April 2007 Print

An extract from In the Likeness of Christ (pp.245-264) by Fr. Edward Leen

 

The Resurrection is the central dogma of Catholicism–and it is not obvious why it should be so. The Acts of the Apostles show it to be the fact in the history of Christ that is the most energetically proposed to the belief of those to whom the Apostles preached. This insistence on the resurrection in the apostolic preaching strikes us with some surprise. It is true that its value from an apologetic point of view might be sufficient explanation of its importance in the eyes of the first preachers of the Gospel. In rising from the dead, Christ proved Himself God and therefore could claim the subjection of every human intelligence to all the religious and moral truths that He had propounded to men during the three years of His public life. His Resurrection stamped all that teaching with the approval of God. It was proved true with the truth of God. It established the validity of His claim to be truly God. This reason, though it is true as far as it goes, is not quite satisfying. And it is because we see no other explanation for this passionate and reiterated proclamation of Christ's life after having been crucified, that the instructions of the first heralds of Christianity, such as they have come down to us in the sacred writings, strike us as being singularly cold and ineffective. They stir us scarcely at all. To us, accustomed to a different line of approach to the life of Christ, the preaching of the pioneers of the Gospel message appears to miss or, at least, to stress very insufficiently what is the chief appeal in the life of the Savior. We instinctively look for a more eloquent and enthusiastic predication of the truths that Jesus came to reveal to men, especially as the Apostles had, by the light from on high received at Pentecost, obtained a vast and deep comprehension of these truths. To their minds, enlightened by the "Spirit of Jesus," what they had dimly and imperfectly understood as it had been spoken to them by the Lord became clear and luminous. After the descent of the Holy Ghost they acquired a grasp of the whole of Christ's revelation in all its truths, in the details of these truths, and in the marvelous unity which bound all these dogmas into one vast, harmonious and dazzling system. Many a Catholic student feels a thrill which is akin to ecstasy, when, having mastered in detail the different treatises of Catholic theology, the perfect unity and the inexhaustible riches of the whole system are presented for the first time to his intelligence, in one comprehensive synthetic view. Such light is but darkness compared to the effulgence that irradiated the minds of the Apostles. Is it possible that under the first ecstasy of that effulgence, their preaching could be coldly apologetic? Scarcely. Their boldness, their fire, their enthusiasm was such that those who heard them believed that they were beside themselves owing to the fumes of strong wine. They were, of a truth, delirious–but delirious with the intoxication of the new understanding of things that they had received. They were drunk, not with wine, but with wisdom and knowledge. They flung themselves forth from the upper room, under the violent impulse of the Holy Spirit, to preach Catholicity–and they proclaimed the Resurrection. This being so, it needs must be that in some way or other this dogma must embrace the whole economy of redemption–must be a compendium of the Faith. St. Paul, indeed, in his words to the Corinthians implies that for him it is such. "If Christ," he says, "be not risen again, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain."¹ If we understood that mystery as did the Apostles, if we could see it in the light in which it was revealed to them and in which they must have set it before their hearers in their instructions, we would realize that this must needs be so.

God sends trials and crosses simply to deaden in us the activity of the forces that make for the decay of the spiritual life, in order that that spiritual life may develop and expand unimpeded. According as the life of perverse nature ebbs away from us on our Cross united with Christ's, the Divine Life that God has placed in all whom He has called begins to make itself more manifest and to display increased vigor and vitality. Our Resurrection to the newness of life, the life wholly controlled by the impulses of God's graces, comes, without any interval, straight on our death to self. It is to that Resurrection, that life in death, that God directs all the circumstances of our life–it is the object He aims at in His dealing with us. We, in our blindness, in our utter incomprehension of that rising from the dead which Our Lord speaks of to us, oppose His designs, thwart His purposes, and cling desperately to the life of self which knows no Resurrection. It is strange how history does repeat itself. Frequently, without our being aware of it, we shall be found re-echoing the words of St. Peter in which he dared to expostulate with Our Lord. The Savior spoke to him of His death and of the restoration to life that was to follow hard upon it. Peter, seeing nothing in the sufferings foretold but something abhorrent; discerning no connection whatsoever between them and the state of glory to which Christ referred; and feeling no attraction for a condition of life which, however good in itself, did not seem to hold out any prospect of greatness in the world where his ambitions were centered, quarreled with his Master's freely chosen destiny. The risen joys to follow the passion and death had for the apostle but a very cold appeal and did not seem to him a compensation for the sufferings and ignominy and rejection which paved the way for these joys.

