persons are His life. Not that God has three different lives;
that as Father he has one life, and as the Son a second life, and
as the Holy Ghost a third life. There is but one life in God, and
it is the three persons that live that life. This appears to me
to be the most reasonable explanation of the Trinity which our
minds are capable of conceiving, and I will develop this thought
in a few words.
{145}
God is a __living__ being. Let us ask ourselves whence does
God receive the life of His Divine Being? Who is the author of
His life? Plainly, from no one but from Himself. He is the first,
and only, and complete cause of His own life. There was nothing
before Him from which He drew His infinite being, nor upon whose
prior existence He depends for life. There is nothing now that
can sustain Him or support His life, neither can there be
anything after Him. He is the eternally living God. He is, then,
the eternal cause of His own life.
What is He as cause, and what is this divine life of His being
which is the effect of that cause? As cause, He is the Father,
the Parent, the Progenitor, the Producer, the Begetter of His own
life. And that life, which is begotten in Himself, is the Son. He
is the eternally living God, and hence the Son is eternally
begotten of the Father. The Person of God who begets His own life
is the Father. The Person who is the Life begotten is the Son;
and is a Person, because it is God who says by the mouth of the
Son--I am the Life begotten.
Both the Father and the Son are equal, because it is the same
Divine Being who is both Father and Son, as we profess in the
Creed--"__consubstantial with the Father__." Both are eternal.
The Father does not exist before the Son, because it is the same
Divine Being which is the life as Son, as well as Giver of life
as the Father. God is the Father, because He begets a Son--His
Life.
{146}
God is the Son, because He is the Life begotten of the
Father--the Divine Progenitor of the Life of the Eternal Godhead.
God is the eternally living God. He lives the life which He gives
Himself. His life is infinitely perfect, infinitely lovely,
infinitely good. He enjoys the life He has. We possess life, not
like the life of God, it is true, because it is limited in
duration, imperfect in action, subject to change, and incapable
of absolute happiness; but, such as it is, we live it, we enjoy
it. The enjoyment or living of our life proceeds from two
sources. First, from the cause of our life--from that which makes
us live; and, secondly, from the life we possess. And we say--I
enjoy my own life. But, mark it, we cannot say as the Father can
say--I give myself life; nor as the Son of God can say--I am the
life. We can only say--I enjoy the life which is given to me.
Hence we are only one person--the person living, enjoying the
life which is not from ourselves, but from God.
So God enjoys with an infinite beatitude His own life. It is the
Person of the Holy Ghost. He says not--I give myself life. It is
the Person of the Father which says that. He does not say--I am
the life. It is the Person of the Son who says that. But he
says--I am God, living My life; I am God, enjoying My life.
{147}
Yet it must be kept in mind that all this is one simultaneous act
in God: the eternal giving of life to Himself; the life itself
eternally springing into being, and the eternal enjoyment or
fruition of life. These are not separate acts, but one, single,
inseparable act of the Triune God. The Being which acts is God,
and God is not one or two of the Trinity, but the Trinity itself.
The principle of the act is attributed to the Person; the act
itself to the God head. Hence, again, the Son does not live a
different life from the Father, or the Holy Ghost a different
life from the other two Persons, but the life they live is all
one.
To the Holy Ghost is attributed the living or enjoyment of life,
as we attribute the living of our own life to our own person;
and, therefore, our person is, in a remarkable manner, an image
of the Holy Ghost. We speak of our __spirit__ as living,
rejoicing, etc., and when we die or yield up the living of our
life, we say--We give up the ghost.
In Me, says the Holy Ghost, are all possible perfections; I
rejoice in them. My life is all good, wherefore I love Myself
with infinite love. My life is all beautiful, wherefore I admire
it, and am well pleased, and take an infinite delight in it. My
life is all holy. I am the supreme object of My own adoration. My
life is all true, wherefore I contemplate all truth with
unspeakable bliss. In My life is no conflict, no change, no
anxiety, doubt, or sorrow, wherefore I am in eternal peace.
{148}
My life is all that is or can be, wherefore I seek not for My
happiness outside of My own happy being. Such I am, and such I
live, the Holy Ghost, who proceed from the Father and the Son,
who, together with the Father and the Son, am adored and
glorified, the great I AM, the Ancient of Days, Alpha and Omega,
the Beginning and the End, who was, and who is, and who is to
come, the Almighty, Good, Wise, Just, and True, the eternal,
living God.
