I.4. Christ, the Efficient Cause of All Grace

Summary. — I. How during Christ’s earthly existence, His humanity as the instrument of the Word, was the source of grace and life. — IJ. How, since His Ascension, Christ exercises this efficiency. The offical means: the sacraments; they produce grace of themselves, but in virtue of Christ’s merits. — III. Universality of the sacraments : they extend to all our supernatural life; the boundless confidence we ought to have in these authentic sources. — IV. The power of sanctification that the humanity of Jesus has outside the sacraments, through the spiritual contact of faith. Capital importance of this truth. going to speak. Never tire of hearing Him spoken of, never weary of it. No subject ought to be dearer to us and none can be more useful: we have everything in Christ, and without Him neither salvation nor sanctification is possible. The more we study the Divine plan according to the Holy Scriptures, the more we see one great design stand out and dominate all things: This is that Christ Jesus, true God and true Man, is the centre of creation and redemption, that everything relates to Him, that through Him every grace is given to us and all glory rendered to His Father.

The contemplation of Our Lord is not only holy but it makes us holy: even only to think of Him, to look at Him with faith and love, sanctifies us. For certain souls, the life of Christ Jesus is one subject of meditation among many others; this is not enough. Christ is not one of the means of spiritual life ; He is all our spiritual life. The Father sees all in His Word, in His Christ ; He finds all in Him. Although infinite glory and praise are due to Him, He finds them in His Son, in the least actions of His Son. Why

I vy is still of the adorable Person of Our Lord we are should not Christ be equally our All, our Model, our Satisfaction, our Hope, our Substitute, our Light, our Strength, our Joy? This truth is so important that I want to insist upon it.

Spiritual life consists above all in contemplating Christ, so that we may reproduce in ourselves His state of Son of God and His virtues. Those souls that constantly keep their eyes fixed on Christ see, in His light, all that in them is opposed to the expansion of the divine life; they then seek in Jesus the strength to put away these obstacles so as to please Him; they ask Him to be the support of their weakness, to give, and ever to increase in them, that fundamental disposition — in which lies all holiness — of always seeking to do that which is pleasing to His Father.

These souls enter fully into the Divine plan. They advance rapidly and surely along the way of perfection and holiness. They have neither the temptation to be discouraged when they fall through frailty — they know too well that of themselves they can do nothing: Sine me nihil potestis facere *, — nor the temptation to take the least pride on their progress, because they are convinced that if their personal efforts are necessary so as to correspond to grace, it is, however, to Christ Who dwells, lives and acts in them, that they owe their perfection. If they bear much fruit, it is not only because they abide in Christ by grace and the fidelity of their love, but likewise because Christ abides in them : Qui manet in Me et ego in eo, hic fert fructum multum *.

Christ indeed is not only a Model such as the artist contemplates when he paints a portrait; neither can we compare the imitation of Jesus Christ to that superficial imitation attained by some when they copy the actions and gestures of a great man they admire; — an imitation that does not reach the soul. Christ is more than a Model, more than a High Priest Who has obtained for us the grace to imitate Him ; He Himself, by His Spirit, acts in the sanctuary of the soul to help us to imitate Him. Why is this ? Because, as I said in speaking of the Divine plan, our holiness is of an essentially supernatural order ; God is not content and never will be content, since He has resolved on making us His children, with a natural morality or religion;

1. Joan. xv, 5. — 2. Joan. xv, 5.

Christ, the life of the soul. 5

He wills us to act as children of a divine race. But it is through His Son, it is in His Son and by the grace His Son, Christ Jesus, has merited for us, that He gives us power to attain this holiness. All the holiness He has destined for each soul, God has placed in Christ, and it is of His fulness that we all must receive the graces which will make us holy. Christus factus est nobis sapientia a Deo, et justitia, et sanctificatio et redemptio*. If Christ possesses all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? and holiness, it is that we may share in them. He came that we might have divine life in us and might have it in abundance : Vemi ut vitam habeant et abundantius habeant*. By His passion and death, He re-opened the source of divine life to all, but never forget that this source is in Him and not outside Him and that it is from Him it flows into us: grace, the principle of supernatural life, only comes through Him. That is why St. John writes: ” He that hath the Son, hath life. He that hath not the Son, hath not life.” Qui habet Filium habet vitam, qui non habet Filium vitam non habet +. i

Let us contemplate Jesus during His earthly existence; we shall see how He is the efficient cause of all grace and the fountain of life. This contemplation is full of consolation, for it shows us how we may expect everything from Our Lord.

We see His holy humanity become the instrument which the divinity makes use of to shed around Him all grace and life.

Bodily life and health in the first place.