The difficulties which the apostles experienced on Easter Morn in adjusting their minds to the fact that the Christ Whom they knew, with Whom they had lived, and Who had died by a death that was made unmistakable by the soldier's lance, was actually before them in flesh and blood, with life coursing through the Body still showing all the marks of the terrible crucifixion, point to the conclusion that, when our Lord had spoken to them of His Rising from the dead, they always understood His words in an eschatological sense. They deemed that the Resurrection had reference to a post terrestrial life: in a vague kind of a way they assumed it to be something that was to take place when the present world should be at an end. They had not grasped that it had a bearing on man's earthly destiny. Their beliefs in this connection were, very likely, those voiced by Martha, the sister of Lazarus, when on receiving the assurance from the Lord that her brother would rise again she immediately understood Him to refer to the resurrection at the last day. They had scarcely a conception of any other rising from the dead–still less had their minds entertained any idea of a newness of life to be attained through suffering.

And yet it is to lead us to this newness of life that God orders all the sufferings and trials He sends us in our earthly pilgrimage. Our Lord draws us towards this risen life by His example after having merited it for us by His Passion. He teaches us that to arrive at the term it is necessary that the concupiscences in us be crucified, and that it is God's love for us that orders and directs the execution. That tendency in us which makes us cleave to the creature to the prejudice of the Creator, which makes us elect perishable things in preference to eternal, must die. To reach the perfect freedom of this life that is all for God, there must be effected in us a detachment from all that is not of God. Pain and sorrow are the instruments of this detachment. It is through them that sinful desires are dulled and concupiscence reduced to a state of quiescence.The attraction to evil that is in us, in consequence of original sin, cannot be made to disappear completely in this life. It continues to exist even in the saints. The repugnance we experience in ourselves to what God's laws desire of us, and to what our own will aspires to, retains us in humility and allows us to distinguish clearly between what we can do of ourselves and what God can accomplish in us by His Holy Spirit. The experience of our own powerlessness in the fight against the evil tendencies in our nature teaches us not to attribute to our own strength, but to God's grace, the victories we may achieve in the struggle. The ever renewed conflict in us convinces us of the necessity of the crucifixion of our wicked nature in order that we may be able to serve God without offending Him.

To live to God we must die to sin, and this death to sin cannot be achieved without its own passion. It was through the Cross that the world was redeemed–it remains that by the Cross and the Cross only, personally borne and endured, each individual enters fully into the redemption and is sanctified. Self must die in order that God may reign in undisputed sway in us. In that lies the whole explanation of suffering in life. It is only over the hilltop of Calvary that we make our way into the brightness and splendor and glowing life of the Garden of the Resurrection. The beauty of a body, free from the corruption of sin, and the radiance of a soul filled with God's life is that in which our Calvary finds its explanation and the term in which it issues. The Cross is the way or the means to the Resurrection. Without the one we cannot have the other. If God makes the path of our life converge on Calvary it is only in order that it may lead us into the calm and peace and light of the Resurrection–of a life in which the germ of mortality, namely, concupiscence, has been successfully combated by the healing virtue of the grace of Christ, working through sufferings patiently accepted.

But, of course, not all sufferings effect in us this wonderful transformation, which is at once an image of Christ™s glorious life, and a pledge of future immortality. There were three who underwent crucifixion together on the Hill of Calvary. One of them suffered and blasphemed. Guilty though he was, he rebelled against his fate. He dared to abuse God for the tortures he had brought on himself by his own misdeeds. He railed at and cursed Divine Providence for the evil that had come upon him. "And one of those robbers who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying: 'If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us.'"² So there are many, who, when crushed upon the cross of life, instead of entering into themselves, acknowledging their sinfulness and humbling themselves under the Hand of God revile their Maker for allowing suffering to exist, or at least, for allowing it to befall them. Such men, far from being purified by their passion, plunge themselves into a worse death than that of the body. They sink from one death into one yet more profound.

