Chapter IV. Love of God and the Mystery of the Cross

The mystery of the cross throws open to us va/t perspectives that add width and depth to our knowledge fof God and of Christ, as well as to our understanding of sin. The cross offers us the clearest and most impressive evidence of God's love for the supreme good, which is Himself, for His incarnate Son,lInd for our souls. It tells us, too, not only of His love for goud, the basis of all duty, but also of His hatred for evil, and of the need for reparation to re-establish the order of justice.

Moreover, incredible as it may seem at first, it speaks to us of God's great love for the Word made flesh. £y sending Christ to icrnnminious death on Calvary¹ the Most High; willed to have Him gain a hidden victory far surpassing His triumph over death on the Hay "t His resurrection, a victory, % wirl-mnt parallel. t]ie" overthrow of sin and Satan.^Lastlyy the cross makes known to us God's love for our souls, since He :. delivered up His only Son that we might be saved. The better ^to grasp this truth, we now wish to consider the Savior's pas-

THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS 175 sion as the supreme manifestation of the plenitude of grace He received at His conception in view of His universal mission as Redeemer.

One of the most mysterious and at the same time most revealing aspects of Christ's passion is. Ae_union of terrible, ^■^ lurrering w kb^jhat great peace; He experienced in consummating His redemptive work— the two perfectly united extremes of His whole interior life. 2 We can learn a lesson from our Master here: how, in union with Him, we ought_to_ preserve peace and abandonment to God in the midst of our worst trials. When we have to undergo not only sharp and pToIonged physical pain but moral suffering as well, and are left to ourselves with little human help, and even without apparent aid from heaven, we nearly always fall into discouragement and seem about to lose all courage and hope.

Rare are the souls that, in hours of profound sadness, preserve perfect abandonment to God and the peace which can come to us only from Him. First in rank among these heroic souls and far above all the rest, stands the holy soul of the Word made flesh, so strengthened by the superabundant grace received at its coming into the world as to suffer much and to be ever at peace.

ARTICLE I OUR lord's fullness of grace and ardent

From the first instant of its creation and union with the body formed in Mary's virginal womb, the holy soul of Christ

, 7 6 THE LOVE OF GOD received a fullness of created grace proportionate to its personal union with the Word; for the nearer we are to God, the ijrore light and life we receive from Him, just as the closer ywc come to a fireside die more light and warmth it gives us.

The personality of the Word made flesh As created, Christ's soul was and will always be more united to the Word of God than any other creature could be: it constitutes one and the same person with Him, since it exists by the uncreated exigence of the Word. 3 No more intimate or indissoluble union of two infinitely distant natures can be conceived: they are one not merely because of an accidental union by way of knowledge and love but through a substantial union by way of being itself, since, without becoming confused, the divine and human natures really belong to the uncreated person of the Word made flesh in such a way that in Christ there is nohumar> personality, no human "I," but only the "I" of the Word of God. "~

Our Savior's humanity loses nothing because of this, but acquires a peerless perfection found faintly reproduced in the lives of the saints. The more the saints grow in the love of God the more, in a sense, they lose their human personality. In their union with God they become independent, as it were, of everything created and rise above the natural condition of men of their country and time so that they may guide human generations toward the life of eternity; they oppose hatred of self to disordered self-love; they abandon their own ideas for the thoughts of God received through faith; they turn their wills from egoism to love of God until, although they are but s IIa, q.17, a. 2.²

human beings still, they can exclaim with St. Paul: "I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me." 4

The faculties of Christ's soul, too, are thus transformed and deified. His intellect is ruled and enlightened in all its ideas and judgments by divine truth. Supereminent charity guards His will from any egoism. The highest degree of sanctifying grace has been engrafted into His soul's very essence. Yet, above and beyond all this, at the very root of His faculties and die soul itself, exists no human self, no human person ; in its stead reigns supreme the very self of the Word made man. The Word, who possesses from all eternity with the Father and the Holy Ghost the infinite and indivisible divine nature, has also intimately and forever assumed our human nature, a body and a soul like ours. Christ can truly say: "I am the way and the truth and the life," 5 not merely, "I have received truth and life," but "I am the truth and the life." And as truth is being, only He who is being itself could so speak. "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am." 6 "No one knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither doth anyone know the Father, but the Son and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him." 7 "I and the Father are one." 8

So close is this incomparably intimate union of natures that the personality of the Word acts as the radical principle of all the human operations of Christ; in Him, the Word of God knows by a human intellect, wills by a human will, speaks, suffers, and dies for us.

Christ's fullness of grace

It follows that, because Christ's soul is nearer the source of all grace than any other soul or any other spirit, it has evidently received more light and more love; it has received an absolute plenitude of created grace proportionate to the dignity of the Word made flesh and to the universal mission of the Savior of humanity. 9 Every divine mission demands holiness proportionate to the task; if all too often in the government of human affairs the incapable and the improvident occupy high positions to the detriment of the governed, no equal disorder or disproportion can prevail in those God Himself has directly and immediately chosen for an exceptional divine work. A supereminent divine mission demands supcrcminent sanctity. The soul of the Savior, already sanctified by personal union with the Word, must have received such an intensive and extensive fullness of grace that from it grace could overflow upon all mankind and give life to all generations. Of Christ, the constituted head of the Church, St. John can say: "And of His fullness we all have received." 10 The special graces received by the great servants of God form them chiefly for the accomplishment of their missions. Together with His mission as universal Redeemer, Priest, and Victim, the fullness of grace was unquestionably bestowed on Christ. As soon as His soul existed, its ardor for the cross was born. As St. Thomas says: "God the Father did deliver up Christ to the passion; ... by the infusion of charity, He inspired Him with the will to suffer for us." 11

Christ and His Cross

That our Savior was ever moved and inspired by the sacrifice of the cross, we learn not only from theology but from a far higher source — the revelation spoken by His own mouth. In the Epistle to the Hebrews St. Paul wrote that, in coming into the world, Christ said: "Sacrifice and oblation [of the blood of bulls and of goats] Thou wouldst not; but a body Thou has fitted to Me. . . . Behold I come . . . that I should do Thy will, O God." 12 This act of oblation Christ unceasingly renewed during the course of His life and expressed again in Gethsemane, saying: "My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." 13 He was ever moving on toward the end of His redemptive mission. Even His anguish before the impending cross could not weaken His efficacious desire to be fully faithful to His mission of priest and victim. The desire prevailed and came to realization in the Consummatum est.

We can regard our Lord's ardent thirst for our salvation as the soul of His apostolate. Although some modernists maintain that St. Paul's genius invented the idea of the sacrifice of the cross, which was foreign to Christ's preaching, we know that He was continually voicing it, not only in the form given us by St. John, but in the varied ways preserved in the first three Gospels.

In the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 14 Jesus says: "The Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ranson for many." 16 And in one of

l8o THE LOVE OF GOD

His most beautiful parables He tells us: "I am the good shepherd ; and I know Mine, and Mine know Me. As the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for My sheep. . . . And there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Therefore doth the Father love Me; because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from Me; but I lay it down of Myself. And I have power to lay it down; and I have power to take it up again. This commandment I have received of My Father." 16

The same thought recurs again and again in His preaching. "I am come to cast fire on the earth. And what will I, but that it be kindled ? And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized. And how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" 17 He speaks here of that most perfect baptism, baptism of blood. 18 "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself." Which He said, adds St. John, to signify by what death He was to die. 18

When unable to bear Christ's foretelling of His passion, Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying: "T_r.pl. he if far from Thee, this shall not be unto Thee," our Lord answered: " Get behind Me, Satan ; thou art ^ scandal unto Me, becauselKou savorest not the things thatareof God.l but the thing s that ar e of men." ^"Indeed, the human ^oughtroTTeTeTit that moment protested against the very mystery of redemption and the whole economy of our salvation.

