HOLY WEEK II
And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put
his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
S. Matt. XXVII, 31.
Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy people:
that we, who are not able to do anything of ourselves, that
can be pleasing to thee, may be assisted in the way of
salvation by the prayers of the Mother of thy Son. Who.
Having partaken of thy heavenly table, we humbly beseech thy
clemency, O Lord, our God, that we who honour the Assumption
of the Mother of God, may, by her intercession, be delivered
from all evils. Through.
OLD CATHOLIC.
The way of the Cross is indeed a Sorrowful Way. We have meditated upon
it so often that we are familiar with all the details of our Lord's
action as He follows it from the Judgment Seat of Pilate to the Place of
a Skull. I wonder if we enough pause to look with our Lord at the crowds
that line the way, or at those who follow Him out of the city. It is not
a mere matter of curiosity that we should do so, or an exercise of the
devout imagination; the reason why we should examine carefully the faces
of those men who attend our Lord on the way to His death is that
somewhere in that crowd we shall see our own faces: it is a mirror of
sinful humanity that we look into there. All the seven deadly sins are
there incarnate.
It is extremely important that we should get this sort of personal
reaction from the Passion because we are so prone to be satisfied with
generalities, to confess that we are miserable sinners, and let it go at
that! But to stop there is to stop short of any possibility of
improvement, because we can only hope to improve when we understand our
lives in detail, when we face them as concrete examples of certain sins.
There was pride there. It was expressed by both Roman and Jewish
officialism which looked with scorn on this obscure fanatic who claimed
to be a king! Pilate had satisfied himself of His harmlessness by a very
cursory examination. This Galilean Prophet with His handful of
followers, peasants and women, who had deserted Him at the first sign of
danger, was hardly worth troubling about. The only ground for any action
at all was the fear that the Jewish leaders might be disagreeable. Those
Jewish leaders took a rather more serious view of the situation because
they knew that through the purity of His teaching and His obvious power
to perform miracles, a power but just now once more strikingly
demonstrated in the raising of Lazarus, He had a powerful hold on the
people. They, these Jewish leaders, declined a serious examination of
the claims of such a man in their pride of place and knowledge of the
Scriptures. They were concerned to sweep Him aside as a possible leader
in a popular outbreak, not as one whose claim to the Messiahship needed
a moment's examination.
This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to which
humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive force because
it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature, of that in us which
is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will remember, the sin on
which our Lord centres His chief denunciation. And common as it has
always been, it has never been so common as it is to-day. Pilate and the
chief priests are duplicated in every community in the thousands who
reject Christianity without any adequate examination as incredible in
view of what they actually hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they
desire to practice. We have only to read very superficially in the
current literature of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in
colleges, to be completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt
against the Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a
revolt without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian
Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is
established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through the
eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is that
Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the word by
those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of great force;
of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the actual
comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an experience. The
operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily proved, and only
completely proved, by the action of the Spirit Himself.
Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal, without
adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and the picking
and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments and practices as to
what we will use or observe. Men do not like this or that, and they
therefore decline it. The whole attitude is one of self-will and pride.
Whatsoever comes to us with a great weight of Christian experience back
of it certainly deserves careful consideration; it demands of us that we
treat it as other than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins
and the most dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual
life. It runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not
all manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of it
are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an indefinite
degree. For there is no difference in nature between the spiritual
attitude of the person who says, "I do not see any sense in that and
will not do it," when the matter in question may be the Church's rule of
fasting, and that of the man who before Pilate's Judgment Seat cried
out, "We have no king but Caesar."
It was in fact because they found their own power and place threatened
that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our Lord's death.
Their sin from this point of view was the sin of covetousness. This sin
reaches its highest point when it is greed for power over other men's
lives and destinies, when it is ready to sacrifice the lives of others
in order to gain or maintain its ends. In this broad sense it is the
most socially destructive of sins. The wars of the world for these many
years have been wars for commercial supremacy. The world is being
continually exploited by commercial enterprises which will stop at
nothing to gain their ends. Some day a history of the last two hundred
years will be written which will tell the story of the commercial
expansion of the world we call civilised, and it will be the most
horrible book that has ever been written. It will contain the story of
the Spanish colonisation of America. It will contain the history of the
slave trade. It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and of
the rubber industry in South America. It will contain the history of the
American Indian and of the opium trade of India--and of many
like things.