Dear brethren, such thoughts, I know, are bewildering, and leave
our poor human intellects stupefied in presence of that Majesty,
the simplest idea of whom is beyond all power of expression.
But we know that God is, and that we know Him, great as He is,
incomprehensible as He is, so far transcending all grasp of our
feeble minds; yet even in His mysterious Being He is no stranger
to us. The doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in God is
wonderful, but it is not a strange doctrine. It is a truth full
of light and consolation. It is a revelation of Him, who is all
in all, that draws us, if I may say so, nearer to Him.
Starting with this view of Him, enlightened with this truth, all
that He has done for us in the world of nature and of grace,
becomes clear, plain, reasonable, and consequent. All the other
mysterious truths of Christianity, as I have said before, suppose
the truth of this, and, indeed, would be unmeaning without it.
The consideration of one or two of these will confirm the view I
have taken of it.
{149}
Look at creation. This is fully as incomprehensible to our minds
as the mystery of the Trinity itself. But without a revelation of
the Trinity, it would be more difficult of belief, further away
from our grasp, baffling more utterly all our attempts to form a
reasonable conception of it. What is it? It is that God, who is
all that is or can be, yet can create and has created something
which is not God. It looks like a contradiction. Those who have
rejected the Trinity and yet believe in God so regard it, and are
led to imagine that the created universe and all that is in it
and of it is Divine.
We read that, when God created man, He said, "Let us make man to
our image and likeness." [Footnote 40]
[Footnote 40: Genesis i. 26]
The creature is, then, an image of the Creator. Creation is not
God, but is an image of God; that is, the being and life of
creatures, analogous to the being and life of God, is not of
themselves, but is a reflected image of God, which we may compare
to the reflected image of ourselves in a mirror. The image we
behold is not our own being, but an imperfect likeness of it. So
the creation which God beholds imaged in His own Divine mind is
not His own Divine being, but an imperfect likeness of it.
{150}
And now it is not the image of an abstract being--of an ideal
being--but of a living being. The living God is the Trinity, as I
have shown. The mystery of creation is illuminated by this truth,
as you will see.
We say in the Creed, "I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth." He is the Personal Cause, the
Progenitor of all creation. Yet we also say, with St. John: "The
Word was God. All things were made by Him: and without Him was
nothing made that was made." [Footnote 41] And with holy Job:
"The Spirit of the Lord made me, and the breath of the Almighty
gave me life." [Footnote 42] And again, with the Psalmist: "Thou
shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created: and Thou
shalt renew the face of the earth." [Footnote 43]
[Footnote 41: St. John i. 1-3.]
[Footnote 42: Job xxxiii. 4.]
[Footnote 43: Ps. ciii. 30.]
[USCCB: Ps. civ. 30.]
We speak of creation, then, either as of the Father, of the Son,
or of the Holy Ghost, because it is of the Trinity--one act of
the Godhead. But we attribute creation properly to the Father,
because He is the Infinite Personal Cause. We attribute it to the
Son, because He is the Infinite Personal Life. "In him was the
life," says St. John, in the next sentence after that in which he
says all things were created by the Word, "and," he adds, "the
life was the light of men."
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So chant we in the Credo: __Lumen de lumine__--Light of light.
It is the first word spoken by God at the creation--"__Fiat
lux!__" Admirable conception! Light is, as it were, the Creator
of the image reflected in a mirror, and the Divine Word is the
light--the Creator of the creature who is the image and likeness
of God. St. Paul calls our Lord, who is Man united to the Word,
"the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every
creature. In Him were all things created in heaven, and on earth,
visible, and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or
principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and in
Him: and He is before all, and by Him all things consist."
[Footnote 44] Because our Lord was the Word of God, the same
thing is declared of Him, as the Eternal Wisdom, by the inspired
prophet: "I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the
first-born before all creatures." [Footnote 45] The creative act
is, then, an image of the Son of God being divinely begotten by
the Father; and creation in existence is an image of Him who
truly said, "I am the Life."
[Footnote 44: Coloss. i. 15-17.]
[Footnote 45: Ecclus. xxiv. 5.]
[USCCB: Sirach xxiv. 3.]
We attribute the creation to the Holy Ghost when we say in the
Creed, "And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and
Life-giver."
