The Exaltation of the Cross

** God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ ’? (Gal. vi. 14).

Tue glory of the Christian must of necessity coincide with the glory of God, since the Christian finds nothing worthy of his ambition and courage, save the things divine, the things immortal. Now, the glory of God consists in two things: His absolute power and His infinite mercy; for, to be glorious demands greatness and also a display of that greatness. If this display is not the outcome of solid greatness it is a feeble glimmer, a mere will-of-the-wisp; and if the greatness is obscured it cannot shine with that pure brilliant lustre without which it is impossible for glory to subsist. Therefore, I say that the glory of God is in His power and in His mercy. His power renders Him majestic in Himself; His mercy makes Him magnificent in His generosity towards us. By His power He stores up vast, boundless hoards of riches and precious things in the treasury of His Divine Being. But it is His mercy which unlocks that treasury and lavishes its wealth upon

His creatures. Or, to use another figure, power is 1 the source, the fountain-head of the great river; mercy the channel along which its waters flow. Power provides what mercy distributes; and it is from the mingling of the two that there comes that Divine splendour which we call the glory of God.

Now, it is in the Cross that the power and the mercy of God are most signally displayed; and this is why St. Paul, who says that the whole Gospel is summed up in the Cross, calls that Gospel the strength and the power of God (1 Cor. i. 17-18). More than this, he preaches no other thing to us than that the Cross reconciles us with God and secures to us His pardoning mercy through our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. iii. 15-18; Col. i. 20). Therefore, it is true that the Cross is the glory. of Christians; and when I shall have shown you in the Passion and Death of our Divine Master these two transcendent attributes of power and mercy, I shall be able to say, with the great Apostle: God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of Jesus! This is the subject on which I now ask you to meditate. Let us look together upon the two arms of the Cross of our adorable Saviour: in the one I see an infinite treasure of power, in the other a vast, inexhaustible well-spring of mercy and forgiveness.*

O Jesus, our Saviour and God! inspire us now so that we may worthily celebrate the glory of Thy Cross. And you, O redeemed people (1 Pet. ii. 9), whom the Precious Blood of Jesus your King has delivered from eternal slavery, contemplate with the deepest reverence and attention the wonders of the triumphant Death of your unconquerable Deliverer.

*It is interesting to compare this present sermon of Bossuet’s with Bourdaloue’s sermon on the Passion from the text 1 Cor. i. 22-24;

Let us, with His Divine aid, glorify His Almighty power in the Exaltation of His Cross.

THE POWER oF GoD

If you contemplate our Lord Jesus Christ abandoned to the fury of His executioners and rendering up His soul in the midst of incredible torments, do not for one moment imagine that He is reduced to this extremity by weakness or infirmity. No; it is not the severity of His sufferings which brings about His Death, He dies because it is His will to die; He leaves the world (says St. Augustine) without coercion on the part of others, because He entered it of His own will. Death in mortals is the result of a failure, a giving way of natural forces; death in Jesus Christ is an outcome, an effect of supernatural power. This is why He Himself, speaking of His Death, says: I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it up again (John x. 18); from which words you see clearly that He puts His Death and His Resurrection on one and the same plane, and that He glories no less in His power to die than in His power to rise again.

And, indeed, must there not have been in our Divine Lord Himself an infallible preservative against death, since by His word alone He restored to life bodies already beginning to decay, already touched by corruption? Think of the Widow of Naim’s son stretched on his bier, of the little daughter of the Ruler of the Synagogue lifeless on her bed, of Lazarus four days dead and with the taint of the grave upon him; did not all these experience the power of that vivifying voice? He, then, Who could thus restore

B life to others could assuredly most easily preserve it for Himself. It would be absolutely useless for you to attempt to dry up mighty rivers or fountains of living water; as fast as you drew from them, so fast would the inexhaustible source from which they flowed replenish them, enriching them continually with fresh and copious streams: and thus it was with our Divine Saviour. He had within Himself the fount of Life Eternal, a spring of living water so abundant that it could never be exhausted. Do your worst, executioners, strike blows as heavy as you please, make a thousand wounds as deep and as cruel as you will in the adorable Body of my Saviour, hoping that as the Precious Blood pours from those ghastly wounds, the very life of the Divine Victim will ebb away with it. It is all in vain. The source of life is deep, deep down within Him, you cannot reach it, you cannot exhaust it or dry it up; it will flow on, and it will never cease to flow unless His own power restrains its course. Yet what your hatred cannot do His Love will do for our salvation. He Who rules and orders at His pleasure both health and sickness, He Himself will command life to withdraw for a time from His own Divine Body. It is not His will that any necessity of nature should have a share in His Death, because He reserves all the glory of it for the infinite Love which he bears to men. Thus you see that our Master died by the exercise of His own Divine power, and not from weakness.

