The Christian Philosopher

2006-08-24T22:26:00.000-07:00

2006-08-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

TheChristianPhilosopher, first published by the Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso (Rome: Anglicum 2005)

Man’s Irreconcilable Freedom

Abstract: This paper draws on the masterful novels of Dostoyevsky and argues that Dostoyevsky reveals something new about man’s freedom. He shows how goodness and freedom are not the same thing and are irreconcilable. The attempt to exalt happiness, reason and order above freedom is doomed to fail, because of that very freedom. The truth Dostoyevsky’s work reveals poses not so much a threat to the project of humanism, but represents an important moment in the recreation of it.

At the end of the thirteenth century, not many years after Thomas Aquinas' death, something revolutionary took place in the north of Italy which would have permanent repercussions for mankind. What took place might be called a “revolution of the senses”, for the way man represented what he saw of the world changed, a new concept of space was formulated. The painter Giotto (1267-1337) started to mould the figures he painted, to give them a life-like look. On a two dimensional surface Giotto began to place figures and landscape in such a way, with paint, that they looked three-dimensional. This required the creation of dimension within the painting for the one standing back from it. The decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (between 1303-05) is universally recognised as a turning point in the history of painting.

This was not just a new way of painting. The construction of an illusion of three-dimensional space upon two dimensions implies a new way of visualising reality, therefore, of sensing. For sensing is not something pure and simple in humans as (presumably) in animals; man perceives through the senses. Giotto marks a difference in the representation of perception. I refer of course to the creation of perspective. This would be refined and mastered by process of trial and error over subsequent centuries, but the new invention, or re-invention, since it was known to the ancient Greeks, would spell the end of the medieval way of representing sight and sense.

What St. Thomas shared with his Islamic counterparts was an idea of sensing and the senses – at least in representation - which was without perspective; it stated an objective order, which in both cases, Islamic and Christian, was prescribed as an objective order of being. Man had an objective place in this order. Although they differed in matters of religion, Christians and Muslims sensed the world in such a way that they represented an objectivised order of being that moved from the top to bottom, up and down, vertically, and without depth.

Before Giotto medieval Islam and Medieval Christian painting had no perspective. Correspondingly, their idea of perception (for instance in a proposition such as "knowledge starts in the senses") upholds, at the level of its envisioning in representation, visual and verbal, a non-perspectival idea of the senses.

After Giotto, it slowly began to dawn on people that sensing itself was perspectival, that what started in the senses, started within some perspective and that there were an infinity of perspectives. Man moved into the middle. Man became the medium. The envisioning of reality became more a matter of reflective description, natural depiction, rather than objective description according to prescribed outlines. No longer did the stiff and severely lifeless Christ of the icon stare back at the kneeling believer in Church, she now looked into the beautiful human face of her Lord. In the new way of envisioning and representing, the painted road no longer went up the page, its two sides remaining parallel the whole way, rather the two sides of a road going off into the distance would close off and disappear into a point. But this point would alter depending where one was.

Man began to get a sense of perspective on things. The extrinsic order of being presumed in Medieval theology began to look extrinsic. For the first time it could be seen to be so. The universe as a totality of order of an objective nature came to be seen in perspective as itself one.

I am talking about the birth of humanism properly speaking. If Aquinas' philosophy had closed the world in a natural order that accorded with reason, after Giotto it gradually began to be realised that man stood at the centre, and not man in general, not the species man, but the individual. Gradually it was not the objective and generic concept of "the soul" which signified man, but the personal sense of me. Giotto's silent revolution in Assisi and Padua changed man.

With a new found sense of perspective we can still look at man existentially, as Thomas did. Thomas’s system is not one which intends to totally absorb all views as lesser views in proportion to his own, as German idealism at its height strove to do; it is a system which works out the relations, what is ‘more’ what is ‘less’ qua God. It is a philosophy of the whole, in the sense that it strives not for mastery over the parts but understanding within them. What differs though are the kinds of problems which we have to see in whole terms.

I do not want to theorise this problem but to illustrate its difficulty. To this end I want to introduce Dostoyevsky. Perhaps this supreme novelist from Russia may seem to you a far cry from Thomas. This is not true insofar as both have something to say about Christian man. The difference between them brings before us the question of the Good in a different light. But this is a productive difference for thinking on the question of Christian humanism in our time.

In his book on Dostoyevsky, the Russian philosopher and theologian Nicolai Berdyaev says that already, in the Renaissance, by Shakespeare’s time, man has shifted out from an objective hierarchical world order, in which he was a gradation in the divine universe with heaven above him and hell beneath. Man felt free.[1] Classic humanist understanding of the high Renaissance period is psychologically rather than theologically oriented. This reflects the way man is in the world, with respect to himself. Heaven and hell are humanised, they become subjects of great art. It is the beginning of the secular world, of that sensibility which can see (and represent) that what is ordained sacred is not necessarily what is holy.

Another similarity Thomas and Dostoyevsky have is their angelology, although strictly speaking of course Dostoyevsky doesn’t have one. In common with scholasticism, Thomas' angelology may be understood as a phenomenonology of human understanding. Thomas' angelology is comprised of disembodied constituents of human understanding. These are objectified in abstract concepts and categories and brought into a unity of thought and understanding, which is static. It is then as if the angels belong to an objective order which the scientific mind might inspect. Even so, it is inferentially constructed. Dostoyevsky’s angels, however, appear as fictional characters. They are embodiments, depictions and raw dramatisations of the really great problems and question-marks of existence, which is what his books set forth in their creative mastery. Yet his novels are not allegorical. His angels and devils do not inhabit a world of their own as in Thomas, they look like man, at least to the outward eye. Dostoyevsky’s characters, his angels and devils, are not reducible to rational, general abstract terms and categories any more than modern urban life is. His novels are expressive of life, they are exemplificatory. The chief matter of any of Dostoyevsky's novels is commonly drawn by the central character, around which the action swirls. Dostoyevsky treats by this dramatised form, rather than by an abstract philosophy, the nature of human understanding, and, quite simply, man. His man is potentially angelic and-or daemonic.

If in Medieval texts angelology is the phenomenology of the pure human understanding, in the Ninteenth century novel angelology is perspectival. No longer may angels be disembodied intellectual creatures as they were perceived to be in the Middle Ages. In Dostoyevsky and many another modern novel, angels exist as individuals that throw perspectives on and within our world. Dostoyevsky’s novels are exemplary in this respect. The classic novelist's angelology does not make us ‘look up’, as it were, as if angels were above us in an objective order of being. Instead we are led to look around us. Particularly, with Dostoyevsky, we are made to look ahead, to project forward into the future. Much of what Dostoyevsky brings into view in his novels points forward to the terrors and crazed ideologies of the century to come; the century we were born into. He shows that the sources of war and peace are in man.

The angelology of the modern novel reflects modern existence. For modern people existence is not derived supernaturally from outside nature by virtue of God being God, neither do we think we only partially exist qua an objective order of being in which only God exists as such. Modern existence is subjective. " I think; therefore I exist." This is the truth which is “on everyone’s doorstep” and which anyone can grasp directly. In other words, it is common sense. “Every theory which takes man out of the moment in which he becomes aware of himself is, at its very beginning, a theory which confounds truth.”[2] I would add that any theory that takes man out of the moment in which he becomes aware of himself, or which prevents this self-transfiguration which self-awareness brings, partly destroys man by replacing the image of God before him with a man-made image. The truth that existence is subjective is the only truth “which gives man dignity, the only one which does not reduce him to an object.”

The medieval angels ultimately form a choir. To speak metaphorically, the medieval angelology is “monarchal”, redolent of the monastery where uniformly dressed and educated same-sex groups chant in unison. The image is one of peace and harmony. The modern angelology in which man sees himself incarnate is urban and sub-urban, it is a cacophony, and insofar as it forms a whole at all, its model is democratic. Or if it is not democratic – that “lesser evil” of Aristotle’s Politics – it is revolutionary, a hotbed. There are as many and diverse angelologies as there are philosophical novels in the Nineteenth century tradition. Dostoyevsky gives us an angelology and a demonology, but it is subject to man.

Dostoyevsky presents a dark knowledge of God. One of the characters in Crime and Punishment (1866) is undoubtedly St. Petersburg itself. Berdyaev writes about Dostoyevsky’s relation to the city as follows:

Petersburg is a spectral vision begotten by erring and apostate men; crazy thoughts are born and criminal schemes ripen in the midst of its fogs. In such an atmosphere everything is concentrated in men, and in men who have been torn from their divine origins; their whole surrounding, the town and its particular atmosphere, the lodging-houses with their monstrous appointments, the dirty, smelly shops, the external plots of the novels, are so many signs and symbols of the inner spiritual world of men, a reflection of its tragedy.[3]

The lives and fates of Dostoyevsky’s main characters revolve round what one of the characters, Ivan Karamazov, calls “these cursed everlasting questions.” These questions may be resolved in one word: man. What is man? What is the spirit of mankind? What is his end? What is man’s salvation? The answer to the question of man’s salvation for Dostoyevsky is Christ. But it is a Christ Thomas could never have imagined any more than he could have imagined the Reformation or the Spanish Inquisition, which are passé for us. The “tragedy” of man that Berdyaev in the quote just given refers to is man’s uprootedness. The cities in which we live are an outward manifestation of our inner confusion. But the modern city, if we focus on its underbelly, exceeds most Medieval visions of Hell. Yet this is no Hell, this is normality for innumerable citizens. Dostoyevsky was a great reader of Charles Dickens who wrote similarly, but with rather less philosophical resource, about London. Literary examples of man’s uprootedness easily spring to mind. The point about the city, Dostoyevsky’s St Petersburg in particular, is that man is uprooted in the very place he calls home.

In Dostoyevsky, we can see the world has turned on its axis again. The repressed returns with a vengeance, only Dostoyevsky does not speak of the repressed, but of the Underground. There is a murmuring Underground against the Establishment. Underground Man is Prodigal Man. There is no ‘man as such’, as thing, except the dead man. In these novels, people become angelic, like Prince Myshkin (The Idiot) or Alyosha Karamazov; or already are angelic, like Sonya (Crime and Punishment) or Aglaya (The Idiot); and men are daemonic, like Stavrogin (The Possessed) and Rogozhin (The Idiot); and men become daemonic (but not deliberately) that they might be saved and become thereby angelic, like Raskolnikov and Dmitri Karamazov. Underground Man himself is a voice of spleen, capriciousness, envy and ennui, of the seamy underbelly of St. Petersburg. The Russian word for Underground that Dostoyevsky used, “podpolya”comes from pol, meaning floor and pod, under. It refers to the space between floor and ground, or a floor and the ceiling beneath. As Berdyaev says, “The word is associated with the idea of vermin breeding in the darkness and preparing destruction.”[4] In Dostoyevsky man is that which cannot of its nature be ordered – or as Dostoyevsky puts it, “contained in a logarithm”. Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man claims “the right to want the absurd and not to be bound by the necessity of wanting only what is reasonable.” And he adds that caprice, absurdity, “can be more advantageous to our neighbour than anything else in the world.” Dostoyevsky shows us that man’s nature is “extreme and contradictory all through.”[5] None of Dostyevsky’s characters inhabit a normal workaday world, angel and devil alike belong to the Underground and we the reader know that ultimately they belong to us, to our world.

In Dostoyevsky’s work man refuses happiness, man refuses what he knows is good, what he should do, what he shouldn’t, man refuses reason, honest purpose, honour, harmony, true love, not because he is deluded about the true nature of the good or about God. This is clearly not the case. Dostoyevsky’s world is tragic – which Thomas’ world was not - but Dostoyevsky’s world is tragic in a new way that he did not create, but first and best represented. No longer did tragedy mean the clash between human purpose and fate. In conventional tragedy before Dostoyevsky, man meets an unforseen and implacable fate which, however, the audience sees coming. In this classic tragedy human freedom is mocked by human destiny which is in the lap of fatal forces, of which death is the signal, and death by one’s own hand the proof. But Dostoyevsky’s tragedy is predicated not on fate, but on freedom. Dostoyevsky’s man is sunk in a chasm of freedom which proves his fate and his tragedy. Even the good in Dostoyevsky is like this - Alyosha meeting Zossima, or Zossima’s account of how he came to the monastery - there is something accidental and chancy about it. Things might have turned out very differently. The destiny of man in Dostoyevsky is the great question of our freedom. And in this freedom, God is not absent, as in the classic humanist or Greek tragedy, but is there above all.

Let me clarify Dostoyevsky’s God. It is not an abstract God - God as Being, Essence, Existence, Beyond-Being etc. God appears not as a philosophical formula, nor according to any. Dostoyevsky’s God is the living God into whose hands it is terrible to fall, as St Paul puts it to the Hebrews. He appears as the God-man, the Risen Christ. He comes in a gesture, a look, a kiss. He appears as a matter of existence, certainly. He comes as a matter of existence. But this is existence is a moment of transfiguration. Existence apart from itself, irreducible to itself. The divine Life appears in a moment, in the midst of man, in the unlikliest of places.

Man transfigured in the image of Christ appears distinct from the man-God of humanism and of the Church (in saying which, Dostoyevsky offended many in the Orthodox hierarchy). The humanitarian man-God is the man who does not need God, he makes himself, he is the self-made man who is the measure of all things. Man may be massed and herded by the self-deified man, the great man, who would save the world, best represented by Kirrilov for instance in The Possessed. Ultimately, such a man is a tyrant, a mad man. In the Church this man is ‘religious’. At his worst he is the anti-type of Christ, best represented by the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. For Dostoyevsky, the domesticated Christos of the Church, with its supposed potestas clavium is ultimately duplicitous, satanic. The Grand Inquisitor is the living personification – arch-daemonic, not arch-angelic - of the Mystery, Miracle, and Authority, which the Church guards. The Grand Inquisitor is good, but like the great man, he is limited to massing and herding people away from their particular freedom to one marked out in advance for all of them. Dostoyevsky’s humanitarian man and his religious man must be distinguished from that man transfigured in the image of Christ, who belongs to the spiritual dimension of this of this world, and who it is not always so easy to see, as it was not so easy for those who knew Jesus to see that he was the Son of God.

The differentiation between transfigured man and humanitarian man signals Dostoyevsky’s depiction of human nature as burdened by freedom, or condemned to it. It is not the Good (or the God reduced to it) that draws us or which is the end of our action and desire, it is freedom. Good which is not free is not truly good. This is not the French idea of ‘liberté’, which Dostoyevsky knew all too well and loathed as the work, again, of the self-deifying humanitarian. Dostoyevsky’s freedom is spiritual in that it belongs to the Holy Spirit, as shown by the face of Christ. Only in the transfigured man is our true face to be seen. But the recovery of our true face belongs to the future, to an age to come. We can look at the city and see that the time is yet to come. Salvation is not accomplished before the end, or instead of it. In this Dostoyevsky can be seen as prophetic, not merely because he fore-shadowed much in twentieth century thought, but because his first principle, freedom, points to an end time. His angelology is not hierarchical but eschatological. But we cannot reach this time, this other shore, without the initiation, the spiritual baptism, that living freedom means for modern man, and it includes living through the era in which ‘man is free’.

Berdyaev writes:

The dignity of man and the dignity of faith require the recognition of two freedoms, freedom to choose the truth and freedom in the truth. Freedom cannot be identified with goodness or truth or perfection: it is by nature autonomous, it is freedom and not goodness. Any identification or confusion of freedom with goodness and perfection involves a negation of freedom and a strengthening of the methods of compulsion; obligatory goodness ceases to be goodness by the fact of its constraint. But free goodness, which alone is true, entails the liberty of evil.[6]

When Dostoyevsky’s characters look into themselves – and in this they are not different from us – they do not find a calm pool of eternity in the depths of their soul, they find collision and contradiction go right to the depths. This is the truth of freedom. It is contrary.

Where Thomas Aquinas is in calm control of his ideas, including his angels (he is the Angelic Doctor after all), in Dostoyevsky we relive the clash of angelic and daemonic forces. We are shown how the good may be demonic because it may be tragic. We are shown this most notably by the presence of the Christlike Myshkin in The Idiot (1868). Myshkin's presence wreaks more havoc than calm, much as Christ’s did. Myshkin is seen by everyone as a comforter, and he is, but also, importantly, he is a tremendous catalyst. One ramification of this is straightforwardly obvious: if the Holy Spirit is catalytic that means it engenders disorder. And this is not a disorder emergent for some reason, it is spiritual, without reason.

The world to come in Dostoyevsky’s vision has to do with this quest for freedom and with all the evil that such a quest will bring. And we can see, more than 100 years on, how such a quest in the old Christian countries, and further afield as well, has already begun. Freedom, Dostoyevsky believed, is shown by the face of Christ, His presence with us, as the image of that final freedom. But the story of our ways of freedom will be a tragic one in any case. Man has infinite ways to destroy himself. Dostoyevsky’s characters bear out some of these ways. The most absolute of such ways - that is, the most indissoluble - is borne out in the story of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Christ walks the earth barefoot once again. He comes to the Grand Inquisitor, the incarnation of the Church Triumphant, to remind him of freedom in an act of pure forgiveness. The Grand Inquisitor holds Heaven and Earth in place by his Authority. Christ sets Heaven and Earth free, letting go the Mystery, the Miracle, the Authority. But by this very act they are somehow spiritually reconstituted beyond themselves. This is not the love that is Good, but the love that frees. Any other kind of love is not properly Christlike. There is no Greek word for this love, even though, for want of a better word, agape and philia are used by the Evangelists.