A leper comes to Jesus, asking to be cleansed; Christ puts forth His hand, touches him and says: ”I will: be thou made clean”, and immediately the leprosy departs®. Two blind men are brought to Him: Jesus touches their eyes, saying : ” According to your faith, be it done unto you”, and their eyes are opened to the light ®. Another day, they bring to Him one deaf and dumb, beseeching Christ to lay His hand upon him ; then Jesus, drawing him apart from the multitude, puts His finger into the man’s ears, touches his tongue with saliva, and looking up to heaven, sighs and says : ” Be thou opened”. Immediately this man hears, his tongue is loosed and be begins to speak distinctly *. Again see Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus: it is by His word that Christ calls back the dead to life.¹

In all these scenes we see the holy Humanity serve as an instrument for the Divinity. It is the Divine Person of the Word Who heals and raises from the dead, but to work these marvels the Word uses the human nature that is united to Him. Through His human nature, Christ speaks the words, and with His hands, touches the sick; life therefore proceeded from the Divinity and through the humanity, reached the bodies and souls of men?. We understand the words of the Gospel, telling us that ” the multitude sought to touch Him, for virtue went out from Him, and healed all”: Virtus de illo exibat *.

Christ acts in a similar manner in the supernatural domain of grace; it is by an action, a word or gesture of the human nature united to Him, that the Word forgives sins and justifies the sinner.

See Mary Magdalen coming in the midst of a feast to wash the feet of Jesus with her tears. Jesus says to her: ” Thy sins are forgiven thee : thy faith hath made thee safe, go in peace*”. It is His divinity that forgives sins, it alone can do so, but it is by a word that Jesus pronounces this forgiveness, His humanity becoming the instrument of grace.

Another scene in the Gospel is yet more explicit. One day a paralytic man lying upon a bed is brought to Jesus. ” Thy sins are forgiven thee”, says Jesus. But the Pharisees who hear these words and do not believe in Christ’s divinity, murmur :” Who is this who speaketh blasphemies ?” ” Who can forgive sins but God alone ?” And Our Lord wishing to show them that He is God, answers : ” Which is easier to say: Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say: Arise and walk ? But that you may know that the Son of man (note the expression: Son of man; Our Lord uses it designedly, instead of : Son of God) hath power on earth to forgive sins, He saith to the sick of the palsy : Arise,

1. Marc. vul, 32, 35- — 2. To employ the theological term, the humanity served as the source of life in being the instrument united to the take up thy bed, and go into thy house”. And immediately this man, rising up before the multitude, takes up the bed on which he had been carried, and returns to his own house glorifying God’.²

Thus Christ works miracles, forgives sins and distributes grace with sovereign liberty and power, because, being God, He is the fountain of all grace and all life, but He does this through His humanity; the humanity of Christ is ” vivifying ” on account of its union with the Divine Word ?.

This likewise is what takes place in the passion and death of Jesus. It is in His human nature that Jesus suffers, expiates and merits : His humanity becomes the instrument of the Word, and these sufferings of the holy humanity work out our salvation, are the cause of our redemption and restore life to us®. We were dead in sin, but God has given us life together with Christ, and for Christ’s sake, in forgiving our sins*. St. Thomas clearly tells us this ®. At that moment when, for love of His Father and for love of us, Christ delivers Himself up that He may give Divine life to all mankind, He asks His Father: ” Father, glorify Thy Son... as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh”, and He adds : ” that He may give eternal life to all whom Thou hast given Him *”. Jesus asks His Father to fulfil eyen now in principle His divine plan, The Father has established Christ as the head of humanity; He wills that in Christ alone all humanity should find salvation, and Our Lord asks that it may be thus, since by His passion and death He is about, in substituting Himself for us, to expiate the crimes of all humanity and merit for this humanity every grace of salvation and life.

Our Lord’s prayer has been heard. Because, by His sufferings and merits, He wrought the salvation of the human race, Christ is established the universal dispenser of all

1. Luc. Vv, 18-25. — 2. Carnem Domini vivificatricem esse dicimus quia facta est propria Verbi cuncta vivificare praevalentis. Concil. Ephes. can.11. — 3. Actiones humanitatis ex virtute divinitatis fuerunt nobis salutiferae, utpote gratiam in nobis CAUSANTES et per meritum_et PER EFFICIENTIAM guanpam. S. Thom. III, q. vui, a. 1 ad 1. — 4. Col. 1, 13. — 5. Let

-us quote this beautiful proposition of the angelic doctor. Verbum prout in principio erat apud Deum vivificat animas sicut agens principale, caro tamen ejus et mysteria in ea patrata operantur instrumentaliter ad animae vitam. III, qg. xu, a. 5, ad 1; cf. III, q. XLVI, a. 6, q. XLIX, a. I, q. xxvil, de Veritate, 1, 4. — 6. Joan. Xvil, 1-2. grace. He humbled Himself, and therefore on the day of His ascension, His Father exalted Him, ” and hath given Him aname which is above all names”: Exinanivit semetipsum: propter quod et Deus exaltavit illum et donavit ill nomen quod est super omne nomen*. He has established Him “heir of all things”: Quem constitwit haeredem universorum?; and because Christ has won them by His blood, His Father has given Him the nations as an inheritance: Postula a me et dabo tibi gentes haereditatem tuam*. For them, all power of grace and life has been given to Christ, in heaven and upon earth: Data est mihi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra*; because ” the Father loveth the Son... He hath given all things into His hand”. Pater diligit Filium et OMNIA dedit in manu ejus ®.