Our Lord's thoughts and desires were ever turning to the

18 John 10: 14-18. " Luke 12: 49 f. "Hla, q.46, a-"-³ cross, which He held out to us all as the one way of salvation. As St. Luke relates: "And He said to all: If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: for he that shall lose his life for My sake shall save it." 21 And as it is recorded elsewhere: "And whosoever doth not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." 22 The sons of Zebedee He challenged with the words: "You know not what you ask. Can you drink of the chalice that I drink of, or be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized?" 23

Again, in the upper room, the night before the Passion, Christ expressed His great desire to accomplish His mission as priest and victim by instituting the Eucharistic sacrifice, identical in substance with the sacrifice of the cross. As St. Luke records: "And He said to them: With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you before I suffer. For I say to you that from this time I will not eat it, till it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. . . . And taking bread, He gave thanks and brake, and gave to them, saying: This is My body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of Me. In like manner, the chalice also after He had supped, saying: This is the chalice, the new testament in My blood, which shall be shed for you." 24

Upon going out of the Cenacle to walk to Gethsemane, He continued speaking His thoughts: "The prince of this world cometh; and in Me he hath not anything. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father

i8 2 THE LOVE OF GOD hath given Me commandments, so do L Arise, let us go hence." 25 As St. Thomas remarks in his commentary on this passage of St. John's Gospel, Jesus obviously so speaks by His Father's inspiration, which made Him desire to die for us out of love and obedience. And as He nears Calvary, His words grow in clarity: "Greater love than diis no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 28 And in the sacerdotal prayer: "Father, . . . sanctify them in truth. . . . And for them do I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth." 27

As St. John says: "In this we have known the charity of God, because He hath laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." 28 In other words, we members of our Lord's mystical body should have a more or less perfect participation in His fullness of grace.

The decree of redemption embraced the cross and all that the cross entailed as the consummation of Christ's work and destiny as priest and victim. By being personally united to the Word and constituted head of the Church, Christ's soul contracted an obligation to satisfy for mankind. The head had to rectify the disorder of its members. Our Lord's fullness of grace disposed Him for the perfect accomplishment of His mission and acted as a magnet drawing Him toward the cross and making Him desire it ardently for our salvation.

Pondus Crucis et Pondus Gloriae

Louis Chardon's clear and masterly treatment of this doctrine shows that the grace of Christ acts as die principle of

two forces or weights, which draw Him, so to speak, in contrary directions : the attraction of glory 29 and the pull of the cross. Even on Thabor our Lord thought more of offering Himself for us than of anything else and, when He spoke with Moses and Elias, He talked about the Passion.

Plunged in the divine essence and absorbed in the fullness of eternal happiness, . . . Christ would not allow His spirit to rest in the joy that filled all His faculties. The divine torrent might go so far as to reach even His garments, yet He withdrew from it, turning His thoughts to the whips, the thorns, the.nails, the shameful death that lay ahead. ... He looked through the deifying and deiform light of beatitude to rest His eyes on the cross ahead and He longed for the terrible sufferings of His passion; for the satisfactions of eternal glory could not slake His thirst to suffer.

Two extremes presented themselves to His mind : glory and dishonor; the life of blessedness and shameful death ... at a time when He tasted the one and had no experience of the other. Nevertheless grace so drew Him to pay the debt of our ransom that beatitude could not move Him.

No joy, not eternal glory itself, could distract Christ's mind from the cross which held sway over all His faculties. Hence the lower part of His soul was not inundated by the effects of the Transfiguration, even though it did share, by divine Providence and through a kind of reflection, in the glory of that mystery. The attraction of the cross was so strong that Thabor was less in the mind, the love, the heart, of the transfigured Christ than Calvary. 30

80 La croix de Jesus, 1st cd., pp. 40 f. Copies of the original text being extremely rare, lengthy extracts from it can be found in Bremond's Hisloire lilteraire du sentiment religieux en Trance, VIII, 30. The revised text of Chardon's work has lost some of the savor and strength of the original.

The same idea is beautifully expressed in Dc Montiort's L'amour de la divine sagesse, Part II, chap. 5, which deals with the triumph of eternal wisdom on the cross and by the cross.

!8 4 THE LOVE OF GOD

God willed the Incarnation chiefly as redemptive. Drawn by the same motive Christ ardently desired to fulfill perfectly His mission as Redeemer.

The motive of the Incarnation We enter into what is most intimate and primordial in Christ's life when we seek to know the motive of the Incarnation. "Mercy" is the best answer to our why, for the Incarnation was motivated most of all by mercy for sinning and unhappy humanity. Misery calls for mercy. Mercy exists because of misery. 31 Mercy is, as it were, so characteristic of God, that through it He best teaches us of His power and goodness, as He so strikingly shows us when He lifts us up from mortal sin and gives us back the eternal treasure of His infinite life.

Often God gives more through mercy than He would have given through simple liberality, as we see from the conversion of Magdalen and the good thief, and in truth, from the ransom of all mankind.

Certainly an opinion exists which holds that the Word would have become incarnate even if man had not sinned. But, St. Thomas remarks: "Since everywhere in the Sacred Scriptures the sin of the first man is assigned as a reason for the Incarnation, it is more in accordance with this to say that had sin not existed, the Incarnation would not have been." 32 In other words, mercy motivated the Incarnation, as the Credo tells us: "Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis et incarnatus est." "For God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son; that whosoever

believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting." 33

Insistence on this point will easily resolve difficulties raised by those who maintain the contrary opinion. Their arguments come to this: the superior cannot be ordered to the inferior, but this is just what would happen if the Incarnation were ordered to our redemption. According to St. Thomas, mercy brings die superior down to the inferior, not, of course, to become subordinated to him, but to raise him up and to restore and magnify the primitive order, the original harmony. The Word, by becoming incarnate, by bending down in mercy to sinning humanity, in no way subordinates Himself to humanity; rather does He wonderfully manifest His omnipotence and goodness by subordinating humanity to His Father, to Himself, and to the Holy Ghost. From all eternity, the divine Mercy has willed the Incarnation as redemptive: "Ratio miserendi est miseria." 34

Another aspect of this great mystery demands consideration. Since God can permit evil only in view of a greater good, it must be said that He permitted original sin only in view of the redemptive Incarnation, a supreme manifestation of mercy, wherein all the rights of justice are at the same time safeguarded. As St. Thomas says: "There is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Rom. 5: 20) : 'Where sin abounded, grace did more abound.' Hence, too, in the blessing of the paschal candle, we say: 'O happy

84 As St. Thomas so often says, "Omnis res est propter semetipsam operanlem." Every being is for its operation, or better, operates for itself and ultimately for God. Christ was willed by God to be the Savior of men.

i86 THE LOVE OF GOD fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer.'" 35 And therefore Jesus Christ is before and above all, not King or Doctor or Prophet or Wonder Worker, but Savior and Victim. In His predestination this role is not something secondary, superadded accidentally as a result of the first man's sin; it is primordial. By the will of God, Christ was first and foremost the Redeemer, the victor over sin, Satan, and death. 36 So, at any rate, St. Thomas thought, and many theologians with him, all believing themselves the possessors of the true meaning of Scripture. If they are right, then we can see how fundamental and predominant in Christ's life was His desire to save us, to suffer for us on the cross.

His hour

No one need wonder then why Christ so often spoke of His hour, the hour of His passion, His great hour. Divine Providence had infallibly determined it from all eternity, and before it came His enemies could do nothing against Him. He spoke of it as an approaching certainty which in no way violated or necessitated either His own freedom or that of His executioners. 37 The nearer this hour approached, the more urgent became His warnings to His disciples. At

85 Sec the exposition of this doctrine given by the Carmelites of Salamanca, Godoy, Gonet, who seem to have given the best interpretation of St. Thomas' doctrine concerning the motive of the Incarnation, applying to the mystery the principle, causam ad inricem sunt causae in diverso gencrc. In other words, there is a mutual interdependence between the Incarnation, in view of which God permitted original sin, and original sin itself, from which the divine mercy willed that we be delivered by the redemptive incarnation of His Son. Cf. Ia, q.23, a. 5, for the application of the same principle to predestination. In both instances causes operate upon each other mutually but from different points of view.

87 Cf. St. Thomas, Commentary on St. John 2:4: "My hour is not yet come." Sec also John 5:25, 28; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, *T. «3**i ^5-2, 4» 21, 32; 17:1; Mark 14: 41 ; Luke 22: 53.