Let us focus more statedly and more categorically on what we mean here by man’s freedom. In Thomas, freedom is discussed at a macro level in terms of its compatibility with Providence. At the micro level of man, freedom in Thomas is largely a matter of the will. Reason informed by faith knows what is best to do and not to do, and why. The discussion is wholly impersonal. The individual person and situation is removed from the equation. This approach lends itself easily to legalism and objectivism. It lends itself also to flagrant abuse in an ecclesiastical situation where Church office is objectified as if it were the natural order. Objectivism is the precursor of positivism. It sees man as an object. But the whole depth of personal experience is missing. And missing too is the cardinal insight of all real psychology, that no person can experience themself as a scientific problem or a "soul".

In Dostoyevsky freedom is personal, that means it is the possession and birthright of a person ie. of one of his characters. This is in line with a shift from a theological and cultural milieu blind to perspective, to a world unable to see otherwise. The cool choice and reasoned will are barely in evidence anywhere in Dostoyevsky; but faith is there in abundance. Dostoyevsky’s man struggles. He struggles because he is not simply and naturally a creature, not actually belonging to an order of being. He is free. Certainly there is providence, but it is something which intervenes, which one gives thanks for, not something which dovetails predictably with reason. In Notes from the Underground Dostoyevsky says, “What are the laws of nature to me!… Obviously I cannot pierce the wall with my head… but neither will I reconcile myself to it just because it is a stone wall.” And: “The whole human enterprise consists exclusively in man’s proving to himself at every moment that he is a man and not a cog.” Man is not simply part of nature. Man is not simply a creature. Man’s freedom to create, man’s freedom for good or evil is testimony to that. Such freedom is the very basis for an authentic ethical life.

Modern man experiences this freedom as aloneness. This Pascalian view of man which has him face God is Dostoyevskian and is a truth still dawning in the world. No man was more alone than Christ in this sense. But this aloneness is not simply a feeling. It is existential. Sartre once said, “Man is both a being lost in the world and consequently surrounded by it on all sides – imprisoned in the world, as it were – and at the same time he is a being who could synthesise this world and see it as an object, he being over and against the world and outside. He is no longer in it; he is outside. It’s this binding together of without and within that constitutes man.”[7] Man is a within-without creature. Contrary to the objectivised and imposed medieval ‘order of being’ in which the lesser issues always from the greater, in the Dostoyevskian frame of reference, that is, in perspective, man is bound by relativity; nevertheless, his decision to do this, rather than that, is marked by an absolute quality, since such action bears reference and regard to all men. Out of relative problems and situations come absolute decisions. According to the holy monk Zossima, Dostoyevsky's voice of spiritual authority in The Brothers Karamazov, we need to take care for what we do because each thing we do, we do for all people for all time. In other words, every act goes down in history, and it goes down in Eternity.

There is tragedy and ambiguity to moral life and moreover we experience it. Berdyaev said, “this tragic element lies not in the opposition between good and evil, between divine and diabolic, but above all in the clash of one good with another, one value with another value – the conflict between love for God and love for man, love for one’s fatherland and love for one’s neighbour, love for science and art and pity for man, etc. … A man is compelled to be cruel because he faces the necessity of sacrificing one value for another, one good for another good. … And here the most tragic point is reached when it becomes necessary to sacrifice one quality of love for another. … And it is important here to note that no law, no norm, can help solve the resultant conflict. …The tragic is a category quite other than good or evil.”[8] This is what Dostoyevsky brought into view in his novels. Who can decide between different goods? What ethics will tell us? What virtues lead us? and in case they do, is it not because they are the virtues and ethics we have chosen?

We read of this very conflict in the life of Jesus himself. He forewent the love of Mary and Joseph as a boy to find intellectual company instead, when they lost him on the way home from Jerusalem and found him again in the temple. In his Passion his love for his mother and for John came second to his love for God’s will, from which we can see that God’s will is hardly exempt from what is in view here. Of the two robbers on the crosses between which Jesus hung, one chose damnation. Man is free to prefer hell to paradise. I do not mean the hell which the so-called “good” establish for others in the name of “justice”, but the “unending” hell freedom can make for itself by virtue of itself.

If Dostoyevsky’s thought strikes a chord with us, which it will if we live in the world (rather than a fool’s paradise) how does the thought of Thomas Aquinas apply? So much of what Dostoyevsky’s writing brings out about human nature seems contrary to the picture Thomas would give us. Although, at the greatest moments of their work there would seem to be some parity: Christ’s forgiving silence in that chapter entitled The Grand Inquisitor bespeaks, perhaps, the silence into which Thomas fell. His last words after all did not belong to his Summa, but were comment on the Song of Songs. Moreover, Thomas does not present us with a closed system, but opens our mind to the questions of man and God. This is like Dostoyevsky. On the other hand, it is pointless to try and ‘connect’ or ‘harmonise’ these two great thinkers. Let us keep them dissonant.

In a perspectival world they represent perspectives. This is what the conventional academic milieu would take for granted. Yet, both Thomas and Dostoyevsky would dispute such an imposition upon them. Perspective becomes perspectivism at the cost of truth – the true good in Thomas, true freedom in Dostoyevsky. 'Perspectivism' is merely the middle-class liberal democratic philosophy of tolerance. Thomas and Dostoyevsky show that no ‘ism’ is the answer, nor is any social philosophy, nor is culture per se. But rather, there is a place from which all perspectives open out. For Thomas this is contemplation. The templum defines the field of vision; it is the perspective on perspective, which is not itself one. To ‘contemplate’ means “to set one’s sights on” that place; but more importantly, I think, it means to set out for it. The templum is not an image of sanctuary so much as of freedom. For Dostoyevsky freedom is precisely the templum, the perspective that puts all in perspective. Dostoyevsky sets his sights on it, in this he is contemplative. But the sanctuary that the templum offers stands beyond the abyss of our nature, beckoning us. It is not unlike Thomas’ beatitudo. But it is not the beatitude of the good man, but the free man.

St. Peter’s words, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” says Berdyaev, “must burst from the spirit, from an unconstrained conscience, and Dostoyevsky knew that therein alone lay their salvation.”[9] According to Dostoyevsky neither Peter’s affirmation of Christ, nor his denial of him, are acts of reason. Such supra- and sub- rational acts are typical of spiritual life. They are typical of the very action of the Holy Spirit in the world. Dostoyevsky shows in every novel that Christ is not recognised in the act of goodness but in the act of freedom.

To sum up my main points are as follows. Firstly that our sense of perspective signifies, among other things, the primary existential factor of subjectivity as marking man. Second, once we gain a sense of subjectivity, of perspective on the world, the objective order of being into which man is slotted becomes a lost cause, a quaint tapestry, a faded fresco. At best it is another perspective. Thirdly, in the modern urban sprawl the angelic and daemonic are human, all-too-human. Life is tragic, not merely disordered. Lastly, the question of freedom opens out beyond the teleology of the Good. This is the question we must reckon with and it demands new terms of reference, just as Thomas’s own thought did in his day. Thomas was a creative philosopher, not one whose mind was fixed in the past and formulated by it. Something similar is demanded of us with respect to existential questions of subjectivity and freedom, which did not exist for Thomas.

How can we turn the whole existential problem of freedom to the credit of Christianity? I think this is a fundamental question for us.

[1] N. Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky (1923) tr. Donald Attwater, Meridian, NY, 1969, p.41.
[2] Jean-Paul Sartre, Essays on Existentialism, Carol, Secaucus, NJ, 1999, p.51.
[3] Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky, p.41.
[4] Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky, p.50.
[5] Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky, p.53.
[6] Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky, p.69.
[7] Simone de Beauvoir, Adieux, tr. Patrick O’Brien, Pantheon, NY, 1984, p.435.
[8] Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, (1931), tr. N. Duddington, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1954, p.165.
[9] Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky, p.80.

2006-08-23T18:47:00.001-07:00

MYSTERIUM CRUCIS

BY HENRI DE LUBAC
translated from the 4th French edition, 1947, Catholicism.
(Sheed & Ward publishers, New York, 1950.)

Introduction

Whenever a Christian’s meditations may have led him, he is always brought back, as
by a natural bias, to the contemplation of the cross.

The whole mystery of Christ is a mystery of resurrection, but it is also a mystery of death. One is bound up with the other and t he same word, Pasch, conveys both ideas. Pasch means passing over. It is a transmutation of the whole being, a complete separation from oneself which no one can hope to evade. It is a denial of all natural values in their natural existence and a renunciation even of all that had previously raised the individual above himself.

However genuine and unsullied the vision of unity that inspires and directs mankind’s activity, to become effective it must be dimmed. It must be enveloped in the great shadow of the Cross. It si only by abandoning all idea of considering itself as its own end that mankind can be gathered together. For does not man, in reality, will and love humanity with the same natural impulse that he wills and loves himself? Now God is essentially a jealous God, who must be loved pre-eminently, under pain of not loving him at all. [1] And if it is true that in the last analysis humanity will be loved for its own sake, and not with a love that is self-centred, only by being loved in God the only Beloved, this truth does not appear automatically with such obvious clarity that it does away with the reality of the sacrifice. Humanism is not itself Christian. Christian humanism must be a converted humanism. There is no smooth transition from a natural to a supernatural love. To find himself man must lose himself, in a spiritual dialectic as imperative in all its severity for humanity as for the individual, that is, imperative for my love of man and of mankind as well as for my love of myself. Exodus and ecstasy are governed by the same law. If no one may escape from humanity, humanity whole and entire must die to itself in each of its members so as to live transfigured in God. There is definite brotherhood only in a common adoration. Gloria Del, vivens homo; but man will attain to life only by means of the soli Deo gloria. That is the universal Pasch, the preparation for the City of God.

Through Christ dying on the Cross, the humanity which he bore whole and entire in his own Person renounces itself and dies. But the mystery is deeper still. He who bore all men in himself was deserted by all. The universal Man died alone. This is the consummation of the Kenosis and the perfection of sacrifice. This desertion – even an abandonment by the Father – was necessary to bring about reunion. This is the mystery of solitude and the mystery of severance, the only efficacious sign of gathering together and of unity: the sacred blade piercing indeed so deep as to separate soul from spirit, but only that universal life might enter.

“O You who are solitary among the solitary, and all in all!”[2]

“By the wood of the Cross”, concludes St Irenaeus, “the work of the Word of God was made manifest to all: his hands are stretched out to gather all men together. Two hands outstretched, for there are two peoples scattered over the whole earth. One sole head in the midst, for there is but one God over all, among all and in all.”[3]

EXTRACTS MAINLY FROM PATRISTIC SOURCES.

I

GREGORY OF NYSSA
The Double Nature of Man

"In Christ Jesus," says the Apostle, "there is neither male nor female." Yet Scripture says that mankind was divided that way. It follows that our nature is constructed on a twofold plan: united in the common possession of human nature, by which man is like to God; yet divided into the two sexes. There is a hint of this truth contained in the order of the expressions which Scripture uses. The first account says, "God created man, to the image of God he created him"; but when the account is repeated, something is added: "male and female he made them"; and the latter division is not one of the characteristics of God.

In this passage Holy Scripture contains, it seems to me, a deep and profound lesson, namely, that man's nature lies midway between two extremes between the divine, incorporeal nature, and the irrational nature of the brute creation. Examine the compound which is man and you will find that he has a share in each of these opposite elements. From the divine nature we receive reason and understanding, which are not divided according to sex; from the irrational nature of the brutes, we receive our bodily structure, divided into male and female. Each of these two elements is to be found complete in every human being. From the order of the account of man's first creation we learn that in man power of understanding takes first place, while his sharing in the nature of the brute creation, his similarity to the brutes, is something super added. First we are told that "God made man to his own image and likeness," to indicate that, as the Apostle says, in God there is neither male nor female; then a special characteristic is added to human nature male and female he made them."

What lesson are we to learn from this? I would ask the reader's indulgence if I go back some way to explain the point we are discussing. God is, by his very nature, all the good it is possible to conceive; or rather he surpasses in goodness all that it is possible for our minds to understand or grasp. And his reason for creating human life is simply this because he is good. Such being the nature of God, and such the one reason why he undertook the work of making man, there were to be no half measures when he set about to show forth the power of his goodness. He would not give a mere part of what was his own, and grudge to share the rest. The very utmost limit of goodness is displayed in this work of bringing man into being out of nothing, this heaping on man of all that is good. In fact, so many are the benefits bestowed on every man that it would be no easy task to list them all. And so Holy Scripture sums all up in one phrase by saying that man was created to the image of God; which is the equivalent of saying that God made human nature a sharer in all that is good.

Now, one of these good things is freedom. Man is not subject to any overmastering yoke of necessity. We are our own masters, to choose what seems good to us. Virtue is something we choose for ourselves, not something forced upon us from outside . . . But if an image bears in every point the impress of the beauty of the Prototype, it can no longer be called an image at all, but is the very Prototype itself, since there is no means of telling the two apart. Wherein, then, lies the distinction between God and the image of God? In this: that God is uncreated, the image of God created. This difference gives rise in turn to other differences. All are agreed that the uncreated Nature is also unchangeable, while for a created nature to exist is to change. The very passage from not being to being is a kind of movement, a kind of change. By the will of God that which was not begins to be... that which came into being through change has a natural affinity to change. And so the Creator, who, as the prophet says, knows all things before they come to be, when he created man saw, or rather foresaw what human nature would incline to, following its self-determining, self‑mastering power. And as he looked upon the creature that was to be, he added to his image and likeness the division into male and female. To this division nothing corresponds in the divine archetype.

It is borrowed as I have said, from the nature of irrational creatures. The true reason for this additional structure is something that could only be given by those who had received a view of the truth, and handed it down to us in inspired Scripture. All we can do is to give the best picture we can, based on conjecture and likelihood. We shall give it not as the last word on the subject, but as a sort of exercise, submitted to the reader's kind consideration. Our suggestion is this: when Scripture says that God created man, this indefinite expression man means universal human nature. Adam is not yet named as the new creature, as he is later on in the account. The creature is called man ‑not any particular man, but man in general. This general, term, used for the nature created, indicates that God by his foreknowledge included the whole human race in this first fashioning. We may not suppose that anything made by God is left indefinite. Every actual creature must have some definite measure of perfection assigned to it by the wisdom of its Maker and just as an individual man is made with a body of a definite size, enclosing his human nature within the limits of a definite quantity, namely, the dimensions of his body, so it seems to me the whole range of humanity was enclosed, as it were, in one body by the foreknowledge of the God of all things. This is what Scripture intends to convey by saying that God made man and made him to the image of God. The gracious gift of likeness to God was not given to a mere section of humanity, to one individual man; no, it is a perfection that finds its way in equal measure to every member of the human race. This is shown by the fact that all men possess ‑ mind. Everybody has the power to think and plan, as well as all the other powers that appear distinctively in creatures that mirror the divine nature. On this score there is no difference between the first man that ever was and the last that ever will be all bear the stamp of divinity. Thus the whole of humanity was named as one man, since for the Divine Power there is neither past nor future. What is still to come, no less than what is now, is governed by his universal sway.

The whole of human nature, then, from the first man to the last, is but one image of him who is. The division into male and female was something super-added to the work, made, it seems to me, for the reasons I have given.

On the Formation of Man, ch. 16 (P. G. x1iv, 181‑5)

2

GREGORY OF NYSSA
Universal Human Nature

Whether what I am about to say on this question comes near to the truth or not, he knows best who is Truth itself. The following at any rate is what suggests itself to me. First I repeat what I said earlier on. God said, "Let us make man to our image and likeness." This image of God finds its fulfilment in human nature as a whole. Adam had not yet come into being. The word Adam means, "formed from the earth" according to Hebrew scholars. The Apostle Paul, well versed in his native Hebrew, turned the name Adam into Greek by the word yoükóv, i.e. of the earth.

By man, then, is meant the universal nature of man, this God‑like thing, made in the likeness of God. It was not a mere part of the whole that came into being through the all-powerful wisdom of God, but the whole extension of the created nature at once. He saw it all who holds all things within his hand, even to the uttermost limits of creation (as the Scripture says, "in his hands are all the ends of the earth"). He saw it who knows all things even before they come to be; saw before his mind in one all‑seeing glance the whole extent and number of the human race. And since he also saw the inclination which our nature would have towards evil, and how we should, of our own free choice, fall away from a dignity equal to that of the angels to consort with lower creatures, he mingled with that image of himself an irrational element. In the blessed nature of God this distinction of male and female had no part. But God transferred to man a characteristic of the brute creation, imparting to our race a means of increase quite out of keeping with our lofty nature as first created. When God made man to his image and likeness, he did not add the power of increasing and multiplying; it was only when he divided man into male and female that he said, "Increase and multiply and fill the whole earth."

On the Formation of Man, ch. 22 (P.G. xliv, 204-5)

3

SEVERUS OF ANTIOCH
The Common Grave

(This ceremony) is the Commemoration of the poor men and strangers who in the course of the ages, up to the present day, have brought their lives to a close, and fallen into that last ineluctable sleep; who have put up, as at an inn, in the one common grave, and entrusted to earth that flesh which was formed out of clay and joined with a rational soul created in the image of God.

Let us not see only the outward form of this commemoration, but. Let us search out the spirit that lies within. Now, those who originally laid down a law for its celebration did so with the clear knowledge . . . that Christ did not die and rise again for the sake of one class of men or another for all mankind. Keeping in thought close to their own Master, and showing in practical action the common avail of divine succour, they recommended and decreed a Commemoration Service for all, in a body, who were cut off from all kindred and worldly friendship; having in view the same union as Paul, when he said; "where there is no question of Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman; but all, and in all is Christ." Col. iii. 11.

