Lecture IV. The Sovereignty of the Divine Head of the Church

In the end of the Sabbath, and in the dawn of the morning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to the sepulchre. And there was a great earthquake. The angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and rolled away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and sat upon it. His face was as the lightning, and his raiment white as snow; and for fear of him, the soldiers who kept the sepulchre trembled, and were as dead men. And he said to the women: Fear not you, for ye

DO THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He is risen. Come, see the place where the Lord was laid.

In this was fulfilled the declaration of Jesus by the tomb of Lazarus: ' I am the Resurrection and the Life.' He did not say: ' I will give life, I will raise from the dead.' He said: 'I am the Life, I am the Resurrection; the Life and the Resurrection are Myself.' That is: ' I am Who am, the Self-existent, the Life and the Life-giver.' The Life is God, and God is the Life of all things. He is the Fountain of life; and He who is the Fountain of life is alone the Resurrection. He who can give life is alone He who can restore life. To do this is a Divine and sovereign act, and is the prerogative of God only. Therefore, by the Resurrection, our Divine Lord is manifested in His Godhead, in the sovereignty of His power, in His victory over sin and death, and in His royalty over the creation of God. This is also the meaning of His words when He said: i I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep... Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from Me: I lay¹ it down of Myself, and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.'1 His Incarnation, His Death, His Resurrection, were all alike sovereign acts of Divine will and of Divine power.

1. In His Incarnation, by an act of His own Divine will, He took our humanity, assuming the intelligence of a human soul, and uniting it with the Uncreated Intelligence, which is the Son of God; and in assuming a human soul like ours — a soul perfect in reason, heart, and will — He beatified it; that is, it was admitted to the Beatific Vision and to the Beatific Union. His manhood was elevated above the order of nature. It was deified, but it was human still. In assuming a human soul, He likewise assumed a human body, and in all things a body like our own — with the same flesh, and bones, and nerves, and blood; with the same susceptibility of suffering, the same capacity of pain, of hunger, thirst, sorrow, weariness, passion, and death. And because He took to Himself a human nature whole and perfect, there were two natures alike whole and perfect — Godhead and manhood united in One Person. No human person 1 St. John x. 11-18.

was there, but One only Person, and that Divine — God Himself Incarnate. Over the Divine countenance He drew the veil of His humanity, so that the splendour and glory of His Person were hidden from the eyes of men. On Mount Tabor, for a moment, the light of His majesty was seen; but in the years of His humiliation, His humanity alone was manifest to sense. The veil was upon the face of His Godhead.

2. As, then, the assumption of our humanity was an act of His free and sovereign will, so also was the laying down of His life. He gave Himself to suffer. He gave His Body to the scourge, and to the thorns, and to the nails. He was furrowed, pierced, and wounded by the instruments of passion. His Precious Blood streamed from Him, His vital spirit was drained away. He gave His Soul to three and thirty years of mental sorrows, and to His dereliction in the Garden, and to the darkness of His agony. When the hour was come, by His own free sovereign will He untied the knot of Almighty power, whereby body and soul, in man, are joined together. The ' silver cord' was broken, and He bowed His head, and by a sovereign act gave up the ghost. The Passion was indeed a sufficient cause of death to any human nature: nevertheless, His dying was voluntary; for He had power to sustain His human life; but, by His own free, sovereign will, He withheld that sustaining power, and by a voluntary act gave up the ghost.

3. And as He laid down His life by a free act of His own will, so He resumed it again. In the moment when the Divine Soul of Jesus parted from the Body, it passed for ever from the desolation of His agony into the light of the Vision of God. Throughout His earthly life of sorrow He was at all times in the Vision of God. In the hour of His desolation, He willingly hid it from Him; but when that passing cloud upon the light of His soul was over, He entered again and for ever into the light of bliss. The deified human soul of Jesus in that moment entered, in our behalf, into the final possession and the eternal fruition of the glory of God. The light of the Sun of Justice then arose upon the world unseen. The realms beyond the grave — where the patriarchs, prophets, saints, martyrs, penitents of the Old Law, waited for the Redeemer — were illuminated by His coming; the invisible world, which in our Creed wo call Hell; the realm of the departed, in which were waiting together — though separate and distinct in state — the saints of the kingdom of grace, though the kingdom of God was not yet opened; those also who were purifying and expiating for the Vision of God, to be revealed hereafter; and those who were lost eternally.