Gethsemane "He taketh Peter and James and John with Him, and He began to fear and to be heavy. And He saith to them: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death.' " 38

No contradiction lies in this. Our Lord did not negate His m ardent-desire to suffer for us and to accomplish perfectly His mission as victim. He was not just a little inferior to those martyrs who have experienced no equal sadness in the face of death: like St. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, who longed to be ground by the teeth of beasts that he might become the wheat of Christ. After the holy ardor of His oblation, our Savior willed to be overwhelmed with grief, and, that He might offer a perfect sacrifice, to suffer for our sakes that mortal sadness and terror a man naturally experiences in the face of such a death. He also willed to leave us an example for our own hours of overwhelming sorrow. His sadness was not an emotion which preceded and troubled the judgment of right reason and the consent of the will; on the contrary He willed to become sorrowful that His holocaust might be perfect. 39 Instead of hardening Himself stoically against suffering and proudly denying its existence, Christ surrendered Himself to it voluntarily for our salvation. Of His life He says: "No man taketh it away from Me; but I lay it down of Myself. And I have power to lay it down; and I have power to take it up again." 40

He willed each and all of His sufferings, the crowning with thorns, the scourging, which reduced His whole body to one great wound, the torture when His robe was put on Him

89 Cf. Summa, Ilia, q.15, a. 4, 5. 6> 7; also q-40, 3.6, 8, where St. Thomas quotes St. John Damascene's famous dictum that Christ's divinity permitted His body to do and to suffer in accordance with its nature.

again and adhered to His wounds, the flaming of His whole body into vivid pain when the soldiers tore it off for the crucifixion. Being offered as a holocaust for us, He willed, too, to be nailed to the cross, to surfer from the priests of the Synagogue whose mission it was to recognize die coming of the Messias, to suffer from Judas, who betrayed Him, to suffer from His people, who acclaimed Him on Palm Sunday and forsook Him so shortly after, to suffer from Peter, who denied Him, the disciples, who deserted Him, the crowd that mocked and blasphemed Him. 41

He willed to go still farther. After taking our sins upon Himself, He willed to surfer in our stead the curse due to sin; becoming as St. Paul says, "a curse for us." 42 An expiatory victim, He felt the terrible justice of God weighing upon Him. Isaias, contemplating the Passion with the very eyes of God, prophetically foretold: "But he was wounded for our iniquities; He was bruised for our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; and by His bruises we are healed. . . . And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. . . . And the Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infirmity. If He shall lay down His life for sin, He shall see a long-lived seed ; and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in His hand." 43

Our Lord's fullness of grace brought Him even to this extremity that His mission as Redeemer and Victim might be realized. If almost all the saints have desired martyrdom, if St. Ignatius of Antioch longed to be ground by the teeth of beasts, what must have been Christ's desire for the cross ! He

41 Ilia, q.46, a. 5. St. Thomas says that, gcnerically speaking, Christ endured every human suffering.

42 In his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians 3:14, St. Thomas says that Christ became a curse for us by dying for us and taking on Himself the curse due our sins.

willed not only to experience through grace a holy enthusiasm for His oblation, but also, as a victim literally bruised in our stead, to know mortal sadness and anguish, offering it all for us with a love so pure and intense that it could be found nowhere else but in the heart of God. "Surely He hath born? our infirmities and carried our sorrows." 44

In mortal sadness, in entire forsakenness, in that desolation expressed in the twenty-first Psalm, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 45 Christ kept perfect mastery over Himself, complete abandonment to the divine will, and a profound peace that found expression in His last words.

The Seven Words

Peace is the tranquillity of order, and order is re stored by^ th e t cxQs s^which reconciles sinning humanity to God. Nowhere can we find an expression of greater peace than in the last words of the dying Christ, spoken for His executioners, for the good thief, for Mary and John, for us all: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 46 "Amen I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise." 47 "Woman, behold thy son." 48 "Behold thy mother." 49 "I thirst." 60 "It is consummated." 51 "Fadier, into Thy hands

I commend My spirit." 62 These words, which we ought to repeat daily, are our Lord's testament whereby He restored peace to our souls. Those He spoke last of all offered and consecrated the sacrifice of the cross at the very moment of its immolation. 53

Calvin sought to find an expression of despair in the words, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"; but, on the contrary, these are plainly the inspired words of the first verse of Psalm 21, the Messianic psalm, which came to the lips of our dying Lord and have an unquestionable significance. They utter a cry of sorrow and then make an act of perfect confidence and pure love. In saying them, Christ thought of our blindness and prayed for us. To be convinced of this, we have only to reread Psalm 21 :

O God, my God, look upon me: why hast Thou forsaken me? O my God, I shall cry by day, and Thou wilt not hear: and by night, and it shall not be reputed as folly in me." This is the supplication of a victim, who adds immediately: "But Thou dwellest in the holy place, the praise of Israel. In Thee have our fathers hoped . . . and Thou has delivered them. . . . But I am a worm, and no man: the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people. . . . Depart not from me. For tribulation is very near : for there is none to help me. Many calves have surrounded me, . . . the council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have numbered all my bones. And they have looked and stared upon me. They parted my garments among them: and upon my vesture they cast lots. But Thou, O Lord, remove not Thy help to a distance from me; look toward my defense. Deliver me from the lion's mouth: and

53 A recent opinion holding that the sacrifice of the cross would not have been a true sacrifice if it had not been preceded by the sacramental oblation at the Last Supper, cannot be admitted. When Christ died on the cross, not only was He immolated but He also offered Himself to the Father for us.

my lowness from the horns of the unicorns. I will declare Thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the church will I praise Thee. Ye that fear the Lord, praise Him; all ye seed of Jacob, glorify Him . . . because He hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of the poor man. Neither hath He turned away His face from me : and when I cried to Him He heard me. With Thee is my praise in a great church. . . . The poor shall eat and shall be filled: and they shall praise the Lord that seek Him: their hearts shall live forever and ever. All the ends of the earth shall remember, and shall be converted to the Lord : and all the kindreds of the Gentiles shall adore in His sight.

The Messianic psalm that welled up to the lips of the dying Christ obviously expresses no despair; the first verse simply cries out the deep sorrow of a victim bearing on Himself the curse due to our sins. Our Lord willingly shouldered this anguish that He might deliver His loved ones from its burden and, by the same act, pay His tribute of adoration to the sovereign Justice that punishes sin. 54

As to the other seven words, martyrdom has spoken none stronger, none more beautiful. They spoke the peace of Christ ; they bestowed the peace of Christ; and those who stood around His cross were strengthened for that terrible trial they shared with Him. St. Augustine says that the beatitude of die peacemakers corresponds to the gift of wisdom, the principle of contemplation. Never on earth were such heights of contemplation reached as those Christ experienced on the cross.

"Father, forgive diem, for they know not what they do." This was said for His executioners at the very moment when they crucified their own Savior, a word to be repeated by

I92 THE LOVE OF GOD

St. Stephen and many other martyrs, a word that plainly distinguishes the true martyr from the false, since it rises not from obstinacy but from strength companioned by exquisite meekness and perfect charity.

Of like character is die word spoken to the good thief, promising him the peace of heaven at once: "This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise." And no other are the words of balm poured into the aching hearts of Mary and John. "Woman, behold thy son." Then did Mary become more than ever the mother of all men represented in John, and the mediatrix and dispenser of all graces. "Son, behold thy mother." And from that moment John loved the Mother of God with the deep and reverent love of a son.

After the first words of Psalm 21, Jesus added "I thirst" and "It is consummated." At the very moment when He thirsts for souls, He Himself was bringing them the living waters of grace. There is more joy in giving than in receiving. He had the boundless joy of consummating the work of redemption by a perfect holocaust, reconciling sinners to God, giving peace to all who would accept it, and eternal life to all those who would not, through their own fault, refuse to receive it.

Surely the peace of the sacerdotal prayer pervades the last word, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." By it, the sacrifice of the cross was consecrated. All things were restored in God. Divine peace returned to the world, and the love of God flowered again in the hearts of men. 55

"Ilia, q-47, a. 3, St. Thomas explains the words, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" by saying that Christ said them while hanging on the cross because His Father had left Him to the power of His persecutors, as St. Augustine says (Ep. cxl), and he adds (ad Him): "It is indeed a wicked and cruel act to hand over an innocent man to torment and to death against his own will. Yet God the Father did not so deliver up Christ, but inspired Him with the will to suffer for us. God's severity (Rom. 11: 22) is thereby shown, for He would

In His last discourse our Lord had promised to give us peace. 56 Dying, He kept His promise. His words express not defeat and desperation, but victory over sin and Satan. So mysterious was His triumph, however, that very few around the cross recognized it — Mary and John, some faithful women, a repentant thief, and a Roman officer. Three days later another more striking though lesser triumph, bound to the first by transcendent logic, made the earlier victory manifest. Christ showed His supremacy over sin itself by vanquishing the fruit of sin, death. Only the mouth that said, "I have overcome the world" 57 could pronounce, "It is finished."