St. John the Evangelist also calls our attention to a most important fact, namely, that our Saviour when hanging on the Cross reviewed in thought all that had been written of Him in Prophecy, and seeing that nothing more remained for Him to do but to taste the bitter cup which the Psalmist had foretold should be given to Him, He asked for something to drink: I thirst. He cried out thus, that all things might be fulfilled (John xix. 28). Then, after having just tasted the gall and vinegar which were offered to Him, He Himself declared that all was consummated, that He had fulfilled in every minutest point the will of His Eternal Father; and finally, seeing nothing more that could keep Him any longer in this poor world of ours, lifting His voice with a loud and piercing cry He rendered up His Divine soul to God. Everything in this dying scene on Calvary was so calm, so free, so premeditated, that it was not difficult to judge that no man had deprived Him of life, but that He had given it Himself of His own free, uncontrolled will. Of this He had already assured us: No man taketh My life away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself (John x. 18).

O glory! O power of the Crucified! Whom else have we ever seen fall asleep so exactly when he willed as Jesus died exactly when it pleased Him to die? What man, intending to start on a journey, fixes the hour of his departure so precisely as our Divine Lord fixed the hour of His decease? Therefore it was that the centurion who had orders to keep guard upon the Cross, considering the calmness, the deliberation even of this death, and hearing the great cry with which the Saviour of the world drew His last breath, marvelling to see so much strength in this extremity of weakness, was filled with awe and conviction, and exclaimed loudly, so that all bystanders could hear: Truly, this man is the Son of God! Yes, this centurion who thought nothing of the living Saviour, recognised so much power in His death that it forced from him this confession of our Lord’s Divinity.

Shall I now, to the glory of the Cross of Jesus, remind you how the death which He suffered upon that Cross moved heaven and earth, darkening sun and moon, disturbing the course of the elements, making all the forces of nature tremble in apprehension of a return of the disorder and dread confusion of chaos? I might indeed remind you of all this, if it were not my desire to dwell upon far greater things. The Cross of Jesus has done more than reverse and lead captive the forces of nature. It has conquered the powers of darkness, Satan and his myriad host; it has brought down to the dust the pride and arrogance of men; it has proved their so-called wisdom to be mere folly and ignorance; it has triumphed over their hard and perverse hearts. To have gained such a victory I consider to be a far more glorious conquest than to have upset the course of the universe, because I can see nothing in all that universe more stubborn, more proud, more indomitable than the heart of man. It is this conquest which seems to me to display most wonderfully the power of the Cross, and I think that you will presently form the same opinion.

Power is most fully displayed in victory, especially when that victory is gained over proud and daring enemies. Now, this God Who is so infinitely good and merciful, under Whose dominion all creatures would be happy if they were submissive; this great eternal God has always had among those creatures rebels and enemies, because some have always been ungrateful and insolent. It was necessary that those rebels should be conquered; but why conquer them by the Cross? This is the miracle of Almighty power, this is the great mystery of Christianity. Let us, under the guidance of the Holy Scriptures, penetrate into the depths of these adorable truths.

Let me tell you that the greatest enemy of God, the one most intolerable to Him, the one in most direct opposition to His greatness and His supreme sovereignty, is Pride. And how is this? It is because a proud man would, if he could, be master of everything; he really believes that all things are his due; his custom is to attribute everything to himself; and thus he makes himself his own god, shaking off the yoke of sovereign authority. This is why Satan, having raised himself by his extraordinary pride to great apparent eminence, declared (as the Scriptures tell us) that he would ascend above the height of the clouds and be like the Most High (Is. xiv. 14): and God Himself often declares that He is a jealous God (Exod. xxxiv. 14) Who cannot endure the proud; that He will drive away the haughty and the high-minded from before His face, because they set themselves up as His rivals and would make themselves equal to Him, the one eternal Almighty God. Thus we see that Pride is undoubtedly the chief of all God’s enemies.

