Communion: The Nourishment of Grace

Fourth in a Series on the Life of Grace

 by

 Fr. Raphael M. Moss, O.P.

Our reason tells us that Almighty God, the Creator of the universe, is not only infinite in power but also infinite in goodness; and from this St. Thomas argues, in the beginning of his wonderful treatise on the Incarnation, that as it is the nature of goodness to communicate itself to others, it is only fitting that God, who is the Supreme Goodness, should communicate Himself to His creatures in a supreme and infinite way.

Quod quidem maxime fit per hoc quod naturam creatam sic sibi conjungit, ut una persona at ex tribus, Verbo, anima et carne, sicut elicit Augustinus.

He so joined created nature to Himself that one Person is made up of these three - the Word, a soul and flesh, as Augustine says. (Summa Theologica, 3a, 1, 1.)

In this wonderful mystery, God became man, and all creation bent the knee in adoration before One who was truly God and Man; yet even here His infinite goodness would not find its limitations. By the Incarnation He had joined our nature to His own, so that we, who are made a little lower than the angels, are in a manner raised above them by this act of infinite condescension on His part; for, as St Paul says:

He took not on Him the nature of the angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold.

Yet He desired to do more for us. Not only did He seek a union with our nature, but also with each individual member of our race, as though His love were ever urging Him to perfect and complete that union which is the end of love and for which He made us. In God's love of His creatures, therefore, is to be found the explanation of the mystery of the Incarnation; and that same infinite love is likewise the only possible explanation of the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament, of which we have now to speak.

The blessed Sacrament! All the sacraments are holy and blessed because of their nature and their super natural work; but here the love of God has won so glorious a triumph that human language is unable to express it, and can only repeat Sanctissimum Sacramentum - the most Holy Sacrament, the Blessed Sacrament! Hence it naturally holds a special and a most important place in our brief survey of the spiritual life, completing and perfecting the good work which baptism begins, so that we should stand in need of it and its abundant blessings even if we were so happy as to have never lost our baptismal innocence, and it is not too much to say that all the other sacraments are but a preparation for the Holy Eucharist.

The first thing that ought to strike us when we begin to consider this uttermost pledge of God's love of us is the variety of names that have been given to it, although, as we have just remarked, our language finally confesses its unfitness for a subject so august, and "the Blessed Sacrament," the name which expresses the least, and therefore, perhaps, suggests the most, is the commonest name of all. The explanation of these various names, as given by St. Thomas, is worthy of notice. 

In three different ways, may we look at this Holy Sacrament. With reference to the past, it calls to mind the passion of our Lord, which was a true and real sacrifice, and hence this name is given to it as well, and we speak of it as the "Holy Sacrifice." With reference to the present, it shows forth the unity of the Church, of which it is the bond, and therefore it is called the "Communion." And lastly, with reference to the future, it is a type of that divine fruition which will be given to us in our eternal home, and since it is the way thither, we call it our "Viaticum," or again, the "Eucharist" - great grace - either because the grace of God is life everlasting, or because it gives us Christ, the author of grace. (Summa Theologica, 3a, 75, 1.)

But all these names assume the real presence of our Saviour in this sacrament, and therefore for the greater increase of our faith in this, the central dogma of our Catholic worship, we may, with all due reverence, examine into it more closely.

It goes without saying that we cannot prove the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament by any arguments which have the force of demonstration. But in our first conference we showed that, in addition to the senses and understanding, we have another source of knowledge in the supernatural power of faith, and it is by faith, and faith alone that we can penetrate the veils that shroud this mystery.

Nevertheless, here, as in all God's works and manifestations of Himself, there is a striking fitness which appeals most strongly both to faith and reason. The Old Law, as the inspired writer reminds us, was but a "shadow of good things to come." Its various sacrifices were a type of that most perfect sacrifice, which the Incarnate Son of God would one day make, and all their power and spiritual worth was due to that great fact. But when the New Law came to put an end to types and shadows, it seems but fitting that its sacrifices should be a reality; and that the victim offered on its altars should be in very deed and truth the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.

Moreover, since it is by faith that we please God and are brought near to Him, and faith is "of all things that appear not," the more the object of faith is hidden and concealed, the more perfect will be our act of faith, and the more pleasing its sacrifice in God's sight. Hence when the apostle saw his Master standing before him in all the beauty of His risen life, and fell down at His feet with that cry of adoration, "My Lord and my God," it was the hidden Godhead which his faith confessed. He saw the humanity, and believed in the divinity. "More blessed are they," said our Lord with gentle reproof, "that have not seen, and yet have believed." This blessedness of faith is peculiarly ours, for in the most holy Sacrament, Manhood and Godhead are equally concealed.

But the true explanation of the real presence is to be found in that "exceeding love wherewith Christ hath loved us." We must remember that we are speaking of love that is infinite, wielding power that is infinite likewise. It was this love, as we have already said, which made the Son of God become incarnate, and because a friend delights in the society of his friends, the Son of God finds His delights amongst the children of men. His visible, bodily presence will be our reward when the time of trial is over, but whilst it lasts, we must walk by faith rather than by sight; and His impatient love, as though unable to wait, obliges Him to give us an abiding presence none the less real because hidden under a veil.

Love, therefore, is the only explanation of this marvellous condescension on the part of God, and if the love of God be in our hearts, our faith in it becomes an easy task. To refuse to believe in it is to deny God's love of us. For love of us God became incarnate, He who is the "Brightness of God's glory," veiled His Majesty in the bonds of weakness, and appeared in the world as a helpless little child. For love of us, He would go even further, and He veiled the winning beauty of His human nature under the whiteness of a little bread! And we? "Let us love God," says St. John, "because God hath first loved us." But how can we prove our love? By believing in His love of us, and imitating it in our feeble fashion. For love of Him we strip ourselves, not of any just rights, but of the stolen, gaudy trappings of self-love, we lay down at His feet the empty claims of foolish vanity, which make us odious even in the sight of men; we hide ourselves beneath the sober garments of obedience, and placing upon our minds the chains of faith, in lumine Tuo, videbimus Lumen - in the light He gives, our blindness disappears.

Let us turn now to the sixth chapter of St John's Gospel, in which we have recorded the promise of the Blessed Sacrament. The Evangelist tells us first of all of the wonderful miracle of the multiplication of bread in the desert, and calls our attention to its immediate consequence.

When those men had seen what a miracle Jesus had done, they said: This is of a truth the prophet that is to come into the world.

The Jews expected a Messiah or Saviour, and the sign of His presence amongst them was to be His power of working miracles like to those of their great leader Moses. On this occasion, therefore, when our Lord had fed them with miraculous bread in the desert, the remembrance of the manna must have flashed across every mind in that great multitude, and the conclusion seemed obvious:

Of a truth, this is the prophet that is to come into the world.

Jesus Christ accepted the comparison, for He was the Saviour and Messiah promised from the beginning, but the sign which He would give was something far more divine than the mere multiplication of  bread; and on the very day following this great miracle, He declared its nature in the most emphatic language to the crowd who followed Him with such enthusiasm:

Moses gave you not bread from heaven, but My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life to the world.

But as the Jews understood Him to refer to some earthly sort of bread, like the manna in so far as it was food for the body only, our Lord at once explained His words, and at some length, and with the greatest clearness put before them the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist:

Amen, amen, I say unto you, he that believeth in Me hath everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that if any man eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever, yea, and the bread which I will give is My Flesh for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us His Flesh to eat? Jesus therefore said unto them: Amen, amen, I say unto you, except you eat the Flesh of the Son of man and drink His Blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My Flesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood abideth in Me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, the same, shall live by Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead, he that eateth this bread shall live for ever.

