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Jesus Christ and Human Life

A Course of Lenten Sermons

BY

REV- H. G. HUGHES

NEW YORK

JOSEPH F. WAGNER





Jesus Christ and Human Life

A Course of Lenten Sermons

BY

REV. H. G. HUGHES

NEW YORK

JOSEPH F. WAGNER



i2t&tl <£>bstat

REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.L.

Censor

Stoipnmatut

*jOHN M. FARLEY, D.D.

Archbishop of New York

New York, October 14, 1909

Copyright, 1910, by Joseph F. Wagner, New York

Oeac&SSsd



CONTENTS

I. Jesus Christ and the Meaning of Life

II. Jesus Christ and the Evils of Life

III. Jesus Christ and the Illusions of Life

IV. Jesus Christ and the Afflictions of Life

V. Jesus Christ and Home Life

VI. Jesus Christ, Our True Life . .

PAGE

. . 5

• • 14

• . 21

. 29

• • 35

• . 41



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in 2016

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JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

A LENTEN COURSE

I. JESUS CHRIST AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

“Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”-'

Luke iv, 8.

SYNOPSIS.—

7

:
Need of an aim in life, an explanation of its meaning and

purpose; misery in being without it. This need felt and acted upon;

hence philosophies and policies.

II. Importance of knowing life’s true meaning. That it has a mean-

ing proved by our faculties—intellect, will, seeking truth and happiness.
Seriousness of life shown by capacities for good, evil, love and, hate,

happiness and misery. Contrasts; proving that there is an aim, an

object; gaining which we live beautiful lives, missing which we live

degraded lives.

III. What is life’s true aim and meaning ? Nature teaches us. Who
truly lives ? He whose noblest part has sway. What do we all seek

?

—happiness, full, complete, satisfying, lasting.
IV. We need to know more than this. How is this happiness to be

gained ? Who can teach us? Ways in which men seek it. All fail. Is,
then, the desire vain? No. Who, then, can teach us this? Only those

who know. Who are they? Not philosophers, men of intellectual pur-
suits, nor aesthetes—only they who have found a philosophy of life that,
practised, has never failed. They are the saints. Teaching of St. Ig-

natius Loyola; We were made for God; all other things made to help
us to God. Some day we shall realize this, when we stand at the
entrance to eternity. No plan for the betterment of the world can per-
manently succeed which leaves this out. Teaching of St. Paul.

V. From whom did the saints learn the true meaning of life? From
“Jesus Christ our Lord.” The life of Christ the supreme model; and the

supreme revelation of the meaning of life.

“Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou

serve.” There are few men more to be pitied than those who go

through life without any definite aim or purpose; men for whom

life seems to have no meaning; who are led hither and thither by

the impulses of every moment; men of whom no one can say,

nor do they know themselves, what they will do next.

Such men suffer from emptiness of soul, from a void in the

heart, the unhappiness of which none can fully realize but those

who have experienced it.

Few can endure such an existence, and thus we find that most

people have some definite purpose in life, and attach to this human

9



6 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

existence of ours some definite meaning, some explanation which,

though they may not consciously have thought it out, really directs

their conduct.

So imperious in our souls is the need of something to live for,

and of some reason for being in this world at all, that the course

of human history has largely been guided by men’s efforts to

follow out those aims which they have conceived to be the proper

end and object of existence. Men of culture in every age have

studied this question, have endeavored to lay down general prin-

ciples as to the object of life; and the result of their researches

is seen in the various systems of philosophy that they have given

to the world.

Men of action have energetically pursued those aims which

their view of life has put before them as right and desirable, and

have founded States and inaugurated policies and schemes for

the practical conduct of social life.

All, without exception, seek and must seek some end in life

that they hope will bring them happiness—unless they would endure
that heart void of which I have spoken—even though that end
be but the fleeting ever-varying objects of momentary desire.

Dear brethren, what our aim in life should be, what meaning

we should put upon life, concerns us most deeply, for life is a

serious thing.

We are not as the things that have no life; we are not as the
brute beasts that do not rise above the desire of animal satisfac-

tions
;

if we are such we have come woefully short of the proper

dignity of our nature. We have noble faculties, we have souls,
we have an understanding, an intelligence that ever seeks to come

to the knowledge of truth, a will that ever aspires to bliss.

How happy we can be and how miserable! Of what extremes

of feeling are we capable! How strongly we can love, and how

profoundly hate; how beautiful, how noble, a human life can be

on the one hand, or how degraded, how unlovely on the other

!

Surely this is enough to indicate that there is an object, an aim,

the attainment of which gives happiness and makes life a splendid

thing, the missing of which makes life a dreadful wreck. Surely

such possibilities, so different, so contrasted, as the possibilities

of nobility and happiness, or of degradation and wretchedness,

should make us realize the seriousness of this human life of ours.

Look at that father of a family—that honest, upright man with



JESUS CHRIST AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 7

the clear eye, the unclouded brow, the firm step, beloved of wife

and children, going through life with a high aim, a determined

purpose to do well. Look, on the other hand, at that wretched

drunkard, that loose-living degraded rake, that false, dishonest

scoundrel who dares not look honesty in the face. Compare the

manner of their lives and say, is not life a serious thing when it

can follow either of these ways ?

Look, again, at that good mother—a human providence to her
household—loved, revered, surrounded by the sacred affection of
husband and children; a copy of the valiant woman of the Book

of Proverbs, “Who hath looked well unto the paths of her house,

and hath not eaten her bread idle; whose children rose up and

called her blessed
;
her husband, and he praised her . . . whose

works praise her in the gates” (Prov. xxxi, 27-31).

And look at that poor, ruined creature who walks the streets by

night, clothed with the tawdry finery for which she has exchanged

her soul, assuming a miserable show of gaiety, while the fixed

smile and unseemly jest hardly can hide the misery of her poor

heart. Ask again, is not human life a serious thing when it can

go into either of these paths? Has not the one man, the one

woman I have pictured to you, gained some object worthy to be

gained, fulfilled some aim in life that ought to be fulfilled? Have

not the others missed an aim and gone astray from some true pur-

pose in life? Some there are, indeed, in these days, who tell us

that the difference between right and wrong, between virtue and

vice, is but a matter of social expediency. Such is not the teaching

of that higher monitor, the conscience; such is not the lesson

taught by the effects of vice or virtue upon the character of those

who practise the one or the other.

Brethren, life has an aim; life has an object; life has a meaning

—a noble aim, a deep, profound meaning. Those noble faculties
that we have, those immense capabilities for good or evil that we

possess, were not made for nothing; not for nothing either does

failure to reach life’s aim, failure to recognize its purpose and its

meaning, bring such misery upon the one who errs.

What, then, is the true aim of life, and what its true significance ?

Brethren, our very nature itself, fallen though it is, teaches us

the beginnings of life’s lesson. Who is he that truly lives? Is it

not he whose noblest part has sway ; he whose highest faculties are

developed and are fixed on worthy objects; he who has put before



8 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

him high ideals and subdues his lower nature to them? There is the

lesson of life learnt from nature’s book.

Again, what is it that we one and all desire? What is it that

we seek in every conscious act; what is it that toward which with

irresistible impulse we are ever carried ? Is it not happiness ? It is

nothing else. That is what we want; it is to that we aspire. We
seek our happiness in many ways, but whatsoever we do is done

because we hope by the doing to gain some benefit, to enjoy some

sort of happiness.

And, dear brethren, we learn by the experience of life that not

any and every kind of happiness will satisfy our souls. Full, com-

plete, perfect and lasting happiness is what our nature craves for

and will ever crave for as long as God is God. Here, then, is

another lesson from nature’s teachings about life.

But we need to know more. It is very well to know that we

need happiness
;
that true full life consists in the full activity of all

that is noblest within us—but we have not learnt the meaning of
life till we have found the path that leads us to the goal; till we

have found the object that will satisfy, and forever satisfy the

yearnings that we feel. We can not do the sum merely by stating

the problem to be solved
;
we must know how to work it out if we

are to find the answer.

And left to ourselves we make mistakes; we solve the problem

wrongly. One man takes his happiness in the pleasures of life;

another in the beauty of earthly things
;
one in intellectual pur-

suits, another in the pursuit of gain. The rich man expends his

wealth in the search for happiness, the poor man toils and saves that

he may be able to do the same. To the very poor, life often means

a struggle for bare existence, and happiness means such poor satis-

factions of bodily appetite as are possible to them in their wretched

circumstances.

But ask any of these is he fully satisfied ; is there nothing that he

needs besides? Ask yourselves, are you satisfied—fully, perma-
nently satisfied by anything this world has given you ? You must an-

swer “No.” We find that when we have attained one object we de-

sire another. When one wish is fulfilled another grows up in us to

take its place, nor are we ever completely satisfied for good, or for

any length of time
;
and the reason is to be found in that unquench-

able longing within us for happiness that shall be simply perfect,

shall be satisfying, shall not be merely passing but shall last.



JESUS CHRIST AND THE MEANING OF LIFE
9

Is, then, this desire a vain one? Is true happiness—happiness
that shall fully and finally satisfy and set at rest every longing

of our souls—is it, I say, a delusion, a mirage that ever floats
temptingly before our vision and ever eludes our efforts to come up

with it?

If so, what vanity is life itself! To what purpose and end are

we here if that vehement longing shall never, never be fulfilled?

To what purpose is that restless seeking for satisfaction a part of

our very nature, and why have we aspirations for a higher, better,

nobler life if there is nothing that ever can realize our ideals?

No ! We can not believe that human life, with yearnings and

aspirations, is such an illusion. A meaning it must have—a goal,
an aim, an object that will give to us the happiness we seek, and

in which we shall find the fullness of that noble life that our nature

itself proclaims we ought to live.

But who shall tell us where this lasting happiness is to be found ?

Who shall guide us to the object that will give completeness to

human life? Who, that is to say, will reveal, fully and clearly, the

true meaning of life?

