A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO THROUGH LENT AND EASTER.
Spring, with its wealth of beauty on the earth, and its Lenten discipline
in the Church, was slowly passing away in Rome; and all the time Aquileia
was holding out through the three months’ agony of her siege, a perpetual
reminder and symbol to the household on the Aventine of the spiritual
conflict to be waged always by all. For Marius, their own Marius, was
there, in what might prove the last death-struggle of civilization and
Christianity, or might prove the travail-pangs of the birth of a new
world of life and light. And now the fast of Lent was deepening into the
shadows of Gethsemane, and the Passion-tide was bringing the pathos and
strength of the Cross; and again the voice of Bishop Leo rang through the
basilicas with its deep, inspiring tones.
“So it is, dearly beloved, that the true ground of Christian hope is the
Cross of Christ. Whilst the blindness of the Jew does not see what is
Divine in Christ Jesus, and the wisdom of the Gentiles despises what is
human; whilst the former speak deprecatingly of the Lord’s glory, and the
latter assume airs of pride about His lowliness, we adore the Son of God
equally in His own might and in our infirmity.”
As Ethne listened, to her, Jew and Gentile were no lifeless, technical
expressions; her heart went up to God for Miriam and Eleazar, that they
might look up, and looking, be no longer blind, but see the love which
is the glory of God. Again, in Leo’s words, she prayed “for that nation
by whom the Lord had been crucified, and desired that mercy might be
obtained by that people, on account of whose stumbling we have received
the grace of reconciliation.”
Of the conflict in Gethsemane Leo said—“The lower will gave way to the
higher, and it was shown to us what may be prayed for by one in distress,
and what ought not be granted by the Healer. For since we know not what
to pray for as we ought, and it is good for us that what we wish should
not for the most part take place, when we seek for what would hurt us,
our good and righteous Lord is merciful in refusing it. Therefore, when
our Lord had by threefold prayer settled the mode of putting our own
wills right, He said to His disciples, ‘Sleep on now and take your rest.’”
And the three women—mother, sister, and bride—in the agony of their
Gethsemane of dread and longing for their beloved, at Aquileia or in all
the perils of their journeys by sea and land, listening to those words
of pardon and peace, comforted one another, and went home that night, and
prayed Thy will be done, and slept and took their rest.
Even for Judas Leo had a word of sympathy, recognizing the yearning of
the Master even for the traitor.
“From this man,” he said, “was withheld no condescension, lest some
vexation should give him the motive for crime; for after the Lord had
died for all, perhaps even this man might have found mercy if he had not
hurried to his death.”
And so the tide of tender, sacred adoration flowed deeper and higher on
through the days of the Passion, without a touch of morbid, melodramatic
sensation, or of weak introspection. “The Festival of our Lord’s
Passion,” as he called it, “suffers us not to be silent amid our exulting
bursts of spiritual joy. For since the prophet says, ‘Seek His face
evermore,’ no one ought to presume that he has found the whole of what he
is seeking, lest by seeking to advance we fail to draw near.”
“The lowliness we see in God amazes us more than the power; we find it
harder to grasp the emptying of the Divine Majesty than the carrying up
on high the form of a servant.
“He shed righteous blood which was to be both the ransom and the cup of
life (_pretium et poculum_) for the reconciliation of the world. Not a
reluctant victim, but a willing sacrifice. For the nature which in us was
ever guilty, in Him suffered, innocent and free.
“What is inflicted by ferocity is welcomed by free-will, so that the
audacity of the crime completes the work of the Eternal will.
“He submitted Himself to the impious hands of infuriated men, who were
busy with their own wickedness, and were doing the behests of the
Redeemer. Even towards those who were killing Him, so strong was His
feeling of tenderness, that in His prayer to the Father from the Cross,
He asked not that He should be avenged, but that they should be pardoned.
“The might of that prayer, ‘Father, forgive them,’ had this result, that
the hearts of many who said, ‘Let His blood be on us and our children,’
were converted by the preaching of Peter the Apostle, and in one day
three thousand were baptized; and they all became of one heart and of one
soul, and ready to die for Him Whose Crucifixion they had demanded.
“He was not only wont to heal bodily infirmities, but the wounds of
sickly souls, saying to the paralytic, ‘Son, be of good cheer, thy sins
be forgiven thee.’
“For He, without any infirmities of sin, took on Him all the infirmities
that come from sin; so that he lacked not the sensations of hunger and
thirst, of sleep and weariness, of sorrow and weeping, and endured the
cruelest pains, even to the extremity of death. For no one could be
loosed from the entangling nets of mortality, unless He in Whom the
nature of man was innocent allowed Himself to be put to death by the
hands of the ungodly.”
And again, lest that sacred season should become the mere commemoration
of the dead, and not the communion of the living, Leo said—“We ought to
honour the Lord’s Passover as present, rather than remember the Passover
as passed.”
