Section III. The Incarnation a World of its own

IP the assumption of it by the Person of the Eternal Word has conferred upon the Sacred Humanity such Wonderful exaltation, we cannot be surprised to find that the Incarnation is a kind cf world of itself, and thoroughly furnished with all that a world requires. The world of nature is intermingled with.a supernatural world, and to such an extent and in such a variety of ways, that it is not easy to see how even the natural world would go on naturally, if it were not for the supernatural; and this is continually bringing home to us the fact that neither angels nor men were first created in a state of nature, but of grace. Now as the Incarnation was the cause of that primeval boon, so also is it the cause of all that is supernatural in the world. From it come revela tions; prophecies, miracles, and all sanctity. From it angelic ministries, the operations of grace, the efficacy of sacraments, and the phenomena of the Catholic Church. From it, with whatever corruptions falsified, come the laws, literatures, politics, philosophies, and civilizations, which are actually uppermost in the world. From it everything which softens life, consoles sorrow, poothes poverty, and makes the world endurable. All time belongs to it. For all grace and all glory that were in ages gone, antediluvian, patriarchal, gentile, jew, or Chris, tian, were from it; all are from it now; and all will be altogether from it till time shall be no more. Nay more; for as the predestination of Jesus adorned the eternity that was before the foundation of the world, so will His kingdom and glory be henceforth itself eternal.

The Church is in fact the world of the Incarnation, the elect world, uniting heaven and earth, in which all living souls are mercifully called to work out their salvation. The world is a revelation of God. It displays His character, and unfolds the excellence of His various attributes; and through the many-coloured veil of things we may discern Him who is invisible. This is the great end of the world, to reveal God. But the Incarnation is a much greater and more intimate revelation of God to us than the world. It illuminates many more of His attributes, and with a light far more distinct and beauti. ful. It tells us mysteries, of the very existence of which nature could tell us nothing, much less give us the key to unlock their consoling secrets. It explains to us all we know of creation. It discloses to us the Most Holy Trinity. It unveils to us the counsels of God in the kingdom of the angels, in the fall of man, in the per mission of evil, in the scheme of redemption, and in the nature and method of divine grace. We can map out the world to come with almost as much accuracy as if it were but a distant land on our own globe. We can trace the operation of the communion of saints in heaven, in purgatory, and on earth, with almost unfailing exactness. In a word there is hardly anything we know of God, creation, grace, or eternal things, which we do not know through the revealing of the Incarnation j and what little we might have known, if the Incarnation had not been revealed to us, we know through it so much more clearly and connectedly and abundantly, that it may almost be called a new knowledge. Yet we must not forget, while we speak of the knowledge which the Incarnation has given us of creation, grace, and glory, that their very existence, as well as our knowledge of them, are due to that mystery, in the same way as an effect is referable to its cause.

Moreover the Incarnation has an empire of its own. It has, so to speak, a nationality which is above all the little nationalities of geography, government, or blood. It has thrown down the partition walls of tribes, kind reds, and nations, and made Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, into one heavenly nation, one complete family, in Jesus Christ the Head. As an empire, it has a government of its own, earthly and visible, yet like nothing else on earth besides. Its Sovereign Pontiff is its heaven-anointed king, the Vicar and dele gate of the Incarnate Word Himself, and the actual successor of His apostle. No potentate in the world has such a plenitude of uncircumscribed power as he, who is almost without a single source of worldly power himself. Mountains and seas are no limits to his kingdom. No form of temporal government exists, but can fall in harmoniously with his. No jurisdiction is so instantaneously and delightedly acknowledged by its subjects as his; arid no liberty is so complete as that which his children en joy. This empire of the Incarnation has also its own laws. It has a system of legislation peculiarly its own, and which has grown with the growth of the empire from its first beginning; and men name it Canon Law. It embraces more of the secrets of government and more legislative wisdom than any other jurisprudence in the world; and it is so peculiar, and essentially so unnational, that it could not be applied to any other government than that of the Church.

It has also institutions of its own, and of a character as peculiar as its government and legislation. A general council is like no other parliament; for its decisions on points of doctrine become infallible, when approved by the Sovereign Pontiff. Yet the gift is in him, not in the Council; nor is a council needed to its use. The judgment is in him alone, irreformable, irrefragable, indivisible. Baptism, and indeed all the Sacraments, are institutions to which the world has no parallel; and the same may be said of the religious orders. It has also a literature of its own, which is not only occupied with its own immediate concerns, but which treats of the affairs of the world in an entirely new and peculiar manner, because of the point of view from which it regards them. It has a poetry of its own, and arts of its own, and a diplomacy of its own, and a philosophy of its own; and theology is its own science, and one which has told more strikingly on the minds of men and their intellectual progress than any other. Nay, it has even formed modem languages upon itself, and extended their range in order that they may meet its requirements, as St. Augustine ol served long ago of Latin itself. For the Incarnation has brought a new set of ideas into the world, and those ideas must find adequate expression. To pass over the scientific terminology which the accurate handling of grace, the mystery of the Incarnation itself, the Sacraments, and the Most Holy Trinity, require, the Incarnation has intro duced a whole circle of moral notions quite peculiar to itself; the strength of weakness, the triumph of defeat, the blessing of sorrow, the might of pain, the power of concealment, the glory of submission, all these, and a host of cognate ideas, rise out of our Blessed Saviour's Passion alone. Finally, this world of the Incarnation has a his tory of its own. The facts of this history are unlike other facts. They are supernatural always, and often miraculous. Its judgments are given after different standards and measures, and through the application of different tests, than secular history. It breathes a different air, and has another sort of brightness to light it up. Moreover it is true of all other histories, sciences, philosophies, literatures, and civilizations, that the theo logical view of them is not only the widest and the grandest, but it is the only important or true view of them. To all this we must add furthermore that the world of the Incarnation has a peculiar spirit of its own, and gives out a very special and discernible genius, which the spirit of the unregenerate world instantly recognizes as not only uncongenial with itself, but even incompatible with its existence, and breaks out forthwith into loud cries, and throws itself into demoniacal convulsions, just as those possessed with devils did at the approach of Jesus.

