_As dying, and behold we live_.--II COR. VI. 9.
We have considered, so far, a number of paradoxical phenomena exhibited
in the life of Catholicism and have attempted to find their
reconciliation in the fact that the Catholic Church is at once Human and
Divine. In her striving, for example, after a Divine and supernatural
Peace, of which she alone possesses the secret, she _resists even unto
blood_ all human attempts to supplant this by another. As a human
society, again, she avails herself freely of human opportunities and
aids, of earthly and created beauty, for the setting forth of her
message; yet she can survive, as can no human society, when she is
deprived of her human rights and her acquired wealth. As human she
numbers the great multitude of the world's sinners among her children,
yet as Divine she has produced the saints. As Divine she bases all her
gospel on a Revelation which can be apprehended only by Faith, yet as
human she employs the keenest and most profound intellects for its
analysis and its propagation. In these and in many other similar points
it has been attempted to show why she offers now one aspect and now
another to human criticism, and how it is that the very charges made
against her become, when viewed in the light of her double claim, actual
credentials and arguments on behalf of that claim. Finally, in the
meditations upon the _Seven Words_ of Christ, we considered very briefly
how, in the hours of the deepest humiliation of His Humanity, He
revealed again and again the characteristics of His Divinity.
It now remains to consider that point in which she most manifests that
double nature of hers and, simultaneously therefore, presents, as in a
kind of climax, her identity, under human terms, with Him Who, Himself
the Lord of Life, conquered death by submitting to it and, by His
Resurrection from the dead, showed Himself _the Son of God with power_.
I. Death, the world tells us, is the final end of all things, and is the
one universal law of which evasion is impossible; and this is true, not
of the individual only, but of society, of nations, of civilization, and
even, it would seem, ultimately of physical life itself. Every vital
energy therefore that we possess can be directed not to the abolition,
but only to the postponement of this final full close to which the most
ecstatic created harmony must come at last.
Our physicians cannot heal us, they can merely ward off death for a
little. Our statesmen cannot establish an eternal federation, they can
but help to hold a crumbling society together for a little longer. Our
civilization cannot really evolve an immortal superman, it can but
render ordinary humanity a little less mortal, temporarily and in
outward appearance. Death, then, in the world's opinion, is the duellist
who is bound to win. We may parry, evade, leap aside for a little; we
may even advance upon him and seem to threaten his very existence; our
energies, in fact, must be concentrated upon this conflict if we are to
survive at all. But it is only in seeming, at the best. The moment must
come when, driven back to the last barrier, our last defence falters ...
and Death has only to wipe his sword.
Now the attitude of the Catholic Church towards Death is not only the
most violent reversal of the world's policy, but the most paradoxical,
too, of all her methods. For, while the world attempts to keep Death at
arm's length, the Church strives to embrace him. Where the world draws
his sword to meet Death's assault, the Church spreads her heart only to
receive it. She is in love with Death, she pursues him, honours him,
extols Him. She places over her altars not a Risen Christ, but a dying
One.
_If thou wilt be perfect_, she cries to the individual soul, _give up
all that thou hast and follow me_. "Give up all that makes life worth
living, strip thyself of every advantage that sustains thy life, of all
that makes thee effective." It is this that is her supreme appeal, not
indeed uttered, with all its corollaries, to all her children, but to
those only that desire perfection. Yet to all, in a sense, the appeal is
there. _Die daily_, die to self, mortify, yield, give in. If _any man
will save his life, he must lose it_.
So too, in her dealings with society, is her policy judged suicidal by a
world that is in love with its own kind of life. It is suicidal, cries
that world, to relinquish in France all on which the temporal life of
the Church depends; for how can that society survive which renounces the
very means of existence? It is suicidal to demand the virgin life of the
noblest of her children, suicidal to desert the monarchical cause of one
country, and to set herself in opposition to the Republican ideals of
another. For even she, after all, is human and must conform to human
conditions. Even she, however august her claims, must make terms with
the world if she desires to live in it.
And this comment has been made upon her actions in every age. She
condemned Arius, when a little compromise might surely have been found;
and lost half her children. She condemned Luther and lost Germany;
Elizabeth, and lost England. At every crisis she has made the wrong
choice, she has yielded when she should have resisted, resisted when she
should have yielded. The wonder is that she survives at all.
Yes, that is the wonder. _As dying, behold she lives_!
II. The answer of course is easy. It is that she simply does not desire
the kind of life which the world reckons alone to be life. To her that
is not life at all. She desires of course to survive as a human society,
and she is assured that she always shall so survive. Yet it is not on
the ordinary terms of ordinary society that she desires survival. It is
not a _natural_ life of which she is ambitious, a life that draws its
strength from human conditions and human environment, a life, therefore,
that waxes and wanes with those human conditions and ultimately meets
their fate, but a _supernatural_ life that draws its strength from God.
And she recognizes, as one of the most fundamental paradoxes of all,
that such a life can be gained and held only through what the world
calls "death."