Unless we know why we are here, for what purpose we are made,

we must always be going astray and missing the mark. It is all-

important for us that we should make no mistake in this matter;

for if we do, life for us will be a failure.

To whom, then, shall we go for the answer? Dear brethren,

there is one test, and only one, of ability to teach us in regard

to this pressing matter. Those who profess to teach us must show

evidence that they know. And a merely theoretical knowledge will

not do; our informants must be those who have proved in their

own lives the truth of what they say to us. They must be those

who have found true happiness and lived the nobler life ; they must

be those who have risen above the unsatisfying ideals of earth,

whose feet are upon the rock, and not upon the shifting quick-

sand; who can speak with confidence because they have found

what we are seeking; who have found some principle, some philo-

sophy of life which makes them serene and happy now, and

promises them, without fear of disappointment, the ultimate, com-

plete fulfilment of that desire inherent in us all—for happiness
that shall be perfect, satisfying and without end.

Who can come to us with these qualifications and tell us what

we so greatly need to know? Can the philosophers? They do



IO JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

not agree amongst themselves. Can the geniuses of the world?

Some of them have been the most unhappy of men. Can those

who have given themselves to culture, to intellectual pursuits, to

estheticism? They number amongst them some who have given

way to the most degrading passions.

Who are they who have found a principle of happiness and

nobility of life that has never failed one single individual who has

carried it out; an explanation of life’s meaning that has never

misled those who have acted upon it?

You will say, perhaps, that such fortunate beings can not be

found in this world of ours; that it is too good to be true.

Brethren, it is true; there have been and there are such people;

people who have found the way of never-ending happiness, begin-

ing in this world and enduring in the world to come; people who

have learnt and can teach us the real meaning of human life.

These people are the saints of God.

Listen to a saying of one of God’s saints—a saying which, when
meditated upon and allowed to penetrate the heart and mind, has

led thousands of souls to the perfection of human life. It is simple

and almost bald in its expression, but it solves in a word the riddle

of life

:

“Man was made for this end
;
that he might praise and reverence

the Lord his God, and, serving him, at length be saved.

“All other things on earth were made to help man to reach the

object for which he was created.”

Brethren, here is the whole philosophy of life; here is the path

to happiness, life’s true meaning and the way to salvation.

We were made for God; to know Him, to love Him, to serve
Him now, and to be blessed hereafter by the possession of Him

forever. Here is the reason why our souls are filled with that

continual desire for a happiness which sad experience tells us the

world can never give. We may err, and seek the satisfaction of

that desire in most unworthy objects; that is an abuse of a thing

which is good in itself—for that desire is good, it is placed in us
by Him who made us for Himself, and it is the groping of the

soul after God for whom it was made ; by God, and by God alone,

can it ever be fulfilled.

And, dear brethren, some day we shall know this, when earthly

things have fallen away from us, and we stand alone at the entrance

to eternity. Now, the things of earth seem so real, and the things



JESUS CHRIST AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 1

1

of heaven so shadowy and far-off. But in truth it is earthly things

that are the shadow, and eternal things the substance; these alone

really matter.

No scheme or plan for individual happiness and well-being, nor

for social happiness and well-being; no attempt to better the con-

dition of this world or of human life will succeed in the long run

if the things of eternity are left out of it, since it is for the things

of eternity that we were made.

This is the teaching of those who know, of those who have

proved it in their lives
;
who have found, and helped others to

find, the fullest, highest happiness that can be found on earth; a

happiness that carries with it the assured and certain hope and

expectation of bliss unending in the possession of God’s all-satis-

fying love forever. Hear some words of another saint—that great
lover of God, St. Paul. Mark the serene confidence with which

he speaks: “I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor

principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come

;

nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be

able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus

our Lord” (Rom. viii, 38-39).

“Which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”—there we have the root
of the matter. For from whom do the saints learn that lesson of

the meaning of life which they teach so well to us, the lesson of

true happiness, of full abundant life; how to live a human life

that shall be noble and grand, and filled with the beauty of holi-

ness, and shall grow into the life of bliss unending? St. Paul has

told us. The love of God, which is our ture life, is to be found “in

Jesus Christ our Lord.” He is “the way, and the truth, and the

life.” The way to follow, the truth to learn, the very life of souls

to whom He gives Himself, and whom He vivifies by grace. He

lived the one all-perfect human life. The saints, each in his

degree, lived perfect lives, because they lived in union with Him,

and closely followed Him; and we too, if we would live full lives,

lives in which every noble faculty shall reach its highest develop-

ment
;
lives that shall not be cramped and stunted by the narrowing

influence of merely earthly ideals, we, too, must live by Jesus

Christ, possessing the things of earth as if we possessed them not,

using them in so far as they help us to God; following Jesus the

way of life, learning from Him who will teach the true life, receiv-

ing from Him that life-giving grace which He freely offers to us.



12 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

The life of Jesus is the supreme model of what a human life

should be; the supreme revelation of life’s true inner meaning.

What was the principle of the life of Jesus; to what end were

all His actions directed? To the salvation of mankind—true!
But why did He work this work of salvation; why did He will to

save mankind? For nothing else than to give glory to God His

Father, and to satisfy the yearnings of love divine. God’s glory

and God’s love—these were the great objects of the life of Jesus
Christ. In the stable at Bethlehem, in the holy house at Nazareth,

in His journeyings to and fro amongst men, in His bitter suffer-

ings, in His death of shame and in His glorious triumph, and now

in His heavenly life, God’s love and God’s glory were the objects

of His human existence. For that same love and glory, too, He

lives His eucharistic life here amongst us, giving glory to God

and His own true life to us.

“I seek not my own will,” He told His disciples, “but the will

of Him who sent me.” He lived not for Himself, but for God.

And of His earthly life St. Paul, quoting the prophetic words

of the Psalmist, writes: “Wherefore, when he cometh into the

world, he saith: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not, but a

body hast thou fitted to me. . . . Then said I, behold, I come;

in the head of the Book it is written of me that I should do thy

will, O God” (lb. x, 5-7).
The true meaning, then, of human life, taught us by Jesus Christ

and proved by all who have faithfully followed Him, is this

—

that God has made us for Himself and His love; that our true life

is to live loving Him; that He and His love alone can satisfy

our souls.

“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer

the loss of his soul?” and “this is eternal life—that they may know
thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

If we go astray from God, that is the loss of our souls, and not

the whole world can compensate that loss.

When our divine Lord was tempted by the devil, one of the temp-

tations placed before Him was just that one which assails every

child of man—the temptation to forget the true meaning and object
of life. “The devil led him onto a high mountain, and showed him

all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and he said

to him: to thee will I give all this power and the glory of them,

for to me they are delivered and to whom I will I give them. If



JESUS CHRIST AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

thou, therefore, wilt adore me, all shall be thine” (S. Luke iv,

6-7). The joy of this world, the glory of this world, the pomp and

circumstance of this world—these are things which the devil whis-
pers to us will satisfy us, the things for which we are made; these

things he would persuade us constitute the meaning of life. “But

Jesus answering said to him,” and He says to us—not for these
things was man made, for it is written, “thou shalt adore the Lord

thy God and him only shalt thou serve.”



14 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

II. JESUS CHRIST AND THE EVILS OF LIFE

“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss
of his soul?”—Mark viii, 36, 37.

SYNOPSIS.—I. The universal reign of “law” in nature; the existence of
inevitable “natural laws.” Man’s power over these “natural laws” in
virtue of his intellectual faculties. Disastrous effects of any mistake or
violation of natural laws. It is the “law” itself that brings the punish-
ment of its violation, in the natural order.

II. Analogy with this of the results of violating the moral law.
This law known by (a) conscience, and (b ) revelation. This violation is
what we call mortal sin; its result the ruin of the soul. Hence sin is
the great evil of life. Other things are only truly evils inasmuch as

they are the results of sinful actions; or lead to sin.

III. Fallacy of those who hold out hope of an earthly paradise to
be arrived at by evolution or legislation. This does not touch the root

of the matter. Religion alone can do this effectively.

IV. Hell, as the inevitable result of the violation of the moral law.

Hell essentially the loss of God.

V. To learn what sin is, we must go to Jesus Christ. Contemplate
His human life as all-perfect, and revealing to us God’s perfections, and
compare with it the life of a sinner. Contemplate Gethsemane; Calvary;

the dead Christ in the arms of His sorrowing mother. Take the side of
Jesus against sin, the great evil of life.

The investigation of this universe of which, if we judge by

material standards only, our earth forms so inconsiderable a part,

reveals to us as everywhere existent the reign of law. Everywhere,

from end to end of creation, as far as science has been able to

explore it, we find in operation certain great forces—constant,
inviolable, unalterable by any but a supernatural intervention; so

inevitable is their action that we might well think them due to blind

necessity were it not for the clear evidence they carry with them

of a Supreme intelligence that originated and directs them.

They permeate the whole of the material creation of God, and

their operation is exercised in the minutest details of the great

work of His almighty hand. Take, for instance, the forces of at-

traction and gravitation. By these the innumerable hosts of

heavenly bodies are kept each in its own place and guided unerringly

in their swift courses through space. It is these forces that keep

this earth of ours safe in its yearly path about the sun; that give

stability to the everlasting hills and keep the ocean within its bounds,

that direct the course of the rivers ; and it is these same forces that



JESUS CHRIST AND THE EVILS OF LIFE 15

poise the dewdrop upon the tenderest blade of grass and float the

almost invisible silken thread woven by the most minute of insects.

Borrowing a word from human and rational affairs, we term these

forces “ laws,” by reason of their inevitableness and the strict obedi-

ence given to them by the irrational part of creation.

