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I.2. Christ, the Only Model of All Perfection

Summary. — Fruitiulness and different aspects of the mystery of Christ. — I. Necessity of knowing God in order to be united to Him; God reveals Himself to us in His Son Jesus: “who sees Him sees His Father ”. — I]. Christ our Model © in His Person: perfect God; perfect man; grace, the iundamental sign of similitude with Jesus, considered in His state of Son of God. — [. Christ our Model in His works . . and virtues. — 1V. Our imitation of Christ is realised by grace; and secondly by the essential disposition of referring everything to the glory of His Father. Christianus alter Christus. tians of his time, it is striking te see with what in- sistency he speaks of the mystery of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He constantly returns to this subject which has taken such possession of him that Christ is his very life: Mihi vivere Christus est*. He spends himself, without counting the cost, for Christ and His members: Ego autem hbentissime impendam, et superimpendar ipse pro animabus vestris *.

Chosen and instructed by Jesus Himself to be the herald of His mystery throughout the world*, he has penetrated so deeply into its depths and glories, that his one desire is to unveil it and make the adorable Person of Christ known and loved. He writes to the Colossians that he is filled with joy in the midst of his tribulations in the thought that it has been given to him to announce ” the mystery which hath been hidden from ages and generations but now is manifested to His saints, to whom God would make known the riches of the glory of this mystery... which is Christ *”.

WA) we read the Epistles of St. Paul to the Chris-1

See how when he is in prison he is told that others besides himself are preaching Christ ; some are doing this out of a spirit of contention in opposition to him; others with good intentions. Does he feel trouble or jealousy ? Quite the contrary. Provided Christ is preached, what does it matter to him? ”So that by all means, whether by occasion, or by truth, Christ be preached, in this also I rejoice, yea and will rejoice”: Et in hoc gaudeo, sed et gaudebo’. Thus he refers all his knowledge, all his preaching, all his love, all his life to Jesus Christ : Non enim judicavi me scire aliquid inter vos msi Jesum Christum?. In the labours and struggles of his apostolate, one of his joys is to think that he is ” in labour ” — it is his own expression — to form Christ in souls *.

The Christians of the first ages understood the doctrine the great apostle set forth to them. They understood that God has given His only Son Christ Jesus that He may be for us ” our wisdom, justice, sanctification and redemption *” ; they understood the divine plan: namely, that God has given to Christ the fulness of grace that we may find all in Him. They lived by this doctrine, Christus... vestra vita ®, and that is why their spiritual life was at once so simple and bore so much fruit.

Now let us remind ourselves that, in these our days, the Heart of God is not less loving nor His arm less powerful. God is ready to shed His graces upon us, I do not say as extraordinary in their character, but as abundant and as useful as those He shed upon the first Christians. He does not love us less than He loved them. All the means of sanctification that they had we too possess; we have besides _ to encourage us the example of the saints who have followed

Christ. But we are too often like Naaman the leper who came to consult the prophet and beg his cure; he was on the point of not obtaining it because he found the remedy too simple °. t. Phil..1, 15; — 2. I Cor. 11, 2. — 3. Gal. rv, 19. — 4. I Cor. 7, 30. — 5. Col. m, 4. — 6. IV Reg: v, 1 sq. Our Lord Himself makes allusion to this fact. (Cf. Luc. 1v, 27.) Naaman, the general of the Syrian army, was stricken with leprosy. Having heard of the wonders the prophet Eliseuus had worked in Samaria, he went to implore his cure. ” Go, and wash seven times in the Jordan,” was the message Eliseus sent to him, "and thou shalt be clean." This reply angered Naaman. ” I thought

That is the case with some of those who undertake the spiritual life; people are to be met with who are so attached to their own way of seeing things that they are scandalized at the simplicity of the divine plan. And this scandal is not without harm. These souls that have not understood the mystery of Christ lose themselves in a multiplicity of details and often weary themselves in a joyless labour. Why is that ? Because all that our human ingenuity is able to create for our inner life serves for nothing if we do not base our edifice upon Christ : Fundamentum aliud NEMO potest ponere praeter id quod positum est, quod est Christus Jesus 1,

This explains the change that sometimes takes place in certain souls. During years, their lives have been as it were cramped,they have been often depressed,hardly ever contented, for ever finding new difficulties in the spiritual life. Then one day God gives them the grace of understanding that Christ is our All, that He is the Alpha and Omega?, that out of Him we have nothing, that in Him we have everything, for everything is summed up in Him. From that moment all is, as it were, changed for these souls; their difficulties vanish like the shades of night before the rising sun. As soon as Our Lord, the true Sun of our lives, Sol justitiae *, fully illumines these souls, they unfold, mount upwards and bear much fruit of holiness.

