THE DESCENT AND BURIAL
And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean
linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had
hewn out in the rock.
S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.
It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos, the
ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God.
Honoured above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than
the Seraphim, thou who without stain gavest birth to God the
Word, and art truly Mother of God, we magnify thee.
BYZANTINE.
The end had come--so it must have seemed to those who had loved and
followed our Lord. As they came back from the burial, those of them who
had remained true to the end, as they came out of their hiding places,
those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in that "Upper Room"
which was already consecrated by so many experiences. They came back
from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading the blessed Mother, the Magdalen
and the other Mary following, S. Peter came from whatever obscure corner
he had found safety in. The other Apostles came one by one, a
frightened, disheartened group, shame-faced and doubtful as to what
might next befall them. The thing that to us seems strangest of all is
that no one seems to have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about
His resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any
light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of what
our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming of the
Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood His meaning;
and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that involved in His
sayings about the resurrection we can understand that they should have
been so little influenced by them.
S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that she would
have been unable to think of the future at all save as a dreary waste
of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all to her, was dead.
She had stood by the Cross through all the agony of His dying: she had
heard His last words. That final word to her had sunk very deep into her
heart. She had once more felt His Body in her arms as it was taken down
from the Cross; and she had followed to the place where was a Garden and
a new tomb wherein man had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body
placed and hastily cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on
the Passover Eve would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at
all where she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in
her brain,--He is dead, He is dead.
It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what He
Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean what it
had always meant to religious people of her time and circle. What that
was we have very clearly presented to us in the talk with Martha that
our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay dead. There is a fuller
knowledge than we find explicit in the Old Testament, showing a growth
in the understanding of the Revelation in the years that fall between
the close of the Old Testament canon and the coming of our Lord. There
is a belief in survival to be followed by resurrection at the last day.
That would no doubt be St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the
belief of many Christians to-day. "I know that he shall rise again in
the resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that
they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who have not
appreciated the vast difference that the triumph of Christ over death
has made for us here and now.
So we have no difficulty in understanding the gloom that fell on the
Apostolic circle, accentuated as it was by the very vivid fear that at
any moment they might hear the approaching feet of the Jewish and Roman
officials and the knock of armed hands upon the door. What to do? How
escape? Had they so utterly misunderstood and misinterpreted Christ that
this is the natural outcome of His movement? Had they been the victims
of foolish hopes and of a baseless ambition when they saw in Him the
Christ, the one who should at this time restore again the Kingdom to
Israel? They had persistently clung to this nationalistic interpretation
of His work although He had never encouraged it; but it was the only
meaning that they were able to see in it. And now all their expectations
had collapsed, and they were left hopeless and leaderless to face the
consequences of a series of acts that had ended in the death of their
Master and would end, they knew not how, for them. Was it at all likely
that the Jewish authorities having disposed of the leader in a dangerous
movement would be content to let the followers go free? Would they not
rather seek to wipe out the last traces of the movement in blood?
So they would have thought, gathered in that Upper Room, while outside
the Jewish authorities were keeping the Passover. What a Passover it was
to them with this nightmare of a rebellion which threatened their whole
place and power passed away. What mutual congratulations were theirs on
the clever way in which the whole matter had been handled. There had
been a moment when they were on the very point of failure, when Pilate
was ready to let Jesus go free. That was their moment of greatest
danger; and they took their courage in both hands and threw the
challenge squarely in the face of the cowardly Governor: "If thou let
this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend!" The chief priests knew their
man, and they carried their plan against him with a determined hand,
declining to accept any compromise, anything less than the death of
Jesus. Great was the rejoicing; hearty were the mutual congratulations
in the official circles of Jerusalem. It had been long since they had
celebrated so wonderful a Passover as that!
So limited, so mistaken, is the human outlook on life. They had but to
await another night's passing and all would be changed. But in the
meantime the position of the disciples was pitiful. They were in that
state of dull, hopeless discouragement that is one of the most painful
of human states. It is a state to which we who are Christians do from
time to time fall victims with much less excuse. We are hopeless, we say
and feel. We look at the future, at the problems with which we are
fronted, and we see no ray of light, no suggestion of a solution. We
have been robbed of what we most valued and life looks wholly blank to
us. For those others there was this of excuse,--they did not know Jesus
risen, they did not know the power of the resurrection life. For us
there is no such excuse because we have a sure basis of hope in our
knowledge of the meaning of the Lord.