Indeed, is it not true that pride has stirred both _ heaven and earth to rebellion against their Creator? In the beginning, Pride climbed up into Heaven, where the Throne of the Eternal God stands immutable and glorious, and there seduced the angels from their allegiance. It carried thus the torch of rebellion even into the sanctuary of the Most High; then descending upon earth, having already won over to its side this band of fallen angels, it makes use of them to subjugate men. Lucifer, prince of this rebellious host, still keeping even in the depths of Hell all his original pride and daring, conceives a plan no less terrible than audacious. He resolves to gain a complete mastery over man because God | honours and favours him; but, knowing that he cannot succeed in this design so long as men remain subject to their Creator, he first makes them rebels, in order afterwards to make them slaves. To make them rebels, he must first make them proud. He therefore inspires them with that arrogance which possesses him: hence the history of all our woes; hence that long train of evils which afflict our nature, oppressed as it is by the tyranny of the Devil. Inflated with this success, he openly declares himself the rival of God, he abolishes His worship in all parts of the earth, he sets himself up to be adored by all whom he has led captive by his tyranny. This is why the Son of God calls Satan the prince of this world (John xii. 8); and the Apostle, in still more vehement language, calls him the god of this world (2 Cor. iv. 4). Thus has Pride armed heaven and earth, striving to pull down the Throne of God. Pride is the father of idolatry; for it is through pride that men, despising lawful authority and full of self-love and self-esteem, have made divinities for themselves on their own pattern. They would have no other gods than these; they deified and adored their own errors and passions. Truly they were worthy to have gods of stone and brass, and to serve inanimaté creatures; they who had wearied of the worship of the living God, that God Who had formed them in His own image! Thus all creatures, stirred and agitated by the spirit of pride which was dominating the whole universe, made war against their Creator with impotent fury.*

Arise, O Lord, and let Thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Thee flee from before Thy face! (Ps. Ixvii. 1). But, O God, with what weapons wilt Thou arm Thyself to destroy these infuriated hosts? I see neither Thy thunderbolts, nor Thy lightning, nor any tokens of that terrible majesty before which the very mountains melt like wax! I see only a mangled bleeding Body, an infamous and cruel Death, a Cross and a Crown of Thorns. These are Thy sole munitions of war; this is all that Thou dost bring forward to oppose Thine enemies. Yes; so it is, and justly, justly. There is a reason for this; a reason So strong, so firmly grounded, that nothing can shake it. Let us consider it.

To oppose pride by force would be to honour it. Pride must be conquered by absolute weakness. It is not enough that pride should succumb, unless at the same time it is forced to acknowledge its impotence; it must be worsted by the very weapons which it holds in the greatest contempt. O Satan, you rose up against God, armed with your utmost strength; God will descend upon you, armed only with weakness, to show you how He derides and scorns your audacious plans and projects. You desired to be man’s god; a Man will be your God: you brought death into the world; death will ruin all your schemes and intentions: you established your empire by making the hearts of men cling fondly and tenaciously to empty honours, uncertain riches, illusive pleasures; contempt, poverty, extremest suffering, in a word, the Cross, will lay waste your

*Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, books i-iii.

empire and sweep it from the face of the earth. Oh, marvellous power of the Cross of Jesus!

The truths of God were banished from the earth, and the darkness of idolatry settled down upon it. It is a singular but certain fact that the most civilised people were those whose forms of religion were the most absurd. They boasted of knowing everything, and yet were so miserable as not to know God! They were marvellously successful in whatever they undertook or attempted to grasp; yet in the matter of religion, the beginning and the end, the sum total of human life, they were positive fools. Who could believe that the Egyptians, the fathers of philosophy; the Greeks, the masters of the fine arts; the Romans, so grave and thoughtful that their strength of mind and of intellect made them dominate the world; who (I say) could have believed that men such as these would have worshipped brute beasts, the elements, inanimate creatures, deifying parricides and the vilest of reprobates; and that not only malignant diseases, but even the most infamous vices and the most brutal passions would have had their temples in Rome?* Who would not be forced to believe and to say that God had given up to the darkness of error those proud and haughty intellects which refused to acknowledge Him; and that, as they had abandoned the true Light, the God of this world had blinded them, so that they might not see what they were and whither they were tending?

Thus the Devil held captive the world and the masters of the world, held them captive and-trembling under the yoke of servile religions of which,

*Cf. Déllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, English trans. (London, 1862).

however, they were no less jealous than of the greatness and power of their republic. What could be more wicked than their deities? What more superstitious than their sacrifices? What more impure than their profane mysteries? What more cruel than their public games which formed part of their religious worship, games fit only for savage beasts, in which their false deities were gorged and sated with human blood? And yet so many great philosophers, so many lofty intellects who were compelled by the very beauty and completeness of the ordering of the universe to recognise that there could be but one Supreme Being, one God ruling and governing nature and its forces; even these men (I say), revolted as they were by such disorders, could not induce their fellow-men to abandon them!* With all their sublime reasoning, with all their magnificent eloquence,