Doubtless, trials are not absent from the lives of such souls; they are often the very condition of inward progress ; collaboration with Divine grace will also remain attentive and generous, but all that narrows the soul and leads to discouragement disappears. Such souls live in the light; they dilate in it. Viam mandatorum tuorum cucurri cum he would have come out to me, ” he said to his servants, " and standing would have invoked the name of the Lord his God, and touched with his hand the place of the leprosy, and healed me. Are not the Abana, and the Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel that I may wash in them and be made clean?” And full of disappointment and indignation he was about to return to his own country. But his servants came to him and said: " Father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, surely thou shouldst have done it; how much rather what he now hath said to thee?” Naaman admits this sensible suggestion, goes and plunges himself seven times in Jordan and, according to the word of the man of God, he is cured of his leprosy. 1. I Cor. mt, 11. — 2. Apoc, Xx, 13. — 3- Malach. Iv, 2. dilatasti cor meum*; their life becomes simplified. They understand the poverty of the means they had themselves created and so often renewed, hoping by them to prop up their own spiritual edifice. They grasp the truth of these words: Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam”. Unless Thou, O Lord, dost build Thyself a dwelling in us, we shall never be able to form a habitation worthy of Thee! It is in Christ, and no longer in self, that these souls seek the source of their holiness. They know this holiness is supernatural in its principle, its nature and its end; and that the treasures of sanctification are only to be found gathered up in Jesus, so that we may share in them: they understand that they are only rich with the riches of Christ.

These riches, according to the word of St. Paul, are unsearchable: Investigabiles divitiae*. We can never exhaust them and all we can say of them will always remain far below the praises of which they are worthy.

There are however three aspects of the mystery of Christ, which we must contemplate when we speak of Our Lord as the source of our sanctification. We borrow the idea from the doctrine of St. Thomas, the prince of theologians, in what he has written of the sanctifying causality of Christ ¢.

Christ is at once the exemplary cause, the meritorious cause and the efficient cause of all our sanctification. Christ is the sole Model of our perfection — the Author of our redemption and the infinite Treasury of grace — and the efficient cause of our sanctification.

These three points sum up perfectly what we have to say of Christ Himself as the life of our souls. Grace is the principle of that supernatural life of children of God that forms the foundation and substance of all holiness. Now this grace is found in its fulness in Christ, and all the works we accomplish through grace have their model in Jesus ; — next, Christ has merited this grace for us by the satisfactions of His life, passion and death; — lastly, Christ » Himself produces this grace in us by the contact we have with Him through faith.2

But these truths contain so much that we must contemplate each one separately. In this conference, we will consider Our Lord as our Divine Model in all things, as the exemplar towards which we must tend. The first thing to be considered is the end we must attain. Once this end is clearly understood, the application of the means proper to its realisation will follow quite naturally. i

We have seen that holiness for us is only a participation in the Divine holiness. We are holy if we are children of God and if we live as true children of the Heavenly Father, worthy of our supernatural adoption. St. Paul says: ” Be ye therefore followers of God as most dear children:” Estote imitatores Dei sicut filti carissimi. Jesus Himself tells us: Estote perfecti, "Be you therefore perfect”, — and it is to all His disciples He speaks, — not with any kind of perfection, but sicut Pater vester coelestis perfectus est *, ” as also your heavenly Father is perfect”. And whv? Because ” noblesse oblige”. God has adopted us as His children, and children ought to resemble their father in their lives.

But in order to imitate God, we must know Him. And how are we to know God? He “inhabiteth light inaccessible”, says St. Paul. Lucem inhabitat inaccessibilem . ”No man”, says St. John, ” hath seen God at any time”, Deum nemo vidit unquam. How then can we reproduce and imitate the perfections of One Whom we do not see ?

St. Paul gives us the answer to this question. J]luxit nobis in facie Christi Jesu®. God has revealed Himself to us by His Son and in His Son Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus is ” the brightness of His glory®”, ” the image of the invisible God’?”, perfectly like to His Father, capable of revealing Him to men, for He knows Him as He is known : ” No one knoweth the Father”, Jesus says, ” but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Father to reveal Him ®. ” Christ Jesus Who is always Jn sinu Patris, tells us: ” I know

  1. Ephes. v, 1. — 2. Matth. v, 48. — 3. I Tim. vi, 16. — 4. I Joan.

Iv, 12. — 5. Ii Cor. 1v, 6. — 6. Hebr. 1,3. — 7. Col. 1, 15.— 8. Matth. Pt, 27.

My Father”, Ego agnosco Patrem*; and He knows Him in order to reveal Him to us. Jpse enarravit®. Christ is the revelation of the Father.