Hope is one of the great trilogy of Christian Virtues, the gift to
Christians of God the Holy Ghost. As Christians we have the virtue of
hope, the question is whether we will excercise it or no. It is one of
the many fruits of our being in a state of grace. Many blunder when they
think of hope in that they confound it with an optimistic feeling about
the future. We hear of hopeful persons and we know that by the
description is meant persons who are confident "that everything will be
all right," when there seems no ground at all for thinking so. They have
a "buoyant temperament," by which I suppose is meant a temperament which
soars above facts. That not very intelligent attitude has nothing to do
with the Christian virtue of hope. Hope is born of our relation to God.
It is the conviction: "God is on my side; I will not fear what man can
do unto me." It is the serene and untroubled trust of one who knows that
he is safe in the hands of God, and that his life is really ordered by
the will and Providence of God.
This virtue, had they possessed it, would have carried the disciples
through the crisis of our Lord's death. They had had sufficient
experience of Him to know that they might utterly rely on Him in all the
circumstances of their lives. He had always sustained them and carried
them through all crises. They had often been puzzled by Him, no doubt;
they had felt helpless to fathom much of His teaching, but they had
slowly arrived at certain conclusions about Him which He Himself had
confirmed. On that day at Caesarea Phillipi they had reached the
conclusion of His Messiahship, a slumbering conviction had broken into
flame and light in the great confession of S. Peter. The meaning of
Messiahship was a part of their national religious tradition; and
although in some important respects mistaken, they yet, one would think,
have been led to perfect trust in our Lord when they acknowledged His
Messianic claims. But death? They could not get over the apparent
finality of death. But, again, perhaps we are not very far beyond this
in our understanding of it. To us still death seems very final.
But it was just that sense of its finality--of its constituting a
hopeless break in the continuity of existence--that our Lord was engaged
in removing during these days which to them were days of hopelessness
and despair. When they came to know what in these days was taking place;
and when the Church guided by the Holy Spirit came to meditate upon the
meaning of our Lord's action it would see death in a changed light. The
sense of a cataclysmic disaster in death would pass and be replaced by a
sense of the continuity of life. Hitherto attention had been
concentrated on this world, and death had been a disappearence from this
world, the stopping of worldly loves and interests. Presently death
would be seen to be the translation of the human being to a new sphere
of activities, but involving no cessation of consciousness or failure of
personal activities. Men had thought, naturally enough in their lack of
knowledge, of the effect of death on the survivors, of the break in
their relations with the dead. Now death would be viewed from the point
of view of the interests of the person who is dead; and it would emerge
that he continued under different conditions, and in the end it would
come to be seen that even in the relations of the survivors with the
dead there was no necessary and absolute break, but that the new
conditions of life made possible renewed intercourse under altered
circumstances.
Our Lord, the disciples learned not long after, during these days went
to preach to the spirits in prison, which the thought of the Church has
interpreted to mean that He carried the news of the Redemption He had
wrought through His dying, to the place of the dead, to the region where
the souls of the faithful were patiently waiting the time of their
perfecting. The doors of the heavenly world could not be opened till the
time when He by His Cross and Passion, by His death and resurrection,
opened them. The Heads of the Gates could not be lifted till they were
lifted for the entrance of the King of Glory. But once lifted they were
lifted forever; and when He ascended up on high He led His troop of
captives redeemed from the bondage of death and hell.