Thus as the one Model and supreme High Priest, the Redeemer of the world and universal Mediator, Christ is, moreover, established the dispenser of all grace. ” The effusion of grace in us”, says St. Thomas, ” belongs only to Christ, and this sanctifying causality results from the intimate union existing in Christ between the divinity and humanity*”. ” The soul of Christ”, he says again, ” has received grace in supremest plenitude; in consequence of this plenitude that He has received, it is befitting that Christ should make souls partakers of it; and thus He fulfils His office of head and chief of the Church. Therefore the grace that adorns the soul of Christ is, in its essence, the same as that which purifies us?”.

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But you may ask, now that Christ has ascended into Heaven, and men no longer see, nor hear, nor touch Him, how is this power of grace and life produced in us ? How is the action of Our Lord exercised over us and in us? How is He now the efficient cause of our holiness, and how does He produce in us that grace which is the source of life?

1, Philipp. 1, 7, 9. — 2. Hebr. 1, 2. — 3. Ps. 1, 8. — 4.. Matth. XXVI, 18. — 5. Joan. Il, 35. — 6. Interior autem influxus gratiae non est ab aliquo nisi a solo Christo, cujus humanitas ex hoc quod est divinitati conjuncta habet virtutem justificandi. S. Thom. III, q. vim, a. 6. — 7. Ill, q: vii, a. 5.

7O CHRIST, THE LIFE OF THE SOUL.

Christ, being God, is absolute master of His gifts and of the manner in which He distributes them; we are no more able to limit His power than we are to determine all His modes of action. Christ Jesus can, when it seems good to Him, cause grace to flow directly into the soul without intermediary. The lives of the saints are full of these examples of divine liberty and liberality.

However in the present economy, the normal and official manner in which Christ’s grace comes to us is through the sacraments He has instituted. He could sanctify us otherwise than He does; but from the moment that, being God, He Himself establised these means of salvation — which He alone had the right to determine, since He is the Author of the supernatural order — it is to these authentic means that recourse must first be had. All the practices of asceticism we can invent to maintain and increase the divine life within us, are only of value in so far as they help us to profit more abundantly by these sources of life. They are, indeed, true and pure sources as well as inexhaustible ones where we shall infallibly find the divine life with which Christ Jesus is filled and of which He wills to make us partakers. Veni ut vitam habeant.

Let us then see what these means are.

I will not give you here all the theology of the sacraments, but I hope to say enough to show you how the goodness and wisdom of our Divine Saviour shines forth in these inventions.

What then is a sacrament? The Holy Council of Trent (to which we must always have recourse in this matter, because it has fixed the doctrine with wonderful precision) tells us that a sacrament is an outward sign which signifies and produces invisible grace; it is a symbol which contains and confers Divine grace. It is a sensible, outward, tangible sign; we are at once matter and spirit, and Christ has willed to use matter — water, oil, wheat, wine, word, imposition of hands — to denote the grace He wills to produce in our souls. Being Eternal Wisdom, Christ has adapted to our nature, both material and spiritual, the sensible means of communicating His grace’.

1. Si incorporeus esses, nuda et incorporea tibi dedisset ipse dona, sed quia anima corpori conjuncta est, sensibilibus intelligibilia tibi praestat. S. Joan Chrysost. Hom. 82 in Matth., et Hom. 60 ad popul. Antioch.

I say ” communicate”, for these signs do not only signify and symbolise grace. They contain and confer it: by the will and institution of Christ Jesus, to Whom the Father has given all power, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost is God, these signs and rites are efficacious, and really produce grace in our inmost soul.

Let us listen to our Divine Saviour. He teaches us that the water of baptism cleanses us from our sins, that by it we are born to the life of grace, made children of God and heirs of His kingdom: Nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu Sancto, non potest introire in regnum Dei; He teaches us again that the word of His minister who absolves us, takes away our sins: ” Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them”; He teaches us that under the appearances of bread and wine are really contained His body and blood which we must eat and drink in order to have life; He declares concerning marriage that man cannot put asunder those whom God has joined together; tradition, the echo of the teaching of Jesus, repeats that the imposition of hands confers on those who receive it, the Holy Spirit and His gifts ”.

One of the characters which shows the condescension of our Divine Saviour in the institution of the Sacraments, is that these signs produce of themselves the grace they contain: Ex opere operato. This grace is given by the sacramental act itself, the proper application alone of the symbols and rites to the soul, and that independently, not of the intention but of the personal worth of the one who administers it. The unworthiness of a heretical or sacrilegious minister cannot, prevent the effect of the sacrament, so long as this minister conforms to the intention of the Church and intends to do what the Church does in a like case; baptism given by an heretical minister is valid. Why is this? Because Christ, the Man-God, has willed to place the communication of His graces above all consideration of the merit or virtue of those who serve Him as instruments. The value of the

1. Joan. 11, 5. — 2. As to the question of knowing whether all the sacraments were instituted directly, in all their details, by Christ Himself, it matters little ; several of the sacraments offer this character ; we do not read in the Gospel that it was so for all. But if Christ left His apostles to determine certain details, even important ones, it is not less true that it is He Who has attached to all these symbols the grace of which He alone is the author and unique source. sacrament does not depend on human dignity nor holiness, it proceeds from the fact of having been instituted by Christ, and that gives the faithful soul infinite assurance in this divine help *.