The effect of these words of our Blessed Lord upon His audience was immediate and startling:

This is a hard saying, who can hear it, who can believe it? And many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.

Now if our Lord had not meant the real presence as we understand it, how strange and unreasonable must His conduct and His language appear! For He had reminded them of the manna, formed by angels, miraculous in every way, and He promised to give them something greater. How could mere bread and wine compare with such a gift? It might indeed, like the manna, be the figure of something else, but it would be incomparably the weaker figure of the two. His hearers took Him at His word, and understood Him literally, and, instead of correcting them and putting an end to their difficulties, He confirmed what He had said, and allowed them to depart. Must we say that He deceived them, or that He promised what He could not perform, He who was the Almighty God of truth? Our faith in Jesus Christ bids us see in these words of His, the promise of the Blessed Sacrament, and that same faith shows us the literal fulfillment of the promise, when on the last night of His life He took the bread and wine into His hands, and changed them into His own very Body and Blood by His word of almighty power. We naturally turn once more to the divinely-inspired words of holy Writ:

Now whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to His disciples, and said: Take ye and eat, this is My Body. And taking the chalice, He gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this, for this is My Blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many, unto the remission of sins.

The reformer Melancthon compares these words to the dazzling flash of the lightning. "What comment," he asks, "can the terrified mind of man venture to make on them?" But what a strange perversion of reason is implied in those who are not ashamed to argue that when the incarnate God is heard to assert so solemnly, "This is My Body, this My Blood," He really meant us to believe that it was nothing of the kind. For us, as we have said, the real presence is a matter of faith. As defined at the Council of Trent:

If any one shall dare to deny that the Body and Blood together with the soul and the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ are truly, really and substantially present in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, but shall assert that they are only there virtually or as in a type or figure, let him be anathema.

And then again:

Since Christ our Saviour declared that that which He offered under the appearance of bread was truly His Body, the Church of God has always held, and this Holy Synod once again affirms, that by the consecration of the bread and the wine, the whole substance of bread is changed into the substance of the Body of Christ our Lord, and the whole substance of wine into the substance of His Blood, a change which the Church justly calls transubstantiation.

With this same loyal profession of faith in our hearts and on our lips, we may now reverently investigate this wonderful mystery of faith. For it is something more than a mere presence, marvelous as that may be. We said that the only possible explanation of such a miracle was to be found in the boundless love which God has for His creatures, and that same love is the key to a yet greater mystery. For the very words of Jesus Christ, both in the promise and in its fulfillment, as well as the accidents or appearances of bread and wine which form the impenetrable veil that hides the Holy of holies, all tend to make us understand that this sacrament is meant to be the food and nourishment of our souls, and that the mystery of the real presence is but, as it were, the stepping-stone to the mystery of communion. Hence from the very early ages we find the Fathers heaping words upon words in order to impress this wonderful truth upon the minds of the faithful. They speak of the "table of the Lord," the "holy table," the "divine banquet," the "bread of the Lord," the "heavenly bread," the "cup of salvation," the "cup of life," the "holy bond of union," the "holy communion," and so on. But the Angelic Doctor seems to have surpassed them all, and sums up the whole teaching of the Church in this matter in those magnificent words which we may call the anthem of the Blessed Sacrament:

O Sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur, recolitur memoria passionis ejus, mens impletur gratia, et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of His passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.

Let us try to fathom some of the depths here revealed to us by the greatest of the Church's Doctors.

O Sacred Banquet! The Sacraments of the Church have been instituted for no other end than to enable us to make progress in our spiritual and supernatural life. Now, there is a great resemblance between this same spiritual life and the life of the body; for, after all, material things are meant to bring home to our senses the more hidden wonders of the spiritual world. Hence, just as the life of the body begins its existence by the act of generation, and then, by degrees, acquires strength and energy, and has to be sustained by nourishment, so also in the spiritual life. Baptism is the new birth, our spiritual regeneration, and the Sacrament of Confirmation is meant to strengthen the soul in its new life, and fit it for its work. But something else is necessary, and so in the Holy Eucharist the soul finds that spiritual nourishment for which it craves.

All this seems evident to common sense. Life, wherever it be found, of whatever grade or perfection it may be, is always dependent upon nourishment; and if we admit the existence of the spiritual and divine life, to which our souls are raised by the gift of supernatural grace in baptism, we seem compelled to admit the necessity of spiritual food. The one is not more wonderful than the other.

What strange things science tells us of the marvellously complicated process by which the body is nourished and kept alive! Chemistry steps in, and declares that, as a matter of fact, our bodies and all material things are built up by the combination of a few primary elements, but that only increases the wonder. A little grain of wheat, itself made up of certain elements, is hidden in the earth, and straightway it begins to live, and work, and seek out other elements by which it lives its vegetable life and at the same time gathers to itself all that is necessary for ours. It becomes our food and once more surrenders all those elements it so unerringly sought out; some being taken by the blood, others by the nerves, others again by the bones, just as our nature requires. Now, if God has done all this for a life so weak and so imperfect as the life of the body, what will He not do for a life which is divine? Its end and object is Himself, and so He makes Himself its food.

But, because as long as this world lasts, our human nature bears the penalties of sin, and has to tread a path of life surrounded by the thorns and briars of suffering, He wisely gives us this same supernatural food in a way most fitting to our state. Not in all the pomp and majesty which surround Him on His throne at the right hand of the Father, nor yet in the dazzling brightness with which He clothed His human nature at the moment of the Resurrection; but, on the contrary, in meekness and lowliness, and with a helplessness which speaks even yet more powerfully to our hearts. It is as though He had searched all the riches of creation, and finding nothing worthy of His infinite love and our inexhaustible needs, nothing good enough for souls that He had created, redeemed and sanctified, and at the same time simple enough for hearts so weak and wavering, He appealed to His own most sacred human Heart, and its answer was the Blessed Sacrament. Most truly can we call it sacramentum caritatis, the sacrament of love. Love, as we have said, desires union, and what union could be comparable to this? There is a union indeed, like that which binds together in the one Person of Jesus Christ the divine and human natures; but such a union would fail here because of its excess, since by it man's personality would cease to be. There is a moral union, like that which links together hearts and minds in earthly friendship, and that was not enough for love which is divine. Hence His wisdom devised and His power effected a union, which was at once most human and divine, most perfect and yet most natural; for He made His living self our nourishment, and since such food is of its very nature incomparably above us, instead of being lowered to our level and transformed by us, it conquers us and makes us like unto itself. It was this truth which transported the soul of St. Augustine. "I am the food of grown men," said the Voice within his soul, "grow, and thou shalt feed upon Me, nor shalt thou change Me, like the food of thy flesh, into thee, but thou shalt be changed into Me." "Truth, who art eternity," was the answering cry of his heart; "Love, who art Truth! Eternity, who art Love."

Most truly, therefore, have we here a sacred banquet, at which we assist on bended knees, seeing that the food is nothing less than the Body and Blood of Christ. "O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received!" Let us now go a step further.

The words of consecration pronounced by the rightfully ordained successors of the apostles are the self-same words as those spoken by the Saviour of the world at the moment of the institution of this most Holy Sacrament. But a wonderful thing has happened! As though astounded and overwhelmed by the greatness of the mystery, the Church, by the mouth of her priests, breaks in upon these sacred words:

Take ye and eat, for this is My Body. Drink ye all of this, for this is the chalice of My Blood, of the New and Eternal Testament mystery of faith which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins.

