"z. ./r. /6 ^ t^ ŒfyBiaçum ^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^ Division L .... .Wrt/'o THE LIFE OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, LOUIS VEUILLOT. "SIC DEUS DELEXIT MUNDUM." TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY The Rev. ANTHONY FARLEY, S/. Monica's Church, "Jamaica, L. I, FROM THE SEVENTH FRENCH EDITION. 1878. New York: PETER F. COLLIER, 24 BARCLAY STREET: "1 fat s^ ..^ î^ffraiJPB fïa^KÎS] DILECTO FILIO ALOISIO VEUILLOT LUTETIAN! I'ARISIORUM. PIUS PP. IX. r\ILECTE Fili, salutem et Apostolicam benedic- -*-^ tionem. Gratulamur Tibi, Dilecte Fili, quod, etsi submotus ab arena ubi adeo strcnue ac utiliter pro veritate et justitia pugnabas, talentum Tibi creditum in terram non foderis, sed alacriter eidem, quam tuebaris, causae ser- vire perrexeris ac novas ferre suppetias. Id testantur recentiora scripta Tua, id postremum confirmât Nobis oblatum de vita D. N. Jesu Christi in lœsae Divinitatis vindicium édita. E perpaucis enim illis quœ, mul- tiplices inter curas Nostras, inde delibare potuimus, accommodatissimam omnium proposito fini methodum a Te electam fuisse existimavimus, Teque in re pertrac- tanda Tibi plane parem exhibuisse. Accessit autcm Approbation. quod haec lucubratio Tua se Nobis obtulerit extrinseco etiam peculiari splendore ornatam ab aerumnarum , quibus obnoxius es, indole ; quippe, quae, adversis istis in adjunctis, veterem redolet esuriem ac sitim justitiae, eamdemque animi comparationcm ac firmitatem in suscepto olim certamine obeundo. Hinc, etsi Tuis Nos \ commoveri aegritudinibus, et ad dolendam vicem Tuam humanitus inclinari senserimus, inopportunum tamen ( censuimus conquestum ubi Apostolus ait : Beatus vir qui suffert tcntatiojicm, imo etiam : Omne gaudium exist imate, fratres vici, cum in tentationes varias in- cidcritis. Itaque, cum constantia Tua doceat proba- tionem fidei Tuae reipsa operari in Te patientiam illam quae opus perfectum habet, ad gratulationem potius compellimur, Teque ad gaudium excitare cogimur. Quod ut faciliusTibi assequi contingat, uberius semper gratiae incrementum Tibi ominamur atque adprecamur a Deo ; atque hujus ccelestis doni auspicem et praeci- puae benevolentiae et grati animi pignus, Benedictionem Apostolicam Tibi Tuisque peramanter impertimur. Datum Romae, apud S. Petrum, die 9 julii 1864, Pontificatus Nostri anno XIX. PIUS PP. IX. Approbation. [translation.] TO OUR BELOVED SON LOUIS VEUILLOT, ) ) AT PARIS. ) ) TION w the arena where you fought so bravely and usefully for truth and right, far from burying the ta- lent entrusted to you, you have gone on cheerfully serving the cause you had defended, and bringing new vigor to its support. This is attested by your later works, and is confirmed by your last, which you have sent to us, on the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, published to vindicate his outraged Godhead. From the short perusal we have been enabled, amid our in- cessant and increasing duties, to bestow upon it, we are of opinion that you have chosen the most suitable method for attaining the end you proposed to yourself, and that you have been quite equal to yourself in the fulfilment of your tfcsk. Nay, more, that this new work presented to us gains peculiar lustre from the nature of the trials to which you have become subject ; since, amid those trying circumstances, it is marked by that PIUS IX., POPE. j I { BELOVED SON, HEALTH AND APOSTOLIC BENEDIC- E congratulate you, dear son, that, driven from ( 8 Approbation. hunger and thirst for justice, that zeal and strength of mind, you always manifested in maintaining the com- bat you entered upon. Although we were sensibly moved at your trials and tenderly inclined to compas- sionate your condition, we considered condolence inop- portune, since the apostle says, " Blessed is the man who endureth temptation " ; and again, " Count it all joy, my brethren, when you shall fall into divers trials." Therefore, since your constancy attests that the trial of your faith really produces in you that pa- tience which has the perfect work, we are compelled rather to congratulate than to grieve, and are con- strained to exhort you to rejoicing. That you may the more easily attain that joy of spirit, we presage and entreat for you from God abundance and increase of grace, and with all the love and sincerity of our heart we bestow on you and yours the apostolic bene- diction— a token of the celestial gift and a pledge of our special benevolence and affection. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, the ninth day of July, 1864, in the nineteenth year of our pontificate. PIUS IX. POPE. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Translator's Preface, g Preface 13 Introduction : I. God and Man, 35 II. Before Christ, ........ 50 III. The Prophecies, 70 BOOK I. The Prologue of the Gospel. Chap. I. Nazareth — Bethlehem — The Jordan, . . . . 89 Chap. II. Zachary — Elizabeth — Mary — John — Joseph — The Crib — The Shepherds — ■ Simeon — Anna — The Magi — Herod, 104 Chap. III. The Ancestors of Jesus — The Temptation in the Desert — The First Disciples, . . . . 125 BOOK II. The Happy Year. Chap. I. Marriage Feast of Cana — Miraculous Fishing, 137 Chap. II. Nicodemus — The Samaritan Woman, . . . 150 Chap. III. The Sick Healed — The Tempest Calmed — Demons Vanquished — The Pharisees, ..... 162 Chap. IV. The Woman Afflicted with the Issue of Blood— The Daughter of Jainis, 169 Chap. V. The Sick Man at the Pool— Magdalene, . . .180 BOOK III. The Struggle. CHAr. I. Conspiracy of the Jews — Miracles on the Sabbath Day — Institution of the Apostles — Judas, . . 19S CHAP. II. Sermon on the Mount — The Leper Healed — The Centurion — The Widow's Son — The Envoys of John the Baptist — The Pharisees, . . . 206 CHAP. III. The Sower— The Tares— The Mustard-Seed— The Net Cast into the Sea 216 CHAr. IV. Incredulity of Nazareth — First Mission of the Apos- tles— The Five Loaves — Peter Walks on the Waters — Announcement of the Eucharist, . . 223 Jable of Contents. BOOK IV. Education of the Apostles. Chap. I. False Purification — The Chanaanite — The Deaf Mute — The Second Multiplication of the Loaves, Chap. II. The Blind Man of Bethsaida — Confession of Peter — Thabor, ......... Chap. III. The Child Afflicted Delivered from the Devil— The Drachma — Precept of Forgiveness, Chap. IV. .Teaching in the Temple — The Woman Taken in Adulterv, Chap. V. The Man Born Blind, Chap. I. Chap. II. Chap. Chap. Chap. III. IV. V. Chap. I. Chap. II. Chap. Ill, Chap. I. Chap. II. Chap. Ill, BOOK V. Discourses and Parables. Mission of the Disciples — The Samaritan — Martha and Mary, ........ The Woman Bowed Together — The Banquets at which Jesus Assisted — The Dropsical Man — Lec- tures to the Pharisees, ...... The Sheep — The Drachma — The Prodigal Son, The Unjust Judge — Prayer — Marriage, . Voluntary Poverty — Little Children, BOOK VI. Resurrectio7ts. Lazarus, The General Resurrection, . . . ... Caiphas — The Blind Man of Jericho — Zacheus— Magdalene and Judas, BOOK VII. The Eucharist. Entrance into Jerusalem — Malediction of the Fig- Tree, . The Last Journey to the Temple, .... The Passover, ........ Chap. I. Chap. II. Chap. III. Chap. IV. Chap. V. Chap. I. Chap. II. Chap. III. Chap. IV. Chap. V. Chap. VI. The Jew?, Pilate, BOOK VIII. 77*i? Passion of Our Lord. Calvary, .... The Sign of the Cross, The Sepulture, . BOOK IX. Jesus Arisen, The Resurrection, The Ascension, . The Apostles — Peter, The Apostles — Paul, The Apostles — John, The Conclusion, 235 252 260 266 276 2S6 297 307 317 332 333 349 360 371 38i 393 412 424 433 445 451 453 465 473 487 495 502 Hj/*^ &fHS 3pif£|jj ^Pfji^^S^^ jeê$- "Ml m'9l 9R\^3fê Translators Preface. r I ^HIS book, now for the first time presented to -*- the public in an English garb, was written by the great Catholic apologist Veuillot, in answer to Renan's celebrated Life of Jesus Christ, which some years ago stirred the Christian heart to its centre, awakening throughout the world a clamor of devout horror or of infidel applause. It is truly what our Holy Father Pius IX. calls it, " A Vindication of the Outraged Godhead of Christ." Nothing need be said by the translator in favor of such a work. Let its title, its author's name, and the high eulogy passed upon it by the Supreme Judge of Christian truth, answer for its worth. But the translation itself requires a few words of vindication and apology. Appearing as it does some time after the existence of the original work, it might seem that the object of the book had ceased to be, had been forgotten, or was of no moment to the public of our day and of our country. But when we remember the 9 io Translator'' s Preface. deep impression produced by Renan's work — an im- pression stamped (it would seem indelibly) upon the religious literature and religious teaching of our times — we have to admit that a vindication of Christ, the God- Man, is as necessary to-day as it was when the new Voltaire appeared to shock religious sentiment in France and in the world. " Chris- tus heri et hodie," is the war-cry of the foes, just as much as the trust and comfort of the faithful lovers of the God-Man. For the devout Catholic this book is full of unc- tion as it is of instruction. As regards the style of this work, some apology is due to the reader. To translate well from French into English is, under any circumstances, a difficult task. But, besides this, the peculiar nature of this work, the profound depths the author sounded, espe- cially in his introduction, and his characteristic style j of composition, rendered this translation a laborious work, and one that seemed at times impossible. The reader will therefore, it is hoped, pardon in it much that is crude and inelegant. For the rest, he may be assured that this translation exactly renders the sense of every portion of the book. \ The author himself vouches for the accuracy of his quotations from other writers, without particularly referring to the works from which he quotes. The translator has relied entirely upon his learned au- thority ; so may the reader. Translator's Preface. i r As to Scripture passages, so necessarily frequent in a book founded on Gospel narrative, they are sup- posed to be' quite familiar to the reader. Hence neither author nor translator have deemed it neces- sary to refer to particular gospels or chapters of gos- pels. Such passages also are for the most part freely translated from the French of the author, the main object being historical, not textual, accuracy. Finally, hoping that this modest labor may be well received by the clergy, who will find in the work excellent reflections on the Gospel they were sent to preach ; by the devout laity, who will appreciate the ( some too, perhaps, of those " other sheep " whom ( the divine Pastor so wishes to nourish with the holy and happy thoughts of one of themselves on a subject so dear to the Christian heart ; and by ) knowledge and love of himself, and " lead into his fold," it is humbly but trustfully committed to the public by the translator. ) ) PREFACE. THOSE who have seen Jesus Christ, living, dying, and dead; who, having detached him from the cross and carried him to the tomb, have seen him alive after his death, have touched him with their hands, have seen him with their eyes ascend to heaven — these irrefragable witnesses of Jesus have also published his history. With a loud voice, in the presence of the people, a witness, like themselves, in the presence of the powerful and wicked who crucified their Master, they have proclaimed " that he is the Son of God, that he has spoken the words of God, that he did the works of God, that he has arisen, that he lives, that he is seated at the right hand of his Father." Thus they have spoken even in the midst of torments, and since their time the miracle of the same truth has not ceased to be attested by the miracle of the same martyr. Here, then, we behold the first history of Jesus. We preserve it intact in its native form, as divine as the life it relates. It is called the Apostolic Symbol, or the Apostles' Creed. Divine faith has given it a name more profound and more magnificent — it is the Credo : " I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth ; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, 14 Preface. our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried ; he descended mto hell ; the third day he arose again from the dead; he as- cended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty ; from thence he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the ) ) ) ) ) body, and life everlasting." This abridgment contains a doctrine and at the \ same time a history — a divine doctrine which has con- ) quered error enrooted in the heart of man. Nothing has been said, nothing will be said, nothing can be truly said, which is not contained in the Credo. All truth flows from it, and truth is found in it and no- where else. Every error is here bruised and annihilated. Twelve poor fishermen of Judea received this lurrii- \ nary, and man issued forth from the womb of darkness. \ For the space of more than eighteen hundred years the Symbol of the Apostles, attested by the Catholic Church, holds back the entire world from plunging into the darkness of error; and for more than eighteen hundred years an unwearied voice denies this heavenly light. Denial is one of the names of death ; it would wish to take Jesus Christ out of the world, the only Son of God, whose mercy has clothed our mortality in order to communicate to us his eternal life. Innu- merable sophists have exerted all their ingenuity to get rid of Christ, true God and true man, at one time his divinity, at another his humanity. They have denied the God, they have denied the man; they have even denied that the person of Jesus has ever Preface. 