Is that so say we ought to use these means without it being necessary to make the least preparation ? Quite the contrary. What then is required ?

First, that general disposition concerning the production of grace itself ; namely that the one who receives the sacraments does not place any obstacle to their action, to their operation, to their energy: non ponentibus obicem. Oppose a barrage to the waters of a torrent, the waters are stopped; destroy the barrage, remove the obstacle: immediately the waters, now being free, rush forward and invade the plain. So it is with the grace of the sacraments; there is in them all that is necessary for their action; yet it is necessary that grace should not meet with any obstacle in us. What kind of obstacle? That varies in its nature according to the character of the signs and the grace the sacraments confer. Thus we can only receive the grace of a sacrament if we consent to it ; the adult on whom Baptism is conferred cannot receive the grace if his will is opposed to the reception of the sacrament; on the same way, lack of contrition is an obstacle to the reception of the grace of the sacrament of Penance; again, mortal sin forms an obstacle which prevents us from receiving the grace of the Eucharist. Remove the obstacle, and grace descends on you, as soon as the sacrament is conferred.

But, I will add, enlarge, by faith, confidence and love, the capacity of your souls and grace will abound in you. For if the grace of the sacraments is substantially the same for all, it varies in degree, in intensity, according to the dispositions of those who receive it after having removed the obstacles; it is measured, certainly not in its entity but in its fruitfulness and extent of action, according to the dispositions of the soul. Let us then open wide the avenues ef our souls to Divine grace; let us bring for our part all possible charity and purity that so Christ may make His Divine life superabound in us.

1. Secura Ecclesia spem non posuit in homine.,. sed spem suam posuit in Christo, qui sic accepit formam servi ut non amitteret formam Det. St. Augustine. Epistola, Lxxxix, 5.

For it is He, Christ, the Incarnate Word, Who, inasmuch as He is God, is the efficient, primary and principal cause of the grace produced by the sacraments. Why is this ? Because He alone can produce grace Who is the source and author of it. The sacraments, signs charged to transmit this grace to the soul, only act in the capacity of instruments ; they are a cause of grace, a real and efficient cause, but only instrumental.

Look at an artist in his studio : with his chisel he hews and sculptures the marble in order to realise the ideal that haunts his genius. When the master-piece in finished, it is exact to say that the artist created it but the chisel was the instrument that transmitted the artist’s idea. The work is due to the chisel, but it was guided by the master’s hand, itself directed by the genius which conceived the work.

So it is with the sacraments: they are the signs that produce grace, not as the principal cause — it is from Christ alone that sanctifying grace flows as from its one source — but as instruments, in virtue of the power they receive from the humanity of Christ united to the Word and filled with Divine life*. In the person of the priest, it is Christ Himself Who baptises, Who absolves. ” Peter baptises ” says St. Augustine, ” it is Christ Who baptises; Judas baptises it is Christ Who does so”. Petrus baptizet, Christus baptizat; Judas baptizet, Christus baptizat?. Whoever is the minister, he here acts only in virtue of Christ*; they are Christ’s merits which are applied; they are His satisfactions of which we are made partakers; it is the life of Christ which, by these channels, flows into our souls.

All the efficacy which the sacraments have to communicate to us the Divine life, comes therefore from Christ,

1. Sacramenta corporalia per propriam operationem quam exercent circa corpus quod tangunt, effictunt operationem instrumentalem ex virtute divina circa animam ; sicut aqua baptismi abluendo corpus secundum propriam virtutem, abluit animam in quantum est instrumentum virtutis divinae ; nam ex anima et corpore unum fit. Et hoc est quod Augustinus dicit quod corpus tangit et cor abluit. S.Thom. III, q. txm,a. 1, ad 2, Vis spiritualis est in sacramentis in quantum ordinantur a Deo ad effectum spiritualem. III, q. Lxvu, a. 4, ad 1; cf. q. LXIV, a. 4. — 2. Tract. in Joan. v. — 3. Commenting on these words : Dominus baptizabat pluves quam Joannes, quamvis ipse non baptizaret sed discipuli ejus. St. Augustine writes: Ipse et non ipse ; ipse potestate, illi ministerio ; servitutem ad baptizandum illi admovebant, potestas baptizandi in Christo permanebat. — Tract. in Joan. Vv, 1.

Who, by His life and sacrifice on the Cross, has merited every grace for us, and has ordained these signs whereby this grace may reach us. If we had faith, if we understood that these are Divine means, divine both in their primary and primordial source and in the ultimate end to which they tend, with what fervour and frequency we should use these means multiplied along our life’s path by Our Saviour’s goodness !

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That which causes the admirable wisdom of the Incarnate ‘Word to shine forth in this domain, is that the sacraments envelop our whole life with sanctifying influences.