{152}
Recall what I said about the Holy Ghost, that He is God living,
enjoying His Divine life. Creation is the image of God living,
and hence of the Holy Ghost. When man was created, the Sacred
Record says, "God breathed the breath [or spirit] of life into
his face, and man became a living soul." With man, everything
lives and enjoys its being with an enjoyment which is a
reflection of the supreme living beatitude in God. Thus exclaims
the writer of the Book of Wisdom: "The Spirit of the Lord hath
filled the whole earth: and that, which containeth all things,
hath knowledge of the voice." [Footnote 46]
[Footnote 46: Wisdom i. 7.]
It is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, the Lord and Life-giver,
who, as holy Job declares, "hath adorned the heavens" with their
radiant beauty, who hath filled the whole earth, and vivified it,
so that it is not a dead but a living image of the Eternal,
Omnipotent, Living God. Did I not say well, my brethren, that the
mystery of the Holy Trinity is an illumination of the mystery of
creation?
Look, again, at the Mystery of the Incarnation, in which are
included the other Mysteries of the Regeneration and Redemption
of man. We can not understand its manner. We cannot see how it
is, any more than we can understand how the Son is begotten of
the Father, or how the Holy Ghost proceeds from them both.
{153}
But the Trinity illuminates that also, and enlightens us to see
and believe it, now that it is revealed to us. Like Creation, it
is an act of the Trinity, because it is God uniting His Divine
Person of the Son to humanity, His created image. This is why our
Lord, as Man as well as God, calls Himself the Son of God. This
is why the Apostle calls us, who are His brethren in the flesh,
sons of God. It is the act of God as the Father. "God so loved
the world, as to give his only-begotten Son." [Footnote 47] It is
an act of God as the Son. In His last discourse, Jesus says to
His disciples: "I came forth from the Father, and am come into
the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father."
[Footnote 48] It is an act of the Holy Ghost. As we say in the
Creed, and as the Scripture testifies, "He was conceived by the
Holy Ghost."
[Footnote 47: S. John iii. 16.]
[Footnote 48: __Ibid__. xvi. 23.]
[USCCB: John xvi. 28.]
The mystery of the Trinity thus enables us to recognize the
Divinity of the Person of Jesus Christ, as also the sublime
character and object of His Incarnation. It reveals to us the
true destiny of man, and shows us how the very reason of creation
is in God Himself, and is to find its end, its accomplishment and
fruition in God. For, as you see, the Incarnation was an act, of
which the Person of God Himself was the object.
{154}
It was God communicating His Divine Life to the creature, and
thus all creatures, through Jesus, who is the First-Born of them
all, are to find their destiny, the end of their creation, in
eternal union with the Divine Life. "I am the Life," said our
Lord, and "because I live, you shall live." [Footnote 49] He and
the Father are one. But, O wonderful revelation! "In that day you
shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you."
[Footnote 50]
[Footnote 49: St. John xiv. 6 and 19.]
[Footnote 50: __Ibid__. 20.]
"God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world," says St.
John, "that we may live by Him." [Footnote 51] "Ye are the
temples of the living God," [Footnote 52] exclaims St. Paul. "We
are made partakers of the Divine nature," [Footnote 53] says St.
Peter. And St. Paul again designates us, first, as the "partakers
of Christ," [Footnote 54] and next as the "partakers of the Holy
Ghost." [Footnote 55]
[Footnote 51: Ep. St. John iv. 9.]
[Footnote 52: 2 Cor. vi. 16.]
[Footnote 53: 2 Ep. St. Peter i. 4.]
[Footnote 54: Heb. iii. 14.]
[Footnote 55: Heb. vi. 4.]
Once more, our Lord bids us fear not the apparent annihilation of
death. "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in
Me, though he be dead, shall live. And every one that liveth, and
believeth in Me, shall not die for ever." [Footnote 56]
[Footnote 56: St. John xi., 25, 26.]
{155}
How clear, how consistent is every word! As we contemplate the
truth of the Incarnation in the light of the revealed Trinity,
our faith must grow stronger, and the hopes and aspirations of
our hearts be confirmed, and our love wax the deeper; for this
brighter view of God must draw us nearer to Him by sight and by
love. We, too, burn to answer our Lord as did Martha, when He
asked her if she believed His words: "Yea, Lord, I have believed
that Thou art Christ the Son of the Living God, who art come into
this world." [Footnote 57]
[Footnote 57: St. John xi. 27.]