1 5 existed. The Jesus of the Credo could only be, according to them, the product of the popular imagi- nation. Poor human reason has furnished its quota of sects to that sweeping logic of negation, because it is less impossible to deny the existence of the man than to deny the God in man. But the logic of the absurdity has too well unmasked .he absurdity; the inconsequence has appeared prefer- able, and every effort in these days is directed against the Divinity. They say that God made man is simply a man whom ignorance has made God — a man without doubt endowed with genius and virtue, good, amiable, almost sincere ; nevertheless, a man, and in whom we discover frailty, passion, falsehood. They advance an impudent thesis, according to which falsehood is the right and privilege of the elevated and intellectual minds, who are to be considered the elite of the human race ; and Jesus, they say, has availed himself of false- hood to invest a sublime morality with credit. They are profuse in this sort of eulogy, which is the most subtle refinement of outrage, blasphemy, and insult. In the questionable perfections they yield to the man; they hope to annihilate the God. Passus / Yet living in his church, he yet suffers. Those sufferings arc but a sketch of his continued Pas- sion. Amidst his benefits hatred breaks out ; negation rears itself in the face of miracles ; betrayal sits at the banquet where he gives his flcsli. Derision insults him on the cross. It is in the Gospel humanity can see how sin has made it the slave of death. By instinct it rejects salvation ; it docs not wish to be saved. There is nothing more obstinate than the malignity of sectarians, except the inclination of fallen nature to accord them credit. St. Paul, forced to combat Alex- i6 Preface. ander the silversmith, attests the injury done to him and his cause by that obscure adversary. Millions of martyrs, of confessors, of apologists, prevail not against the wily cunning which attempts to lead astray human > presumption. On the word of a sophist the ignorant man rejects the testimony of nineteen centuries. For > him, everything is proof against Jesus Christ. He i counts as nothing so many men of every epoch, of all > countries, masters in all the sciences, bound together by community of unbelief, who have bowed down be- fore the Gospel, in spite of their tyrant hearts, in op- position to their own self-love. He will not admit to himself that those men, far from eluding them, were bound to seek objections ; that they have been anxious to find it insoluble; and that they only abandoned it after having incontestably proved its emptiness. No ; those men of Christ, say they, were cither deceived or wished to deceive. As for the silversmith, he was hon- est and learned. Not that they argue from conviction even. In the eyes of the ignorant the knowledge and ? integrity of heresy are more doubtful than the divinity [ of Jesus. But the wickedness of the human heart co-operates with heresy. Thence the gloomy fire which casts a lurid cloud over the light of evidence. i That God be other than he is, or be not at all — there- in lies the hidden wish, the secret longing, of incredulous science. Therein is it sure to run counter to belief. However, no science can contend against Jesus Christ. There never has or will be any. Scientific unbelief is but a labored ignorance, a mask of impiety adjusted to deceive the conscience and furnish it with some rea- < sons for not believing. As soon as conscience throws off Jesus Christ, it becomes easy and pliant as regards its way and its guide. It accepts every road ; it accords Preface. 1 7 to the hypocritical guide all the virtues he wishes to attribute to himself; it pardons in the cynic guide all the vices he exhibits. Among these learned adversaries of Christ, what manifests itself the most is the desire to remain in ignorance. They are impious rather than really un- believing. What industry they show in shutting out the light of truth ! "What a vile artifice to thicken the darkness around them ! And when evidence forced them to shout denial, their ravings are like to the most formal acts of faith. In the Gospel the demons, seeing Jesus, cry out to him, " Son of God, leave us in peace ; do not disturb us ; let us alone." For the demon, the father of the supreme lie — that is, of false know- ledge— father also of negation, is very learned and very believing. But, torn by an eternal pride, he hates, he blasphemes, he denies. On whatever ground denial or negation wished to measure swords with th 2 unerring and unfailing truth, it has been beaten. Its most boasted works have never been able to stand the test of sound criticism. After a short triumph of deceit the enemies them- selves end by repeating that beautiful expression of Tertuilian to Marcion, a falsifier of the Gospel: "Christ yet exists." Nevertheless, it is true a general success, often enduring, encourages those miserable labors. They survive for a long while the contempt wherein they have suddenly fallen, equally protected in their disgrace by the complaisant ignorance of the public and by the unreflected insufficiency of the refutations. Doubtless those deniers and falsifiers of the truth have been admirably refuted in every objection raised by them ; but since their supreme art lies in feigning and producing ignorance, the essential point should 1 8 Preface. be to reply especially to what they do not sa> This is what we unavoidably forget. The last of those wicked impugners of the divinity of Christ our Lord who has rendered himself cele- brated has well understood, in a book of five or six hundred pages, how to speak of Jesus Christ without pointing him out. Perpetually avoiding all that be- longs to God, with the same stroke he perverts all that belongs to the man. This artifice of weakness is the only strength of the book. It has drawn the apologist into the discussion of trifles in which the Man-God completely disappears. The refutations are excellent, but they leave us ignorant of what Jesus Christ has done, and for what purpose he came into the world. Thus it is not Christ who has the case gained, yet less the laborious reader of so much con- troversy ; it is this miserable man, who has proposed to himself to betray God and his neighbor, s Hence the idea of this life of our Lord. The \ attacks of contemporaneous incredulity have been \ the occasion of it ; they are not directly the object of it. \ The clement wisdom of Jesus has not been left to the mercy of sophists, nor to the resources of I reason, nor to lowliness or feebleness of faith. It has foreseen the weakness of the mind of man, and has prepared a succor always victorious. It is not necessary to ransack the libraries, to collect together so many dead languages, so much history, so much physics, so much philosophy, to know with certainty Him who came to save the little ones and the ignorant. The bread of life is as easy to find as the material bread, on the same conditions. A simple, faithful Christian or member of the Church of God, a man I r~ D-eface. 1 9 of the world, provided he may have studied a few books and heard some instruction, can render an ac- count of his faith far better than the " savants," the account of their incredulity. The Gospel is sufficient for that. The Gospel contains motives conclusive of the faith in Jesus Christ, true God and true man — motives, reasons, which the Saviour himself has put forth. We can paralyze, by the contents of the Gospel, the sophistry of the infidel, without being shocked by its contact. What does it matter that the sophist should amass notes against the sincerity of the Evangelists, if we have clear proof that he of whom the Evangelists speak is God ? On bended knees, before the Real Pre- ) \ pretended unbelievers, are in a condition to give an sence, one is not tempted to withdraw from its contem- plation in order to consider or view more closely this vile apparition of blasphemy. We are by no means bound to extract from it open avowals of repentance. There are different degrees in the region of the mind; discussion belongs to the inferior degrees. In discussing, man is pitted against man ; the reason of the one seems as good as that of the other. In ex- pounding, we place God against man. This exposition of the truth must get the preference when God is absolutely and personally in the case. From the apex of those lofty heights the voice of man properly avoids discussing with nothingness, lest weak human reason might be inclined to believe that nothingness could reply ; that the beauty of truth might appear alone in the presence of the absolute deformity of falsehood. We will suppose a man almost completely ignorant of religious matters, without hatred, but not without ( J 20 Preface. \ prejudices ; his mind unsettled about the existence oî \ God ; very uncertain about the divinity of Jesus Christ ; j rather disposed not to believe it, yet avoiding to speak on the subject through simple feeling of delicacy, be- cause he knows that he does not know, — this man has listened to the deniers. He doubts their sincerity; at least, they appear to him frivolous. Nevertheless, is there another God besides the indulgent and shadowy God of deism ? And he who has proclaimed himself the Son of God — this Jesus Christ whom negation attempts to paint in colors exclusively human — is he truly what he has said he is ? Is he God ? Powerful impressions, flowing from a corrupt carnal heart, exist against this belief. Long discussions appear necessary to discover its falsehood or truth. But to admit the falsehood of the belief would be frightful and destruc- tive of human and eternal happiness. The soul shrinks and refuses to be robbed of God, its creator. The truth of this belief, that there is a God eternal, self- exerting, the avenger of evil, and the rewarder of good — this thought is consoling, and cheers on the pilgrim here below till he arrives in the inexpressible majesty of his presence. Truth proposes and imposes solemn engagements. The common inclination is to remain in doubt, expecting that doubt may produce indifference, and indifference forgetfulness. Well, a man, an uncertain being floating on uncer- tainty, who tends towards indifferentism ; an indiffer- entist who does not deny God, who does not wish to make war on him, who has simply resolved to forget God, not knowing that God will not forget him— a man, in a word, who has never reflected on God, and who desires never to think of him — such a man the Preface. 