It is as though the overpowering realization of the effect of those divine words had on the instant provoked this strange outburst of adoring fear. For think of all that is implied by these words! In the words of a great spiritual writer:

One moment, and there is bread in the priest's hands, and wine in the chalice on the corporal. One moment, and there is the substance of bread, with its accidents inherent in it, and it would be the grossest of idolatries to offer any manner of worship to that senseless substance. Another moment, and what was bread is God! A word was whispered by a creature, and lo! he has fallen down to worship; for in his hands is his Creator, produced there by his own whispered word. One moment, and at the bidding of a trembling, frightened man, omnipotence has run through a course of resplendent miracles, each more marvelous than a world's creation out of nothing.

Yet all this is summed up in those brief words of St Thomas: "O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received!" The instant the words of consecration are pronounced the change takes place. Instead of the bread and the wine, there is present on the altar the Body and Blood of Jesus, living, glorious and triumphant. Therefore His majestic soul is there as well, the masterpiece of divine power and love, the treasury of supernatural gifts. Nor is this all. This human nature is in separably united to the Person of the Eternal Word, for the one cannot be without the other; and lastly, because it is a principle of faith that in all God's beautiful works outside Himself, the Blessed Trinity of Persons work together, and where there is One Person there also are the other Two, it follows that under the veil of this most Holy Sacrament, within our grasp, as it were, yet hidden from our eyes, lives and works that mystery of all mysteries, the most blessed and un divided Trinity. "Under the veil," we said. "The Eucharistic presence," as Bishop Hedley remarks, "is meant to have a double power over our beings. It has the effect of physical sense and the effect of faith."

Since our Blessed Lord wished to appeal to our faith by remaining invisible, it was necessary that there should be a veil to hide Him; and on the other hand, since He desired to be really, truly, and substantially present, this same veil would serve to indicate the place of His hiding. Something to point Him out to us, and at the same time to hide Him from us, this was what the real presence demanded; and since He also wished to make Himself the food of our souls, He chose the veils of bread and wine. In these two material things, as in everything else of a like nature, we must clearly distinguish between the substance itself, which is hidden from the senses, and its outward visible appearances. As the Council of Trent declares in the words above quoted, it is the substance which is changed by the words of consecration; the appearances or accidents are kept to form the veil which hides even whilst it reveals the real presence of Jesus Christ. St. Thomas teaches that these appearances remain in their entirety, supported by the power of Him who has chosen so to use them, and he replies to the foolish objection of those who would argue from this that God deceives us: 

The senses are not deceived. Their legitimate work is to judge of the accidents or outward appearances which are really and truly present before them. It is for the intellect alone to judge of the substance, and in this case the understanding is preserved from making a false judgment by the light of faith.

Time will not allow us to linger over the many other wonderful and most interesting truths which are the consequences of the real presence, and which St. Thomas explains to us with such clearness in his great Summa, but we may at least quote the lines of the Lauda Sion, in which this same great Doctor and poet-saint sums them up in his own incomparable way:

Sub diversis speciebus, Signis tantum, et non rebus, Latent res eximiæ. Caro cibus, sanguis potus: Manet tamen Christus totus, Sub utraque specie. A sumente non concisus, Non confractus, non divisus: Integer accipitur. Sumit unus, sumunt mille: Quantum isti, tantum ille: Nec sumptus consumitur. Sumunt boni, sumunt mali: Sorte tamen inaequali, Vitæ vel interitus. Mors est malis, vita bonis: Vide paris sumptionis Quam sit dispar exitus. Fracto demum Sacramento, Ne vacilles, sed memento, Tantum esse sub fragmento, Quantum toto tegitur. Nulla rei fit scissura: Signi tantum fit fractura: Qua nec status nec statura Signati minuitur.

Here beneath these signs are hidden Priceless things, to sense forbidden, Signs, not things, are all we see. Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine, Yet is Christ in either sign, All entire, confessed to be. They, who of Him here partake, Sever not, nor rend, nor break: But, entire, their Lord receive. Whether one or thousands eat: All receive the self-same meat: Nor the less for others leave. Both the wicked and the good Eat of this celestial Food: But with ends how opposite! Here 't is life: and there 't is death: The same, yet issuing to each In a difference infinite. Nor a single doubt retain, When they break the Host in twain, But that in each part remains What was in the whole before. Since the simple sign alone Suffers change in state or form: The signified remaining one And the same for evermore.

To attempt to express in our own language the theological terseness of these wonderful lines of St Thomas would be to set ourselves an impossible task. It has been well said of all his hymns that they are well-nigh supernatural, uniting the strictness of dogma with a sweetness and a melody more like echoes of heaven than mere poetry of earth.

We may now return to the anthem of the Blessed Sacrament, and briefly touch upon the remaining thoughts which it suggests, and without which our idea of this adorable mystery would be very incomplete. When our Lord instituted this most sacred pledge of His love for us, and for the first time uttered the solemn words of consecration, He added to them a command, full of divine power and authority, and yet at the same time of the most affectionate tenderness:

Do this in remembrance of Me.

Having spoken as our God and our Saviour, He now pleads as a most loving friend, and, with the very words with which He authorizes His apostles to work this miracle of love, He begs us to look upon it as a memorial of Himself and all that He has done for us.

We must once more remind ourselves that infinite love is the key to the mystery of which we are speaking. There are some who pretend to see in it nothing but a memorial, and they base their opinion on these very words of our Lord. What a poor idea of the love of Jesus Christ! The Blessed Sacrament is indeed a memorial, but it is one in every way worthy of the Son of God. Earthly friendship may be, and surely is the brightest sunshine of our darkened lives; yet even when it shines its brightest, there looms on its horizon the cloud that may overcast it, forgetfulness and death. Hence we try to save ourselves, and fight against the threatened dark ness by every means within our power, and even when we feel that separation is at hand, most certain and inevitable, we make a last attempt to overcome its con sequences by every sort of touching artifice. Not content with promises and pledges, the one we love, and whom we now must lose, will link himself to some memorial, and leave that to us, to speak for him when he is gone.

Yet, after all, how weak the power of such memorials, how terribly inadequate their success, when measured by our longings and our hopes! So Jesus Christ, loving us all so dearly, and foreseeing the hour of separation, loved us to the very end - *infinem dilexit* - and gave us a memorial of Himself and His great love.

Do this in remembrance of Me.

And what was His memorial? Not the crib in which He rested as a little child, on His first coming into our cold world, not the cross, all stained though it was with the Blood so lavishly poured forth in the hours of His death-agony, but His own real Self. As St. Thomas says:

For a memorial is something to take the place of one's own personality, and hence, the more we can attach ourselves to it, and the more of ourselves we can put into it, the more real and perfect it will be. We try to do what we can, because our love is the shadow of God's infinite love, and we fail pitiably, because we are only human. Jesus Christ wished for a memorial because His Heart was human, and succeeded because He was God. "Take ye and eat. This is My Body. Drink ye all of this. This is My Blood. Do this in remembrance of Me."

A few more words and we have done.

O sacred banquet in which Christ is received, the memory of His passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us!

All the sacraments are the efficient instrumental causes of grace, since they exist for no other end, but the Holy Eucharist has a power beyond them all, and very naturally so, since it contains the Author of all grace, and by His sacramental presence He pours upon the soul that torrent of grace let loose upon the world by the mystery of the Incarnation.

He that eateth Me, the same shall live by Me.