And how does the Son reveal the Father ? By becoming incarnate. The Word, the Son, is incarnate, is made man, and in Him, by Him, we know God. Christ is God brought within our reach under a human expression. It is the Divine perfection revealed to us under earthly forms; it is holiness itself appearing sensibly before our eyes during thirty-three years so as to be rendered tangible and imitable *. We can never think too much about this : Christ is God made man, living among men so as to teach them by His words and above all by His life how men ought to live in order to imitate God and please Him. We have then first. of all, if we wish to live as children of God, only to open our eyes with faith and love and contemplate God in Jesus.

There is in the Gospel a very simple and yet magnificent episode. You know it, but here is the place to recall it. It was the eve of the passion of Jesus. Our Lord had been speaking, as He alone could speak, of His Father to His disciples, and these, carried out of themselves, desired to see and know the Father. The apostle Philip exclaims : O Master, show us the Father and we ask for nothing more. Ostende nobis Patrem et sufficit nobis*. And Christ Jesus answers : ” Have I been so long a time with you, and have you not known Me? Philip, he that seeth Me, seeth the Father also”. Qui videt me, videt et Patrem. Yes, Christ is the revelation of God, His Father. As God, He makes only one with Him, and he who contemplates Him, sees the revelation of God.

When you contemplate Christ abasing Himself in the poverty of the crib, recall this word : Qui videt me, videt et Patrem. When you see the Youth of Nazareth, full of obedience, toiling in the humble workshop until the age of thirty, say to yourself ” He that seeth Him, seeth His Father ”, to contemplate Him is to contemplate God. When you see Christ passing through the villages of Galilee, everywhere doing good, healing the sick, announcing the good tidings; when you see the Crucified, dying for love of men, the object of the derision of His executors, it is He Who

  1. Joan. x, 15. — 2. Ibid. 31, 18. — 3. To be a model and to be says to you: Qui videt me, videt et Patrem. ” He that seeth Me, seeth the Father also. ”3

These are so many manifestations of God, so many manifestations of the Divine perfections. The perfections of God are in themselves as incomprehensible as the Divine nature. Which of us for example could comprehend what Divine love is’ It is an abyss surpassing all we could imagine. But when we see Christ, Who, as God, is ” one” with His Father: Ego et Pater unum sumus*, Who has in Him the same Divine life as the Father ?, instruct men, die upon a cross, give His life for love of us ; when we see Him institute the Eucharist, we then understand the greatness of God’s love.

So is it with each of God’s attributes, with each of His perfections; Christ reveals them to us; and according to the measure we advance in His love, He makes us enter more deeply into His mystery : Qui autem diligit me, diligetur a Paire... ego diligam eum et manifestabo ei meipsum®. Which comes to saying : — If anyone loves Me, receives Me in My humanity, he shall be loved of My Father, and I also will love him and will manifest Myself to him in My divinity. I will disclose its secrets to him.

” The Life was manifested”, writes St. John*, “and we have seen and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath appeared to us”, in Christ Jesus. So that to know and imitate God, - we have only to know and imitate His Son Jesus, Who is the expression at once human and divine of the infinite perfections of His Father : Qui videt me, videt et Patrem.

II

But how and in what is Christ, the Incarnate Word, our Model, our exemplar ?

Christ.is doubly our Model: in His Person and in His works; in His siate of Son of God, and in His human activity, for He is at the same time Son of God and Son of man, perfect God and perfect man.

Christ is God, perfect God, Perfectus Deus.

  1. Joan. x, 30. — 2. Sicut Pater habet vitam in semetipso manentem, sic et dedit Filio habere vitam in semetipso. Joan. v, 26. — 3. Joan. xiv, Bis -— 25 (Gant, 2.

Christ, the iife of the soul. 3

Let us go in spirit to Judea, at the time of Christ. He has already fulfilled one part of His mission, journeying through Palestine, teaching and accomplishing the ” works of God’?”. Behold Him after a day of apostolic labour, gone apart from the multitude, surrounded only by His disciples. He asks them : ” Who do men say that the Son of man is??” The disciples echo all that is noised abroad concerning Him.

’ Some John the Baptist, and others Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” ” But whom do you say that Iam?” Jesus asks. Then Peter answering says to Him: ” Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Our Lord, confirming the testimony of His apostle, responds : ” Blessed art thou... because flesh and blood (natural intuition) hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in heaven *”.

Christ is then the Son of God, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, as the Credo expresses it. Christ, says St. Paul, ’ thought it not robbery” to call Himself equal with the Father: Non rapinam arbitratus est esse se aequalem Deo*.

Thrice, moreover, the voice of the Eternal Father made itself heard to the world, and each time it was to glorify Christ by proclaiming Him to be His Son, the Son in Whom He is well pleased : Hic est Filius meus dilectus in quo mihi bene complacui, ipsum audite®. Let us prostrate ourselves like the disciples who heard this voice of the Father on Thabor, and with Peter, inspired from on high, let us say to Jesus: Yes, Thou art the Christ, the Incarnate Word, true God, equal to Thy Father, perfect God, possessing all the Divine attributes ; Thou art, O Jesus, with Thy Father and the Holy Ghost, the Almighty; Thou art the Eternal. Thou art infinite Love. I believe in Thee, and I adore Thee ” my Lord and my God” !