It was fitting, therefore, in the first place because of our common nature, to come together and render to the holy burial of those who were first to depart the same service which others will later do for us. In the second place, we should be filled with awe … at the succour brought by Christ in dying and rising again ‑for the ‑sake of all; and should give due consideration also to the fact that it is Christ who is honoured through the poor and the stranger, the same Christ who said: "As often as you have done it to one of these my least brethren, you have done it to me." 2 Matt. xxv. 40. And we should mount in thought, and rise to this sublime reflexion, that these dead, who were reckoned of no account, we find to be dignified by the likeness and dignity of God: for Christ . . . came to us, in his Incarnation, in the guise of a stranger and a poor man, and being rich, became poor for our sake, that we might be enriched by his poverty: became so poor that he cried. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Matt. viii. 20; Luke ix. 58. He was not laid in a tomb of his own, but Joseph of Arimathea received him into his own tomb like a stranger.

Homily 76 (Patrologia Orientalis, XII, 136-8)

4

ST AUGUSTINE
Adam Broken Up and Gathered Together

"For with righteousness shall he judge the world," not a part of it only, for it was not merely a part that he redeemed; the whole of the world is his to judge, since for the whole did he pay the price. You have heard what the Gospel has to say, that when he comes "He shall gather together the elect from the four winds" (Mark xiii. 27). He gathers all the elect from the four winds, that is to say, from the whole world. Now Adam's name, as I have said more than once, means in Greek, the whole world. For there are four letters, A, D, A, and M, and with the Greeks the four quarters of the world have these initial letters. They call the East, "Anatole"; the West, "Dusis"; the North, "Arctus"; and the South, "Mesembria," and these letters spell Adam. Adam is thus scattered throughout the globe. Set in one place, he fell and, as it were broken small, he has filled the whole world. But the Divine Mercy gathered up the fragments from every side forged them in the fire of love and welded into one what had been broken. That was a work which this Artist knew how to do; let no one therefore give way to despair. An immense task it was indeed; but think who the Artist was. He who remade was himself the Maker; he who refashioned was himself the Fashioner. "He shall judge the world in righteousness and the nations in his truth." On Psalm 195, n. 15 (P.L. xxxvii, 1236)

5

DURANDUS OF MENDE
The Threefold Wall Thrown Down

The Gloria in excelsis is the hymn not only of the Angels, but also of men, rejoicing with one another because the woman has now lit her lamp to look for the groat which was lost, and the shepherd has now left his ninety‑nine sheep in the desert and come to look for the single lost one.

For before Christ's birth there were three walls of enmity: one between God and man, one between the Angels and man, and the third between man and man. The reason for this was that man had offended his creator by disobedience, by his fall had hindered the restoration of the Angels, and by the diversity of his cults had separated himself from his fellow men (since the Jews used ceremonial worship, while the Gentiles practised idolatry).

But our Peace by his coming destroyed these walls, and thus united what had been separated. This he did by taking away sin, and thus reconciling man with God; by repairing the effects of the Fall, and thus reconciling man with the Angels; and by destroying diversity of worship, and thus reconciling men with each other.

Therefore, in the words of the Apostle, "He restored the things that are in heaven and those that are on the earth," and it is for this reason that the multitude of the heavenly army sang: "Glory to God in the highest," that is, among the Angels who have never sinned or been at enmity with God; and "on earth" Christ makes "Peace with men," that is, Jews and Gentiles, "of good will," because before his birth their sins put them at enmity with God and with the Angels. This also explains why the Angel speaks to the shepherds and rejoices with them, for peace is made again between man and the Angels; God is born as man, and so peace is re‑established between man and God; he is born in the manger of an ox and an ass, and so peace is restored between men themselves, for the ox stands for the Jewish people and the ass for the Gentiles.

Explanation of the Divine Offices, Book iv, ch. 13. Cf. ch.
33, on the Preface

6

CARDINAL DU PERRON
Salvation through Unity

God of his inestimable bounty and incomprehensible wisdom has vouchsafed to watch over us and to prepare and

Direct us even in this life towards that eternal happiness that it has pleased him to promise us and reserve for us in the other; and to this end he has chosen the method which best corresponds with the excellency and dignity of his nature. And since he is one, the principal of all unity, and even unity itself, instead of saving us by so many distinct ‑and separate ways, he has obliged us to embrace the means of our salvation and its conditions in unity. "He is one," said St Augustine (In Psalm. 101), "the Church is unity, nothing corresponds to the one save unity." That is, he was not, content to win us and possess us separately as so many scattered and dispersed' individuals, but willed that by the terms of that same covenant between him and ourselves we should be bound up together in a common society, to constitute, under the authority of his name, a sort of spiritual body, and a form of Estate and Republic. Jesus died, said St John, "not only for the nation, but to gather together in one the children of God, that were dispersed" (John xi. 52).

Replique à la Response du Serenissime Roy de la Grande Bretagne (Paris, 1620), Preface

7

ST FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE
The Miracle of Tongues

Now let us see why it was that at that time the sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit was this that they who received it should speak in every tongue. For the Holy Spirit has "not ceased to be given”. Yet the recipients nowadays do not speak in every tongue. The Holy Spirit does not renew in them the striking miracle by which, formerly, he proved his Presence.

We must realize, my dear brethren, that this Holy Spirit it is who pours forth charity into our hearts. By this charity the Church of God was to be assembled from every corner of the globe. Now united by the Holy Spirit, the Church by 'her very unity speaks in every tongue, as then each recipient of the Holy Spirit spoke. If then anyone were to say to one of us: "You have received the Holy Spirit, why do you not speak in every tongue?" he ought to answer "I do.

For I am part of the Body of Christ, the Church, I mean, and she speaks in every tongue”. What else did God mean the presence of the Holy Spirit to convey if not this, that his Church should one day speak in every tongue?

Celebrate, then, this day as members of the unity of the Body of Christ. For you will not celebrate it in vain, if you are what you celebrate by adhering together to that Church which God fills with the Holy Spirit; that Church which by its growth throughout the world he recognizes as his own and by which he in turn is recognized . . . To you of every nation who constitute the Church of Christ, the members of Christ, the Body of Christ, the Spouse of Christ, to you it is that the Apostle says: "Supporting one another in charity, careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace" (Eph. iv. 2-3). Notice how he links mutual tolerance with love, and the hope of unity with the bond of peace. This is the house of God, built with living stones, the house in which he loves to dwell as Father of his Household. The ruins of division must never be allowed to sadden the eyes of such a Father.

Sermon 8, on Penetcost, n. 2 and 3 (P.L. 1xv, 743-4)

8

HERMAS
The Stone Quarried from the Twelve Mountains

Why, Lord, are these mountains all of different shapes and colours? Listen, the Shepherd replied, these twelve mountains are twelve tribes which inhabit the whole world, the Son of God was preached to them by the Apostles.

But, Lord, tell me why they are of different colours and shapes.

Listen, said he, these twelve tribes which inhabit the whole world are twelve nations. Now these nations differ in outlook and spirit. The variety of form which you saw among the - mountains represents the diversity of spirit and outlook among these nations. I shall now describe to you the manner of life of each of them.

First tell me this, Lord, I asked: Seeing that the mountains are so varied, how is it that when their rocks were built up into the tower they became all of one colour, glistening like pebbles thrown up from the depths of the sea?

The reason, he replied, is that all the nations that dwell beneath the sky, when once they heard the gospel and believed, were called in the name of the Son of God. In receiving the seal they took on one mind and one spirit, in the unity of one faith and spirit of love . . . In this way the tower came to be built of one colour and to shine like the sun.

The Shepherd, Similitude 9, c. 17, n. 1-4

9

ST IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
Christian Prayer

Let everyone have reverence one for another, making God the rule of your conduct: not with merely human eyes should you regard your neighbour, but have love always one for another in Jesus Christ. Do not allow any cause of division to spring up in your midst, but let your union with the bishop and those who preside over you be an‑ example and an object lesson of incorruptibility.

Just as our Lord, being one with the Father did nothing on his own or by means of the Apostles without the Father, so neither should you do anything without the bishop and the presbyters. Do not try to persuade yourselves that you can do anything good on your own; on the contrary, do all in common: one prayer, one petition, one mind, one hope in the unity of love and in innocent joy‑this is Jesus Christ than whom there is nothing higher. Make haste, all of you, and gather in the same temple of God at the one altar, the one Jesus Christ who came forth from the one Father and, remaining one with the Father, went back to the unity of the Father.

Letter to the Magnesians, c. 6-7

10

ORIGEN
The Science of Harmony

"We, thy servants, have reckoned up the number of the fighting men, whom we had under our hand, and not so much as one was wanting" (Num. xxxi. 49).

"Not of the mere rank and file do you hear it said that not one of them was wanting, but only of those who are acclaimed as "picked champions of the fight." Amongst these true champions not one is wanting, amongst them is no breath of discord. Of such it was said: "The multitude of believers were of one heart and soul, and not one of them said that he possessed anything of his own, but they held all things in common." Champions, therefore, because each was of one mind with the rest. In the battle they have won great booty in gold, and all this gold, whether crowns for the head, bracelets for the arm, rings for the finger, they offer to God as symbol of all that their intellects have to offer, all that their hearts and hands have found to do. But unless they were of one mind and heart, they could not offer any gift to God. They represent, I believe, those who diligently observe the precept of our Lord and Saviour, "If in offering your gift at the altar you remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother. Then come and offer your gift that thus they may "lift their hands to God in prayer free from anger and discord." Such men can say, "We have numbered the pick of our fighting men, not one has failed the others. We have offered our gift to God."

It is for us then earnestly to lay to heart this lesson of mutual harmony. For, as in music, if each chord chimes harmoniously with the rest, the whole harmony is pleasing and true, but if there be but one note out of harmony, then discordant noise is the result and the whole joy of the song is lost, so with those who fight for God. If they allow dissension and discord to exist among them, then nothing they have is pleasing or acceptable to God - no matter how many battles they may win or‑ spoils they bring home, nor however numerous the gifts they make to God.

Homily 26 on the Book of Numbers, n. 2 (ed. Baehrens, pp. 244-5)

11

ST MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

The Three Laws

There are three common laws, the law of nature, written law and the law of grace, each imposing a particular outlook and a consequent discipline on those submitting to them.

Natural law, where the sensitive appetites do not dominate reason, leads a man without the help of any other master to have a fellow‑feeling for all beings of a nature similar to his own, and teaches him to succour those in need. It induces a common will in man to render to all the treatment he would wish to receive from them. Our Lord, too, teaches this in the words: "Do unto all men as you wish them to do unto you." For in all men whom reason governs there arises a common outlook; this in turn gives rise to a common moral code and way of life; and where these are found there appears a consciousness of men's mutual bond in the rationality of human nature. Then there can be no place for the prevailing dissension, which is grounded on a narrow egoism.

Written law restrains disordered impulse, in those whose moral sense is undeveloped, by fear of penalties; and, by accustoming them first to have a regard for justice, in the narrow sense, goes on to implant a wider sense of righteousness, which in time takes root and becomes natural, whereas the initial fear yields little by - little to recognition of the good. This in turn, when it becomes a habitual outlook, gives rise to love of other men. This is the end and fulfilment of this law, viz. to bind together all who share the same human nature in mutual love, and through this love to enthrone natural reason in man. Thus the goal of this law is to cherish the natural law with the warmth of affection. Hence our Lord says: "Love thy neighbour as thyself" and not merely "treat him as thyself": for the second formulation only suggests that men are, socially dependent for their mutual subsistence; whereas the former emphasizes the real concern which each should have in the welfare of all.

But the law of grace teaches its devotees to imitate God himself directly, without intermediary steps‑for he has loved us, dare one say, even more than himself . . . "For there is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

To sum up natural law is natural reasoning, keeping control over sense appetite and eliminating that irrational behaviour which is the disruption of what is naturally coherent. And written law, too, is natural reasoning which, after eliminating the same irrationality of sense, rises to a spiritual love which is the bond of union with our fellow men. But the law of grace is a reasoning which rises above nature, and unswervingly fashions nature into the likeness of God …
Questions to Thalassios, No. 64 (P.G. xc, 724-8)

12

BALDWIN OF CANTERBURY
Prayer for Fraternal Union

Guard me 0 Lord, from grave sin which I fear much. Guard me from the hatred of thy love, lest I should sin against the Holy Spirit who is the bond of love, who is unity, peace and concord: let me not separate myself from the unity of thy Spirit, from the unity of thy peace, by committing the sin which is forgiven neither here nor hereafter. Keep me, Lord, among my brethren and neighbours, to tell of the peace which is from thee. Keep me among those who keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Dearly beloved, let us anxiously attend to all that concerns the profession of our common life, keeping the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the imparting of the Holy Spirit. From the love of God comes the unity of the spirit; from the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ comes the bond of peace; from the imparting of the Holy Spirit comes that communion which is necessary to those who live in common, if they are to live in common ... This unity which the love of God works in us is preserved in the bond of peace by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our peace who made of two peoples one; at whose birth the angels sang: Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace to men of good will; who when about to ascend into heaven said: My peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.

What is this peace given us by Christ in the bond of which the unity of the spirit is preserved? It is mutual charity by which we love one another, which remains unbroken if we are all of one mind and there are no divisions among us. St Peter exhorts us on this point: Above all things preserve constant charity among yourselves. What is this charity, if not what is mine and thine, so that I speak of it to him whom I love?

This, then, is the law of the common life, the unity of the spirit in the love of God, the bond of peace in the mutual and constant love of all our brothers, the sharing of all our goods, with every opportunity of possessing things as our own far removed from us by the rule of holy religion. That this may be our abiding intention, that we may have but one heart and one soul and all things in common, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the imparting of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen."

I believe, 0 Lord, in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints. This is my hope, this is my trust, this is my confidence, this is the whole of my security in the professing of my faith: in the goodness of the Holy Ghost, in the unity of the Catholic Church, in the Communion of Saints.

If I am allowed moreover to love thee and to love my neighbour, though my merits are small and few, yet will my hopes reach beyond them. I am confident that the merits of the saints will help me by the communion of charity, so that the Communion of Saints will make up for my insufficiency and imperfection. The prophet comforts me saying: To all things I see a limit, but thy commandment is exceeding large. 0 large and widespread charity, how great is thy dwelling, how immense the place of thy possession. Let us not be straitened in our bowels, let us not confine ourselves within the bounds and limits of any justice whatever. Let charity expand our hope as far as the Communion of Saints in the sharing of merits and rewards; but the sharing of the latter belongs to the future, for it is the sharing in the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Since, then, there are three communions - the first of nature, which includes the sharing of guilt and anger, the second of grace and the third of glory - by the communion of grace that of nature begins to be remade and the sharing of guilt to be excluded: but by the communion of glory that of nature will be perfectly restored and the communion of anger will be entirely excluded, when God will wipe away - every tear from the eyes of the saints. Then among all the saints there will be one heart and one soul and all things will be in common, when God will be all in all. That we may all arrive at this communion and that we all may be one, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, and the imparting of the Holy Spirit be with us all for ever. Amen."

Treatise on the Conventual Life (P.L. cciv, 554-6, 562)

13

CLAUDIANUS MAMERTUS
Mutual Presence in God

Now that this proof enables you to appreciate how utterly different and inferior is physical sight to that of the soul, you should no longer be disturbed by the doubt that, when you are thinking of your absent friend (to use your own example), you have to believe him to be absent from you just because he is not bodily there before you. For if he is dear to you in that aspect of himself which makes you both human, and makes you love one another with a reciprocal love, then you are both equally present to one another: for your friend is precisely one with you in nature.

Now, the soul's faculty of vision is the intellect; if you see yourself [in this spiritual way] you see your friend too, for he is in no way different from yourself. Were he physically before you, you would be able to recognize him by clear and visible physical characteristics. But supposing these characteristics were signs which led you to recognize him for enemy, surely your soul would be repelled with antipathy, and would in a manner recoil from his. In spite of your both being physically in the closest possible proximity, you would really be separated by no small distance, through your wills being in opposition to one another.

Therefore, one cannot maintain that it is distance that separates hearts, when we see there can be separation even with the bodies close to each other. Besides, the obstacle created by the body to the mutual union of hearts is a small one, unless you would either use the body to look for the image of God in yourself, or desire the body for its own sake. For it would be sadly opposed to the truth to be using the body to look for the image of God, that is, the truly human part of man, instead of using this truly human part - itself in your search. But you do use the truly human part and your search will be successful, if you use the image of God. Now, every rational soul is this image of God, so that he who seeks the image of God in himself, is seeking both himself and his friend at the same time: and if in seeking this image he finds it in himself, he will recognize it in all other men too. As for you, you have good reason for maintaining that your friend seems to be absent: for you fix your thoughts on the body and can only love the body, when you think that he is nothing more than a body.

Love your God, and in your God love your friend, who is the image of your God, and may he, likewise loving God, love you in God. If you both seek and aim at the one single object, you will always be united to each other, for you are rooted in this object. And I do not see how it could be that, if bodies brought together to one place can be present to each other, hearts fastened on one single object can fail to be united.

On the State of the Soul, Book I, Chap. 27

14

ST PETER DAMIAN
The Unity of the Body of Christ

During the actual celebration of the Mass, shortly after he ‑has pronounced the words Memento, Domine, famulorum, famularumque tuarum, the priest adds, Pro quibus tibi offerimus vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis. These words make it quite clear that this sacrifice of praise is offered by all the faithful, men and women, even though it may seem to be offered, in an especial way, by the priest alone. What he offers to God with his hands, the multitude of the faithful offer in spirit by their earnest devotion. That this is really so is evident also from the words: Hanc igitur oblationem servitutis nostrae, sed et cunctae familiae tuae quaesumus, Domine, ut placatus accipias. From these words it is as clear as day that the sacrifice which the priest places on the altar is offered by all God's family in general.

