The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

‘* Christ being risen from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over Him. For in that He died to sin, He died once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God ” (Rom. vii. 9-10).

LooxING upon the splendid monuments of the dead, beneath which the great ones of the earth seem to be trying to hide the shame of their own corruption, I am filled with amazement at the extreme folly of men who raise trophies of such magnificence over a little handful of dust and a few dry bones. Of what avail is all this wealth of marble and bronze? this dignified title of monument or mausoleum? They are but flimsy disguises of the truth; they only serve to accentuate the triumph of death, and to illustrate the fact of our nothingness. But it is not thus with the grave of my Saviour. Death, it is true, has so far gained the mastery over the Divine Body as to lay it low in the dust, lifeless and motionless; but there the cruel power is arrested, it can go no further, it cannot touch with corruption the Sacred Flesh; and as Almighty God, according to Job (Job xxxviii. 11), said to the raging sea, so may we now say to Death: Here in this sepulchre your power ceases; this stone like an invincible rampart stops your ad- 56

6s geht vance; here your embrace cannot bear the seeds of corruption.

It was for this reason that our Lord Jesus Christ, after having of His own will undergone a most shameful death, yet chose that His Sepulchre should be a place set apart as it were from all other graves, a place of peculiar honour and dignity. It was in the midst of a garden, newly hewn out of a rock; and it was His will that it should be a virgin tomb like the womb of His Blessed Mother, a place in which no one yet had ever been laid. Moreover, a hundred pounds of the most precious myrrh and spices must be brought to embalm the Sacred Body, and linen the whitest to enfold it. And after His having been throughout the whole course of His earthly life filled with reproaches, as the Prophet tells us (Lam. iii. 80), one would almost say that in His burial He becomes fastidious and careful; and why is this, if not because He would have us understand that He was preparing for Himself a bed rather than a grave? There He rested calmly until the hour for rising had come; then in one moment He awoke, rose up, and came forth to awaken the slumbering faith of His Apostles.

On this first Easter Day the three holy Marys hastened in the early dawn to the garden, seeking their beloved Master in the tomb in which pious hands had laid Him. Angels are guarding it; and what are these words which fall upon the women’s wondering ears? Why seek you the living with the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Behold the place where they laid Him (Luke xxiv. 5; Mark XVl. 6). O day of triumph for our Saviour! O day of joy for all the faithful! I adore Thee with my whole heart, O Jesus victorious over death! This is indeed

Thy Pasch, for it is Thy passage from death to life. Grant us Thy grace, O Divine Lord, that we may keep our Pasch with Thee, by passing from the death of sin to a holy newness of life!

But how shall I teach you what this newness of life is, all that it implies and demands of you? There is no better way than by sending you to learn your lesson in the school of the Holy Ghost and by bidding you practise diligently all the evangelical precepts. Since, however, holy doctrine is an excellent preparation for leading a good life, and since the Paschal solemnities which we are beginning to celebrate to-day invite us to dwell on these subjects, do not listen to my own thoughts but rather to those of the great Apostle St. Paul, in which, in three different passages, he reasons on the principles laid down in my text and draws from them the following conclusions. (1) Jesus, he tells us, died; and he adds: He died to sin (Rom. vi. 10). If, then, we desire to participate in His death, we too must die to sin. (2) Jesus being dead took to Himself a new life, a life no longer according to the flesh but wholly and entirely according to God, for in that He liveth, He liveth unto God (Rom. vi. 10). We too, then, must pass on to a new life, which must be absolutely supernatural. (3) Jesus being risen from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him (Rom. vi. 9). If, then, we would rise again with Him, we must live now and to all eternity in His grace, and the death of sin must have no more dominion over our souls.

Our Saviour died, let us die with Him. He rose again, let us rise with Him. He lives for ever, let us live for ever with Him, Let us bring those great truths home to our hearts, by trying to understand the simple teaching of the Gospel as regards them; and above all things let us learn from them how absolute is the necessity that we should die with our Divine Saviour.

OUR DYING WITH CHRIST.

Why is it, think you, that St. Paul speaks of nothing but death and burial, when he wishes to depict the conversion of a sinner; and why does he continually insist upon the fact that we must die to sin with Jesus Christ and must crucify the old man; why does he use these and many other similar assertions which at first sight seem strange to us? Surely this is somewhat exaggerated language if he only means to imply that we must curb our evil inclinations and make some change for the better in our mode of thinking, speaking, and acting! Human nature is of itself so variable, our dispositions and affections are so liable to alteration, that one would have thought he might have used simpler and less far-fetched expressions when speaking on this subject. It seems to me, however, that there is some deep, hidden meaning in this apparently extravagant form of language; a meaning which by that very extravagance he invites us to search out and having found to lay to heart. Let me try to help you in this search, first by showing you why the conversion of the sinner is called a death (and the reason for this lies in one of the properties of sin); secondly, by showing you that we must die to sin with our Saviour (and this insisted point will be considered in the light of a remedy applied to sin as a disease). From these two considerations will naturally spring a third for the instruction of sinners.

