Chapter II: What is the Christian Life ?

IN order to appreciate the place which all the Saints and masters of the spiritual life give to mental prayer it is essential that we should have a right and clear conception of what the Christian life is and implies. For unless we have such a true conception it will be quite impossible for us to see why mental prayer is necessarily one of the strongest determining factors, if indeed not the strongest, of such a life.

The Christian life is the life of the first Christian, Jesus Christ, continued in the members of His Mystical Body, the Catholic Church.

To the explanation and development of this definition, this chapter will be devoted.

That the Sermon on the Mount is not, primarily, as is commonly supposed, a code of morality, may be inferred from more than one place, but it is sufficiently shown by the definite injunction, ' Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect ' (Matt. v. 48). A similar word is St. Paul's : ' Be ye imitators of God as dear children ' (Eph. v. 1), where the lines of a mere morality are clearly passed, as indeed they are on almost every page of the New Testament. I am not discounting morality ; I am simply pointing out that it is not religion, certainly not Christianity. Yet nothing is commoner to-day than what M. Bremond, following Jean Baptist Nolleau, styles ' le crime d'avoir été religieux à la façon de l'honnête homme, mais non du chrétien' (Histoire littéraire du Sentiment Religieux en France, vol. vii., p. 220).¹

But to imitate God, to be perfect as God, surely this is impossible in any ordinary sense of the word. Must we not have in such words at least a touch of poetry, of Eastern mysticism, of analogy and so on? To which I reply in the words of Cardinal Mercier, ' Sanctity consists in taking our Lord's words literally. We do Him a grave injustice and ourselves much harm when we do not do so.'

Further, the seeming impossibility is removed if we consider that an imitation is never the same thing as the original. The most perfect copy remains but a copy, even though it be the nearest possible approach to the original. And in the case of the Christian life, as we shall see, we are not merely invited to the copying of something external to ourselves; the Christian life is only an imitation because it is primarily a participation in that Divine Life which it is called to continue and reproduce.

We have, then, to consider what that perfection is with which we are to be perfect, and in this we can find no safer guide than St. Thomas Aquinas. ' We call that being perfect,' he says, ' which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection . . . existence is the most perfect of all things, for it is compared to all things as that by which they are made actual ; for nothing has actuality except so far as it exists ' (Summa Theol., pars. I., q. iv., art. 1).

Now God is His own Existence, His Perfection is His own inalienable possession of infinite, inexhaustible life, of complete self-existence, and of the total possession of supreme good in Himself, so that He is in no way dependent upon, or has any need of, anything outside Himself, but is to Himself all in all. ' The perfection of no one thing is wanting to God . . . as is implied by Dionysius when he says that " God exists not in any single mode, but embraces all being within Himself, absolutely, without limitation, uniformly " ' (Summa Theol. I. iv. 2).

St. Thomas says further, ' Things are perfect precisely so far as they have being after some fashion ' (ibid.), and since our Lord declares that our perfection is to be, in some way, the perfection of God Himself, it is clear that this cannot be attainable merely by desire or imitation, but only by some communication of that Divine Life which is our perfection. For even if we could and did desire it, we are totally incapable of attaining to it by our own efforts, for, as the Apostle says, we ' cannot do the things that we would ' (Gal. v. 17 ; cf. Rom. vii.). The possibility of a copied perfection may be dreamed of as Plato dreamed of painters ' who copy a Divine model . . . until to the best in their power they succeed in painting the lineaments of a human character as like to God as the matter will allow ' (Republic, vi. 501), but it was no more than a dream, or, shall we say, a prophecy of what should become a sober actuality, not by men's efforts, but by the act of God.

For by two things is the creature separated from the Creator. First by the fact that God is ' other ' than man, not merely in degree but in kind, so that, as St. Thomas says, ' Although it may be admitted that creatures are in some sort like God, it must in no wise be admitted that God is like creatures ; because, as says Dionysius, " a mutual likeness may be found between things of the same order, but not between a cause and that which is caused” and “The same things can be like and unlike to God : like, according as they imitate Him so far as He can be imitated, Who is not perfectly imitable ; unlike, according as they fall short of their cause, not merely in intensity or degree . . . but because they are not in agreement, specifically or generically ” ’ (Summa Theol. I. iv. 3).