Peace in anguish

One of the most sublime aspects of the mystery of the redemption, an object of study for theologians and of contemplation for mystics, is the union of deep sorrow and perfect peace in the dying Christ. Theologians and mystics alike generally agree that this intimate union of seemingly opposed sentiments is both a miracle and an essentially supernatural mystery: a miracle, in virtue of which Christ was at one and the same time viator et comprehensor, a traveler toward eternity who already possessed eternal life; a mystery essentially supernatural, because the two extremes united here, greatest peace and deepest sorrow, are, like grace and not remit sin without penalty: and the Apostle indicates this when (Rom. 7: 32) he says: 'God spared not even His own Son.' Likewise His goodness (Rom. 11: 22) shines forth, since by no penalty endured could man pay Him enough satisfaction: and the Apostle denotes this when he says: 'He delivered Him up for us all': and again (Rom. 3:25): 'Whom — that is to say, Christ — God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.' " Concerning St. Augustine's explanation of these words, cf. G. Joussard, "L'abandon du Christ d'aprcs saint Augustin," Revue des Sciences phil. el theol., July, 1924.

"Ibid., 16:33- charity, both supernatural, and, as a result, their union also is essentially supernatural, and thus inaccessible to the natural powers of any human or angelic intellect. The coexistence of states apparently so contrary requires some clarification, although during our lifetime this union must always remain somewhat incomprehensible to us, hidden by light too strong for our weak eyes.

In attempting to explain this mystery, some theologians have fallen into contradictions. They extenuate or disfigure its truth in one of three theories now to be stated and discussed.

Certain theologians, like Aureolus, have held that, during the Passion, Jesus suffered only in the sensitive part of His soul, and not in its purely spiritual part. 58 But, as the Carmelites of Salamanca remark, 59 this opinion goes contrary to the common doctrine of the Fathers founded on Scripture, according to which Christ suffered from the sins of all men, an evidently spiritual suffering. Like contrition, such sufferings belong not to the sensitive part of the soul, which man shares in common with animals, but to the will, and all the more so as the will is elevated and animated by supernatural charity, the love of God and of souls in God. The ordinary magisterium of the Church teaches this doctrine plainly. 60

A second entirely different theory was proposed by Melchior Cano, Velantia, Salmeron, and Maldonatus. According to them, our Lord did not will to preserve during the Passion the beatific joy that normally originated at the summit of His

69 Cursus theologicus , in 111am, q.9, a. 2, de scienlia beala Chrisli.

80 This teaching rests on the definitions o£ the Third Council of Constantinople against the Monothelitcs. These definitions establish the distinction between our Lord's uncreated will and His human will, without which He would not have been really man.

soul because of the vision of the divine essence. This second theory conflicts with what St. Thomas says, 61 and, as Gonet notes, it appears to contain a contradiction. It seems impossible that the Sovereign Good, God seen face to face, could be possessed by an intellect and proposed to a created will without the latter experiencing immense joy. If our Lord did have the vision of die divine essence during the Passion, He had, too, at the highest point of His soul, the joy which comes from that vision.

Theophile Raynaud proposed a third theory: that sovereign beatitude and deepest sorrow, even if contrary can coexist miraculously in the same soul. But, as Gonet says, 82 equal contrariety implies contradiction; and this obtains if, at the same time, the same will is made both deeply glad and deeply sad by the same object. Even by a miracle, God cannot do anything contradictory. Almost all theologians admit that the union of deepest sorrow and perfect beatitude in our Lord was miraculous, a result of His being at the same time viator and comprehensor, 63 so that in Him the glory of the beatific vision did not overflow into the lower part of the soul. To recognize a miracle, however, is not to concede a contradiction.

Since these diree theories are evidently insufficient, let us turn to St. Thomas and his principal commentators for an understanding of this union of sentiments apparently so opposed. 84 We shall find that the tradition preserved by them gives us a much nobler and more comprehensive view. St.

62 Clypeus thomisticae theologiae, in lllam, q.9, a. 2.

84 Cf. Ilia, q.g, a. 2; q.46, a. 7; q.84, a. 9, 2 ob.; and sec Cajetan, Salmanticenses, Gonet, on these articles.

Thomas is not one to minimize; he does not make little of the mystery in any way. First of all, he establishes the fact that even during the Passion Christ enjoyed the beatific vision and, as a result, perfect beatitude; and that, on the other hand, His sorrow far surpassed all the suffering endured by men in the present life. The solution to this enigma St. Thomas sees in our Lord's will to suffer for us. His will prevented His beatitude from overflowing into the relatively inferior part of His spiritual soul and into His sensibility.

The cross and the beatific vision

St. Thomas firmly believes that all during the Passion, Christ's soul possessed the immediate vision of the divine essence. Our Lord's fullness of grace overflowed in three ways : in a very high knowledge of God and of His kingdom, in love of God, and in love of souls. This twofold love was at the same time the principle of Christ's perfect peace and of His profound sorrow at the sight of men's sins.

For a better understanding of this doctrine, let us recall its dogmatic foundations, all too little known. At our Savior's conception, the fullness of grace He received flooded His intellect as the light of glory. He more than believed in His divinity. He saw His own divine personality, and the divine essence, from which His personality is not distinct. The common teaching of the Fathers and of theologians 03 holds that with the first moment of life Christ enjoyed the vision possessed by the blessed in heaven. Their view rests upon the words of the Gospel, and to dissent from it would be to err almost to the point of heresy. 66

88 Ilia, q.9, a. 2. Cf. on the same, Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, Gonet, the Carmelites of Salamanca.

86 On June y, 1918, the Holy Office forbade the teaching of the following proposi-

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." 67 Evidently these words mean that, unlike the prophets, who had not seen God, the only Son had seen Him, inasmuch as the Son was in the bosom of the Father, and saw God not only by His divine intellect, but by His human intellect as well. As man, the Son made known the Father; as man also die Son saw the Father. Testimony and the knowledge from which it springs should surely correspond.

When talking to Nicodemus about spiritual regeneration, our Lord said : "Amen, amen, I say to thee that we speak what we know, and we testify what we have seen. . . . And no man hath ascended into heaven but He that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven." 68 In these words "what we know" is synonymous with "what we have seen." The "speaking," the "bearing witness" that Christ refers to here, He certainly did as man: as man also then He saw God, not by the knowledge of faith but with that vision the blessed in heaven possess. And, as at the time He was speaking the souls of the just already dead were awaiting entrance into heaven, He added: "And no man hath ascended into heaven but He that hath descended from heaven: the Son of man who is in heaven." Christ was already in heaven not only as the Son of God, by reason of His divinity and His divine intellect, but as the Son of man, through His human intellect; not only would He be in heaven after His death and resurrection, but He was already there; even then, by His human intellect, seeing God face to face, without any in- tion: "Non constat juisse in anima Christi inter homines degentis, scientiam, quant habent beati seu comprehensores." Cf. Hugon, O.P., De Verba incarnato, p. 212.

termediary. As tradition says, He was at the same time viator and comprekensor, 69 traveling toward eternity and already home and in possession of eternal life.

St. John the Baptist told our Lord's disciples the same truth: "You yourselves do bear me witness that I said that I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. . . . He that cometh from above is above all. He that is of the earth, of the earth he is, and of the earth he speaketh. He that cometh from heaven is above all. And what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth ; and no man receiveth His testimony." 70

Not only the friendly Nicodemus but even the contentious Jews at Capharnaum were told: "Everyone that hath heard of the Father and hath learned cometh to Me. Not that any man hath seen the Father; but He who is of God, He hath seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say unto you: He that believeth in Me hath everlasting life." 71 A little later the Pharisees as well heard: "It is My Father that glorifieth Me, of whom you say that He is your God. And you have not known Him; but I know Him. And if I shall say that I know Him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know Him and do keep His word." 72 Finally, in the sacerdotal prayer, when praying for His disciples, Jesus again says: "Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world." 78 These last words are particularly expressive: "where I am,"

that is, in heaven; those who have been given to Christ already have supernatural faith; He asks the beatific vision for them, the vision of the divine essence and of the glory He has been given as man. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." 74

St. John the Apostle surely understood the Savior's words in this sense when he wrote: "Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when He shall appear we shall be like to Him ; because we shall see Him as He is." 75 Then will be granted the sacerdotal prayer of Jesus: "Father, I will that where I am, diey also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; diat they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me." 76 The more we contemplate the literal meaning of these words, the more we grasp, in the obscurity of faith, the truth that, even in this life, our Savior possessed the light of glory.

St. Thomas gives a sound reason of congruity for this prerogative of our Lord. He says that since in this world Christ, the Master of teachers, apostles, and doctors, was entrusted with bringing mankind to eternal life, that is, to the vision of God, He Himself should see God even in this life. To give we must first have. If we would dispel darkness, we must possess light ; if we would warm others, we must provide heat. It was eminently fitting, then, that the Master should possess the vision of heaven so that He might lead men to see God. 77 If St. Paul, called to become the Doctor of the Gentiles, was

caught up to the third heaven and "heard secret words which it is not granted to man to utter," 78 with how much greater reason should Christ, the Savior of mankind, have had evidence of the supernatural mysteries about which He taught us!