There is, says St. Thomas, an analogy between the natural and the supernatural life?. We are born to the supernatural life by Baptism; this life has to be strengthened : that 1s the work of Confirmation; one is born and comes to maturity only once: that is why these two sacraments are not to be repeated. Like the body, the soul has to be nourished: the food of the soul is the Eucharist, which may be our daily food; when we fall into sin, the sacrament of penance restores grace to us, as many times as is necessary, by purifying us from our faults. If mortal sickness overtakes us, Extreme Unction prepares us for the passage into eternity, and sometimes even gives back the health to the body, if such be the design of God. All these various sacraments create, nourish strengthen, assure, repair, and make the Divine life grow and increase in the soul of each one of us.

And as man is not an isolated individual, but also a member of a society, the sacrament of Matrimony sanctifies the family, and blesses the propagation of the human race, while the sacrament of Holy Order perpetuates the spiritual paternity by means of the priesthood.

All the sacraments, without exception, confer grace, that is to say, they increase in the soul the life of Christ. Sanctifying grace, infused virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, this wonderful ensemble under the name of the state of grace, adorns the substance of our soul and causes its faculties to bear supernatural fruit, so as to make it one

1205.) hom. LLL ngs cxXVvaearn i with Christ Jesus, and worthy in the sight of the Eternal Father.

In each sacrament, we receive sanctifying grace or an increase of this grace; but this same grace bears, in the different sacraments, a special character, it contains special energies and produces particular and determined effects, conformed to the end for which the sacrament was instituted, and that we have just indicated; and, as you also know, Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Order imprint on the soul as with a seal, an ineffaceable character: the character of the Christian, of the soldier of Christ, of the priest of the Most High.

What must chiefly be remembered in this analogy (which we must not push to the extreme limit) *, is that the life of the Christian is sanctified at its principal stages, and that Christ has provided for all our supernatural needs. Whatever be the circumstance of any importance in our existence, grace is there, under a special, opportune and helpful form ; Jesus Christ accompanies us during our whole existence here below; He is with us all the time.

Let us then have faith, a lively, practical faith in these means of sanctification; Christ has willed and merited that their efficacy should be supreme, their excellence transcendent, their fruitfulness inexhaustible: they are signs charged with Divine life. Christ has willed to lay up in them all His merits and satisfactions in order to communicate them to us: nothing can or ought to take their place. They are, in the present economy of the Redemption, necessary for salvation ?.

It must be repeated, because experience shows how in the long run, even with souls who seek God, the practical estimation of these means of salvation sometimes leaves much to be desired. The sacraments are, with the doctrine given by the Church, the official channels authentically created by Christ to make us attain to His Father. It is to wrong Him not to appreciate their value, their riches, their

1. Notably for the Sacrament of Penance when it restores the soul to

Divine life: in the natural life one only dies once. — 2. Although it must be added that this necessity is not the same for all the sacraments ; for example, Baptism is absolutely necessary for all; it is not the same, in what concerns men taken individually, for Holy Orders and Matrimony. fruitfulness, while He is glorified when we draw from these treasures acquired by His merits: we thus recognise that we hold all from Him, and that renders Him very pleasing homage.

There are souls who have only a mediocre faith in these sacred signs and who, practically, use them only parsimoniously; as they attach only small attention to the grace produced in them by the sacraments, they only prepare themselves half-heartedly or give their preferences to extraordinary means. Certainly, as I have said, Jesus Christ always remains absolute Master of His gifts, He distributes them when it seems good to Him and to whom He pleases. We see in the Saints marvels of Divine generosity, from the charisma which illustrate the times of the early Christians to the wonderful favours which, even in our days, abound in so many souls: Mirabilis Deus in sanctis sms. But in this matter, Christ has made no promise to anyone; He has not indicated these means as the regular way, either of salvation, or even of holiness: while He has instituted the sacraments, with their particular energies and efficacious virtues; they hence constitute, in their harmonious variety, the whole means of sure salvation. Here there is no illusion possible, and we know how dangerous are illusions created by the devil in matters of piety and sanctity !

God wills our sanctification: Haec est voluntas Dei, sanctificatio vestra’. Christ repeats: ” Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect ?”; in these words then, it is not simply a question of salvation, but of perfection, of holiness. Now it is not in extraordinary means, in raptures, and ecstasies, that Our Lord has normally placed the life He wills to communicate to us in order to render us perfect, to make us saints, pleasing to His Father: it is first of all in the sacraments. That He should have willed this is sufficient to make our souls, eager for holiness, abandon themselves to this will in all faith, in all confidence. These are the true sources of life and sanctification, all sufficing and abundant sources ; in vain shall we go to draw elsewhere; we should forsake, according to the energetic words of Scripture, ” the fountain of living water”, to dig to our-

1. I Thess. 1v, 3. — 2. Matth. v, 48.

CHRIST, THE CAUSE OF ALL GRACE. Te selves ” broken cisterns that can hold no water?”. All our spiritual activity ought to have no other reason, no other aim, than to make us able to draw always more abundantly, more largely, with more faith and purity, from these Divine fountains and to make the grace proper to each sacrament grow in us with more ease and liberty, more vigour and power.

