Chapter VII. The Transforming Power of the Sacred Heart

For we all beholding, as with open face, the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 COB. iii. 18.

I HAVE already explained the language of the Church, by which we are taught that the Sacred Humanity assumed by the Son of God is deified. It became the Manhood of God, and, as the Fathers say, it was also deified by the sanctity of God, which pervaded it, as fire pervades the iron in the furnace. In this latter sense the deification of the Sacred Humanity signifies its sanctification.

Now in this latter sense Dionysius (or whosoever be the author of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy), S. Athanasius, S. Cyril, S. John Damascene, and others apply the word to all who are sanctified by union and conformity to Jesus Christ. Dionysius says, ' Deification is an assimilation and union, so far as it can be, with God.'1 Again, ' The nature of God is the 1 De Eccl. Hier. cap. i. s. 3.

principle of deification, by which all who shall be deified are deified.'2 S. Athanasius says, ' He (the Son of God) assumed our human nature that He might deify us.'8 And again, ' He was made man that He might deify us.'4

S. John Damascene says that God created man to be deified by approaching to Himself; and he explains the manner of it, — ' deified by participation of divine illumination, not changed into the divine essence.'5 In this way the Fathers explain the words of the Psalmist quoted by our Lord: ' Ye are gods, ye are all the children of the Most High;'6 and again those of S. Peter, ' being made partakers of the divine nature.'7 S. Athanasius writes thus against the Arians: ' It is not granted to Him as a reward that He should be called the Son of God; but it is He that has made us to be sons of the Father, and He has deified men, being made man Himself.'8 Now the meaning of all this is, not that we are made partakers of the divine essence, which is both intrinsically impossible and madness to think, but by adop-

2 Cap. i. s. 4.

3 Orat. de Incarn. Verbi, torn. iv. p. 108.

4 Ad Adelphinm, torn. i. p. 158.

5 De Fid. Orth. lib. ii. c. xii.

6 Ps. Ixxxi. 6. 7 2 Pet. i. 4. 8 Orat. ii. Contr. Arian. torn. i. p. 345.

tion, by the sanctification of the Holy Ghost, by participation in goodness and illumination, by assimilation, and by conformity.

Therefore conformity to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is our perfection. First, let us see in what that conformity consists; next, the means by which it is wrought in us; and lastly, the signs of it.

What, then, is conformity to the Sacred Heart of Jesus? S. Paul says that 'we all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image.' And when he says 'wej he means all Christians, as distinguished from the people of God of old; for he is drawing a contrast between the manifestation of the glory of the Lord in the face of Moses, who, after he had seen God, while his face was shining with the reflection of the divine presence, had need to cover it with a veil, because the people could not endure the splendour of His glory. The Apostle contrasts this with the face of Jesus Christ, which is not only the reflection of God, but the face of God Himself, and this glory we behold without a veil. In the glory of that countenance we see the glory of God with open face. It is manifested and revealed to us; and, so far from needing a veil to intercept that glory, it is by the steadfast contemplation of this glory that the power of transformation works in us. It changes those who gaze upon it ' from glory to glory into the same image.' In another place S. Paul says, ' God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' Here we have again exactly the same truth, that the face, that is, the human countenance, of Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the glory of God; and that by gazing on it our hearts are assimilated, and changed by its transforming power into the same likeness. For as the Apostle says in another place, ' Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, counted it not robbery to be equal with God: but, being God Himself, He emptied Himself (that is, He laid aside His glory), 'and was made in the likeness of man.'9 ' He took upon Him the form of a servant;' that is to say, Jesus Christ was in the form of God, because He is God; and He took upon Himself the form of man, being made man — true man, as He is also true God; and that true form of God and true form of man united in one Divine Person constitute the Sacred Heart of Jesus. There is the eternal charity of God clothed in the sym- » Philip, ii. 6, 7.

pathies and the affections of man, and in that we see the twofold perfections of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. Such, then, is the plain meaning of the text. The face of Jesus Christ signifies the whole Person, in all the perfections, divine and human; and the manifestation of that perfection is by the Sacred Heart, which is not only a symbol but an organ of the divine and human love of our Redeemer.