The Apostle sets forth clearly the Church's unity when he says, "We, being many, are
one bread, one body." So great, in fact, is this unity of the Church in Christ, that throughout the whole world there is but one bread of Christ's body and one Chalice of his Blood. The Divinity of the Word of God, though it fills the whole world, is yet everywhere the same. So too, though Christ's Body is consecrated in many different places and on many different days, there are not many bodies but one only. Just as the bread and wine are truly, changed into the Body of Christ, so also do all the members of the Church who receive that Body worthily, become, beyond all doubt, one Body in Christ. He himself bears witness to this when he says, "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him."

If then we are all one body in Christ, if we remain in him, we cannot be separated from one another, even though, as far as bodily appearance goes, we seem to live apart. I do not see, therefore, why each individual should not follow the common usage of the Church since, thanks to the Sacrament of Unity, we are never separated from her. When I utter in solitude the common prayers of the Church, I truly show that I am one with her, that I am always with her in spirit. For if I am a member, there can be nothing incongruous in my exercismg the functions of the whole body to which I belong.
The Dominus Vobiscum, c. 8 (P.L. cxlv, 237-8)

15

WILLIAM OF SAINT-THIERRY
The Threefold Body of Our Lord

Whenever the intelligent reader finds in a book anything about the flesh or body of the divine Jesus, he may apply this threefold definition of his flesh or body. I have not presumed to invent or fashion it according to my own notions, but have extracted it from the writings of the Fathers . . .

For he must think in one way of that flesh or body which hung on the cross and is sacrificed on the altar, in another way of his flesh or body which is abiding life to the person who receives it in Communion, and in yet another way of that flesh or body which is the Church . . .

Not that we would depict Christ as having three bodies, like Geryon in the fable, since the Apostle testifies that, the body of Christ is one. But the mind or heart makes the distinction with a certain relation to faith, though the reality maintains the undefiled truth in its simplicity. For this threefold nature of the body of the Lord is to be understood exactly as, the body of the Lord himself is understood, ac cording to its essence, its unity and its effect? For the body of Christ, exactly as it is in itself, is offered to all as‑ the food of eternal life, and unites in its life those who receive it faithfully, both by the love of the spirit and by a sharing. In its own nature, the living head of the body of the Church.

On the Sacrament of the Altar, c. 12 (P.L. clxxx, 361-2)

16

THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA
The Priest Invokes the Spirit of Unity

Next the priest asks that the grace of the Holy Spirit descend upon the whole congregation, so that all those who were brought together in one body by the symbol of regeneration may now be also bound up as in a single body by partaking of the body of our Lord; that they may come together in concord and peace and zeal to serve one another, lest, while each of us turns the whole gaze of his spirit upon God, it should yet be for our punishment that we receive the communication of the Holy Spirit, being divided in thought, contentious and quarrelsome, prone to jealousy and envy, and heedless of propriety. (He asks) on the other hand, that we may be deemed worthy to receive him, because we turn the eyes of our soul on God in concord and peace and zeal for the good, in a perfect spirit; and that we may so be made one by taking part in the holy mysteries, and thus together be joined to our Head, Christ our Lord, whose body we believe we are, and through whom we believe that we enter into a share of the divine nature.

6th Liturgical Homily

17

ST FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE
Unity through the Trinity

At no time may the spiritual building of the Body of Christ, which charity effects, be implored more opportunely than when Christ's Body, the Church, in the sacrament of the bread and of the chalice, offers the very Body and Blood of Christ. For "the chalice of benediction which we bless is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? For we, being many, are one bread, one body: all that partake of one bread." This is why we pray that by that same grace, which has made the Church the Body of Christ, all its members may persevere, held fast by the cement of charity in the unity of his Body.

Rightly do we ask that this should be brought about in us by the gift of that Spirit, who is the one Spirit of the Father and of the Son: because that Holy Unity of Nature, that Equality and Love, that is the Trinity, the one true God, sanctifies in unanimity those whom it adopts. In this one substance of the Trinity there is unity in the origin, equality in the Son, but in the Spirit of Love a fusion of equality and unity: the unity knows no division, the equality no difference, the love no shadow of dislike. There is no discord there: for the equality, which is love and unity, the unity, which is equality and love, and the love, which is unity and equality, continue for ever in one unchanging nature.

It is by this fusion (of unity and equality) in the Holy Spirit, if one may use such language, that the love of the Father and the Son is seen to be one, and because of this the Apostle writes: "Because the Charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us." That Holy Spirit indeed, the one spirit of the Father, and the Son, works in those to whom he grants the grace of divine adoption what he worked in those of whom the Acts tell us: "The multitude of the believers had but one heart and one soul." This one heart and one soul were the work of him who is the one Spirit of the Father and the Son as he is likewise, with the Father and. the Son, one God. That is why the Apostle asserts that this spiritual unity is to be preserved by the bond of peace. "I therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called: with all humility and mildness, with patience supporting one another in charity; careful to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." This spirit they lose by their desertion, who, led astray by vice or puffed up by pride, sever themselves from the unity of the body of 'the Church. That these men have lost the Holy Spirit the Apostle Jude states clearly where he says, "These are they who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit." For the same reason, St Paul remarks, "The sensual man perceiveth not these things which are of the Spirit of God." Such men are prone to division-, for they lack that Spirit in whom alone the members of Christ preserve their loving unity. It is in the sacrifices of the Church alone, the sacrifices offered by her spiritual unity, that God takes pleasure. Just as true faith admits no discord in the Trinity, so does peace hold us brothers in the harmony of charity?
To Monimus, Book 11, Chap. XI (P.L. 1xv, 190-1)

18

ST FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE
The Sacrifice and the Summoning of the Spirit

Realize what is taking place when the sacrifice is being offered. Then you will understand why we invoke the Holy Spirit.

The sacrifice is offered to proclaim the death of the Lord, that the memory of him who gave his life for us may live again. When, in this sacrifice, we commemorate his death, we pray that by the coming of the Holy Spirit love may be bestowed on us, for whom Christ died of love. Humbly and earnestly we pray, that by that same love which made it seem to Christ worth dying on the cross for us, we too, having received grace of the Holy Spirit, may be crucified to the world and having imitated our Lord in his death may walk in the newness of life ... Thus does it come about that all the faithful, who love God and their neighbour, even though they do not drink the chalice of bodily suffering, drink none the less the chalice of the love of the Lord . . . For the chalice of the Lord is drunk when holy love is cherished, and without it giving one's body to be burnt is of no avail. But with the gift of love is given us the grace to be in truth what in this sacrifice we celebrate in mystery. This the Apostle affirms when, after saying "for we being many are one bread, one body," he adds, "all that partake of one bread."

As warrant for our asking this at the moment of sacrifice, we have the salutary example of our Saviour. He has willed that in the commemoration of his death there should be made that same petition which, on the eve of that death, he himself, the true High Priest, made on our behalf, saying, "Holy Father, keep them in thy Name whom thou hast given me: that they may be one as we also are” and adding shortly after, "and not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me. That they all may be one as thou, Father, in me and I in thee; . . . that they may be made perfect in one." When we offer the Body and Blood of Christ, we ask what he asked on our behalf when he deigned to offer himself for us. Read the Gospels carefully and you will see that as soon as our Redeemer had finished this prayer, he entered the garden and was there taken captive at the hands of the Jews.

Thus does he show us that we ought to ask, especially at the time of this sacrifice, what he, the supreme High Priest, deemed it fitting to ask when he established the. Law of sacrifice. Now, that which we ask, that we may be one in the Father and the Son, we receive through the grace of spiritual unity which the blessed Apostle commands us to preserve with care when he says, "Supporting one another in charity, careful to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." We pray then that the Holy Spirit may come, not in person, in the Immensity of the Godhead, but by his gift of personal charity.

So the Holy Spirit is said to come at the request of the faithful whenever he deigns to increase, or to give anew, the gift of charity and unanimity. This is the function, which is, so to speak, proper to the Holy Spirit. By this especially is he recognized? When, therefore, the holy Church, in the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, prays that the Holy Spirit may be sent her, she is simply asking for that gift of charity by which she is enabled to preserve spiritual unity in the bond of peace. Since also it is written, "Love is stronger than death," in order to promote the love of mortification - in those of her members who are still on earth, she asks for that charity which, as she recalls, led her Redeemer to go freely to his death for her sake. Thus does the Holy Spirit sanctify the Sacrifice of the Catholic Church because of this, the Christian people continue in faith and charity. Each one of the faithful, thanks to the gift of the Holy Spirit, eats and drinks worthily the Body and Blood of Christ. For 'each holds the right beliefs concerning God, and by his good life is far from deserting the unity of Christ's Body, the Church.
Against Fabianus, Fragm. 28 (P.L. 1xv, 789-91)

19

ST AUGUSTINE
The One City of God

An orderly exposition of the faith demanded that the Church should be joined to the Trinity as a house to its owner, as a temple to its god, as a city to its founder. The Church is here to be considered not in any partial aspect but as a whole; not only as the Church on earth as it journeys.

On towards its goal, praising the name of the Lord from the rising of the sun even to its setting, singing a new song after its liberation from the old captivity; but also as the Church in heaven which ever since its foundation has cleaved to God and has never suffered in itself the evil of a fall. Set among the angels in blessedness it ever endures, and brings help, as is but right, to that part of itself which is still in its pilgrimage. For both will be one by sharing eternity together, are one already in the bond of love, seeing that the whole Church was founded for the worship of the One God.

Enchiridion, c. 57 (P.L. xl, 258-9)

20

ST HILARY
The "Natural" Unity of Christians

There were those whose heart and soul were one, and it was faith which made them so. This faith is itself one, witness the Apostle who proclaims one faith even as one Lord, and one baptism and one hope and one God. If then it is through faith, that is through the nature of one faith, that all are one, why not admit a natural unity in them, seeing that they are one through the nature of a unique faith? For all were born again unto innocence, unto immortality, unto the knowledge of God, unto faith, unto hope. Now these things cannot differ within themselves, for there is one‑ hope and one God, ‑as also there is one Lord and one baptism of regeneration. If, however, these things are one by common consent rather than by their very nature, then to such as receive a new birth unto them, ascribe a simple unity of will. But if they have been born again unto the nature of one eternal life, then there is in them no longer a mere unity of will, but they are one by being reborn with one and the same nature.

These are not our own conjectures which we are offering, nor do we seek to delude our hearers with falsehoods based on distorted interpretations; but holding fast to essentially sound doctrine we know and preach the things which are true. For the Apostle, teaches that this unity of the faithful arises from the nature of the sacraments when he writes to the Galatians: "As many of you as have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." Surely this unity among such diversity of race and circumstance and sex is not the result of free consent, but of the unity of the sacrament, in that they share one baptism and have all put on the one Christ. What part can mutual agreement play when they are one by putting on the one Christ in the one baptism?'

Our Lord prays to his Father that those who believe in him may all be one, and that as he is in the Father and the Father in him, so all may be one in them. Why speak of harmony of soul, why bring in, here a unity of mind and heart based on agreement of will? Our Lord had an unlimited vocabulary and knew the precise meaning of words.

If their unity was to be an affair of will he would have prayed thus: "Father, even as we will one and the same thing, so let them will one and the same, so that we all may be one through the oneness of our wills." Perhaps the Word did not know the meaning of words or he who is truth could not say what was true? He announced the true and unsullied mysteries of the Gospel faith; and he not only made his meaning clear but spoke to be believed when he said: "That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they all may be one in us." First of all it is for them that he prays, that they all may be one; and then he points out the nature of that unity: as thou, Father, in me and I in thee; so that, even as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, so, as a result of and based on the pattern of this unity, all may be one in the Father and the Son.

Our Lord did not leave the minds of the faithful in doubt: "That they may be one as we also are one; I in them and thou in me; that they may be made perfect in one." I ask those who assert a unity of will between the Father and the Son, whether Christ is in us today truly by nature or by the concord of wills? For if the Word was indeed made flesh and if in Holy Communion we really receive the Word-Flesh, surely he is to be considered‑ as "naturally" abiding in us? For, born as man, he has taken unto himself inseparably the nature of our flesh and has conjoined the nature of his own flesh to the nature of eternal Godhead

In the Sacrament by which his flesh is given to us. Thus we are all one, because the Father is in Christ and Christ is in us. We therefore who are united inseparably in his very flesh must proclaim the mystery of a true and natural unity…

We do not, of course, deny unanimity between the Father and the Son; it is the heretics, with their lying tongues, who assert that because we do not accept concord by itself the bond of unity we therefore declare them to be at variance. If they attend they will see that unanimity is not denied by us. The Father and the Son are one in nature, in glory and in power, and one and the same nature cannot will things that are contrary . . .

On The Trinity, Book 8 (P.L. x, 241-50)

21

GREGORY OF NYSSA
In the Perfect Dove

But if perfect love casts out fear, as Scripture says, fear being transformed into love, then whatever attains to salvation will be found to constitute a unity. All its elements will be gathered up into one by being grafted on to the one Good, in the perfect unity, which is typified by the dove. This we learn from the words that follow: "My dove is one, my perfect one. And the same is declared even more clearly in the Gospel in the words of ‑ our. Lord, when he proclaims to his disciples that they should all become one by being grafted on to the one and only Good so that through the unity of the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle says, bound together by the bond of peace, they should all become one Body and one Spirit.

Better still, in the very words of Christ in the Gospel, "that they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee." Now, the bond of this unity is spoken of as "glory"; and that by glory is meant the Holy Spirit no man of discernment will deny, in view of the words of our Lord, "The glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them." This, it is certain, is the glory which he gave to his disciples when he said to them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost . . ..”

And be is the perfect dove upon whom the bridegroom looks, saying, "My dove is one, my perfect one."

15th Homily on the Canticle (P.G. xiiv, 1116-7)

22

EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA
The Sacerdotal Prayer

The prayer which our Saviour makes to the Father on our behalf teaches us the nature of his great mission‑that wherever he may be, there we may be with him and may gaze upon his glory; that he may love us even as his own Father loves him, and may give to us all that he receives from the Father, even his glory, making of us all a unity in which we will be no longer many individuals but one, bound together in his divinity and in the glory of the Kingdom - not, indeed, by our merging into one substance, but by the consummation of perfected virtue . . . For in this way, made perfect by him in wisdom and justice, in holiness and all virtue, we shall be united with each other and with the unfailing radiance of the Father's godhead, ourselves taking light from this union and becoming sons of God, fashioned by our participation in the union of God with his only Son, and in the splendour of the godhead.

"The Father and I are one," he tells us. So too he prays that all of us may share in this union by following and imitating him . . .“The glory you have given me," he goes on, "have I given to them, that they may be one as we also are one. Thus the Father and the Son are one through the glory they share, and by giving to his followers a part in their glory, God has found them worthy even of this union itself.

On the Theology of the Church, Book 3, Chaps. 18, 19 (P.G. xxiv, 1042-3)

23

ORIGEN
In Expectation of the New Wine

Once we have understood what is meant by. This "inebriation of the saints" and how it is held out to them as a joy in store, we can now consider how it is that our Saviour can be said to drink wine no more, until he drinks this new wine in the Kingdom of God.

Understand, then, that at this very moment my Saviour is grieving over my sins. There can be no joy for him while I remain in my evil doing. Why not? Because he is the advocate for our sins with the Father, as John his closest friend declares, saying, "If anyone sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just. And he is the propitiation for our sins." How then could he, as the advocate for my sins, drink the wine of joy while I grieve him by my sinning? How could he possibly rejoice as he approaches the altar to make propitiation for me a sinner, while all the while there mounts to his heart the misery of my sins? "I shall drink this wine with you," he says, "in the Kingdom of MY Father." So long then as our steps are not set towards that Kingdom, he cannot in solitude drink that wine which he has promised to drink with us. While we remain in sin, he must remain in grief. If his Apostle grieves over, many that were in sin before and have not repented," how much more he who is called "the Son of Love," who humbled himself for the love that he had for us, and though he was equal to God sought not his own but our advantage, and to that end emptied himself. Do you think that having gone so far in seeking our good, he now ceases to seek it that now he gives us no further thought and is not filled with sorrow when we leave his side? Will he who wept over Jerusalem and said of her: "How often would I have gathered together thy children, as a hen gathereth together her chickens under her wings, and ye would not" have now no tears to shed for our loss? Once as the healer of our bodies and souls he took upon himself our stripes and grieved over us. Is he now unconcerned at the foulness of our sores? "There is no soundness in my flesh, no health in my bones because of my folly," wrote the Psalmist. For all those sins of ours he now takes his stand before the face of God, interceding for us. He stands at the altar making propitiation for us to the Father. It was for this very reason that on the eve of his sacrifice he uttered the words, "I shall not drink of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you. "He is in suspense then until we are converted, till we have begun to follow the steps of, his example, that then at last he may rejoice in our company and drink that wine with us in the Kingdom of his Father and since the Lord is with us in the Kingdom “compassionate and gracious" "'he weeps with those that weep and rejoices with those that rejoice" with a depth of feeling beyond the range of his own Apostle.

But over “the many that were in sin before and have not repented" his grief is greater still. It is inconceivable that Paul should grieve over sinners and weep over those who fall away, while my own Lord Jesus should be dry-eyed as he approaches his Father, when he 1 stands by the altar and offers Propitiation for' us. "He who approaches the altar does not drink the wine of gladness," that is to say he still tastes the bitterness of our sins. He has no heart to drink that wine alone in the Kingdom of God - he is waiting for us; for did he not say,”until I drink with you"? It is we then who by the negligence of our lives delay his happiness.