Son of God, Christ is also Son of man, perfect Man: Perfectus homo.

The Son of God is made flesh; He remains what He is — perfect God. But He unites Himself to a human nature, complete like ours, integral in its essence, with all its native properties. Like all of us Christ is ” made of a woman *®”.4

He belongs authentically to our race. Often in the Gospel, He calls Himself “the Son of man” ; eyes of flesh have seen Him, human hands have touched Him. Even on the morrow of His glorious resurrection, He makes the incredulous Apostles verify the reality of His human nature: Palpate et videte quia spiritus carnem et ossa non habet sicut me videtis habere ?.

Like each of us, He has a soul, created directly by God; a body formed of the substance of a woman, an intelligence to know, a will to love and choose; all the faculties that we have, memory and imagination. He has passions in the philosophical, elevated, and noble sense of the word, in the sense excluding all disorder and all weakness; for in Him these passions are perfectly subject to reason and only moved by an act of His will*. His human nature is then similar in everything to that of His brethren: Debuit per omnia fratribus similari, says St. Paul‘, excepting sin : Absque peccato®. Jesus has not known sin, nor that which is the source and consequence of sin — ignorance, error, sickness, all things unworthy of His wisdom, His dignity and His divinity.

But our Divine Saviour willed, during His mortal life, to bear our infirmities, all those infirmities compatible with His sanctity. The Gospel clearly shows us this. There is nothing in the nature of man that Jesus has not sanctified ; our labours, our sufferings, our tears. He has made all these His own. See Him at Nazareth: during thirty years He spent His life in the obscure toil of an artizan, inasmuch that when ‘He began to preach, His compatriots were astonished, for up to this time they had only known Him as the son of the carpenter: Unde huic omnia ista ? Nonne hic est fabri filius® ?

Like us our Lord has felt hunger ; after having fasted in the desert ” He was hungry”: Postea esuriit’. He has suffered thirst: did He not ask the Samaritan woman to give Him to drink, Da mihi bibere® ? and upon the cross did He not cry: ”I thirst”. Sitio ? Like us He has felt fatigue; He was often fatigued by His long journeyings throughout

  1. I Joan. 1, 1. — 2. Luc. xxiv, 39. — 3. Theology names these propassions, in order to denote by this special term their character of5

Palestine. When at Jacob’s well, He asked for water to quench His thirst. St. John tells us that He was wearied; it was the hour of noon, and after having walked far and being wearied, He sat down on the side of the well : Fatigatus ex itinere, sedebat sic supra fontem. Hora erat quast sexta?. Thus then, in the words of St. Augustine in the wonderful commentary he has given us on this beautiful evangelical scene, ” He Who is the very Strength of God is overwhelmed with lassitude”: Fatigatur Virtus Det?. — Slumber has closed His eyelids; He slept in the boat when the tempest arose: [pse vero dormiebat*. He really slept, so the apostles fearing to be engulfed by the angry waves, had to awaken Him. He wept over Jerusalem, His own city which He loved despite its ingratitude; the thought of the disasters that after His death, were to fall upon it drew tears from His eyes: ”If thou hadst also known... the things that are to thy peace”! Flevit super illam*. He wept at the death of Lazarus, as we weep over those we cherish, so that the Jews who witnessed this sight, said to one another :” Behold how He loved Him®!” Christ shed tears because His Heart was touched; He wept for him who was His friend; the tears sprang from the depth of His Heart. Several times too it is said of Him in the Gospel that His Heart was touched with compassion ®. Still more than this, He has felt sadness, heaviness and fear: Coepit pavere et taedere, et maestus esse’; in His agony in the Garden of Olives, His soul is overwhelmed with sorrow: Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem &; anguish penetrated His soul to the point of wringing from it “a strong cry and tears®’”. All the mockeries, all the outrages with which He was saturated in His Passion, the being buffeted and spit upon, all these insults, far from leaving Him insensible, caused Him intense suffering. His nature being more perfect, His sensibility was the greater and more delicate. He was plunged in an abyss of suffering. Lastly, after having shown Himself to be truly man, like to us in all things, He willed to endure death like all the sons of Adam: Et inclinato capite tradidit Sspiritum 3.6

It is then both as Son of God and Son of man, that Our Lord is our Model, — but He is so first of all as Son of God. This state of Son of God is properly speaking what is essential and fundamental in Christ, and it is in this we must first of all resemble Him.

And how can we do so ?”