2 1 author of this work has been, and for such men is it written. In the Introduction we discuss the elementary ques- tion of man considered as a proof of the existence of God, of the end for which he has been created, of the fall, and of the necessity of a mediator. We touch after that on the pagan world ; we present the result of its discoveries on the knowledge of man. Thence we pass to the prophets. The prophets, like the apostles, arc inseparable from Christ. It is a deception to pretend to relate the history of Jesus Christ, and suppress the divine heralds who march before him from the remotest antiquity, proclaiming his mission and recounting be- forehand his works and his life. In the recital of the mortal life of the Incarnate Word we follow no other document but the Gospel. We do not attempt to prove anything. Long since, proofs were established. It is a long time ago since Tertullian said : " The first truth we ought to believe is that we should believe nothing rashly or superficially." The beautiful works of M. Abbé Freppel, of Mgr. Bishop of Nîmes, of M. Augustus Nicolas, of R. P. Gratry, of M. Wallon, sufficiently demonstrate that the ancient- rule has always been observed. There are excellent replies to all the ancient and modern objections in the learned History of Our Lord that Abbé E. J. Darras is just now publishing. It is our wish in this book to write for those who are worthy to submit themselves to the simple reasoning of Jesus. The Gospel relates the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the divinity of Jesus Christ invincibly proves the truth of the Gospel. The cavillers are forced to avow it. They pretend to follow the Gospel, but they falsify it. Preface. It is certain the Gospel presents to us a wonderful spectacle. Astonished at what God has done for it, and the little he requires in return, the soul, quite overcome by evidence, asks itself how can it believe what it does not comprehend. We behold afar off a something created by God ; created in his image. We enter on the way of the Inaccessible ; we view heights or sum- mits we cannot reach. But that mystery of divine love, that abasement of a God towards our loneliness ; that suavity of expres- sion, that patience of his kindness, that bitterness of his agony, that phlegm, that buffeting on the cross, that sepulchre — -and all that for us, and we know we are what we are. Who will explain to us the excess of the love of God ? What do we carry within us to aid us to comprehend it? We are forced to believe it for the sole reason that this unfathomable mystery, which nothing can explain, is itself the sole explanation of all besides. Let us refuse to believe that God loved the world to this degree, and we have no longer an explanation of any- thing; neither of God, nor man, nor of the world. But the Gospel is full of palpable realities. It is manifestly the work of witnesses on whom it has been enjoined to bear witness to what they had seen. Say you, there- fore, " Yes, yes," " No, no"? Whatever we add "pro- ceeds from evil." The Gospel is the truth of the God of truth. It is this same God who puts it in our hands, who presents it to our senses as well as to our reason ; and there is nothing the world can render a higher tes- timony of. Besides, the Gospel is in itself ever youth- ful. Too many readers find it quite new. Among infidels ignorance of the Gospel is generally complete ; among a great many Christians it is hardly Preface. 23 less so. They know the Gospel by heart, and they do not understand it. They have not read it with care, with order, such as it has been delivered. They do not know how to explain it or meditate on it as they ought. Whoever sees in the Gospel only the letter, does not understand even the letter ; and whoever seeks for morality only in its pages, does not find the morality they contain. The Gospel of the letter and of strict morality is but the skeleton of the true Catholic Gospel. It is strip- ped of all the beauty wherewith God wishes to clothe it, in order to unite our hearts to Jesus Christ by the chains of love. It has been the design of God that the Gospel should be written, as we have it, by four au- thors, in four different parts, which we must in some sense take singly in order to fit them together as a whole. The authenticity of the divine book is thus secured from doubt ; and at the same time it can never become a common or vulgar production. If this defect of com- bination should provoke the spirit of contradiction, it also stirs up the spirit of faith. The ocean of sacred literature is before us to demonstrate that nothing more weighty or pressing could animate and fertilize the human mind. Apart from the interpretation, properly speaking, the labor alone of establishing a chronological order — about which the Evangelists did not care — has produced won- derful lights. The Gospel history existed beforehand in the will of Jesus Christ, as in the prophecies which it came to accomplish. The first steps of the Saviour were directed towards the hill of Calvary. He proceeded thereon, knowing well where he was going; holding his enemies and death powerless as long as he wished. Pie 24 Preface. arrives at the hour eternally fixed, and all is consum- mated that was to be. j This universal miracle is the proof of all the others. Like all the others, it proves the love of God for all man- kind. Incredulity contests miracles, because it wishes to reject love ; it controverts them, sometimes by brut- ish negation, sometimes by unjust and false explana- tions. It proclaims that a miracle is not admissible either in history or in philosophy. Forced by the word of the Saviour, some " savants" admit that Jesus was capable of believing that he accomplished those things impossible to man. But, say they, he has neither performed them nor could he do it, not being God. Because Jesus Christ, according to those infidel philo- sophers, is not God, he has not performed miracles ; and because, according to them, Jesus Christ has not performed miracles, he is not God. Their sophistry must give way to solid reasons ad- duced. Reason believes miracles, because the Man- God was and is capable of accomplishing them ; because he was bound to perform them ; because he incontest- ably proves his having performed them. A Gospel without miracles would be a foolish, incredible Gospel. It required that the Incarnation should tinge with the divine reflex all the acts of the Saviour, which were but the ostensible marks of his humanity ; otherwise, when I behold a God yielding to hunger, thirst, fatigue, sad- ness ; concealing himself by flight ; laboriously troub- ling himself to instruct his apostles, so dull of apprehen- sion ; bearing strokes, enduring calumnies, even the shameful and cruel death on the cross, it is then my astonishment could lead me to doubt. In all those circumstances God appears dissociated from the divine nature. He reasserts his nature divine when he com- Preface. 25 mands the elements, raises the dead, institutes the mysterious Eucharist. How could it be that he should have descended from heaven and not have wrought miracles ? He came " in infirmities," for the purpose of healing the infirm — a double condition, which demands of him the working of miracles. He was obliged to work them for our sake. It belonged to his justice to lavish them, so as to throw divine light on his humilia- tions and to aid our infirmities. For the deaf it needed those signs; for the blind it needed those touches ; for the paralytic it required those sudden shocks, awaken- ings. If he had not proven himself the master of ( nature, they would demand of him what had he done that surpassed the power of man. Bergier said to the \ philosophers of the eighteenth century, " Consider well, and see if your predecessors were not conquered by a miracle." The objection against miracles " because they are not credible " is ridiculous. What is a credible miracle ? They have been pre- cisely made incredible, so that faith might accept them, or be bound to accept them, and so that reason could ) not controvert them. A miracle is iriven to make us be- j to ; lieve something superadded to the natural order. 1 he man who should pretend to comprehend the Incar- nation without the aid of miracles would be a fool, quite as much as he who denies the existence of God. Common sense laughs at philosophers and historians who pretend that God cannot interpose as God, in the affairs of this world, and that man has no need of him. Jesus Christ has treated us better ; he does not re- quire us to surrender ourselves to man, but to God. He has proven himself God, so that our pride might be fairly vanquished. By his miracles he has rendered nugatory for ever every philosophy that would wish to \ i ( \ 2 6 Preface. \ exclude his divinity, and he has mercifully treated the ( philosophers themselves, or those " savants," in letting them know that he is more learned than they are. When their pride refuses this kindness, they are wrong. ? Nevertheless, his clemency proposes to them other arguments. He said to the Jews, " If you do not believe my Word, believe at least my miracles." We say to-day the same to the incredulous : " If you do not believe the miracles, at least believe the Word." This Word is also a miracle, and the greatest of all miracles, which we cannot gainsay. The Word created the miraculous, to rest thereon; and on that altitude which it has made accessible it dwells, living and creative. It is the ) . ( miracle of miracles — it is God himself. We hear him ; our ears, obstructed by the dust and filth of the earth, could not misunderstand that voice, whose accent has awakened man, and whose fecundity has created a new world. " The words of Jesus Christ," says Bossuet, "reflect something of the divine in their simplicity, in their depth, by a certain gentle authority with which they issue forth. Never has man spoken like this man, because man has never been God, like him. Nor has man had over all spirits that natural authority which pertains to truth, and which speaks to the soul so sweetly and so intimately." But this Word, absolutely divine — divine by its own character, divine by its effects, always subsisting — whose should it be if not Jesus Christ's? Who should be the inventor of the wisdom of Jesus Christ ? At a distance of nearly two thousand years the Word of Jesus Christ remains the only true light of man on himself and on God. It upholds the Catholic world, encompassed by fanatical enemies ; it sustains the natural law, infested Preface. 