Widiout the beatific vision our Lord would have remained in the order of faith; for only through faith would He have known His own divine personality, a thing seemingly contrary to His dignity as Son of God. If the fullness of grace received by Christ's soul at His conception surpassed the grace of all saints and all angels combined, we must say as much of His knowledge of divine things. In consequence of the personal union of Christ's soul with the Word of God, and of the fullness of created grace flowing from that union, it was highly fitting diat His human intellect be lifted up in this life to the divine vision, in a degree proportionate to His supereminent charity which, from the very first, surpassed that of all the just together.

Had our Lord not enjoyed the vision of God in the first but only in the following moment of His existence then, in this subsequent instant, grace and charity would have increased in Him. Yet the Second Council of Constantinople teaches that Christ non melioratus est,™ "did not become more perfect," did not grow in charity, but received an absolute plentitude of charity from the first instant of His life on earth.

St. Thomas did not believe so we can admit that our Lord lost the beatific vision during the Passion, giving several reasons for his judgment. First of all, the beatitude constituted by this vision is inamissible by its very nature. Well named "eternal life," it is not touched by time but shares in the

immutability of eternity. 81 Our Lord never lost it even in sleep because it required no concurrence of the imagination. Besides, Christ possessed the beatific vision as the normal result of the hypostatic union and of His fullness of grace. Certainly in the Passion, no grace was lost to Him; indeed it so filled Him as to overflow more than ever upon all men. Lastly, even on the cross and above all on the cross, Christ continued to be the Master of masters in the things of eternity, incomparably superior to the greatest contemplative raised to the most sublime union. While speaking from the height of His cross to Mary, to John, to the good thief, to us all, Christ was seeing God; in this unparalleled light He pronounced the seven words, and, as Bossuet says, "the light He received without measure He gave to us with measure, that our weakness might be able to bear it."

The vision of the divine essence, of God's sovereign goodness, was not, therefore, lost to our Lord on the cross, and even then it gave Him happiness that nothing could trouble or lessen. No soul can see God face to face widiout loving Him and without experiencing, at least in the highest point of the will, the joy that necessarily comes from the possession of the Sovereign Good.

Before the Passion our Lord revealed to His disciples the secret of His peace, of that tranquillity of order founded on the knowledge and love of God. "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled; nor let it be

81 la Ilae, q.5, a. 4. As this article says, a cessation of the beatific vision would presuppose God's withdrawal of the light of glory, a thing conceivable only as a punishment for some fault. Christ was without fault, being even in this world incapable of sin because of His divine personality and in virtue of the beatific vision which, once possessed, makes it impossible for the soul to turn from God.

afraid." 82 "Behold, the hour cometh, and it is now come, that you shall be scattered every man to his own and shall leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress. But have confidence. I have overcome the world." 83

Charity effects peace by subordinating all our affections to the love of God above all things and establishing in us the tranquillity of order. 84 During His life on earth, Christ's charity surpassed that of all the saints, and it was exercised to the greatest degree during the Passion and on the cross; and while He was in torment He was not content to preserve His own deep peace, but He gave peace to those about Him who were most deeply grieved, whom He sustained and strengthened — Mary, John, the holy women, the good thief. He was the true peacemaker, reconciling the world to God. From His cross comes the peace given by all the absolutions of nineteen centuries. From His cross comes the peace procured through every Mass to the end of time. The peace of the Crucified can make every desolation sweet, every weakness strong.

The sufferings of Christ

Our Lord cannot be said to have endured every possible suffering. Some sufferings naturally preclude others. A man cannot both drown and be burned to death. Besides, Christ's body never knew sickness and remained in perfect health up to the time of the Passion. St. Thomas maintains 85 that

our Lord did, however, endure for our salvation every kind of suffering that can touch us in this life. If we consider the men who made Him suffer, we find that affliction came to Him from the Jews, the Gentiles, the chief priests, the people, the disciples, Judas, from Peter himself. If we consider what was taken from Him, He suffered in His heart by being abandoned by His friends; He suffered in His body by being stripped, scourged, crowned with thorns, and crucified; He suffered in transfixed hands and feet; He suffered in His soul, sad unto agony and unto death.

The Passion, adds St. Thomas, 86 was the greatest agony endured by any man in the present life, and that for many reasons : because of the violence and general character of these sufferings; because of the fineness of our Lord's constitution; because Christ willed to give Himself up fully to pain of body and grief of soul without seeking any alleviation ; and, above all, because of the principal cause of these afflictions, the sins of all men.

Christ's body, conceived miraculously in the virginal womb of Mary, was endowed with a keen sensibility augmented, if we may so express it, by the exceptional penetration of His intellect. The sufferings of the scourging, of the crowning with thorns, of the crucifixion, of the pierced hands and feet, on which the whole weight of His body rested, could not have been more bitter or more terrible. As regards His interior sorrow, all the sins of mankind were its chief cause. The Savior had to satisfy for them — sins without number, sins the gravity of which Jesus realized more than anyone else, sins that made Him suffer in the measure of His love for an out-

2o 4 THE LOVE OF GOD raged God and for sinners. 87 Lastly, our Lord's physical and moral agony was more intense than any martyr's because no joy, no consideration of the higher reason, and no distraction mitigated or sweetened it, because Christ willed to give Himself up fully to pure suffering, to go to the last limits of sacrifice: those of love. 88

The objection has been made that the greater the good lost, the greater the sorrow. It is said, for example, that a sinner by losing sanctifying grace is deprived of a greater good than the life of the body which our Lord lost on the cross, and that, therefore, he knows greater desolation than that known by his Lord. The repentant Peter is cited as an instance.

To this St. Thomas makes answer: "Christ grieved not only over the loss of His own bodily life, but also over the sins of all others. And this grief in Christ surpassed all grief of every contrite heart, both because it flowed from a greater wisdom (by which He saw better than anyone else the infinite gravity of mortal sin) and a greater charity (love of an offended God and of those who offend Him) by which the pang of contrition is intensified, and because He grieved at the one time for all sins, according to Isaias 53:4: 'Surely he hath carried our sorrows.' " 89

Only a great contemplative can penetrate deeply into the richness of these sober words. We catch a suggestion of what they contain by thinking of those who have offered themselves as victims for some sinner and have sometimes had to suffer terribly for his sins, in order to detest them in his stead and with the intention of obtaining for him the grace of conversion.

Christ had to suffer not only for a few sinners, but for thousands and thousands of all peoples and generations, and for all their sins at the same time. The chalice of Gethsemane brimming with all the iniquities and infamies of the whole world He took for Himself, and gave us instead the chalice of His precious blood, offered daily on the altar. These two chalices, like the scales of a balance, represent the whole history of humanity, all the evil on one side and all the good on the other: "And where sin abounded, grace did more abound." 80

If St. Catherine of Siena was sickened and nauseated at seeing the interior state of certain prelates' souls, what must our Lord have suffered at the sight of the sins of all men! The suffering that sin caused Mary at the foot of the cross can be measured only by her love. To know what she suffered we would have to realize how much she loved her offended God and His crucified Son, how much she loved our own souls, so ravaged by wrongdoing. Plainly, we cannot compass her secret or her suffering. What then can we know of her Son's ? The fullness of grace and charity in our Savior sharpened and deepened His capacity for suffering. Our egoism makes us live on the surface of ourselves so that we are dull to evil but quite alive to whatever wounds our sensitiveness and pride. Christ's suffering, like His peace and happiness, had its origin in His plenitude of grace. Between these two extremes of perfect peace and unparalleled sorrow lies the whole interior life of Christ in this world. St. Thomas offers us some measure of understanding of this mystery which contemplation will help us to penetrate more and more deeply each day.

The union of peace and sorrow

St. Thomas in no way makes little of the divine obscurity in this mystery. The difficulty that our minds encounter he formulates thus: "It is not possible to be sad and glad at the one time, since sadness and gladness are contraries. But Christ's whole soul suffered grief during the Passion. . . . Therefore His whole soul could not enjoy the beatific vision." 91 The holy doctor 92 answers with a principle expressed by St. John Damascene that has become classic: Divinitas Christi permisit carni agere et pati quae propria: "The divinity of Christ allowed His body to act and to suffer according to its nature." 93 And, inversely, the agony of the Passion did not prevent the highest part of Christ's soul from experiencing the joy proper to it because of the immediate vision of the divine essence.