The Divine Sonship of Christ is the type of our supernatural sonship; His condition, His ” being” the Son of God is the exemplar of the state in which we must be established by sanctifying grace. Christ is the Son of God by nature and by right, in virtue of the union of the Eternal Word with human nature”; we are so by adoption and grace, but we are so really and truly. Christ has, moreover, sanctifying grace ; He possesses the fulness of it ; from this fulness it flows into us more or less abundantly, but, in its substance, it is the same grace that both fills the created soul of Jesus and deifies us. St. Thomas says that our divine filiation is a resemblance of the eternal filiation: Quaedam similitudo filtationis aeternae >.

Such is the primordial and supereminent manner in which Christ is first of all our example : in the Incarnation He is constituted, by right, the Son of God ; we should become so by being partakers of the grace derived from Him which, deifying the substance of our souls, constitutes us in the state of children of God. That is the first and essential characteristic of the likeness we must have to Christ Jesus; it is the condition of all our supernatural activity. If first and above all we do not possess in us this sanctifying grace which is the fundamental sign of similitude with Jesus, the Eternal Father will not recognize us for His own; and all we do in our lives without this grace is of no merit to make us partakers of the everlasting inheritance: we shall only be co-heirs with Christ if we are His brethren by grace 4.

  1. Joan. x1x, 30. — 2. This is called in theology the ” grace of union, “ in virtue of which a human nature was chosen to be united in an ineffable manner to the Divine Person, the Word, and thus to be the humanity of a God. This grace is unique and only to be found in Jesus Christ. — 3. I, q. xx, a. 3. — 4. O si cognovisses Dei gratiam per _ Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum ipsamque ejus Incarnationem, qua hominis animam corpusque suscepit, summum esse exemplum gratiae videre potuisses! St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Xi 293

Christ is also our Model in His works.

We have seen how truly He was man, we must now see how truly He acted as man.

In this again, Our Lord is for us a perfect, and yet an accessible model of all holiness. In an incomparable degree, He practised all the virtues that can adorn human nature, all those at least that were compatible with His Divine nature.

You know that with sanctifying grace, there was given to the Soul of Christ the magnificent array of virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit. These virtues fowed from grace as from a fountain-head, they were expressed in all their perfection in the course of the life of Jesus.

Evidently He had not faith. This theological virtue only exists in a soul not yet enjoying the vision of God. The Soul of Christ contemplated God face to face; It could not exercise faith in regard to this God Whom it saw; but it had that submission of the will necessary to the perfection of faith, that reverence, that adoration of God, the first and infallible Truth. This disposition was in the highest degree in the Soul of Christ.

Neither had Jesus, properly speaking, the virtue of hope: it is no longer possible to hope for what is already possessed. The theological virtue of hope makes us desire the possession of God, whilst giving us the confidence of receiving the graces necessary to arrive at this possession. Through its union with the Word, the Soul of Christ was filled with the Divinity ; It could not then have hope; this virtue only existed in Christ in the sense that He could desire, and indeed did desire, the glorification of His holy Humanity, the accidental glory that was to come to Him after His Resurrection : Clarifica me, Pater*. He possessed in Himself, from the moment of His Incarnation, the source and root of this glory; He allowed it to appear for an instant at His Transfiguration on Thabor, but His mission on earth among men obliged Him to veil its splendour until His death. There were also certain graces Christ asked from His Father ; for example, at the resurrection of Lazarus we hear Him addressing these words to His Father with the most absolute confidence : Pater ego sciebam quia semper me anudis .7

As to charity, He practised it to a supreme degree. The Heart of Christ is an immense furnace of love. The great love of Christ is that which He bears towards His Father. All His life can be summed op in these words: ” I do always the things that please My Father”.

Let us meditate these words in our prayer ; only thus shall we be able to penetrate a little into their secret. This unspeakable love, this tending of the Soul of Christ towards His Father is the necessary consequence of His hypostatic union. The Son is altogether Ad Patrem, as the theologians say: this is, if I may thus express it, His essence: the holy Humanity is carried along by this divine current ; having become, by the Incarnation, the Humanity of the Son of God, it therefore belongs entirely to the Father. The fundamental disposition, the primary and habitual sentiment of the Soul of Christ is necessarily this: I live for My Father, ” I love My Father?”. It is because He loves His Father that Jesus gives Himself up to all He wills; His first act on coming into the world is an act of love towards Him: “Behold I come to do Thy will ?”. It may be said that all His existence here below was only to be the continued expression of this initial act....During His life, He loves to repeat that His meat is to do the will of His Father‘; therefore He always did the things that pleased Him: Quae placita sunt et facio semper®. All that His Father had decreed for Him, He fulfilled to the least detail*®. Lastly, it was out of love for, His Father that He was made obedient to the death of the cross: Ut cognoscat mundus quia diligo Patrem, sic facio*. Never let us forget this: — if Christ was able to say ” Greater love than this no man hath than to lay down his life for his friends*”, if it is of faith that He died for us and for our salvation, Propter nos et propter nostram salutem, it remains true that it was before all, out of love for His Father, that Our Lord laid down His life. In loving us, it is His Father He loves; He sees us, He finds us in His Father: Ego pro eis rogo... quia tui sunt®. These are His own words: “I pray for them... because they are Thine”. Yes, Christ loves us, because we are the children of His Father, because we belong to His Father. He loves us with an ineffable love, surpassing all we can imagine, to such a point that each of us can say with St. Paul: Dilexit me et tradidit semetipsum pro me’, “ Who loved me, and delivered Himself for me.”8