Moreover, since this sacrament is a real memorial of His passion, its power upon the souls of men is in all respects the same as that which so effectually blotted out the handwriting that was against us, and brought redemption to our fallen world. It is given to us as food and drink for no other purpose than to make us understand that it must be to our souls what food and drink are to the body, for it is meant to give us that strength and support, that new life and those new powers of which we stand in need, in other words, it is an unfailing source of grace.

The mind is filled with grace. And because the grace of God is life everlasting, in this same most Holy Sacrament, a pledge of future glory is given to us. All this grace is the promise of the glory that is to come, the fruitful seed of an eternal harvest, even as our Lord Himself declared:

He that eateth this bread shall live for ever.

The attainment of everlasting life is the chief and principal effect of this sacrament, according to the teaching of St. Thomas. For whether we look at the Holy Eucharist in itself as the Body and Blood of Christ, or whether we consider it more as a means placed at our disposal by our all-merciful God, the one end for which it ever works is the completion and perfection of man s supernatural life, the glory of the kingdom of heaven. It is the Body and Blood of Him who, by His death, opened to us the gates of heaven, and so became the Mediator of the New Testament, "that they that are called may receive the promise of an eternal inheritance." With regard to our use of it, it is, as we have said, a heavenly food, and at the same time a foretaste of that union with God to which we must aspire. It is always "under the veil," and, therefore, its delights and pleasures can never fully be appreciated here. But it is the "pledge of future glory," enabling us to wait until the appointed time. It will be to us what the heaven-sent food was to the prophet, in the strength of which he traversed the weary desert land and reached the mount of God. All this is most perfectly summed up by St. Thomas, in words that are often on our lips, though rarely truly fathomed by our minds and hearts. They may serve as a fitting conclusion:

O salutaris Hostia, Quæ cæli pandis ostium: Bella premunt hostilia, Da robur, fer auxilium. Uni trinoque Domino Sit sempiterna gloria, Qui vitam sine termino Nobis donet in patria.

O saving Victim, opening wide The gate of Heaven to us below; Our foes press hard on every side; Thine aid supply; thy strength bestow. To thy great name be endless praise, Immortal Godhead, One in Three. O grant us endless length of days, In our true native land with thee.

Popes of the Late Second Century: Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherius and Victor

Reading N°43 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by
 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Under Trajan (A.D. 98 - 117) and Hadrian (117 - 138), the Christians had mainly to die. Their fearlessness in the presence of torture and death was their great apologetic. Some of them did publish written apologies, but their purpose was to offer a defense against calumny and injustice. From Antoninus Pius (138 - 161) to Septimius Severus (193 - 211) their courage does not fail at the sight of torments; but their apologetics assume a greater scope. Not merely do they refute their enemies' charges, but they labor to win over those enemies; they also endeavor to defend the purity of their faith against heretical alterations and, in the heat of the strife, they start the first theological synthesis of their beliefs.

From the coming of Antoninus Pius to the middle of the reign of Commodus (177 - 192), the legal status of Christians remained what the rescripts of Trajan and Hadrian had made it. The Church was nearly all the time suffering persecution in some place or other, now because of formal accusations in accordance with the imperial rescripts, now in consequence of popular commotion half-heartedly repressed or even encouraged or aroused by the magistrates themselves. From the middle of Commodus' reign to the middle of that of Severus, the Christians enjoyed about fifteen years of peace, a sort of transition between the regime of persecution by rescript, in force throughout the whole second century, and that of persecution by edict, which prevailed at intervals during the third century.^[1] St. Polycarp, St. Felicitas and her sons, St. Justin, St. Cecilia, the martyrs of Lyons, and the martyrs of Scillium were the most illustrious victims of the persecution of this period.

Ss. Hyginus (139-149), Pius I (149-157) and Anicetus (157-168)

We know but little of the pontiffs who governed the Church at this time. Under Diocletian (284 - 305), all the registers of the Roman Church were destroyed - an irreparable loss for the history of the Roman pontiffs. The Liber Pontificalis, written in the sixth century and based on oral traditions and doubtless on certain written documents that had escaped the search of the persecutors, says of St. Hyginus, the successor of St. Telesphorus, that no trace is found of his genealogy.^[2] It is supposed that he was a philosopher and native of Athens. Tradition credits him with "the organization of the clergy."^[3] It has been supposed that this remark concerns the institution of minor orders.^[4] His successor, St. Pius I, is set down as the brother of Hermas, of whom we shall have to speak later. The statement that to him is due the practice of celebrating Easter on Sunday^[5] is certainly a mistake, because Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Sixtus are mentioned by St. Irenaeus as having observed this custom.^[6] About St. Anicetus, successor of St. Pius I, we know almost nothing, except that he was born at Emesa, a city of Syria, and that he made rules about the life of the clergy, whom he forbade to take excessive care of their hair.^[7]

St. Soterus (168-177)

St. Soter, who succeeded him, is supposed to have been a native of Campania. It is said that he showed great zeal in observing liturgical regulations, and forbade women to touch the sacred linens.^[8] Eusebius quotes a valuable letter of Dionysius of Corinth, which shows that this Pope, continuing the generous traditions of his predecessors, was in the habit of giving liberal succor to poor churches. The testimony of the bishop of Corinth is noteworthy as an homage of that time to the mother Church, which, as in the days of St. Ignatius, always merited the glorious title of "the one that presides at the charities." Dionysius wrote as follows to the Romans:

This has been your custom from the beginning, to do good in manifold ways to all Christians, and to send contributions to the many churches in every city, in some places relieving the poverty of the needy, and ministering to the Christians in the mines, by the contribution which you have sent from the beginning, preserving the ancestral custom of the Romans, true Romans as you are. Your blessed bishop Soter has not only carried on this habit, but has even increased it.^[9]

The end of the letter shows with what veneration the documents coming from the Apostolic See were always received at Corinth:

Today we observe the holy day of the Lord, and read out your letter, which we shall continue to read from time to time for our admonition, as we do with that which was formerly sent to us through Clement.^[10]

St. Eleutherius, who was chosen to succeed St. Soter, is said in the Liber Pontificalis to have negotiated with an Anglo-Saxon king, or rather the head of a clan,^[11] about the conversion of Britain. The historical genuineness of this event, however, is questionable.^[12] More authentic is his correspondence with the Churches of Lyons and Vienne on the occasion of the martyrdom of St. Pothinus and his companions.

It was during the pontificate of Eleutherius that Irenaeus began his great work, in which he recognizes the Roman Church as the "chief guardian of the Apostolic tradition." With Pope St. Victor, who succeeded St. Eleutherius and who governed the Church until the close of the second century, papal history is illumined with more numerous documents. In his pontificate the great baptismal controversy took place and the first discussions began in the Trinitarian controversy.

Ss. Eleutherius (177-185) and Victor I (185-199)

Tradition calls both of these popes martyrs. In the early centuries, this title was bestowed, not only on those who gave up their life for the faith, but also on those who faced the risks of a perilous situation.^[13] But it is highly probable that Roman pontiffs were put to death in a time when the sword of persecution threatened everyone who did not practice the religion of the emperors. The silence of written documents is no reason for refusing these venerated pontiffs of the Roman Church the glorious title which the Catholic Church gives them in her liturgy.

Footnotes

[1] Allard, Hist. des pers., I, iii.

[2] Duchesne, Lib. Pont., I, 131.

[3] "Clerum composuit." (Duchesne, loc. cit.)

[4] Ibid., note.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Eusebius, H. E., V, xxiv, 14.

[7] "There can be no question here of the tonsue, which even in the sixth century was still one of the episcopal insignia." (Duchesne, op. cit., I, 134.)