All sin, we know, must have its origin or first principle in the will; but in man it has a most strange property, namely, that it is at the same time voluntary and natural. The Pelagians, not understanding this truth, could not endure to be told that we were all born in original sin. They vehemently asserted that to teach this doctrine was to insult and do outrage to nature, the handiwork of God. They did not understand that the human race having been tainted and corrupted at its very source by the voluntary act, by the deliberate wilful sin of its first parent, that same taint and corruption of will had been handed down as a second nature to all his descendants. Need I dwell more fully upon the details of the sad story of that first sin which brought death into the world and all our woes? You know only too well how the first man, seduced by the deceitful counsels of the cunning serpent, longed ardently to make a trial of his liberty, and yielded to that longing. The holy Pontiff Innocent tells us that our father Adam, not acknowledging that all his powers of mind and body, his free will, intelligence, his senses, and every other natural gift were bestowed upon him by the hand of God to Whom they belonged, used them with careless inconsideration; that, his heart being thus lifted up against the Divine Giver, he lost that natural empire over himself which he had hitherto possessed. Shame which until now had been unknown to him was the first of all his passions to reveal to him the rebellion of the others. He became inflated with a vehement longing to know good and evil; and so it was (as Tertullian says) that, by the just judgment of God, the first thing of which he became conscious was that he must needs blush. This is most strange. Suddenly, in an instant’s flash, he perceived his nakedness (Gen. iii. 7); that is to say, he began to feel an unexpected and hitherto unknown revolt and strife within him; and the flesh rising up in rebellion against his reason, he was confused and perplexed at his inability to quell and subjugate it.

But perhaps I am dwelling too long upon these well-known facts; for the present it is enough to remind you that we are all unhappily born of these shameful passions, which being kindled by sin rise up in the flesh to the confusion of the spirit. This is only too true, and St. Augustine draws from the fact the same conclusion as that which St. John tells us was drawn by our Saviour when He said: That which is born of the flesh, is flesh (John iii. 6). What (asks St. Augustine) is the meaning of this assertion? The flesh, here so-called in the phraseology of Scripture, signifies those corrupt inclinations which are in opposition to the law of God; it is therefore as though our Divine Master had said, speaking more at length and more definitely: ‘O miserable degraded humanity! poor souls of men! all you who are born of this revolt are, by a natural sequence, born rebels against God, the enemies of your Creator. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; you receive at one and the same time and through the same channels the life of the body and the death of the soul.* That which

*To a gentleman who said that he did not believe in original sin, nor in the necessity of baptism, and that he could not see how any man of common sense could accept the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the late Archbishop P. J. Ryan, of Philadelphia, replied: ‘‘ You do not believe in original sin; therefore you believe that you were conceived without original sin. But to be conceived without original sin is to have an immaculate engenders you kills you; and the substance of which you are formed being infected at its source, sin attaches itself to and incorporates itself with your very nature. Hence this depth of ignorance, hence these repeated falls, hence these unbridled lusts which are the cause of all the troubles, the agitations, the miseries of human life: That which is born of the flesh, is flesh.? And I ask you to see for yourselves what are the consequences, the results of this fact.

Philosophers teach that birth and death are on the same plane, and almost inseparably united to each other. All that dies has been born; all that is born may die: it is death which deprives us of what birth gives us. You are a man by your birth, you only cease to be a man by death. The union of soul and body is effected by birth; it is death which dissolves that union. Now, until corrupt nature is healed and cured of its disease, to be a man and to be a sinner is one and the same thing; the soul does not cling more closely to the body than does sin with all its evil inclinations cling, so to speak, to the substance of the soul. For if sin has its birth, it will by a natural sequence have its life and its death: it derives its birth from our corrupt nature, its life from our ill-regulated appetites; it is, therefore, not without reason that we give the name of death to that marvellous cure which the healing power of grace effects in our fallen nature, delivering it from the tyranny of sin; not without reason that the conversion of a sinner is called a death. No wonder, then, O great Apostle, that it is your wont to speak of it conception. Therefore, you believe in your own immaculate conception, and in the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, and in everybody’s immaculate conception.”

thus. You would have us understand how deeply seated are our wounds, how sin and the inclination to evil have become in us a second nature, and how, seeing that they were born with us, nothing less strong than death will have power to uproot them from our souls.

