Second Sermon for the Feast of St. Michael: On Scandal

‘* He that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill-stone should be hanged about his neck and that he should bedrowned in the depth of the sea. ... And if thy hand or thy foot scandalise thee cut it off and cast it from thee. ... And if thy eye scandalise thee, pluck tt out and cast it from thee.’’—Matt. xviii. 6-9.

You have heard, most dearly beloved, in to-day’s Gospel lesson the Lord’s terrible denunciation of those who scandalise the little ones. He Who is Truth Itself flatters no man, He fawns upon no man, He deceives no man, but fearlessly thunders forth : “ Woe to that man by whom scandal cometh ” (Matt. xviii. 7). “ It were better for him,” He says of a great scandal-giver, “if that man had not been born ” (Matt. xxvi. 24). “Better for him,” that is, if he had not been “born again ” (John iii. 3), if he had not been born unto the life of grace, “ born of the Spirit ’’ (ibid. 8), because, namely, he was afterwards “ consummated in the flesh” (Gal. iii. 3). And if there is anyone here who is a cause of scandal in this house, in this holy community, so pleasing to God, so favoured with the love and companionship of His angels: “it were better for him also that a mill-stone should be hanged about his neck ” (Matt. xviii. 6) and, with a crushing weight of worldly desires laid upon his shoulders instead of the sweet and light yoke of the Saviour (Matt. xi. 30), “that he should bedrowned in the depth of the sea ” (Matt. xviii. 6), of “ this great sea which stretcheth wide its arms” (Ps. ciii. 25), by which doubtless we are to understand the “ present wicked world” (Gal. i. 4). For his doom would be less terrible if he were lost, not in religion, but in secular life ; and he cannot but be lost whosoever is without charity, even though he should deliver his body to be burned (x Cor. xiii. 3). If I address you thus, dearest brethren, it is not because I have a low esteem of your charity or because I have any reason to suspect that the opposite and most hateful vice has obtained dominion over you, but that you may be solicitous to persevere in the charity, in the concord, and in the peace wherein you now “stand in the Lord ” (x Thes. iii. 8) and “ that you may abound the more ” (x Thes. iv. 1). “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glory ? ” (x Thes. ii. 19). What indeed but your unity and unanimity by which, as I rejoice to see, you prove yourselves ‘‘ lovers of the brotherhood ” (x Peter iii. 8), “before all things having a constant mutual charity _ in yourselves ” (x Peter iv. 8), for charity is “‘ the bond of perfection ’’ (Col. iii. 14). Therefore I beseech you, most dearly beloved, “ so stand fast in the Lord ” (Phil. iv. 1). For “ by this shall all men know—yea, and even the holy angels—that you are the disciples of Christ, if you have love one for another ” (John xiii. 35).

Now, if you remember from my last discourse the three motives I assigned for the angels’ love and solicitude for us, you will be able from that viewpoint to form a very magnificent estimate of the worth of fraternal charity. For it is easy to understand that in him who loves not his neighbour the angels can find none of the motives aforesaid. How could they love us for Christ’s sake if our lack of mutual charity made it evident to them that we were not His disciples at all? How could they love us for our own sakes, that is, on account of the spiritual part of our nature, in which they recognise a resemblance and a relationship to themselves, if they found that we had no love for the participants of that nature, yea, if dissensions in our community gave them to understand that we preferred the flesh to the spirit? And how could they love us for their own sakes either, and because of their hope to see us contributing as “ living stones ” to the restoration of the holy city, if (which God forbid) they found us devoid of the cement of charity, by which alone we can be united and built into the spiritual walls? How could they entertain the hope that the everlasting walls of the heavenly Jerusalem are to be repaired by means of us if they knew us to be, if they perceived us to be, not “living stones” capable of being united together, but rather “ like the dust which the wind driveth from the face of the earth ” (Ps. i. 4), which the wind of a single word is enough to send whirling in the air, which the gentlest breath of suspicion is sufficient to scatter? Let so much suffice on the words of the Lord, ‘‘ He that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in Me,” etc. For I think what has been said will make you shun this most baneful vice with greater solicitude for the future.

But, my brethren, who can read without surprise the words which follow in our Gospel: “ If thy hand or thy foot scandalise thee cut it off and cast if from thee ; and if thy eye scandalise thee pluck it out and cast it from thee” (Matt. xviii. 8, 9)? Are we then admonished to pluck out this bodily eye and to cut off one of our material hands and feet ? God forbid that we should entertain so carnal and ridiculous a thought! No, dearest brethren, that is not the Master’s meaning ; but after warning us against external scandals ‘in the words of great severity which we have been discussing, He now tells us how we are to deal with that scandal which we discover in our own interior where we find an opposing law in our members (Rom. Vii. 23). “For He knoweth our frame” (Ps. cii. 14) and that we cannot so easily escape scandal of this kind. Now we are taught by daily experience that interior scandal can arise in three ways. Sometimes it happens that we have in us the “simple eye” (Matt. vi. 22) of a pure intention, which should rather becalled the eye of grace than our eye; but we are scandalised by our own eye, the eye that is truly from ourselves, when our self-will strives insistently to substitute another and a less pure intention. For this emergency we have the salutary counsel of the Saviour ; “ If thy eye scandalise thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.” And we do as recommended when we refuse consent to the suggestion, when we repudiate it, when we manfully resist it. In the same way is to be understood what is said of the hand and the foot. Thus, when we are engaged in good works and our own will endeavours to draw us away to other ‘employments: it is our hand that is now scandalising us, and we must cut it off and cast it from us lest otherwise it should gain our consent.

So too when we burn with the desire to advance in religious perfection and to mount up on the steps of the mystical ladder which Jacob beheld in vision (Gen. xxviii. 12), and according to what the Psalmist says, to ‘‘go from virtue to virtue so that the God of gods shall beseen in Sion ” (Ps. lxxxiii. 8) : we are often scandalised by the foot, as it were, of our own pusillanimity and sloth, which struggles rather to backslide or at least to retard our ascent. This also it is necessary to cut off, so that the foot of grace which “standeth in the direct way” (Ps. xxv. 12) may be able to run forward without impinging upon any stumbling-stone, any scandal, any obstruction. With regard to the words, “‘It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire ; it is better for thee having one eye to enter into life than having two eyes to be cast into hell-fire ” (Matt. xviii. 8, 9) : the Lord here addresses Himself to such as follow their own will, no matter whether it is good or bad, and who consequently walk in two ways, pursuing at one time what is good, at another what is evil, according as their desires happen to vary. For these in truth it would be more profitable to follow grace in everything, and whenever self-will stood in the way to cut it off and cast it from them.

But, dearest brethren, after we have been long exercised in thus waging war against our own will, we shall at last succeed in subduing it to such an extent that it shall learn to renounce its arrogance, and then without any more scandal or contradiction ‘‘ our souls shall be subject to God ” (Ps. lxi. 2). Then we shall no longer have any necessity to pluck out our eye, because by cleaving to the simple eye of grace it shall itself have become simple ; or rather they shall not now be two different eyes at all, but one and the same, according to the testimony of the Apostle, ‘‘He who is joined to the Lord is one Spirit with Him ” (x Cor. vi. 17). Understand in the same way what is said about cutting off the hand and the foot. Now he whose will follows the guidance of grace with love and alacrity, so that he desires neither to do anything evil nor anything less perfect nor less perfectly than grace suggests: he undoubtedly is a perfect man. However, such peace belongs to the state of felicity ; the time of our probation must be occupied with cutting away the sources of scandal and triumphing over temptation: the former is the lot of the saints in glory, the latter appertains to the trial of virtue.