[8] Duchesne, op. cit., I, 135.

[9] Eusebius, H. E., IV, xxiii, 10.

[10] Ibidem, no. 11.

[11] Great Britain was then a Roman province, and could not have had a king.

[12] Duchesne, op. cit., I, cii ff.

[13] St. Cyprian gives Pope Cornelius the name of martyr for the single reason that he had "willingly occupied the Apostolic See at Rome at the very time when the tyrant was issuing the most terrible threats." (Letter of St. Cyprian to Antonianus; apud Ep. S. Cornelii, x, 9).

***

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Lust

Thirty-Ninth in a Series on Catholic Morality

 by

 Fr. John H. Stapleton

The malice of lust consists in the abuse of a natural, a quasi-divine faculty, which is prostituted to ignoble purposes foreign to the ends by the Creator established. The lines along which this faculty may be legitimately exercised are laid down by natural and divine laws, destined to preserve God's rights, to maintain order in society and to protect man against himself. The laws result in the foundation of a state, called matrimony, within which the exercise of this human prerogative, delegated to man by the Creator, receives the sanction of divine authority, and becomes invested with a sacred character, as sacred as its abuse is abominable and odious.

To disregard and ignore this condition of things and to seek satisfaction for one's passions outside the domain of lawful wedlock, is to revolt against this order of creative wisdom and to violate the letter of the law. But the intrinsic malice of the evil appears in the nature of this violation. This abuse touches life; not life in its being, but in its source, in the principle that makes all vitality possible, which is still more serious. Immorality is, therefore, a moral poisoning of the wells of life. It profanes and desecrates a faculty and prerogative so sacred that it is likened to the almighty power of the Creator.

A manifold malice may attach to a single act in violation of the law of moral purity. The burden of a vow in either party incurring guilt, whether that vow be matrimonial or religious, is a circumstance that adds injustice or sacrilege to the crime, according to the nature of that vow; and the double guilt is on both parties. If the vow exists in one and the other delinquent, then the offense is still further multiplied and the guilt aggravated. Blood-relationship adds a specific malice of its own, slight or grievous according to the intimacy of said relationship. Fornication, adultery, sacrilege and incest - these, to give to things their proper names, are terms that specify various degrees of malice and guilt in this matter; and although they do not sound well or look well in print, they have a meaning which sensible folks should not ignore.

A lapse from virtue is bad; the habit or vice, voluntarily entertained, is infinitely worse. If the one argues weakness, even culpable, the other betrays a studied contempt for God and the law, an utter perversion of the moral sense that does not even esteem virtue in itself; an appalling thralldom of the spirit to the flesh, an appetite that is all ungodly, a gluttony that is bestial. Very often it supposes a victim held fast in the clutches of unfeeling hoggishness, fascinated or subjugated, made to serve, while serviceable; and then cast off without a shred of respectability for another. It is an ordinary occurrence for one of these victims to swallow a deadly potion on being shown her folly and left to its consequences; and the human ogre rides triumphantly home in his red automobile.

But the positions may be reversed; the victim may play the role of seductress, and, displaying charms that excite the passions, ensnare the youth whose feet are not guided by the lamp of experience, wisdom and religion. This is the human spider, soulless and shameless, using splendid gifts of God to form a web with which to inveigle and entrap a too willing prey. And the dead flies, who will count them!

The climax of infamy is reached when this sort of a thing is made, not a pastime, but a business, when virtue is put on the market with its fixed value attached and bartered for a price. There is no outrage on human feeling greater than this. We are all born of woman; and the sight of womanhood thus degraded and profaned would give us more of a shock if it were less common. The curse of God is on such wretches as ply this unnatural trade and live by infamy; not only on them, but on those also who make such traffic possible and lucrative. Considering all things, more guilty the latter than the former, perhaps. Active co-operation in evil makes one a joint partner in guilt; to encourage infamy is not only to sin, but also to share all the odium thereof; while he who contributes to the perpetuation of an iniquity of this nature is, in a sense, worse than the unfortunates themselves.

The civil law which seeks to eliminate the social evil of prostitution by enactment and process, gives rise, by enactment and process, to another evil almost as widespread. Divorce is a creature of the law, and divorce opens the door to concubinage, legalized if you will, but concubinage just the same. The marriage tie is intact after as well as before the decree of divorce; no human power can break that bond. The permission therefore to re-marry is permission to live in adultery, and that permission is, of its very nature, null and void. They who avail themselves of such a permission and live in sin, may count on the protection of the law, but the law will not protect them against the wrath of the Almighty who condemns their immoral living.

On Fr. Longenecker and the Catholic Pharisees

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Some of you might have taken notice of the recent altercation between Fr. Longenecker and the staff of The Remnant. Ignoring the matter of the dispute itself, I'd like to commend Fr. Longenecker for recognizing that he crossed a line, and for issuing a formal retraction and sincere apology.

This article, however, is not about Fr. Longenecker's dustup with The Remnant. Rather, it is in regard to a piece he published today, entitled The Pope's Exhortation: A Parish Priest's Perspective.

Let me begin by saying that, to his credit, Fr. Longenecker seems genuinely concerned about the people he meets in his confessional. I feel confident in the assumption that he takes their various problems seriously, and attempts to offer advice and assistance which will help them reconcile their lives with the teaching of the Church. While these are, of course, absolutely necessary qualities in a confessor, Fr. Longenecker is nonetheless to be commended for possessing them.

Also, his advice to withhold judgment on the new papal Exhortation until one has found the time to sufficiently digest the text is thoroughly prudent. I, for one, won't be writing anything on the subject until I've had the chance to read the whole thing at least twice and compare it with the great encyclicals on marriage and the family, such as Leo XIII's almost universally forgotten Arcanum Divinae of 1880.

With that being said - and not in a false show of charity, but in genuine appreciation - I cannot overlook what can only be described as the clericalism which permeates his approach to lay Catholics outside the confessional as expressed in his most recent missive. I offer the following passage for your consideration:

With respect to all the dear laypeople, the armchair experts, the theoreticians, amateur theologians and experts in church law – it is we priests who actually deal with the real life situations of ordinary people. We're the ones who have to help them match up their lives with the teachings of the church. [...] We priests realize more than anyone else that many of our people are the walking wounded. We are the ones they go to when it all goes bad. We are the ones who hear them crying in the confessional. We are the ones who struggle with them as they try to reconcile their lives with the teaching of the church.

Now, before laying into Fr. Longenecker, I'd like to try to see things from his point of view.

It is no secret that sitting in the confessional, sometimes for hours on end, listening to penitents as they relate some of the most horrifying and depressing stories ever told is hard, sometimes utterly exhausting, work. If any of you have any doubts, try picking up a good biography on the Curé d'Ars, St. John Vianney. The Saint, who was blessed with the gift of reading souls (though he often experienced this as a great cross), was known to spend up to eighteen hours a day in the confessional, enduring sweltering heat in the Summer and sub-zero temperatures in the Winter. Though I will never know from first-hand experience, I can at least sympathize with Fr. Longenecker - as with all good priests - for the tremendous amount of energy and heroic patience which their special work requires.

Do we, the laity, show enough appreciation for that work? Probably not. We leave the confessional feeling reborn, overflowing with joy and thankfulness. How often do we think of the priest who just absolved us, and who remains behind, in the dark, with the stench of our sins hanging thick in the air? How often do we include him in our prayers of thanksgiving?