And to this pattern all who are saved must be conformed. Salvation is this deification or conformity to the Sacred Heart. No soul which is deformed, that is, which is unlike to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, shall enter the Kingdom of God. No soul can live eternally which is not in union with God. And no soul which is not conformed to the Sacred Heart can be united with God. Therefore conformity to the Sacred Heart is the vital condition of our salvation.

Spiritual writers sometimes put this subject in the following way, in four words — Deformata reformare, reformata transform/tare, transformata conformare; that is, that which is deformed in us must be reformed, that which is reformed must be transformed, and that which is transformed must be conformed to the perfect image of Jesus Christ, who is the form of all perfection, divine and human, being both God and man.

Now there are three kinds of this conformity. There is the transformation of the innocent, and there is the reformation of the penitent, and there is the conformation of the Saints. And all these three, the innocent, the penitent, and the Saints, find the type and the term of their perfection in Jesus Christ.

1. We will begin first with the innocent. And who are they? The innocent are those that are born again and abide in their baptismal grace; the little ones of the Kingdom of God, who never fall from the innocence of their baptism; and those childlike souls who grow up in humility and purity, and to the end of life are childlike as they were in the beginning. Our Lord describes them when He says, ' Unless you be converted and become like little children, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.'10 Now the most perfect example of this innocence is in the Person of our Lord Himself, in His own childhood, boyhood, youth, and manhood. No shadow could ever fall upon the perfection of divine innocence. Being God, it was impossible in Him. The innocent are those who, being 10 S. Matt, xviii. 3.

born again by water and the Holy Ghost, are made sons of God, brethren of Jesus Christ; in them the light of faith, if sustained by mental prayer and the contemplation of the Person and the example of our Lord, is always growing; then hope grows into confidence and reliance upon the love and the perpetual care of our Divine Master; and then charity is ever kindling more and more towards God and man, expanding in their hearts, pervading their whole life. In this way they grow up into the likeness of our Lord. They become more and more averted from creatures; and the world, which is the bondage of the soul, has less and less hold over them. They are more and more converted to God by a steady, equable, gradual, uninterrupted, and lifelong change or transformation of their whole mind and heart and will and spirit into the likeness of their Redeemer. They are averted from creatures, because the very essence of sin is this, that the heart of man, which God made for Himself, to be in union with Himself, is turned away or averted from Him and is converted or turned to creatures; so that by all its passions and affections it lays hold of creatures, and loves and serves, that is, worships, them more than God the Creator. But where faith, hope, and charity, and the Spirit of God dwell in the heart and perpetually grow and transform the whole inward life into the likeness of Jesus Christ, the soul loses hold of the creatures one by one; it becomes detached from them, independent of them, and has its happiness in things that are higher than all creation. It is always turning to God: as the moon, which receives continually an increase of the light of the sun, until it is full, so the soul, turning continually towards God, loves God, rests in God, and finds all its good and all its fulness in God.

Now the most perfect example of a heart turned in all its expanse to God was in the Sacred Heart. We are told that Jesus ' advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and man.'11 We are not to understand that our Divine Lord grew in grace. His deified soul was full of grace from the first moment of the Incarnation. In Him there was no accession nor augmentation, for it was already full; but there were fuller manifestations, a gradual unfolding in the eyes of men of that which was in Him from the beginning, according to the measures and laws of the humanity which He had assumed. But in S.John, the 'beloved disciple,' who, by a special privilege, was preserved from sin, there was this increase of grace, this continual augmentation 11 S. Luke ii. 52.

and accession; not only an outward manifestation, but an inward increase of the light and grace of sanctification. In his innocence he grew up; as the morning light from the day-spring continually grows to the noontide, or as the ripening of the harvests and of the fruits of the earth, which, with a silent onward progress, continually advance to their full maturity, so it was, without interruption and without break, in the life of the disciple whom Jesus loved.