To all He was made known: to the saints as their Redeemer, fulfilling the promise made to the faithful who had looked for Him from the beginning of the world; to the penitent, who had turned in hope to the promise of a Redeemer; and to the lost, who would not believe the Word of God. To them was revealed the light of the truth and of the majesty of God against whom they had sinned. They had in their day received light enough to know Him, and grace enough in all hours, and in all temptations, to have turned from sin to God, and to have attained salvation, had they only been willing to be saved.

While this Divine work was accomplishing, the Body was taken from the Cross; but never for one moment was either the body or the soul of His humanity separated from the Godhead of the Eternal Son. The body and soul were parted indeed from eacli other in natural death, but the body and soul were alike united indissolubly by the Hypostatic Union — that is, by the personal assumption of our manhood into God — to the Person of the Eternal Son. From the moment of the Incarnation to all eternity, Jesus remains the same indissolubly, two natures in one Person. As the Soul of Jesus in the world unseen was a manifestation of God, so the Body which hung lifeless on the Cross — the lifeless form which, when the nails were drawn from the hands and feet, was lowered into the bosom of His Immaculate Mother — was the Body of the Incarnate Son of God. With loving care it was swathed in the grave clothes, it was anointed with the ointments, it was embalmed with the spices, it was borne lovingly to the tomb, and laid in the sepulchre upon the mouth of which the stone was laid. But it was not ointments or spices that embalmed that Sacred Body: there was no need of them to stay corruption; over that Body corruption had no power because union with the Godhead sustained its incorruption. The true embalming of that Sacred Flesh was its union with the Godhead; and that Sacred Flesh was incorruptible because the Son of God, by His sovereign will, stayed the progress of the dishonours of the grave.

Then came the re-assumption, by the same free act of His sovereign power. All through that night, while the watches were set, and the guards kept the sepulchre, and the seals remained unbroken upon the stone, there was light, and worship, and watching, and energy within the tomb. Within that closed sepulchre there was a Divine power, the presence of the Son of God, who, having laid down His life, was preparing to take it up again. The Divine creating power which had fashioned His own humanity, restored it again from the wounds and dishonours of His Passion. The Divine will smoothed out the furrows of the scourge, healed the piercing of the thorns, closed the wounds of the nails, and effaced from His Sacred Flesh all tokens of humiliation, save only the five Sacred Wounds in hands, and feet, and side, which still remain, and in eternity will remain for ever, as the tokens of our redemption and the pledges of His everlasting love. When that Sacred Flesh was once more restored to its perfection and glory, the Divine soul of Jesus clothed itself therewith as with a garment.

As in the moment of the Incarnation He arrayed Himself in our humanity, so once more, in the tomb, He took up again that Sacred Body, reanimated it, quickened it again in every pulse, and in every vibration of its human life. He raised it to a state of immortality; He elevated it above the conditions of nature. He passed out of that tomb before the stone was rolled from its mouth, before the seals were broken. By His Divine Omnipotence He passed forth, because that which was mortal had become immortal; that which had been passible was now impassible; that which was before as our nature in the state of death, had become subtle and glorious. He endowed His Body with the four gifts of glory which He has promised to us all. That which

; shall be the inheritance of all His members, He first assumed to Himself.

Such, then, was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He had laid down His life, and He took it up again, fulfilling His promise, ' I am the Eesurrecition, I am the Life.' In Him all men shall rise. 'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all ibe made alive. The first man is of the earth, tearthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly.

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As is the earthly, so are the earthly; as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly/

In His Resurrection we all partake. ' Christ is risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep.'2 All who live by Him, and by vital union are united with Him, rise together with Him; and therefore the Apostle says: ' If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above; where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are on the earth; for you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God/3 And again he says, that God has raised Him up, 'and hath raised us up together, and hath made us sit together in the heavenly places.'4

The power of the resurrection of Jesus is upon every member of His Body: it is upon every one of you. In your baptism you were grafted into-Christ; and if you be living members of His Body, the life of the Resurrection flowed into you: ' Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in youf 5 If any man have not the Spirit of Christ in him, he

2 1 Cor. xv. 20. 3 Col. iii. 1-3.