Now God has given man a certain power over these great forces,

or “laws,” of nature. In our intelligence we possess a faculty

nobler than all things that are merely material, a faculty that can

explore the secrets of nature to a certain extent, and can turn its

forces to our own uses and purposes. Look back upon the century

that has passed. What wonderful conquests of natural forces has

man’s intelligence made in that time; on sea and land, above and

beneath the surface of the earth; and now has begun the conquest

of the air, while that wondrous force called electricity can be di-

rected at man’s will whithersoever he desires without the medium

of any intervening wire between the sender and receiver

!

But how fatal is any mistake made by man in the use of these

great forces
;
how dire the catastrophes that ensue upon any viola-

tion of nature’s laws ! How simply awful, for instance, would be the
result of any general carelessness upon one of our great railway

systems; how truly terrible, as it is, are the results now of any

chance carelessness or error. Such error brings its own dreadful

punishment and men shudder when they hear or read of the victims

who pay with their lives for the mistake.

And note, dear brethren, that it is these very forces whose rule

has been disobeyed, it is these very same laws that have been vio-

lated, which, working along their inevitable lines, bring down the

punishment.

Undoubtedly God often interferes to prevent these catastrophes

in answer to prayer; and by the guardianship of the holy angels

who minister to His redeemed prevents these fatal mistakes from

being made, or from being made at a moment that would precipi-

tate calamity; but when He wills to permit the error and the

calamity that follows upon it, that calamity is due to the laws of

nature, the forces of nature following their appointed course.

It does not belong to my subject to point out to you how those

who sutler from such action of natural laws are often the gainers

thereby in regard to the next life
;
nor how sometimes those things

are a punishment for sin
;
how, too, they are part of the sad results

of man’s original fall from grace, by which pain and disease and



i6 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

death entered into this world. I have brought the subject before

you to illustrate what happens as the result of the violation of a

higher law than the laws of nature.

For, dear brethren, there is a higher law than those which govern

the movements of the material universe
;
a law still more inevitable

and unalterable than they
;
a law that God himself can not change

—

the eternal law of right and wrong: and even God can not change

it, because that law is in His own divine nature—nay, it is His
nature, it is Himself

,
for He Himself is eternal right, eternal justice,

eternal holiness, eternal truth, and so the absolute standard and

norm of truth and holiness and justice and right.

And you will easily see, dear brethren, that these things—truth
and justice and holiness and right—have to do with intelligence and
will, and that if God has made creatures possessed of intellect and

will, they are bound to know and to follow that supreme eternal

standard of truth and of right, which is naught else than God

himself. Conscience, even apart from divine revelation, teaches this

to every child of man that has reached the use of reason, even

though it be but to an elementary degree; for every child knows,

by that inner monitor, that certain things are right and certain

things wrong, and is aware of a standard of right and wrong that is

recognized as binding and external to the human mind.

And just as by investigation of the laws of nature we can see

the inner meaning of the universe, and descry the real order and

harmony that are beneath outward phenomena, however chaotic and

disordered they may seem, so, by listening to the voice of con-

science and following its commands, we can descry the eternal law

of God, a law and rule that we feel to be imperative, revealing a

supreme Lawgiver, to whom we feel that we and all others are

strictly bound.

And, dear brethren, if we have the teachings of science to enlighten

us concerning the great laws and forces of the visible creation, so,

too, we have the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, to make clearer

and to complete the teachings of conscience, and to guide us when,

by reason of our fallen nature, we are in perplexity or doubt as to

the straight path of our duty to our God. And to carry the parallel

further, just as the violation by accident of the laws of nature in-

evitably results in disaster, destruction and death; so, if the intelli-

gent creatures of God, not now accidentally, but knowingly and

willingly violate the eternal law of right and justice, putting them-



JESUS CHRIST AND THE EVILS OF LIFE
*7

selves consciously out of harmony with that law, that is to say, out

of harmony with God, disaster, destruction and ruin of soul and

body are the dreadful and irremediable consequence unless God him-

self intervenes and gives a remedy. That disaster has happened to

some of God’s creatures. It has happened to the multitude of fallen

angels
;
and in their case it was irreparable. They sinned with such

light and knowledge, with such intensity of rebellious wilfulness,

that God’s dread justice cast them off at once. The disaster hap-

pened also to man, to the whole human race, who in the person

of Adam were put out of harmony with the eternal law. But man

sinned through the suggestions of a crafty tempter, and with less

perfection of knowledge
;
and for him a way of reparation has been

found by the divine mercy. Nevertheless, though God in His good-

ness did not cast us off utterly and finally, as He did the rebel angels,

yet because of that fatal act of sin and disobedience, disaster came

upon us
;
sin, misery, death, and all the evils of life entered into the

world
;
and many, alas, who refuse the salvation offered by the love

of our heavenly Father and persist in their violation of His holy

law to the end, bring upon themselves the inevitable eternal ruin

that, if they would, they might have escaped.

Yes, dear brethren, that is the final result of the violation of the

eternal law. It is a misreading, a wilful misunderstanding of the

meaning of life of which I spoke to you on Sunday last. It is a

turning our backs upon that God for whom we were made, who

alone can satisfy us
;

it is an act that, but for God’s merciful inter-

vention, would have destroyed us for good and all the first time it

was committed; an act that, unrepented of and persisted in, must

md will bring about our eternal wreck and ruin. This, then, is the

great evil of life, and its name is sin—mortal sin.
What are all the other things we call evils—sorrow, disease,

misery, poverty, death itself; what the ruin and destruction of the

universe compared with the ruins of an immortal soul that has lost

its way forever? What is a mistake about a natural law with its

temporal consequences compared with a wilful violation of God’s

moral law and its eternal consequences? Those things—those tem-
poral calamities are the afflictions of life of which I am to speak

to you on a future occasion. They may be called evils when they

lead to sin, and when they are regarded as the consequence of sin,

whether of original sin, or of individual and actual sin; but it is

their connection with sin that makes them evils. Sin is the supreme



<8 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

evil, and the cause, either remotely or directly, of all else to which

we give the name of evil.

Had it not been for original sin, the afflictions and miseries of

life would never have existed. If we could do away with men’s

actual sins now, the other evils of life would be immeasurably

lessened. Take away from the world avarice, ambition, envy, anger,

pride and lust, and it would be a different place.

There are those in our days, as there have often been before,

who hold out the hope of an earthly paradise, to be arrived at by

the gradual evolution of the race, and helped on by political and

economic measures. A few years ago they told us that it was at
hand; now they say that it will take centuries, perhaps, to realize.

But it is to come. The evils of life are to be abolished by a change

in the political and material conditions of human society. God

forbid that I should speak against any good political measures, or

any just economic legislation that should be true reforms and

should tend to the betterment of the lot of the downtrodden and

oppressed. Such measures, indeed, are often a necessary preliminary

to the spiritual betterment of the people; for as a man must live

before he can philosophize, so, too, he must be freed from grinding

anxiety as to how he shall gain his bread from one day to another

before he can think of his soul. But political and economic changes

do not go to the root of the matter
;
they do not deal effectively and

completely, nor can they deal effectively or completely, with the

real root of all evil, which is sin. Religion—true religion alone can
do that; for only true religion can change men’s hearts; and only

by changing men’s hearts can we remove sin. Not a misguided

socialism which casts aside religion and leaves it altogether out of

account in the proposed reorganization of society—not that, but an
enlightened Christian individualism that keeps the middle course

between a slavish subjection of all to the State and a proud inde-

pendence of all community obligations, will lessen the evils of life.

I say “lessen,” because God has not promised that they shall be

altogether done away till the new heavens and the new earth shall

come. And the evils of life can be lessened, as they have been in

times past and will be again, not by a binding and fettering of men’s

individuality by State organization, but by their free obedience and

willing association in the divine society instituted by Jesus Christ,

the Christian Catholic Church, which affords to men the means of

grace by which they may attain to the true higher individualism.



JESUS CHRIST AND THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 19

to holiness and gpcdness and the virtue of perfect divine charity, that

is the strongest bond that can unite men one to another.

The thought of hell, dear brethren, is an awful one. To some

it is a difficulty; to those, that is, who have not the Catholic faith.

But we must remember that hell essentially is the loss of God
;
and

that the unrepentant sinner loses God by his own conscious and

wholly wilful act; nay, more, he rejects God by his conscious and

wilful act. Knowingly and willingly and persistently to the very

end he violates the eternal law of right and wrong; and hell is the

inevitable consequence. It is not merely a vindictive punishment.

It is a mystery to us, because we can not fathom God’s nature, and,

therefore, can not see sin as God sees it, nor perceive clearly the

absoluteness of the opposition between sin and all that God is. But

this is not an excuse for persistence in sin; for God has told us

plainly what sin will bring us to. Could we see sin as God sees it,

we should not be surprised at its involving eternity of punishment,

but we should wonder that God could forgive it at all.

If we would learn what an evil sin is, we must go to Jesus Christ.

He, the All-merciful, who came to die for sinners, is obliged to

denounce against them the awful sentence. “Depart ye cursed into

everlasting fire.” He has warned us in the question, “What shall it

profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his

soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ?”

In the human life and character of Jesus, the Perfect Man, can

be learned what the great evil of mortal sin is in the sight

of the almighty God. That life is the most perfect created

likeness of the divine perfections. Compare the life and ac-

tions of a sinner with the life and actions of Jesus Christ, and

you will begin to see the extreme of opposition between sin and

all that God is; how God is supreme goodness, justice and purity,

while sin is supreme badness, injustice, impurity; yes, and how sin

is supreme un-reason; for it is the futile and impotent uprising of

the creature against the eternal law of right and wrong that God is,

a law that must prevail. Kneel with Jesus in Gethsemane, and see

what sin did
;
and learn what it must therefore be, since the horror

of it thus laid in the very dust Him who made the heavens and the

earth. Stand beneath the Cross of Jesus, and see the most innocent

one that ever lived suffering the punishment of the most abandoned

and incorrigible of criminals, and remember that sin is so great an

evil that the Father thus punished it, demanding that vicarious



20 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

penalty from the Son of His love. See the agonized Mother, in

speechless, nameless grief, embracing the lifeless body; looking at

those glazed eyes that can not answer with the glance of love, those

pallid lips that may not part in speech; and know that sin and sin

alone of all things that we call evil had power to take that life away.