Secondly, creatures are separated from God by the fact of sin. By an act and by repeated acts of his will, man has deserted God, the one Source and Principle of his being, and by those acts has rendered himself incapable of returning to God. The history of his repeated and continuous attempts is sufficient evidence both of his felt need for God and of his inability to attain to Him.

The gulf which exists between God and man can only be bridged by the act of God Himself ; in this as in all else He alone is the Prime Mover. Such an act He has willed to perform, and in doing so He has bestowed upon man not merely some gift external to Himself, but the gift of Himself, His very Life and Perfection, in order that He might make us, in the words of St. Peter, ‘ partakers of the Divine Nature ’ (2 Peter i. 4). In the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God we see the Divine Thought and Life made Flesh : ‘ Et Verbum caro factum est ’ (John i. 14). By an ineffable act of Divine wisdom and power, the Nature of God is united to a created human nature, the Sacred Humanity, formed of Mary, appropriating in our full humanity the state of a Person at once human and Divine in the fullest and most literal sense of both terms.

‘ By this union, so inter-penetrating, so powerful and so permanent, God becomes man, truly, really and substantially, and man becomes God personally, God and man constituting but one and the same Person, which subsists in two natures infinitely Divine, lives in two states infinitely differing, experiences two conditions infinitely remote the one from the other. And yet these natures, these states, these conditions, for all this tremendous difference and inequality, are, according to the definitions of the holy councils, so divinely and intimately, so inseparably and indistinguishably united, that faith in two such different natures recognises and adores its God, and the spirit of man and angel loses itself in the unity in diversity of this most high mystery' (Bérulle, Œuvres, p. 938).

The Incarnation is the centre, the heart, the all of the Christian religion, and that for two main reasons. First, because the ineffable mystery of the Adorable Trinity, which is our Beginning and our End, our Sanctity and Perfection, our Beatitude and our Home, is only known to us in and through Jesus, the Word made Flesh. 'No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him' (John i. 18). 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father' (John xiv. 9).

Secondly, because by the Incarnation God not only reveals Himself to man, but gives Himself to man. The supreme purpose for which the Divine Life took our nature, was made visible to us, was not that we should see it, but that we should receive it. 'Factus est homo ut homo fieret Deus' (St. Aug., Serm. CXXVIII., de Nativ.),² 'God is made man that man may be made God,' a statement entirely justified by the New Testament, as is the frequent use of the term deification in early Christian writers.

'I am the Life,' says our Lord. 'This is the testimony that God hath given to us eternal life: and this life is in His Son; he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life' (1 John v. 11, 12). 'In this was manifested the love of God towards us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him' (ibid. iv. 9). It is the centre of St. Paul's teaching, 'the hidden mystery' which has now been revealed, 'Christ in you, the hope of glory' (Col. i. 27). We are 'saved by His life' (Rom. v. 10), an equivalent saying being that 'by grace are ye saved' (Eph. ii. 8), grace being the communication of the Divine Life given not merely for us but to us, to be continued, lived, exercised by us in the sense of the Apostles: 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me' (Gal. ii. 20).

'Why speak of imitation,' asks Fr. Prat, 'when the Apostle aims at mystical identity?' (Theology of St. Paul, ii. 344). In a footnote he adds, 'To put on Christ (Rom. xiii. 14; Gal. iii. 27), to be transformed into His image (2 Cor. iii. 18), to grow in Him (Eph. iv. 5), to live in Him (Rom. vi. 11), are only different expressions of the same thing. It is less the direct imitation of Jesus than the effort to assimilate to ourselves always more and more the Divine nourishment of grace which makes the Christian another Christ. St. Paul is not afraid to propose to us Jesus Christ as a model in His Divine pre-existence (2 Cor. viii. 9; Phil. ii. 5-7). Why should he not do so, since he exhorts us to imitate God? (Eph. v. 1: γίνεσθε οὖν μιμηταὶ τοῦ θεοῦ).'