4 Ephes. ii. 6. 5 1 Cor. iii. 16.

is none of His; but if He be in you, then being buried by baptism to death, you will also rise up with Him, by the power of Him who raised Jesus from the dead.

The plain consequence of this teaching is full of joy and of consolation.

First, it pledges to every one of us a resurrection hereafter to perfection and glory, the same as that of Jesus Himself, identical in all its circumstances. We are conquerors in Him, by Him, with Him, and through Him, over sin and death. If sin have no power over our will, death will have no power over our body or our soul, for we are made partakers of the first resurrection; and ' Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; in these the second death hath no power.'6 That is, if the resurrection of your baptism, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and the risen life of Jesus Christ in your mortal body, be the law, and the rule, and the power which sustains you, then the death of the body is but a resting, a momentary passing sleep.

Jesus has plucked out the sting of death; for the sting of death is sin, and He has thereby turned 6 Apoc. xx. 6.

death into slumber. Therefore Christians call their burial-places ' cemeteries,' — sleeping-places, places of rest, of sweet, kindly, refreshing repose, after the toil of life is done. Therefore the living memories of those whom the world calls dead, and the Church knows to be alive, are ever fresh and vivid in the hearts of Christians. Therefore also the Communion of Saints — which the dullhearted, cold-hearted world, with its clogged understanding, cannot comprehend — is to those who live by faith a family, a household, an eternal home, on the very threshold of which our feet now stand. There is a resurrection pledged to us all, and with that resurrection the perfect personal identity which we bear in this life. We shall be the same men, having the same minds, hearts, wills, — only with this change, that whereas here we are imperfect, there we shall be in perfection; whereas here, if the image of God be impressed upon us — as indeed it is — it is dim and faint, there we shall be as He has promised: ' The just shall shine as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father.'7 But we shall be the same men still. The very same that have suffered, sorrowed, struggled, laboured, 7 St. Matt. xiii. 43.

hungered, and thirsted in this life, the same we shall be in the kingdom of the resurrection. And therefore there shall be a perfect and universal recognition one of another, and of all those bonds whereby we are united here. Jesus and Mary, the Mother and the Son, will be Mother and Son to all eternity: maternal and filial love will be glorified in the kingdom of heaven. Mary and Lazarus will be likewise brother and sister; Andrew and Peter, and James and John, in like manner will be bound together in eternal kindred: fraternal love and friendship shall then be glorified. So shall it be with all of you in the kingdom of God, in perfect personal identity, and perfect mutual recognition in that eternal home, in the everlasting bliss of our Father's house.

Such, then, is the personal sovereignty of Jesus Christ, manifested in Himself, and in His victory over death and the grave; and this sovereignty of life and immortality pervades His whole mystical Body now, and quickens every member of it. This is the meaning of St. John's words: ' Grace be unto you and peace from Him, who is, and who was, and who is to come; and from the seven spirits which are before His throne: and from Jesus Christ, who is the Faithful Witness, the First Begotten of the dead and the Prince of the kings of the earth; who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us a kingdom, and priests to God and His Father: to Him be glory and empire for ever and ever. Amen.'8 The Church on earth is the kingdom of the resurrection, and the sovereignty of its Divine Head is exercised through it, as the instrument of His power and the manifestation of His government over the nations. This power He delegated in chief to His Vicar upon earth: the witness of the Divine Head of the mystical Body.

We have already traced this sovereignty over the intellect and the will of man. We have traced it also over the civil society of the world, through that which is both the type and bond of all societies — His Church. For this end, He has provided His Church with a supreme authority residing in its visible head, and with supernatural endowments, derived from Himself. On these two points it may be well a little longer to delay; but at this time we can only touch on the former. The 8 Apoc. i. 4-6.

presence of a supreme authority, delegated by-Jesus Christ to His Vicar, has been ever acknowledged by the world by a twofold recognition. It recognises it both by submission and by antagonism.