Am I saying that Fr. Longenecker writes out of bitterness or a sense of a lack of appreciation? Not at all. But I think his own words make it clear that his work inside the confessional, as laudable as it is, is blinding him to what should be an obvious truth:

We all deal with the real-life situations of ordinary people. They might be his penitents, but they are our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters. We are those ordinary people. To suggest that the priest alone suffers with those in difficult situations, that the priest alone helps in the work of bringing those who have lost their way back to Christ, that it is to the priest alone that people go when they are wounded, that the priest alone hears their sobs and dries their tears, is nothing but rank clericalism of the worst sort.

It is certainly true that only a priest can speak those beautiful words, "Ego te absolvo," and that absolution is, ultimately, what really counts. But to think that the priest alone accomplishes the difficult work of guiding the wayward back to Our Lord is a particularly ugly form of self-aggrandizement.

Furthermore, to imply, as Fr. Longenecker does, that those Catholics who insist on doctrinal clarity only do so because they are somehow insulated from the suffering of those living in sin, i.e. that they don't understand the moral complexity of "real-life situations," takes the art of patronizing to insultingly new heights.

I invite Fr. Longenecker, therefore, to drop the tired caricature of the "Catholic Pharisee" as someone who lives in total isolation from the real world and only condemns sin because neither he nor anyone he knows - and loves - suffers under its crushing weight. I invite him to consider the very real and painful difficulty many of those so-called "Pharisees" face when a loved one looks to them for the approval that their faith prevents them from giving. I invite him to imagine the frustration and self-doubt they experience when the parish priest, the bishop or even the pope condemns them as "hard-hearted, whited sepulchers" for attempting to do nothing other than give witness to God's truth with both fidelity and charity. Above all, I invite Fr. Longenecker to remember that priests are not the only people in this world who know compassion.

It is a sad commentary on the present state of the Church that, in an age when delivering the truth of the Gospel with pastoral delicacy is writ large on every felt banner, those in the pews - and, more importantly, in the bedrooms, in the living rooms, in the offices, and on the streets - who are trying their best to do just that are being excoriated as the enemies of Christ.

If he really wants to further the discussion, Fr. Longenecker will stop resorting to condescension and lame caricatures and instead enable his readers to at least understand where it is those he disagrees with are truly coming from.

Confession: The Cleansing Work of Grace

Third in a Series on the Life of Grace

 by
 Fr. Raphael M. Moss, O.P.

When we speak about the "supernatural life of grace," we mean an earnest persevering effort to attain our last end by a loyal obedience to God's commandments, and any deliberate and willful failure on our part we unhesitatingly characterize as sinful. This is practically the definition of sin given by St. Thomas, and so clear is our conviction of its truth that proof seems quite superfluous. Similarly, when the Angelic Doctor tells us that this moral failure, which we call sin, leaves a stain upon the soul, our conscience once again bears witness to the truth of his assertion. The very fact that we are reasonable beings, and that the essence of sin lies in its deviation from the law of right reason, obliges us to feel the moral humiliation which is its consequence and to acknowledge the stain it leaves upon the soul. Hence this question of sin and its consequences, and the remedies against it prepared by our Creator, must necessarily come before us when we begin seriously to consider the supernatural life. We could not pass it over even if we would.

Supposing there were no such thing as sin, it would be different. Our worship of Almighty God might then indeed be limited to fervent prayers of praise and adoration, but the sad knowledge of good and evil is the fatal inheritance of our fallen race. Hence, at all times and in all places, we find men bearing witness to this fact, and in various ways, according to the best of their ability, endeavoring to undo the work of sin and blot out its dishonoring stains by rites of expiation. Our minds are therefore quite prepared to admit that in the one and only true religion, which is meant to lead our souls to God, there must be some such means provided for us. Our reason tells us that it must be so, our faith declares it is so, and bids us see and wonder at the power and wisdom and mercy of our God in the priceless sacrament of Penance.

The sacrament of Penance! It is a world of theology in itself, embracing as it does the teaching of our faith on sin and grace and the sacraments; it is perhaps the commonest of God's supernatural dealings with our souls, and yet by no means the least wonderful; it is the most beneficent of all His condescensions, and yet the very one that is the most traduced and hated. To us, on whom God has bestowed the light of faith, the need of such a sacrament seems so manifest, that we feel we could almost prove its existence to any reasonable mind by a priori arguments. For once we grant the possibility of sin in those who have received the grace of baptism, we are compelled to grant that another sacrament for the remission of such sins would only be what we might expect from God's great goodness, especially since it is His way to treat us in accordance with our nature, and make material things the channels of His grace. It is quite true that He died to make atonement for our sins, and that His sufferings are the superabounding cause of all grace and all satisfaction. But belief in His atonement does not mean that we are henceforth free to please ourselves and indulge in every sin without fear or remorse. He laid down His life for us, but, as He Himself declared, it was of His own free will, for no one could take it from Him, and dying for us freely, He could and did determine how the abundant fruits of all His sufferings were to be applied to the souls whom He had so generously redeemed. He instituted the sacraments. We believe that He blotted out the hand-writing that was against us, and opened the closed gates of heaven to the human race; but we also believe that He laid down a clear condition:

Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter the king dom of God. (John 3:5)

Hence we teach that baptism, either actually or by desire, is an essential condition of salvation. But when we grow up, and our reason and free will assert themselves, it often happens that we soon forget how much we have been favored. Freely and deliberately we turn our backs upon our Maker, and declare our independence, and even as a beautiful flower, just opening its white leaves to the bright sunshine, loses all its frail loveliness, and is sullied and destroyed when it is trampled in the dust, so also is the soul of man sullied and defiled when he consents to sin. What then can he do? He may repent, and indeed his reason tells him that repentance is essential; but is his repentance real enough to merit God's acceptance, and will He accept it ? Hope says He will, but have we no visible assurance, such as God gives us in baptism? Must we be like the King of Nineveh, who hearkened to the preaching of God's prophet, and proclaimed a solemn fast, for "Who can tell," he said, "if God will turn and forgive, and turn away from His fierce anger?" (Jonas 3:9)  Who can tell? There is the difficulty. So faith steps in, and tells us that there is another sacrament, a second plank after shipwreck, a visible outward sign of the cleansing work of grace: the sacrament of Penance.

But there is another way of looking at this dogma of our faith. A sacrament is defined to be an outward sign of inward grace ordained by Jesus Christ. All its powers must come from Him, for nobody could make a sacrament, and bind the supernatural power of grace to visible things, but the Author of grace Himself; and so we venture to say that any candid mind looking at this institution as an existing fact in the world, and seriously considering it, must see in it the handiwork of God, and confess it to be a sacrament, or means of grace, and a most efficient factor in the spiritual life.

In the sacrament of Penance, or "Confession" as it is commonly called amongst Catholics, we have to acknowledge two most wonderful creations utterly beyond the power of man, or any natural agency whatever; for since this marvelous institution implies the confession of one's sins to a fellow-creature, it necessarily supposes the one who confesses his sins, and the one who receives the confession; the self-accused transgressor of the law and the judge who is its representative; the penitent and the confessor. Analyse these two ideas, and try to see what they imply.

Who is the penitent? He is a human being, humbly avowing his sins at the feet of a fellow-man. According to St Thomas, pride may be looked at as a special sin in itself, or as the fountain-head of all sin. He shows us, moreover, how it is the worst of all sins, because it is the furthest point of sin, and yet, though we may admit the reasoning of the Angelic Doctor and accept his conclusions, we cannot help feeling somehow or other that pride is the most excusable of all sins, probably because so natural to our fallen and perverted will.