Again—“He it is Who, making no exception of any nation, forms out
of every nation under heaven one flock of holy sheep, and is daily
performing what He has promised in the words, ‘And other sheep I have
which are not of this fold, them also I must bring; and they shall hear
My voice, and they shall be one flock and one Shepherd.’
“For although it is to blessed Peter in the first instance that He says,
‘Feed My sheep,’ yet the care of all the sheep actually belonging to all
the shepherds is under the direction of the one Lord; and those who are
on the rock He nourishes in such pleasant, well-watered pastures, that
numberless sheep, strengthened with the fulness of love, hesitate not
themselves to die for the name of the Shepherd, even as the Good Shepherd
Himself was pleased to lay down His life for the sheep. He it is in Whom
not only the glorious courage of martyrs has a share, but also the faith
of all who are new-born.
“The fiery sword by which the Land of Life was shut in has been quenched
by the sacred blood of Christ.
“Before the true Light the gloom of the old night has given way. The
Christian people are invited to the riches of Paradise; and to all the
regenerate has been laid open a path of return to the lost Fatherland, if
only no one causes that way to be closed against himself, which could be
opened to the faith of the robber.”
Ethne’s thoughts went back to Dewi the pirate.
So the forty days of the fast and the week of the Passion passed on, and
the lives of Christians were gathered into the life and death of Christ;
until at the close the grave voice of Leo, as a faithful leader of souls,
led the people from the contemplation of the Sufferer into the fellowship
of His sufferings.
“If it was a grievous offence to neglect the Paschal Festival, it is
more dangerous to take our place in Church assemblies whilst we are not
gathered into the fellowship of our Lord’s Passion. For who does really
honour Christ as having suffered, died, and been raised again, save he
who also suffers, dies, and rises again with Christ? These events are
carried on in the children of the Church. The warfare is perpetual, the
enemy malignant and strong as ever. Here then, at the Cross, let the
Christian station himself, where Christ lifted him up with Himself; and
to that point let him direct all his life, where he knows human nature
was saved. For the Passion of our Lord is prolonged even to the end of
the world; and as in His saints He is honoured and loved, and as in the
poor He is fed and clothed, so in all who suffer for righteousness’
sake He suffers too. Unless, indeed, we are to think that since faith
has been multiplied all over the world, all the persecutions and all
the conflicts which raged against the blessed martyrs have come to an
end; as though the necessity of taking up the Cross had been incumbent
only on them. But very different is the experience of pious men who are
serving God, and very different the witness of the Apostle. ‘All who
resolve to live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ By which
sentence he is proved to be sadly lukewarm and indolent who is attacked
by no persecution. For none but those who love the world can be at peace
with it; and there is ‘no fellowship at any time between iniquity and
righteousness,’ no concord between falsehood and truth, no agreement
of darkness with light. It is safer for man to have earned the devil’s
enmity than his friendship; therefore the wise souls who have learned to
fear and love our Lord do not stoop either to dread their foes or to do
them homage. For they prefer God’s will, ever, to themselves, and love
themselves all the better, inasmuch as for the love of God they love
themselves not.
“For in those who, after the Apostle’s example, chastise the body and
bring it into servitude, the same enemies are being despised by the same
courage, and even now the world is being overcome by Christ.”
At length the light of Easter Day broke in on Christian Rome, the first
Easter Ethne had ever spent in a city, had ever spent in Christendom. The
joy of the festival swept her away in its great tide, the bells pealing
from every basilica, the stately Ambrosian hymns filling the churches,
the streets, and the homes with their grave and exulting music. The
morning broke with the “_Aurora lucis rutilat_,” and the “_Hic est dies
verus Dei_.” The voices of priests and people, in what was then the
vulgar tongue of all, rose high in the “Ad cœnam Agni Providi.”
“The Supper of the Lamb to share,
We come in raiment white and fair.”
And still through all, penetrating and rising above all the tides of
sound, sounded the deep voice of Leo. Through the Passion-tide he had
been preaching to them the duty of the taking up the Cross of Christ,
that their actual life might enshrine within it the Paschal solemnity.
“If then, dearly beloved,” he said, “we believe in our hearts what we
profess, we also have been raised the third day, for ‘ye are dead, and
your life is hid with Christ in God.’ Let the people of God acknowledge
themselves to be a new creation in Christ Jesus, and, with souls on the
watch, understand Him by Whom they have been apprehended, and Whom they
may apprehend.
“Let not the things that have been made new return to the old state which
abideth not; and let not him who put his hand to the plough give up his
work, but fix his attention on what he is sowing, not looking back to
what he has left.”
Again—“Though the rolling away of the stone, the emptying of the
sepulchre, the laying aside the linen, the shining of the angels, did
abundantly establish the reality of our Lord’s Resurrection, yet He
mercifully appeared to the women; He suffered Himself to be handled with
careful and inquisitive touch by those of whom doubt was taking hold.”
Thus the faithful voice led the people on through Easter to the
Ascension. Very quiet were the words, not exhausting the joy in a burst
of rapture, but leading it onward and upward in an ever-rising tide of
certainty and victory “too deep for sound or foam”; very quiet, quiet and
strong as the first flood-tide of the first joy of the first Easter.