It is for us he waits that he may drink "of the fruit of this vine.” What vine does his mean? He means the vine of which he is the figure. “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Wherefore he also said: “My blood is drink indeed and my flesh is food indeed.” And in very truth “He has washed his garment in the blood of the grape.” What then is he waiting for? For happiness how long will he wait? Until," he says, I shall have finished the work God gave me." When does he finish that work? Only then when he has finished and perfected his work in me, the worst of all sinners. For as long as I am imperfect, his work too is imperfect. Nor, finally, is he said to be "subject to the Father until I too am "subject" to the Father. Not that there is in him any lack of submission to the Father, but in so much as I, his work, am not yet finished, he himself is said not to be "subject." We read in the Scriptures that "we are the body of Christ and his members in part”. Consider what is meant by “in part”. Suppose, for example, that I am subject to God according to the spirit, than is, in my will and intentions, then while in me “the flesh”, and I am unable to bring the flesh into subjection to the spirit, then I am “subject” to God, it is true, yet not wholly but only “in part”. But if I succeed in bringing the flesh likewise with all my members into harmony with the spirit, then I shall become perfectly “subject”. If you have understood what perfect subjection and subjection only “in part” mean, consider now what I have said about our Lord’s subjection and observe that as long as some of us are not yet in perfect subjection, he, whose body and members, we are, is not said to be perfectly subject. But when he has finished his work and brought all his creation to the height of its perfection, then he too will be said to have attained his full subjection in us whom he has made subject to the Father and in whom he has consummated the work which the Father gave him, that God might be all in all.

And what is the point of all this? It is to bring you to an understanding of the reason of what we have treated above: namely, why he drinks wine and why he does not drink wine drinking it, that is, before he enters into the tabernacle and before he approaches the altar, but not drinking it now because he stands before the altar in grief for my sins; yet he will drink it again in the future when all things shall have been made subject to him, when all have been saved and when with the abolition of the death of sin it will no longer be necessary for him to offer sacrifice for sin. Then will come the time for gladness and rejoicing, then "the bones which have been crushed will rejoice" and Scripture will be fulfilled, "Sorrow and sadness and mourning are no more”.

But we must not lose sight of a further point. Not of Aaron alone was it said that he would not drink wine. His sons are included when they in their turn enter into the sanctuary. For not even the Apostles have entered as yet into their joy, but they must wait till I become a sharer in their joy. Nor do the saints when they leave this world receive the full reward of their merits, but they stand in wait for us, tardy and sluggish though we be there can be no perfect joy for them while they still weep over our truancy and grieve for our sins and grieve for our sins. Perhaps you hesitate to take my word for this, for who am I to presume to establish such lofty doctrine on my own authority! So I call upon the most unimpeachable testimony – the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and in truth, the Apostle Paul. When writing to the Hebrews, after enumerating all those holy patriarchs who had been justified by faith, he adds “All these, though through their faith they had gained approbation, yet they did not receive the fulfilment on the promise, for god intended that for our greater good they should not come to their perfection without us.”

You see, then, that Abraham is still waiting to receive his perfection. Isaac is waiting; Jacob and all the prophets are waiting for us, that with us they may receive their perfect happiness. Here is the reason why this mystery is kept till the Last Day, and why the Judgement is deferred till then. For it is one single body that awaits its justification, one body that is promised a future resurrection. "There are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of thee." For even if the eye is a healthy one and without any defect of vision, what joy can it have if its fellow members are missing? What sort of perfection will it seem to have if it has no hands, if its feet are gone or the rest of its members missing? The eye, indeed, has a certain pre‑eminence of glory, yet this lies chiefly in its being the guide of the body and is completely dependent on the eye not being deprived of the support of the other members. This I think is the lesson for us of that vision of the prophet Ezechiel where he says "that bone must be united with bone, joint to joint, and that nerves, veins and skin are all to be restored each to its proper place." Notice that last phrase of his "these bones," he says; not, mark you "all men," but "these bones" are the House of Israel. You will enter into joy then if you leave this life in holiness. But your full joy will only come when not one of your members is lacking. Wherefore you must wait for others, just as others have waited for you.

Surely, too, if you who are a member have not perfect joy as long as a member is missing, how much more will he, our Lord and Saviour, consider his joy incomplete while any member of his body is missing. This was the reason for his earnest prayer to the Father, "Holy Father, glorify me with that glory, which I had before the world was, with thee." He is loath to receive his perfect happiness without you, that is, without his people who constitute his body and his members. His wish then, is to take up his dwelling as the soul of that body his Church and of those members his people, so that he may rule all their actions and works into accordance with his will, whereby that saying of the Prophet may be realized in us, "I shall dwell in them and walk amongst them." But while we are not yet perfect and are still in our sins," he is only in us "in part' and so "we know in part and we prophesy in part' until each of us merits to arrive at that measure of which the Apostle speaks, "It is no longer I that live but Christ that liveth in me. "In part," then, as the Apostle says, "we are Christ’s members” and “in part” we are his bones. But when bone shall have been joined to bone and joint to joint, as we have read above, then he will bring that prophesy to its realisation in us, so that "all my bones will say, 'Lord, who is like unto thee?’ For all these bones give voice in song and thanks to God, mindful of the favour he has done to them. Then all my bones shall say, "Lord, who is like unto thee, who delivereth the needy from those too strong for him?' Of these bones, when they were still scattered apart before the coming of him who was to collect and gather ‑them into one, this further prophecy was made, "Our bones have been scattered at the mouth of the nether‑world." And it was by reason of this scattering that it was said by another prophet, "They shall be joined together, bone to bone, joint to joint, and veins and nerves and skin shall once more cover them." When this has been brought about, then "all these bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, who delivereth the needy from those too strong for him." For each of those bones lay powerless, crushed beneath the hand of a too powerful adversary. 'For the joint of Charity, the veins of the living soul, the sinews of patience, the vigour of faith, all these were lacking. But when he comes who is to gather together that which was dispersed, joining bone to bone and joint to joint, then will he begin to build up that holy body which is the Church.

All this may seem a digression, but I found it necessary to introduce it in order to bring out more clearly how it is that our High Priest drinks no wine as he enters upon the sanctuary, nor will drink of it again till his priestly task is accomplished. Afterwards he will drink, but it will be new wine and a new wine in a new heaven and a new earth, as a "new man" with "new men" and with those who will sing him a new song. Now you see how impossible it is for him who has not yet put off the "old man with his deeds" to drink the new draught from the new vine. "None," he has said, "Puts new wine into old skins." If you too wish to drink of this new wine, then make yourself a new man, and say, "Even if our outward man suffers corruption, yet the inner man is ever renewed afresh."

Homily 7 on Leviticus, n. 2 (ed. Baehrens, pp. 374-80)

24

GREGORY OF NYSSA
When the Son also himself shall be subject

When, therefore, like our first‑fruit, we have put off from ourselves all evil, then the whole of our nature will be absorbed in him who is our first‑fruit, and we shall become one continuous undivided body with him, admitting no other governor but the one and only Good. In this way the whole of our bodily nature will become mingled with the incorruptible divine nature, and the subjection attributed to the Son will also come about in us. When, I say, the subjection accomplished in his body is attributed to him as working the grace of subjection in us … then he absorbs into himself all who are made one with him by sharing the same body. He makes them all members of his own Body, so that there are many members, but one Body. When he has made us one with himself, and himself one with us, he becomes identified with us in all his operations, and makes all that is ours his own. Now the chief good that we possess is our subjection to God, when the whole of creation sings together in unison . . . Then Christ makes his own the, obedience which his whole Body gives to the Father. Let no one take this explanation amiss: we too instinctively attribute to the soul things that come about through the Body... By making all men one with himself, through himself he makes them one with the Father, "As thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us . . ." The words in the Gospel context are in complete harmony with what has been said: "The glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them."

By "glory" in this passage I hold that he means the Holy Spirit, which he gave to his disciples when he breathed upon them. There is no other possible means of uniting district souls than by bringing them together into the unity of the Spirit: "Now if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his." And the Spirit is called glory, as Christ says to the Father in another place, "Glorify me with the glory which I had from the beginning before the world was, with thee . . ." Nothing existed before all ages except the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and so Christ says in the passage
Previously quoted, "The glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them," that through it they may be made one with me, and through me with thee.

Treatise on the Text: "Then the Son himself shall be subject"(P.G. xiiv, 1316-21)

25

JULIAN OF NORWICH
The Ghostly Thirst of Jesus

Thus shall the ghostly thirst of Christ have an end? For this is the ghostly thirst of Christ: the love-longing that lasteth and ever shall, till we see that sight [the oneing of all mankind that shall be saved unto the Blessed Trinity] at Doomsday. For we that shall be saved and shall be Christ's joy and his bliss, some be yet here and some be to come, and so shall some be, unto that day. Therefore this is his thirst and love-longing, to have us all together whole in him, to his bliss as to my sight . . .

For we know in our Faith . . . that Christ Jesus is both God and man. And anent the Godhead, he is himself highest bliss, and was, from without beginning, and shall be without end: which endless bliss may never be heightened nor lowered in itself. And anent Christ's manhood, it is known in our Faith that he with the virtue of Godhead,
for love, to bring us to his bliss, suffered pains and passions and died . . .. Anent that Christ is our Head, he is glorified and impassible; and anent his Body in which all his members be knit, he is not yet fully glorified, nor all impassible. Therefore the same desire and thirst that he had upon the Cross (which desire, longing and thirst, as to my sight, was in him from without beginning) the same hath he yet, and shall, unto the time that the last soul that shall be saved is come up to his bliss . . . The ghostly thirst is lasting in him as long as we be in need, drawing us up to his bliss.
Revelations of Divine Love, chi. 31

26

ADELMAN OF BRESCIA
Growth of the Body of Christ

Let us believe from our hearts and proclaim it by our words that the power of Christ, which is invisible, works through the visible ministry of his priest, and creates out of material bread the true body of Christ. Let us also believe that all who are born again of water and of the Holy Ghost are, by partaking of this food, incorporated into Christ himself. For in the words of the Apostle: "As the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ." Such is clearly the man of whom Paul speaks in another place, "Until we all meet unto the perfect man": he does not say "Perfect men," but "Perfect man." The Head of this man is none other than he who was born of the Virgin Mary, died and rose again; the members are the elect, from the beginning of the world to the end.

Now just as in our own bodies the head is the seat of all the senses and of the intellect itself (whereas the rest of the body possesses only the sense of touch, each of the members having its own particular function to carry out), so is it, according to the Apostle, with him who is our Head: "In him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge"; and again: "He is the head of the body, the Church." About the members, on the other hand, this, is what Paul says: "To every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the giving of Christ." And about him‑self, assuredly a true member of this Head, he says: "to fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh," calling ‑the sufferings he himself is enduring the "sufferings of Christ." Therefore Christ suffered in Paul and was crucified in Peter, both Peter and Paul being in Christ citizens of heaven; "our fatherland is in heaven," says St Paul. And elsewhere he shows his hope even more clearly: "He hath quickened 'us together in Christ . . . and hath made us to sit together in the heavenly places." We may well be surprised: he was still being buffeted on earth by an angel of Satan, and yet he gloried in that he was, in Christ, risen and sitting in heaven. Now he could say this because of the union which obtains between all the members dependent on one another, as he explains more clearly in another passage: "If one member suffer anything, all the members suffer with it; or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it."

This same teaching is frequently given by our Lord himself in the Gospels. When he says: '1 am the vine, you the branches"; or: "unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." He can only imply by these examples this same interdependence of all who are united to him, which he in his goodness and love procured for them, giving them to share in his own glory . . .

Again, the vision of King Nabuchodonosor seems to contain this same idea: he saw a small stone (this stands for Christ) which, cut out from the mountain without being touched by human hand (as Christ was conceived without human seed), increased in size till it became itself a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Dan. ii. 34-5). The meaning of this is that our Lord's Body, which had its origin in a minute fragment of matter taken from the single mass of the human race, has had added to it a great number of the faithful, so that, multiplying itself many times, it goes on growing until the end of the world, when it will have filled the whole earth.

This Body, then, is even now fully and perfectly glorified in its Head, and also in those of its members of whom it is written: "and many bodies of the saints that had slept, arose"; these are now at rest in perfect happiness in heaven. But other members are still suffering - those, that is, who are yet in this mortal life and imprisoned in the body, mourning, and desiring to be dissolved and to be with Christ." Further, there are amongst the members of this immense Body (it may well be called "gigantic," according to the Psalmist: "He rejoices as a giant") some who, although they have been cleansed from all stain of sin and now enjoy the glory of the blessed, yet abide in the firm hope of their happiness being increased, for they look to the end of time when their bodies will at last rise again, to be harmoniously united with each other in a deathless life.

It is likely that the Psalmist is referring to the striking diversity of the members of this Body, when, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he says: "The queen stood on thy right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety." Surely this queen is the consort of the King who is referred to a little after: "And the king shall greatly desire thy beauty, for he is the Lord, thy God."

This King is her God, her Spouse, and her Head; while she is his Church. By nature his servant, by grace she has been made his Spouse and his Body, and we can say that now is fulfilled that mysterious thing which was promised in the beginning of the world: "they shall be two in one flesh. What surrounds her is the great variety of her different members, some reigning in bliss, others suffering"sowing in tears"as they await the redemption of their bodies. Yet their present state is not to last forever: otherwise they would be in the most wretched condition imaginable. But how long will it go on? And when will it end? It will last as long as the King remains resting on his couch, tarrying it may be, but bound inevitably to come in the end; and when he does show himself, at the same time the queen will appear with him in glory. Then this great variety of her members will finally disappear, for, with "death swallowed up in victory," the whole Body will be clothed with the glorious state of immortality, and all the members will be conformed to their Head, all of one accord rejoicing in an honour at once special to each and reflecting back from each to the whole. On that day, our Lord Jesus Christ, having delivered the kingdom to God and the Father, and reduced to nothing all principalities and powers, will introduce his Church without spot or wrinkle into his presence, and God will be all in all.

Adelmanni ex scholastico Leodiensi episcopi Brixiensis, de Eucharistiae sacramento ad Berengarium epistold. (See R. Heurtevent, Durand de Troarn et les origines de l’héréstie bérengqarienne, 1912, pp. 298-302.)

27

COURNOT
The Historical Character of the Bible

The other religions of antiquity have not, properly speaking, a historical side to them, and although of necessity they have their own history, just as every sect or institution has, they are not founded on history; in their sacred writings, when they have any, it is only cosmogonies and myths that are recorded. By contrast there is nothing more imposing, nothing simpler and briefer than the purely cosmogonic portion of the Jewish people's sacred books. And the genealogies which follow, if they are not exactly historical in every way, are very much more so than all other accounts of the same kind. Lastly, the books of a national history which reciprocally verify and are verified by the historical records of other peoples‑and in this they are unique - play a considerable and fundamental part in the scheme of the canonical books. Later on, as the Jews became involved with the great empires of antiquity, they linked up their prophecies and their hopes for the end of time with the break-up of these empires; so that even in the dreams of an oppressed people there appears and is developed the idea of a plan of historical events.

Traité de 1'enchalinement des Wes fondamentales dang les sciences et dans Phistoire, ed. Hachette, 1911, pp. 655-6

28

RUPERT OF TUY
Jacob's Ladder

On this Christmas night there is read before Mass the genealogy of Jesus Christ from St Matthew's Gospel‑a custom handed down by holy Church with a beauty and mystery of its own. For behold how in truth the authors of the divine office by this reading put before us at dead of night that ladder which Jacob saw at night in his sleep. Supported on the topmost rung of the ladder where it reached heaven the Lord appeared to Jacob and promised him that his posterity would inherit the earth. This vision took place when he was on his way, at his father's command, to assure that posterity by taking a wife from the family and kin of his father and mother . . . Now, as we know, "all these things happened to them in figure." The ladder by which the Lord appeared to be supported prefigured the family-tree of Jesus Christ which the holy Gospel‑writer so drew up as to come through Joseph. It is by Joseph that our Lord as a small child is supported . . .

Through the gate of heaven‑a gate to which the topmost rung of the ladder, meaning St Joseph, is joined by his dignity of spouse-through this gate, that is, through the Blessed Virgin, our Lord, a tiny child for our sake, comes crying. He comes supported by the ladder, as I have said above, and in proof of his blessing promises our salvation, that is the salvation of the Gentiles: rather he fulfils that promise. For the words which Jacob in his sleep heard the Lord say, "And in thy posterity shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," are fulfilled by the birth of Christ.

The divine writer, bearing in mind this very point, put the names of Rahab the prostitute and Ruth the Moabite into his genealogy. For he saw that Christ was ‑made flesh not for the Jews alone, but also for the Gentiles, inasmuch as he deigned to accept mothers from among the Gentiles. The prophets had previously born witness to this. David, for example, says: "I shall remember Rahab and Babylon": that is, the wide extent and confusion of the Gentiles, for Rahab means "wide extent" and Babylon "confusion." And Isaias in his vision over Moab: "Send forth, - 0 Lord, thy lamb, the ruler of the earth, from Petra in the desert to the mount of the daughter of Sion," as if he were to say plainly: "Thou shalt send forth, 0 Lord, thy lamb Christ from the midst of the Gentiles, to prevent carnal Israel from boasting that Christ is exclusively her own‑Israel to whose notions it is clearly repugnant that thou shouldst send the same Christ from the Gentiles to the mount of the daughter of Sion." For Petra in the desert represents Ruth the Moabite who, standing fast on the rock (petra) of a firm faith, forsook her own people and her native gods and going with Noemi married Booz of Bethlehem, by whom she was the mother of Obed, the grandfather of David; and so also the ancestor of the Saviour.

Sprung therefore from two races, Jew and Gentile, as from two sides of the ladder, the ancestors from their different rungs support Christ our Lord emerging from heaven. The holy angels come up and go down and all the elect are first humbled to receive faith in his Incarnation that they may be afterwards lifted up to see the glory of his divinity. Hence our Lord himself says elsewhere, "Amen I say to you, you will see heaven opening and the angels of God going up and coming down upon the Son of Man." That is to say, you will see all the saints going up to God supported and raised up by the Son of Man, since the barriers of heaven have been opened by his redemption. But to be able to go up, they first go down in a spirit of humility to adore his cross and passion.

