Chapter IV. The Science of the Sacred Heart

That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all understanding, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. 3PHES. iii. 17-19.

We have seen that the knowledge of the Sacred Heart is the most perfect of dogmas: that it contains in itself the knowledge of God, the knowledge of man, the knowledge of the sanctification of our humanity in Jesus Christ, and therefore of our own sanctification. It sets before us an example of all perfection, and of our relations to God and to one anoiher. We have seen also that the love of the Sacied Heart is the most perfect devotion: that it contains in itself the love of God and the love of Jesis, a tender and intimate friendship of heart witi heart, the nearest union of God and man possible in this world. And we have seen also that whsre perfect dogma is found, perfect devotion springs from it, that these two are united as light and heat are united together, and that as the light is more intense the heat is more ardent. Light and heat may, indeed, in the spiritual world he parted; for it is possible for a man to be illuminated in the intellect and yet be cold in the heart; but to this we shall come presently. Now this appears to be what S. Paul was asking of God for the Ephesians, whom he had brought into the faith. He had for two wliole years dwelt in Ephesus and taught the Ephesians everything that it was in the power of a human-teacher to deliver. He was an Apostle chosen in a special manner, called by the Holy Ghost, converted by a vision of our Lord Himself, illuminated in a singular degree, and caught up into the third heaven, so that he had learnt things which it is not lawful for man to utter; nevertheless even he, after a]l his labour, and after delivering to the Ephesians 'the whole counsel of God/ having ' kept back no:hing from them,' as he himself declares, prayed for an illumination and a knowledge which he could not bestow, which God alone could give. He prayed that their hearts might be illuminated, and that they might perceive the indwelling of Christ in:heir hearts by faith; that they might be ' founded and rooted in charity/ and that they might (be abb to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the chanty of Christ, which surpasseth all understanding.' It is clear, therefore, that there is a kind of knowledge altogether supernatural, altogether a divine gift, something which is superadded, after all that we can learn hy the intellect, and after all that we believe by faith. And to this we will turn our thoughts.

It seems then, from these words of the Apostle, that there are five degrees of this knowledge of Jesus, or, we may say, that there are five ways by which we know, or there are five ascents which we must make, going from step to step upwards into the light, the knowledge, and the love of the Sacred Heart. I will now endeavour, as well as I can, to point out these five degrees. • But I feel that we are entering on a region — I may say on regions which are far beyond any I would profess to have trodden myself; nevertheless a teacher must teach even those things which he dare not think that he himself has yet made his own.

1. The first way of knowledge and the first beginning of the knowledge of the Sacred Heart of our Divine Lord is by the intellect illuminated by faith. The virtue of faith is supernatural, and consists in this: it is a light of the Holy Ghost infused into the intellect, whereby the truths of revelation and the objects of faith are made, I may say, visible; so that by the vision of faith we know the truths and objects that are revealed. It has been argued among the theologians of the Church whether; in that infused light of faith, the very articles or truths of the creed are infused. Some have believed that, as in the reason of every child there is the whole power of numbers, so that a child can count as soon as it is conscious; and as soon as it comes to the age of reason the power of calculation may be elicited and trained into the most abstruse process of numbers; so also with the power of faith. They have thought, in like manner, that the mysteries of faith lie hid in the infused grace of faith; and that just as between the natural eye and the natural world there is a certain affinity, and it needs only the light of day to render the natural world visible to the faculty of sight, so with the truths of revelation and the gift of faith: that they have an affinity with each other, and that it needs only the proposition of the Church to render them visible. Every one, therefore, who is born again has this knowledge of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by the light of faith. So long as we are in a state of grace, faith works by charity and unites us by love to the