Nor did he forget the doubt, the heavy weight of apprehension, the slow
reviving to faith of the hearts of the disciples benumbed by sorrow; the
magnitude of the weight which gives the true measure of the power which
lifted it.
“For the death of Christ,” he said, “had sorely disturbed the hearts of
the disciples, and a kind of torpor of distrust had slowly crept into
minds oppressed by sorrow, on account of the humiliation of the Cross,
the yielding up of the spirit, the burial of the lifeless body.
“For when the holy women in the gospel history had announced to the
disciples that the stone was rolled away from the tomb, that the body
was not in the sepulchre, and that angels bore witness that the Lord was
alive, their words seemed to the apostles and disciples as idle tales;
and surely this uncertainty would in nowise be allowed by the Spirit of
Truth to exist in the hearts of his preachers, unless their trembling
anxiety and inquiring hesitation had laid the foundation of our faith.
It was for our perturbations and our dangers that provision was being
made in the case of the apostles; we, in them, were being instructed
against the calumnies of the impious, and against the triumphs of the
world’s wisdom; we have been taught by their seeing, we have heard by
their hearing. Let us give thanks to the Divine Providence, and to that
necessary tardiness of our holy fathers. Doubts were felt by them, that
no doubts might be felt by us.
“Those days, dearly beloved, between the Resurrection and the Ascension
did not pass away in an inactive course; but in them great and sacred
truths were confirmed, great mysteries were revealed. To the Magdalene
He said, ‘Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father;’ that
is, ‘I will not have thee come to Me corporeally, to recognize Me by the
sensations of the flesh; I am putting thee off to something loftier,
I am preparing thee for something greater. When I shall have ascended
to My Father, then thou shalt handle Me more perfectly and more truly,
being about to apprehend what thou touchest not, and to believe what
thou seest not.’ When He took Himself away to the majesty of the Father,
He began in an ineffable manner to be more present in His Divinity. And
a truly great and unspeakable cause of rejoicing it was, when, in the
presence of that holy multitude, the nature of manhood was ascending
above the dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the angelic
ranks, and to be elevated above the high seats of the archangels; and not
to let any degree of loftiness be a limit to its advancement, until it
should be received to sit down with the Eternal Father, and associated
in the throne with His glory, to Whose nature it is united in the Son.
Since then Christ’s Ascension is our advancement, and whither the
glory of the Head is gone before, thither is it the hope of the body
to be summoned, let us, dearly beloved, exult with befitting joys and
devout thanksgiving. For to-day have we not only been confirmed in the
possession of Paradise, but in Christ we have penetrated to the heights
of Heaven, having won through the unspeakable grace of Christ nobler
gifts than we had lost through the wiles of the devil.
“This faith, increased by our Lord’s Ascension, and strengthened by
the gift of the Holy Spirit, has not been overcome by chains, nor
imprisonments, nor banishments, nor famine, nor the sword, nor the
teeth of wild beasts, nor by any torments invented by the cruelty of
persecutors. For this faith, throughout the whole world, not only men
but even women, not only young boys but tender maidens, contended to the
shedding of their own blood; whatever had before caused them fear now
turned into joy.
“Let us therefore, dearly beloved, follow after charity, without which no
one can shine; that through this way of love whereby Christ descended to
us, we also may be able to ascend to Him, to Whom with the Father and the
Holy Ghost belong honour and glory for ever.”
So the tide of Christian joy flowed on fuller and fuller to Whitsuntide,
when the great company of the newly baptized gathered around the fonts
in their white robes, as at Easter. Then Ethne’s heart went back to that
glad white-robed company of neophytes which had gathered around the well,
beside the little chapel of rough-hewn stones in her own island. It was
but a year since she had sat with her brother in the white robes of
baptism on the cliff by her father’s house. And in looking back from the
pomp of these great assemblies in the stately basilicas on that homely
gathering, she felt more than ever how glorious had been that simple
beginning of new life in the new world, as at the first Pentecost. “From
Him, the Holy Spirit,” Bishop Leo said, “comes the thirst; from Him, the
calling on the Father; from Him, the groans of suppliants. As in that
first exultant choir of all human tongues, the majesty of the Holy Ghost
was present, let the minds of the faithful rejoice, because now through
all the world our God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is praised by the
acknowledgment rendered in every tongue, and because that indication
which was given in the form of fire is still witnessed, alike as a work
and a gift. For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the house of His glory
shine with the radiance of His own light, and wills not to have in His
temple anything dark or lukewarm.”
“The house of His glory also,” Ethne murmured to Damaris, “was that
little round stone cell of Patrick’s building in our Ireland.”
“The house of His glory is Patrick’s heart and Leo’s, and, in their
humble place, thine and mine,” Damaris said. “Did not our Leo say,
_Templum Dei sumus, si Spiritus Dei habitat in nobis_? Greater is what
the faithful Christian has in his heart than what he wonders at in the
heavens.”
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