Already, as it seems to me, we thus have some light thrown upon this thought of St. Paul’s, drawn, as indeed it is, not from the proud, self-asserting maxims of worldly wisdom, but from the reverent, submissive principles of Christian humility. We feel no shame in avowing the infirmites of our nature; let those who know not their Deliverer, blush for them. On the contrary, we even dare to glory in our infirmities, knowing as we do the mercy of the Great Physician and the virtue of the remedy applied by Him. This remedy is, as you know, the death of our Divine Lord; and since we are touching upon this subject, let us listen to the reasoning of St. Paul. The Son of God, he says, died to sin; therefore, so do you also reckon that you are dead indeed to sin (Rom. vi. 10-11). What does he mean by saying that our Lord died to sin? our Lord Who from the very first moment of His conception always lived in and by grace? If we would grasp the full meaning of the Apostle’s words, we must carry our thoughts back further and lift them a little higher, so that we may come face to face with some very remarkable points in his teaching.

Let me help you in attempting to do this by a homely but yet a painful example. If you have ever happened to find yourselves on the spot where a public execution has just taken place with all its grim attendant circumstances, have you not often been disposed to judge of the heinousness of the condemned man’s crime from the various details of the punishment inflicted and even from the distorted ghastliness of the criminal’s features? You may wonder at my recalling to your mind anything so horrible; but it is because I want to bring home to you the fact that from the nature of the penalty we may always gain some idea of the magnitude of the crime. O my Divine Saviour, may we dare to apply this example to Thee? Yes, undoubtedly, since Thou hast appeared upon earth as a criminal. It was Thy Divine Will to make Thyself like unto sinners; and, although without sin, Thou hast deigned to undergo all its penalties during Thy life upon earth. Thy Sacred Flesh was subject to the same infirmities which sin only had brought upon ours, and therefore it is that St. Paul ventures to say that Thou were in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. viii. 8). Oh, Miracle of Divine goodness! It was not enough that the Son of the Eternal Father should clothe Himself in human flesh, veiling thus His dignity, His Divinity: but, more than this, for love of us He wraps around that Flesh, purer than the light of the sun, and worthy to be adorned with glory and immortality; He wraps around it as a garment the image of our sin! Is not this enough to overwhelm and confound us? What, then, will it be when we realize that by this means our sins are blotted out, our disease is cured. This, this is indeed the supremest, the most amazing feature of Divine Mercy.

Where was the image of sin? In His most Sacred Flesh. Where was sin itself? In you and in me. The Sacred Flesh of the Saviour, that most innocent image of sin, was delivered up into the hands of the ee executioners to be dealt with according to their will. They struck Him, and their blows rebounded upon sin; they crucified Him, and sin was crucified; they deprived Him of life, and at the same moment sin died: this is exactly what the Apostle would have us understand by his words. The Saviour, according to St. Paul’s teaching, died to sin, because He annihilated sin by abandoning to death His innocent Flesh on which He carried the image of the world’s sins.* But may we conclude from this that we too must die with Him, so that we also reckon that we are dead indeed to sin? Yes, assuredly; the sequence is most simple; we need only raise our eyes and contemplate our Divine Master hanging upon the Cross. O my God! how have they treated this innocent Flesh! Whichever way I turn my eyes, I can see no whole part in it! What! Because it bore the image of sin, is it His Will that it should be thus torn and lacerated, while we are so tender, so sparing in our dealings with the sin which is actually alive in our souls! We never mortify our lusts, but rather allow ourselves to be blindly carried away by them. Let us beware of this; let us, this very day, make as it were a loving exchange with our Divine Saviour. Innocent though He was, He put on the similitude of our sins, submitting to the penalty of death; guilty though we are, let us imprint upon ourselves the image of His holy death, so that we may be sharers in His innocence; for when we bear the likeness of His Death, by the marvellous operation of the Spirit

***Tn His Passion the Saviour was carrying the load of the world’s sins, and, all-holy though He was, He carried the image of them on His very face. He looked like some outcast or outlaw who had frightful guilt upon him. He had been made sin for us, Who knew no sin.”-—Carp. NEWMAN.

of God its virtue is applied to our souls. This is why the Apostle exhorts us to bear the image of Jesus Crucified in our mortal bodies, to have His death in our members, to conform ourselves to His death (2 Cor. iv. 10).