Our Lord possessed too all the other virtues. Meekness and humility: — ” Learn of Me because I] am meek and humble of Heart?”; He, the Saviour, before Whom every knee bows in heaven and on earth, kneels before His disciples to wash their feet. Obedience: — He is subject to His Mother and St. Joseph; one word of the Gospel sums up His hidden life at Nazareth: Et erat subditus ilis*. He obeys the Mosaic law; He goes assiduously to the assemblies ~ in the Temple; He submits Himself to the powers lawfully established, declaring it necessary to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s *”; He Himself pays the tribute money... Patience : — how many testimonies has He not given of this especially during His bitter Passion! His infinite mercy towards sinners: — with what kindness He welcomes the Samaritan woman and Mary Magdalen! As the Good Shepherd, He hastens to seek the straying sheep and bring it back to the fold. He is full of ardent zeal for the glory and interests of His Father; it is because of this zeal He drives out the sellers in the Temple and flings anathemas at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. His prayer is continual: Erai pernoctans in oratione Dei®. What shall we say of those sublime communications between the Incarnate Word and His Father, of the spirit of religion and adoration with which Our Lord was animated’

In Him then every virtue blossomed in its season for the Glory of God and for our salvation.

You know that the ancient patriarchs, before leaving this world, used to give to their eldest son a solemn blessing that was like the pledge of heavenly prosperity for his descendants. Now we read in the book of Genesis, that the patriarch Isaac, before giving this solemn biessing to his son Jacob, kissed him, and smelling the perfume of his garments cried out in joy: ” Behold the smell of my son is as the smell of a plentiful field, which the Lord hath blessed”, Ecce odor filii mei sicut odor agri pleni, cui benedixit Dominus. And immediately, carried out of himself, he called down on his son’s head the richest blessings from on high: ” God give thee the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, abundance of corn and wine. And let peoples serve thee, and tribes worship thee; be thou lord of thy brethren... Cursed be he that curseth thee; and let him that blesseth thee be filled with blessings? !”9

This scene is an image of the delight the Father has in contemplating the humanity of His Son Jesus, and of the spiritual blessings He sheds on those united to Him. Like a field enamelled with flowers, the soul of Christ is decked with every virtue that can embellish human nature. God is infinite. As such, His exigencies are infinite; and yet the least action of Jesus was the object of His Father’s complacency. When Christ Jesus worked in the humble workshop at Nazareth, when He conversed with men or sat at meat with His disciples, — things apparently so simple — His Father looked upon Him and said: ” This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased:” Hic est Filius meus dilectus in quo mihi complacui®. And He adds: ” Hear ye Him”, /psum audite, that is to say, contemplate Him in order to imitate Him : He is your Model, follow Him: He is the Way and no one cometh to Me but by Him, no one has a share in My blessings but in Him 3, for I have given Him the fulness of them, as I have given Him the nations of the earth for His inheritance*. Why does the heavenly Father take this infinite delight in Jesus ? Because Christ accomplished everything perfectly, and His actions were the expression of the most sublime virtues; but especially because all the actions of Christ, whilst being in themselves human actions, were divine in their principle.

O Christ Jesus, full of grace and Model of every virtue, beloved Son in Whom the Father is well pleased, be the one object of my contemplation and love. May I regard all passing things ” as dung*®” so as to place my joy in Thee alone; may I seek to imitate Thee so as to be, by Thee and with Thee, pleasing to Thy Father in all things !

  1. Gen. xxvii, 27. — 2. Matth. m, 17. — 3. Pater Domini nostri Jesu10

IV

When we read the Gospel of St. John, we notice the insistency with which Jesus repeats: ” My doctrine is not Mine?”; ” The Son cannot do anything of Himself?” ; ” T cannot of Myself do anything?” ; ”I do nothing of Myself *’””.

Is this to say that Christ had neither human intelligence, nor will nor activity ? In no wise; it would be heresy to think so ; but the humanity of Jesus, being hypostatically united > to the Word, there was not in Christ a human Person to which His faculties could be attached, there was in Him only one Person, that of the Word doing all in union with the Father; all was in the most absolute dependance on the Divinity, all His activity emanated from the one Person that was in Him, that of the Word. This activity although immediately exercised by the human nature, was divine in its root, in its principle; and therefore the Father received from it infinite glory and found in it utmost delight.