And here I would fain make an end, but for other thoughts which are forced upon me. Yesterday I read a notable example of this homage of antagonism — a scornful, petulant attack upon those devoted sons of the Catholic Church in England, who during this Holy Week have knelt at the feet of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, testifying, in the name of us all, our fidelity and love to him and to the Master whom he represents. The writer of the article stated he did not wonder — and perhaps those who receive the teaching of such a writer may, like him, not wonder — if in the heart of some devout Catholics there may rise a doubt whether the temporal power of the Pope will ever again be restored, and if not restored, whether the spiritual power of the Pope will long survive. In the name of the Catholics of England, in whose name I have a right to speak, and in the name of Ireland, for whom I have no right but that Ireland gives it me, and will not refuse my words, I protest against the folly and falsehood of this senseless insinuation. There is no living Catholic in Great Britain or Ireland who for one moment doubts that the power in worldly things, with which our Divine Master has invested His Vicar on earth, will continue undiminished until the hour in which it shall have fulfilled its mission; and then, in the wreck of kingdoms and the desolation of the world, it will be rendered back to Him who gave it.

In the name, then, of every Catholic here and everywhere, I bear witness that he who thinks any Catholic child to imagine that the temporal power over temporal things is the basis or strength of the spiritual prerogatives of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, or that those things are other than dust under his feet, that man, if he be not senseless, must be malicious. It is either the incapacity of the mind to understand, or the insincerity of the will that refuses to understand.

It may seem as if I have introduced a note of discord, and struck, upon this day, a sound out of harmony with the joy of the Resurrection. Not so; for He who, when He had risen from the dead, declared: *I am alive, and was dead; and behold, I am living for ever and ever, and have the keys of death and of hell,'9 is the same Who said: ' Thon art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell' — the keys of which I hold — i shall not prevail against it.' It is the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ which quickens the Church of God. As the Head is Divine, and as the Head is the ' Kesurrection and the Life,' so is the Body imperishable, and its authority indefectible and infallible. The universality, sanctity, structure, and unity of that one Body of Christ is indissoluble and imperishable. It cannot die; and that because its Head is the i Resurrection and the Life.' Not only so, but it can never be bound. Jesus was bound with grave-clothes and laid in the grave, the stone upon the mouth of it was sealed, and guards set to watch it. The world would have hindered Him from rising. Turn now to the history of the Church. When hasking, or prince, or people, or revolution, ever prevailed to bind the Church of the living God? At this hour, the Church, living and giving 9 Apoc. i. 18.

life, is more widely spread, more rooted in the hearts of mankind, more fruitful beyond all example in its spiritual mission and power. Its Episcopate reaches beyond all bounds and limits of its former extent: its authority is universally obeyed by the loving hearts of its pastors and people: greater unity with its Head has never yet been seen in the history of Christendom. Princes and legislatures, penal laws, laws of prohibition, imperial despotisms, royal corruption, sanguinary revolutions, have done their worst to bind the liberty of the Church of God; but the bonds have been broken, as the threads and the withes were broken by the hands of the ' Deliverer of Israel.' So it has been, and so it shall be. Let no man believe, then, that if the temporal rights of the Church be for a moment wrested from it, the Vicar of Christ will not go onward without wallet or staff, scrip or shoes, if need be. His work will be done: for it is God's work, and none can hinder it.

But there is another lesson these censors bring to mind, and for your sakes I must speak of it. In the same senseless and clamorous article I read, for the thousandth time, that ' The government of the Pope must go, because it is opposed to progress and modern civilisation.'

For the present, it is enough to say that l progress' and 'modern civilisation' mean this: the world going its own way without God and without Christ; banishing Christianity from legislation; excluding religion from the education of children; dissolving the bonds of marriage; tampering with the tables of sanctity and purity, whereby the marriage state has been protected; proclaiming that the public life of nations has no religion. This is 'progress,' this is 'modern civilisation,' I acknowledge. Nations may grow cultivated and rich, scientific and prosperous; they may devote all their energies to this world; but they cannot serve God and mammon; and for that reason they serve mammon mightily, and they serve God never. Yerily they have their reward: they prosper in this life, and that prosperity is all the recompense before them. Such, indeed, is 'modern civilisation' and ' progress.' And then they invite the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the representative of the Good Shepherd, the witness of truth upon earth, the teacher of the doctrines of Redemption, the expositor of the law of God, the guardian of the Seven Sacraments, the supreme judge of the law of domestic life, the chief father and pastor of the little ones of the flock — they invite him to conform himself to ' progress' and ' modern civilisation,' under the pain of losing his temporal power. Be it destroyed seventy times seven, before a compromise of truth be made! No Pontiff who has ever reigned in the chair of Peter, no head of the Catholic Church who represents the Incarnate Son of God, ever did, or can, or ever will compromise, for all the world contains, jot or tittle of the faith or law of Christ.