Oh! let us come with joy to draw at these fountains of salvation: Haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus Salvatoris ?. Draw from these salutary waters; enlarge the capacity of your souls by repentance, humility, confidence, and above all, by love, so that the action of the sacrament becomes deeper, vaster, and more lasting. Each time we approach the Sacraments, let us renew our faith in the riches of Christ; this faith prevents routine from finding its way into the soul that frequents these sources; let us draw from them frequently, above all from the Eucharist, pre-eminently the sacrament of life; these are the fountains which Our Saviour, by His infinite merits, caused to spring up at the foot of His Cross, or rather, from the depths of His Sacred Heart.

St. Augustine, commenting on the text of the Gospel on the death of Christ: Unus militum lancea latus ejus aperuit, ” one of the soldiers with a spear opened His side”, writes these remarkable words?: ” The Evangelist makes use of an expression chosen purposely; he does not say: (in speaking of the thrust of the lance given by the soldier to Jesus on the Cross) he struck or he wounded His side, of any similar word, but he opened His side, to teach us that he thus opened for us the gate of life from whence issue forth the sacraments, without which, access cannot be had to the true life”. All these sources spring from the Cross, from the love of Christ; all apply to us the fruits of the death of the Saviour, by the virtue of His Blood.

If then, we wish to live as Christians, if we seek perfection, if we tend towards holiness, let us draw from these

1. Me dereliquerunt fontem aquae vivae, et foderunt sibi cisternas, cisternas dissipatas, quae continere non valent aquas. Jerem. WU, 13. — 2. Isa. xu, 3. — 3. Vigilanti verbo Evangelista usus est ut non diceret : latus ejus percussit aut vulneravit, aut quid aliud, sed aperutt, ut illic quodammodo vitae ostium panderetur, unde sacramenta manaverunt sine quibus, ad vitam quae vita vera est, non intratur. — Tract. in Joan. cxx. waters with joy: In gaudio; for these are the sources of life here below, and of glory above. ” If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink...* For he that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst for ever, but the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting? ”.

” Come, my dearly beloved”, Our Saviour seems to say to us, ” come and drink and be inebriated”. IJnebriamini, carissimi*; come and drink from these fountains, by which, under the veil of faith, I communicate My own life to you here below, until the day on which, all symbols having disappeared, I will Myself make thee drink of the torrent of My beatitude in the eternal brightness of My light: E# torrente voluptatis tuae potabis eos *.

IV

The riches of the grace Christ communicates to us are so great — St. Paul declares them unfathomable, /nvestigabiles divitiae Christi, — that the sacraments are never exhausted. Outside the sacraments Christ still acts and operates in us. How is this? By the contact we have with Him in faith.

In order to understand this, let us read again an episode related by St. Luke. In one of His apostolic journeys, Our Divine Saviour is surrounded and pressed by the multitude. A sick woman, desiring to be healed, approaches Him, and, full of confidence, touches the hem of His garment. Immediately, Our Lord asks those who surround Him: ” Who is it that touched Me ?” And Peter answers: ” Master, the multitude throng and press Thee, and dost Thou say, Who touched Me?” But Jesus insists : ” Somebody hath touched Me; for I know that virtue is gone out from Me.” And at that very instant the woman was healed: and this, on account of her faith: Fides tua te salvam fecit °.

Something analogous takes place for us also. Each time that, even outside the sacraments, we approach Christ, a strength, a Divine virtue goes out from Him and penetrates our souls to enlighten and help them.

You know the means of approaching Him is faith. By faith, we touch Christ, and at this Divine contact, little by little, our soul is transformed.³

As I have said, Christ has come amongst us to give us a share in all His riches, in all the perfection of His virtues, for all He has belongs to us; all is for us. Each of Our Lord’s actions is not only a model for us, but a source of grace. In practising all the virtues, He has merited for us the grace to be able to practise these same virtues which we contemplate in Him, and each of His mysteries contains a special grace in which He wills to give us a real participation.

It is certain that those who lived in Judea with Christ and had faith in Him, received an abundant share in those graces which He merited for all men; the Gospel assures us of this. Christ had not only, as I have shown you, power to cure corporal infirmities, but also the power to sanctify souls. See for example how He sanctified the woman of Samaria who, after having spoken with Him, believed Him to be the Messias; how He purified Magdalen who, considering Him to be a prophet, one sent by God, came to pour her perfumes over His sacred feet. The contact of the Son of God becomes, for the souls who have faith in Him, the source of life: Fides tua te salvam fecit. Consider how, during His Passion, by one look of His, He gives to Peter, who has thrice denied Him, the grace of repentance; consider at His death, the good thief ; he recognises Jesus as the Son of God, since he asks Him for a place in His kingdom; and immediately the Saviour, on the point of expiring, grants him the remission of his crimes: ” To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise”.

We know this, we are so convinced of it that sometimes we say: Oh, if it had been given to me to live with Our Lord in Judea, to have followed Him like the Apostles, to have approached Him during His life, and to have been present at His death, I should have been so surely sanctified ! And yet, however, hear what Jesus says: ” Blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed”. Brat qui non viderunt et crediderunt.