Heart of our Lord; so long as there is love, so long there is a light both of faith and charity. But by one mortal sin the charity of God is lost, the sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost is forfeited. Charity departs with sanctifying grace, but there remain behind hope and faith; the light is still in the soul, but the love has departed. And it is of this state that a Saint has said, ' 0 miserum, intellectum habere in coelo, voluntatem in cceno, — 0 miserable state, to have the intellect in heaven and the will in the mire;' that is, by the light of faith to know God and the mysteries of God, and to have the will and the heart sunk in the mire of sin. This is the divorce of light and love which borders on the state which theologians call the faith of devils, for ' the devils believe, and tremble.' Hell itself is light without love — light to know God, to know the Ever-blessed Trinity, to know the Incarnation, to know the mys-teries of Kedemption when it is all too late, when salvation is impossible. Light without love turns into malice, hatred, rebellion, and remorse; the inextinguishable light of the knowledge of God in hell breeds ' the worm that never dies.' But so long as there is the grace of charity perfecting the light of faith, there faith has a special vision of the Person of Jesus Christ our Lord. S. Bernard says, ' Whenever I hear the name of Jesus I see before me a man humble, lowly, loving, poor, merciful, pitiful, and divine;' there is a vision of beauty and sanctity, of majesty and dignity, always before the mind of those who are illuminated by faith to know the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This, then, is the first way or degree of knowledge.

2. The second is to know the Sacred Heart by love; not only by the intellect, but by the heart; and that is by the perfection of faith unfolded and ripened by charity. Faith without charity is, as I said before, light without warmth; faith and charity are light and warmth together; and where there is charity in the heart, the vision of faith grows always more luminous and more full of love. Just as friends, the more intimately they know one another, the more they love each other, come to have a living consciousness of each other's character; so it is with charity: it perfects the vision of faith by a personal friendship with Jesus; and as charity grows, there is a closer union between the heart of the disciple and the Sacred Heart of his Master; and where there is union there is an assimilation; for love likens the object of love to itself. They that love one another by living together grow like each other. Love identifies the souls of friends, so that they have at last hut one will; and as their wills are identified, their hearts, their affections, and their ways, and even their outward manner, their tone of voice, and their accent of speech, grow like each other. They change, as it were, into each other's likeness. We say that 'a friend is another self,' because there is a power of assimilation which is natural to love. And what is true in natural things is true in divine things; and those who love our

Divine Lord and are united heart to heart with Him, as they grow in likeness grow also in knowledge;

they know Him better and more intimately in the measure in which they grow more like Him, and they grow more like Him in the measure in which they know Him. This is a divine paradox, a circle returning into itself. They are changed into the same likeness; and such is the meaning of the

Apostle when he says, ' We are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.'1 This is why the priest, if he be worthy, is called ' another Christ' — words that are our crown if we be worthy, and our condemnation if we be not.

Unless the priests of the Church have learnt by faith and by love to know their Master, unless they.are changed into His likeness, unless they bear His Heart

1 2 Cor. iii. 18.

within them, unless they think His thoughts and speak His words, they are not trusty witnesses; they may even give a false witness, may teach or mislead men to believe that their Master is other than He truly is. But when they are like to their Master they^tre evangelists of the Sacred Heart, true witnesses of their Lord, of His love and of His truth. This, then, is the second degree of the knowledge of the Sacred Heart which comes by love.