*Seneca laments the fact of almost daily divorce in Rome in her most cultured period. Juvenal, who lashed the vices and vicious of his day, tells us of one woman who by divorce married eight husbands in five months. Even the ‘ divine’ Plato, the most ‘naturally Christian’ of the pagan philosophers, advocated a community of wives, and on the ground that the children would then become more exclusively the property of the State. Hymen, the god of marriage, was represented in Roman mythology as the son of Venus, the goddess of impurity, by Bacchus, the god of drunkenness. How degraded was woman, whom God made far purer than man! Such was the world when in the stable of Bethlehem, the birthplace of civilisation, stood a woman.”— ArcupBisHop P. J. RYAN.

** When scepticism alleges that our advanced morality (such as it is) is really the work, not of Christianity, but of civilisation, require it to show cause why this advanced morality has never grown up except under the egis of the Gospel; why the old civilisations were one and all smitten with decay and degenerated in moral tissue even before they lost their intellectual vigour. When you are assured that marriage and the laws of purity are safe, ask how it was that the ancients in these capital respects marched continually downwards, and that only in Christian times and lands have these laws come to and maintained authority.”— W. E. GapsTone.

they could not convince the people of the folly and banefulness of their religious ceremonies and orgies, or of the hideous depravity of their beliefs.

But as soon as the Cross of Jesus began to be visible to the eyes of the world, as soon as the Passion and Death of the Son of God began to be preached, the lying oracles were silenced, little by little the false gods were dashed from their pedestals; Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, and the Egyptian Serapis ceased to reign over the hearts or lives of men, and ere long all that had been adored on earth was either forgotten or despised. The world at last opened its eyes to recognise God the Creator, and marvelled at its own blindness and ignorance. The very foolishness of Christianity was more powerful than the most sublime philosophy.* The simplicity of twelve poor fishermen, unaided by patronage or eloquence or art, changed the face of the universe. These fishermen were more successful than even that famous Athenian Timotheus, the son of Conon, of whom Plutarch tells us that Fortune drove whole cities into his net. These twelve fishermen gathered all men into their Divine nets, thus completing the conquest made by Jesus Christ, Who restores all things to His Eternal Father by His Cross.

Yes, by His Cross. For we must remember that

*Christianity has marched for fifteen hundred years at the head of human civilisation, and has driven, harnessed to its chariot as the horses of a triumphal car, the chief intellectual and material forces of the world. Its learning has been the learning of the world, its art the art of the world, its genius the genius of the world, its greatness, glory, grandeur, and majesty have been almost, though not absolutely, all that in these respects the world has had to boast of.’”-—W. E. Giapstong, Studies on Homer.

“Certainly the highest and most varied civilisation that men have ever known has not come into being without Christianity.”’— Dean R. W. Cuurcu, The Gifts of Civilisation.

while our Divine Lord walked on earth among us, holding daily converse with men, although He worked many wonderful miracles, although the words of eternal life were ever on His lips, yet He had but few followers. Even His friends were often ashamed to find themselves reckoned as the disciples of so despised a Master. But as soon as He had ascended the Hill of Calvary and died upon the Cross, what multitudes of people flocked to Him! O my God! what is this new marvel? Basely used and con- -temned in life, after death He reigns. His Divine teaching which should have made Him revered and honoured by all, only nailed Him to the Cross; and that Tree of Shame, which, one would think, must have made Him more than ever an object of contempt, on the contrary wins for Him the reverence, nay, the adoration of a whole universe. As soon as He is able to stretch forth His loving arms, a contrite world rushes into their embrace. This mysterious grain of wheat has no sooner fallen into the ground than it is multiplied by its own corruption. He is no sooner lifted up from the earth than (as He had predicted in His Gospel) He draws all things to Himself (John xii. 82). Thus He turned the instrument of a shameful, agonized death into a heavenly lever which should raise the hearts of men. The Saviour fell down from the Cross into the Sepulchre, and, by a marvellous counter-stroke of Divine power, the whole world fell down at His feet.