There are those who when they suffer accept what comes to them in a spirit of expiation. They recognize their sinfulness and acknowledge that by reason of it they deserve chastisement at the Hands of God. Like the good thief, they cast their eyes upon Jesus and consider the fearful tortures that He endured–though sinless. Contrasting His Innocence with their own guilt, they strive not to repine at the cross to which they are nailed; they simply humble themselves under the powerful Hand of God, appeal for mercy and pardon, and beg their offended Master to accept their sufferings as an expiation of their guilt. They ask the suffering Christ to sanctify their crucifixion by applying to it the virtue of His, and they thus merit to hear from the Savior's lips the promise that from the Cross they shall ascend into the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Cross they find that detachment from earth, that unworldliness by which their salvation is secured. Were it not for the Cross they could never have been severed from the life of earth and brought to the side of Christ.

There is still another class of sufferers. They are those who enter into a voluntary participation in the Passion of Christ–through love of Him and zeal for souls. They have passed the stage where the Cross has been active in promoting in them the love of Christ; it is now that very love which creates the Cross for them. These souls do not merely support with patience such trials as befall them; they will to suffer in order to be more like their Divine Master. They aspire to be united with Christ on the Cross not only that His life may reign in them, but also that, by their own sufferings united with those of the Savior, effects of salvation may flow out on others. This is the highest and most sublime mode of suffering, and it is only the chosen few that enter on it.

Death implies the cessation of activity. The death through which we are to reach newness of life is the cessation of the activity of the principles of sin in us. Though, as a penalty of the First Transgression, the roots of sin itself cannot be torn out from our being, the vitality of sin can be destroyed. The apostle does not ask us not to be sinners, but he commands us not to be the slaves of sin. He requires that its domination over us should cease: "Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies."³ The Christian who has passed through the crucible of suffering to a purification of soul is not exempt from the assaults of sin. The newness of life which he has reached cannot be retained without effort. Even the saints are not free from solicitude and anxiety. In spite of their sanctity they remain sinners, but they are not the slaves of sin. The reign of sin has ceased in them, in that they have ceased to obey its lusts. They maintain a constant struggle against their concupiscences, and when they suffer a momentary defeat they do not acquiesce in or take pleasure in the evil to which they have succumbed. They deplore their weakness, exercise themselves in humility because of it, and animate themselves with a still greater desire of union with God as a protection against it. They continue to defeat sin in its very successes.What is true of the saints in this respect is true of ourselves in a more pronounced fashion. Even when we have experienced the Passion of Christ in our limited manner there remains a hostile force within us, and if we cease to combat it we shall not remain at peace with God nor in tranquil possession of our "risen life." The old evil inclinations, though suppressed, have not been entirely destroyed. The energy of the evil habits has diminished but has not disappeared. Even after long years of inactivity they remain ready to resume their vitality if only the occasions by which they are called into play present themselves. Things which formerly attracted us retain their power of attraction still, in some measure, and will exercise it once more unless we are vigilant and careful in protecting ourselves against their appeal. We must keep ourselves outside the range of their influence. If we, relying on our strength, place ourselves in the circumstances that once were a stumbling block to us, if we make any concession to the ways of acting that were associated with our failures in God's service, if we return to the associations that proved harmful, if there is any resumption of the old conditions of life that witnessed our betrayals of God, then there is grave danger that the smouldering passions will blaze up anew from their ashes.⁴

If we are to preserve our new life intact we must resolutely renounce everything that once proved a temptation to us, and uncompromisingly turn our back on the old ways. We sometimes think that we can safely indulge in an innocent manner an inclination which we formerly indulged in with guilt. This is an error. If we yield in any way to anything evil in ourselves, we shall drift back, little by little, into the channels of sin. To die with Christ and to rise with Him we must push our detachment to the very root of these inclinations in us which if at any time indulged in set us at variance with God.

We must not temporize with the things which make a strong appeal to our sensitive nature. No matter how strong we may feel, we have our strength in weakness. We can never afford to relax in our war with concupiscence. This enemy, in ourselves, cannot be fought without risk, controlled without effort, restrained without anxiety. This strength of our weakness, this energy of what is death dealing in us should make us humble, vigilant and constantly mortified.