Does not this make us understand that contact with Him by faith alone is still more efficacious, and more advantageous to us? Let us then believe in these words of Our Divine Master: His words are” spirit and life?”: let us be persuaded that the power and virtue of His holy humanity are the same for us as for His contemporaries; for Christ lives always: Christus heri, et HODIE, tpse et in saecula?.⁴

I can never repeat often enough how eminently useful it is for our souls to remain united to Our Lord by the contact of faith. You know that from the beginning of their journeying in the desert, the Israelites murmured against Moses. To punish them, God sent serpents whose bite caused them great suffering. Then, touched by their repentance, God commanded Moses to lift up a brazen serpent of which the sight alone sufficed to heal the wounds of the children of Israel?. Now, according to Our Lord’s own words, this brazen serpent was the figure of Christ lifted up on the Cross. And Our Lord said: ” And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself*. Because He has merited all grace for us by the sacrifice of the Cross, Jesus Christ has become for us the source of all light and strength. And that is why the humble and loving glance of the soul upon the holy humanity of Jesus is so fruitful and so efficacious.

We do not think enough of the power of sanctification that Christ’s humanity possesses, even outside of the sacraments °.

The means of placing ourselves in contact with Christ is faith in His Divinity, in His Almighty power, in the infinite value of His satisfactions,in the inexhaustible efficacy of His merits. In one of his sermons to the people of Hippo, St. Augustine asks how we can ” touch Christ”, now that He has ascended into Heaven ? In caelo sedentem quis mortalium potest tangere ? He answers: By faith; he touches Christ who believes in Him. Sed ille tactus fidem significat; tangit Christum qui credit in Christum. And the holy Doctor recalls the faith of that woman who touched Jesus to obtain her cure: Fide tetigit et sanitas subsecuta est. There are, he says, many carnal men who have only seen Jesus Christ as man, and have not understood the Divinity which was veiled by His humanity. They did not know how to touch Him because their faith was not what it ought to have been. Would you touch Jesus Christ with profit? Believe in the Divinity which, as the Word, He shares from all eternity with the Father. Vis bene tangere ? Intellige Christum ubi est Patri coaeternus, — et tetigisti 1,⁵

To believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ is, then, the means which places us in contact with Christ, the source of all grace and all life. When, then, in reading the Gospel, we ponder in our minds the words and actions of Our Lord; when, in prayer, or in meditation, we contemplate His virtues ; above all, when we associate with the Church in the celebration of His mysteries (as I shall show later) ; when we unite ourselves to Him in each of our actions, whether we eat or work, or do any action indifferent in itself in union with the like actions that He Himself accomplished when He lived here below, when we do this with faith and love, with humility and confidence, there is then a strength, a power, a Divine virtue, which goes out from Christ to enlighten us, to help us to remove the obstacles to His Divine operations in us, so as to produce grace in our souls.

You will perhaps say : But I do not feel this. It is not necessary to feel it. Our Lord said Himself that His kingdom ” cometh not with observation?”, that it is beyond the experience of the senses: the supernatural life is not based on sentimentality. If God makes us feel the sweetness of His service, even in the sensible faculties, we ought to thank Him for it, and use this inferior gift as a ladder by which to rise higher, as a means to increase our fidelity, but not to be attached to it, and above all, not to found our interior life upon this sensible devotion ; it is much too unstable a basis. We might be as much in error in believing we are advanced in the way of perfection because our sensible devotion is very intense, as in imagining we are making no progress because our soul is in spiritual dryness. What, then, is the true basis of our supernatural life? It is faith, and faith is a virtue exercised by our superior faculties: intelligence and will. Now what does faith tell us? That Jesus is God as well as man, that His humanity is the humanity of a God, the humanity of the Being Who is Infinite Wisdom, Love itself,

1. Sermo. ccxLil, c. 2; cf. Sermones. LXUl, 3 } CCXLIV, 3 and CCXLV, 3 ; In Joan. xxvi, 3. — 2.Luc. xvul, 20 sq.

Christ the life of the soul. 6 and Omnipotence. How, then, can we doubt that when we approach Him, even outside the sacraments, with humility and confidence, Divine power comes forth from Him to enlighten, strengthen and help us? No one has ever approached Jesus Christ with faith without being touched by the beneficent rays that ever escape from this furnace of light and heat: Virtus de illo exibat.

Jesus Christ, Who is always living, semper vivens, and Whose Humanity remains indissolubly united to the Divine Word, thus becomes for us — and that in the measure of our faith, and the ardour of our desire to imitate Him — a light and a source of life; and little by little, if we are faithful in contemplating Him in this manner, He will imprint His likeness in us, by revealing Himself more intimately to us, by making us share the sentiments * of His Divine Heart and by giving us the strength to live according to these sentiments "Tt is evident to me”, said St. Teresa, ” that in order to please God, to receive great graces from Him, it is necessary and such is His Will, that they should pass through the hands of this Sacred Humanity (of Christ) with which He has Himself declared He is well pleased. I have made the experience of this a great number of times, and Our Lord Himself has told me so. J have recognised manifestly that this is the door by which we must enter if we wish the Supreme Majesty to discover His high secrets to us... One travels in assurance along this way ?.” We understand then, the truth of this word of Jesus: Ego sum vitis, vos palmites; qui manet in me et ego in eo, hic fert fructum multum *. ” My Father is the husbandman; I am the vine: you are the branches; he that abideth in Me and J in him, the same beareth much fruit.” According to the beautiful remark of St. Augustine, it is as man that Christ is the Vine; as God, one with His Father, He is the Vine-dresser Who works, not like de vine-dressers of here below, outside, but He works interiorly, in order to give increase of grace and life; for, adds the great Doctor, quoting St. Paul, he who plants is nothing, neither is he who waters, but God Who gives the increase: Nec talis quales sunt qui extrinsecus operando exhibent ministerium, sed talis ut det etiam intrinsecus incrementum *.⁶

From the vine, which is Jesus, the sap of grace rises into the branches which are our souls, if, however, we remain united to the vine. How is this to be done ?