See this concourse of people flocking from all the quarters of the globe to the Cross of Jesus; they are not only glorying to bear His name, but eager to suffer as He suffered, to be despised for His sake, to die for love of Him. If among the ancients any one despised death, this extraordinary courage was admired as something almost unprecedented. Thanks to the power of the Cross of Jesus, examples of such courage are so common among us that their very number prevents us from recording them. Ever since the Death of a God has been preached, death for us has not only lost its terrors, but has had its delights. Decrepid old age, tender childhood, timid and delicate maidenhood, each and all have hurried to meet it as they might have hurried to join in some triumphal procession or to receive a crown of victory. This is why it was a common saying in those days, that the Christians were an order of men especially destined and chosen out for death. The all-powerful Cross had familiarised them with that hideous phantom, from which nature itself shrinks with horror. The world wearied sooner of inflicting tortures and death, than did the Christians of enduring them. All the devices of cruelty were exhausted in efforts to shake the Faith of our Fathers; all the forces of the world were brought to bear upon their constancy and heroism. Ah! how blind was that fury, which only strengthened and settled what it sought to destroy! It was by the Cross that Jesus our King resolved to conquer the world; this is why He signs with this victorious Cross His brave soldiers, thus making them partakers of His sufferings. By the power of the Cross they will overcome the world; by their patience they will disarm their persecutors; in the end their meekness and gentleness will convert their enemies.

The Cross of Jesus must be adored throughout the world; His empire must have no bounds, because His power has no limit. It will extend its dominion to the most distant ptovinces, the most inaccessible islands, the most unknown nations and _ peoples. What a joy to see Greeks and Barbarians, Scythians and Arabians, the inhabitants of the Indies, the people of the whole world, united together to form a new kingdom, which will have the Gospel for its Law, Jesus for its Head, and the Cross for its Standard! Even Rome, that proud city, for so long a time drunk with the blood of Christian martyrs; Rome, the mistress of the world, will now, by the religion of Jesus, carry her conquests a thousand times further than she ever carried them by her armies, and we shall see her paying more honour to the tomb of a poor fisherman than she ever did to the Temple of her Romulus. And your turn comes too, proud Cesars! Jesus Crucified desires to see the majesty of the Empire prostrate at His feet. Constantine, that victorious Emperor, at the time appointed by Providence will raise the Standard of the Cross above the Roman Eagles. By the Cross he will overcome tyrants, by the Cross he will give peace and splendour to the Empire, by the Cross he will strengthen his own house; the Cross will be his sole trophy, for he will proclaim to the world that by the powerful aid of this salutary sign he has conquered.

Truly, I can no longer wonder, O Jesus my Lord, that so short a time before Thy death Thou didst declare with so much joy that the hour of Thy triumph was approaching, and that the prince of this world was soon to be cast out (John xii. 31). Neither can I wonder any more when I see Thee in the Palace of Herod, and before the Tribunal of Pilate, calm and unmoved, confronting all the pomp of the Royal Court and the majesty of the Romans with the dignity of Thy marvellous silence. It is because Thou dost feel and know so well that the Day of Thy Crucifixion will be for Thee a day of triumph. And Thou hast triumphed, O Jesus, and hast in Thy triumph led the powers of darkness captive and trembling behind Thy Cross. Thou hast conquered the world (as St. Augustine says) not by iron but by wood. For it was worthy of Thy greatness to conquer strength by weakness, and the loftiest things by the meanest, and that which is by that which is not, as says the Apostle (1 Cor. i. 27-28); and false and haughty wisdom by wise and modest foolishness. By this means Thou hast made manifest to the world that nothing in Thy hands is weak, and that Thou canst make thunderbolts and instruments of destruction out of whatever it may please Thee to use as such.

But let me remind you of yet another convincing proof, given to us by Jesus Christ, that it was indeed the Cross which worked all those wonders. It was in the reign of Constantine, at the time when the Church was at last permitted to enjoy peace, when the true God was publicly acknowledged everywhere, when all the nations of the world confessed the Divinity of Jesus; the Cross of our dear Master, which until then had never appeared before the eyes of men, was made manifest and acknowledged owing to the extraordinary miracles wrought by it to the glory and ennobling of those days. It was exalted in a magnificent temple, to the glory of the Crucified and the consolation of the faithful. Was it merely owing to a happy combination of circumstances that this happened at that particular time? Could so great an event have occurred without some special mysterious ordering of Providence? No, we may be sure that it could not. This exaltation of the Cross was decreed that all might bow beneath the yoke of our Divine Saviour. The powers of Hell are confounded; the whole world comes to adore the true God in the Church which is His Temple, and through Jesus Christ Who is His great High Priest.

It is time, O holy Cross, that all men should at last behold you. These miracles have been worked by you! the idols have been shattered by you! you have subdued the people! you have given victory to those valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ who have overcome all things by patience! You, holy Cross, will be signed upon the brow of Kings; you will be the chief ornament in the crown of Emperors; you will be the hope and the glory of Christians, who will say with the Apostle St. Paul that they desire to glory in nothing, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and all this because the Cross, by the signal victory which it has gained in illuminating the world with so glorious a display of almighty power, has at the same time poured forth upon us from the storehouse of its boundless wealth the treasures of God’s infinite mercy.