There has never been in the world a power like to this power of the Incarnation. None which has wrought such changes, or brought about such tremendous revolutions. None which has gathered to itself such enthusiastic loyalty, or for which men have been so eager to lay down their lives and to shed their blood. None which has allured such a vast amount of holiness to adorn it, or of consummate intelligence to propagate and defend it. At the same time there is none which has provoked so much opposition, has so stung wickedness to the quick, or has been visited with such intense and withering and preternatural hatred. Now, what is the secret of all this power, this undying energy, which crosses over ages of time and continents of earth, and waxes no weaker, nay, rather quickens itself by distance and duration? Is it to be found merely in its success? Success is certainly prone to attract to itself love, admiration, and submission on the one hand, while on the other it awakens jealousy and hatred. But mere success can furnish no adequate solution to the problem; and in truth it has not by any means been uniformly what on worldly principles would be regarded as successful. Neither is the intrinsic attractiveness, great as it is, of the mystery itself, the questions it answers, and the interests it undertakes to promote, a sufficient account of the supernatural power of the idea and empire of the Incarnation.

It must be looked for in that perpetual presence with His Church which our Lord promised in the Gospel. In other words, it must be sought in the Blessed Sacrament itself. The great Emperor is secretly present in this Ilia mystical empire, not in one point only, to which wor shippers must come in arduous pilgrimage; but He haa diffused the real presence of His Sacred Humanity all over the Church. He does not take on Himself the exterior government of the Church; but leaving that to His Vicar, He hides Himself everywhere as the fountain of light and grace and power, in every realm beneath the sun, and upon countless altars. Nothing will explain the phenomena of the Church, except the Blessed Sacrament. Nothing else will interpret its history, or account for its miraculous propagation and preservation. The Incarnation is not simply a past fact; it is the living life of the Incarnate (rod. It is not merely a glory of the theo logical schools '} it is the Sacrifice of the daily altar. On earth as well as in heaven, Jesus Himself is the present cen tre round which all the elements of the world of the Incarnation are perpetually revolving. This is why no extern can ever understand the Church, but must, as by a fatal necessity, blunder when he speaks of her, no matter whether it is to praise or blame. He cannot realize what it is to have the Blessed Sacrament, or what the minds and hearts of those must be like who live upon the doctrine, the devotion, and the thought.

Let us look at the wonderful mystery of our Lord's own Communion. Nothing can illustrate in a more touching way how completely the Blessed Sacrament is everything to us in the Church, than that He should have vouchsafed to have received it Himself. Long before the hour came, He had looked forward to that scene in the supper-room. Having loved His own, He loved them to the end, and reserved the chief invention of His love until He had come to the very threshold of His Passion, and they were about to be parted. He who had so wonderfully possessed His Soul in patience, and seemed as if nothing could stir Him but His Father's glory, could say with a most unwonted energy of expression, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you. And how? The Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world was slain also on the Thursday night, and that by Himself and by Divine Love, before tie sins of men slew Him the next day on Calvary.

The awful words have been spoken. This is My Body. It is the first time earth has heard them. If it were not inanimate, it would have rocked to its very foundations, even as the gates of hell are vehemently shaken by the Sacrifice of the Mass. Our Lord stands, cognizable as Mary's Son and in the dimensions of mature mortal age. On His Face is a light of love, more bright than a saint's extasy. He stands there, Body, Soul and Divinity, holding in His Hand with unutterable thrills of joy, His own very Body, with the Soul and the Divinity. He holds it forth for a moment for the adoration of His apostles; and then enters Himself into the richest inheritance which He has left to His Church, by communicating Himself with Himself. By virtue of the Incarnation the Incarnate Lord received Himself Incarnate, was held in His own Hands, lay upon His own Tongue, descended into His own Heart, by the most real reality on earth, His own real presence in the Blessed Eucharist. How needful then, in a far other sense of the word, must the Blessed Sacrament be to us, if He even vouchsafed to need It Himself! And how could the mystery of the Incarnation more utterly embrace us all within its charmed circle, and as it were return into itself, than by this other mystery of our Lord's Communion?