In this world our efforts to explain supernatural things achieve only partial success. St. Thomas has indeed penetrated profoundly into this mystery. With certainty, yet in the obscurity of faith, he sees the truth and shows it to us. 94 He first answers the proposed difficulty with an abstract, wholly metaphysical consideration of the very essence of the soul. This serves as a preparation for a more concrete solution, reached through a consideration of the faculties.

We must distinguish, he says, between the essence of the soul and the total of the faculties which proceed from it. The essence of the soul is indivisible; and, as a result, it is whole in the entire body it informs, animates, or vivifies, and whole

in each part of the body, although by the head it exercises much higher functions than by the other parts. If, therefore, we consider the very essence of the soul of Christ, we can and should say that Christ suffered in His whole soul, for He suffered in all the parts of His body and in His different faculties that were affected by such grievous objects. "For my soul is filled with evils." 90

For the same reason, that is, because of its essential indivisibility, the soul is the complete subject of each of its faculties. We can, dierefore, say that Christ, even during His passion, rejoiced in His whole soul so far as His soul was the subject of His higher faculties, and the vision of the divine essence beatified the summit of those higher powers.

But to speak more concretely, following St. Thomas' trend of thought: 96 if, on the other hand, we no longer consider the essence of the soul but its different faculties in relation to the objects toward which they are directed, then we see that, during the Passion, the vision of the divine essence beatified only the highest point of Christ's human intellect and human will; whereas the lower part of these higher faculties and all the sensitive faculties were plunged in agony at the sight of the sins of men and the torments of the Passion.

If, therefore, by the expression "the whole soul" we understand no longer the essence of the soul but "all its faculties," we cannot say that Christ was beatified in His whole soul ; for the glory which shone on the summit of His higher faculties was not reflected either in their lower part or in His other, sensitive faculties. Our Lord freely willed that these be abandoned to sorrow, without seeking any alleviation for it

BS In fact the soul knows, loves, joys, and suffers only through its faculties.

in the vision of the divine essence. Our Savior's humanity was like a mountain peak crowned with sunshine and hemmed in by calm blue heavens, the while, far down the mountain side, below the clouds, a raging storm seems to devastate everything. Such in substance is the doctrine set forth by St. Thomas in his Summa theological

A superficial reading of diese two articles has led some to misunderstand St. Thomas, believing that, according to him, our Lord suffered only in the inferior part of His soul during the Passion, and by these words, "inferior part of His soul," they understand only the sensitive part. Aureolus, not St. Thomas, holds this opinion, already refuted as contrary to Scripture and to the ordinary magisterium of the Church.

That Christ suffered especially from the sins of men, St. Thomas himself clearly asserted a little earlier in the Summa. "Christ grieved not only over the loss of His own bodily life, but also over the sins of all others. And this grief in Christ surpassed all the grief of every contrite heart, because it flowed from a greater wisdom and charity, by which the pang of contrition is intensified." 98 Suffering experienced at seeing God offended and souls lost, plainly belongs, like contrition, not to the sensitive part, but to the purely spiritual part of the soul, to the will that loves and desires spiritual good, and even to the will as elevated by grace and charity. The suffering essential to contrition is not only spiritual but supernatural, for it has its immediate source in the supernatural love of God and is proportionate to that love.

The question arises whether Christ suffered from the sins of men in the highest part of His soul, in the summit of His

higher faculties, in ratione superiori. Scotus and Suarez think that He did. In several works 99 St. Thomas teaches, on the contrary, that our Lord did not suffer because of sin in ratione superiori, at the highest point of His mind ; there He possessed the Sovereign Good seen face to face and loved above all things, as do the blessed in heaven, who no longer suffer because of sin, although they are displeased by it, as is God Himself. 100

We need not conclude that St. Thomas was of the opinion that the great suffering our Lord experienced at the sight of men's sins pertained only to His lower reason. Cajetan 101 seems to preserve the real thought of his master when he says that it belonged to the lower reason of Christ directed by His higher reason. According to the terminology of St. Augustine, what is called the "lower" reason has to do with temporal things, and sin is a temporal thing. However, the sadness a just man experiences at the sight of sin comes from "the higher reason" which contemplates the eternal law of God. 102 Sin makes the just suffer chiefly inasmuch as it is an offense against God.

It would, then, be a gross error to say that Jesus suffered only in the sensitive part of the soul, which is common to man and animal alike; He suffered from the sins of all men in the purely spiritual part of His soul, even in those high regions of His mind that are enlightened by the principles of the highest

03 III Sent., d.15, q.2, a.l; d.3, a.3, q.2; Compendium thcologiac, cap. 232; Dc verilale, q.26, a. 9, ad 711m; Ilia, q.46, a.7, c el ad 2um; Quodlibel VII, a. 5.

100 Ilia, q.46, a.7, c: "But Christ's higher reason did not suffer on the part of its object, which is God, who was the cause, not of grief, but rather of delight and joy, to the soul of Christ." Ibid., ad 2um: "On the part of its proper object . . . Christ's higher reason did not suffer."

2io THE LOVE OF GOD wisdom. However, He did not suffer in the very peak of His mind beatified as it was by the sight of God seen face to face, by the possession of the Sovereign Good. This peak is called the summit of the soul, the apex mentis, in relation to the sensible faculties regarded as inferior; the mystics sometimes also use another metaphor for it, calling it the depth of the soul, the fundus animae, in relation to the sensitive faculties and sensible things considered as external.

Sin causes no suffering to the saints in heaven although it displeases them, for they see the victory of mercy in regard to forgiven sins and the splendor of justice in the punishment due to other sins. 103 Even in this world, on Calvary, Christ saw this victory and this splendor. Nevertheless He experienced untold suffering at the sight of sin, for He was at the same time viator and comprehensor , both a traveler toward eternity and a possessor of eternity, one of the blessed. In other words, He freely prevented the irradiation of the light of glory on His lower reason and sensitive faculties, not wishing the radiance of this light and its consequent joy to sweeten in any way the sadness that assailed Him from every side. 104

Theologians generally regard this inner state of Christ as no less miraculous than His sudden stilling of the storm on the sea of Galilee. According to the natural laws of life, joy in the higher part of the soul reflects on the lower, and inversely, the suffering of the latter has its echo in the highest part. Christ voluntarily and freely worked a miracle that He might give Himself up to sorrow, just as He freely willed

104 Cf. St. Thomas, Compendium thcologiac, cap. 232.

to bring back to life Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nairn. 108

In the natural order perfect happiness and profound grief cannot coexist in one person. Only a miracle could bring them together in an entirely exceptional, unique union, the result of the incarnation of the Word in passible and mortal flesh. No one claims that Christ was saddened and made glad by the same object under the same aspect, a manifest contradiction. In reality, He suffered from His passion inasmuch as it was contrary to His human nature and effected by the world's greatest crime ; He rejoiced in it so far as it was ordered as an expiatory sacrifice for the salvation of man and therefore pleased God. 108

In somewhat the same way, a true penitent, while sorry for his sins and saddened by them, may find much joy in his own contrition since it proceeds from love of God. 107 St. Augustine says in his book De poenitentia: "Semper doleat poenitens et de dolor e gaud eat: Let the penitent be ever sorry for his sins and let him find joy in his sorrow." 108 In His higher reason, Jesus took joy in His passion, for it pleased God that our Lord's suffering and death should ransom humanity. The apostles mirrored their Master when "they went out from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they

106 Ilia, q.46, a. 8, ad 2um; the Carmelites of Salamanca, Cursus iheol., de Incarnatione, disp. XVII, dub. iv, no. 47.

106 St. Thomas, De verilale, q.26, a. 9, ad 7um; Compendium theol., c.232; Summa, Ilia, q.46, a. 8, ad ium.

107 Cf. Ha, q.84, a. 9, ad 2um. where St. Thomas shows at greater lengih than elsewhere how joy and sadness of the sensible order cannot coexist in die same subject, since joy expands the heart and sorrow contracts it, whereas joy and sorrow as spiritual acts of the will have no parallel bodily repercussion and therefore exclude each other only if they concern the same aspect of the same subject.

were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus." 109

Our Lord, therefore, suffered chiefly because of men's sins, and His suffering surpassed that of all contrite hearts, because of the superiority of His knowledge and love. He saw incomparably better than we can the gravity of mortal sin and He knew the number of men's offenses. Immeasurably more than we, He loved both Him whom sin offends, God His Father, and our own souls, which die of sin.