This double movement of ascent and descent seems to be hinted at by Matthew and Luke when the former composed the genealogy in a descending order, the latter in an ascending order. For God-made-man, crying in his crib, invites us to humble ourselves by the example of his humility: but once baptised and beginning to be famous by his heavenly miracles, he raises up the humble to the understanding of his divine glory.

De divinis officiis, lib. 3, c. 18 (P.L. clxx, 75-7)

29

ORIGEN
The Water of Mara

"They came to Mara but they could not drink its waters because they were bitter, whereupon he gave' the place an appropriate name, calling it Mara, that is, bitterness. And the people grumbled against Moses saying, 'What shall we drink?' But Moses cried to the Lord who showed him a tree. And when this had been cast into the waters they were turned into sweetness." (Exodus xv. 23-5.) The Old Law, then, is an exceeding, bitter draught to drink . . . But if God should reveal a tree which when cast into this bitterness should turn it into a law of sweet waters, then one might drink of it. Moreover, we know the tree that the Lord has revealed, for Solomon teaches us when speaking of wisdom that it is a tree of life to those that embrace it. If then the tree of the wisdom of Christ be cast into the waters of the Old Law and show us what we are to think of circumcision, what are the obligations of the law of the Sabbath, the law of leprosy, the distinction between things clean and unclean, then the water of Mara is made sweet and the bitterness of the letter of the law is turned into the sweetness of a spiritual understanding so that we of God's people can drink of it. For unless we understand such things in a spiritual sense then a people which has abandoned idols and turned to God, On hearing of a law enjoining sacrifices, will have none of that law, and will refuse to drink of it, finding it bitter and harsh.

To make this 'water of Mara drinkable, then, God has revealed a tree that may be cast into it so that he who drinks of the water may neither die nor find any bitterness in it.

Clearly, then, if anyone wishes to drink of the letter of the law without this tree of life, that is, without the mystery of the Cross, without faith in Christ, without spiritual understanding, then he will die of its exceeding' bitterness. This is what' St Paul had in I mind when he' said that it is the letter that killeth, plainly declaring that the water of Mara is deadly if drunk unsweetened and unchanged.

In Exodum, homily 7, n. 1 (Baehrens, pp. 205-6)

30

GREGORY OF NYSSA
The New Myth of the Cave

The Church receives the light of truth through the porch of prophecy and the lattice of the Law. The Law was a wall of partition through which the original revelation came. The very truth could not pass through, but only a type or foreshadowing. But behind this wall of partition stands the truth which the type foreshadowed. The Church received the first rays of the Word of Truth through the Prophets. But the time came when the very Truth was revealed in the Gospel, and in its light the shadowy outlines of the type of prophecy fade, and the wall of partition is broken down. The house is thrown wide open, and the light of heaven pours in, mingling unhindered with the inner air. No longer need we contrive to catch a few dim rays through a tiny casement; 'for now the Gospel glory of the true Sun sheds its brightness on all within the house.iv 865D)

On the Canticle of Canticles, homily 5 P.G. 31

31

PAUL CLAUDEL
The Everlastingness of the Old Testament

The Old Testament, which is made up of hi story, lyrical and devotional poetry, moral and ritual regulations, cannot be understood without that invisible, future presence which co-ordinates it and settles its direction, even in its slightest shades of meanings and its most colourless passages, surrounding it in its entirety with an atmosphere of prophecy. The Old Testament cannot be understood without the New, which comes to fulfil, to justify and to explain. "I am not come," said our Lord, "to destroy but to fulfil . . . one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." And, as in truth the letter has passed away, it must indeed be admitted that, if something remains, that something is its spiritual meaning, dominating, and inherent in, the text of the Old Testament, right down to its smallest details. If every jot: and tittle are to be endowed with perpetuity, it is because their claim to it comes from God, whom, we are told, they show forth, rather than from their intrinsic worth; it is because the dead letter must give way to the spirit which quickens . . .

So, nowadays as in all other times, Holy Scripture still remains the seed of the Church and has lost nothing of its power to take root and grow. It is not a historical document addressed exclusively to its contemporaries. Himself above all time, our Lord never ceases to testify that his whole mission is to fulfil and bring to completion. Deprived of its opportunities, the original circumstances of its composition and its proper season, the substance of the written word, even to every jot and tittle (St Augustine), is still addressed to us as it was to our fathers. "Unless the grain of wheat die”… says the Gospel, unless it loses its husk to disclose before our eyes starch and gluten . . .

Scripture is concerned throughout with Jesus Christ; sometimes it is Jesus Christ who manifests himself and makes himself known; at others it is we who perceive him, answering his summons to press forward on the path that he shows us.

Introduction au livre de Ruth, Le sens figuré de I'Ecriture, pp. 87-8, 110-1 and 114

32

PSEUDO-EPIPHANIUS
The Light of the Cross

What is this? To-day there is a great silence in the world; a. great silence, and a stillness over all, because the King slumbers. The earth is fearful, and has grown still, because God, falling, asleep in his flesh, has awakened those who have slept from the world's beginning...

Christ our God, our Sun, has sunk to his setting, and has brought for the Jews an endless night. This day has brought salvation for those 'upon the earth, and those who have been below the earth for generations; it has brought salvation for the whole universe, visible and invisible . . . Christ is among the dead; let us go down with him, and gaze upon the mysteries hidden there...

Listen now to the deeper meaning of Christ's suffering; Listen, and sing your hymn of praise; listen, and extol the wonderful works of God … See how Law gives way, and Grace begins to flower; see how the ancient Types recede, how the shadows scatter, and our Sun now fills the whole world; see how the Old Law passes, and the New is ratified, how the past fades before the bright coming of the present.

At the house of Christ's Passion, there were two peoples met together in Sion, the Jews and the Gentiles; there were two kings, Pilate and Herod; there were two chief‑priests, Annas and Caiphas, so that two Paschs might be kept together, the one on the point of ceasing, the other-the Pasch of Christ‑to be celebrated for the first time. Two sacrifices were offered on that same evening; so was there wrought a double salvation, salvation of the living and of the dead. The Jews were binding a lamb for sacrifice and slaughter; the Gentiles were binding God made Man. The Jews were still gazing into darkness; the Gentiles were hastening towards the Light, towards God himself. The Jews were recalling, their deliverance from Egypt; the Gentiles were proclaiming their deliverance from all untruth . . .

And where did this take place? In Sion, the city of the great King. There, at the world's centre, was accomplished the world's salvation there, between the two Living Beings, Father and Spirit, Jesus was seen to be the Son of God. Angels and men were round the manger at his birth; and he, set as a cornerstone for both peoples, heralded alike by Law and Prophets, seen upon the mountain with Moses and Elias, recognized as God as he hung between the two thieves he, this day, in the midst of the living and the dead, to both alike has brought life and salvation.

He has united in peace his two peoples, linking the things of heaven with the things of earth . . . With symbols merely, and in darkness, as the Paschal night came down, Israel kept her Pasch; in clearer truth and light, do we keep ours, while Time's long day moves to its close.

Homily 11 for Holy Saturday (P.G. xliii, 440-1 and 468-9)

33

ST AMBROSE
The Church, the Mystic Eve

Moses tells us that after the creation of man God also made woman. "Then the Lord cast a deep sleep upon Adam; and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs and filled up flesh for it. And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman" (Gen. ii. 21, 22). This way of acting on the part of God forces me to see something more which I cannot quite grasp. Such passages as "Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," "She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man," left me in doubt as to their meaning. St Paul came to my help and inspired by the Holy Spirit gave me the clue with the words: "This is a great mystery." The mystery of which he is speaking is contained in the words: "They shall be two in one flesh" and "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife" and "Because we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones" (Eph. V, 30-2). What man and what woman is he speaking of? The woman who leaves her parents is the Church, composed as she is of Gentiles, the Church to whom it was said in prophecy, "forget thy people and thy father's house" (Ps. xliv. 11). And for what man if not for him of whom John spake, "After me there cometh a man who was before me"? (John i. 27-30).

From his side as he slept God took a rib; it was he indeed, who slept, took his rest and rose again, for the Lord raised him up And this rib of his is nothing but his power, his virtue. When the soldier opened his side there came forth at once blood and water, which was poured forth for the life of the world. This life of the world is the rib of Christ, the rib of the second Adam; for the first Adam was made a living soul, but the second Adam a life-giving spirit. The second Adam is Christ and the rib of Christ is the life of the Church. We therefore are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones; and it may have been of this rib that he said one day: "I know that virtue is gone. out from me" (Luke viii. 46). This is the rib, which came from Christ without mutilating his body, for it was not a bodily but a spiritual rib, and the Spirit is not divided but gives to others according as he wills. This rib is no other than Eve, mother of all the living, and the mother of the living is the Church. God built her upon the supreme corner stone, Jesus Christ, on whom every well-built structure uses up to form the temple of God.

Come then, dear God, and fashion this woman, this helper for Adam . . . for Christ. Not that Christ is in any need of help, but because we seek and long to find, through the well-built structure rises up to form Church, the grace of Christ. At this very moment the Church is a building and taking shape; the woman is being fashioned and made. And so the Scripture makes use of a new term: are "built up upon" the foundation of the apostles and the spiritual Lord God, prophets (Eph. ii 20). At this very moment building is rising into a holy priesthood. Come, Lord God, fashion this woman build this city; and let thy Son come, for I believe thy word: "It is he who shall build my city" (Isaias kliv. 13).

Lot the woman, mother of all; lot the spiritual dwelling, lot the city that shall abide forever, for it knows not death. It is the city of Jerusalem, the city which appears now upon earth, but will be lifted higher than Elias, higher than Enoch. He indeed was carried aloft, lest his heart be changed through malice; but that Christ loves other, the Church, as his spouse, glorious, holy, immaculate and without spot. And if one man was carried on high, shall not the whole body be even more so? Such is the hope of the Church it shall indeed be carried on high; it shall be lifted up, translated to heaven. In a burning chariot was Elias taken up; so shall it be with the Church. You do not believe me? Then believe Paul in whom Christ has spoken: "We shall be taken up in the clouds to meet Christ" (I Thess. iv. 16).

For the building of this city how many are sent by God. The Patriarchs and prophets, the Archangel Gabriel and countless angels and the whole heavenly host gives praise to God because the perfection of the city draws nigh. Many are sent, it is true, but it is Christ alone who is the builder, though indeed he is not alone, for the Father is with him. And if he is the only builder, yet he does not usurp to himself the glory of so great a labour.

It is written of Solomon's temple which is a type of the Church, that when it was building there were seventy thousand men to carry the materials on their shoulders, eighty thousand stone‑cutters and three thousand six hundred overseers (II Paralip ii 2). Let his angels come then, heavenly stone-cutters; let them cut off all that is superfluous in us and remove all our roughnesses. Let them come and lift us on their shoulders, for it is written: "On their shoulders shall they be carried" (Isaias xlix. 22).

Exposition of the Gospel according to St Luke, Book 2, n. 85-9, (P.L. xv. 1666-8)

34

PAULINUS OF NOLA
Christ Suffering in His Members

From the beginning of time Christ has been suffering in his followers. He is, in fact, the beginning and the end, veiled in the old law, revealed in the Gospel, the Lord ever wonderful, suffering and triumphing in his saints: in Abel, slain by his brother; in Noe, mocked by his son; exiled from his land, in Abraham; in Isaac, offered as a victim; made a slave, in Jacob; in Joseph, sold; in Moses, exposed as an infant and later a fugitive; in the prophets, stoned and slain; in the apostles, afflicted by land and sea and slain time and again the manifold tortures of the Martyrs. It is always he, as in the past so in the present, who bears our afflictions and carries our griefs; always is he, the Man covered with wounds for us bearing that infirmity which we, without him, could never bear, even if we knew how to. He, I say, at this very moment, for us and in us, endures the malice of the world, that endurance may have the victory and power be made perfect in infirmity. He, in you, suffers contumely, and it is he in you who is hated by the world.

Letter 38, n. 3 (P.L. 1xi, 359)

35

SEVERUS OF ANTIOCH
The Good Samaritan

"A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho." The use of the specific noun is to the point: not "somebody was going down," but "a certain man"; for the whole of humanity is in question, inasmuch as it has fallen, through the disobedience of Adam, from the height of the abode of Paradise‑lofty and calm, passionless and godlike, here aptly called "Jerusalem," which means "peace of God" to the depth of Jericho, low-lying and stifled. in heat - meaning the ardent life of this world, which separates from God and drags down, which causes suffocation in the heat of shameful desire, and chokes to death.

Once humanity had gone astray towards this life, and had lost her balance and been drawn down, borne little by little to the lowest point of the downward path, as I have said, there settled on her a swarm of savage demons, like a band of brigands; and they stripped her of the cloak of virtue, leaving her not a vestige of fortitude or temperance or justice or prudence, or of anything that represented the image of God; and so they hacked her to death with the repeated wounds of various sins, leaving her cut to pieces; in a word, halfdead . . .

So while humanity was lying prostrate and all but fainting to death, she was visited by the Mosaic Law; for this is of course‑ the meaning of the priest and the Levite, since it was the Law that taught the Levitic, priesthood. It did indeed visit her, but it fell short in competence, and was not equal to a full treatment; it did not even raise the prostrate form, but went perforce, in its incompetence, on an ineffectual round. For sacrifices and gifts were offered through it, as Paul said, which were unable to perfect the worshipper in conscience; because, again, it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should entirely take away sin.

At last "a certain Samaritan who was going on a journey came to where he was . . ." Now it was to the point that Christ here called himself a Samaritan; for since he was dealing with a lawyer, who prided himself greatly on the Law, he took care to show by his words that it was not the priest or the Levite, or indeed, to speak in general terms, those who thought to model their conduct on the Mosaic statutes, but himself who was come to fulfil the will of the Law, and to show by actual practice who was really one's neighbour, and what it was to love him as oneself‑he to whom the Jews said as an insult: "Thou art a Samaritan, and thou hast a devil."

This Samaritan, then, who was going on a journey - that is, Christ-visited the prostrate man. For he had in fact really come on the Journey; he was not just passing by, as he was making the journey for that very purpose‑to visit us, the people for whom he came down to earth and with whom he dwelt. For he did not merely show himself, but also lived among mankind, becoming man in truth, without figure or fancy; for it is distinctive of true and charitable physicians to live among the sick, and not leave them before they are cured . . . When pouring wine on the wounds - the Word, instructive but pungent, . . . "the wine of repentance" . . .

Since . . . the severity . . . of the wounds could not bear a strong astringent, he tempered it with oil. That was why he sat at table with publicans and sinners, and told the contentious Pharisees, when they brought his human kindness against him as a reproach: "Go and learn what this means: It is mercy I want, not sacrifices." Next, he says, he mounted him on a beast; meaning that because "man," as the Scripture says, "when he was well off, did not use his intelligence, but imitated the senseless beast, and became like it," and fell sick of every beastly and unclean desire: so Christ, who knew not sin, having become the first-fruits of our race, showed first in himself that having trampled down these beastly passions we have mounted and risen above them; for he has taken the weight of our infirmities and borne the load of our ills. That is why he. said that he mounted him, when he had received treatment, on 'his own ass; for he was bearing us in himself, because we are members of his own body.

But what is more, “he brought him to an inn.” Now, navooxéiov – that is, "inn," literally "'all-receiving"-is his name for the Church, which has become receptive and holds all mankind: for no longer do we hear, in the restrictive manner of the foreshadowing in the Law -and the worship by symbols, "the Ammonite and the Moabite shall not enter the Assembly of the Lord," but: "Go and teach all nations . . ." and "in every nation, he that fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him." And having brought him to the inn, he showed still more solicitude for him. For, indeed, when the Church had been assembled from nations dying of polytheism, Christ himself was in it, dwelling and moving, as the Scripture says, and giving every spiritual grace.

So "to the man in charge of the inn"-let us take him as standing both for the Apostles and for the shepherds and teachers their successors - as, he was ascending to heaven, "he gave two coins," bidding him take especial care of the sick man, and adding, "if you incur any further expense, I will repay you on my return." By "two coins" he meant the two Testaments, the Old and the New: that is, the one given in the Mosaic Law and the Prophets, and the one given in the Gospels and the Apostolic Constitutions; both of which are, of the same God, and bear, like coins, the same image of the same king on high, and with their sacred words imprint in our hearts the stamp of the same royal likeness. Away, then, with Manes and his predecessor Marcion, the godless ones who assigned each of them to a different God. These two coins were of the same king, given by Christ to the man in charge of the inn together and without distinction of value.

Now, since the pastors of the holy Churches have received these, and developed their teachings with labour and sweat, and have gone on paying out from their own store, rather increasing it by the expenditure (for the money of the mind has this property, that instead of growing less and less with expenditure, it grows more and more), each of them will say, when Christ has come again at the last day: "Lord, thou gavest me two coins; see," by continuing to pay out of my own account, "I have gained two more," whereby I have increased and multiplied the flock; and he will say iin reply: ."Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful in charge of a few things, I will give thee charge over many: enter upon the joy of thy Lord."

Homily 89 (Patrologia Orientalis xxiii, 105-14)

36

MAXIMUS OF TURIN
The Woman at the Mill

The woman hid the leaven in the dough, as it is written. Who is this woman? Is she not the Church who day after day seeks to hide the teaching of Christ in the depths of our hearts?

The Church is indeed she and she is also that other woman sitting there at the mill, she to whom our Lord referred when he said, "Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left."

Holy Church is sitting at the mill and her millstones are the Law, the Apostles and the Prophets. When she teaches her catechumens she is picking out and crushing the hard grain of paganism.