It could not increase the grace of His Soul, as it in creases grace in ours; for from the first moment of His Conception the plenitude of His grace was not capable of augmentation. But, as St. Thomas teaches us, It filled Him with unutterable sweetness. Every wonderful faculty of His Blessed Soul was as it were inundated 41 with a sweetness which nothing on earth could give. The darkness of the Passion was beginning to gather round Him. All the deep places of iniquity, whether in hell or on earth, were about to give up their gloomy waters to drown His Soul in a very deluge of unparalleled suffering. The flood was rising, and the waters tfere to come in, even into His Soul; and He vouchsafed as it were, to fortify Himself with His own Viaticum. There was no source of power, light, or sweetness equal co that. It was far more than the ten legions of angels that were impatiently waiting His call, and longing to break in upon that drama of human wickedness with the game gleamy swords which had driven the rebel angels over the battlements of heaven. He let His single angel come to soothe Him in Gethsemane, to teach us that even in the grandeur of this Blessed Sacrament we must not despise or neglect other and lesser means of grace. Nay, while the thrills of Its ineffable sweetness were still •vibrating in His Sacred Heart and quickening the pulses of His Precious Blood, He took the same Blessed Sacrament and communicated Judas, stooping to go down into that foul and accursed heart, that we might learn not to exclude secret sinners from that marvellous gift, nor put limits to His prodigal liberality in the giving of it.

And how this wonderful Communion of Himself brings before us the whole doctrine of the mystery! What He held in His Hand was the same Blessed Sacrament which His priests hold in their hands now. Yet with differences which only serve the more entirely to prove it the same The Blessed Sacrament is Jesus as He is, only without dimensions, and beneath the sacra mental veils. This is its very truth and grandeur and surpassing reality. So as Jesus is now in heaven with

[V.] A PICTURE OP JESUS. 43S

His glorified Body in impassible Flesh, in like manner He is in the Blessed Sacrament in impassible Flesh. But that Thursday night His Fle^h was passible and His Body not yet glorified; arid thus in the Blessed Sacrament which He held in His Hand, He was in passible Flesh. So that had the Blessed Sacrament been reserved during Good Friday He would have died in the Blessed Sacrament as well as upon the Cross. His Blood which is in the Host by concomitance would have left it, the Body and the Divinity alone remaining; for the Human Soul would have left it also, when it was sepa rated from the Body on the Cross and descended into Limbus. In like manner throughout His Passion His interior pains would have been represented in His Sacred Heart in the Blessed Sacrament; but not His exterior sufferings. For though He would have been in the Host in passible Flesh, it would have been in an impassible way, according to the manner of PI is sacramental presence now. He could not have been spit upon, or buffeted, or His hair torn, or His limbs wounded. Just as sacrilege now can only reach His honour, and cannot penetrate into the sacramental sanctuary, and outrage His Blessed Self. So that the Passion would as it were have been divided into two. It is true that Hugh of St. Victor says that our Lord at different times before His Passion assumed the four qualities of a glorified body; subtlety, when He was born of a Virgin Mother; agility, when He walked upon the surface of the waters; brightness at the Transfiguration; and impassibility when He communicated Himself and His disciples. But this, as St. Thomas shows, is contrary to the truth of the Blessed Sacrament. Think also of the parallel wonders of the chalice; and the whole of the Catholic doctrine of the mystery will be brought before you with amazing clearness. The Body and the Soul would have retired from the Precious Blood, which would have existed in the chalice, as well as on the olive-roots of Gethsemane, the pavement of Jerusalem, the wood of the Cross, and the veil of Mary, only in an impassible state. Is there any thing in theology more interesting, or which fills us more full of silent reverence and breathless love than the articles of St. Thomas, in which that angelic mind occu pies itself with the question of our Lord's Communion?

But there is another wonder in it which must not be forgotten. In the first book we learned that no eye could see our Lord in His mystical state beneath the sacramental veils. But when He held the Blessed Sacrament in His own Hand, and was communicating Himself and the apostles, He clearly beheld Himself and the miraculous method of His existence in the Sacrament, a privilege which even His Immaculate Mother has not shared, and of which, either as regards the joy that vision gave Him, or the nature of the vision itself, we can form no adequate conception.

I should not have put these facts together, if they were to be regarded simply as scholastic subtleties. It is impossible for a pious, believing reader to look at them in such a light. They illuminate the whole doctrine of the Incarnation, and give us fresh reasons for loving and adoring the Blessed Sacrament, while they enable us somewhat the more clearly to understand it. Especially they bring home to us the truth of the Blessed Sacrament, in a manner which is awful even to our faith from its intense reality. And they alone who have fixed their wondering gaze on our Lord communicating Himself before His Passion that Thursday night, can realize how completely the Incarnation is the life of the Church, the greatest of all created powers, the crown of the creation of God, and the unspeakable joy of the Eternal Word Himself. I have said nothing of our Lord's Communion, but what St. Thomas has already said; yet it is fearful, and perforce inclines the heart to prayer. All the mysteries of Jesus are incomprehensible condescensions. Can anything go deeper than the condescension of His communicating Judas? If we weigh well the significance of doctrine, we shall have to admit that His own Communion was a deeper condescension still.