God permits sin only in view of a greater good. In this life, even during His passion, Christ contemplated this higher good: the victory of mercy and the splendor of justice: the supreme victory of the Sovereign Good over sin, Satan, and death. 110 Therefore the divine and holy permission for sin caused the higher reason of Christ no suffering. What we have been contemplating in Christ is both miracle and mystery and lies beyond the laws of nature and the ordinary laws of the order of grace.

More and more clearly we can see that the fullness of grace in our Lord produced two apparently contrary effects that were like the two poles of His interior life: the vision of God bound Him to eternal life, desire for the cross drew Him on to the mortal agony of death that He might be a perfect holocaust.

The harmony within our dying Lord

In our Lord, these two effects originated in the same radical source, His fullness of grace; and, in a more proximate way, they proceeded from His charity, from the intensity of His

love for God and souls. Here we have the secret of their intimate union.

To love God above all things is to have peace, for, as St. Augustine says, peace is nothing but the tranquillity of order, the wonderful harmony of all sentiments and all desires completely subordinated to one supreme love, which ought to have first place in our hearts. 111 Love of God burned so ardently in Christ's soul that He could bear and even forget His physical suffering. On the other hand, this very love added to His suffering.

Sin is the practical denial of the Creator's infinite goodness. Christ realized this fully and saw how many times men would attempt, as it were, to wrest from God His dignity as their last end merely to gain some miserable, momentary satisfaction. And because lie loved the Father so intensely, this knowledge caused him terrible suffering. 112

Our Lord experienced such peace in suffering because of His love for God and also because of His love for us. On the cross He certainly knew boundless joy in saying, "It is con-

111 Cf. Ha Ilae, q.29, a.3: "Whether peace is the proper effect of charity?" See also, ibid., q. 28, a. 1 , where St. Thomas says that both joy and sorrow proceed from love but in contrary ways. "For joy is caused by love, either on account of the presence of the thing loved or on account of this, that the proper good of the thing loved exists and endures in it; and the latter is chiefly in the love of benevolence, whereby a man rejoices in the well-being of a friend though he is absent. On the other hand, sorrow arises from love either on account of the absence of the thing loved or on account of this, that the loved object to which we wish well is deprived of its good or afflicted with some evil. Now charity is love of God, whose good is unchangeable, since He is His goodness, and from the very fact that He is loved, He is in those who love Him by His most excellent effect, according to John 4: 16: 'He that abidcth in charity abideth in God, and God in him.' Therefore spiritual joy, which is about God, is caused by charity."

112 Ibid., q.28, a. 2: "The joy of charity whereby we rejoice in the divine good as participated by us . . . can be hindered by anything contrary to it; wherefore, in this respect, the joy of charity is compatible with an admixture of sorrow, so far as a man grieves tor that which hinders the participation of the divine good either in us or in our neighbor, whom we love as ourselves."

2i 4 THE LOVE OF GOD summated." There is, indeed, more joy in giving than in receiving, in loving than in being loved; and the more precious, lasting, and immortal our gift is, the more joy there is in sharing it with others. Now, in dying for us, Christ merited eternal life for us all, bringing back to us the stream of divine mercy. He told us He came that we might have life, and have it in abundance; surely He experienced great joy in giving Himself up for us. "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends," 113 He said; and from the height of the cross He seemed to repeat the words: "If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, as the Scripture saith: 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.' " 114 Since that time the Sacred Heart has never ceased saying to us : "Only in the heart of a God will souls find ease for their sufferings and strength for their weakness; let them stretch out their hands to Me, I Myself will lead them to that heart."

On the other hand, Christ suffered in proportion to His charity for men and the gravity of their sins, which He had taken upon Himself to expiate. He knew sin as the destroyer, the death of souls, the way from God to abysmal misery, misery as inexpressible as the glory of which it is the privation. The thought that some souls would not profit from the sacrifice of the cross, however infinite and superabundant its value, made our Lord suffer in the measure of His love for us, a love so great that the hearts of all saints and angels together could not hold it. 115

115 The famous melody of the Grail, the holy cup which legend says received the blood from Christ's pierced heart, attempts to express this infinite supernatural wealth. An unknown artist of the Middle Ages composed the melody at the time when the great cathedrals of Europe were being built. It was an Amen accompani-

The desire of dying for us on the cross was always alive in the heart of Christ, even on Thabor at the moment of the Transfiguration. As St. Luke relates, "And whilst He prayed, the shape of His countenance was altered, and His raiment became white and glittering. And behold two men were talking with him. And diey were Moses and Elias, appearing in majesty. And they spoke of His decease that He should accomplish in Jerusalem." 116 A little while later, 117 Jesus again prophesied His sorrowful death to His disciples.

The fullness of grace in Christ was, then, the source of His perfect happiness and intense suffering. In the seventeenth century Louis Chardon, O.P., made this sublime thought the soul of his masterpiece, La croix de Jesus. He says:

The same unction of grace 118 is both a principle of joy and a source of sadness for our Lord. If, on one hand, it disposed His soul to enjoy the perfection of eternal happiness, on the other, it filled His powers to overflowing with untold suffering. He was anointed for immortality; He was also anointed for death. . . . Of old, men used two kinds of oil, one for feasts, the other for the burial of the dead. The soul of Jesus was anointed with both kinds of oil: with festal oil because of His beatific love, and with burial oil because of His love for justice. . . . He had an unction to make Him impassible; He had an unction to make Him susceptible to suffering. He received the oil of glory and He received the oil of the cross.

A little while before his martyrdom, Polyeuctus expressed the same great thought.

ment, whence its name Amen-Dresden. Both Wagner in his Parsifal and Mendelssohn in his Reformation repeat the melody although it is not theirs but comes from a higher source, seeming to belong to the genius of Christianity, as though heard in ecstasy and composed under divine inspiration.

118 La croix de fitut, i er cntretien, chap. II to the end.

2i6 THE LOVE OF GOD

God alone do I adore, God alone

The Master of the universe, before whose throne Heaven and earth and hell must bow;

Whom love led here for love to die, Sharp-limned in shame against His own wide sky;

Who, still unsatisfied with giving, stays till now With us — the same dying, deathless victim as when

First offered as the homely bread of men. 119

Seen from without, this mystery, like a stained-glass window, appears unintelligible and almost contradictory; seen from within, in the right light, by those who understand it a little by living it, it expresses the divine harmony of mercy and justice, of strength and gentleness, of deepest suffering and that peace which will shine undimmed throughout all eternity.

The lesson of Calvary

Fords est ut mors dilectio. "Love is strong as death." What is particularly striking in Christ's love, whether for His Father or for our souls, is the close and wonderful union of deepest tenderness with heroic strength in suffering and death: Fortiter et suaviter. Our love sometimes lacks one of these qualities. Neither can survive long without the other.

119 Corncillc's Polyeuctus, speaking elsewhere of earthly pleasures, says: Source dclicieuse, en miseres feconde, Que voulcz-vous de moi, flatteuscs voluptcs? Before Corncillc, Richard of St. Victor had remarked in his work De quatuor gradibus violentac caritatis how the contraries, joy and sorrow, are at times united. This union may range from the abnormality of perversion all the way up to that true antithesis realized on the cross, the bitter source of a wealth of delight. The liturgy expresses this for us by singing

Te adorandam, te crucem vivificam, Per te redempti, dulce decus sacculi, Semper laudamus, semper tibi canimus: Per Lignum servi, per te sumus libcri.

Without strength, tenderness becomes languid and affected; without sweetness, strength grows bitter and harsh. 120

No one can know how Christ loved His Father. If He loved the Virgin Mary tenderly, how much more He must have loved His Father, to whom He rendered unceasing adoration and thanksgiving! Supernatural tenderness has always flowed out from Him to empty itself upon souls, not merely on those of one country or time, on a restricted group of a few friends, but on the souls of all generations that all may have life eternal.

Christ's love, while tender, is stronger than death, stronger than sin, stronger than the spirit of evil. It led our Lord to offer Himself as a victim in our stead, to save us, by satisfying for us, by giving God an infinite reparation. Cor Jesu, fornax aniens curitaiis: in that heart all the tenderness and energy of love are wonderfully blended; for the heart of the Savior is a pure mirror of mercy and justice, the two great virtues of the uncreated love of God.