2 7 and crushed by a mad philosophy ; it upholds human reason, subject to madness and error ; it not only pre- serves and repairs, but it brings forth ; it begets both priests and saints ; it begets faith, and from the most stony and sterile hearts it wrests admiration and love. Who could have invented this Word ? Against the effulgence, the power, and number of the miracles of Jesus Christ, attested with so much splendor and power, by so great a number of witnesses, no objection is admissible at the tribunal of human reason. No objection will be received at the tribunal of God. We are bound to believe in miracles. Let us, however, suppose a possible refuge for doubt as to facts. How will you account for the invention of the Word, for the creation of the doctrine, and for the triumph of that doctrine? Those witnesses, so up- right and sincere, whom you are anxious to suspect either for not having seen or for having seen but im- perfectly what they relate— how can you suspect them for not having heard what they relate ? The}' do not relate things which everybody may have known, and j which every one would be accustomed to ponder on ; but, on the contrary, they rejate what is above and be- yond everything. They relate them, not in the same terms, but with the same depth of unheard-of ide with the same clearness of style entirely new, with the same accent of sovereign authority : all is beaming with divine light, full of prophecy, radiant, dazzling, with a force from which you cannot escape. All flows from the Divinity ; all returns thereto. Thus, the mira- cle reappears in the Word, and in its turn becomes the Word divine. Yes, those miracles were given to uphold the Word —they are transformed and changed, and become the 28 Freface. Word. Under those miracles, so hateful to science, as ( f a sap beneath the tree's bark, the divine germ lies hid, ( and by the breath of the Holy Spirit it blossoms into flowers of celestial beauty. From these flowers, as from the divine Word, an invigorating fragrance ? diffuses itself. These physical impossibilities teach us the most salutary moral truths. Humanity needs this teaching ; it is ennobled or degraded according as it listens to or rejects it. Miracles are the parables in action — they abound in admirable and wonderful thought. The larger portion of them explain the prophecies and undoubtedly prove their fulfilment, and also prophesy the future order. They have healed bodies ; they will for ever cure souls. ; They have demonstrated the almighty power and good- ness of the Son of Man, and they will for ever demon- strate the wisdom and knowledge of the Son of God. may work wonderful cures, and restore health to those afflicted with diseases almost incurable; the thauma- turgus may raise up the dead ; but all that has no influ- ence on the general affairs of this world — it only shows desperate diseases cured by an able man or by a holy man. Sin does not interrupt its works, infirmity ceases not to show itself, the tomb ceases not to receive those who raised the dead ; and quickly those wonderful men disappear, leaving behind them a remembrance soon forgotten. The remembrance of the man of learning soon passes away; and as for the thaumaturgus, if it please not God to honor his grave by the permanency of miracles, he is soon forgotten. So that those things so strange, wonders of science and greater wonders of holiness, rest purely on facts, either absolutely isolated or suddenly unfruitful. But the miracles of Jesus The physician of long experience and deep erudition -v, ...„„1, ., J f..1 „„J 4. 1 kl. i._ il Preface. 29 Christ adhere to all things, contain all things ; history terminates in them and flows from them ; they possess ) ) a vitality universal and immortal ; they arc resplendent with heavenly light ; they establish the perpetuity of miracles. "The miracles of the Saviour," says St. Gregory, Pope, "are real, and at the same time they serve to teach us some truth. By those acts of his power, God points out to us certain things ; he reveals to us from them other things, through the mysteries that his wis- dom has placed in them." All the facts of the Scripture are susceptible of four different senses, equally true ; for the profundity of the Spirit of God is infinite. Besides the literal sense, there are, first, the allegorical sense — by the applica- tion of one fact to another of which it is the figure or the prophecy; second, the tropological sense — by the application to the wants of the soul and to the direc- tion of morals; third, the anagogical sense — by the application to the joys of the celestial country. These three senses constitute the spiritual or mystical sense, which places the miracles in harmony with the whole < ( ( history of religion and with the entire history of hu- manity The study of the mystical sense has been for a long while among us confined to morals — and, we may re- mark en passant, morals have gained nothing by it. Morals flow much less from the dogma which remains obscure ; impiety disputes the origin or source of mo rality, and destroys its savor and its authority. With- out neglecting by any means the moral, the Fathers . ( have taken care to give to the mystical sense its full development. Their minds were elevated to marvellous heights; and our minds, accustomed to morality of the ( ( 3 his dependence. In the presence of this necessity, behold the wisdom and affection of God. Child and youth, man is provided with a hidden strength that enables him to support, without being bowed down and remaining in that posture, the burdens Providence may load him with. Youth possesses an interior buoy- ancy that makes labor pleasant, subjection, grief, trou- bles, and hardships endurable — things so difficult to bear later on, and which would crush him if the weight was the same from the first starting into life. Youth sur- mounts the elements of everything. The past is to him nothing; he flies towards the future, where he is sure of reigning. Tombstones rise up before his path — he hardly stops to notice them ; he dashes them in pieces, and he' dreams of them no more. Death ! It is not for him ; it will not injure him ; it shall not take from him the future ; it will not prevent him from ex- isting, acting, and having what he would wish ! If sud- denly death presents itself and stretches out its hand, he is astonished. " Take me," he says ; and he dies, as he does other things. This life, so full of reveries 42 Introduction. wherein he sees himself master of all, is yet but a sport which he leaves off without regret. But in this wonderful being what inexplicable de- fects, what inexplicable miseries! There are two indispensable secrets which he does not possess and which he cannot acquire. It is necessary that God should reveal them to him. Abandoned to himself, he feels a horrible incapacity of knowing and loving. Darkness envelops his mind — a brazen wall repels his heart. Whence comes he ? Where is he going? What power has thrown him into life, to be at war with men ? For society rears him up in vain ; in vain is ït indispen- sable to him ; there is no natural love between him and society. It does not love him, it does not respect him ; ) he does not respect it, he does not love it. On both sides he sees but services imposed by necessity, rules by force — no respect, no love ; and his urgent want is love- Behold the immense misery of this creature, so beau- tiful, and formed with so much care! Man does not know God, and he does not love man. What do I say ? He does not love him ; he passionately hates him. lie overwhelms him with delights ; and by his frenzy all the charms of society are for him changed into bitter- ness, and its advantages into tortures ; he finds in it but hatred and tyranny. This king of creation, this conqueror of all terrestrial beings, capable of resisting every shock, who hunts the wild beasts of the forest and rebuilds his cities on the soil of the volcano — he encounters an enemy who humbles him, binds him, chains and kills him. And this enemy is man ! Is that the primal design ? Is it thus man has been created? No; we feel there is disorder, immense dis- order, not to be repaired by human power, which gives us to understand that man is a wreck. Introduction. 43 Whence comes this disorder? Why is man but a wreck? What will those answer who say that he be- comes religious when he distinguishes himself from the animal — that is to say, when he invents a God ; that is to say again, that God is a chimera of man, and that there is no Creator, no God ? It matters little what they reply. We have nothing to do with it here. The existence of man is the first and decisive proof of the existence of God. Man has not created himself. Who has created him, if not God ? And if we wish a definition of God, it is found in the symbol of the Apostles, developed against the folly of those who deny the Nicene Creed: " Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible." Behold, in a few words, the clear conception of a power and of a wisdom without bounds ! For from what has God created all things? From nothing, un- less we suppose matter pre-existing and coeternal with God. Those who pretend not to be able to compre- hend God creating all things out of nothing flatter themselves that they comprehend matter, inert matter, either eternal or self-creating, and afterwards creating order and intelligence. If it be impossible to comprehend how matter could have created order and intelligence, it is also impossi- ble to comprehend how God, sovereign and perfect in- telligence, could have created man otherwise than through love, or to ask of him aught else than love. Every other explanation degrades God, and makes him inferior to man in justice and goodness, declares him im- potent in the midst of this creation, which is his work. But to lower God is to annihilate him in the thought ) • of man, who ceases then to adore- — that is, to know — - him ; and by this deprivation of God, thought and 44 Introduction. man himself are annihilated. He remains but a dis- contented and intelligent animal, who gives and re- ceives hatred, who engenders and undergoes death. God is love, and love is life. A continual expansion of the love of God, which is the uncreated life, con- tinually creates life. All life created of God is good and perfect in its order, is endowed with beauty, and gives something which is the support of another life. The more the being is elevated, the more he receives and diffuses life. The perfection of life is the know- ledge and love of the Creator; the perfection of love is adoration. Created through love to know perfectly and to love perfectly, according to the hierarchy of his nature ; created by the Sovereign Good to ascend up to the abundance of life, which is adoration — man, a work sublime, has received the sublime complement of liberty. With liberty he combats, he merits, he has something in him to raise himself up to the love- of God, to recompense God for having given him being. Thereby also he has it in his power to separate him- self from God, to withdraw from him, and to deny him. He has this choice. As the last mark of the Almighty power, he has given man the power of deny- ing him. Loving, he is bound to obey, for obedience is the law and form of love ; free, he is at liberty to disobey, to violate the law, to refuse to love. Already God had encountered rebellion : before the visible creation, a combat had taken place in heaven. Among the innumerable angels there were cohorts rebellious. A party of those pure spirits, created to adore, permitting pride to be born in them, separated themselves from God, lost love and light, and became Introduction. 45 demons incapable of repenting. According to a high doctrine, the anticipation of the revealing of the Word's incarnation, by whom they had been created, was the cause of their revolt. In advance, they re- fused adoration to the Word of God — the Word-God — when it should have become Jesus ; that is to say, when it should have been clothed with the infirmity, the lowliness, of mortal flesh. The mystery of divine love surpassed their intelligence ; the condition of man, this new creature, in many respects above them, whom it was necessary everywhere to adore in Jesus, excited their envy. The rebellious angels were precipitated into the bottomless abyss. Then evil began to exist, as evil for ever, as a power for a time — the power of seduction, dreadful to man, but less powerful than man when he wishes to obey God. Tempted by the devil, man disobeyed. He violated the law of love, he refused love, he preferred disorder, confusion, and death. And if man commenced, not by confounding himself with the animal, but by dis- tinguishing himself from it less than he ought, and thus assuming some one of those hideous traits of the brute which philosophy is pleased to acknowledge in him — traits that God had not given him — it was on that day of disobedience he did so. That day, ashamed of his nakedness, he sought to conceal it, and he got a garment made of the skins of beasts — a symbol of mortality. In the eyes of science, that denies God and man, that inauspicious day should be the first date of pro- gress, the first step of man towards the religious sense. Alas ! that day but marks the day of his death. Driven out of paradise, chased from the delights of an innocent, angelic life, hurled from the clear, bright presence of Introduction, God, his creator, he sinks into the depths of human darkness. He did not commence to become religious, but, by an effect of the divine mercy, he cannot cease to be so. It