But what hand can be skilful, patient, persevering enough to trace in us this resemblance at once so mysterious and so beautiful? Only the hand of Love; Love alone has power to do it. On this glad Easter morning, Love will go with Magdalene, anxious, eager, expectant, to adore the Saviour in His Sepulchre; Love, prostrate before that innocent Body which lies there cold and motionless as the rock which forms its resting place, prostrate and gazing upon the Sacred Form, will produce its lineaments in our souls and bodies. Those Divine Eyes so tender and so sweet, which with one single glance melted St. Peter’s heart so that he wept bitterly, have now lost their gentle heavenly light; Love will lay its hand upon ours and keep them closed to all the vain glitter, the vanities, the follies of this poor world. Those Divine Lips, from which flowed as a living stream the words of eternal life, are sealed by death; Love will for ever close our lips to blasphemy and slander. Love will shut the door of our hearts, so that the idle pleasures of earth can find no entrance there; it will gently but firmly bind our hands, so that they cannot snatch greedily at what is not our own; it will, with a passionate persistence, urge us to throw ourselves in an absolute self-abandonment upon that beloved Corpse, drawing around us as a shroud the grave clothes which enfold our beloved Master. That is what the Apostle means when he tells us that we are buried with Christ in baptism.

The early Christians liked to have the Sign of the Cross imprinted all over their bodies, as though to impress upon their every sense the mark of the Crucified and to be reminded continually of the death which they had undergone in and with Him. Of course we ourselves have this ceremony in constant daily use, but with (I fear) little consideration of all that it demands of us; of that marvellous detachment, that self-surrender, that mortification of the senses, which St. Paul urges upon us, and which those early Christians kept constantly in mind. For we know that as Christians we must all die with Jesus Christ. Yes, we must die, because sin being contracted by birth can only detach itself by a species of death. We must die, because we must apply to ourselves both the similitude and the virtue of our Saviour’s death which is the only cure for our diseases. Those are the two reasons: the first drawn from one of the properties of sin, the second from the quality of the remedy. Let us, in the third place, not forget what is indeed a natural consequence of those reasons.

Listen to the grave and solemn teaching of the great Apostle, and try to enter into its full meaning. Do not for one moment imagine that while speaking to us of nothing but death and burial he is only demanding of us an ordinary and perfunctory change of life. Vain indeed is it to have tried to show you how closely sin clings to our fallen nature, if you still think that it only needs a slight effort to detach yourselves from it, and if you imagine that Christianity only demands of you some superficial, external reformation and the adoption of a few religious practices. This is not St. Paul’s teaching. He bids you treat sin as Jesus Christ treated its similitude in His

F own sacred Flesh. Look at your Crucifix; see if He spared that tortured Body one pang of keenest agony! and then ask yourselves how it is possible that you do not yet understand that you must search down into the deepest recesses of your hearts for whatever evil desires may be growing there, and root them up without one moment’s hesitation. Yes; I tell you, and our Divine Lord Himself told you, that whatever the object may be which separates you from God, even should it be more precious to you than the sight of your eyes, more necessary to you than the cunning of your right hand, dearer to you than life itself, it must be cut off from you (Matt. v. 30). It is not without reason that the Apostle takes death so continually as the text of his discourse; he would have us understand that we must wage war unceasingly, yes, and war to the knife, against our most natural inclinations, even should those inclinations be bound up indissolubly with our very heart-strings so that death to them means death to ourselves also. Then, arm yourselves with the sword of justice; conquer by continual acts of penance the sin which strives to reign in your bodies. Do not plead the idle excuse that you have done enough, that you have already unburdened your consciences to your confessor. Reflect for a moment on the words of Origen, who says: ‘* Never think that it is sufficient to be renewed once; you must renew that renewal itself.”’ He means that whatever measure of sanctity and justice you may have been so happy as to obtain as your portion of the graces meted out to the penitent, and even if you were as just as you presume yourselves to be, there are always a thousand things which need renewal by the faithful practice of penance.

And still more is this the case when you have not yet atoned for your faults, when you feel in your soul re-opened wounds, and are conscious of old habits of evil still alive and working within you.

Bear in mind that penance is our practice, the Saviour’s Death our pattern, His Cross our portion, His Sepulchre our dwelling-place. Ah! that Sepulchre is to us a mother: my Master entered it a lifeless corpse, but by it He was born to a new Divine life; so too must I, after having there died to sin, seek and find the life of Grace.

OuR RISING WITH CHRIST.

St. Augustine asserts that there are two kinds of life in the soul: the one which it communicates to the body, the other from which it draws its own individual existence. The holy Bishop considers that as the soul is the life of the body so God is the life of the soul. Let us try to explain his thought and to follow his reasoning. If the soul is to give life to the body it must of necessity possess three properties: it must be nobler than the body, for it is more noble to give than to receive; it must be united to the body, for it is manifest that our life cannot be outside of ourselves; it must impart to the body powers of operation which otherwise that body cannot possibly exercise, for it is certain that life consists principally in action. Now, if we find that God possesses in a supreme degree all those three qualities in relation to our souls, it becomes a positive, an undoubted certainty that His claim to be the life of the soul is as well established as is the claim of the soul to be the life of the body. Let us, in a very few words, show how this matter stands.