3. The third way of knowledge is the knowledge of experience. The Psalmist says, ' Taste and see how sweet the Lord is.' Is it not strange that these two senses should here be, as it were, interchanged? How can we receive sight by tasting, or by seeing, how can we taste? Yet it is true in spiritual things that if we taste we shall see. If we have tasted that the Lord is sweet, we shall know Him by an experience distinct from faith. It is a trial that we must make each one for himself. Wherever there is friendship, in proportion as it is prolonged and matured and tried in the manifold changes and vicissitudes of life, just in that measure we grow in the knowledge of our friend. And friendship has special faculties ^)f its own. We know how friends that are intimate with each other know each other's will without a word, know each other's judgment without asking, know how to act and how to speak in their behalf without going to them for counsel. There is an instinct and an intuition in true friendship which forecasts and knows at once what a friend would desire. So it is in the life of a true disciple who walks uprightly and in obedience and in the love of his Divine Master. Take Abraham for an example. How did God try his fidelity? What did He command him to do? God, who spoke with Abraham as a man speaks with his friend, and who called him his friend, commanded him to offer up his son. In that He tried his trustful fidelity and his spirit of sacrifice; and in that trial Abraham learned to know God and the love of God and the mercy of God with a more perfect knowledge. He obeyed without hesitation, and was ready to offer up his only son; and by that trial he entered into a knowledge and a love of God such as he had never learned. before. Again, when our Divine Lord bade the blind man go and wash in the Pool of Siloe He tried his faith; and after he had gone and washed, and his eyes were opened, he came back seeing, and he knew the Son of God. Again, S. Paul says that he was 'buffeted by an angel of Satan, a sting of the flesh' — some terrible temptation — and that he had 'besought the Lord thrice' — which need not only mean three times, but daily, continuously, and without ceasing— ' that it might depart from him.' And what was the answer? * My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in infirmity.'2 After that answer S. Paul knew the will and the purpose of his Lord as he had never known till then. There is a continual growth of knowledge which comes by experience, and those who live in the love of the Sacred Heart find their whole life to be full of the tokens of His love to them. The consciousness of our relation to Him turns our whole life into a personal service, and all His providence into a personal oversight and guidance. It gives a meaning and a purpose to everything that befalls us. Nothing comes by chance; nothing falls out at random; everything is ordered, even the falling of a sparrow to the earth: how much more the life of man, and all the events of it. The whole order and tissue of our life are disposed by the Hand of our Divine Lord for our trial and our sanctification; even our very temptations are permitted that we may be chastised and sanctified, our afflictions that we may be more conformed to Him in His patience, and our privations that we may know what it is to be content with Him alone. The sorrows of life are intended to conform us to the 2 2 Cor. xii. 7-9.

' Man of Sorrows.' Whatsoever comes to us is ordered or permitted; and all is overruled by Him with an intention and a purpose which becomes legible to those who know Him by experience. We, then, can understand what the Apostle meant when he said, ' I know Him whom I have trusted,' that is, in whom I have believed; ' and I am certain that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him' — and what was it? his soul, his whole being, his salvation — ' against that day,'1 the great day of judgment to come.

Now, I ask you, have you gone beyond this? Have you yet attained to the knowledge and love of the Sacred Heart by the light of faith, and by the love of your heart, and by the personal experience of your lives? Do you interpret what befalls you in your life as the overruling, watchful, and loving care of your Divine Friend? If so, you will never murmur, nor repine, nor rebel; you will never chafe against His providence. You will be content with your lot, you will be ready to thank Him for everything. If the day is fair you will bless Him, if the day is stormy you will be content with it; you will know that nothing comes amiss, that everything that befalls you, whatsoever it be, is ordered by a Heart that loves you, and by a Wisdom that cannot err.

3 2 Tim. i. 12.

4. But there is still another and a fourth degree of this knowledge of the Sacred Heart.

There are two kinds of theology. There is a theology, or knowledge of God, which is acquired by study and by elaborate intellectual toil, but that is the theology of Doctors. Alas for us if there were no other theology. There is another science of God, which comes not from books, but from God Himself; not from poring over learned pages, but by the infused light of the Holy Ghost. And that infused knowledge is the theology of the Saints. Perhaps you will say, ' But we are not Saints. Why do you invite us to a knowledge which is above us?' I answer, ' The poor and the simple and little children may be Saints; for the first shall be last and the last shall be first in the Kingdom of God. It is not only those whom we account to be Saints that are so. God gives these infused lights to all that are humble, to all that are clean of heart, for " the clean of heart shall see God." ' And by an infused light of the heart they will see God in the world around them, and in all the works of God; and they will see God in the Church and in all its history, in all its fortunes, in all its sufferings, in its warfare, in its conflicts which the world counts to be defeats. God is in them all; and the clean of heart in all these things can see His Face and the power of His Hand, and the working of His Will. They can see God also in the tradition of Faith and in every letter of their baptismal Creed, and in all the luminous truths of their Catechism. These all are theology in short words and in a little book, but it is a theology which will be eternal. They see God too in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar; and they see Him in all their own life by an infused light which teaches them to know that they are in the hands of their Master in heaven, and that He is their Divine Redeemer who shed His Precious Blood for them; and that nothing comes which is not ordered for their sanctification and by His Will.