is said that the last objects which are depicted before the eyes of the living being at the moment that death seizes him remain engraved on the soul, and can never be effaced ; so, on the thresh- old of those long and dismal ages of ignorance, obscur- ity, and darkness, wherein he was plunged by his own fault, man carries away an indelible vision, radiant of Paradise, and his soul does not cease to give back some imperfect echo of the great things that it had known and the promises that made it expect a Redeemer. Here, at that far-off, far-distant period, the grace of Christ appears ; it will be renewed in signs and sym- bols without number till the days of the ineffable re- ality. Let us resume. Man could not sin without being free, else God could not have been offended. The All-powerful could not exact the fulness of love of a being without liberty. What constitutes the gift is the power of refusing it. God could neither deceive himself to the point of ex- acting of his creature, as a free offering, what he had not given him ; nor punish that creature for a defect of the organization which it received from him. An error and injustice in God, an improvident God, a God not only without mercy but without justice, are palpable absurdities. If God had loved sinful man less, not having to de- stroy him as a work badly made, he would have crush- ed it as a rebellious work. Because his work is conformable to his plans, he has preserved it ; because it is intelligent and free, and Introduction. because it has prevaricated voluntarily, he has punished it ; because he has loved it with an eternal love, he has repaired it. At the sacrifice of the altar, the priest, having poured the wine into the chalice which shall be changed into the precious blood of Jesus Christ, mingles therewith a few drops of water, which represent our human- ity assumed by the Saviour, and he pronounces those astonishing words : " O my God ! who hast wonder- fully created man in a state so noble, and yet more wonderfully thou hast reinstated him in his former dignity, grant us, through the mystery of this water and this wine, one day to have a share in the divinity of Him who has deigned to clothe himself with our humanity — Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord." God, therefore, has restored his fallen creature, and he has confided the redemption to this Word by whom he has created mankind — this Word which " is in him from ) the beginning; begotten, not made ; by whom all things have been made, and without whom nothing was made ( that was made." The Word becomes incarnate, and has taken the form and weight of sin ; charges itself with death, whieh was the punishment of sin ; and by his sacrifice satisfies at once justice and love, restores life, and abolishes death. And "the Word was God " ; for who else but God could repair the work of God, satisfy the justice of God, sovereignly accomplish the objects of God's love ? Man understood those things which enlighten his reason and give him the key of his own mystery. He has known them, not as having discovered them, but because they have been revealed to him by the divine Word, and afterward explained under the dic- tation of that Word, whose voice is never silent. Be- 48 Introduction. hold here what was written towards the end of the first century of the Christian era, more than eighteen hundred years ago, by a man who had been a poor fisher- man on the Lake of Tiberias. Here he speaks as the pro- phet, as the witness, as the historian — he who reclined his head on the bosom of Jesus. Thus he speaks : " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him : and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life ; and the light was the light of men : and the light shineth in darkness ; and the darkness did not comprehend it. . . . That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him ; and the world knew him not. He came unto his own ; and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name : who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us : and we saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." What a page! What an illumined portal for enter- ing into the light of God ! Bossuet says of the same Gospel in another place, " You will discover therein depths to make one tremble." Here is the evidence which gushes forth from those depths, and which solves the enigma of man and of God, as the heavenly sun swal- lows up the night. Humanity is not mistaken in it. Before the splendor of this heavenly brightness in- stantly it has felt the vision of Paradise appearing again to its darkened vision ; it has partly, if not en- Introduction. tirely, recognized the God who had spoken to it in the days of its innocence, when it yet dwelt in its cradle of flowers ; and it has well known that the Redeemer came, and that he gave to men " power to be the chil- dren of God." But the light shone in darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it. And He by whom the world was made came into the world, and the world did not know him. And the world requires that we should contradict the murderous folly that advises men to re- fuse being made the children of God, saying to them that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God nor the Re- deemer of the world, and that God has no Son, and that the world does not stand in need of a Redeemer I If^S^I II. BEFORE CHRIST. NEVERTHELESS, the world waited ; and in what condition ! The modern writer, according to whom man " became religious," depicts humanity- abandoned to its own conceptions on religious matters. For gods it had fetiches ; sorcerers and jugglers for priests ; human beings for a victim : such were the re- ligions invented by man. " So this divine faculty of religion for a long time resembled a cancer that re- quired to be extirpated from the human species — a cause of errors and crimes which the sages were com- pelled to suppress." The author adds that the brilliant civilization of China, of Babylon, and of Egypt made a certain progress in religion. But what progress? China remained " mediocre " ; the religions of Babylon and Syria, never having " detached themselves from a foundation of strange sensuality, remained, even to their extinction, in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, the schools of immorality." In other words, all the re- ligions anterior to Jesus Christ, the Jewish excepted, were satanical, anti-social, dishonoring to God and man. This is the acknowledgment of one who is a de- clared enemy of the Catholic Church. He could not help acknowledging the fact, and the fact overthrows his whole system. Bossuet, with the superiority of his 50 Introduction. 5* genius, which was often but the superiority of his faith, \ has said : " The most enlightened nations were the blindest in matters of religion : so it is true that among them it required to be laised up by a particular grace or by wisdom more than human." In what religion of antiquity do we not discover gross sorceries, fetichism, the abomination of hu- man sacrifice ? What temple was not in some man- ner the school of immorality ? Those horrors kept pace with the flourishing splendor of Athens and Rome. There, even in those centres of civilization and refinement, the rite of immolations was never abol- ) ' ished. To multiply executions, it was not necessary that a religion should accumulate dead bodies around its idols, as at Carthage and at Dahomey. At Rome, the circus was a temple. Before commencing the sports (those sports where as many as thirty thousand \ men were put to death), they invoked the immortal \ gods, and occasionally upon a portable altar human blood flowed, shed by the hand of the priests. In the circus, religion made victims by the sword of the gladiator and the teeth of wild beasts. Through- \ out the whole empire, and over the entire surface of the earth, she slew souls with greater tortures by the prevalent corruption of morals. Do we — sons, daughters, fathers, through the grace of Christ, — do we represent this " brilliant civilization," where the family existed not for three-fourths of men, where none tasted its bliss in its sacred fulness? The name " father of family " signified possessor of slaves. In all Greece, devoted to the worship of un- chaste love, conjugal love had no temple. Behold, therefore, the progress of the man become religious. His religion was a " cancer," and the can- \ 5 2 Introduction. cer devoured his flesh. But the " sages" who under- took to extirpate the cancer — where do we find them? Only since Jesus Christ, only as opposed to Jesus Christ, has the world known of such sages. Antiquity is ignorant of their species, and would not have borne with them. When Satan sets himself up to be ador- ed, he neither excites nor permits a free examination. Not having the truth, he has no longer that patience which is the forbearance of God. They did not dis- cuss Minerva at Athens, Jupiter at Rome, more than they did a little while ago Calvin at Geneva, Mahomet at Mecca, Luther at Copenhagen, or Joe Smith among the Mormons. The Christians publicly refused incense to the idols. Among the enlightened pagans, those who wished to remain " sages " demanded that the idols should be regilded and Christians delivered over to the lions. Before Christianity, what could the sages effect ? What baptism gave them light ? What could they have discovered to put in place of the gods ? Reason, abandoned to itself in the search after God, rushes into polytheism by the rapid downfall which now hurries into pantheism all that has severed itself from Jesus Christ. Polytheism tends to the worship of idols ; pantheism will end there also. The sages will resist but little !' Man is made to adore ; he must adore. Wherever Christ has not appeared fetichism reigns. Wherever he is banished, there the fetich will arise. The passions remain ; they are the masters, and they invoke the gods. Separated from divine revelation, science incontestably demonstrates nothing but terrible phe- nomena, before which the faculty of adoration quickly vanishes ; man appears as the sport of contrary powers, for the most part cruel, all inexorably unfathomed, H Introduction. 53 whose dark, mysterious will he cannot conquer, whose wicked caprice he must continually dread-. Perpetual terrors, whence surge up the ravings of superstition — this is paganism in its full and proper meaning. " There is," says Bossuet, " a Christianism of nature." There is also a paganism of nature, yawning under men's feet ; and how many daily plunge therein in presence of the full light of God ? The world will be swallowed up therein. Could the sages of antiquity withdraw themselves from it? It is certain they have not attempted it. Natural sagacity does not compromise itself for the love of truth. It despises vulgar error, yet accompan- ies it to its vilest altars. Moses, animated with the Spirit of God, is the only legislator of antiquity who dared break to pieces the popular idol ; he has no imi- tators, except among his people. Solon established at Athens the temple of prostituted Venus. Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca, voluntarily beliçved in the unity and immateriality of God ; but Socrates, when dying, sacrified to Esculapius ; Plato took good care not to incur the charge of impiety ; Cicero, already priest of the temple of the earth, sought after and obtained the office of augur ; Seneca observed the pagan rites. Whatever might have been their sacred or private thoughts, they would connive at no irreligion in public. The sages of our day assume more license ; they make war on a suffering and peaceful Redeemer. Neither Greece nor Rome present anything which deserves the honor or disgrace of being compared to them. No, no; to overturn idols it required the arm of the martyrs ; to heal the " cancer " it required their generous blood, become the blood of Christ. The 54 Introduction. philosophers and free-thinkers of pagan times have done what those fine talkers were able to accomplish whom the disciple of Socrates points out to us at the banquet of the poet Agathon. Though discoursing sometimes admirably on virtue and truth, still they corrupted the earth. The genius of Plato, roused by the far-off vibrations of Sinai, has given back some magnificent echoes. Does he suspect that it was the echo of truth ? In the dialogue of the Banquet, where Socrates seems for a moment filled with Christian thought, the most abominable passion is glorified as the most active prin- ciple of virtue ; and Socrates asserts that he took from a courtezan the beautiful ideas with which he charmed his auditors. All the depravation, the wickedness, that one could nowadays collect together in the places of in- famy, in the abodes of depravity and vice, could not give or present the like essence of degradation and coï- ruption. To refine in infamy was the design and the art of the "sages." St. Augustine chides himself for having lauded those impious men : " Plato and his school were not born to enlighten the people, or to draw them away from the universal folly of idols to the true worship of the true God." One may cite beautiful pagan maxims. Among them beautiful maxims abounded, just as temples abounded. Their temples became holy and their maxims effica- cious only when Christ entered them. Pay attention, says Bossuet, to their high, lofty expressions. Do you not perceive they understand them not ? Nothing is more admirable than the apology of Socrates on the character and destiny of the truly just man, contrasted with the impostor who feigns righteousness : " Let his love for justice draw on him the stigma of infamy ; Introduction. 55 though always virtuous, and yet always reputed as criminal, he ardently desires to persevere till death. . . The just man will be buffeted, loaded down with chains, delivered up to torture ; they will burn out his eyes, they will nail him to the cross." The Christian spirit is astounded at this prophetic inspira- tion. But what impression does it leave on Socrates ; what impression does the world conceive of it before the world had seen the tree of Calvary and tasted its fruit ? This pagan conclusion is that it was all-import- ant that the Just One on the cross should acknowledge that he was not suffering for justice's sake, but only for appearing to be just ; and all ends in this grovelling conclusion: that the lot of the unjust is more happy. The Roman poets are rich in irreproachable expres- sions of morality. In the writings of Ovid many moral lessons abound— that is, to speak of the profit one might draw from them. There are many of them in Horace, too, who so calmly despises everything that is not voluptuous. Horace, as hard as a Pharisee, hesitates not to declare that death is too slight a pun- ishment for the impure vestal. But at the same time this rigid devotee does not cease to repeat, in thrilling accents, the advice to " seize pleasure while it flies, for 'tis of heaven the gift." We have also the famous ex- pression, " Know thyself "—a word admired, engraved in the temple of Delphos, " and from heaven derived," says Juvenal. He failed to discover the art of knowing himself, and afterward the art of conquering himself Few heroes essayed this, and still fewer, having essayed persevered. They are forced to follow the counsel of Horace : " To be troubled at nothing : Perhaps the only thing here below To make us happy and keep us so." 56 Introduction. We will hear Pilate asking, with a shrug of his shoulders, What is truth ? This same Pilate, who orders the Just One to be scourged in order to save his life ; who caused him to be crucified to relieve him- self from a difficulty — this Pilate, who pronounces the Ecce Homo, doubtless was not ignorant of the Homo Sum of Terence. He murmured the words, perhaps, at the first sight of the Man of Sorrows. We do not despise those unfruitful accents. They are the testimonies of a soul naturally Christian — testi- monies' like the rich grass which attests the richness of a neglected soil. After the coming of Christ the moral vegetation be- comes more abundant, and assumes a character more august. Perseus, Seneca, Juvenal, were affected by the breath of the apostles. Under Caligula and Nero Seneca pronounces those admirable words : "The un- fortunate man is a sacred thing." But Seneca, a flatterer of Caligula and Nero, had renounced the bar not to wound the vanity of the former, who believed himself an orator ; he returns to eloquence to excuse the second for having killed his mother. Juvenal has glimmering lights and vigor of expression which seem to be obtained at the foot of the cross : " There is no wicked man happy " ; " Esteem it dishonorable to love less your honor than your life " ; " Whoever meditates crime is already guilty" ; " Respect more than all the candor of youth." Among the pagans, thoughts that are fruitful in the Gospel are but stoical emphasis, a flourish of the cymbals of genius. The last word of Seneca is suicide. Juvenal, like Seneca, produces only the abortive fruit of the good grain fallen on the highway of temporal solicitudes. " Pray for a valiant soul — one which, disfranchising Introduction. 57 itself from the terrors of dying, rather looks on death as the choicest benefit of human nature — a soul unassail- able by anger, superior to vain desires, capable of pre- ferring to all the pleasures of Sardanapalus the severe labors of Hercules and all that he has suffered." Sub- lime desires, noble thoughts ! In the days of Nero and Adrian, when Juvenal lived, who prayed for a glory like this, and who obtained it? Christ crucified grati- fied the love of those who had learned of him to pray, "Our Father who art in heaven"; Juvenal saw their labors greater than those of Hercules, and he was not converted. In order to give a better account to ourselves of this world, where it is said that Jesus Christ was not neces- sary, let us listen to what was thought of the soul — a question very much debated among philosophers; that is to say, among those who constituted the head of pagan society. For Athens and Rome were head- quarters of philosophers and literati. According to an academician of our" epoch, Judea was a " stranger to the theory of individual rewards or recompenses, which Greece had taught under the name of the immortality of the soul." By this turn of ex- pression the academician avows that, in his mind, the immortality of the soul, and perhaps the soul itself, are but philosophical conceptions, very debatable. This is the point on which antiquity prided itself. Only, those efforts it made to raise itself so high must be made to-day to descend from those heights. Doubt- less such efforts will be made. The question of the soul is bound up with the question of Jesus Christ : in < order that Jesus Christ should cease to be God, it is es- sential to suppose cither that the soul is not responsi- ble or is not immortal. 58 Introduction. Let us here first observe that Judea was not " a stranger " to this " theory." In the books of Moses, anterior to all literature and all philosophy, God is called " the only God, master of all, who wounds and who heals, who strikes with death and who raises up to life again." Twenty passages of the Sacred Scrip- tures establish the same truth. Daniel : " Those who sleep in the dust, will awake from the sleep of death and rise up one day; some for eternal life, and others to torments without end." Tobias : " We are the chil- dren of God, and we await that life that he is bound to give to those who do not renounce his faith." Job : " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that I will rise up from the earth at the last day." Behold what Judea knew and believed touching the soul before there were any Greeks ! " Those Jews," says Tacitus (portraying at the same time the Romans), " believe that souls are immortal. They rejoice in becoming fathers, and do not believe it lawful to take away the life of any of the children which were given to them." All this is so well known that it would require a sort of courage to ap- pear not to know it. The numerous systems of the ancient philosophers on the soul or thinking substance belong to the num- ber of those things which mark more vividly human in- firmity. The Christians made representations of them full of salutary reflection. We find in those various sys- tems that the soul is the heart itself — a certain section of the brain — a subtle air — a harmony resulting from the concordance of the various parts of the body — a number that moves itself — a portion of matter distri- buted through the human body, wherein it assumes a peculiar character according to the place it occupies. According to others, there is no soul. An " active Introduction. 59 principle " resulting from the combinations of matter gives place to the phenomena that one calls life and movement. Aristotle imagines the soul has its origin in the Entelechia, or perpetual motion. To what end? Aristotle knows not. Is the soul immortal ? The mas- ter of Pythagoras, Pherecides, was the first to affirm it, in relation to Cicero, who seems too embarrassed to reject it, and quite content in not being sure of it. A great many maintain that the soul ends with the body. The Stoics are of opinion it lives as long as the crow. Py- thagoras makes the soul neither perishable nor immor- tal. After indefinite transmigrations, this something or other, which is a part of the Divinity, having dwelt in men, beasts, and even. vegetables, goes to unite it- self to the universal Soul, and is lost in all. Aristotle is unintelligible, not to say mute ; Plato, always bril- liant and ingenious, contradicts himself; Panetius, ob- serving that the soul is subject to sufferings, concludes that it could not be endowed with immortality. This idea of the immortality of the soul appears to Pliny a childish story, an intolerable inflation of human pride, the zenith of madness. Seneca says: "The last day of life is the birthday for an eternal life " ; and again : " If it be true that the soul survives the body without living in the body, the future life is preferable to the present." Marcus Antoninus is equivocal ; Plutarch is hypothetical ; Epictetus inclines to annihilation. An humble sentiment of Socrates is worth far more than all the speculations of the others and than all his own. Contemplating the problem of the union of the soul and body, he confesses the weakness of the human mind, and invokes the aid of some divine revelation. After the lightning flashes through the darkness of night, the darkness becomes deeper and more obscure. 6o Introduction. Socrates hopes that after death he will be found among the good people ; nevertheless, he dares not affirm that anything remains of the good or bad people after death. This is the substance of the entire discourses of Socrates on this subject ; and Plato, for his part, does not speak otherwise. This is also, the main point of Cicero, in spite of the penetration which, in the Dream of Scipio, led him to the threshold of truth. There was among the Scipios a Jewish teacher whom Cicero certainly consulted. Except in this sublime flight of thought, Cicero differs not from the common thinker ; he asks, " If the soul be annihilated, what greater advantages than to escape so many miseries, and to enter into the sweets of eternal sleep ? As long as I exist I shall not suffer, because I have notliing to re- proach myself zuitk. Annihilated, I shall not expe- rience either sorrow or pain." The thought of a future responsibility does not torment them. If they had ex- perienced it, they would be less presumptuous in de- claring themselves just; and doubtless if they had sincerely believed in their justice, they would have cherished less the idea of nothingness or non-existence — a thought so dreadful to the soul ennobled by Chris- tianity. In reality, they did not consider' themselves just ; they did not wish to be so, and they were not happy. The tone of despair and disgust of himself is not rare with the Epicurean Horace ; the Stoics con- sidered it the right, and almost the duty, of man to commit suicide — all view total annihilation as the surest felicity. Socrates cries out, " To sleep without dreaming or awaking — if death be anything like this, I call it a great gain." Oh ! what a gain to be no more. What a comment those outcries of human misery are on the word of the apostle where he proclaims Christ Introduction. 