In the first place, that God is incomparably exalted above the soul cannot and may not for one moment be contested. God would not be our sovereign good, if He were not nobler than we are, and if we were not infinitely better and greater when united to Him than when left to ourselves. As regards this union, it is impossible for any Christian to doubt it, when our Saviour so repeatedly said that the Holy Ghost would dwell in our souls (John xiv. 17), and the Apostle, that the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Who is given to us (Rom. v. 5). And, indeed, seeing that God is our one and perfect joy, it follows of necessity that it must be possible for Him to unite Himself to our souls; since it is inconceivable that our joy and our bliss should not be within us. It remains, then, to be seen whether or not our soul is, by this union, raised to some possibility of action loftier and grander than its own natural powers could be capable of attaining. Let us still keep close to St. Augustine and his teaching. ‘** Assuredly,’’ he says, ** God is an immutable Life; He is always what He is, always in Himself, always belonging to Himself.’’ It is impossible, therefore, but that the soul should become better, nobler, more excellent when united to this Sovereign Being Who is supreme in excellence and goodness; being better, the soul will act better; and you see this in the just. ** For,’’? continues St. Augustine, ‘‘ the soul, lifting itself up to God Who is so far above it and yet of Whom it is, receives justice, piety, wisdom poured down upon it from this storehouse of perfection.”’ Then it believes in God, it hopes in God, it loves God; or rather, as St. Paul says that the Spirit of God with groanings unspeakable asks for us (Rom.

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Vili. 26), so it behoves us to say that the same Spirit believes, hopes, and loves in our souls, because He it is Who creates in us this faith, this hope, this sacred love. Consequently, to believe in God, to hope in Him, and to love Him are all wholly Divine operations which the soul could never achieve without the operation, the union, the communication of the Spirit of God; they are also actions of life, and of an eternal life: it is, then, true that God is our life.

O joy of joys! Who would not esteem himself happy indeed to live such a life? Who would not prize it far above every other blessing? Who would not a thousand times rather run the risk of losing this poor mortal life than that immortal life, the life divine? Yet Adam lost it for himself and for all his descendants; and had it not been for the intervention of the Son of God, we should for ever have been deprived of it: I am come, our Divine Lord says, that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly (John x. 10). Indeed, it is my great joy to notice that in all the discourses of our Saviour which the Gospels hand down to us, like a golden thread running through them, the one subject of this undying mystic life pervades them. Hence it is that St. Peter, when asked by our Lord if he desired to leave Him, answered: Lord, to whom should we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life (John vi. 69); and the Son of God Himself says: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life;—and this because He well knew that as nothing is dearer to men than their own existence, no charm could have such power over them as this hope of eternal life. This is why St. Clement of Alexandria, in the beautiful hymn addressed by him to Jesus, speaks thus: ‘* The Divine Fisherman draws the fish out of the stormy sea of this world into His own net, by the sweet attraction, the seductive bait of a life that knows no ending, of joys that never cease.”’

And here let us raise our thoughts for a moment, that we may see in the Person of our Saviour Jesus Christ the source of our life. The life of God is wholly made up of reason and intelligence; and the Son of God, proceeding from this life and this intelligence, is Himself life and intelligence. This is why the Fathers speak of Him as the life, the reason, the light, and the intelligence of the Father; and there is a good foundation for this teaching in the Scriptures. Being then Himself essential Life, it is for Him to promise and to give life. The Sacred Humanity which in the fulness of time He deigned to take upon Himself, touching so closely upon Life, is impregnated with its virtue to such an extent that from it there flows an inexhaustible stream of living water, of which whosoever drinks shall have eternal life. It would be vain to try and tell you all the beautiful sayings of the Fathers, especially of the great St. Cyril of Alexandria, on this subject. It is enough to remind you of what is given to you at the holy Altar, of what at this Easter time all the faithful are called to partake of. Is it common bread that is offered to you? Nay, is it not the Bread of Life? or, rather, is it not a Living Bread of which you must eat if you would have life? Yes, for this Bread is the Sacred Flesh of Jesus, that Living Flesh, that Flesh wholly filled and penetrated by a vivifying Spirit. For if our common bread which has no life in it preserves that of our bodies, think how glorious that life must be which we live, we who eat of a Living Bread and at the Table of the Living God! Why, this is a marvel! a miracle! To Jesus, and to Him alone, does it belong to give us such Divine Food. He Who is Himself the Life must, in giving us Himself for our Food, give us life. O delicious Banquet of the children of God! O Table spread with dainties! O Food containing in Itself all sweetness! What must that life be which is so nourished and sustained! how priceless its value! how eternal its duration!