You will say, perhaps, that there is no such innocence as this now. Yes; your little children are such: they are still in a state of innocence. Watch over and guard them well. If you do this, they may not, indeed, be like the beloved disciple, because they have no such special privilege of grace as he had, but still they may abide in their innocence without mortal sin to their lives' end. God, on His part, will give them all graces necessary for holy perseverance; and they will be perpetually transforming and transformed into the image of Jesus Christ; that is, the Holy Ghost, by whom they were born again, will perpetually accomplish His own work in them. This, then, is the first example of conformity to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

2. Now the second is, at first sight, more difficult to understand. How, and in what manner, can it be said that the penitent is conformed to the Sacred Heart of our Lord? How can it he said that the sinful is conformed to the Sinless? First of all, our Divine Saviour was made sin for us, though He knew no sin. He stood in the place of sinners; His Heavenly Father dealt with Him as a sinner for the sake of sinners. He laid on Him the iniquity of us all, and 'by His stripes we are all healed.' He suffered for sin all His life. From the first moment of the Incarnation hegan the oblation of Himself for sin; He was the Man of Sorrows from the first instant that He took our manhood. From the first moment that the human soul was assumed and deified in the Person of the Son of God, He was conscious of the sins of the world and of the sorrow which is inseparable from that sin, because He made Himself the offering for sin. And for three-and-thirty years He was the Man of Sorrows; He bore for us the mental sorrow we ought to bear for our sins. For three-and-thirty years He offered Himself by a willing and continuous expiation. His sinless humanity endured, I may say, the penance of our sins. He bore temptations and hunger, thirst and weariness, fasting and sleepless nights, scourging and buffeting; He was crowned with thorns; He was nailed upon the Cross. No life of penance ever went beyond the sufferings of the innocent Son of God. He was tempted like to us in all things, sin only excepted;13 and yet He was made like to us in respect to sin in all its sorrows, except only its guilt; He had all the innocent infirmities of our nature, and all the penalties which follow upon our sin, except those which imply the guilt of the person: He suffered, He tasted them all; and with a sensitive capacity of sorrow which none but the Sinless can know, and a Divine Sanctity alone can suffer.

Therefore the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in its passion upon earth, its three-and-thirty years of perpetual sorrow of mind, its agony in the garden, its anguish upon Calvary, and in all its unknown sufferings, is the example of the penitent. What does it teach us? First of all, that they who are entangled in creatures and averse from God are thereby deformed, destroyed, and dead; and that there is no way of return to God but by the mortification of the passions, affections, and senses whereby we lay hold of creatures, and creatures lay hold of us. Next, that there is no way of life for 12 Heb. iv. 15.

those that are sinful but union with God, returning to God, conversion to God: that the very intellect becomes darkened, deformed, perverted; the heart becomes corrupt, sensual, and selfish; the will becomes unstable and stubborn; the whole inward nature of man is destroyed by conversion to creatures and aversion from God. We must come back again by conformity to that perfect image of innocence suffering for sin. We must put off not only the practice of sin, the wilful commission of sin, but also the love of sin, and the disorders, affections, and senses of sin. We must mortify them and die to them, and we must return to God and live in and for God above all. Hear the words of the Apostle: ' They that are Christ's have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences.'18 They must drive the nails through their evil passions. You know, each one, what yours are: every man has his own, every woman has her own. Learn what they are; know them for yourselves, and drive the iron through that affection or that passion which deforms your soul. When you are dead to it, so far you will be conformed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Once more the Apostle says, ' With Christ I am nailed to the Cross.'14 He says 'I;' not one passion or one 13 Gal. v. 24. 14 Ibid. ii. 19.