But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit of
wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need not forget
that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can be. It is so
common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to know how far one is
a victim of it. It is deliberately taught to us as children under the
guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is certainly one that the
saints have overlooked. We are constantly called on to strike a balance
between what are the proper needs of life and what is an improper
concentration of attention upon ourselves. Waste of money, like waste of
any other energy, is a sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is
waste. I think it a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of
the doubt when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.
However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to conduct
their lives as the children of God will have little difficulty in this
matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of expenditure but in the
matter of gain. The ethics of business are very far from being the
ethics of the Gospel, and we are often frankly told by those engaged in
business that it cannot be successfully conducted on the basis of the
ethics of the Gospel, That it is not so conducted is sufficiently
obvious from a cursory scanning of the advertising columns of any
newspaper or magazine. The ideal of the business world is success.
Naturally, one cannot carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be
success by all means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the
methods by which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there
is no room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but
one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it
controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and beware of
covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
things that he possesseth." And He went on to speak a parable which has
come to be known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. The "practical man"
may be as angered as he likes by this teaching, but in his soul he knows
that our Lord was right. When such things are pointed out from the
pulpit the "practical man" says: "What would become of the Church were
it not for the rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that
in that case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have
a fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.
It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was not
represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is but a
superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of some
manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its roots deep
in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its commonest
manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always, but commonly,
cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a very common form of
its expression. There are sights we have seen or incidents we have read
of, it may be a boy torturing an animal or another child, it may be a
shouting mass of men about a prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a
town,--when the action seems so senseless that we are at a loss to
account for it; but the account of it lies in the mystery of our
sensual nature, in the ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that
is being expressed by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a
sensual joy. These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were
sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our selves
closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself from time to
time. Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few could have known
anything about the case of our Lord; but they were fascinated by the
spectacle of a man's torture. If the executions of criminals were public
to-day there would undoubtedly be huge crowds to gaze upon them.
It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that what we had
thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one of the
manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study far before we
arrive at the ideal, Know thyself. It is always dangerous to assume that
we know when we have not been at the pains to look at a subject on all
sides. Our sensual nature needs a very careful discipline, and the mere
freedom from certain forms of the sin of lust is not the equivalent of
that purity which is the medium of the Vision of God.
It is the sin of gluttony which is the least obvious in the Way of the
Cross. There are no doubt plenty of gluttons there, but that is not what
we are trying to find; we are trying to see how each sin contributed to
this final act in the drama of our Lord's life, how each sin contributed
to put men in opposition to our Lord. It is not the actual sin of
gluttony that we shall find in operation here but certain inevitable
effects of it, What is the effect of gluttony on the soul of man?
Absorption in the pursuit of the pleasures that spring from material
things; the indulgence of the appetite, and the natural result of such
indulgence which is to render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The
man whose motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," puts
himself out of touch with the spiritual realities of life. He is
materialistic, whatever may be his philosophy. He wants immediate
results from life. When he is confronted with our Lord, when he is told
that our Lord makes demands upon life for self-restraint and
self-discipline, that He demands that the appetites be curbed rather
than indulged, he declines allegiance. One can have no doubt that in our
Lord's time as to-day indifference to His teaching and failure even to
take in what the Gospel means or how it can be a possible rule of life
is largely due to the dull spiritual state, outcome of the indulgence of
the appetite for meat and drink. Men whose brains are clogged by over
eating, and whose faculties are in a deadened state through the use of
alcohol, cannot well understand the Gospel of God.
There is abundant evidence of anger all along the Way of the Cross. The
constant thwarting of the purpose of the Jewish authorities by our Lord,
His unsparing criticism of them before the people, had stirred them to
fury. If our Lord had seemed to them to threaten their "place and
nation" we can understand that they would show toward Him intense
hostility. Their attitude toward the people whose religious interests
they were supposed to have in charge was one of utter contempt: "This
people which knoweth not the Law is cursed." Our Lord's attitude was
the opposite of all this. It was not, to be sure, as to-day it is
represented to be an appeal to the people. He was not bidding for
popular support, but he showed unbounded sympathy with the people; He
cast His teaching in a form that would appeal to them and draw them to
him. He made a popular appeal in that He showed Himself understanding of
the popular mind and without social prejudice of any sort. This setting
aside of the arrogant authorities of Israel roused them to implacable
wrath. They felt that our Lord was setting Himself to undermine their
authority, and as they felt that their authority was "of God" their
indignation translated itself into terms of zeal for God.