By the sacraments, above all by that of the Eucharist, the very Sacrament of union: Qui manducat meam carnem et bibit meum sanguinem in me MANET et ego millo?. “He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, abideth in Me and linhim.” Next by faith; St. Paul tells us: Christus HABITARE PER FIDEM in cordibus vestris*; by faith vivified by love, that is to say, the perfect faith that accompanies the state of grace, Christ dwells in us; and each time that we place ourselves in contact with Jesus by this faith, Christ exercises His sanctifying power over us‘.

But for this, it is needful that we should put away all obstacles to this action — sin, deliberate imperfections, attachment to creatures, and to ourselves: it is necessary too, that we should have an ardent desire to resemble Him; that our faith should be living and practical: a living faith, that is to say, an unshaken faith in the infinite treasures of holiness contained in Christ Who is All for us ; a practical, watchful faith which throws us at the feet cf Jesus in order to do all that He asks of us for the glory of His Father.

It is then, as the Council of Trent says, that Christ ” unceasingly pours His sanctifying virtue into us, as the head does to the members, as the vine does into the branches; for this salutary virtue does not cease to precede, to accompany and follow our good actions: Jile ipse Christus tamquam caput in membra, et tanquam vitis in palmites, in ipsos justificatos JUGITER virtutem INFLUIT: quae virtus bona corum opera semper antecedit et comitatur et subsequitur °.

It is by the grace of Christ that we become holy, pleasing to God, His Father, so that through Him also, all glory is referred to the Father; because He loves His Son, the Father has constituted Him head of the kingdom of the elect, and has given all into His hands: Pater amat Filium et OMNIA dedit in manu ejus ®.

1. Tract in Joan. Lxxx. — 2. Joan. vi, 57. — 3. Ephes. 11, 7 4. Christus per fidem habitat in nobis, ut dicitur Ephes. 1, et ideo virtus

Christi copulatur nobis per fidem. S. Thom. III, q. tx, a. 5, ad 2. — 5. Concil. Trid, sess. v, c. 16. — 6. Joan. Im, 35.

Note

There is a page of St. Thomas (Q. De Veritate, a. 4.) which resumes very well the doctrine exposed in this conference. The human nature of Our Lord, writes St. Thomas, is the organ of the Divinity, and that is why it communicated to the operations of the Divine virtue: thus, when Christ healed the leper by touching him, this contact instrumentally caused health. Now this instrumental efficacy which it had for corporal effects, the holy Humanity exercises also in the spiritual order ; His Blood shed for us has a sanctifying virtue to wash away our sins. The Humanity of Jesus is then the instrumental cause of justification, and this is applied to us spiritually by faith, corporally by the Sacraments, because Christ’s Humanity is spirit and body. It is in this way we must receive within us the effect of the sanctification which is in Christ. Also, the most perfect of the Sacraments is that which really contains the Body of Our Lord, that is to say, the Eucharist, the end and consummation of all the others. As to the other Sacraments, they receive something of that virtue by which the Humanity of Christ is the instrument of justification ; so that, according to the language of the Apostle (Hebr. x, ), the Christian sanctified by Baptism is also sanctified by the Blood of Jesus Christ. The Passion of the Saviour operates therefore in the Sacraments of the New Law; and these concur as instruments for the producing of grace.

Footnotes

1. 1. I Cor. 1, 30. — 2. Col. 11, 3. — 3. Joan. x, ro. — 4. I Joan. v, 12. — $s. Matth. vi, 2-3. — 6. Ibid. 1x, 27-29.
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2. Word: ut instrumentum conjunctum, — 3. Luc. vi, 19. — 4. Ibid. vu, 48-50. ↩

3. 1. Joan. vil, 37. — 2. Ibid. Iv, 13. — 3. Cant. v, 1. — 4. Ps. xxxv, 9g. — 5. Luc. vin, 43-48
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4. 1. Joan, xx, 29. — 2. Ibid. vi, 64.
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5. 1. Hebr. xm, 8. — 2. Num. xxi, 9. — 3. Joan. mi, 14. — 4. Ibid. xu, 32. — 5. Read on this subject the Retreat by the late Mgr. Hedley, Bishop of Newport. In Chap. xm, Looking upon Jesus, we see exposed by one of the best English ascetical authors this "most powerful, and almost miraculous, efficacy of transformation” that the Sacred Humanity has upon souls that contemplate it in faith.
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6. 1. The word sentiment is here taken in the spiritual acceptation of the word, as the affection of the will. — 2. Life by Herself. — 3. Joan. IVs 3
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