But remember that this wonderful divinely-sustained life has its various stages of progress—its immaturity, its growth, its perfection—in the same way, so to speak, as the natural mortal life. God Who by His presence within the souls of the just quickens them, nevertheless does not give life to them instantaneously, in (as it were) a sudden flash of illumination. If, however, we consider all the admirable changes and developments which He brings about in them during the course of this most happy, supernatural life, we cannot fail to love it; and if we love it, we shall be fervently, eagerly desirous to preserve it, to make it ours for all eternity. Let this be our aim—to reproduce in ourselves the undying, the eternal life of the Risen Saviour; this is the lesson which the Feast of the Resurrection teaches us; this is indeed its natural consequence. Let me in a few words show you that it is so.

That eagle of the Apocalypse which came flying through the air, crying with a piercing note, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth (Apoc. viii. 13), seems by this triple denunciation to prefigure the threefold calamity which has befallen our nature. Man, in his state of original righteousness, being wholly animated by the Spirit of God, received from this indwelling Spirit the three gifts of innocence, peace, and immortality. The devil by sin robbed him of innocence; concupiscence, having risen up within him, disturbed his peace; and immortality yielded to the claims of death: and thus we see the work of Satan in opposition to the work of God. Now, the Son of God came to destroy the work of the devil (Heb. ii. 14) and to bring man back again to the state originally designed for him by his Creator. This we are told by St. Paul, who adds, that in order to effect this the Eternal Father has shed forth His Spirit into the souls of the just, and that this Spirit ceases not to renew them day by day (2 Cor. iv. 16). It is not the will of God that they should be changed all at once. There are three gifts to be restored to them; there are also three different stages through which they must pass and become, step by step, perfect men (Eph. iv. 18). O great Apostle, these are your own words, and you shall be our guide to-day. God has thus ordered things in order to show His beloved ones the operations of His grace one by one; therefore in this life He restores their innocence, in Heaven He gives them peace, in the general resurrection He adorns them with immortality. By these three stages the just attain to the fulness of Jesus Christ, to the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ (Eph. iv. 18). This present life is like childhood; that which the Saints enjoy in Heaven resembles the flower of youth; later on, in the general resurrection, maturity will follow. In this supernatural life there is no old age, because being wholly divine it is not subject to waste or decay; hence it is that it has only three ages, whereas our life on eal earth passes through all the vicissitudes of four different periods.

Let me explain what I mean by saying that the saints in this world are, so to speak, in their childhood. All that is to follow in the course of life should have its beginning in childhood. Now, we have said that the operation of the Holy Ghost, by which He animates the just, consists wholly in overcoming in them those three furious, bitter enemies stirred up in them by the devil: sin, concupiscence, and death. And how does God deal with them in this life? First of all, He entirely destroys sin, justifying us by grace; concupiscence, however, still stirs within them, it struggles feebly, but a vigorous war is waged against it and it is overcome; as for death, it indeed still holds its sway there unresisted, but then there is the promise of immortality, and our bodies are prepared for that immortality by becoming the temples of the Holy Ghost. Consider this progress in the just. On the ruins of sin rises the stronghold of their sanctification; the battle with concupiscence is the exercise which perfects their strength and energy; the promised immortality is the foundation of their hope. And in these three particulars do you not recognise the child’s true characteristics? Innocence is restored to them as it is to children; and if the Holy Ghost wrestles within them against concupiscence, it is only in order to strengthen them by gentle degrees, and to mould their lineaments into conformity with the image of our Divine Lord; and can there be anything more suitable than to set before them continually (as is done in the case of children of high birth and distinction) the hope of an inheritance glorious and undefiled? O blessed childhood of the Christian! It has, I know, its troubles and its tears; but remembering what magnificent promises are attached to it, and to what heights of sun-lit glory its poor beginnings lead, who would not count himself highly favoured and happy beyond words to lead such a life!