And take consolation, take courage, rouse up your hope and your

love, for He who saved the dying thief died also to save you, and

offers you now His grace. Take His side against the great evil

of life; fight sin in all its forms; fight it in yourselves, fight it in

society, and that, under Christ, will be your remedy for all the

evils of human life.



JESUS CHRIST AND THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 21

III. JESUS CHRIST AND THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE

“A man’s life doth not consist in the abundance of things which he pos-

sessed.”—St. Luke xii, 15.

SYNOPSIS.—I. What we mean by an “illusion.” Illustration from a train.
Difference between an illusion and a delusion. An illusion is a misin-
terpretation of facts.

II. Life and this world are facts. They can be misunderstood.

Hence illusion—the illusions of life; misinterpretation of the meaning of
life. Recapitulation of life’s true meaning.

III. Attitude of the saints, and of our blessed Lord, to life and the

things of the world. They under no illusion. Variety of saints a proof

that it is not life’s circumstances, but the way we use them, upon which

sanctity and salvation depend; and the way we use them depends on our

view of life.

IV. Parable of the rich fool. Words of St. Ignatius Loyola.

V. How we become subject to illusion. How to judge whether we
are thus subject.

I am to speak to you to-day, dear brethren, about the illusions

of life. Now by an “illusion” we commonly mean the misinterpre-

tation, by our minds or our senses, of something that really exists,

but the true meaning of which we mistake.

An illusion, then, is not the same thing as a “delusion”; for a

delusion is the mere invention of our fancy, having no basis in fact,

but only in a disordered imagination.

The man who sits in a railway carriage when his train is stand-

ing still in a station, and sees another train close to him begin to

move, has an almost irresistible impression that it is his own train

that has started, and seems to feel a sudden stoppage, and almost

a physical shock when the disappearance from sight of the last car-

riage of the train that really is moving reveals to him the fact that

he has been all the time at rest.

His false impression can be corrected by the reflection that he

does not feel the customary vibration
;
but this requires some effort.

This is what we call an illusion—an optical illusion. It was a similar
illusion that made man think for centuries that the sun and stars

revolved about the earth, until other considerations than those

suggested by sight taught them better.

But when a man in fever or insanity imagines himself pursued by

a furious enemy seeking his life, we have a case of pure delusion,

not founded on any actual fact external to the sufferer.



22 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

In the case of an illusion, on the contrary, there are real and

true facts, but they are misinterpreted by the observer. The two

trains, in the case I put to you, really exist; the movement exists

also, but is attributed for the moment to the wrong train—until
the false impression is corrected by further observations.

This human life of ours is a fact; a great fact, an undeniable

fact. At the very foundation of all our intellectual and moral ideas

lies the fact that we are—that we exist—and that a true and real
world is about us. Whatever certain modern philosophers may

say, who, in imitation of some of old, have endeavored to cast

doubt upon the reality of things, they are themselves obliged in

every conscious action of their lives to deny the false philosophy

they have arrived at. They have arrived at it only by endeavoring

to go behind those first principles of common sense taught us by

the light of reason, that God has put in us to be our guide.

Life, then, is a fact
;
and the world is a fact. They are not delu-

sions. But they are facts which we can misinterpret
;
facts of which

we can miss the true meaning; and from this arise the illusions

of life.

Let me recall to you briefly what I said two Sundays ago about

the true meaning of human life. We then considered how our nature
itself begins to teach us the meaning of life by its undying, never-

satisfied longing for happiness—for happiness complete and serene
and unending—short of which we can never be permanently content.
We found that only one class of persons can say that they have

found the path to such happiness as that; and can, therefore, claim

to teach us how and where such happiness is to be found.

Not the votaries of the world, for they have tried all that the

world can give and found it wanting. Not even the followers of

high and nobler pursuits—of science, of literature, of art—for their
lives ofttimes have been unhappy, and their desires have been

unsatisfied. One class only—the saints of God—have been serene
and happy in the midst of the heaviest trials and sharpest suffer-

ings—happy in this world in full security of having found and
entered upon the path that leads to eternal blessedness.

They know the real meaning of human life, having learned it

from Jesus Christ, their Master and Teacher; and they not only

learned it, but acted upon their knowledge.

Yet, dear brethren, the things of this life, the things of this

world were as true and real to the saints as they are to us. The



JESUS CHRIST AND THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 23

saints lived in the world ; they had to use the things of the world

;

they had the same bodily needs, the same intellectual needs; the

same affections that call so loudly for someone to love; the same

desires for human sympathy ; the same love of parents and kindred

and home. They were not wanting in any of those human qualities

that are characteristic of man as man.

Nor, dear brethren, with all reverence be it said—nor was our
blessed Lord Himself different in this from ourselves. He was truly

man, tried and tempted in all things even as we are—sin apart.
He lived a human life; He needed food and raiment and money;

His Sacred human Heart was full of love and sympathy for others

;

and full of intense desire that the love and sympathy of others

should be extended to Himself. To Him, as to us, the names of

Father, Friend and Home, and above all the name of Mother, were

sacred and inexpressibly dear.

But, dear brethren, though He lived in the world, and, having

willed to become man, needed and used the things of this world,

yet our divine Lord, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, could not

be under any illusions in regard to the things of the world; could

not mistake their meaning nor their purpose; for His soul lived

ever in the bright light of the Beatific Vision—the sight of God

—

in whom, as man, He saw the very truth and the true meaning of all

things else.

Nor were the saints under any illusions in regard to earthly

things, for they learned from Jesus Christ the true meaning of life.

It must sometimes be a puzzle, I think, to thoughtful people who

have not the happiness of being Catholics, to see what a variety

of classes is represented in the Church’s calendar of saints. Nor

is this a useless consideration for us Catholics ourselves.

To some people outside the Church, a Catholic saint is a person

who has got into a strange morbid state of mind, in which he takes

a quite different view of life from others; looks upon all things

earthly as a snare of the evil one
;
and tries to escape the snare by

cutting himself off, as far as human nature will allow, from all the

delights and concerns, and even from the necessities of life.

Is there not also, dear brethren, a temptation for ourselves to

look upon the saints too much in this way; to think that they are

inhuman, in some way differently constituted from ordinary people,

so that the things of this world do not appeal to them as they do

to us?



24 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

Or at least are we not disposed to think that our circumstances

and surroundings make it impossible for us to be like the saints?

It is quite true that sanctity does need special conditions; but

those conditions are far more within the person who becomes a

saint than without; and the facts I have mentioned, that all classes

are represented in the Church’s calendar, proves this. There have

been the rich and the poor; the obscure and the noble; princes on

their thrones; servants and beggars, bishops and priests, monks

and nuns, as well as soldiers, sailors, statesmen and merchants; the

young as well as the old, the unlearned as well as the learned,

philosophers and men of letters as well as those who could neither

read nor write; fathers and mothers of families as well as conse-

crated spouses of Jesus Christ.

It was not, then, the circumstances or surroundings of life, that

made all these to be saints, but the use they made of these circum-

stances and surroundings. This is the secret of their sanctity; this

is the thing in which, with such variety of earthly conditions, they

were all alike
;
and this is the thing in which we can be like them,

apart from special effects of special graces of union with God that

they had, and which He grants to whom He will.

The use we make of the things of life—that is the important point
in regard to holiness and salvation.

And the use we make of life depends upon the view we take

of life. If, like the saints, we take the right view of life, taught

us by their example, and taught to them and us by Jesus Christ

Our Lord, then, by God’s grace, we shall make of life the right use.

In other words, if, like the saints, we can get rid of the illusions

of life, get rid of them in our conduct as well as in our thoughts, we

shall begin to be like them and like our divine Lord and Master.

The cause of an illusion, like that of the man in the train, is always

the failure to grasp all the circumstances of a case. The man in

question thinks he is moving because he attends only to what sight

tells him; forgetting that sensation does not bear out what sight

appears to prove.

And the cause of our illusions in regard to life is the failure to

grasp all its circumstances.

We are placed in a universe of things visible and palpable
;
things

which strongly impress our senses. To us the things we can touch

and see and hear are so real, that we forget that there are other

and deeper realities.



JESUS CHRIST AND THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 2
5

This is true even with regard to unseen realities that are not

necessarily supernatural nor spiritual. A man too fond of money,
always engrossed in the pursuit of it, comes to forget that there are

such things as honor, generosity, kindness, love, sympathy, pity

—

all of which, though unseen, are realities which we should be sorry

to see abolished from the world.

Such a man is under an illusion. A man given up to sensual
pleasures may easily come to lose sight of the fact that there are

intellectual pleasures, artistic pleasures, far higher and nobler than

the things he gives himself to. He, too, is under an illusion.

And a man may be high-minded, noble, elevated in all his tastes

;

upright and even irreproachable in conduct; and yet not realize

that around and beyond this present world is another—a spiritual
world, the realm of the supernatural, God’s kingdom of grace.

This he never thinks of
;
and he is under an illusion.

It is not that money, nor pleasures of sense, nor intellectual and

artistic pursuits are unrealities or delusions; it is not that they are

useless
;

it is not that they are always undesirable, nor in all cir-

cumstances wrong. Nor are a higher-minded natural nobility or

elevation of taste or uprightness of conduct unreal
;
far less wrong.

No; the illusion does not consist in looking upon these things as

real or good or useful in their proper place
;
but in excluding higher

things, and making the lower things, good, useful, and even noble

though they may be, the end and aim of life.

These things are not the end and aim of life; they are not what

we were made for.

The illusion consists in forgetting that there are other and higher

realities; greater things than they for which we are made; for-

getting that we were made for heaven, for God and His love, that

we are destined to be citizens of the kingdom of grace here

and of glory hereafter.