Members of the mystical body of Christ should participate in His life more and more so as to become like unto Him. The sacred humanity of our Savior communicates to us progressively the graces it merited for us on the cross. The head of the mystical body pours out its riches on its members. Our Lord desires to assimilate us more and more to Himself, by baptism, absolution, frequent Communion, the crosses or purifications necessary for our advancement, at the last by extreme unction and up until our entrance into heaven. The lives of many of the saints show this progressive assimilation

120 See Chardon, ha croix de Jisul, chap. 8, where he shows that God wills the tenderness of His creatures so that He may unite it with His own divine strength and work its transformation.

by a sort of reproduction of the mysteries of Christ's lifefirst His childhood and hidden life, then His apostolic life, and, at last, His sorrowful life or passion. 121

One of the great marks of the spirit of Christ in souls is the reproduction of those two effects that have their origin in His own inner life and flowed from His fullness of grace. The first is peace, the tranquillity of order, the more and more perfect subordination of every sentiment and desire to the love of God and of souls in God, a love ever growing by the actual influence of Christ.

The second is acceptance of the cross in order to follow the Master, as He has bidden us to do. We must accept the cross with patience, otherwise our burden increases but bears no fruit; with thankfulness, for it is a hidden grace, as those who bear its weight will find out ; with love, for, in any cross, Christ crucified comes to us, to reproduce in us His own traits. Love like this brings abandonment and peace, and offers for our discovery the true wisdom, divine contemplation. 122

In commenting on St. Paul, the austere Louis Chardon makes some profound statements:

A reverential consideration of Christ's energetic and insatiable longing for the cross gives us a great deal of light on His disposition of crosses among those souls who belong to Him by the bonds of grace. . . . We understand, too, that the more closely souls are united to His spirit, the greater the obligation they contract to suffer. ... It would be a disorder in grace and against the laws of

121 See the encyclical Miserenlissimus Redeniptor, June, 1928, in which Pope Pius XI speaks of the reparation due to God for the sins of all men.

122 Cf. De Montfort, L'amour de la divine sagcsse, Part II, chap. 6: means of obtaining divine wisdom: (1) ardent desire; (2) continual prayer; (3) mortification in ail things; (4) a true and tender devotion for the Blessed Virgin.

love for delicately bred members to be united to a head pierced with thorns. . . .

The same grace that has its universal source in Christ sanctifies His members. His grace as head is communicated to Him for the purpose of His office, which is to satisfy the strict justice of God for the sins of His members. Consequently He contracted the loving obligation to suffer, the cause of that mighty attraction which constantly bore Him on toward the cross. Of necessity, then, grace produces the same propensity in predestined souls and makes the same demands of them, that the mystical body may not seem an entirely monstrous whole in the order of grace, which it would indeed be if the spirit of Christ were contrary to itself — altogether otherwise in the members than in the head . . .

In its original source, the soul of Christ, grace produces an attraction that relates to the end for which He was made man. Overflowing upon men's souls, the grace of Christ necessarily effects the same disposition in those made worthy to receive it. 128

By its essence grace is a participation in the divine nature, but, so far as it is transmitted to us by Christ, it has a special modality which configures us to Him, an effect of the grace of Christ as such. This St. Thomas teaches when he asks whether sacramental grace, and, in particular, baptismal grace as such, adds anything to the grace of the virtues and the gifts as possessed by Adam before die fall. 124

Louis Chardon rounds out St. Thomas' thought with the teachings of men like Tauler and St. John of the Cross.

Because this kind of grace cannot be idle in a soul ... it hungers for growth and, because it cannot receive any considerable increase without the help of crosses, . . . God does not fail to aban-

123 La croix de ]isus, ist ed. pp. 1 19-21 (Lethiclleux cd.), I, 14, 29, 43, 136; n, 376. 45°-

don the soul to its own weakness and to naked grace, stripped by Him of all its sensible effects. This is done to teach the soul to know itself and to renounce itself and to cleave to Him alone. The closeness and intimacy of its union depend on its separation from everything else.

Whence it comes that the same love is at once the principle of life and of death . . . uniting and separating . . . detaching and binding together. . . . For the holiness of God as communicated to His creatures completely deprives them of all that is incompatible with His immaculate purity. 125 . . .

To experience this glorious death ... is to be rich in divine fruitfulness ... for in it we find more presence than absence; more union than separation . . . although it is a death more cruel, for all that, than the common way of nature . . . leaving only sad desolation within the soul. Nevertheless those who are well versed in the characteristics of sacred love, and of the end that the good God has in view in all these trials, would not wish to change for a moment their hard martyrdom for the rapturous delights of paradise, or the cruel torments of death for a happy life in glory. 126

One historian, who would make amends for the way Chardon's work has been neglected, says: "Never, perhaps, has the separating, simplifying, stripping action of grace been analyzed with more penetration." 127 To see it at work we have only to turn to the life of Mary. 128

127 Brcmond, Histotre lilt, du sentiment religietix en France, VIII, 43. Whether Chardon had read St. John of the Cross the author cannot say; in any event he drew from Taulcr's doctrine and explains it.

128 Chardon, op. cit., shows in the first of his three dialogues how love that demands separation was the principle of the cross borne by the Blessed Mother and the apostles. He has ten chapters of great depth on the interior martyrdom of the Blessed Virgin. In his third dialogue he uses the same great principle to describe the spiritual heights attained by Abraham, Elias, Jacob, Benjamin, the spouse of the Canticles, Martha, and Mary Magdalen. Pages like these show how mystical

Reread slowly the beautiful chapter of The Imitation of Christ, 129 "On the Few Who Love the Cross of Jesus," and you will see that the mark of Christ's spirit is peace and abandonment in suffering, peace and abandonment in the anguish of the Passion as reproduced in different degrees in souls for their own purification and for their cooperation in their neighbor's salvation with and by our Lord and through the means that He Himself used. So, in a sense, Christ is in agony until the end of the world in His mystical body, until it is fully purified and glorified, until the word of the Master, "I have overcome the world," is perfectly realized by the final victory over sin, Satan, and death.

When by faith we look with the eyes of God into what the holy liturgy tells us, we see how infinitely it surpasses the sublimest flights of human poetry.

Salve Crux sancta, salve mundi gloria, Vera spes nostra, vera ferens gaudia, Signum salutis, sal us in periculis, Vitale lignum vitam ferens omnium.

Crux fidelis, inter omnes Arbor una nobilis: Nulla silva talem profert Fronte, flore, germine: Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, Dulce pondus sustinet.

O magnum pietatis opus! Mors mortua tunc est, in ligno quando mortua Vita fuit.

theology is normally the crown and complement of theology itself and was so judged by St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and all the great masters. "» Bk. H., chap. 9.

Nos autem gloriari oportet in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi.

Crux benedicta nitet, Dominus qua came pependit, atque cruore suo vulnera nostra lavit.

Blessed Grignon de Montfort provides us with a conclusion for this thought.

In His incarnation, Wisdom incarnate has taken the cross for His treasure and has espoused it with ineffable love. During His whole life, which was nothing but a continual cross£JIe sought after it and carried it with unutterable joy. At last He was fixed and, as it were, fitted to the cross; and He died in its dear embrace joyfully, as though it were a couch of honor and triumph. ... Do not believe that for His greater triumph after death He is now detached from die cross, that He now re jects die cross. . . . He does not wish the homage of even relative adoration to be paid to creatures, however great, like His own most holy Mother; this great honor is reserved and due only to His dear cross. On the day of the last judgment He will bring to an end the worship of the relics of the saints, however venerable; but as for the worship of the cross^H c will c ommand the first among the seraphim and the cTierubim to go out into the world and gather up every piece of the true cross. These, by His all-powerful love, will be so well reunited that they will make b ut one cross, t he very cross o n which He died. He will have t hisj^oss carried in triumph by the angels. . . .He will have it go before Him and, seated onacloud of glory such as eye has never seen, He\yjh^judge^e_w^d j vith it and byit^ What joy tl^friendjjjjhe_cross wilUhe n know! . . . W isdom eternal avyaks that day . . . desiring die cross to be the sign, the seal, an d the sword of all the elect Helias hidden so many oLitteS" treasures and graces in the cross tha t Tie gives the knowledge of it only to those He most favors. . . . 6"h, how humble, little, mortF fied, interior, and despised we must be_t o know the mY stery of the cross! Whoeve r carries it shall fincTit an eternal weight of glory In heaven. 130

Footnotes

1. C£ the Summa, la, q.20, a. 4: "God loves Christ not only more than He loves the whole human race but more than He loves the entire created universe: because He willed for Him the greater good in giving Him a name that is above all names, inasmuch as He was true God. Nor did anything of His excellence diminish when God delivered Him up to death for the salvation of the human race; rather did He become thereby a glorious conqueror. The government was placed upon His shoulder, according to Isa. 9: 6." ↩

2. This is the fundamental idea of Chardon's beautiful book, La croix de tfsus, written before the controversy between Bossuet and Fenelon. ↩

3. 9 John 12: 32. 2 ° Matt. i6:22t ↩