affection only, but 'I,' that is, my whole soul is stretched out, as it were, nailed hands and feet, and my side is pierced upon the Cross with Christ — * I am nailed to the Cross, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself for me;'15 that is, gave Himself over to die for me. And then, once more, S. Paul says, ' God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.'16 If these words were not the words of the Holy Ghost, written in Holy Scripture, I should not have dared to speak them. They are divine truth. Unless the sinner dies to sin, dies to the world, and dies to self, he will never enter into the Kingdom of God; unless by mortification all that is deformed is crucified and dead, and by sanctification his whole soul in all its affections, powers, and faculties is conformed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he can never be united to God in eternity. Let us take two examples. Take, first, the example of S. Mary Magdalen. Who departed further from the sanctity of the Sacred Heart than she? And yet who ever stood nearer to the Cross? and who ever, with a 15 Gal. ii. 20. " Ibid. vi. 14.

divine indignation, infused into her soul by the Holy Ghost, so chastised and expiated the sins that she had committed? She was conformed to the Sacred Heart of her Master, hy detestation of the sins which had stained her, and by love to the Eedeemer who had saved her from eternal death. Or, once more, take S. Paul, who was accomplice to the murder of S. Stephen, and whose whole life was spent in a burning zeal of penance, like the zeal for the house of God which consumed his Lord. Here we see, then, that the penitent must be conformed to the Sacred Heart of our Divine Kedeemer in these things: sorrow for sin, hatred of all evil, self-denial, self-sacrifice, and crucifixion of his own will. But penance is a hard word; and be sure of what I say, any man who sets about this work, either trusting in his own strength or only by human rules, will never do it. But there is a way of accomplishing it which is both easy and sweet, and I will tell you what it is: it is to sit humbly at the feet of our Divine Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament, to look up into His face, on which there is no veil, into that face which reflects the love and the grace and the tenderness and the absolution and the pity of God Himself, and to gaze upon that countenance until the Spirit of the Lord has transformed you by inward submission into the purity and the sorrow and self-chastisement of your Divine Kedeemer.

3. And then, thirdly, there is the conformation of the Saints. But of this I hardly know what to say. Neither you nor I are Saints, nor, in this world perhaps, ever will he. And yet some of you may be. Thsre may he some poor humble soul who hears me who thinks that he is the worst of sinners; there may be some poor woman who says that ' no soul was ever farther from being a Saint than I am;' and yet it may be that those two are nearer than we are in their conformity to the humility of Jesus, for 1 the last shall be first and the first last.' But of one thing I am sure — that if there be such they will be the least conscious of it; and if anybody here thinks well of himself, and that he is in the way to be a Saint, he is very far — perhaps the farthest — from it. Our Divine Lord is the King of Saints. He is the elder Brother of Saints, and His humility is the family likeness, the one type, which is common to all His brethren. It is universal in the whole Communion of Saints; for as the light of heaven is one — and yet 'one is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars, for star differeth from star in glory;'17 17 1 Cor. XT. 41.