Read that parable of our divine Lord in the twelfth chapter of

St. Luke, spoken to illustrate this great truth of which the whole

life of Jesus was an exposition. One had said to Him, “Master,

speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me.” “And
He said to them : take heed of all covetousness

;
for a man’s life doth

not consist in the abundance of things that he possesseth.” Then

He spoke a similitude to them—the parable of the rich fool
;
teach-

ing us by this striking image, and by those that followed, what an

illusion we labor under when we think that the things of this world



26 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

are all In all; and summing up His teaching in the words, “Seek

ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all those things

shall be added to you.”

What is this but the teaching put into a few words by St.

Ignatius Loyola, that I have quoted on a former occasion: “Man

was made for this end ; that he might praise and reverence the Lord

His God
,
and, serving him, at length he saved. All other things

on earth were made to help man to reach the object for which he

was created
”

This is what the saints realized
;
and, therefore, they

had no illusions in regard to this life.

They saw the beauty of the world, and they admired it and

gave thanks to God for it. Who was so great a lover of nature as

St. Francis? But he looked beyond the outward form, and saw God

within, and the beauty of nature revealed to him more and more

of God.

The saints appreciated the friendship of the world; but they

loved their friends in God and for God and sanctified their human

love with glowing charity divine.

They made use of the riches of this world; but as stewards of

God, holding their possessions for those that had need.

In a word they used the things of the world for that purpose

for which those things were made—to help them to heaven. Some
were called to give up all

;
they obeyed

;
others were not so called

;

still they became saints, for the)" used the things of earth and all

the circumstances of life well; never permitting them to come be-

tween their souls and God.

The great illusion of life is to think that earthly good things

are all in all; that they can satisfy, that they are the end and object

of human existence. There is the illusion. It matters not whether

it be the grosser things of earth or the more noble and elevated;

the things of the body or the things of the mind
;
if we make them

the supreme object we are like the rich man in the parable, and some

day it will be said to us, “Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be re-

quired of thee.” Thy soul, made for God and given to creatures

;

thy soul, that rejected its only lasting good and now can never, never

have it.

I gave you, dear brethren, as an instance of an optical illusion the

apparent movement around the earth of the sun and other heavenly

bodies. Now we find it convenient in every-day life to keep up

that illusion, and to speak as if it were a truth. We talk of the



JESUS CHRIST AND THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 27

sun rising and setting, we measure times and seasons by his ap-

parent changes of position as if these were really due to the sun’s

movements and not to the earth’s.

I think that many of us act in this way with regard to the great

truth that our blessed Lord so frequently inculcated and which we

have been considering to-day. We acknowledge it to be true; but

we act as if it were not. In practise we put the world first; as if

the world and the things of the world were fixed, eternal, immov-

able, instead of passing, changeable, temporal. We forget that the
fashion of this world passeth away

;
that Eternity, which was before

the world and will be after the world, is the fixed unchangeable state

to which we must all come.

If we think that we can get to heaven in this way, that is by

putting from us the real truth, and acting as if this world were

all, I should call that vain hope more than an illusion; I should

call it a delusion indeed, and the greatest of all delusions.

We cannot be saved unless by God’s mercy we recognize practi-
cally as well as theoretically the truth of this matter. For the illu-

sions of life may be manifested, and are among Christians often

manifested in practical conduct; that conduct by which a man

denies in act what he believes in his heart and knows to be true.

It is for each of us to examine his own life to see whether this

is his own sad case. There are many ways in which we can judge

whether it is so or not. For instance, we can judge by our habitual

attitude toward sin. Do we really shrink from mortal sin as the

greatest evil that can happen to us in life
;
or do we, like so many,

cast lingering, longing, Backward glances at forbidden pleasures,

even if we do not actually commit the evil that we half desire

and perhaps wish were not forbidden? We can judge, too, by the
use we make of confession as a real means of improvement or

amendment. We can judge by our readiness to profess our faith
without shame or human respect

;
by our promptitude in taking the

right side in any public question in which our religious faith is

involved. We can judge by our attendance at Mass and the Sac-
raments—or rather, I should say, by our truly devout use of these
great means of grace

;
by our thorough earnestness about the salva-

tion of our souls. If the result of this self-examination is favorable,

we may say that the illusions of life have no serious hold upon our

minds.

To conclude, then, dear brethren, the illusions of life are all



28 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

those things, whatsoever they may be, that present themselves to

us as so desirable, or so important, as to exclude the things of

God and of eternal salvation ; all things which cause us to lose sight

of the true meaning of life, and allure us so to set our hearts upon

them that, whatever we profess in the abstract, we live practically

as if we thought we were created for the sole enjoyment of those

things, and as if we believed that in them true and lasting happiness

is to be found.

Anything and everything of this world that presents itself to

us in that way is an illusion. It is for us to decide whether we will

allow ourselves to be led away by these illusions
;
and we must lose

no time in making the decision. Some of you may have thought

that I meant to speak to you to-day of the disappointments of life.

Life, indeed, is full of them, but what are they but illusions found

out? And if from the disappointments of life we learn true wis-

dom, they are, in truth, a blessing. It is sad when the young are

cut off in the bloom of their fresh youth; sad when early promise

is not fulfilled
;
sad when bright hopes of earthly happiness are

blighted; sadder still, perhaps, when ambition fulfilled does not

bring the joy that was expected of it. But in heaven youth and

age are not, but the full stature of a new life in God; there life’s

so-called failures have triumph
;
there is joy surpassing all that we

can hope for or desire; for there, all illusion past, the very Truth

Himself shall be revealed to our adoring gaze; and seeing His

beauty and His graciousness beyond compare we shall wonder that

for a single moment the illusions of this earthly life could have had

a hold upon our hearts.



JESUS CHRIST AND THE AFFLICTIONS OF LIFE 29

IV. JESUS CHRIST AND THE AFFLICTIONS OF LIFE

“Wherefore it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren,

that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest before God. . . .

For in that wherein he himself hath suffered and been tempted, he is able

to succor also them that are tempted.”—Heb. ii, 1 7, 18.

SYNOPSIS.—I. Contrast between the beauty of nature, and the afflictions
of mankind. Why is this

?

II. The world not as God intended it. This suggested by reason,

and revealed clearly in Scripture. The original curse. Genesis and St.

Paul. Rom. viii, 18-23. Sin the cause of life's afflictions. Exposition of

St. Paul’s teaching.

III. The promised restitution of all things in Christ. II Pet. 10-12;

Acts Hi, 19-21; Isaias Ixv, 7.

IV. How to treat the afflictions of life.

When, on some bright, calm day we look down from a command-

ing position upon a smiling fertile plain, wide-spread beneath us,

and see the beauty of the earth that God has made, our hearts are

lifted up and we thank God for His good creation. Then, perhaps,

we descry the roof and towers of a great city, and our thoughts are

carried naturally to the thousands or millions of human beings who

spend their lives therein
;
and the contrast, the sad contrast, between

the calm beauty of nature, and the misery of so many millions
;
the

inevitable suffering that is the lot, indeed, of every child of Adam

comes into our minds and fills our hearts with sadness.

The question will then irresistibly arise—why is it that this sad
contrast exists? Why is it that man is born to sorrow and suffer-

ing? What is the explanation of the afflictions of human life?

That these afflictions exist is a fact that is only too true and too

evident. There is no one who does not know this by personal

experience. Who can say that he has never suffered in some way,

greater or less ? Who can observe what goes on about him and fail

to be painfully struck by the truly vast amount of misery and

suffering that exist in the world? The man who does not recog-

nize the afflictions of life must be one who selfishly closes his eyes

to the concerns of his neighbors
;
and he will have to learn, sooner

or later, by his own suffering, what affliction and sorrow mean.

Whence, then, do sorrow and affliction come, and what is their

explanation ?

First', dear brethren, it is clear from Holy Scripture that this



3°
JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

world, and particularly human life, is not what God at first made

it, and is not what He intended it to be. Moreover a study of

human nature is of itself sufficient to give us an intimation of this

fact. With such nobility of nature as man possesses, with such

excellent capacities and high ideals, he yet falls below his ideals

and fails to realize in action the noble purposes for which his

nature and capacities are evidently intended. Does this not show

that there has been a great original catastrophe, by which man’s

nature has been injured and wounded? That it is so, and that all

creation is in some manner involved in the catastrophe, is clear from

the inspired words of Holy Writ.

“Cursed is the earth,” God said to Adam when he had fallen into

sin. “Cursed is the earth in thy work; with labor and toil shalt

thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it

bring forth to thee. ... In the sweat of thy face shalt thou
eat bread till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken

;

for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

Man, by falling into sin, has involved the rest of creation in his

fall
;
he has dragged all nature down with him. This is a mysterious

truth, dear brethren, but it is a truth most plainly taught in Holy

Scripture. There is a close connection between man and the rest

of the earthly creation. He is the only rational being that God

has placed on this earth
;
the only one who can give to God reason-

able service, who can serve God; that is, freely and with under-

standing; choosing to serve God because he knows that this is due

to God’s supreme excellence. And so man has been called the

“High Priest of Nature,” who, by his willing and understanding

service, gathers up, as it were, and presents to God the praise

given to Him by His other works, but given to Him by them with-

out freedom and without understanding. There are many mys-

teries of nature, as well as of grace and revelation
;
and it may well

be that, could we penetrate more deeply the things, even of nature

only, we should be able also to find some intimation of the bond

that unites us to the rest of God’s creatures. Be this as it may,

the connection exists, and is taught by the revealed Word of God.

Turn to the eighth chapter of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, and

you will find a passage of wonderful force and beauty on this

subject.