Can we imitate this? Yes, since by sanctifying grace, we share in the divine filiation of Jesus ; by this, our activity is enhanced and as it were made divine in its principle. It goes without saying that in the order of being, we always keep our own personality; we always remain, by nature purely human creatures; our union with God by grace, however close and intimate it may be, remains an accidental not a substantial union. But it is so much the greater in as far as the autonomy of our personality, in the order of activity, is effaced before the Divinity.

If we wish nothing to interpose between us and God, nothing to hinder our union with Him, if we wish Divine blessings to flow in upon our souls, we must not only renounce sin and imperfection, but moreover despoil ourselves of our personality in so far as it constitutes an obstacle to perfect union with God. It constitutes an obstacle to perfect union when our judgment, our self-will, our self-love, our susceptibilities, make us think and act otherwise than according to the desires of our Heavenly Father. Believe me, our faults of frailty, our miseries, our human limitations, hinder our union with Ged infinitely less than

  1. Joan. vii, 16. — 2. Joan. v, 19. — 3. Ibid. v, 30. — 4. Ibid. vin, that habitual attitude of the soul which, so to speak, wills to keep in everything the proprietorship of its activity. We must therefore not annihilate our personality — which is neither possible nor yet willed by God — but bring it to an entire capitulation before God. We must lay it down at God’s feet and ask Him to be by His Spirit — as He is for the humanity of Christ — the supreme mover of all our thoughts, of all our feelings, of all our words, of all our actions, of all our life.11

When a soul arrives at the state of having stripped itself of all sin, and all attachment to self and the creature; of having destroyed in itself, as far as possible, all purely natural and human springs of action in order to surrender itself completely to the Divine action; of living in absolute dependance on God, on His will, His commandments, on the spirit of the Gospel; of referring everything to the Heavenly Father, then it can truly say : Dominus regit me? ; "The Lord ruleth me ; everything in me comes from Him, I am in His hands”. This soul has attained to the perfect imitation of Christ to the point that its life is the very reproduction of that of Christ : Vivo ego, Jam NON EGO, vivit vero in me Christus*. God directs it; it is in everything, moved under divine impulsion: that is sanctity, the most perfect imitation of Christ in His being, in His state of Son of God, as in His primordial disposition of belonging altogether to His Father, in His person and in His activity.

Do not think it is presumption on our part to wish to attain so sublime an ideal: no, it is God’s own desire; it is His eternal design for us: Praedestinavit nos conformes frert imaginis Filii sui*. The more we are conformed to His Son, the more the Father loves us because we are more closely united to Him®. When He sees a soul fully transformed in His Son, He surrounds it with His special protection, the most tender cares of His providence; He showers His blessings upon it, He places no limit to the communication of His graces: that is the secret of God’s extraordinary gifts.12

Let us thank our Father in Heaven for having given us His Son, Christ Jesus, as our Model, so that we have only to look at Him to know what we have to do : [psum audite. Christ has told us: “I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also.” Exemptum dedi vobis ut quemadmodum ego feci vobis faciatis*. He has left us His example that we may walk in His footstep: Vobis relinquens exemplum, ut sequamim vestigia ejus®. He is the only way we must follow: Ego sum via*; he who follows Him does not walk in the darkness, but comes to the light of life. That is the Model faith reveals to us, a transcendant and yet an accessible Model : Inuspice et fac secundum exemplar *.

The soul of Our Lord contemplated at every moment the divine essence. With one and the same glance, His Soul saw the ideal conceived by God for humanity, and each of His actions was the expression of this ideal. Let us then lift up our eyes, let us love to know Christ Jesus more and more, to study His life in the Gospel, to follow His mysteries in the wonderful order established by the Church herself in her liturgical cycle from Advent to Pentecost; let us open the eyes of our faith and live in such a way as to reproduce in ourselves the features of this Exemplar, to conform our lives in accordance with His words and acts. This model is divine and visible and shows us God acting in the midst of us and sanctifying in His humanity all our actions, even the most ordinary; all our sentiments, even the most intimate; all our sufferings, even the deepest.