It is through these lifted Gates that the companies of the sanctified
have been streaming ever since; and the difference that has been made in
our view of death has been immense. If we have the faith of a Christian
death has been transformed. There remains, of course, the natural grief
which is ours when we part from those whom we love. This grief is
natural and holy as it is in fact an expression of our love. It is not
rebellion against the will of God, but is the expression of a feeling
wherewith God has endowed us. But there is no longer in it the sting of
hopelessness that we find, for instance, in the inscriptions on pagan
tombs, nay, on tombs still, though created by Christians and found in
Christian cemeteries. Rather it is the expression of a love which is
learning to exercise itself under new conditions. We do not find it
possible to reverse all our habits in a moment; and the new relation
with the dead is one to which we have to learn to accustom ourselves. I
remember a case where a mother and a son had never been separated for
more than a day at a time, though he was far on in manhood. There came a
time of indeterminate separation and the mother's grief was intense
notwithstanding that there was no thought of a permanent separation. It
took some time for her to accustom herself to the new mode of
communication by letter. It is not far otherwise in death; it takes some
time for us to accustom ourselves to the new mode of intercourse through
prayer, but we succeed, and the new intercourse is very real and very
precious. In a sense, too, it is a nearer, more intimate intercourse. It
lacks the homely, daily touches, no doubt; but in compensation it
reveals to us the spiritual values in life. We speedily learn, we learn
almost by a spiritual instinct, what are the common grounds on which we
can now meet. By our intercourse with our dead we get a new grasp on the
truth of our common life in Christ: it is in and through Him that all
our converse is now mediated. We have little difficulty in knowing what
are the thoughts and interests which may be shared under the new
conditions in which we find ourselves. Our perception of spiritual
interests and spiritual values grows and deepens, and our communion with
our dead becomes an indication of the extent of our own
spiritual growth.
There come times in the spiritual experience of most of us when we seem
to have got to the end. There is a deepening sense of failure which is
not, when we analyse it, so much a failure in this or that detail, as a
general sense of the futility of the life of the Church as expressed in
our individual lives. It came to those primitive congregations, you
remember, to which S. Peter was writing; "Where is the promise of his
coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
were from the beginning of creation." It is the weariness of continuous
effort from which we conclude that we are getting quite
insufficient results.
No doubt that is true. The results are never what we expect, possibly
because the effort is never what we imagine it to be. We continually
underestimate the opposing force of evil, the difficulty of dealing with
a humanity which falls so easily under the slightest temptation. It is
not that sinners decline to hear the Word of God, but that those who
profess themselves to be the servants of God, and who in fact intend to
be such, are so lamentably weak and ineffective. We think of the effort
of God in the Incarnation; we have been following that effort in some
detail through the Passion. We are surprised, shocked, disheartened by
the spectacle of the hatred that innocence stirs up, at the lengths men
will go when they see their personal ends threatened. We are horrified
by Caiphas, Pilate, Herod. But is that the really horrifying thing
about the Passion of our Lord? To me the supreme example of human
incomprehension is that all the disciples forsook Him and fled, that He
was left to die almost alone. There we get the most disheartening
failure in the tragedy.
For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part of the
world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find Satanic
activities. One of the outstanding features of the literature of to-day
in the Western world, the world that had known from childhood the story
of Jesus, is its utter hatred of Christianity; its revolt from all that
Christianity stands for. This is markedly true in regard to the
Christian teaching in the matter of purity. The contemporary English
novel is perhaps the vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth.
There have been plenty of unclean books written in the course of the
world's history--we have only to recall the literature of the
Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in careless or
boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still regarded as
existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral propaganda--it is
deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of careless levity, but out
of deliberate intention. You do not feel that the modern author is just
describing immoral actions which grow out of his story, but that he is
constructing his story for the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He
hates the whole teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of
purity. He has thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an
"unnatural" restraint. To those who have studied the development of
thought since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.
But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of being
surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians take their
religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they admit that they
are not getting anything out of it; but it is harder to get them to
admit that the reason is that they are not putting anything into it. You
do not expect to get returns from a business into which you are putting
no capital, and you have no right to expect returns from a religion into
which you are putting no energy. What is meant by that is that those
Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are
going to High Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then
making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who
make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go
only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the
Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be
surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from
their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so much as
they do, and that they see no point in permitting it further to
interfere with their customary amusements and avocations. I do not know
what such persons expect from their religion, but I am sure that they
will be disappointed if they are expecting any spiritual result.
Naturally, they will be disappointed if they look in themselves for any
evidence of the virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under
the circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.
We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian Religion
by this which seems to be the failure of God. We are not to echo the
cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were
from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter pointed out to those
pessimists that all things do not continue the same, that there are
times of crisis which are the judgments of God. Such a judgment was that
of old which swept the wickedness of the world away, "whereby the world
that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." He goes on to
state that the present order likewise will issue in judgment: "The
heavens and the earth which are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto
fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." What
renders men hopeless is the feeling of God's inactivity; but this
declaration of impending judgment certifies the active interest of God.
God's dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt
to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final scene. But
every society, every individual life, is being judged through the whole
course of its existence, and there is no need that either society or
individual should be blind to the fact that such a judgment is taking
place. There is no failure of God. There is a failure on our part to
understand the works of God.