St. Paul speaks first of the afflictions of human life, and holds

out the hope of future recompense and restitution. He shows how



JESUS CHRIST AND THE AFFLICTIONS OF LIFE 3i

all creation shares in these afflictions, and can look also for resti-

tution—the “restoration of all things in Christ.”
“I reckon,” he says, “that the sufferings of this time are not

worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be re-

vealed in us. For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the

revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject

to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject

in hope. Because the creature also itself shall be delivered, from

the servitude of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the

children of God. For we know that every creature groaneth and

travaileth in pain, even till now. And not only it, but ourselves also,

'who have the first fruits of the Spirit; even we ourselves groan

within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the

redemption of our body” (Rom. viii, 18-23).

This is a pregnant passage, dear brethren, and throws great light

upon the subject of my present discourse, “Jesus Christ and the

Afflictions of Life.” It accounts not only for those many afflic-

tions that we can trace to the actual sins of men, and which we

considered in a former sermon on the “Evils of Life”; but it

accounts also for the sufferings of animals, for the natural catas-

trophes and disasters, as well as for the personal sufferings of

human beings.

Sin, and nothing else, is at the root of all. Sin spoilt man, and

spoilt the world. Original sin began the evil, and man’s obstinate

perseverance in sin augments and continues it. The eternal law

has been violated and the inevitable consequences follow. It was

the firm belief of the Jewish doctors that man’s fall brought all

afflictions upon the human race and upon the rest of the earthly

creation. “Although all things were created perfect,” says one of

them (see “La Sainte Bible Commentee,” by L. Cl. Fillion, Paris,

1904, in loco), “they became corrupted when the first man sinned,

and they will not return to their primitive condition till the coming

of the Messias.”

“The creature,” says St. Paul, “was made subject to vanity.”

By the creature here is meant, not man, but the rest of the earthly

creation, both animate and inanimate; and by “vanity” is signified

“imperfection.” And it was not willingly; that is, it was by the

compulsion of some external force
—

“by reason of him that made

it subject.” These words, “by reason of him that made it subject,”

may refer either to God, in that He included all creation under the



32 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

curse of man, or to man himself, in that he involved all the rest of

earth in his own disgrace. But deliverance, a restitution is to come

;

for the creature is indeed “made subject to vanity,” but “in hope,

because the creature also itself—that is, not man merely, but the
rest of the creatures—shall be delivered from servitude of corrup-
tion.” And just as the rest of creation was cursed and spoilt

when man fell, so shall it be restored and reinstated in its primitive

goodness when man is himself restored and finally saved; for “the

creature itself shall be delivered from corruption into the glorious

liberty of the children of God.”

The same truth of the involving of nature in man’s fall, and its

final restitution by Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, is taught

in those passages of the Holy Scripture which speak of the new

heavens and the new earth that are to be created. “The day of

the Lord shall come as a thief,” writes St. Peter (II Pet. iii,

10-13), “in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence,

and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the

works that are in it shall be burnt up . . . and we look for a

new heaven and a new earth, according to his promises, in which

justice dwelleth.” And the same holy Apostle, in his discourse

after the miracle worked at the beautiful gate of the Temple, and

recorded in the third chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, says to

his hearers, “Be penitent . . . and be converted, that your sins

may be blotted out. That when the times of refreshment shall

come from the presence of the Lord, and he shall send him who

hath preached unto you, Jesus Christ, whom heaven indeed must

receive until the times of the restitution of all things which God

hath spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets from the beginning

of the world” (Acts iii, 19-21). Thus, again, speaks one of the

prophets to whom St. Peter here refers, the great prophet of the

Messias to come, Isaias: “Behold, I create new heavens and a

new earth, and the former things shall not be in remembrance, and

they shall not come upon the heart” (Isaias lxv, 17) ; and in a

passage in the following chapter Almighty God declares by His

mouth : “As the new heavens and the new earth which I will make

to stand before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed stand and

your name” (lb. lxvi, 22).

What a glorious hope for the future! And what a sure hope;

for it is the word and the promise of God! Do we not lose sight

too much of this future that is before us and before the world?



JESUS CHRIST AND THE AFFLICTIONS OF LIFE 33

What is the life of man but a passing shadow compared with that

eternity which was, and is, and ever shall be; and in which these

promises shall be fulfilled. It is not worth while to endure the

short affliction that shall earn so great a reward in the coming day

of the Lord?

But more afflictions exist and they are hard to bear, and though

life is so short, compared with eternity, yet it seems long to us,

and especially when we are in pain and trouble do its hours drag

wearily along. And it is with the afflictions of life that we are con-

cerned; to try to learn how we may bear them well and what they

mean, and what consolation and teaching our blessed Lord has to

give us in the midst of them.

And first, He has borne them Himself. As we walk along the

thorny way we can plant our feet in His own footprints, red with

blood. Truly “we have not a High Priest who can not have com-

passion on our infirmities, but one tempted in all things like as we

are without sin” (Heb. iv, 15).

And by His suffering and His endurance of the afflictions of

human life, He has changed the nature of pain and sorrow, and

all earthly woes. But for Him and His consecration of suffering

in His own person, it would have been merely a punishment for

sin and nothing more. But now it is the road to heaven, the path

to eternal glory
;

it constitutes a likeness to Himself
;

it purifies and

makes holy; it ennobles and strengthens; it is wholesome, though

a bitter medicine, for it has distilled into it the saving drops that

fell from the Cross on Calvary.

By all means let us strive, with all our power, to diminish the

sufferings that exist in the world. Our blessed Lord did this. He

relieved pain and suffering wherever He went. But He did not

abolish it. Instead of that He left it to be a true blessing to us,

if so be that we endure it particularly for His dear sake. He did

not abolish it, but He bore it Himself, and He lifts up His holy

Cross before our eyes that we may look to that and take courage

to endure
;
since by patient suffering we are made like Him and

trained for heaven. “We know,” says the Apostle, “that all things”

—and if all things, then suffering also—“work together unto good
to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints. For

whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable

to the image of His Son” (Rom. viii, 29). “And we see Jesus,”

writes the same great teacher, “who was made a little lower than



34 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and

honor” (Heb. ii, 9).

Sursum Corda! “Lift up your hearts!” Lift up your eyes to

the Cross of Jesus, and lift up your hearts to God. We have the
humble and the confident hope that we are among those whom

God has called to be one day saints in heaven; and, therefore,

we must be made in all things “conformable to the image of

His Son.” Conformable in suffering here below, if we are to be

conformable in glory hereafter. When we have done all we can,

and rightly done it, for it is the law of charity to lessen and relieve

the afflictions of human life, much inevitable suffering must still

remain. Let us endure it with great patience, and help others to

endure it with patience
—

“counting it all joy” when we shall fall

into divers tribulations, knowing that this “trying of our faith

worketh patience, and patience hath a perfect work,” that “we may

be perfect and entire, failing in nothing” (St. James i, 2-4).

Thus, and thus alone, dear brethren, can the afflictions of human

life be—not done away with—but sweetened, lightened, made more
than endurable. Those who think to abolish them by schemes of

legislation, by socialism, or any other nostrum, are merely dreamers.

All honor to those who strive to lessen them and to relieve them.

They are following the example of Jesus Christ Himself. But

they must not expect to do what Jesus Christ Himself willed not

to do; they must not expect any legislative measures will make a

paradise of earth. By all means let us be social reformers, but

let us not delude the people by promises that any scheme of human

policy can make them perfectly happy. One thing only can do

that, and that one thing is the faithful observance of God’s holy

law, as promulgated by the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ; and it

is not by doing away with the afflictions of human life altogether,

but by teaching us how to bear them, and how to use them to our

unspeakable advantage for eternity, that Jesus Christ and His

Church solve the question and offer us the explanation of the suf-

ferings we must all endure.



JESUS CHRIST AND HOME LIFE 35

V. JESUS CHRIST AND HOME LIFE

“And he went down to Nazareth, and was subject to them.”—St. Luke ii, 51.

SYNOPSIS.—/. From the beginning, by God's ordinance, the family has
been the center of the social life of man. Importance of the family to

national life shown by experience and history.

II. The family also a sacred and holy thing. The holy office of
parentage. Family and parentage holy, because images of divine mys-

teries; for (i) parenthood is a co-operation with the Creator, and (ii)

an image of the divine faithfulness which results in the Blessed Trinity;

(in) the family was consecrated by Jesus Christ’s own family life; (iv)

marriage was made a Sacrament.

III. The responsibilities of the father and mother; the family a

training-ground for salvation.

IV. Exhortation to fathers and mothers as to conduct. Go to the

holy house of Nazareth for the example of a Christian home; and for

the grace to perform your duties as parents.

From the day, dear brethren in Jesus Christ, when God Almighty

gave to Adam a helpmate in Eve, his wife, the family has been the

center of the social life of man.

It is because all mankind are descended from that original family

constituted by God at the beginning, and of which Adam was the

head, that all men are in a true sense brothers, blood relations, chil-

dren of the same father and mother. From the union of families

connected by relationship have grown up the nations, whose truest

bond of unity consists not merely in considerations of expediency or

mutual help, but in the far closer and more binding tie of blood.

• Dear brethren, of what supreme importance is the family ! Sim-

ple experience tells us that upon the preservation of family life

depend the welfare and stability of nations. When family ties be-

come loosened to any considerable extent in a nation, that nation is

working to its fall. The binding force that keeps it together is

being weakened; the ties that unite man to man are being cut.

History has proved this again and again; and history has proved

that no other bond of union can supply the place of, or operate

with, the same effectiveness as the sacred tie of blood relationship.

What is it that keeps us to our country and our kin but that they

are our country and our kin
;
because the people of our country are

the people of our blood and race ?



3 6
JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

Conflicting interests we have; many evils are endured by one

class in a nation at the hands of another
;
but we will endure much

before we will sever the bond that unites us to the men of our race

;

few will willingly exile themselves from the land of their birth, and

in the eyes of all there is no disaster so supreme, no catastrophe so

dreadful as civil war—the spilling by men of the same nation of
that blood which all have from a common source.