It is hardly any exaggeration to say that this whole New Testament conception of the Christian life, a conception carried on and developed by the continuous tradition of the Catholic Church, a conception which is the source and background of Catholic 'spirituality,' is completely foreign to the average Christian of to-day, who regards the Christian life as an attempt which we make, and may expect God's help in making.

to model ourselves on the example and words, or rather on the adapted spirit of the example and words of Jesus Christ in much the same way as a Confucianist might model himself on the life and precepts of his master. Our Lord is regarded almost exclusively as a Teacher external to ourselves, not as a Saviour in the full, Christian sense of the word, nor as the Life destined to become our life. Little wonder, then, that men cannot understand the Catholic religion which makes this central, or that they say frankly and with truth that the life and precepts of Jesus are neither practicable nor even natural. They are right, for the Life and teaching of Jesus is altogether supernatural; it is not the apex of human moral and spiritual effort but a 'donum Dei,' a gift of God coming down from heaven and bringing life, not merely a message, to the world. And the Christian life is not an external, human imitation of a life external to itself, but a participation in that Divine Life upon which human perfection depends and in which it rests. 'Be ye imitators of God as dear children' (Eph. v. 1), that is, as possessing some real relationship, some real communication with the Life of God. 'The adoption of children of God resembles that participation in natural filiation,' says St. Thomas. We are able to imitate God since He has made that imitation possible by the gift of His own Life in and through Jesus Christ. 'To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God' (John i. 14). 'The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them' (John xvii. 22). This is that eternal life of which our Lord speaks, not a future gift, still less a 'going on' (the term eternal is the very opposite of succession or duration, vide St. Thomas, Summa Theol. I. x.) of our natural life under new and improved conditions, but a present possession by which we are made 'new creatures' in Christ Jesus, so that we are, here and now, so united to Him, so filled with His Spirit,

His Mind, His Will, His Love, that our life is nothing less than a continuation of His Life.

Almighty God has created us of nothingness (Summa Theol. I. ii. 14), and as nothingness in ourselves, capacities for the reception of that true life which is Himself, the true substance of that 'shadow of life' which we are in and by ourselves. 'Jesus is the accomplishment of our being, which subsists only in Him and is alone perfect in Him . . . we ought to regard our being as an emptiness . . . and Jesus our fulness . . . the perfect life of Jesus ought to be the excellence and perfection of our life . . . our first knowledge should be of our imperfect and defective condition: and our first movement ought to be to Jesus as to our accomplishment. For in that search of Jesus, in that adherence to Jesus, in that profound and continual dependence upon Jesus, is our life, our repose, our strength and all our power of being and doing' (Bérulle, Œuvres, pp. 1180, 1181).

The initial bestowal of the Divine Life takes place in Holy Baptism, so that, once we grasp the greatness and the significance of the gift there given, the positive reality of the union it sets up between the soul and God, we can understand the tremendous place that Sacrament holds in the New Testament and in the Church. For 'baptised in Christ Jesus' (Rom. vi. 3) we are actually incorporated into all the reality of His death and resurrection, made one with Him in the death to sin and a new life unto righteousness, 'saved by his life' not by some merely external act done to us but by a radical change effected in us 'for ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God' (Col. iii. 3). Thus the Christian becomes another Christ, his life is a continuation and extension of the Divine Human life of Jesus, who, as the Council of Trent says, 'communicates His own virtue to those who are justified.'

'The Christian life,' says St. John Eudes, 'is nothing else but the continuation and achievement of the life of Jesus in each one of us . . . the true Christian continues and accomplishes by all that he does in the name of Christ all that the same Jesus Christ did during his life on earth.'

So real, so intimate and so perfect is this union accomplished by our moral response to Divine grace that, following St. Paul and St. John, St. John Eudes does not hesitate to say, ' The Eternal Father having done you the honour of receiving you into companionship with Himself by Baptism, as one of His children and members of His Son, He has obliged Himself to look upon you with the same eye, to love you with the same heart and to treat you with the same love with which He regards, loves and treats His Son.'

It is obvious that since the Christian life is nothing less than a continuation of the Life of Jesus Christ, its existence is incompatible with mortal sin, that is with a deliberate act, even in thought, which amounts to a rejection by the will of our Lord Himself. Since, too, the Christian life must always be a gift, it can never be attained purely from man's side, it must in the case of the sinner be a gift restored by God on the fulfilment of such conditions as He has laid down. Those conditions are again necessary, not arbitrarily, but on account of what the Christian life is, for a gift must be received, and this gift can only be received by penitence, renouncing the act which forfeited it and thus making possible its restoration. Here the Divine liberality, ' rich in mercy,' provides the Sacrament of Penance, wherein the penitent child is restored to the fulness of his Father's home, to which, however far he has wandered, he always belongs. ' Nor need we fear, lest there be no place whither to return, because we fell from it ; for in our absence, our home fell not - which is Thy eternity ' (St. Aug., Conf., bk. iv. 16).