We set out, my dear brethren, to look at the reasons which
Christian philosophy is able to show us of the reasonableness of
the mysterious doctrine, of which we make acts of profession
oftener, perhaps, than of any other, for we do it every time we
make the sign of the Cross; and in honor of which we are to-day
keeping solemn festival. We have been talking and thinking like
philosophers on this deep mystery, and to us might be very
properly addressed that pertinent remark of Thomas à Kempis:
"What doth it avail thee to discourse profoundly of the Trinity,
if thou be wanting in humility, and, consequently, displeasing to
the Trinity? If thou didst know the whole Bible by heart, and the
sayings of all the philosophers, what would it all profit thee,
without the love of God and His grace?" [Footnote 58]
[Footnote 58: __Imit. Christi__, book i. ch. I.]
{156}
Truly, a question of no little import to us all. Today the Church
brings us, as it were, face to face with the awful Majesty of the
Ever-Blessed Trinity, the Living God. It is a fearful thought to
be in that Presence, for it must compel us to ask ourselves--Are
we indeed the image and likeness of the Living God? And not only
that, but are we, as we should be, __living images of Him?__
Are our souls living in His Divine grace, or are they standing
before Him to-day dead in sin? To be wise in the knowledge of the
Blessed Trinity is well, but to love Him is better. To be
ignorant of the Blessed Trinity is a misfortune; but to sin
against Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being is a
crime against the Life of God. Wonder not that to lose God is to
lose eternal life, and fall into hell, the eternal death. To sin
is, in the language of St. Paul, to "trample under foot the Son
of God, and offer an affront to the Spirit of Grace." [Footnote
59] Filled with horror at the thought of this crime against the
Holy Trinity, he exclaims: "It is a fearful thing to fall into
the hands of the Living God." [Footnote 60]
[Footnote 59: Heb. x. 29.]
[Footnote 60: Heb. x. 31.]
Therefore, brethren, let us adore with profound humility the
Ever-Blessed Trinity, full of gratitude that He has vouchsafed
this revelation of His mysterious Being to us, and thus
enlightened our minds that we may know Him, and love Him, and
serve Him better.
{157}
But let us so live, as children of the Heavenly Father, as
brethren of Jesus Christ our Lord, and as sanctified temples of
the Holy Ghost, that, when the veil of this life be rent in
twain, and we shall stand face to face in eternity before the
glorious majesty of God, and in presence of the glittering hosts
of angels who surround His throne, we may be able to present the
record of a life which has truly been an image and likeness of
the Life of the Living God--the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost; to whom be glory now and for ever throughout eternal ages.
Amen.
-----------------------
{158}
Sermon X
The Real Presence.
(For The Feast Of Corpus Christi.)
St. Matt. i. 23.
"__They shall call His name Emmanuel,
which, being interpreted, is God with us__."
We conclude the seasons of Easter and Pentecost with the Feast of
the Blessed Trinity, following in thought our ascended Jesus up
to the right hand of His eternal Father. From Christmas to
Ascension we commemorate the mission (as it is called) of the
Second Person of the Trinity: how the Father sent the Son to
become Incarnate, to accomplish our redemption, and found the
Church. At Pentecost we celebrate the mission of the Third
Person: how the Father and the Son together sent the Holy Ghost,
to become incorporate in the Church, and abide with and in it
through all time. Then, on Trinity Sunday, the Church, in her
turn, bids us remember that, although the Son and the Holy Ghost
were sent down to earth, yet they never left heaven; where they
had dwelt from eternity, and will dwell to eternity,
consubstantial and coequal with the Father.
{159}
But the Church is the kingdom of the Incarnation; and the
Incarnation is God made visible. Therefore, as a true spouse,
living only for her Beloved, she does not leave us contemplating
the invisible God, but quickly sets before us the Incarnation
again--the end of her yearly song no less than its beginning. For
the feast of Corpus Christi is to Christmas as the end to the
beginning of a chain of mysteries which centre in the
Incarnation. It is, indeed, a sort of second Christmas--the
sacramental life of our Lord bearing striking resemblance to His
helpless infancy. Again, lest we should forget that our ascended
Lord left behind Him the very body He carried into heaven, the
Church does not let us stand gazing up after Him with the group
on Olivet, but invites us to turn and rejoice with her in the
mystery of His perpetual presence here below--a presence not the
less real because supersensible, nor the less consoling because
veiled.