But the family is not only of supreme importance in national life

:

it is, and it has been from the beginning a holy, a sacred thing.

Next to priesthood—the office of him who stands in the midst be-
tween men and God to offer sacrifice—there is no office so sacred
as that of parentage.

Nay, in ancient days, in the earliest religion that God prescribed

to men, the father of the family was the priest. And even now

is not the proudest title that your own priests bear the sacred

name of “Father”?

And parentage and family are then sacred and holy, because they

are the living earthly image of great mysteries of God.

What is the office of the parenthood but a co-operation with God

in the creation of immortal beings
;
of beings who are destined to fill

the homes of the fallen angels? It is nothing less.

Ah! dear brethren, how inviolable this office ought to be! Is it

not truly a kind of sacrilege, a violation of holy things, to violate in

any way this office and the faculties that to this office alone belong?

But there is more. Before the coming of our blessed Lord Jesus

Christ, men knew not what we now know of the inmost nature of

the Godhead; they knew not that in the One Godhead there is a

divine society, or divine family of persons—the Adorable Trinity

—

in whom there are Father, and Son, and the Holy Spirit who is the

outcome of the love of both.

The human family, then, is no less than an earthly material

image and likeness of that divine and wholly spiritual fruitfulness

of the Godhead, by which the Son proceeds from the Father, and

the Holy Ghost proceeds from both Father and Son.

Again, when Jesus Christ Our Lord came upon earth, the Incar-

nate Word of the Father, He has given an added sanctity to family

life. He came to save the world: to preach the truth, to found

the Church, to give us the holy Sacraments; to offer the great

sacrifice and institute the great Sacrament of His Body and Blood

that is daily continued on our altars
;
He came to do a work greater



JESUS CHRIST AND HOME LIFE
37

than the work of creation itself—and with all this before Him, He
consecrated some thirty years of His earthly career to the sanctities

of family life.

Marriage, that bond already sacred in that it was directly insti-

tuted by God Himself
;
already by God’s primitive ordinance hedged

about with the defense of absolute indissolubility, Jesus Christ raised

to the dignity of a grace-giving Sacrament, a channel of the merits

of His precious Blood
;
and made it a type and a symbol of His

union with His immaculate Bride, the Holy Catholic Church.

Brethren, reflect on these truths; truths of Scripture, truths of

faith, and you will see what it is that men to-day would touch

with impious hands—those men who would enter the sacred pre-
cincts of the family, and ruin that holy work of God. You will see,
too, what it is that men impiously do attack when they legalize and

make easy the breaking of the marriage bond: you will see, too,

what everyone violates who is unfaithful to this sacred tie, or who
misuses those powers which were given to them only for its sake.

And you, fathers and mothers, and you who will be fathers and

mothers, think of the responsibilities that attach to this high office

of parenthood. Yours is a privilege indeed to bring into this world

and to train up citizens, not chiefly for an earthly country, but for

God’s Church here below, and for the heavenly Jerusalem above.

And where, I ask you, is the training ground? It is, and it only

can be in the family. The priest and the school master can help

you
;
but they can not take your place

;
and unless you lay the

foundation in the family life, their efforts are likely to meet with

scant or only temporary success.

You have the care of the child in its tenderest years, when this

great world is opening upon it, when its mind is receiving its first

impressions—impressions that will be indelible.
From you, father, that child will learn its standard of life: wo to

you and to your child if that standard be not a high and noble one.

Remember that your fatherhood is a type of the fatherhood of

God, “of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named” (Eph.

iii, 15). Remember that to your child you have to represent God

—

that he may learn from your faithfulness and justice and strong

protection what are the faithfulness and justice and providence of

the Father in heaven.

From you, mother, that little one will chiefly learn the great

lesson of God’s love. You will tell to it the sweet story of Jesus



3 »
JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

and Mary; of the holy Childhood; of the Cross; of saints and

angels, and God’s Holy Church. The enthusiasm of your faith
;
the

warmth of your loving devotion will pass to that child of yours

;

he will see it in your face
;
he will detect it in the hushed and awe-

struck accents of your voice, and he will catch it from you as he

can from no other. If the things of heaven are real to you, they

will be real to your child; if in all your life you put God first, he

will learn to do the same. Of how many of God’s saints we know

that the beginning of their sanctity was due to the teachings and

example of a truly devout and Christian mother : how many a saint

on reaching heaven has gone to seek his mother’s happy soul and

say, “Mother, it is you I have to thank for this.”

Oh, my dear brethren, what a truly immense responsibility is this

!

Immortal souls to make or mar! Think not; again I say it, think

not that others can take your place in this. It is the first years that

matter most
;

it is the intimate life of home that makes the deepest,

most lasting impression
;
and so, dear brethren, a Christian home is

a school of salvation, while a wicked home is the very anteroom

of hell.

Look well, then, to yourselves, Christian fathers and mothers.

What is your conduct
;
what do your children see in you ? What is

your mutual love for one another? Fathers, are you tender and

considerate to your wives? Mothers, are you a support and a

comfort to your husbands? Is your home one to which man and

children can turn as to them the sweetest spot on God’s earth? All

this will deeply affect your children’s lives.

Fathers and mothers, what is your conduct toward Almighty

God and His Church? What is your frequentation of the Sacra-

ments? Your attendance at Mass? What is your practise with

regard to prayers? Do your children ever see you pray? Have

you in your homes that holy and most beneficial custom of family

prayer? What little time it would take, and yet how incalculably

good it would be in its effects, to recite the Rosary or the Litany

of our blessed Lady every evening in common in your households

before the venerated image of the blessed Mother and the holy

Child.

Is it, father and mothers, the sad case with you, that the priest

must work and strive to get your children to come to Holy Mass

and the Sacraments against the evil influences of your own bad

example ?



JESUS CHRIST AND HOME LIFE 39

Brethren, if your children’s feet are set upon the road that leads

to destruction by any bad example or neglect of yours, their blood

will be upon your heads.

Again, brethren, how do you perform that all-important duty

of protecting your children’s innocence
;
of cherishing their budding

virtue, of keeping them from the infection of sin, from temptation

and from every evil? Do you take care that their companions are

such that you can safely intrust your little ones to their care; that

nurses and servants are of irreproachable character ? Do you

see to it that no bad book, or newspaper, or picture comes into

your children’s hands? Great, indeed, is your task; so great that

of yourselves you can not accomplish it. You must rely upon a

strength greater than your own; a wisdom higher than of your-

selves you can attain. Whither, then, shall you go?

Brethren, there is a name that once was wholly unknown to

men, but now is known and revered the world over. It is the name

of a little mountain village whose luster now outshines that of the

mightiest cities of earth. Nazareth is that name
;
and if you would

learn to be good fathers and mothers, to Nazareth you must go.

There, for the years of His hidden life, lived Jesus, with Mary and

Joseph, and was subject to them. There we see the supreme model

for all time of what a Christian home should be.

It was not a rich home
;
far from it. Joseph worked at a trade

;

Mary kept the house; Jesus, their God, was subject to them in

childhood’s simplicity of docile obedience. What a spirit of joy and

peace reigned in that holy house, that most blessed of all earthly

homes

!

And why? Because God was there. Mary and Joseph lived ever

in the presence of their God. Him whom they were privileged to

carry in their arms they had long learned to bear in their hearts.

Their one aim was to do the will of His heavenly Father and theirs.

In that home was never an angry word, never a murmur of dis-

content; never an act of harshness; never a dispute. Jesus, though

God of heaven and earth, is the perfect model of a child’s obedience.

Mary and Joseph are the patterns of parent, husband and wife.

Brethren, go there; and learn what your homes should be like.

First and foremost learn that your home must have God in it. With-

out that nothing will avail
;
with that all will be well. It is not hard

to tell whether God is in a home or not. You know whether He is

in your home. If He be there, all else that is necessary for a good



40 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

home will follow
;
there will be true love of husband and wife

;
loving

obedience and perfect respect from the children.

Many are the complaints heard in these times about the ill be-

havior of children. Where is the fault? If homes were always

Godly, the conduct of children would seldom be ill.

And not only for an example upon which to mold your home

life, but for grace and strength to perform your difficult but noble

task you must go to the Holy Family of Nazareth. Jesus is there,

the Fount and Giver of all grace; and think you not that Mary

and Joseph will pray for you to Him, that joy and peace and grace

divine may abound in your homes, to the blessing of you and

your children?

Make these two, dear brethren, the guardians of your home;

the guides and models of your home life as fathers and mothers.

Let their holy images be before your eyes in some place in your

home where all may see them
;
let your daily prayers ascend to them

in heaven, that they may pray for you to the Divine Child, and gain

you grace to carry out the duties of your sacred office well, that

one day you may lead your children and your children’s children to

His sacred feet.



JESUS CHRIST OUR TRUE LIFE 4i

VI. JESUS CHRIST, OUR TRUE LIFE

“As the branch can not bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so
neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches

;

he that abideth in me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit; for with-
out me you can do nothing.”—John xv, 4, 5.

SYNOPSIS.—I. The early Christian symbolism of the vine. Not an acci-
dent, but founded on Our Lord’s words. It teaches a most important
lesson.

II. Recapitulation of subjects of this course. All the lessons we
have tried to learn on the past five Sundays are summed up in the truth
taught in the text. Enlargement upon this in detail.

III. Consideration of the simile of the vine and the branches as ap-
plied to ourselves as branches of Jesus Christ. How are we to become
branches, and abide in the vine? St. Paul’s simile of the olive and the
engrafting (Rpm

..

xi, 1.6-18). Application to the
_

vine and ourselves.
Points of similarity and of difference in such similes. Explanation of
these points in the combined similes of Our Lord and St. Paul.