and more than this, as each star has its own magnitude and its own colour — for there are coloured rays which diversify the light of every star — so it is with the Saints. All are like to their Divine Master in lowliness, and all are conformed to the Sacred Heart; but no two are identical; yet in this they all agree — they all have a due aversion from creatures, and they all are converted with their whole soul to God. I do not say in this world, but before the Throne to them God is all in all. And when I say they have an aversion from creatures, do not misunderstand me, as if the love of God extinguishes the love of man. No; the love of our neighbour springs from the love of God; the love of kindred, the love of friends, the love of all that are about us is a part of the love of God. As radiance is a part of light, so the love of mankind flows in a direct stream from the love of God. Therefore aversion from creatures means this, that there are no undue attachments, no dependencies, no bondage to creatures, even to the purest and the best. The soul is in perfect liberty because it is united with God; it loves every one, each in his measure, and fulfils every duty of charity with a delicate tenderness greater by far than the love of those who love God less. In the measure in which we love God, in that measure we shall have more heartfelt love to all that are about us. A father will be a better father, and a mother a better mother; son and daughter will be better children; they will love each other more, and friends will love one another more in the measure in which they love God more. Therefore aversion from creatures means a rational and measured love which sets us free from all undue attachments. Then, next, Saints have often said that they had two conversions; their first conversion was from sin to penance, their second conversion was from penance to perfection; that is to say, they began by putting off and mortifying everything they knew to be contrary to the will of God and to the example of the Sacred Heart of our Lord; and having done penance, and chastised themselves for the past, then they went beyond this. To keep the commandments of God is an absolute necessity for salvation; but after we have kept the letter of the commandments, there is the spirit of each commandment, and there are the counsels of liberty and generosity, which any one who desires to serve God with his whole heart will certainly fulfil. If a man gives an alms in some small, if it be not a niggard, measure, he is fulfilling a Christian's duty; his conscience need not reproach him. But if a man were to say to himself, ' I will give a tithe of all I possess/ or * I will give a third of all that I gain,' or ' I will give a half of my inheritance/ he is plainly going beyond the measure of necessity: it is an act of generosity. Or, again, if any one were to say, 'I know it is lawful for me to enjoy innocent pleasures; but the money that I might spend on innocent pleasures I will lay by and give to the poor' — there is no strict necessity for doing this; but in doing it we are moved by a greater generosity. And this is the meaning of S. James when he says, ' So speak ye and so do as being to be judged by the law of liberty/18 that is, 'You were free to do it, and you were free not to do it, but you did it for My sake. I knew every act of self-denial; I knew everything that you laid aside; I knew everything in which you denied yourself; I knew every motive of every act: you did it for the love of Me.' This is the spirit of counsel, which guides us and lifts us to higher and more perfect actions.

Now I will try to give you a rule by which you may conform yourselves to the Sacred Heart of our Divine Lord. Keligious orders, as you know, have a rule and constitutions. I will give you a rule and constitutions for those who live in the world; and if you will make them your meditation, you will grow 18 S. James ii. 12.

in conformity and be transformed into the image of the Lawgiver from whom alone they come. Now the rule I will give you is this: ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength; and thy neighbour as thyself.' I did not make that rule: you know who made it. He gave it to all men, and, alas, few men keep it. Now make a resolution with yourselves, in honour of the Sacred Heart, that you will endeavour to keep this rule of perfection. Take that rule as your rule of life.

Next, you will need constitutions, that is to say, explanations, or amplifications of the rule reduced to detail. I will give you two chapters. The first chapter is the Twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost. Meditate upon them one by one, and try to transcribe them into your own lives. And the other chapter is the Eight Beatitudes. Endeavour to attain them: ' Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the meek; blessed are they that mourn; blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the clean in heart; blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are ye when men shall persecute you for justice' sake.' There you will find the surest rule of conformity to the Sacred Heart of our Lord; and to those who keep it there will be p three chief results. The first is, you will be humble; the second is, you will be charitable; and the third is, you will love the Cross. In all that crucifies your will and crosses your heart's desire; in all that against which other men chafe and fret, and over which they lose their self-control, you, when it befalls you, will say to yourselves, t This is the discipline of perfection; this is the sign that the Spirit of the Lord is transforming me into the image into which I desire to be changed. I will gladly live and die under this cross, if only I can be made like to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.'

Now I have touched on these three kinds of conversion most imperfectly, as I am well aware; but you will see that in all these three — the innocent, the penitent, and the Saints — the Sacred Heart is the pattern, that the process of transformation is continuous, and that the power whereby that transformation is effected is our co-operation with the Holy Ghost working in us.