Then she grinds men into a smooth flour, so that this flour may be ready to receive the unifying leaven of the divine Blood.

The leaven, I mean, is all our Lord's Passion. The leaven of salvation is the Creed which is delivered to the newly baptized.

Without the leaven of the Blood and the leaven of faith there is no one who can become by grace the substantial bread of eternal life.

But if the message" of glad tidings speaks of two women busy at the mill, and if one of the women is the Church who turns the stones of the mill of salvation, is not the other woman the synagogue? She too turns the mill of Moses and the Prophets, but she turns it in vain, as the Apostle says of the Jews: "They are zealous for God, but with a zeal without understanding"

The synagogue works the mill in vain, for she does not mix with her dough the leaven of Christ's teaching.

Holy Church is led onwards to eternal rest; for she has made ready for the Lord the peace of holiness.

The hard-hearted synagogue is left by her mill, sentenced to turn forever the stones of her unbelief.

Homily cxi (P.L. Ivii, 514 B-D)

37

ISAAC DE STELLA
Mary, the Church and the Soul

… Head and body: one single whole, Christ: of one God in heaven and one mother on earth. Sons both many and one: for as the head and members are one son, as well as more than one, so Mary and the Church are one mother and more than one, one virgin and more than one.

Each of the two is mother; each of the two is virgin. Each conceives by the same spirit without carnal attraction, each without sin brings forth an offspring to God the Father. Mary without sin provides the head for the body: the Church by the remission of all sins provides the body for the head. Each is the mother of, Christ, but neither gives birth to the whole without the other.

Therefore, in the divinely inspired Scripture, what is said universally of the Church, virgin and mother, is also said individually of Mary; and what is said in a special way of Mary, virgin and mother, is understood by right, but in a general way, of the Church, virgin and mother: so that, when the Scripture is understood to be speaking of either, it can, be applied to one or the other almost indifferently and in a mixed manner.

Also each faithful soul is the spouse of the Word. Of God, the mother, daughter and sister of Christ. Each faithful soul is understood in its own sense to be virgin and fruitful.

The same thing is therefore said universally for the Church, in a special way for Mary, individually for the faithful soul: and it is the Wisdom of God who speaks, the Word of the Father.

. . . It is also said: "And I shall dwell in the heritage of the Lord." For the heritage of the Lord, in a universal sense, is the Church, in a special sense, Mary, in an individual sense, each faithful soul.

Christ dwelt for nine months in the tabernacle of Mary's womb. He dwells till the end of the world in the tabernacle of the Church's faith. He will dwell forever and ever in the knowledge and love of the faithful soul.

Sermon 61, on the Assumption (P.L. cxciv, 1863 and 1865)

38

WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE
The Slow Coming of the Worship of God

But why did God leave the divine cult imperfect and wanting for so many thousands of years? Why did he? not take thought sooner for his glory and for our salvation?

One answer to such questions is this: if but a small, fraction of the peoples of the world, the Jewish race alone, was capable of understanding, in the most simple and elementary way, wherein lay the perfection of the divine cult, and if to do even this they needed the persuasion of miracles, and something of the compelling power of many great. Afflictions, not to mention the help gained from knowledge handed on by their ancestors; surely the whole world and society of mankind was far more incapable of attaining to the required perfection in so great a matter. And so God permitted his cult to be imperfect until the fullness of time was come (Gal. iv), just as he permits children to be immature and the seed of plants and of animals to be small, till by gradual growth they reach their full and perfect stature.

To go further, the fundamental meaning of the question

we are answering is this: why are we, born as infants, instead of as fully developed and mature men? Why do certain animals lay eggs instead of bringing to birth fully, - developed offspring? When God's cult, the true religion, was first established in the world, it existed rather in the manner of a seed or an infant, because the community of mankind itself was immature and unfitted for anything more advanced.

On the Sacrament of the Eucharist, Chap. 2 (Opera, Paris, 1674, t. 1, p. 437, col. 2)

39

CARDINAL FAULHABER
Why the Saviour was Born so Late in Time

"Why was our Saviour born so late in time?" "My Father worketh until now …" (John v. 17). In carrying into effect the divine economy of salvation there is no interruption, but neither is there precipitation. There is no loitering, but neither is there impetuous haste.

The Man-God was born only when the light of the messianic prophecies had shone through a long Advent and the world was ready to receive its Saviour and its King. Ask no longer, then, why our Saviour was born so late He was to be not only the dew from heaven and the gift from on high, but the "fruit of the earth" (Isaias iv. 2) and was to "bud forth" from the earth (Isaias xlv. 8). He was not to speed to earth like a shaft, but to. "bud forth" slowly from the earth like a plant . . . . At the same time pagan Humanity had first to endure the wretchedness of being separated from God and brood over all the bitterness of that state. . . . The educative activity of Divine Providence needed time for its accomplishment. That is why our Saviour was born so late in time.

From French trans.: Juifs et chrétiens devant le racisme, 1935,pp.81-2

40

ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN
From Idols to the Trinity

In the history of religion there have been two revolutions, called the two Testaments or, by St. Paul, "tremors of the earth." In the first man passed from idolatry to the Law, and in the second from the Law to the Gospel. And now we proclaim a third cataclysm, the transference from the present order to that beyond, where there can be no further change or disturbance.

One element the two Testaments have in common. They were established without any abrupt or instantaneous transformation.

It is well to realize the reason for this. God did not wish us to be coerced, but persuaded. For that which is not voluntary is not enduring, as we may see by comparison with the forceful repression of a stream or a plant. On the other hand, a transformation undertaken voluntarily is more lasting, more surely grounded. Coercion is the work of an external and tyrannical power, but choice is our own and is consonant with the goodness of God.

God, then, did not desire us to conform to the good under compulsion, but to choose the good. Hence, in the manner of one instructing children or tending the sick, he withdrew some of our traditional practices while condoning others, yielding to us on some small point to keep us happy . . . For it is not easy to abandon customs which long usage has invested with dignity and veneration.

Thus, the first Testament abolished idols, but allowed the traditional sacrifices; the second suppressed these, but did not forbid -circumcision. In this way men accepted the suppression and then came to give up of their own accord what had been condoned--sacrifices under the old law, circumcision in the new. From pagans they became Jews, from Jews Christians, led furtively, one might say, towards the Gospel by these gradual changes …

With this process I may compare the development of the notion of the Godhead, except that here the process is reversed. In the former instance transformation came by way

of suppression; but here perfection was approached by gradual increment ... This is what I mean.

The Old Testament unambiguously proclaimed the Father, the Son more obscurely; the New Testament gave full revelation of the Son, but put forward more tentatively the divinity of the Holy Ghost. But to-day the Holy Spirit is resident and active in our midst, giving us a clearer manifestation of his nature.

For it would have been misleading to proclaim decisively the divinity of the Son at a time when that of the Father was not openly admitted, or to add that of the Holy Ghost before the Son had been fully recognized, as an additional burden to our intellects, if I may use so bold an expression. We might, as children given food beyond their power of assimilation or as men of weak sight turning their gaze upon the sun, have imperiled what here and now lay within our grasp. It was more fitting that by piecemeal additions and, in the words of David, by gradual advance from splendour to splendour, the full radiance of the Trinity should come to shine on us . ..

In this way one can understand the progressive illumination of our understanding, and trace the line of development in the expanding notion of the Godhead. It would be well for us, too, to keep to this line of advance in instructing others, neither displaying the full doctrine from the beginning, nor keeping it from them to the very end. The former course of action would be imprudent and would bewilder unbelievers, the latter impious and it would estrange the faithful.

I will add one consideration which, though it has probably occurred to others, comes to me as the fruit of my own reflexion. There were some truths which our Saviour, perhaps for the reasons I have outlined, told his disciples that they were as yet unable to bear, abounding as they were already in the riches of his teaching. And elsewhere he says that the Spirit of God, dwelling in us, will teach us all truth. Now one of these truths was, I think, the divinity of the Holy Spirit himself, which was made plain later; for the comprehension of this fact could only become firm when our Lord's triumph no longer left room for doubt as to the marvel of his own divinity.

Discourse 31 (5th Theological Discourse) Chaps. 25, 26, 27 (P.G. xxxvi, 160-4)

41

CHARLES MIEL, S.J. (t 1934)
Man is Adult

I . . . We must make no mistake about it. For, if I may put it thus, the Catholic system looks well. It stands up, it is attractive. Still, I don't think there is any advantage in hiding from others, any more than from ourselves, the fundamental strangeness of the redemptive economy. It may even be beneficial to realize this strangeness to the full. We must acknowledge to ourselves that as really believing Catholics we appear to those outside, to-day no less than in the past, as people who accept monstrous beliefs. We must not be astonished, still less worried, if people look on us with amazement, and if sometimes we -are asked: "Honestly now, do you believe all that?" It is to be expected. A book which caused something of a sensation thirty years ago, and some amusement to those with a sense of humour, for it is rather ridiculous to claim, by the title of one's book, to be the representative of the modern mind-this book did nothing else, in effect, than adduce new reasons for the rejection of Christianity as inadmissible folly. No cause for surprise there, no reason for fear. Paul realized that from the beginning. There was a modern mind in his day. He realized that, and pointed out that this mind, confronted by the Cross-, would cry "folly."

Yet he, "'an ugly little Jew," as Renan called him, set out to preach that folly. He set out with full realization and great enthusiasm, saying to himself of his future hearers: "Humanly speaking they ought not to listen to me. All the same they shall listen to me." And listen to him they did. Because what was folly to man was at the same time the wisdom of God. And this wisdom of God, to win acceptance, had to find a point of insertion into man's mind. What was it? This is what it was, and it is one of Paul's finest conceptions.

The world is corrupted certainly. But the wickedness of the world matters little. For precisely from the depths of this abyss a desire appears, an appeal arises, a cry goes up: "Who shall deliver us from ourselves?" In Paul's eyes, and it is a wonderful idea, the world will listen to the Good News. Why? Because the world is no longer in its infancy. It is grown up. Yes, grown up. Not by any means because it is strong, because it knows or thinks or can organize. All that can be done by a child. It is grown up, because, being feeble of heart and poor of soul, it knows its wretchedness and that it cannot cure itself. A wonderful truth that is ever true. At what moment in the destiny of the individual does the child become a man? Do you think that your manhood dates from the day when by some act of violence or rebellion, some success or other, you asserted yourself before your fellows or yourself? Nonsense! How often are such things but childish pranks?

In reality, the precise moment at we become adult is rather that in which after some personal failure, struck by the feeling of our own helplessness, we at last exclaim: "Lord, deliver me from myself, I am only a poor, wretched man." It is only at that moment of, honest humility that childhood comes to an end. Then man has grown up. It is then that the divine folly of Christianity can be manifested; in its presence we can no longer play at being clever, we are mature and can understand its higher wisdom.
Fourth Sermon from Lenten Course at St Joseph's, Marseille, 1927

42

ST LEO THE GREAT
The Universal Sacrament of Salvation

It would be a good thing if those who murmur about the dispensations of God gave over their complaints and ceased their silly chatter about the lateness of our Lord's Nativity. They talk as if that which has come to pass. In the last age of the world had no bearing on the times that are past. But the Incarnation of the Word produced its effects not only after but also before its realization in time, and the mystery of man's salvation was never, in any age of antiquity, at a standstill. What the Apostles preached had been foretold by the prophets, nor did fulfilment come too late for that which had always been believed. Indeed, the wisdom and loving-kindness of God made us more able to receive his call, by delaying the work which brought salvation. For thus what was foretold by many signs, by many voices, by many mysteries, throughout so many ages, would not be doubtful in these days of the Gospel; and the birth of our Saviour, which surpasses not only all other miracles but also the very grasp of human thought, would work in us a firmer faith precisely because it had been preached so frequently and so long ago.

It was therefore by no new design, by no tardy mercy that God took thought for man, but from the foundation of the world he ordained one and the same cause of Salvation for all. For the grace of God, whereby the whole body of the saints is ever justified, was augmented by the birth of Christ, but it did not begin love, which to-day fills the in its types and prophecies that those who believed in its promise received no less than those who witnessed its fulfillment.

3rd Sermon for Christmas, n. 4 (P.L. liv, 202)

43

ST HILARY
God Builds and Guards His City

God chose Sion for his abode and his dwelling-place. But Sion came to be destroyed. Where, then, is now the everlasting throne of the Lord, where his eternal resting-place, where the temple in which he can reside? “You,” says the Apostle, “are the temple of god and the Spirit of god dwells within you.” This is the house and this the temple of God, filled with divine knowledge and virtue, made fit for God’s indwelling by holiness of heart, to which the prophet bore witness: “holy is thy temple, wonderful in justice.” It is the holiness, the justice, the purity of man that is a temple for the Lord.

This temple must be built by God. Raised by man’s endeavour, it will never hold together; kept by our foolish exertions and care, it will never be preserved. On no shifting sand is it to be founded, but set firm on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles; with living stones must it take shape, held fast by the Corner-Stone. With its materials securely joined together it must grow unto the perfect man, unto the stature of the body of Christ, and its adorning must lie in the beauty and splendour of spiritual gifts.

Israel is no in captivity, but when the full host of Gentiles is come then it will pursue the building of this house. By the multifarious labours of the faithful it will grow into as many houses, will become a great and beautiful city. For long, now, has the Lord kept faithful watch over his city: guarding Abraham on his pilgrimage, preserving Isaac from immolation, rewarding Jacob for his years of service, giving power to Joseph, a slave in Egypt. He strengthens Moses in his conflict with Pharaoh, makes Josuah a leader in battle, rescues David from every danger, confers on Solomon the gift of wisdom. He is there among his prophets, taking up Elijah, choosing Elisha, feeding Daniel, bringing refreshment to the children in the fiery furnace. Joseph he tells by an angel of his virgin birth, Mary he reassures, John he sends before him. He chooses the Apostles and prays to his Father: “Holy Father, keep them safe … while I was with them I kept them in thy name.” And after his passion he promises that he himself will have an everlasting care of us: “Lo, I am with you all days, even till the consummation of the world.” Such is the everlasting protection of this blessed and holy city which, made up of many come together in one, and found in each one of us, forms indeed the city of God.
Treatise on Ps. 126, n.7-9 (ed. Zingerle, pp.617-9)

44

NICHOLAS OF CUSA
The Loud Voice of Jesus

Our Saviour is a universal mediator, who "fills all things," and is "the first-born of every creature." From the very beginning of time he gave expression in those of his members who are redeemed to but one utterance: and this gradually grew in strength till it became that loud voice with which he cried out at the moment he expired.

The message this one Voice gives is that, apart from the Word, there is no life, and that, just as the world issued from the Word, so, too through the Word is it preserved in existence and brought back to its source. Now for this return, to happen, lower beings must be conducted, each in its own order, by higher ones; and the highest of all, who leads all, is Jesus. Christ. One can only regain true happiness by ceasing to be soiled and stained and. becoming pure in spirit. If we want to return to our true source and to taste the joys of eternity, we have to ignore the desires of our senses, which are fixed on what is transient, and embrace instead what is true and lasting by a life of holiness and justice.

Such is this loud Voice, echoing in the depths of our being, a Voice which reaches us through the Prophets, urging us to adore the one Creator, to practise virtue, to seek refuge in our Saviour, in whom we find the strength to rise above the life of the senses. For centuries this. Voice had sent forth its sound; its volume grew unceasingly till the time of John the Baptist, himself the voice of one crying in the wilderness and pointing to the Saviour; finally this great Voice was made flesh. Then it gave utterance with ever greater clearness and force to many expressions - doctrines and miracles and in the end, to show that for the sake of truth even the most terrible fate of all -the death of the body-must be chosen, with a loud cry it gave up the ghost.

Exhortations, Book 3: extract from a sermon preached at Tréves in 1443 on the text: "But Jesus, crying with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost"(Opera, Basle, 1565, pp. 411-2)

45

PSEUDO EUCHARIUS
The Sixth Age of the World

God completed his work in six days and on the seventh he rested. Similarly the human race proceeds in this world through six ages; from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David, from David to the Babylonian captivity, from that to the lowly advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the present one from that advent till the end of the world, when the Most High will come as Judge. By the seventh age is understood the repose of the glorious which has no evening.

Now the sixth age comes into being with the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. For as on the sixth day Adam, the first man, was fashioned from the slime of the earth in the image of God, so in the sixth age of the world the second Adam, that is Christ, was born in the flesh of the Virgin Mary: the former into a living soul, the latter into a life-giving spirit. And as on that day there came into being "a' living soul, so also in this age there come into being those who desire eternal life. And as on that sixth day the earth. Produced the different species of serpents and animals, so in this sixth age of the world the Church has begotten the different nations eager for eternal life. And as on the sixth day man was created, male and female, so in this age Christ is made manifest with the Church. And as man on that day was placed over, the animals, the serpents and the birds, so also is Christ in this age lord of the nations, peoples and races, that they may be governed by him, whether they be in subjection to the concupiscence of the flesh like animals, or blinded by earthly curiosity like serpents, or carried away by pride like birds. And as on that day 'man and the animals with him fed on plants, fruit and green herbs, so in the sixth age of the world the spiritual man, who is the good servant of Jesus Christ, feeds on the spiritual food of the sacred scriptures and the law of God . . .

May the evening of this age no longer find us here! For it is of that evening that our Lord says: But ah, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith left on the earth?

Commentaries on Genesis, Book I (P.L. 1, 903-4)

46

MACARIUS THE EGYPTIAN
Prayer at Evening

O God, who didst come in the fullness of time to save us, who didst cast Adam forth from Paradise at the decline of day, and didst likewise at the decline of day restore him to his inheritance: by they Crucifixion have pity on me, now that the end of my life is drawing near, and evening comes upon me.