This anger that manages to wear a cloak of virtue is peculiarly
dangerous to the soul. When we are just ordinarily mad over some offence
committed against us it is no doubt a sin; but it is not a sin of the
same malignity as when we feel that we can go any lengths because we are
not angry on our own behalf, then our anger almost becomes an act of
religion in our eyes. We have become the defenders of a cause. No doubt
there is such a thing as "righteous indignation," but it is not a virtue
that we are compelled to practice, and we would do well to leave it
alone as much as possible lest our indignation exceed our righteousness,
and we indentify our personal interests with the cause of God.
The worst feature of tempermental flare-ups is the testimony they bear
to our lack of discipline. When we excuse ourselves or others on the
ground that action is "temperamental" we are in fact no more than
restating the fact that there is sore need of discipline; and there is
no more ground for excusing one variety of temperament for its lack of
discipline than an other. In fact, the more inclined a temperament is to
certain sins, the more necessity there is for the appropriate sort of
training. People without self-control, who are constantly losing their
temper, are public nuisances and ought to be suppressed. There is the
worst kind of arrogance in the assumption that I do not have to control
myself and can speak and act as I like. No one, whatever his position,
has the right to ignore the feelings of others; and the more the
position is one of authority, exempting him from a certain kind of
criticism, the more is he bound to criticise himself and examine himself
as to this particular sin.
There are sins under this caption which do not contain much malice but
are disturbing to life, and they are especially disturbing to one's
spiritual life. There are peevish, complaining people, who do not seem
to mean much harm, but keep themselves in a state of dissatisfaction
which renders their spiritual growth impossible. They grow old without
any of the grace and beauty of character which should mark a Christian
old age. One knows old people who have been in intimate contact with the
Church and the sacraments for many years but do not show any signs of
having reached our Lord through them. They are dissatisfied and
complaining and critical and generally disagreeable so that the task of
those who take care of them is rendered very disheartening. What is the
trouble? Has there never been any true spiritual discipline, but only a
certain superficial conformity to a spiritual rule? When old age comes
the will is weakened and the sense of self-respect undermined, with the
result that what the person has all along been in reality, now comes to
the surface and is, perhaps for the first time, visible to every one.
Envy is closely related to pride on the one hand and to covetousness on
the other. It begins in the perception of another's superiority, and
carries its victim through the feeling of hurt pride at the contrast
with himself to desire for that which is not his own. The envious person
covets the qualities of possessions of another, while vividly denying
that they are in fact superior to his own, except, it may be, in certain
apparent and not very valuable aspects. The contrast between the
superior and the inferior has one of two results: either the inferior is
stirred to admiration, or he is stirred to a greater or less degree
of envy.
It was thus that contact with our Lord _revealed_ the reality of men. It
was a very true judgment to associate with him. His apostles were simple
men who never thought of putting themselves in comparison with Him: the
more they knew Him the more wonderful He seemed to them. We feel all
through the Gospel story what an overwhelming impression His personality
made upon men. There is no criticism raised on His character from any
point of view. His enemies fell back on the accusation of blasphemy
growing out of His claims, an accusation that would be true, if the
claims were not true. What we really discover in those who oppose Him is
envy, envy of the influence He exercises over others, envy stirred by
His obvious superiority to themselves.
Envy is one of the sins of which we are least conscious. When people
affirm that they envy others this or that: their leisure, their beauty,
or what not, they clearly do not envy them at all, but are mildly
covetous of the things that they see others possess. Where envy does
show its presence and where we do not recognise its nature, is in that
horrible inclination to depreciate others which is visible in certain
characters. They seem never to hear another mentioned but they try to
think of something which limits the praise bestowed upon him, or
altogether counteracts it. It seems to be an instinctive hostility to
superiority as involving an implied criticism of one's own inferiority.
It is that curious love of the worst that lies at the root of gossip.
And what about the last of the deadly sins, the sin of sloth? One is
almost tempted to say that it is at once the least obvious and the most
destructive of all the deadly sins. That would no doubt be somewhat of
an exaggeration, but it would not be very far off the truth. It is
spiritual sloth that prevents us from considering as we should the
spiritual problems that are presented to us, and therefore prevents us
from gaining their promise. It is the quality in humanity that blocks
the consideration of the new on the ground that we already know and can
gain nothing by further exertion. The Jewish religious leaders declined
the intellectual and spiritual effort of considering our Lord's claims;
they just set them aside unconsidered. And is not that just what we are
constantly doing, and what constitutes the most pressing danger of the
spiritual life? We will not consider the future as the field of
constantly new opportunity and therefore new stages of growth. We do not
want to make the effort that is implied in that attitude.