61 and the revelation which Socrates expected : " In him was the life, and the life was the light of men." Be- cause mankind had not Christ, they had not life. "Among the pagans," says Lactantius, "wisdom has its doctors who do not teach the means of ap- proaching the gods, and religion has its ministers who do not teach wisdom ; hence we may conclude that among them there is neither true wisdom nor true re- ligion." Aberrations from religion and aberrations from wisdom produced a moral teaching which was but the contempt of everything. The most logical sophists madly maintain that nothing is just or unjust in itself, but only through the will of the legislator ; others, without saying this, show too well that they believe it. The noble school of Socrates and Plato brought forth the Pyrrhonites and the Cynics, and those foolish and impure sects were very soon the only memory that re- mained of them. There is almost the same space of time between the teaching of Plato and Cicero as there is between the teaching of the apostles and the why," he adds, " Arcesilaus maintained against Zeno that we can know nothing, not alone that we do not Council of Nice. But what essential truth was acquir- ed or established among the human race up to the days of Cicero? He speaks of the "obscurity" of those lofty questions which led Socrates to confess his ignorance, and, even before Socrates, almost all the ancient philosophers, whose opinion was that one can arrive at nothing, understand nothing, know nothing ; that the senses are limited, the mind incapable, life too short ; that truth is profoundly hidden ; that there is no longer room for it on the face of the earth, strewn over with conventionalities and opinions ; that, in a word, all is covered with a thick darkness. " This is 62 Introduction. know anything, winch was all that Socrates held. There is nothing we can see or comprehend, and con- sequently there is nothing we can hold for certain." Such is the drift of ancient wisdom some ages after Plato raised it to its highest summit. In a space of time of the same length, amid heresies and torments, } when the pagan world was about being dissolved, the \ teaching of the apostles chanted the universal Credo of Nice — sovereign affirmation of the truths which save > the soul and which will reconstruct the world. The ancient Athenians, having been delivered from a plague, raised an altar to the Unknown God, " in order to discover," says St. Paul to their descendants, " if by groping for God in the dark they could find him." But when St. Paul, announcing this God before the Areopagus, touched on what regarded justice and the resurrection, the sages of the school of Plato laughed \ him to scorn. They no longer deigned even to examine. All enlightened paganism expresses the disdain of Pilate : Quid est Veritas ? St. Augustine is astonished that after Christ people were to be found who, undertaking to speak and en- lighten men, loved more to have Plato in their mouths than Christ in their hearts. There are many of the same stamp always to be found. Let us grant them that a favorable interpretation may be given of many doubt- ful points in the doctrine of Socrates and Plato ; let us acquit those sages of having positively believed in metempsychosis, in the pre-existence and eternity of matter, in the annihilation of the soul ; yet we must refuse to justify them in their teachings on conduct and morals. Their manners were not simply gross, wicked customs, as we understand it to-day ; they were not content to yield to nature, but they violated it. Introduction. 63 They did not refrain from this; they did not blush for it. Socrates is absolutely cynical. In the Dialogues ( ) I of Plato the most degrading vice is presented as some- thing so natural in itself, so much in usage in spite of ( prohibitive laws, that it is doubtful if those polite and learned authors, those sages, those philosophers, could have discovered any evil in the practice of the most revolting vices. Christian morality may be often powerless against the wicked inclinations of man ; but j even when defeated, it awakens to repentance ; it ex- cites in the consciences dreadful remorse. The sinner is the first to accuse and condemn himself. But if he be so bold as to justify crime, then he is not only a sin- ner, he becomes an apostate. His very apology for his sin is an acknowledgment upon which the public con- science ratifies the just decree by which he becomes an outcast. Whatever one may think of the genius of Plato, it must be acknowledged that the truth was known to him ; that he amused himself with it, played with it ; and that he amused himself also with vice. Whatever one may think of the lofty presentiments of Socrates, of his qualities, and of his death, it will always be true that Socrates did not know his faults, nor did he wish to condemn them. Plato despised the philosophers who would not render themselves plain enough and clear enough to be understood by the common people. Socrates, after a life of free-thinking, died without having the least spark of repentance. By this trait of character of the greatest of men, by this trait of one of the best of men, we can perceive what were the precursors of Christianity. Antiquity had nothing in it that was Christian, no- thing whatever. Doctrines, laws, customs, whatever 64 Introduction. flowed from its wisdom, concurred to grind the helpless and feeble — the child, the mother, the poor, the slave, the people. The proof of this lies in those famous legislative acts wherein is revealed with so much evi- dence the inspiration of him who was " a murderer from the beginning." The Spartan laws present not what is most diabolical and impure ; Plato insults human nature more deeply, if possible. The imaginary laws of Plato explain the extreme helplessness of the mortal who seeks after wisdom by himself; and these laws show the extent of his implacable pride when he imagines he has discovered it himself. Humanity, according to him, is but inert matter, over which the mind has the right to govern as it will. He shapes humanity with a stroke of the axe — he cuts, lops off, tears to pieces at his will, and uses death itself as he pleases. Plato, the legislator, wishes only to have per- fect bodies and beautiful minds ; consequently physi- cians should let badly-formed individuals perish. The tribunals should put to death the incorrigibly wicked ; the children badly made or born of wicked parents should be abandoned. Out of regard for beauty and vigor of manhood, he limits the age for becoming fa- ther or mother ; nevertheless, before and after the period fixed, the law only imposes sterility, and in case of crime— that is to say, in case of production — that the children should be abandoned to their own fate. Women shall be common for soldiers ; so that children, not knowing their parents, and not known by them, shall be considered to belong to all. The free man can kill his slave, and he is only bound thereafter to purify himself; but the slave who, even in defending himself, should have killed a free man, shall undergo the punishment of a parricide. Thus it is that the Introduction. 65 greatest philosopher of antiquity, supposing himself master of the people, would wish to mould them to beauty and virtue. Plato had criticised the laws of Lycurgus ; they were capable, said he, of forming valiant but not just men. We meet, indeed, some views of justice and dignity in this Utopian world of Plato's, which sometimes seem to have grown out of dim shadowings of the Hebrew republic. But Plato had not the God of Israel, and, on the other hand, the brutality of the Spartans fascinated this dainty philo- sopher. Elevating himself in imagination above the effeminate Attics, he spurns poetry and encourages bloodshed. Voluptuousness is not barren ; it always brings forth a daughter — ferocity. The voluptuous Horace demands that the perjured vestal should twice be put to death ; the voluptuous Plato wishes to crush the heart of the mother and of the spouse ; he puts to death the slave, and casts deformed children into the filthiest sinks. O Christ! O purity! O love! hasten thou, come and instruct the Samaritan, raise up the sinful woman who weeps, and place your hand on the head of the little children. It is not necessary to object that the laws of Plato were but the spore of his imagination — a chimera. Greece had seen in this same line of enactments at- tempts and successes which permitted everything. Plato did not invent infanticide ; the condition of the Helots of Sparta was worse than he made that v>( the slave. The lot of the Roman slave and the Roman infant was not better. Tcrtullian said to the magis- trates of the empire: "Who is he among you who has not put to death his own child?" In the third cen- tury Plotinus, a philosopher jealous of Christianity, un- dertakes to found a city wherein the laws of Plato 66 Introduction. should be observed. The philosophers whom Chris- tianity shall not enlighten become even blinder than those. Notwithstanding the aid of Gallienus, the emperor, Plotinus could not succeed. In the third century it was already too late. Nevertheless, those things sprang from the vitiated source of human na- ture, and even to-day one could not swear that they can be found there no more. " Opinions opposed to reason," says Bonald, " in- evitably produce actions opposed to nature." In spite of the inward groanings of this nature, which cannot entirely disappear, the pagan world, yielding to the reason of its sages, was made to the image of its gods. Human intelligence became obscured, public and pri- vate acts were dissolute. Let us take any ten years of Roman history : in the civil as well as the domestic society the ulcer deepens, enlarges itself; divorce and licentiousness devour the family, ambition devours justice. More and more foreign war appears to be the only remedy for internal disorders, and more and more it is their aliment. The more the great aspire to tyranny, the more the multitude plunge into igno- miny; until at length they must be satiated with blood. They lick the hand that spreads before them the poison and whets the sword that becomes the avenger of their crimes and immoralities. Natural vir- tue becomes more precarious, usury more ferocious, debtors more miserable, slaves more barbarously op- pressed, in proportion as riches augment, as morals become effeminate, as letters and arts multiply won- ders. Everywhere cruelty, venality, deceit ; every- where lying and barefaced wickedness — the impudent, captious lying of words, the cynical lying of judgments and of oaths, the monstrous lies in treaties and com- Introduction. 