Let us contemplate this Model with faith. We are at times tempted to envy the contemporaries of Jesus, who were able to see Him, to follow Him and listen to Him. But faith renders Him also present to our souls with a presence not less efficacious for us. Christ has said Himself: Bratt qui non viderunt et crediderunt: ” Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed®”. This was to make us understand that it is not less advantageous for us to live in contact with Jesus by faith than to have seen Him in the flesh. He, Whom we see living and acting when we read the Gospel or when we celebrate His mysteries, is the very Son of God. We have said everything when we have said of Christ: ” Thou art the Son of the Living God”, and that is the fundamental aspect of the Divine Model of our souls. Let us contemplate Him, not with an abstract contemplation, exterior, theoretic and cold, but with a contemplation full of love, attentive to grasp, in order to reproduce them in our lives, every feature of this Model and above all that fundamental and primordial disposition of Christ, of living for His Father. All His life was resumed in this disposition; all the virtues of Christ are the effect of this orientation of His Soul towards the Father, and this orientation is itself only the fruit of that ineffable union by which, in Jesus, entire humanity is drawn into that Divine impulse which draws the Son towards His Father.13

It is this which properly constitutes the Christian: — first of all to share by sanctifying grace, in the Divine filiation of Christ : that is the imitation of Jesus in His state of Son of God; and next to reproduce by our virtues the characteristics of this unique archetype of perfection : that is the imitation of Jesus in His works. St. Paul points out this when he tells us we must form Christ in us’, put on Christ 2, and bear in us the image of Christ *.

Christianus, alter Christus: The Christian is another Christ”. That is the true definition of a Christian given by tradition, if not in the same words, at least equivalently. ” Another Christ”, because the Christian is first of all, by grace, a child of the heavenly Father and brother of Christ here below in order to be His co-heir above ; ” another Christ”, because all his activity, — thoughts, desires, actions — plunges its root in this grace, to be exercised according to the thoughts, desires, sentiments of Jesus, and in conformity with the actions of Jesus: Hoc enim sentite in vobis quod et in Christo Jesu *. t Gal. 1v, 19. — 2. Rom. xin, 14. —-3. I Cor. xv, 49. — 4. Philip.n, 5.

Footnotes

    1. Philip. 1, 21. — 2. I] Cor. xu, 15. — 3. Ephes. ml, 5-9. — 4. Col. I, 26-27.
    ↩
    1. Ps. CXVIII, 32. — 2. Ps. cxxvi, 1. — 3. Ephes. m, 7. — 4. III, Qi XXIV) A: 13 a 4g wOnexLVIN, a. 6's, g. La. Of ud Lyles ad aeala
    ↩

  3. imitable are the two characters which must be found in the exemplary cause. — 4. Joan. XIV, 5. ↩

    1. Joan. 1x, 4. — 2. Matth. xvi, 13-16. — 3. Ibid. 16. — 4. Philip. u, 6. 5. — Matth. xvi, 5; cf. 11, 47; Joan. xm, 28. — 6. Gal. rv, 4.
    ↩

  5. transcendance and purity. — 4. Hebr. ur, 17. — 5. Hebr. tv, 15. — 6. Matth. xi, 55-56. — 7. Matth. Iv, 2. — 8. Joan. Iv, 7. ↩

    1. Joan, 1v,6. — 2. Tract, in Joan. xv. —3. Matth. vin, 24. — 4. Luc. XIX, 41. — 5. Joan. x1, 36. — 6. Misericordia motus, Luc. vil, 13; Misereor super turbam, Marc. vu, 2; cf. Matth. xv, 32. — 7. Marc. xiv, supplicationesque ad eum gui posset illum saluum facere a morte cum 33; Matth. xxvi, 37. — 8. Ibid. 38. — 9. In diebus carnis suae, preces clamore valido et lacrymis offerens. Hebr. v, 7.
    ↩
    1. Joan. Xvu, 5.
    ↩
    1. Joan. x1, 42. — 2. Ibid. xiv, 31. — 3. Hebr. x, 7. — 4. Joan. 1v, 34. — 5. Ibid. vi, 29. — 6. Matth. v, 18. — 7. Joan. xiv, 31. — 8. Ibid. xv, 13. — 9. Ibid. xvu, 9.
    ↩
    1. Gal. 11, 20. —2. Matth. x1, 29. —3. Luc. 11, 51. — 4. Matth. xx1i, 21. — 5.Luc. vi, 12.
    ↩

  10. Christi benedixit nos in omni benedictione spirituali... in Christo. Ephes t, 3. — 4. Psi nm, $8. — §: Philip. mr, 8: ↩

    1. — 5. " Hypostatically " from a Greek word meaning: " by a personal union, ”
    ↩
    1. Omnis cogitatio nostra et intellectus et omnis sermo et omnis actus nostrum quidem denegationem spirat, Christi autem testimonium atque confessionem. Origen. Homil. 2 in 16 Matth. — 2. Ps. xxu, 1. =) 3. PS. i, 20. — 4. Rom. vin, 29. — 5. Si imitatorem te praebeas Christi, appropinquasti Christo, et per Christum Deo. S,. Ambros. In psalm, 118, seym. 22.
    ↩
    1. Joan. x1, 15. — 2. I Petr. , 21. — 3. Joan. xiv, 6. — 4. Exod. XXV, 40. — 5. Joan. xXx, 29.
    ↩

Chapter 4 of 21