I shall speak, then, of the Blessed Sacrament, first, as a
reality; and, secondly, as a consolation.
{160}
First, as a reality. You are aware, my dear brethren, that no
article of our faith excites so much the wonder of those who are
not Catholics as the doctrine of the Real Presence. They are
forced to acknowledge, too, that we actually do believe in it,
and take it as a matter of course. Their wonderment is natural
enough: for they judge of it only by the senses; and certainly we
cannot conceive of any mode in which it would have more apparent
__un__reality. If, however, they believe that the Christ who
was born in a stable, lived in obscurity for thirty years, was
rejected by the Jews as "the carpenter's son," and, at last, died
a felon's death, was God, they must allow that the Godhead in Him
had very much apparent unreality, and that its surprising
concealment can only be accounted for by design. Again, if they
are familiar with the Bible, they know that in several passages a
certain adorable secrecy and shyness are ascribed to God as
characteristic of Him. As, for instance, in the Psalms we are
told that He "makes darkness His hiding-place." [Footnote 61] In
Job it is asked, "Peradventure thou wilt comprehend the steps of
God, and find out the Almighty perfectly? He is higher than
heaven, and what wilt thou do? He is deeper than hell, and how
wilt thou know?" [Footnote 62] while Isaias breaks out with the
exclamation: "Truly Thou art a hidden God, Thou God of Israel,
the Saviour!" [Footnote 63]
[Footnote 61: Ps. xvii. 12.]
[USCCB: Ps. xviii. 12.]
[Footnote 62: Job xi. 7.]
[Footnote 63: Is. xlv. 15.]
{161}
As far, then, as the hiddenness of the Real Presence goes, it
ought rather to commend our doctrine than otherwise, and create a
presumption in its favor.
But the radical difficulty with the stranger to the truth lies in
his not understanding the Incarnation and its object. It is
nothing to him, I may say. He professes belief in it, indeed, but
has utterly "lost its meaning" (as dear Father Faber says). Let
him once begin to realize the Incarnation, and he will find he is
taking the road to Rome: he will find that there is such a thing
as a visible Church, and such a person as the Mother of God. To
the Catholic, on the contrary, the Incarnation is everything. It
is the fount of the whole system to which he glories in adhering.
The Church exists for nothing else. The world exists for nothing
else. The world for the Church, the Church for Christ, and Christ
for God.
Now, the object of the Incarnation was briefly this: The
establishment of a visible kingdom, in which the Creator should
receive an adequate worship from the creature, and the creature
be raised to the highest possible union with the Creator. We say,
then, that the Church is this visible kingdom--to wit, an organic
body, of which we are made members by Baptism (an outward and
visible rite); and that the twofold end of worship and union is
accomplished by the perpetual presence of the Incarnation here on
earth, as at once a sacrifice and a sacrament.
{162}
A sacrifice in which the creature offers to God a divine
victim--the only adequate worship He can receive, God being
offered to God--and in a created nature. A sacrament, in which
the assumed humanity in Christ, hypostatically united with the
divinity, is made to blend with our humanity in a union so close
as to render us, in turn, "partakers of the divine nature."
[Footnote 64] Moreover, we say that the form of food, in which
our Lord chose to impart to us His deified and deifying humanity,
was (so to speak) the most natural form He could have chosen:
since food becomes one substance with its recipient--the
difference between ordinary food and this divine food being that
the latter, instead of being changed into us, transforms us into
itself.
[Footnote 64: 2 St. Peter i. 4.]
Therefore, to us, who, by the grace of faith, understand the
Incarnation and its object, the doctrine of the Real Presence is
simply the supplement to the doctrine of the Incarnation. The one
is the consequence of the other. We behold in the Church, with
the Blessed Sacrament on her altars, the mystical Mary with the
Divine Babe on her lap: and when we kneel to her, that she may
give Him to us, or bless us with Him, we have no more feeling of
unreality than the Shepherds and the Magi had in the cave at
Bethlehem.
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The feast of Corpus Christi, then, my brethren, is one of a
blessed __reality__: a reality which ought to make us thank
God every day of our lives that we are Catholics. For can
anything be more dismal, more barren, more pointless, than a
Christianity in which the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed
Virgin have no place?