We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask
ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present
effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual life
is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art that is
acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is attained through
the careful training and exercise of the faculties wherewith we have
been endowed. The answer to our question is itself a perfectly simple
one, as simple as would be the answer to the question: "Do you speak
French?" We speak French if we have taken the trouble to learn French;
and we have gained results in the way of spiritual development and
culture if we have taken the trouble to do so. I do not know why we
should expect results on any other ground than that.
But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained any
results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in that
case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture to think
of his past history. What sort of character-development has so far been
going on? Commonly it happens that there has been no spiritual effort
that is worth thinking about; but that does not mean that nothing
spiritual has been happening. It means on the contrary that there has
been going on a spiritual atrophy, the spiritual powers have been
without exercise and will be difficult to arouse to activity. In such a
case as that spiritual awakening will be followed by a long period of
spiritual struggle against habits of thought and action which we have
already formed, a period in which unused and immature spiritual powers
must be roused to action and disciplined to use. The simplest
illustration of this is the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic
beginner in holding the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the
various forms of prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity
there will be the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states
of mind and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can
be overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call for
the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the virtues
characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and the feeling
that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have quite possibly made
a mistake about the whole matter.
This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come if we
look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the ground that
we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we ask: "Why hope?" we
shall see that our basis of hope is not in ourselves at all but in God.
We hope because of the promises of God, because of His will for us as
revealed in His Son. "He loved us and gave Himself for us"; and that
giving will not be in vain. "He gave Himself for me," I tell myself,
"and therefore I am justified in my expectation of spiritual success."
So one tries to learn from the present failure as it seems; so one
repents and pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of
purpose that one attains results.
And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results that I
covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation all about
me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other Christians past and
present. They are reality not theory, fact not dream. And what has been
so richly and abundantly the outcome of spiritual living in others must
be within my own reach. The results they attained were not miraculous
gifts, but they were the working of God the Holy Spirit in lives yielded
to Him and co-operating with Him.
Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I do find
results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I am justified
in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not believe that any one
can look back over a year's honest labour and not see that the labour
has born fruit.
In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking for
does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem that our
Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor any that
answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the wrong place or
listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked that the outcome of
our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom should be restored to Israel;
and when they turned away from the tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt
that what they had looked for and prayed for was hopeless of
accomplishment. But the important point was not their vision of the
Kingdom at all, but that they had yielded themselves to our Lord and
become His disciples and lovers. This is not what they intended to do,
but it is what actually had happened: and when the grave yielded up the
dead Whom they thought that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with
a mission for them that was infinitely wider than their dream: the
mission of founding not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of
David's Son. All their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being
transcended, and they found themselves in a position vastly more
important than had been reached even in their dreams.
Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience. We
conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and seem
always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to us what He
has been doing, and we find that through the very discipline of our
failure we have been being prepared for a success of which we had not
thought: and when we raise our eyes from the path we thought so toilsome
and uninteresting, it is to find ourselves at the very gate of the City
of God. It will be with us as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour
of their imagined failure, when they were gathered together in hiding
from the Jews were startled by the appearence among them of the risen
Jesus, and were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.
"His body is wrappèd all in woe,
Hand and foot He may not go.
Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so
Naked is nailed upon a tree.
"The Blessèd Body that thou hast born,
To save mankind that was forlorn,
His body, Lady, the Jews have torn,
And hurt His Head, as ye may see."
When John his tale began to tell
Mary would not longer dwell
But hied her fast unto that hill
Where she might her own Son see.
"My sweete Son, Thou art me dear,
Oh why have men hanged thee here?
Thy head is closed with a brier,
O why have men so done to Thee?"
"John, this woman I thee betake;
Keep My Mother for My sake.
On Rood I hang for mannes sake
For sinful men as thou may see.
"This game alone I have to play,
For sinful souls that are to die.
Not one man goeth by the way
That on my pains will look and see.
"Father, my soul I thee betake,
My body dieth for mannes sake;
To hell I go withouten wake,
Mannes soul to maken free."
Pray we all that Blessed Son
That He help us when may no man
And bring to bliss each everyone
Amen, amen, amen for Charity.
Early English Lyrics, p. 146. From an MS. in the Sloane collection.
PART TWO