For in the period which follows, and which because of its vigour and healthy energy I compare to youth in its fresh beauty, what peace and serenity reign! Here below even the holiest souls are at times troubled and tossed by an infinity of vain desires. It is true that God dwells within these souls, but He does not dwell there alone; a thousand idle fancies, poor earthly cravings, thrust in by the flesh, intrude upon that Divine presence incessantly, unweariedly; because, though failing to detach these souls from Him to Whom they cling so closely and so lovingly, this rebellious flesh strives at least to distract and trouble them. Therefore it is that they sigh and moan, crying out with the Apostle: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body? (Rom. vii. 24). But, on the other hand, for the peaceful life which the Saints enjoy in Heaven St. Augustine gives this beautiful motto: Concupiscence at last extinct, charity consummated. To my mind, these few words have a most weighty meaning. They seem to tell us that the soul, having laid down the burden of the body, feels a marvellous co-operation of all its powers tending, aiming, working towards one and the same end. Now, at last, God and God alone dwells in that soul, reigns in it, dominates it, because it is wholly and entirely absorbed in God, because it is possessed solely and absolutely by that Spirit of Life Whose presence it experiences. The soul yields itself so quietly to this attraction; it tastes, in so doing, so profound a peace, that it is scarcely able to comprehend fully its own happiness; so little can mortals like ourselves form an idea of it.

Does it not seem as if to desire more than this would be a folly? and yet you know that there is a third stage, in which our life will be perfected because our happiness will be consummated. In the two first stages Jesus Christ extinguishes in His saints the fires of sin and all fleshly desires; finally, in this last stage of both the world and the human race, after His having trampled under foot all our other enemies, the subjugation of death will crown His victories. And how will our Divine Lord do this? Well, if you ask me this question in the spirit of a true Christian, that is to say, not to gratify an idle curiosity, but to strengthen your faith and hope, I will answer you by quoting some words of St. Augustine’s, marvellous because drawn from the teaching of St. Paul. All changes that are wrought in the Saints are brought about by the operation of the Spirit of God. Now St. Augustine teaches us that this Spirit has His abode in the soul because He is that soul’s life. If, then, this Spirit does not dwell in the body, how can it be that He renews it? The great Doctor solves the difficulty for us by laying down a very clear principle. He says: ‘‘ He possesses the whole who has in his keeping the dominant part. In you the noblest part, that is to say, the soul, is the part which holds the pre-eminence. And therefore God, holding as He does what is best and greatest in you, namely, your soul, enters by means of that greater part into possession of the lesser, that is to say, your body.”

What are we, then, to infer from this teaching of St. Augustine’s? The inference is very clear. God, dwelling in our souls, has taken possession of our bodies also; therefore, O Death! you cannot snatch them from Him; you imagine that they are your spoil, but they are really only a deposit consigned to your keeping for a while; sooner or later God will reclaim His own. That which My Father hath given Me is greater than all, says the Son of God; and no one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand (John x. 29). Therefore, great deeps, and fierce devouring flames, and you too, earth, at once the mother and the grave of poor humanity, you all shall render up these bodies which you have engulfed and hidden out of sight; and sooner shall the world itself be overwhelmed than a single one of our hairs shall perish; because the Spirit Who animates the Son of God, animates us also. He will then work in us as He did in our Lord, and will make us like to Him; for as the Son of God assures us that He Himself does nothing but what He sees His Father do (John v. 19), so too the Holy Ghost Who receives of the Son (John xvi. 15), regards Him as the pattern of all these operations carried on in the soul. All in whom He dwells must of necessity be transformed into His resemblance; the Apostle tells us this when he says: If you have in you the Spirit of Him Who raised up Jesus from the dead, He will quicken your mortal bodies (Rom. viii. 11). And just as the germ put by nature into the grain of corn, preserving itself there amid all changes and alternations of weather and seasons, brings forth in the fulness of time a perfect ear of wheat like that from which it was taken, so will the Spirit of Life, having descended upon us from the fulness of Jesus Christ, renew us gradually little by little, according to the various vicissitudes ordained by Providence, until at last He will restore us to a body and a life like to our Lord’s, neither corruption nor death having been able to hinder His wonder-working power.

This is why St. Paul, dwelling upon the thought of our Risen Master, urges us so strongly to rise with Him. Hitherto, he says, my Master’s life had been hidden beneath the veil of His mortal body; we knew not yet either the beauty of that life or the magnificence of our own hopes. Now, I see Him wholly changed; there is no more infirmity in His Sacred Flesh; there is in it nothing that breathes of sin or its similitude; He is dead to sin (Rom. vi. 10). He has stripped from Him that mortality which hid His glory; the Divinity which animates His Spirit is shed forth also upon His Body; in that Body I see God only, because I no longer see anything there but glory and majesty. He only lives in God; He only lives through God; He only lives for God: in that He liveth, He liveth unto God (Rom. vi. 11). I know that if I begin to live with Him on earth, His Spirit which quickens me will also renew me according to His image. Courage! (says the Apostle); what by faith we believe in the Person of the Son of God that same faith should make us hope for ourselves. Jesus is risen as the first-fruits of our nature. In that first golden ear of wheat, which is Jesus Christ, God has shown us how He will deal with all the other precious grain which He will gather into His storehouse. Judge of the harvest by these first-fruits, says St. Augustine; Christ is the first-fruits (1 Cor. xv. 28).