Miserable and poor and blind and naked as are the very best of us from a supernatural point of view, we are all, nevertheless, infected with this vice of pride. It hides itself under many forms. It often wears the robe of virtue, and the proudest man will often urge that he is only overstocked with self-respect. Yet, proud as man is by nature, stubborn and sensitive and reserved in every way, he is, by this sacrament, laid under a law which at first sight seems an outrage on human nature. For it is a law which obliges him to come and kneel at the feet of one of his fellow-men - one perhaps who, in the social scale, may be in every way inferior and of less account, one who may be less clever, less learned, less refined and there reveal the sins of his life. Neither age, position nor experience may avail as an excuse. All must obey. The pope himself, who claims to be the vicar of Christ on earth, is as much under the law as the youngest cleric in the Church. Kings and queens are bound equally with the poorest of their subjects. Old men bowed down by the weight of years, young men in the fierce strife of passions that make up the battle of life, children who have but begun to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, all are under the same law. And they must confess all. It might not seem so hard to be obliged to confess the public crimes that outrage every law of public morals, the sins against society and its ordinances, the offences that are committed in the light of day and under the eyes of our neighbor; but the law of confession goes further than that. All sinful acts, all moral failures and humiliations in thought, word and deed, all are to be avowed. This is the inexorable law, and the world cries out against it as a sheer impossibility.

But it is only half the wonder! Difficult as this may seem to human reason, impossible as it may appear to the world, it is surely still more difficult, still more impossible to the confessor. For a confessor in the sacrament of Penance has not merely to listen to the self-accusation of his neighbor, and be the recipient of his confidence. His task is something far more wonderful than that: it is nothing less than super-human! The burden laid upon him, in the exercise of this office, is beyond the strength of angels, yet in himself he is but a man as other men; like to them in body and soul and mind and heart. And what is the heart of man, the will of man? A power with high ideals, lofty aspirations, capable of heroic sacrifice, yet at the same time capable of yielding to most selfish cravings and weak enough for any fall! Manifestly, therefore, before it can undertake a work like this it must be changed, and cleansed, and strengthened until it hardly seems the same. So when Jesus Christ bestowed upon His Apostles the power of forgiving sin, Holy Scripture tells us that He breathed upon them, to signify that He gave to them a new spirit, a better and more perfect heart. He showed them by that mysterious sign that He would have them work by His Spirit and His Heart; or, in the words of Holy Writ, He gave to them "wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart even as the sand that is on the sea-shore." (John 20:22)

The work of a confessor demands no less. For it implies a heart full of an unwearying love, a love that can bear up against the sins, the faults, the weaknesses and follies of humanity, coupled with a sense of duty that will enable him to sacrifice home and kindred and friends and pleasant occupations; or, if needful, willingly brave suffering and danger and death, often to meet with no other reward, as far as this world is concerned, than the misunderstandings, criticisms and revilings of those whom he has tried to serve.

Moreover, real and true and deep as is to be this love of souls, it may not be confined to any narrow circle. It must be ready to embrace all; the poorest of the poor as well as the rich and nobly born, the old and feeble as well as the young and lighthearted; the innocent and pure side by side with the sin-stained and the fallen. But because love is a fire which may burn and consume, it must be tempered by a purity like unto that of the angels of God, and guarded by a prudence and discretion not of this earth. Then again, these extraordinary gifts, so wonderful and so supernatural, were not to be conferred on one or two more perfect souls; but all over the world, in all nations and in all peoples, these representatives of Christ were to be found, so that everywhere, until the end of time, wherever sin existed, there also must be found the confessor to break asunder its chains. This is the miracle of the sacrament of Penance, and for nineteen centuries it has been before the world. Only one conclusion is possible. "This is the finger of God." (Exodus 8:19) "It is the Lord's doing, and it is wonderful  in our eyes." (Psalm 117:23)

It seems hardly worth our while to insist upon a further argument; though we may pause to point it out, for it is not without its special value, and it is to be found in an appeal to history and its evidences. It has a negative as well as a positive side, and the former may be summed up in the pertinent question: Who is the author of the practice of confession, if it be not our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

The Catholic Church is not unmindful of the great names in her history, the many holy pontiffs, kings and warriors, martyrs and confessors, who have deserved well of her. Their names and their achievements are ever being handed down to posterity with their fitting meed of praise; but nowhere is there mention of the one who placed within her hands this means of boundless influence. Her enemies, on the other hand, are equally silent. "Free-thought" is not the exclusive product of the nineteenth century, it has its votaries in every age, and what were they doing when this outrage on their theories was first introduced? Those others, too, whose boast it is to steer a middle course between the license of free-thought and the authority of the Church, have they no words to say, no plea of novelties to urge until the middle of the sixteenth century? Full five or six hundred years before the so-called "Reformation", the Greeks had broken away, but the Greeks uphold confession. If we go back another six hundred years we find Nestorius, Eutyches, and others cutting themselves adrift, but never because of the dogma of confession. Surely all this silence, the silence of the centuries, speaks as eloquently as any argument, and were we now to turn to Catholic writers for the positive proofs of history, and in each succeeding age bow down before the clear, unfaltering teaching of its greatest sons, it would not be because we needed more convincing evidence, but only that we loved to hear the voice of truth triumphing over error, and proclaiming aloud to the whole world that Penance is really and truly a sacrament ordained by Jesus Christ.

Passing over, therefore, the testimonies of these Saints and Fathers of the Church, let us turn to the book of God's word, and see when our Savior bestowed upon us this fresh proof of His love for our souls, and His anxiety for their salvation. Just as in the case of the Holy Eucharist, the Son of God seems to prepare the minds of His apostles for so great a gift by foretelling its bestowal, for in the eighteenth chapter of St Matthew's Gospel, after speaking of the power of the Church, He uses these solemn words:

Amen, I say unto you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose up on earth shall be loosed also in heaven.

And then when the fitting time had come, He fulfilled His promise by conferring upon them the awful powers necessary for so great a work. The beloved disciple describes the wonderful scene:

Now when it was late that same day, the first of the week, and the doors were shut, when the disciples were gathered together for fear of the Jews, Jesus came, and stood in the midst, and said to them: 'Peace be to you.' And when He had said this, He shewed them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. And again He said to them: 'Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.' And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them: 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain they are retained.' (John 20:19-23)

Every word seems to ring with a power and authority all divine. "As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you. Receive ye the Holy Ghost." In these words of her divine Founder, the Catholic Church has always recognized the institution of the sacrament of Penance, for they most certainly and most explicitly confer the power of forgiving and retaining sin; and hence they imply the duty of confession, for how is the divinely appointed representative of Christ to exercise His power of forgiving and retaining sins, unless the sinner himself reveal them to him?

Now let us look into this teaching of our faith more closely, and see for ourselves how perfectly it corresponds to the natural wants of man; and how, therefore, far from being a burden, it is in reality a very great help and consolation. For if God is our last end, it follows naturally that every single law laid upon us by Him is meant to be the echo of His voice, the beckoning of His hand, now calling us onward, now warning us backwards, but ever showing us the way to Him. Hence every duty we owe to Him, every obligation under which we lie, is really meant to be a help to us.

It is in absolute accordance with right reason and with our nature, and necessarily tends to perfect it by uniting it with its last end; and we assert that confession is no exception to this universal law, although we often hear it attacked by non-Catholics as unnatural and unreasonable and therefore most certainly not of God. But it is easy to prove our contention. 