Tue Mercy or Gop.

Truly it is a glorious thing for us to serve a God so powerful as Him Whom we adore; but it is His Mercy which above all else compels us to glory in Him and in Him only. Who would not deem himself most highly, nay, infinitely honoured by the fact that a God so great, so powerful, esteems it His chief glory to enrich us His poor creatures with His wealth? And does not such mercy urge us on more and more to make it our glory to praise and adore Him? This God, so far above us by His transcendent power, yet in His tender mercy condescends to stoop even to us, and to communicate to us all that He has, all that He is. Let us confess that this fills our hearts with love and grateful wonder, and that if He is glorious in that supreme power which makes us tremble lest His mercy should not be vouchsafed to us, He is no less glorious in the mercy which makes us love His almighty power.

For there is glory in making oneself loved; and this is why Tertullian teaches us that in the beginning God’s chief attribute was mercy, and that His one principal desire was to do us good. For this statement the great writer gives a very sufficient reason. He says that in order to find out what is our primary and dominant desire, we must select that which we find to be the most natural, since nature is the moving spring of all the rest. Now, to Almighty God there is nothing more natural than this desire to enrich us with the profusion of His graces. As a spring naturally sends forth its waters, and as the sun naturally sheds its beams abroad, so does God naturally do good. Being in Himself all goodness, and, by His natural dignity, abounding in infinite treasures, He must also of necessity by His very nature be beneficent, generous, magnificent in His dealings with His creatures.

When He punishes you, sinner as you are, the reason for His so doing is not in Himself; it is not His will that any man should perish. It is your malice, your ingratitude, which draws down His indignation upon your head. On the other hand, if we desire that He should do us good, we need not seek far to find motives which may induce Him to do so; His nature is of itself so beneficent that no other motive is required; in it there is a sufficient reason for the exercise of His benevolence, and one ever present with Him. When He inflicts upon us any pain in punishment, or what we consider to be evil, the cause of the infliction lies in ourselves; when He does us any good, He does it on account of Himself. **That He is kind and merciful to us,’ says Tertullian, ‘‘ is the result of His own nature, this goodness is a part of His very being; that He is just is the result of what we ourselves are.’? It is we who by our crimes furnish material for His just vengeance. It is, then, true to say that Almighty God the Creator could not begin His stupendous work except by pouring forth the treasures of His goodness upon all His creatures, and that the display of mercy is therefore His greatest glory.

And now, I ask you, why was it that Jesus our Saviour, our Love and our Hope, our High Priest, our Advocate, our Intercessor; why was it that He hung upon the Cross and died upon that accursed Tree? What does the great Apostle St. Paul teach us about this? Was it not that He might renew all things in His own Person, that He might bring back to men all their original perfection, restoring in them the image of His Eternal Father, reforming them according to the pattern of the Divine Artificer? This is the teaching of Christianity; and what led our Saviour to wish to die upon the Cross was that His Sacred Heart was stirred by the same tender emotions of pity, kindness, and infinite love as had moved the heart of the Creator when the world, new-born from chaos, left His almighty hands.

c

Indeed, was it not upon the Cross that Jesus offered before the Throne of God, not the blood of bulls and heifers, but His own Sacred Flesh formed by the Holy Ghost, a holy and living oblation for the expiation of our sins? Was it not on the Cross that He reconciled all things to Himself, purifying our souls indeed by the virtue of His Precious Blood? (Col. i. 20). Men, as we have already said, had rebelled against God, and Divine Justice was therefore ready to lure them down into the pit of destruction, into the company of devils whose counsels they had followed and whose presumption they had imitated, when suddenly our merciful High Priest appeared and stood between God and men. He presented Himself that He might bear the blows which were about to fall upon our heads. Laid upon the Altar of the Cross, He shed His Blood and poured it forth upon men; uplifting His innocent hands to God, He thus made peace between Heaven and Earth (Col. i. 20), He arrested the course of Divine Justice, and changed implacable wrath into infinite, undying mercy.