Here I would fain conclude; but I must press this ' progress' and 'modern civilisation' a little farther. Let me trace it to its fountain; and that I may not detain you too long, I will only go a century back to show what it has produced. In the last century, a new code of legislation was promulgated to the civilised and Christian world, called ' The Principles of 1789.' Those principles were laid down as the basis of the civil order of France: and not only so; they were intended to make France the apostle of civilisation and progress throughout the Christian world. The example of perfection, and the capital of the modern world in its civilisation and progress, was to be Paris. I need hardly say more. In eighty-two years there have been five revolutions in that city, all of them with bloodshed. No doubt you have all read of the blood which flowed during the First Revolution, as the first libation to those principles. I am old enough to remember the blood shed in Paris in the years 1830, 1848, and 1852. And how do you think Palm Sunday was kept this year in the centre of 'modern civilisation'? By the inauguration of a civil war. How has this Holy Week been sanctified? By daily battles of brother against brother. And Good Friday? By a fiercer encounter, by the seizure of the Archbishop and pastors of the flock, by the closing of the churches, by the spoiling of sanctuaries, by the prohibition of religion. The last tidings we heard were, that it was expected a decisive assault would be made last night, that is, on Easter-eve. Verily, this is the Easter of progress! Today is Easter-day; and who knows but that, the moment I speak, blood may not be running in the paths of that city? If this be * progress,' and if this be ' modern civilisation,' may God in His infinite mercy keep it for ever from the shores of this country!

The first great French Ke volution was the inauguration of the reign of Antichrist, of the denial of Christian faith, of the ruin of the Christian order, of the subversion of the authority of the Church of God, both in public and private life; and from that day to this, the principles of turbulence and apostasy have scourged and tormented kingdoms. At that time they all but entered England; at this time they may strive to enter again. Be firm, and fear not the clamorous talk of those who write to pander to the public opinion of the day. We know that He in whom we believe is the * Resurrection and the Life,' the Head of His Church on earth, the sovereignty of which shall never fail. Whether the Church be clothed with temporal power or not, so long as the world is Christian, the world will believe in Jesus Christ and in His Vicar. So long as it believes He has a Vicar upon earth, no king, prince, or sovereign whatsoever will venture to claim him as a subject. Even at this moment, the unjust and sacrilegious revolution of Italy has not dared to call him subject, but, with pretences and guarantees, which are mere illusion, has attempted to throw dust in the eyes of the Christian world, and deceive those who cannot be deceived. So long as the world is Christian, the Chief Pastor of the Christian world will remain as he is — subject to no human authority. This is his temporal power. It is not the possession of a bit of land or of a city; it is independence of all power on earth; being the delegation of Him who said: ' All power on earth is given to Me; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.'

There may, indeed, be another alternative; and I acknowledge, looking to the stream of events, the time may come when the nations, governments, and legislatures may cease to believe that Jesus Christ has a Church upon earth; and in the day when they cease so to believe (and I am bound to say, their acts lead us to think they are not far off from that state of unbelief), then the world will not be' Christian, and then I acknowledge that the Vicar of Jesus Christ will have no temporal power over the world that has rejected his Master. Though I am no prophet, and no expositor of prophecy, and know nothing of what is to come, save only as the

Catholic Church and faith guide me, of this I am sure, from the lips of Jesus Christ; that in those days which we call the latter times, * kingdom shall rise against kingdom, and nation against nation, and brother betray brother to death;' and the world shall be in misery it never knew before. When these things shall come to pass, the tyranny of the world will be well-nigh over, and the despotism of men will no more sway the Church of God; revolutions will not long prosper, because there is One at the door who must reign until He puts all enemies under His feet; and when that time shall come, will come also the ' resurrection of the just.'

Footnotes

1. / am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live: and every one that liveth, and believeth in Me, shall not die for ever! St. John xi. 25, 26. ↩