The heart of man has been well compared to a vessel filled to overflowing, and this overflow cannot fall back upon itself, but by its very nature seeks another resting place, or, in other words, seeks and craves for sympathy. This sympathy implies confidence, and what is confession but confidence carried to its utmost limit, and made wholly supernatural by the grace of God? It also implies a fellow creature, for if we could confess to God, we should require that God should manifest Himself and His acceptance of our confidence, and in our present state of probation, this could not be. We feel that we must lay the burden of our miseries at the feet of one like unto ourselves, and yet one who can speak to us in the name and with the authority of God Himself.

Moreover, quite apart from any supernatural motive, confession is the natural instinct of a remorseful conscience. It is the soul's spontaneous and voluntary rejection of evil. But when we pass into the supernatural order, and consider it as the remedy for sin, the violation of God's law, then is its fitness even yet more clearly manifest. For in every serious sin we can discern two elements, a turning away from God, who is our last end, and a turning to the creature; in other words the rejection of the Creator for the creature.

The turning away from God is the outcome of pride. Our fallen nature tends to worship itself, and craves to be its own master that it may please itself and its own inclinations at whatever cost. It was this love of self which the devil aroused in our first parents when he asked: "Why hath God commanded you that you should not eat of every tree of paradise," and then in answer to the reason given: "No, you shall not die, but in whatsoever day you shall eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Then came the second element of sin, the act of preference. "When the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat," (Genesis 3) and so God's law was broken; for when the sinner, turning away from God and preferring some created good, finds his moral freedom barred by the divine command, he spurns it with contempt, and so these two elements combine in one foolish act of revolt.

Now look at confession. In it you will find precisely the contrary elements to those which constitute the act of sin. In opposition to pride, self-indulgence and rebellion, it imposes on us an act of true humility and self-sacrifice, and an act of child-like obedience to God's law in the submission of the will and the sorrowful avowal of our fault. How wonderful are the ways of God! Had our divine Savior not vouchsafed to bestow it upon us, no one would have dared to dream of such a remedy; but now that He has given it, we have but to look upon it to see in it His handiwork, at once a marvelous token of His power, His wisdom and His love. Moreover, it is a special privilege, for which we cannot show ourselves too grateful. St Thomas tells us that the word "privilege" implies a sort of private law, or favor, granted only to a few, and though all the sacraments might justly claim the title, yet in some way it seems especially to describe the sacrament of Penance.

The very beautiful chapter in the Old Testament which gives us the story of Naaman the Syrian (4 Kings 5) serves as a good illustration. Naaman was the general of the Syrian army; valiant, rich and powerful, but a leper. Amongst his many slaves, there happened to be a little Hebrew girl, who understood her master's trouble, and spoke about the great prophet in her own country, and told how God had blessed him with miraculous powers, so that he was able to cure all diseases, even leprosy. So Naaman set out for the laud of Israel, and having found out who this prophet was, and where he dwelt, he came to him with all his grand retinue, and made his prayer. But the prophet did not trouble to see him; he merely sent his servant with a message, directing him to bathe a certain number of times in the river Jordan, and promising, if he did so, that he would be healed. Now mark the sequel. Naaman's pride was hurt. He wanted to be healed, but he also wanted to dictate the manner of his healing. He wanted more attention and more ceremony, and he was actually returning in anger to his own country, when his servants ventured to appeal to his common sense: 

If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, surely thou wouldst have done it; how much rather what he now hath said to thee, 'Wash, and thou shalt be clean.'

So he obeyed God's prophet, and he was healed. The lesson is most evident: "If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, surely thou wouldst have done it." Sin is a moral leprosy. Did we but realize this, no sacrifice would be too great to get rid of it, and to recover that rectitude of soul, that cleanness of heart which we have lost; and it is our wonderful privilege to be able to win it back at what is comparatively no cost at all. Moreover, the sacrifice, such as it is, not only cleanses us from the stain of sin and heals us of our disease, but over and above this, it rewards the effort we have made, by filling the soul with a new happiness, born of a superabundance of comfort and light and the perfect consciousness of forgiveness. It gives us comfort. All sorrow comes from sin, for sin is the only real sorrow, the only real misery. With our spiritual sense so unrefined it may perhaps be hard for us to see this, but reason teaches it, and faith asserts it.

St Thomas was wont to declare that he could not understand how a person living in sin could ever smile. How can there be real peace in the heart that has knowingly turned away from its last end? But by casting out sin we recover peace, for that act of self-humiliation and self-sacrifice, by restoring grace, opens the door of the soul to its true Friend, who reveals Himself to us under the gracious name of "Paraclete" or Comforter. And with consolation comes light.

By the sin of our first parents, our minds have been grievously darkened, and every sin that we commit deepens this intellectual darkness; so that, like poor, blind men, we stumble along, running the risk of a fall or taking the wrong turn at every moment. Our divine Master is the Light of the world, and His word is a "lamp unto our feet" and a "light upon our path." "He that followeth Me," He has declared, "walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12) There is the public light of His authoritative teaching, and the special light of grace bestowed upon each soul in proportion to its need, enabling it to see its own littleness and narrowness and poverty; and the light of this self-knowledge does not dishearten, but, on the contrary, helps us on by making us more kind and patient with ourselves and with others.

Lastly, there is the sense of forgiveness, the crowning joy of all. The world never forgives. Even when the poor unfortunate who has defied its laws has paid the penalty of his rashness, he is not forgiven. The stain remains, a blot upon his life and the lives of his children. Our own conscience never forgives. "I can never forgive myself," says a man, when he realizes some irreparable mistake, and he speaks the literal truth. Our conscience never speaks of sin, but it speaks to reproach and condemn; and though we may refuse to listen, and even do our best to stifle it by pretending to believe that it is "but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe," yet will a day come when it repays such wrongs with interest and seems to have "a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale" to condemn us. But God forgives, and His forgiveness is complete and perfect. It matters not how low the fall, how far the wandering: "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven" - a truly royal pardon, begetting in the repentant soul that peace which the world cannot give, since it comes from Him who alone has the right to say: "Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee."

We have every right, therefore, to point to the sacrament of Penance as a special privilege of our holy faith, and one of the chief glories of the Catholic Church. To the priest who wields this wondrous power of binding and loosing the members of Jesus Christ, it is a royal unction, consecrating him a king amongst souls, at the same time filling his heart with wonder and amazement and pity and zeal, and a readiness to spend himself and be spent in the service of his brethren. But, in addition to this spiritual royalty, it gives him a spiritual fatherhood, for when he sees at his feet the souls for whom His Master died, laying bare before his eyes the troubles of their souls, the human spirit dies within him to give place to something more divine, so that he may justly say with St Paul: "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me." (Galatians 2:20) No wonder that Luther, in the hour of his fall, hesitated to uncrown himself of this bright diadem. "Confessio miro modo placet," he wrote, "et utilis imo necessaria est, nec vellem eam non esse in Ecclesia Christi." But his apostasy had sown the storm, and he lived to reap the whirlwind.

We have surely said enough to prove what we advanced, and to show the special place occupied by the sacrament of Penance in that supernatural life of grace to which we have been called. We may conclude with the words of the beloved disciple:

These things we write to you that you may rejoice, and your joy may be full. [...] If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity. (1 John 1:4,8-9)

The Wrath of Joshua McElwee

I've just been unceremoniously blocked on Twitter by National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent Joshua McElwee for the following exchange:

As I choke back the tears, I can't help but wonder which is more disturbing: McElwee's fawning over Pope Francis for doing what every politician/celebrity has done since forever, his knee-jerk reaction to an image of Adolf Hitler, or his overlooking my sly inclusion of Justin Bieber as a world leader.

Hopefully this kerfluffle won't damage my chances of being picked up as a columnist for NCR.