Bold and defiant as the rebel angels, we had sold ourselves body and soul to them; and Almighty God, the witness silent and awful of this terrible bargain, of this accursed contract, had commanded that we should be delivered up into their hands. He had so decreed by a final, irrevocable sentence. But what did our Saviour and Deliverer Jesus then do? St. Paul tells us: He took the handwriting of the decree that was against us, and fastened it to the Cross (Col. 1. 14). And why? It was, O Eternal Father, in order that Thou mightest not see the sentence which condemned us, but only the Sacrifice which absolves us, and that if Thou shouldst recall to memory the sin which incurred Thine anger, Thou shouldst at the same time remember the Precious Blood which appeases that wrath. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: Your league with death shall be abolished, and your covenant with Hell shall not stand (Is. Xxvill. 18). Jesus broke that accursed compact by means of a better covenant: and from that moment hope dawned for us. Heaven, which was as brass for us, began to pour down its graces upon miserable mortals; Jesus opened its gates to us by His Cross.

This is why I compare it to that mysterious ladder on which the Patriarch Jacob saw angels ascending and descending (Gen. xxvill. 12). Are we not taught by this vision as by a figure that the Cross of our Saviour re-opens communication between Heaven and Earth; that by this Cross the Holy Angels come down to us as to their brothers and allies, and at the same time teach us that by this Cross we may mount up to Heaven with them, there to fill the places which their ungrateful comrades left vacant.

In what, then, should we glory but in the Cross of Jesus? For, as St. Paul tells us, if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the Death of His Son, much more now that we have peace with Him through the Blood of the Mediator will He not load us with His blessings? and if when we were sinners Jesus Christ loved us so much as to die for love of us, now that we are justified by His Blood, who can measure the depth of that Divine Love? (Rom. v. 8-10). Yes, truly, if while we were still rebels God showed us such mercy, what will He not do for us now, when by the Cross of our Saviour we have become His children? What is there that He Who spared not His own Son can refuse us? (Rom. viii. 37).

For myself, I can with absolute truth say that this and this alone is my glory, that this is my sole consolation. Were it not for this, into what depths of despair would not the infinity of my sins plunge and engulf me? When I consider the narrowness of the way which God has commanded me to tread, and the incredible difficulty of restraining on a path so slippery a will so volatile and impetuous as mine; when I look down into the almost fathomless depths of the human heart, capable of concealing in its crooked windings and many secret corners such a multitude of corrupt inclinations of which we ourselves are ignorant, I shudder and have too much reason to fear that even in things which appear to me the most innocent there may be sin. And even though I may appear just in the eyes of men, what human standard of justice will keep its ground when brought face to face with Thee, O Eternal God? And who is he who would be able to justify his life if Thou shouldst call him to a strict account of it? (Ps. exlii. 2).If even St. Paul, though he could say with the firmest assurance that he was not conscious of anything amiss in himself, yet added that he feared lest he should not thereby be justified in Thy sight (1 Cor. iv. 4), what shall I (miserable sinner that I am) say, O my God? What must not my troubled conscience dread? Yet, O my merciful High Priest, most faithful, most compassionate, most loving, to Thee I look, and I know that Thou wilt shed calm into my soul. No; as long as I can embrace Thy Cross, I will never lose hope: as long as I can look up to Thee seated at the right hand of Thy Father, clothed in a human nature like my own, bearing on Thy sacred Flesh the scars of those wounds which Thou didst receive for love of me, so long as I can do this I will never believe that humanity, frail and faulty as it is, can cease to be dear to Thee; and the terror of Thy Majesty shall never hinder me from drawing near to the safe shelter of Thine unfailing mercy. This makes me certain that Thou wilt have pity on my miseries; this is why I glory in the Cross and in that alone, because in the Cross only is my hope.

But is it true that we do indeed glory in the Cross of Jesus? Do not our actions too often give the lie to our words? Must we not rather say that the Cross is to us, as it was to the Gentiles, foolishness? Is it not foolishness to you also who disdain poverty, who cannot brook insults and injuries, who run after worldly pleasure, who shun everything that the Cross represents, forgetting that our Lord Jesus Christ found His life in death, His riches in poverty, His delight in suffering, His glory in ignominy? St. Paul told those who wished to establish justice by the works and ceremonies of the Law that if justice had been by the Law then Jesus Christ would have died in vain (Gal. 11. 21). And may I not to-day with even greater reason say that our Divine Lord died upon the Cross in vain, since He died only to make us a people pleasing to God and yet we live lives of so great licence that we almost force unbelievers to blaspheme the holy name by which we are called? In vain did Jesus Christ die upon the Cross that He might overthrow the wisdom of this world, if after His death we continue to lead the same lives, to applaud the same maxims, to find our highest happiness in the same poor fleeting joys. In vain did the Cross cast down and demolish the idols which were scattered all over the world, if we day after day make new idols for ourselves by our own lawless, uncontrolled passions; if we offer sacrifice not indeed to Bacchus but to intemperance, not to Venus but to lust, not to Plutus but to avarice, not to Mars but to vengeance; immolating to them, not slain beasts, but our own souls filled with the Spirit of God, and our bodies which are the temples of the living God, and our members which have become the members of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. vi. 15, 19; Eph. v. 30).