This is the theology which comes not by learned books. It comes down into the heart by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. In the history of the Church some of the greatest lights that have ever been cast upon it have been shed by the humblest and most unlettered souls. Peter himself, the first Vicar of Jesus Christ, was a fisherman; and from his day onwards God has chosen humble and pure souls as the channels of His illumination. He has chosen the handmaids of His Blessed and Immaculate Mother, unlearned women, to be special channels of light even upon dogmas of Faith. S.

Catherine of Genoa wrote, as with a pen of light, upon the mystery of Purgatory: her hook on the state of souls heyond the grave is an illumination visibly from the Spirit of God. S. Gertrude received light to know the Sacred Heart long before the special illumination which was given to Blessed Margaret Mary, the founder of the devotion. The venerable Mary of Agreda, in a profuse and minute exposition, has taught us the mystery of the deified humanity and the actions and passion of our Blessed Lord. No human genius could have conceived such teaching. It can be ascribed to nothing but supernatural light. Blessed Angela of Foligno tells us that one day when she went into the church she prayed for a special grace from God, and as she began to say the ' Our Father,' in a moment, she said, * I seemed to see the " Our Father" and every word of it in so clear a light and with so new an understanding, that I marvelled how little I had known it before.' And Blessed Margaret Mary was an unlettered woman, despised and persecuted even in her own convent, thought to be a visionary, and to be beside herself, without cultivation and without theology. Nevertheless she has left behind her writings and meditations and counsels and records of the visions she received, and instructions to those who were under her charge, full of intuitive perception of divine truth, of subtil discernment in the spiritual life, of ardour and love and a surpassing knowledge of the Sacred Heart.

What was the source of all this? An infused light — the light that was shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost. Perhaps you will say, these are all Saints. I answer that the little child may have all these things, for ' out of the mouths of babes and sucklings' God glorifies Himself. There have been turning-points in the lives of Saints which have been determined by a word spoken by a child. S. Augustine tells us, when he was pondering upon the truths of Christianity before he yet became Christian, that one day, when he was meditating in a garden in profound grief and doubt, he heard, as it were, the voice of a child saying in a neighbouring garden, ' Tolle lege, tolle lege, — Take and read, take and read.' He laid his hand upon a roll that was beside him, and opened it, and his eyes lighted on the words, ' Let us walk honestly as in the day;' 1 Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.'4 From that moment he turned to God.

In the history of many there are turning-points of life of this kind. You can perhaps remember when 4 Rom. xiii. 13, 14.

a word read in a book, or something that you heard from a preacher, or the chance whisper of a friend moved you so as nothing had ever moved you before. Now, I ask you, do you believe that it was a mere human speech or mere human voice that made you to thrill and to listen? Was it not an infused light of the Spirit of God, who is always striving with our hearts? Like the rain that falls on the barren mountain, His grace had been flowing down into our hearts for years without leaving a change behind; but upon some one day, in some brief moment, one word was changed by an infused grace into a ray of light which pierced your understanding, and into a spark of fire which kindled the love of God in your heart.

Here, then, is another way in which we may come to know the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And these things are not beyond the reach of any of you. Any humble docile soul, by prayer and Holy Communion and kneeling before the Altar, may be ever receiving fuller illumination to know and to understand the Sacred Heart with a growing intimacy and a more ardent love. Our Lord Himself has promised it: ' I confess to Thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid those things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto little ones' — that is, to children, to the docile, to the humble and the clean of heart — ' yea, Father, for so hath it seemed good in Thy sight.'5