She does not, then, want merely the life of a prosperous human state,
whether monarchy or republic. There are times indeed in her history when
such an accompaniment to her real existence is useful to her
effectiveness; and she has, of course, the right, as have other
societies, to earthly dominions that may have been won and presented to
her by her children. Or through her ministers, as in Paraguay, she may
administer for a while the ordinary civil affairs of men who choose to
be loyal to her government. Yet if, for one instant, such a
responsibility were really to threaten her spiritual effectiveness--if,
that is, the choice were really presented to her between spiritual and
temporal dominion--she would let all the kingdoms of the world go in an
instant, to retain her kingdom from God; she would gladly _suffer the
loss of all things_ to retain Christ.
And how is it possible to deny for one instant that her success has been
startling and overwhelming--this fructification of Life by Death.
Are there any human beings, for example, who have been more effective
and influential than her saints--men and women, that is to say, who have
_died daily_, in order to live indeed? They have not, it is true,
prospered, let us say, as business men, directors of companies, or
government officials, but such a success is simply not her ideal for
them, not their own ideal for themselves. That is precisely the kind of
life to which they have, as a rule, determinedly and perseveringly died.
Yet their effectiveness in this world has been none the less. Are any
kings remembered as is the beggar Labré who gnawed cabbage stalks in the
gutters of Rome? Are the names of any statesmen of, let us say, even a
hundred years ago, reverenced and repeated as is the name of the woman
of Spain called Teresa of Jesus who, four hundred years ago, ruled a few
nuns within the enclosure of a convent? Are any musicians or artists
loved to-day with such rapture as is God's little troubadour, called
Francis, who made music for himself and the angels by rubbing one stick
across another?
Or, again, is any empire that the world has ever seen so great, so
loyally united in itself, so universal and yet so rigorous as is that
spiritual empire whose capital is Rome? Is there any nation with so
fierce a patriotism as she who is Supernational? Earthly kings speak
from their thrones and what happens? And an old man in Rome who wears
three crowns on his head speaks from his prison in the Vatican and all
the earth rings with it.
Has her policy, then, been so suicidal after all? From the world's point
of view it has never been anything else. Her history is but one long
example of the sacrifice of human activities and earthly opportunities;
she has expelled from her pulpits the most brilliant of her children,
she has silenced or alienated the most eloquent of her defenders. She
has cut off from herself all that she should have kept, and hugged to
her arms all that she should have relinquished! She has never done
anything but die! She never does anything but live!
III. Turn, then, to the life of her Lord for the solution of this
riddle. Last week[1] He was going to His Death. He was losing, little by
little, all that bound Him to Life. The multitudes that had followed Him
hitherto were leaving Him by units and groups, they who might have
formed His armies to seat Him on the throne of His father David.
Disloyalty had made its way even among His chosen body-guard, and
already Judas is bargaining for the price of His Master's blood. Even
the most loyal of all are dismayed, and presently will _forsake Him and
flee_ when the swords flash out in the garden of Gethsemane. A few weeks
ago in Galilee thousands were leaving Him for the last time; and when,
once again, a company seemed to rally, He wept! And so at last the
sacrifice was complete and, one by one, He laid down of His own will
every tie that kept Him in life. And then on Good Friday itself He
suffered that beauty of His _Face to be marred_ so that no man would
ever _desire Him_ any more, silenced the melody of the Voice that had
broken so many hearts and made them whole again; He stretched out His
Shepherd's Hands with which alone He could gather His sheep to His
Breast, and the Feet that alone could bear Him into the wilderness to
_seek after that which was lost_. Was there ever a Suicide such as this,
such a despair of high hopes, such a ruin of all ambition, a dying so
complete and irremediable as the Dying of Jesus Christ?
[Footnote 1: This Sermon was preached on Easter Day.]
And now on Easter Day look at Him again and see how He lives as never
before. See how the Life that has been His for thirty years--the Life of
God made Man--itself pales almost to a phantom before the glory of that
same Life transfigured by Death. Three days ago He fainted beneath the
scourge and nails; now He shows the very scars of His Passion to be the
emblems of immortal strength. Three days ago He spoke in human words to
those only that were near Him, and limited Himself under human terms of
space and time; He speaks now in every heart. Three days ago He gave His
Body to the few who knelt at His Table; to-day in ten thousand
tabernacles that same Body may be worshipped by all who come.
In a word, He has exchanged a Natural Life for a Supernatural in every
plane at once. He has laid down the Natural Life of His Body to take it
back again supernaturalized for ever. He has died that His Life may be
released; He has _finished_ in order to begin.
It is easy, then, to see why it is that the Church _dies daily_, why it
is that she is content to be stripped of all that makes her life
effective, why she too permits her hands to be bound and her feet
fettered and her beauty marred and her voice silenced so far as men can
do those things. She is human? Yes; she dwells in a _body that is
prepared_ for her, but prepared chiefly that she may suffer in it. Her
far-reaching hands are not hers merely that she may bind up with them
the broken-hearted, nor her swift feet hers merely that she may run on
them to succour the perishing, nor her head and heart hers merely that
she may ponder and love. But all this sensitive human organism is hers
that at last she may agonize in it, bleed from it from a thousand
wounds, be lifted up in it to draw all men to her cross.
She does not desire, then, in this world, the _throne of her Father
David_, nor the kind of triumph which is the only kind that the world
understands to be so. She desires one life and one triumph only--the
Risen Life of her Saviour. And this, at last, is the transfiguration of
her Humanity by the power of her Divinity and the vindication of them
both.