Our sloth binds us hand and foot and delivers us to the enemy. There are
no doubt some who cry out: "But I am not at all slothful; I am busy from
morning to night; of whatever else I may be guilty, it is not of sloth!"
My friend, busy people are quite often the most slothful people that
there are. They are busy dodging their rightful duties and the
opportunities that God offers them, all day long. Have you never
discovered that when you had something that you ought to do and do not
want to do, that the easiest method by which you can still your
conscience is to make yourself terribly busy about something else, and
then to tell yourself that the reason why you have not done what you
know that you ought to have done is that really you have not had time?
Do you not know that being busy is one of the most effective screens
that you can put between your conscience and your obligation? Do you not
know that tens of thousands of men and women to-day are putting the
screens of good works, of social service of some sort, between their
souls and the worship of God and the practice of the sacraments? Beware
lest while you wear yourself out with activity your besetting sin be
found to be sloth!
And shall we find there on the Way of Sorrow the virtues that are the
opposite of the Seven Sins? Perhaps, if we had time to look, or had
sufficient knowledge of the crowd that lines the way. There are certain
women over there wailing and lamenting; perhaps they could help us. In
any case we know that there is one woman who has succeeded in keeping
near whose love of Jesus is so intense that it will enable her to
overcome all obstacles and be near Him to the very last. Jesus as He
staggers along the way and falls at length under the intolerable weight
of the Cross is the embodiment of all virtues and of all spiritual
accomplishment, and his blessed Mother through His grace has been kept
pure from all sin. She will show the perfection of purely human
accomplishment. She is the best that humanity in union with the
Incarnate Son has brought forth. We have seen--we have caught glimpses
of her life through what the Scriptures tell us of her--how completely
she has responded to grace in all the actions of her life. Not much do
the Scriptures say, but what they do say is like the opening of windows
through which we catch passing aspects of her life which we feel are
perfectly characteristic and revealing.
And we have seen there, or we may see, may we not? the virtues which are
the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to overcome the deadly sins. We
have seen the humility with which, without thought of self, she answered
God's call to be the Mother of His Son. We have seen the liberality with
which she places her whole life at God's disposal, withholding nothing
from the divine service. Purity undefiled had been God's gift to her
from the first moment of her existence. Hers too was that meekness
which willingly accepted all that the appointment of God brought her,
showing in her acceptance no withholding of the will, no trace of
self-assertion. Hers was the great virtue of temperance, the power of
self-restraint and self-discipline, which suppressed all movements of
nature that would be contrary to God's will. There too was the love of
the brother and of the neighbour which is the contrary of envy; and
there was the eagerness in fulfilling the will of God which is the
opposite of sloth.
We have then two spotless examples,--how shall we not be stirred to
follow them! There is Jesus manifesting the qualities of His sinless
life, of the life of God's election, of humanity as God wills it to be,
and as it ultimately will be when it gives itself to His will; and Mary
in whom we see the work of God's grace perfectly accomplished by virtue
of her perfect response to the love of her Sen. We look at these two
lives and we see what is possible for us. We do not say, we cannot say,
these things are too wonderful and great for me. We can only say,
through the grace of God which is given me, "I can do all things." It is
not my inevitable destiny that I should abide a sinner. I have the
choice of being a sinner or a saint.
MARY: Ever I cried full piteously:
"Lordings, what have ye i-brought?
It is my Son I love so much:
For God's sake bury Him nought."
They would not stop though that I swooned,
Till that He in the grave were brought.
Rich clothes they around him wound:
And ever mercy I them besought.
* * * * *
They said there was no better way
But take and bury him full snel.
They looked on my cousin John
For sorrow both a-down we fell--
* * * * *
By Him we fell that was My Child.
His sweet mouth well full oft I kissed.
John saw I was in point to spill,
That nigh mine heart did come to break.
He held his sorrow in his heart still
And mildly then to me did speak:
"Mary, if it be thy will
Go we hence; the Maudeleyn eke."
He led me to a chamber then
Where my Son was used to be,--
John and the Maudeleyn also;
For nothing would they from me flee.
I looked about me everywhere:
I could nowhere my Sonè see.
We sat us down in sorrow and woe
And 'gan to weep all three.
From St. Bernard's Lamentation on Christ's Passion. Engl. version,
probably 13th Cent, by Richard Maydestone.
PART TWO