It is from the same Christian point of view that we must continually regard Holy Communion, ' our daily super-substantial bread.' Not as a reward of virtue or a crown of our efforts, but as the source of our virtue and the principle of our efforts. There are no plainer or more significant words than ' As the living Father hath sent Me and I live by the Father : so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me ' (John vi. 57). The main purpose of the Most Holy Eucharist, considered as a Sacrament, is to make us more and more Christian by the transformation of our lives into the life of Christ. At the altar ' the guilty slave eats the body of his God,' and, as St. Chrysostom cries, ' is no longer mere dust and ashes, since he has tasted of the food of immortality,' for, in the exquisitely theological and beautiful words of Urban IV, ' This bread is eaten but not transmuted, it is nowise changed into the creature, but if it be worthily received, the recipient becomes like to it. This transformation is brought about by the streaming in upon us of the Spirit and Life of Christ. As a result, Christ liveth in us ; our thoughts, our impulses, our will and activity assume a resemblance to the hidden life of the Eucharistic Saviour and become Divine ' (Bull Transiturus). But this transformation of life is not effected by the most Holy Sacrament alone, as we shall see later. In his letter to Proba (No. 130) St. Augustine dwells on the fact that the secret of that happiness, the desire of which is inherent in our nature, can only be found in the possession of life in God. And to acquire this Divine life which is the complement and satisfaction of our nature should be the object of our prayer.

Baptised then, and so incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ, the Christian carries on the life of Jesus Christ, reproducing that life in the particular way, form and manner determined by his vocation. The call and the grace of God constitute the initial as well as every successive step in that life. We do not begin it, and, having made some progress, arrive at a point where we must seek God's assistance. God is the author of the first movements, however slight and in whatever way they may manifest themselves, by which we are 'delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son' (Col. i. 13). 'We love him because He first loved us' (1 John iv. 19). Our part is that of response to, and correspondence with, an act of God done for and in us, a response and correspondence deriving from the fact that we are both rational and free beings. God does not treat us otherwise than He has constituted us. But that response and correspondence is never purely a natural act of our own, but always an act suggested and aided by Divine grace. Thus the Apostle exhorts us, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,' as if, as St. Ignatius Loyola says, it were entirely dependent on ourselves, yet without any dependence on self but only on God, 'for it is God Who worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure' (Phil. ii. 13).

Christian perfection is both a gift and an accomplishment. 'Baptised into Christ,' and so being made 'partakers of the Divine nature,' our part is one of continual, lifelong 'putting on of Christ,' of surrender to the Divine life of Jesus operating within our souls, of constant conformity to the Mind and Will of Christ, by all of which we are 'transformed from glory into glory,' growing up 'unto Him in all things,' as day by day we are 'renewed in the spirit' of our minds and 'put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness' by 'the spirit Who dwelleth in us,' 'till we all come

in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of The Fulness of Christ.'

Footnotes

1. Compare the striking words of Cardinal Mercier addressed to his clergy on this point : ' It is incumbent upon us, priests and pastors, to preach the Christian Life. . . . The burden of our sermons and of the confessional is too much one of duty, of virtues, too little of supernatural charity poured out upon souls by the Holy Spirit. . . . It is the Christ whom it is necessary to give, His Gospel, the riches of His grace, His presence and that of the Holy Spirit in the soul, interior prayer, the peace and power of Divine union – it is this which needs to be preached. But you do not preach it, or but little, for it is dogma, and dogma, it seems, frightens you. And hence there grows up a generation of Christians whose ideal is an irreproachable honesty, the respectability of the gentleman with some practices of religion ' (La Vie Intérieure, pp. 457-460). ↩

2. This sermon is placed in the Appendix of 'sermones suppositiones' by the Maurist editors, but the thought is the saint's and may be paralleled by St. Athanasius. 'Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποινθιομεν' (De incarn. Verbi, 54). ↩