IV. We must abide in Jesus Christ and open our hearts to Him.
The test of this.

t(

Keep my commandments.” In other words, “Imita-
tion of the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

V. How to know and follow Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and
the Life. One may say, He lived two thousand years ago! He lives
now, in heaven, and in His Church.

VI. Therefore we must throw ourselves, heart and soul, into the
divine Catholic system.

Were you to visit the holy city of Rome, dear breathren in Jesus

Christ, and to go down into those wonderful subterranean ceme-

teries known to us as catacombs, and would see there crypts and

galleries decorated with religious paintings, in which the truths of

faith are taught through the sense of sight.

And amongst the earliest of the paintings there to be seen is one

of frequent occurrence—The Vine—rich in foliage and laden with
fruit. And this is not the result merely of chance

;
nor a mere copy

of the conventional pictures to be found on the walls of heathen

houses of the same date, for though it is true that the vine figured

largely in such domestic decoration at the beginning of the Christian

era, there is clear evidence that amongst Christians it was given

quite early a distinctively Christian significance.

This shows, dear brethren, that the first Christians were deeply

impressed by the comparison made by our blessed Lord in the

words of my text, and that they had learned and appreciated the all-

important lesson which He teaches us thereby.



42 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

And, in truth, it is a lesson of supreme importance for the right

conduct of human life; teaching us how utterly that right conduct

depends upon our attitude toward, and our relations with, Jesus

Christ, our Lord and Master.

I have spoken to you in this Lenten course of Jesus Christ and

human life. We have tried together to learn life’s true meaning

—

that we are made for God and can find lasting and true happiness

in Him alone. We have seen that the only real evil of life is sin;
we have endeavored to grasp the truth that, to look upon the things

of this world as if they were all in all and could satisfy the needs

of the soul, is the greatest of life’s illusions; we have considered

how we ought to bear ourselves under the afflictions of life, so as

to make them a blessing to our souls and upward steps to heaven

;

and on Sunday last we meditated upon the Christian home as the

training ground for citizens of the heavenly land.

And all these lessons are summed up in the great truth which Our

Lord teaches us in the words of the text—that He Himself is our
true life, the only true life of individuals, the only true life of

society.

In this fact, in this teaching of Jesus Himself, we find the solu-

tion to all the problems that human life offers to our minds.

Would we know the meaning of life? He says to us, “Come to

me, I am the way, and the truth, and the life—the truth to learn
the way to follow, the life to live. I teach you that you are made

for God
;
I show you how to come to God

;
I give you that divine

life of grace which is in Myself.”

Would we escape the evils of life, and sin, life’s greatest evil of

all? Would we do our part in banishing, as far as may be, from

earth the many evils that come from the sins of men? He says to

us, “Come to me, I have conquered sin, and in my strength you too

can conquer sin, in yourselves and society. By spreading the true

knowledge of me, through your words and, above all, by force of

your example, you can regenerate society through the individual, by

making good Christian men and women and true followers of me.”

Would we escape the illusions of life, learning to use the things of

earth so as to gain heaven by their means ; making of them not a

hindrance, but a help? “Come to me,” He says, “and follow the

example of my life on earth.” Would we have true help and real

consolation in affliction? “Hear my words,” He says, “that I have

spoken to you ; ‘Come unto me all you that labor and are burdened,



JESUS CHRIST OUR TRUE LIFE 43

and I will refresh you/ ” Would we have homes that shall be like

heaven upon earth? “Learn of me,” He cries out, “copy the home

that I lived in and blessed when I was on earth
;
and I will dwell in

and will bless your homes also.”

Yes. Would you do all these things? “Come to me,” says

Christ, “and I shall tell you that there is one only way of salvation

and happiness and reform, whether for ourselves individually or

for society at large
;
you must abide in me”

Look, dear brethren, at the spreading branches of the vine; see,

too, how fresh and beautiful are the leaves; notice the strength

and vigor of the branches; see how, to the furthest extremity

where the young shoots are pushing out, all is life and growth,

giving promise of abundant fruit. And what is the secret of this

vigorous life? It is the vital sap which, drawn up from the parent

stem, flows to the newest and most delicate tendrils.

So it will be with you, if you abide in the true vine, Jesus Christ.

“I am the vine, you are the branches
;
he that abideth in me, and I

in him, the same beareth much fruit.”

Otherwise, if you abide not in Jesus Christ, you will be as a

branch that has withered, because by some accident the lifegiving

sap has been cut off from it
;
a branch that is only fit to be cut off

and cast into the fire. “If anyone abide not in me, he shall be cast

forth as a branch and shall wither, and they shall gather him up

and cast him into the fire, and he burneth.”

How then, dear brethren, are we to become branches of the true

vine, and abide in Jesus Christ our life? We are first made
branches of Christ in holy Baptism. St. Paul, speaking of the con-

version of the Gentiles, says to them in his Epistle to the Romans

:

“If the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the

branches be broken, and thou, being a wild olive, art ingrafted in

them, and art made partaker of the root and of the fatness of the

olive tree, boast not against the branches . . . thou bearest

not the root, but the root thee” (Rom. xi, 16-18).

St. Paul is here using the olive tree in the same way Our Lord

used the similitude of the vine
;
and as the Apostle tells the Roman

Christians that they, from being wild olives, have, by Baptism,

been ingrafted upon the true olive tree, and made partakers of the

fatness of the root
;
so it is true of us that we have been ingrafted

in the true vine, and are made partakers of the richness of the

grace of Jesus Christ.



44 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

At our Baptism it was, that the sap of divine life, God’s holy-

grace, began to flow into us from Him. By it, and by it alone,

while we are joined to the true vine, and then only, can we bear the

rich fruit of Christian virtue and good works.

In every comparison such as this, of the vine and the branches,

used by our divine Lord, or that of the ingrafting upon the olive,

used by St. Paul—comparisons in which an earthly, material thing
is used to illustrate spiritual truths and realities, we come sooner

or later to a point where the similarities of the earthly image to

the spiritual truth ceases
;
and often the points of difference which

then ensue are no less instructive than the points of resemblance.

Now, combining the image used by our blessed Lord with the

idea of grafting used by St. Paul, we shall see that it is so here.

As branches of the true vine we are like the branches of some

wild inferior species, for we were born in sin, and children of

wrath, but ingrafted in Baptism upon the true vine; made living

branches of Jesus Christ, partakers of the fatness of that root. Just

as the sap also flows through the branches to the utmost extremities

of the whole vine, so does the life of divine grace flow in every

soul.

And, moreover, just as the branch must wither and be cut off

and cast away, if any obstacle prevents the sap from flowing

through it, so too we, if we cease to abide in our divine Lord and

thus lose His grace, become withered branches.

But now come points of difference. It does not depend upon

the voluntary action of the branches of a vine whether or not they

abide in the parent root, but it does depend upon our own voluntary

action whether or no we abide in Jesus Christ. By mortal sin we can

cut off that life that flows from Him to us.

Again, it does not depend upon the branches of the natural vine

how great the abundance or how scanty the supply of the vital sap

which flows into them. Not so with us. It does depend in part

upon us what abundance of spiritual life we receive from our divine

Lord. If we are generous, and open our hearts to Him, He will

fill us abundantly with His own life ; but if we are cold, and narrow

our hearts, we shall not receive the abundance that we might.

We must, then, abide in Him, and open our hearts to Him.
And He has told us how we may know whether we are doing this or

not.

“In this is my Father glorified; that you bring forth very much



JESUS CHRIST OUR TRUE LIFE 45

fruit. ... As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you.
Abide in my love.” There, dear brethren, is the secret. “Abide

in my love.”

And the test, the proof? "If you Keep my commandments you

shall abide in my love, as I also have kept my father’s command-

ments and do abide in his love” (St. John xv, 8-10). It is the

same lesson that our blessed Lord teaches when He says, “If you

love me, keep my commandments”
;
and, in the chapter from which

I have just quoted, “You are my friends if you do the things that

I command you.”

We abide in Jesus Christ by loving Him, and the true proof of
our love is in our acts, in the keeping of His commandments

;
or,

in other words, by imitating Him who is the Way, and the Truth,

and the Life; for He commands us nothing of which He is not

Himself the perfect example.

He is the Way we must follow; by the imitation and by coming

to the Father through Him, by whose merits, in whose Church,

through whose Sacraments, we are brought into closest union with

God. He is the Truth from whom we must learn, and whom we

must know by the exercise of faith. He is our very Life that we

must live, by preserving ever in our souls that holy gift of grace

by which we are made like unto Himself.

“But,” one may say, “Jesus Christ lived nearly two thousand

years ago, and records of Him are comparatively scanty, and men

differ very greatly as to His teaching and nature and office. How

are we to know of His life; how be sure of His teachings; how

obtain His grace?”

Brethren, it is not true to say that Jesus Christ, God-made

man, lived two thousand years ago. Well-nigh two thousand years

have passed since He became incarnate for our salvation; but He

lives still; he lives now. He is to-day our living, loving Saviour,

Lord and friend. He lives in heaven, and He lives and abides in

His own true Church. In that one true Church, which is His

mystical body, we are ingrafted upon him. Throughout the

Church, which lives alone by His own very Spirit, flows the life-

giving grace that He won upon the Cross. The Holy Spirit leads

her into all truth, by Jesus Christ’s own promise that can never

fail, and so from her and in her we can both know Jesus and learn

how to follow Him; from her and in her, who has the means of

grace that He appointed, we can draw the life that comes direct



46 JESUS CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE

from Him. If therefore, dear brethren, you would abide in the

true vine, and receive abundantly of the fatness thereof, then throw

yourselves heart and soul into the Catholic system, for it is His

own appointed way. See Jesus Christ in the Church ; in the Sacra-

ments; in His Vicar; in His ministers; in every least rite and

ceremony that she has instituted in His name. Listen to her voice

with docility; be of one mind with her in all things, and you will

then be of one mind with Jesus Christ her Lord who lives in her,

and in you will the Father be glorified because you will bear very

much fruit.