It is then only too certain that the Cross of Jesus is not our glory; for if it were, should we glory as we do in vanities? Why, do you think, does St. Paul not say that he glories in His wisdom, in His power, in His miracles, in His Resurrection? Why does St. Paul say only that he glories in the Death and in the Cross of Jesus Christ? Does he speak without reason? Nay, do you forget how I told you at the very beginning of our meditation that the Cross gathered into itself all the torments, the insults, the things which appear not only the most contemptible but even the most terrible to our reason? This is why St. Paul says that he glories in nothing save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in order to teach us humility, in order to make us understand that for us Christians there is no glory, except in those things which the world despises.

I ask you to tell me what is the sign of the Christian; is it not the Cross? ‘‘ Do we not,’’ says St. Augustine, ‘‘ bless with the Sign of the Cross the water which regenerates us, the Sacrifice which nourishes us, the holy oil which fortifies us? ’? Have you forgotten that the Cross was imprinted upon your foreheads when you were confirmed by the Holy Ghost? And why your foreheads? Because the

EVE brow is the seat of modesty. Jesus Christ by the Cross wished to harden our brow against that false shame which makes us blush for things which men consider small and mean, but which are great and noble in the eyes of God. How many times have we not blushed at having done well? How often have not the most sacred occupations and duties seemed to us mean and contemptible? The Cross, imprinted on our foreheads, arms us with a noble and dignified effrontery to resist that cowardly, false modesty; it teaches us that the honours of the world are not for us. When magistrates wish to let the public know that certain individuals who had been brought up before them to be tried and have undergone their punishment and are set at liberty, are yet wholly undeserving of any kind of respect and unfit for any honourable employment, they have them branded with some disgraceful mark, which shall always proclaim their vileness. Well, this circumstance suggests a thought to me. Almighty God has imprinted upon our foreheads, upon the noblest and most prominent portion of our body, a mark glorious indeed in His sight but full of ignominy in the eyes of men, in order to make us incapable of receiving any honour upon earth. It is not that in order to be good Christians we must be unworthy of worldly honours, but that the honours of the world are not worthy of us. In the opinion of the world we are infamous, because the world considers that the Cross which is our glory is an epitome of infamy.

And yet, wonderful to say, as though Christianity and the Cross of Jesus were a mere fable, our one ambition is the attainment of this world’s glory; Christian humility seems to us a folly. The early

Christians considered that even Emperors were scarcely worthy to share their glorious Faith; but now all things are changed. We, in our day, think that Faith hardly worthy to be professed by the great ones of the earth; our all-engrossing desire is to be applauded, respected, highly honoured by the world; the lowliness, the insignificance of the Cross is, in our eyes, detestable.

But, you say, my very position, my business in life, makes it absolutely necessary that I should make myself respected and treated with proper distinction. If men in authority, magistrates and so forth, are not counted as honourable and given their due respect, consider what disorder, what lawlessness, would result. Yes, that is true, but let me tell you how a Christian should deal with worldly honours. In the first place he must receive them with modesty, knowing full well how vain and empty they are. Then let him accept them for the maintenance of order and justice among his fellow-men, not for the sake of any pomp or display for himself. Let him imitate the Emperor Heraclius, who laid aside his purple and clothed himself as a poor man, that he might carry the Cross of Jesus. Thus should the faithful lay. down all their honours before the Cross of our Divine Master; there let them appear as poor, naked, beggars and suppliants. There let them consider that by birth all men are their equals, and that the poor are by the teaching of Christianity even in some sort their superiors. There let them reflect that the honour paid to them is not so paid on account of their own greatness, but to maintain order in the world, such order as could not otherwise exist. Let them remember that this order will soon, however, pass away; and then a new order of things will arise, in which those will be the greatest who here below lived the holiest lives and who gloried in nothing save in the Cross of Jesus our Saviour and God. Let us, then, filled with this thought, venerate the Cross; let us, so thinking, so believing, assist at the Holy Sacrifice which is offered in remembrance of the Passion of the Son of God. May our Lord Jesus Christ make us understand how august, how glorious is His Cross, since it alone can display to men the almighty power of God, since it alone can pour down upon them the vast treasures of His infinite mercy, by opening to them the entrance into unending joy.