5. There still remains the last, a fifth, way of knowledge; and that is by the manifestation of Himself. Hear His own words: ' He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.'6 Now, before I venture to interpret these words, I ask you to say to yourselves, 'What do these words mean? What have I understood them to mean?' You have read these words a thousand times. Have you attached any meaning at all to them? And, if you have, what is that meaning? ' I will manifest Myself to him.' Is it to the eye, or is it to the ear, or is it by a vision, or by a voice, or by anything that is seen, or by anything that is palpable? Answer in your own hearts. First of all, no doubt our Divine Lord in these words promised that all who loved Him, and all who were faithful to Him, should see Him manifested again after He rose from the dead. He came visibly and palpably into the midst of them; S. Thomas put his finger into the print of the nails; they ate and drank 5 S. Matt. xi. 25, 26. 6 S. John xiv. 21.

with Him; they saw that He was the very same who had been crucified. By the sea of Tiberias they all sat round Him, and they ate of the broiled fish and the bread which He gave to each: they knew that it was their Divine Master. On the mountain they conversed with Him, and while He lifted up His hands and blessed them, He visibly ascended up into heaven. This, then, may be the first fulfilment of the promise. Afterwards, when Stephen was stoned, as he yielded up the ghost, he saw heaven opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.7 Once more. Saul, on the way to Damascus, to persecute the disciples of Jesus, was struck down by an overwhelming light from heaven, and he saw that ' Just One,'8 he saw Jesus Himself manifested; and again he says that, when he was called before the tribunal of the Emperor in Home, ' At my first answer no man stood with me, but all forsook me: may it not be laid to their charge. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me.'9 This too was a manifestation of his Divine Master. All these things are recorded in the New Testament, and you believe them. Then, I ask you, why should not men believe what we read in the history of the Church, that when Peter was fleeing from Borne, to escape from persecution, our 7 Acts vii. 55. 8 Ib. xxii. 14. 9 2 Tim. iv. 1'6, 17.

Divine Lord met him? Peter asked, ' Lord, whither art Thou going?' And Jesus said, * I go to Eome, again to be crucified.' These words turned Peter back to win the crown of martyrdom. I ask you whether you believe it or disbelieve it. It is written in history. It is intrinsically credible. If any man disbelieves it, not upon defect of evidence, but as intrinsically incredible, he convicts himself at least of the incredulity which says that these things happened only in the time of the Holy Scriptures. Why should the same things be credible then and incredible now? I would ask, Do you believe that the dispensation of grace, and of the divine operations of the Church on earth, and the visible manifestations of our Divine Lord have ceased because they have not been recorded by inspired writers? Because we have not a continuous history of these things, a canon of Scripture reaching through eighteen hundred years, do you believe that the things themselves have ceased to be? If you see a planet sometimes obscured by a cloud, sometimes reappearing, do you doubt that the light is one and the same? Or if you see a river bury itself in the earth, and, after a long track, reappear and break up again and again above the surface, would you disbelieve its identity because you cannot trace the whole of its course? So is it with these supernatural manifestations. The whole order of the Church is supernatural. We read in the Life of S. Thomas of Canterbury that, as he was in thanksgiving after his Mass in the chapel of S. Stephen, in the Abbey of Pontigny, our Divine Lord appeared to him and called him by name. S. Thomas said, 'Who art Thou, Lord?' and He answered, *I am Jesus, thy brother. My Church shall be glorified in thy blood, and thou shalt be glorified in Me.' Is this incredible to you? But the other day, in the East, in Corea, a humble native Christian, whose baptismal name was Charles, as he returned from Pekin, twice saw in a dream, as he declared, our Divine Lord, who said to him, ' In the course of this year I will give thee the grace of shedding thy blood for the glory of My name.'10 He returned home fully possessed with the belief that his martyrdom was close at hand. Soon after, the persecution broke out and he was martyred. Why doubt these things? You do not doubt that the Holy Ghost, who came on the Day ofJPentecost, is here. You cannot see Him, you see no tongues of fire, you hear no sound of the thrilling wind, and yet you believe in the perpetual operation cf God the Holy