Sometimes I hear good people sighing after the joys of the golden age of innocence. Oh! they cry, if we were only as they were who lived in the Earthly Paradise. Well, there is no doubt but that that life was a very sweet and blissful one; and yet the Apostle tells you that you are not Christians if you do not aspire to something more than that. To possess that happiness is, at the most, to be like Adam; and St. Paul teaches you that you ought all to be like Jesus Christ (Col. iii. 4). No less a promise is held out to you than that of being seated with Him on His Throne. The Saviour says: To him that shall overcome I will give to sit with Me on My Throne (Apoce. iii. 21).

After this do you expect me to give you any further reasons to prove that this life should be immortal? is it not enough to have shown you its beauty and its hopes to make you fervently long for it? Truly, when I see Christians coming at this Easter time to draw from the Sacraments as from a life-giving stream this immortality, and then going back to plunge again into the mire of sin, my heart aches for them. They eat the Bread of Life, and go back to death; they cleanse their souls in the waters of Penance, and wallow again in the gutter; they receive the Spirit of God, and live like the brutes. Fools! madmen that you are! do you not understand the destruction upon which you are rushing? the glorious hopes which in one moment you are dashing to the ground? Guard as your most precious treasure this immortal life; perhaps if you lose it this time, it may never be restored to you. Lay to heart the teaching that in the original designs of God this life could neither be given nor lost more than once. Adam lost it, and all would have been at an end, the loss would have been irretrievable, had it not been for the intervention of the Son of God. Now He restores it to us in Holy Baptism. And if even we should chance to defile our Baptismal innocence, He for the sake of His Divine Son permits Himself to give sanctifying grace back to us by means of Penance. Still, however, He does not wholly abandon His original design. The oftener we lose grace, the more difficult He makes it for us to regain it. In Baptism He gives it to us so easily that we scarcely think about the gift. If we lose it we must have recourse to the tears, the travail, the pains of penance. But, if it be true that the recovery of grace becomes more and more difficult, what of us who have so often received and so often despised it? How comes it that the health of our soul is not in an absolutely hopeless condition? Tertullian says that those who are afraid of offending God after having obtained the remission of their sins, dread becoming debtors to the Divine mercy. Those, then, who have no such fear, are debtors to that mercy. Hardened sinner, coming again and again unblushingly to bring the same foul stains to the cleansing waters of Penance, for how many years have you not poured into the ears of your confessor the same miserable stories of your sins? Surely if you had grasped the fact that grace and pardon were not your due, your right, you would be more fearful of losing such a treasure! you would tremble lest in the end God should withhold His absolving hand! whereas you come back so often and without one vestige of fear or doubt or hesitation, that it is certain you must imagine what you demand is your due. You think that God will always gladly receive you! I would have you know rather that you are a poor burdensome debtor dependent on His mercy; that He, so to speak, regretfully bestows what you claim as aright; and that if you persevere in this course of action He will at last shake you off and no longer permit you to enjoy His benefits.

Let us awake from sleep; let us try, this once at least, to be immortal, to live an undying life of grace with our Risen Saviour. Do not let us be like those who think they have done all when they have made their Confession; the chief thing still remains to be done, that is, to change our ways and modes of action, to root out our bad habits. If you have been justified, you need not indeed any longer fear eternal damnation; but do not, on that account, imagine yourselves perfectly safe, lest a false security should produce in you a fatal negligence. Fear sin, dread your own evil inclinations, fear above all those dangerous occasions which have already so often made shipwreck of your innocence. Let this fear force upon you the necessity of using wholesome precautions; for penance has in itself two qualities which are both equally necessary. It is the remedy for the past; it is also a precaution for the future. The disposition necessary for receiving it as a remedy for the past, is sorrow for the sins which we have committed; the disposition necessary for receiving it as a precaution for the future, is a filial fear of the sins which we might commit and of the occasions which might lead us to commit them. May God give us this fear which is the safeguard of virtue!

Ah! Christians, let us fear to lose Jesus Who has won us by His Blood. Wherever I see Him, His arms are outstretched to us! Jesus Crucified extends His arms to us. ‘ Come,’ He cries; ‘ come and die here with Me! It is good for you to be here, because I am here!’ Jesus risen extends His arms to us. ‘Come,’ He cries, ‘come and live with Me; you shall be what you see Me to be! Iam glorious, I am immortal.’ Be you immortal now by grace, and one day you shall be immortal in glory!