Our conversion must then be wholehearted and must mean the paralysis, if not the death of the tendencies to evil in us. It is our affections that lead us astray by attaching us to what draws us from God. Having once broken these attachments we must on no pretext (and our nature will allege many a specious one) allow them to resume their mastery over us even in a very mild and modified form. Any affection that can draw us away from God or stand between us and God must be combated without truce.

The most successful way to overcome these dangerous attractions is to set up a counter attraction. Life is not a negative process. It is positive. The new life must not consist in the mere cessation of loving what is evil; it must express itself in the love of what is good. Newness of life does not consist merely in the efforts to avoid sin–it means the positive endeavor to live for God. We die to sin in order to live to God. The destination of our faculties to the interests of God is the characteristic of that resurrection of the soul that follows on its dying in union with Christ. The aim of the soul that has once been purified (or converted) should be not merely to have an aversion to what is evil, but to conceive a strong love for what is good. Love of God, not mere aversion from sin, should be the controlling motive in its new life. Renovation or Resurrection must mean a new love. When at our being broken on the cross, all the false idols which we worshipped in our hearts tumble into dust before our eyes, we must not allow ourselves to be still and motionless in the tomb of our dead selves. We must, by laying hold on Christ, rise to a new life by setting up God Himself exclusively as a new object of love and worship in our hearts. Devotedness to God and His interests is the exercise of the vitality of the life that comes of the death on the Cross.

It is inevitable that suffering should sooner or later present itself in the life of each individual and mingle its bitter savor with every kind of pleasure, even the purest, that one wishes to extract from existence. It did not enter into God's original plan. It is through man's act that it made its way into human life. Owing its origin to human perversity, it is evident that it is an evil thing. It is a foretaste and a beginning of death. God's power and goodness is shown in making this evil thing, this result of man's wrongdoing, an instrument of good. He permits us to suffer. He does not choose to destroy the consequences of the use of our free wills. He prefers to repair these evil consequenc­es. It does not become Him to undo what He has once done–it would be on His part a confession of miscalculation, error, want of prevision. He created, foreseeing the entry into the world of sin and suffering in the train, and as the logical issue of sin, and He takes that evil thing and makes it productive of good. He permits us to suffer, not because He takes pleasure in our suffering, but because He sees that as things now are it is only by suffering that are burned away in our souls the obstacles to the free operations of grace. He does not take away sufferings, but He gives us the power and the means to turn our sufferings to good account. He makes that which is the fruit of sin itself effect the destruction of sin in our souls. He shows us His Divine Son suffering and He invites us to endure our sufferings with the like dispositions, promising us that if we be like Him in His death, we shall be like Him in His Resurrection from death. God exhibited to us in the risen life of the Savior the type and example of what our life on earth shall be, if we willingly undergo the trials and hardships that are its condition and its preparation. Not all sufferings are salutary: it is only those that are endured in union with Christ. Suffer we must whatever be the spirit in which we endure suffering. If we look upon the pains of this life as an evil thing only and, therefore, as something which we must struggle against desperately, we shall not assuage but intensify the bitterness of life. If, on the other hand, we look upon sufferings as the necessary instrument in the purification of our souls, if we accept them from the Hands of God as such, and if we draw from Christ's passion the strength to bear them in humble submission to God's providence, we, through them, free our souls from the contagion of mortality, and heal in our souls the wounds inflicted on them by sin. Through sufferings endured in conformity with Christ we work our way steadily back towards the condition of original justice in which sense was perfectly subject to the spirit, and the spirit to God. Through sufferings, endured supernaturally, we clothe ourselves with the justice of Christ, the new Adam. When nature is dead in us and its rebellious stirrings are quieted we walk in newness of life and in the peace of the Resurrection.
If we consent to die with Christ, then also we shall rise from the tomb of our dead selves to live with Christ.

 

¹ I Cor.15:17.

² Lk. 23:39.

³ Rom. 6:12.

⁴ Msgr. Benson's novel, A Winnowing, is an interesting psychological study of this "going backwards" through the effect of "old associations."