(Prayer inserted in the Office of the Jacobite Church, at None, and attributed to Macarius the Great, "the Egyptian," d.390)

47

NEWMAN
Catholic Fullness

Now, the phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this: that great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is in its rudiments or in its separate parts to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr Milman argues from it "These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian": we, on the contrary, prefer to say, "These things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen." That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying" that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba, Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; "sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions"; claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to "suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings."

How far in fact this process has gone is a question of history; and we believe it has before now been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr Milman, have thought that its existence told against Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a Sybil was inspired, or Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing at the Nativity; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in very deed He died for us on Calvary. Nor are we afraid to allow, that, even after His coming, the Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner's fire, or stamping upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her Master's image.

The distinction between these two theories is broad and obvious. , The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to expect, "at sundry times and in divers manners," various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of itself. We consider the Christian doctrine, when analysed, to appear, like the human frame, "fearfully and wonderfully made"; but they think it some one tenet or certain principles given out at one time in their fullness, without gradual accretion before Christ's coming or elucidation afterwards. They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen; we conceive that the Church, like Aaron's rod, devours the serpents of the magicians. They are ever hunting for a fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fullness.

Essays Critical and Historical, XI: Milman's View Of Christianity (1871, Vol. II, pp. 231-3).

48

ST PETER DAMIAN
The Church and Ourselves

The cohesive force of mutual -charity by which the Church is united is so great that she is not merely one in her many members but also, in some mysterious way, present in her entirety in each individual. So true is this that we rightly consider the Church as the unique Spouse of Christ and yet rightly believe that through this Sacramental mystery the Church is fully present in each individual. For it was the Church wholly present (in each individual) that Isaac prophetically scented when he said of the person of his son, "Behold the smell of my son is as the smell of a plentiful field." The debtor woman, too, was certainly a figure -of the Church when, at the bidding of Elisha, she sowed her scanty stock of oil, as if it were seed, and reaped the rich harvest of overflowing vessels. Explore the fields of scripture carefully: you will often find there some individual man or woman who symbolizes the Church. For although the Church seems t o have many parts by reason of the many nations (she enfolds) she is nevertheless not made up of. parts. She is made one by the mystery of one faith and one (sacrament of) divine regeneration. Though seven women have received a single husband, we speak of them as a single virgin betrothed to the Heavenly Spouse. Thus the Apostle says, "For I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ."

The conclusion is evident. Since the Church is symbolized by a single individual, and since, in consequence, she is called a virgin, this Holy Church must be one in all and entire in each. Indeed, by reason of her unity of faith, she has not, in her many members, many parts, and yet through the close-knit bond of charity and the varied charismatic gifts she shows many facets in her individual members.

Though the Holy Church is thus diversified in many individuals, she is none the less welded into one by the fire of the Holy Spirit. Even if one part of the Church seems to be separated from another in space, the full vigour of the Sacrament of unity can never be impaired. It is this Holy Spirit, dwelling in the Church, who makes her one in her universal extension yet entire in each part. For beyond all doubt the Holy Spirit himself is one, yet manifold: one in the majesty of his being, manifold in the diversity of his charismatic gifts. The Word of Truth himself revealed the secrets of this undivided unity when, speaking to his Father, he said of his disciples, "Not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me. That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou has sent me. And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them: that they may be one as we also are one."

If then those who believe in Christ are one, wherever there appears, to the natural eye, even one member of the Church, there, by the mystery of the Sacrament, the whole body is present. Whatever belongs to the Church as a whole belongs, in' some measure, to each member. At any rate, there is no absurdity in an individual saying in private what is said usually by the assembled Church; and whatever may be asserted with truth by an individual may be uttered without any impropriety by many together. Thus, when we are gathered together for prayer, we say quite correctly, "Incline thy ear, 0 Lord, and hear me: for I am needy and poor. Preserve my soul for I am holy." Yet when we are by ourselves, each, one of us may sing without any incongruity, "Rejoice to God our helper: sing aloud to the God of Jacob." Nor is it, inappropriate for many together to say, "I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall always be in my mouth." Likewise in solitude we often express ourselves in the plural, saying, "0 magnify the Lord with me; and let us extol his Name together," and many other things of that sort. In fact, he who prays alone may say "we," and the multitude may say “I” For, by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in each and fills us all, the individual is a multitude and the multitude an individual.

What do we find strange in the fact that a single priest, who is undoubtedly but a part of the Church, should fill the role of the whole Church in her work of salvation, as he does when he says "The Lord be with you" and answers immediately "and with thy spirit"? What is there strange in the fact that he alone asks and gives the blessing? Is it not true that the Church, by reason of the Sacrament of unity, is wholly present wherever there exists a single individual who shares her faith and devotion? Indeed, the unity of faith does not suffer solitude in the individual any more than schism in the multitude. What is to prevent many voices speaking through one mouth if, at the same time, many tongues profess, in turn, a single faith? For the whole Church is without doubt a single body, as I have already said. It is the Apostle who assures us of this . . .

If then the entire Church is the one body of Christ, and we are members, what is to hinder any one of us from using the manner of speaking of our body the Church, seeing that we are truly one with it? For if we, though many, are one body in Christ, then, in Christ, the whole body is the property of each. Consequently, though, as far as bodily presence counts, we may appear to be isolated and far removed from the Church, we are nevertheless, through the inviolable Sacrament of unity, ever very close to her. Hence it is that what all together possess is possessed by each: and what is the peculiar possession of a few, the indissoluble unity of charity and faith renders common to all. Rightly then do the people cry, "Have mercy on me, 0 God, have mercy on me," and "0 God, come to my assistance, 0 Lord, make haste to help me," and justly may a single individual say, "My God, have mercy on us and bless us." Our holy Fathers wished us to be so sure of the necessity of this communion of the Faithful in Christ, that they included it in the Creed of Catholic Belief and ordered us to think of it often as one of the very rudiments of our faith. For as soon as we have said, "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church," we add immediately "the Communion of Saints," so that in the same act in which we give God testimony of our faith, we may include the testimony of our faith in the communion of the members of the Church who is one -with him. Now the Communion of the Saints in the unity of faith means simply this: all believe in one God, all are reborn again by the same Baptism, strengthened by the same Holy Spirit, and introduced by the grace of adoption into the same Eternal Life.

Just as man is said to be a microcosm -a term derived from a Greek word meaning "little world"-because he is made up of the same four elements as is the Universe, so too each of the faithful is the Church in miniature, when in the mystery of the hidden unity he receives all the sacraments which have been conferred by God on the universal Church. If then it is beyond dispute that each individual receives the Sacraments, common to the whole Church, what is to prevent his using, as an individual, words used by the whole Church in common, since Sacraments are so much more important than words?

The Dominus Vobiscum, Chaps. 5, 6 and 10 (P.L. cxlv, 235-6, and 239-40)

49

ST BERNARD
Order in Love

"He ordered love in me." This saying was made effective when in the Church "he gave some apostles, and other, some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors for the perfecting of the saints." It is fitting that love should bind them all together and arrange them harmoniously in the unity of the Body of Christ; and that can come to pass in no case if love itself is not ordered. For if each individual allows himself to be led by his personal whim, and betakes himself to what pleases him taking no account of the judgement of reason, and still more if no one is content with his allotted function, but if all wish to be concerned with everything which attracts them by an indiscreet exercise of activity, then surely there will be no unity but rather confusion and disorder.

May the Lord Jesus order in me that small degree of love that he has granted me; so that I may set my heart on the whole, which belongs to him, in such a way that I may attend before all things to that part which he has allotted me in the scheme of duties; but that the precedence given to this shall not prevent my dwelling with great interior interest on the many other duties which are no concern of mine in the performance of my own function. For what we must principally apply ourselves to is not always what we must love the most. It often happens that what is primarily our own concern is of itself the least important and that, consequently, we should not bring our greatest interest to bear on it.

Forty-ninth Sermon on the Canticle, n. 5 and 6 (P.L. clxxxiii, 1018-9)

50

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Christianity and Personalism

The most serious danger to humanity on its present course is that it should finally forget the essential thing, that is, its spiritual concentration, faced as it is by the cosmic discoveries made for it by science, and by the collective power revealed to it by social organization. For does not the secularist neo-religion strive, in its confused fashion, to represent the Deity as a sort of diffusive energy, or even as a heartless and shapeless super-society? At this dangerous stage, which threatens the existence of souls, it is, I suppose, Christianity which will, and can, intervene, to bring back human hopes and desires to the only path which conforms to the fundamental laws of being and of life. Until quite recently it could be held that nothing was so unfashionable, so anthropomorphic, as the Christian's personal God. Yet now, in what was apparently the most outworn, yet the most fundamental, of its tenets, the Christian Gospel discovers that it has become the most relevant of religions. Christianity, faced by a humanity that runs the risk of allowing that consciousness which has been already awakened in it by the developments of modern life to be absorbed in the "second matter" of philosophic determinisms and social techniques, upholds, the primacy of reflective, that is, personalized, thought. And it does so in the most effective way of all: not only by a speculative defence, through its teaching, of the possibility of a consciousness which is at the same time central and universal, but still more by conveying and developing through its mysticism the meaning and, in some sort, the direct intuition of this centre of total convergence. The very least that an unbeliever must admit to-day, if he understands the biological condition of the world, is that the figure of Christ (not only as it is described in a book, but as it is concretely realized in the Christian consciousness) is the most perfect approximation yet achieved of a final object towards which the universal effort of mankind may tend without fear of weariness or deformation.

Thus, contrary to current notions, it is by its dogma as well as by its moral system that Christianity is hum n, and can be called upon once more to save the world in the immediate future ...

La Crise Presente, Refiexions d1un naturaliste, Etudes, Oct. 20, 1937, p. 164

51

FRIEDRICH VON HUGEL
For a Person Came

As to Christianity, it is really impossible to compare it directly with Hellenism without at once understating its originality. For its originality consists not so much in its single doctrines, or even in its teaching as a whole, and in the particular place each doctrine occupies in this teaching, as in its revelation, through the person and example of its Founder, of the altogether unsuspected depth and inexhaustibleness of human Personality, and of this Personality's source and analogue in God, of the simplicity and yet difficulty and never-endingness of the access of man to God, and of the ever-preceding condescension of God to man. Hence if Christianity is thus throughout the Revelation of Personality; and if Personality is ever a One in Many (and more deeply One and more richly Many, in proportion to the greatness of that spiritual reality): then we need not wonder at the difficulty we find in pointing out any one particular doctrine as constitutive of the unique originality of Christianity.

For a Person came, and lived and loved, and did and taught, and died and rose again, and lives on by his Power and his Spirit for ever within us and amongst us, so unspeakably rich and yet so simple, so sublime and yet so homely, so divinely above us precisely in being so divinely near-that his character and teaching require, for an ever fuller yet never complete understanding, the varying study, and different experiments and applications, embodiments and unrollings of all the races and civilizations, of all the individual and corporate, the simultaneous and successive experiences of the human race to the end of time.

The Mystical Element of Religion, Ist edn., Vol. I,pp. 25-6

52

SIMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN
I Knew a Man ...

Brethren, let us strive, to worship God by our love for each other. All effort is vain which does not lead to this . . . for the disciples of Christ are recognized by their mutual love. This is their characteristic mark: "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples. It was because of love that the Word was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us; for the Son of God became Man, freely and gladly enduring those sufferings which brought us life, in order to remake his creature, that human nature which the devil had shattered and torn apart . . . This is the true and irreproachable Wisdom of God, which has for its ends the good and the true: the good, a kindness towards our fellow men; the true, a worship, of God in accordance with faith. These are the marks of that charity which- unites men among themselves, and binds them to God.

Brethren, I knew a man who, in his love, made it his chief work to rescue his intimate companions from, their evil thoughts and actions. This he would attempt to do by various means, as occasion offered; he would seek to influence one by his words, another by his acts of kindness . . . I have known such a man weep over one, mourn for another-clearly, because he had taken upon himself their personality, and now charged himself with the faults which they had committed.

I have known a man rejoice so heartily over the struggles and conquests of others, show such pleasure in their progress in virtue that it seemed as though not they but he himself was going to receive the reward of their merits and labours.

I have known a man possess such a burning desire for his neighbours salvation that he often begged the Divine Goodness with his whole heart, with warm tears and a lofty zeal worthy of Moses, either to grant them salvation or to condemn him too, along with them. For he was bound to them, in the Holy Spirit, with such a. saintly love that he was unwilling even to enter the kingdom of heaven, if this should mean he must be separated from them.

Sermon XXII (P.G. cxx, 423-5)

53

ST AUGUSTINE
The Demands of Charity

Whatever we love in the way of food, we love it -to this end that it be consumed and we ourselves refreshed. But men, surely, are not to be loved in this way? There is, indeed, a certain love of well-wishing which urges us at some time or other to do good to those whom we love. But what if there be no good that we can do? To the lover, the benevolence, the mere wishing well, is more than enough. We should not desire that men be in affliction in order that we may practise works of mercy. You give meat to the hungry; but it were far better that there were no hungry and that you bad no one to feed. You clothe the naked; oh, if only all were clothed and you had no need to clothe them! You bury the dead; if only that life were come wherein there is no death! You reconcile those who are at variance; ah, that eternal peace were at last here, the peace of the heavenly Jerusalem, wherein none shall disagree! For all these services answer to some necessity. Take away the wretched, and works of mercy are at an end. They indeed are at an end, but the fire of love, shall that ever be quenched?

With a truer love do you love a happy man to whom there is no good work that you can do; purer will be that love, and more sincere. For if you do good to anyone in distress, it may well be that you wish to raise yourself in his eyes and that you are glad that he, who is the occasion of your benefactions, should be inferior to you. He was in need and you came to his help; you, who brought assistance, appear greater than he who had to receive it. Long rather to be equal, that you may both be under the one Lord on whom nothing can be bestowed.

On the First Epistle of St John, Treatise 8, n. 5 (P.L. xxxv, 2038-9)

54

ST BERNARD
The Passover of the Lord

On this, the chief solemnity, we should seriously consider what is set before us: that is, a resurrection, a passing over, a change of dwelling. For to-day, my brethren, Christ did not remain lying dead, but he rose up: he did not come back, but passed over; he did not establish himself afresh, but he raised his dwelling-place aloft; and, in fine, this Pasch that we are celebrating does not mean Return but Passing-over: and that Galilee in which he who rose up promised to let us see him does not mean that he stayed behind, but that he had. changed his dwelling.

And it is to that place, so it seems to me, that the minds of many among you have gone before me, surmising rightly where my words would lead you.

If Christ the Lord, after the consummation on the Cross, had lived again to return once more to our mortal nature and the sufferings of our present life, I should say most certainly, my brethren, that he had not passed over, but that he had come back; that he, was not established in a higher state but that he had taken up his pilgrimage again in his former state. On the contrary: he is now raised up to, a new life, and that is why he calls us too to the Passing-over, he calls us into Galilee.

Easter Sermon, n. 14 (P.L. clxxxiii,281)

55

PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM
The Cosmic Tree

This Tree is my eternal salvation. It is my nourishment and my banquet. Amidst its roots I cast my own roots deep: beneath its boughs I grow and expand, revelling in its sigh as in the wind itself. Flying from the burning heat, I have pitched my tent in its shadow, and have found a resting-place of dewy freshness. I flower with its flowers; its fruits bring perfect joy - fruits which have been preserved for me since time's beginning, and which now I freely eat. This Tree is a food, sweet food, for my hunger, and a fountain for my thirst; it is a clothing for my nakedness; its leaves are the breath of life. Away with the fig-tree, from this time on! If I fear God, this is my protection; if I stumble, this is my support; it is the prize for which I fight and the reward of my victory. This is my straitened path, my narrow way; this is the stairway of Jacob, where angels pass up and down, and where the Lord in very truth standing at the head.

This Tree, vast as heaven itself, rises from earth to the skies, a plant immortal, set firm in the midst of heaven and earth, base of all that is, foundation of the universe, support of this world of men, binding-force of all creation, holding within itself all the- mysterious essence of man. Secured with the unseen clamps of the spirit, so that, adjusted to the Divine, it may never bend or warp, with foot resting firm on earth it towers to the topmost skies, and spans with its all-embracing arms the boundless gulf of space between.

He was All, and in all, filling it with himself; stripped naked for battle against the powers of the air. . .

With him two thieves were extended, bearing within themselves the marks of those two peoples, the marks of those two types of mind. . .

When this cosmic combat came to an end ... the heavens shook; almost, the stars fell from the skies; the light of the sun was extinguished for a time; rocks were split asunder; the entire world was all but shattered ... But great Jesus breathed forth his divine Soul, saying: "Father, into Thy hand I commend my spirit." And lo, even while all things shuddered and heaved in earthquake, reeling for fear, his divine Soul ascended, giving life and strength to all; and again creation was still, as if this divine Crucifixion and Extension had everywhere unfolded and spread, penetrating all things, through all, and in all. 0 thou who art alone among the alone, and all in all! Let the heavens hold thy godhead; and paradise, thy soul; and earth, thy blood ... For the Indivisible has become divided, so that all might be saved, and the world below might not remain ignorant of the coming of God...

We beseech thee now, Lord God, Christ, eternal King of souls: stretch forth thy mighty hands over thy sacred Church, and over a holy people for ever thine.

Sermon VI for Holy Week (P.G. lix, 743-6)
[1] See St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, book 3, chap.12.
[2] Pseudo-Chrysostom (Hippolytus?): Extract 55, p.282.
[3] Adversus Haereses, 5, 17, 4 (P>G> vii, 1171-2). Cf. Rhabanus Maurus, Poem 80:
Expansis manibus sic totum amplectitur orbem In cruce confixus Christus in arce Deus. (M.G.H., Poetae latini aevi carolini, vol.2, p.234).

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