As I said before, we are not Saints. No; but we are, I hope, in the way to the kingdom of Saints, and to the throne of the great King of Saints; and as the first rays of the daybreak are the same in kind as the splendour of the noonday sun, I hope our faint beginnings will one day be made perfect, either here or in Purgatory. But do not imagine that the work is done yet. I do not think that anybody is likely to fall into so great an error. All our conformity to the Sacred Heart is the work of God in us; and He perfects it in measure and degree as He sees to be for our good. He humbles us by making us wait. We desire to be sanctified with great speed, that we may be delivered from the bondage of our temptations. We pray to be Saints out of love to ourselves; and if we were made Saints to-day, we might fall to-morrow, as the angels did, by self-contemplation. No; God will make us perfect as He sees fit; every holy thought is from Him, every good desire, every beginning of better things. We should never turn towards Him by a hair's-breadth if He did not first give the attraction and the impulse. His grace prevents us in everything. As the good shepherd goes out after the lost sheep, and the lost sheep would never find its way home if the good shepherd did not first go out to seek it, so the Holy Spirit of God searches for us, and begins to turn us to Himself; and having begun that work in us, He carries it on and gives His grace in measure and in season, according to the needs and dangers of every soul. In Baptism we received a sacramental grace to make us children of God, and to enable us to fulfil all the duties of a child of God; and there is no duty, no obligation upon a child of God that a baptised soul, in its baptismal grace, has not the power and strength to fulfil. In our Confirmation we received the grace to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ — a measured grace proportioned and sufficient for every conflict. In our Communions we receive a grace straight from the Sacred Heart, to transform us into its likeness. If the many Communions that we have made from the day of our First Communion had been worthily made, we should now be disciples of the Sacred Heart indeed. You have been for ten, twenty, forty years in the practice of Communion, and I know not how often — and one Communion has in it grace enough to make us Saints — and what are you after all? We are straitened not in Him but in ourselves. In every Communion we receive grace enough to conform us to the Sacred Heart; and if we fail in conformity to His perfection, it is because we on our side have hearts narrow and cold. Nevertheless He bears with us in patience, and holds us fast with His love. What He begins, if we do not destroy it, He will perfect through our whole life. This process of transformation is His own, supernatural and divine — the operation of the uncreated Spirit of God. He it is who is working now in every one of you; and therefore ' with fear and tremhling work out your salvation,' for this divine reason, that it is 'God that worketh in you to will and to accomplish.'19 What is good in you is from Him. But it is not only His work — it must be yours too. Throughout the whole process of your salvation, with the exception of the first grace of all, your will must be united with His — you must work together with Him. We have the power at any moment to cast ourselves into eternal death; we have the power at any moment to commit spiritual self-murder; we may abuse our freedom and commit mortal sin at any time. God will indeed by His grace draw and resist and warn us; but He will not overbear our free will. He created that free will to His own image, and He respects the work of His own hands. He will not deface His own image in us. But we may also co-operate with Him in every gift of His grace, because He never commands anything that is impossible. Therefore whosoever will use faithfully the grace that he has received shall receive greater grace; and whosoever asks for more shall surely receive it.

May God in His mercy perfect that work in you. You know the restless activity of your intellect. Is it conformed to the intelligence of Jesus by the

19 Philip, ii. 13.

knowledge of the perfect truth which He has revealed? Are you illuminated with the faith which He has declared for our salvation? Or are you seeking for it? Or are you doing what tens of thousands are doing now, with a reckless scepticism explaining it away, and, as it were, filing asunder the links of truth which God has laid open to the reason of man to he known and believed upon His divine authority? Next, you are conscious of the turbulence of your heart. Is it yet detached from the world? Is it united in love with our Divine Kedeemer? And you know the instability and the impetuosity of your will. Is your will submissive to His will? Are you docile to His divine inspirations? Are you ready to obey His divine voice, to believe what He teaches, to do what He commands?

I have said that we are not yet Saints. But we are all called to be Saints — if not here, at least hereafter. And there is one thing we are all called to be, from which no man can release himself. The obligation is universal upon every man to be conformed to the example of Jesus Christ, and the example of Jesus Christ is not the example of His outward life alone. We are not called to be whited walls; we are called also to the inward perfection of His Sacred Heart. He Himself has said it, and His words shall be my last: ' Take up My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly of heart.' Answer to Him and say, ' Lord, make my heart to be like Thy Heart.' vm.