10 The New Glories of the Catholic Church, p. 65 (Richardson, 1870).

Ghost. Believe, then, in the perpetual promise of our Divine Lord: ' He that lovetk Me shall he loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.' What is the life of Blessed Margaret Mary, chosen to be the channel of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, but one continual evidence of this wonderful and luminous manifestation of His presence? He gave her seventy visions of Himself — seventy times, in supernatural ways, He manifested to her this devotion of the Sacred Heart in its light and in its love. These things are things of the Kingdom of God, supernatural indeed, because they are above nature, but I was going to say natural, because the Kingdom of God itself is divine, and all its laws are supernatural. But perhaps you will say that you do not look for these manifestations. No, *nor do I. But I do believe that to you and to me our Lord does manifest Himself. And how? Not palpably, it may be, as He did after the Resurection; not visibly, as He did to S. Thomas of Canterbury and the Blessed Margaret Mary; but invisibly, yet personally and truly and inwardly, every time we make a worthy Communion. And in the measure in which we live in communion with Him, in the degree in which we are pervaded by the consciousness that we are united to His Sacred Heart, He will manifest

Himself to us. "We know that which we cannot see, and we taste that which we cannot touch. We know that He is with us, for He Himself hath said, ' He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me and I in him.'11 If He abide in us, how is He not manifest to us?

We have here, then, five ways of knowledge — by the intellect, by the heart, by experience, by the infused grace of the Holy Ghost, and by His inscrutable manifestations, which, to such as you and me, are invisible and spiritual, but nevertheless personal, real, and true.

If, then, you would learn to know the Sacred Heart, you must learn it of Itself. Books will not teach it to you, and preachers cannot. You must learn it from Him who alone can teach the heart. The Master of that doctrine sits at the right hand of God, and Jesus alone can lead you on from step to step to know and to love Him in the five ways which I have endeavoured to trace. It begins with a secret infused grace of faith; it ends with the manifestation of Himself. And there are two chief ways in which He teaches us to know the science of His Sacred Heart: the one is by a docile submission to His divine Voice, speaking through His Church. 11 S. John vi. 57.

There is no other channel of His Truth, there is no other witness of His Kevelation, there is no other teacher from whom we can learn His divine and unerring will. Therefore, to listen to the voice of His Church with the docility of children, and to learn the whole dogma of the Godhead and manhood of His Incarnate Person, is the first condition of the knowledge and love of the Sacred Heart. The other way is upon the altar — the Most Holy Sacrament — in which and from which His attractions are perpetually going forth, as the virtues went out from His garment upon earth, fulfilling His words: ' And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.'12 There comes an illumination, and what I may call an articulate voice, from the silence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, by which He teaches all those who do not hinder His light.

Worldliness is like the dust which darkens the sight of the eye. ' Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world.'13 And they that have these clouds in them cannot know 12 S. John xii. 32. 13 1 S. John ii. 15, 16.

and love the Sacred Heart. And I must add that levity, carelessness, shallowness of heart, hinder the entrance of His light. Some people have not sufficient gravity or earnestness to understand divine truth. No hearts are more blind than the light and careless.

Therefore open your hearts wide, he candid as the day. ' If thine eye he single, thine whole body shall be full of light; if thine eye be double, thine whole body shall be full of darkness. If, then, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great shall that darkness be.'14 Be perfectly sincere and upright with our Divine Master; let there be no false sur-renderings of the heart, no secret reservations, keeping anything in yourselves back from His service. Cut off the right hand, pluck out the right eye, if they stand between you and your fidelity to Him. Out of generosity He gave the last drop of His Blood for you, keeping nothing back from you: so be and so do for Him in turn.

In this way, if you do not reach the highest degrees of knowledge, you will at least be ascending up that ladder of which the foot is on earth and the head in heaven. It reaches the Sacred Heart itself; and in them who go up by these degrees of know- » S. Matt. vi. 22, 23.

ledge and love shall be fulfilled the words of our Lord: ' I am the gate: by Me, if any man shall enter in, he shall be saved; and he shall go in and he shall go out, and he shall find pasture.'15

15 S. John x. 9.

V.