67 pacts. The Punic faith has devoured Roman faith ; allies are but enemies whom they gained over by trea- son. Whether we speak of strangers or fellow-citizens, war is without humanity, alliance without security peace without amenities. Such is the greatest of those ancient peoples whom an infatuation of literature wishes to portray to us as so free, noble, and bold. Their baseness is only comparable to their corruption. The dominant characterof ancient Rome is a profound forgetfulness of God, an unutterable contempt for man. These two things can hardly be separated — the one \ engenders the other. i i Before Christ, man was the prey of man. The moment Christ appears the prey is submissive and resists no more. It is not that man has lost his in- stincts. Pursuing the path of darkness, he preserved this vain light. With it guiding him, he rushes on ) madly, fatally, to slavery and bondage. Without speaking of Ninive, of Tyre, of Babylon, which have disappeared, and of Memphis, which is fast decaying, we have had those dazzling Greek democracies and that grand Roman Senate— Homer and Plato, Phidias and Aristotle, Cicero and Virgil, Alexander and Caesar. Legislators, conquerors, artists, poets, have not been wanting ; but nothing taught man the love of God nor respect for man, and everything tended to place the world under the sway of Rome, and Rome under the feet of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Behold the grand total, the names which sum up those vast labors of the human race and of time — Tiberius constitutes himself a divinity ; he is followed by the divine Nero. That is the rule and order of things. The god Tiberius shuts himself up in the isle of Capri, inventing voluptuous- ness, brutality, and punishments, restless, and already Introduction. a prey to dissolution. It is not the anxiety to con- solidate his divinity that caused restlessness ; he is more embarrassed to limit the number of his temples and the multitude of his priests. Tiberius does not demand incense — he refuses it ; but he fears death, he fears Rome at his knees, he fears his ministers, the accomplices of his murders and debauchery ; he fears especially his heir, that Caligula whom he raises up to revenge himself for the misery of being divinized, and to bequeath to his adorers a monster capable of mak- ing even himself regretted. However, ten thousand Pretorians suffice Sejanus to maintain respect for mighty Rome, trembling under the indictment of her impeachers. Very soon they will have a Caligula, the fool ; then Claudius, the imbecile ; next, Messalinus and Agrippinus govern ; and, at last, Domitius Nero will be the political head, the centre, the peace-giver of the human race. " Let the gods rain down miseries, double our woes ; Be our storm-riven galleys entombed in the main ; . Let the best blood of Rome, as in torrents it flows, Still crimson our hearths, where her heroes lie slain. What matter though all sink in ruin untold ? Nero rules, we are happy, and Rome is consoled !" * This is the last word of polytheism, its last civil and religious expression — Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Helio- gabalus, masters round whom the world naturally throngs ! Against the dogma of the unity of God Satan, the denier, brought forth the heresy of poly- theism. When the Son of God assumed human na- ture, and clothed himself with our mortality, to reveal all truth and to restore all liberty, Satan, the parodist, * Pharsalia, Brébeul's translation. ~1 Introduction. 69 is also anxious to be incarnated ; he enthrones Caesar sovereign pontiff and vicar of all the gods, and in the main the only god. And Tertullian said that they would rather perjure themselves after having sworn by their gods than after having sworn by the genius of Caesar. This power adapted itself so well to the degradation of humanity that it lasted for three centuries, passing from the wicked to fools, from fools to brutes, from brutes to monsters, without causing the sluggish beast to revolt whose veins it empties while staining it with perpetual infamy. The pagans kill the emperors; the Christians only will put to death the empire. They will kill it by rejecting its gods, and by offering up their own life, dying themselves thus to redeem the world. But those haughty Romans, those philosophers, those idolaters, who refuse the truth, do not wish liberty either. They kill the emperor either to rob or sell the empire, not to deliver it. " Our glory at present is to obey." They kept this engagement, taken before the face of Tiberius. The ancient legislators proposed to themselves to institute some form of liberty; but the imperial world entertains no more this dream. Under the feet of Caesar civilians grow up true theologians of the imperial worship ; they give to this pastor the entire ownership of the human cattle. Caesar kills and robs by an authority founded on right. " Quidquid principi placuit legis habet vigorem." But, after all, far better are the caprices of Caesar than the laws of Plato. And the world, carrying to its extreme verge its for- getfulness of God and hatred of man, adores abjectly the idol of flesh which devours it, and feels itself ab- jectly dying. III. THE PROPHECIES. ONLY one people or nation, escaping from this natural condition of degradation and ignominy, adored the true God, possessed a legitimate priesthood, and practised a holy worship. These were the only people who believed in the immortality of the soul — the Jewish people, reserved to furnish the flesh of the Incarnate Word. By dint of chastisements and mira- cles, God had plucked from their heart the growing bud of idolatry. Indifferent observers of the divine law, in- clined to misconstrue it, they were still zealous guar- dians of it. They transgressed it, they did not abjure it ; and this was enough to elevate them morally far above all other peoples and nations, without even ex- cepting the Romans, who were their proud oppressors and their masters. Under the protection of the Temple, man was a man, a son of Abraham, a sub- ject of the Most High. Equitable regulations pro- tected his liberty, guarded his dignity, maintained him in the possession of his inheritance. Ceremonies at once religious and national instructed him in the history of his fathers and that of his religion. If he wished to walk in the way of the divine commandments, the strength of holy prayer continually elevated his heart ; ! he offered up pure sacrifices, he did works of penance and justice ; he awaited the accomplishment of the long- expected promise, knowing that a Redeemer would be born for him of the race of David, Son of Abraham, and that he would see the God of his ancestors in the land of the living. _ This God of Abraham, who was to send forth the Re- deemer, has revealed to us some of his high and holy names: He is who is— the Lord of Lords— the All- Powerful Protector of the weak and the orphan, who created the world, who gives life and conquers death. Lowly Palestine was more learned than Athens and richer than Rome ; for already she, in a certain manner, knew and possessed God. Despite terrible vicissitudes, all occasioned by their transgression and announced by their prophets, Israel, the people of God, had tasted long periods of repose. The traditions of the golden age, seen in vague begin- nings in other histories, formed in the Jewish history certain and recent epochs. Since the return from the Babylonish captivity up to the Roman domination, Judea, rather protected than enslaved, mistress of her worship, perfectly undeceived as to the worship of idols, and preserved from false prophets, had enjoyed four centuries of honorable peace. During those four ages, Greece passed from the Persian war and the de- feat of Xerxes to the victory of the Consul Mummius, where she died ; Carthage saw her last day ; the his- tory of Rome was full of the blood that flowed from Tarquin to Marius. The peace of Israel, wherein each, according to the gracious expression of the Scripture, lived happily under his own vine and fig-tree, was not notably interrupted, save by the short and glorious war of the Machabees, the last heroes, and almost the last ( priests, of that people whose incomparable destinies are not yet completed. Strange people, truly immortal, founded by God, in- structed by God, cared for by God, who also received directly from God all their laws and all their great men ; and who, having separated themselves from God, per- ished without dying and without disappearing ! Guilty of a crime as unheard of as their privileges, object of a chastisement unheard of, dragging along a living death under the arms of the cross to which they nailed the living God, the Jew erred amid light like others amid darkness, blinded by the very torch that ought to have been his guide ; but the faithful promises he ob- stinately rejects pursue him, they overtake him, and he Avili die to live again, ennobled by all humanity. In the bosom of this people is to be accomplished, at the moment announced five hundred years before by one of its last prophets, an event the most important that the world ever witnessed or that heaven has ever seen. On earth the reparation of the first creation is to be effected ; and this reparation requires a new and more perfect creation, since the degraded and outlawed creature, re-established in his primeval state, shall be honored by a participation in the Divinity. In heaven was to take place what we might dare to call a change of the Unchangeable, an enlargement of the Infinite. " The mystery [of the redemption] concealed from all eternity in God, who created all things," is to be mani- fested to men and angels, to become the faith and sal- vation of the human race, the admiration of angels, the perfection and glory of God. By this mystery the earth, whereon God was about to descend, should be an enlargement of heaven, a new heaven, in which God dwells in a manner more divine than that in which he Introduction. 73 dwelt before in the highest heavens ; and the heaven to which human nature is to ascend, indissolubly united to the divine nature, shall be enriched with an adoration hitherto unknown. Heaven had a God adored, and it will have a God, an adorer, clothed with humanity, as the most signal of the divine attributes. It will behold around this God the cortege of pious souls — a terrestrial harvest that the Son of God garnered to be eternally the prize of his victory and the triumph of his love. This event is the establishment of fixed and definite religion, the ransom of humanity. Although it had pleased God to execute it in a manner which surpasses infinitely all that humanity could hope for and even comprehend, nevertheless the outward world itself and all the Gentiles had a long and lively presentiment of it. We find at the bottom of all the traditions the type, more or less altered, of the Messiah, the dogma of the necessary redemption, which could not be per- formed but by an innocent man. The conscience of the human race at least renders this homage to inno- cence, disdained and often hated though it was. The expectation of this divine succor, faith in the super- abundant merits of the innocent One, is a universal inheritance. Admirable proof that the human family sprang from the same cradle ! Grief for lost wealth, sorrow for disinheritance and dispersion, produced an abundance of legends. The legendary Messiah, colored by the character of each family of peoples, nationalized and materialized, ob- scured and disfigured the true Messiah. In the depth of the soul there is an echo to the saying of Moses, " Hear, O Israel ! the Lord thy God is One." And as this idea of the unity of God, always subsisting, re- mained, nevertheless, suppressed and depraved in the 74 Introduction. fables of polytheism, so the idea of the Messiah was everywhere enveloped in dark clouds of error. It was requisite that the Messiah should come and that they should not acknowledge him / it was requisite that the redemption should be an effort and a conquest ; it was necessary that Christ should suffer, that the innocent one should bear the pain of the guilty. This was necessary in order that man might be redeemed, and that justice might be done toward the prince of this world, from whom the divine mercy snatched his prey ; and that all foretold might come to pass. Among the Jews it seemed that nothing that concern- ed the Messiah could become obscure. Depositaries of the promises, they did not insult him by any doubt or any forgetfulness. They believed their fathers and Moses, to whom God had spoken by miracles. Since Moses, instructed in all things, neither the Spirit of God nor miracles were silent. The promise, renewed, affirmed, developed, as it were without intermission, resounded in all the prophets, lived in all the - great men. The Holy Scripture is full of the Messiah. The revelations announce him ; events and historical personages foretell and typify him ; all his traits are described ; the day of his coming is clearly pointed out ; the circumstances of his birth, his life, his death, are marked in detail, and even with minuteness. The Jews, says an historian of the Church, possessed his very signature : God had taken four thousand years to write it. And at length, when he appeared, the voice of heaven, of earth, and of hell, John the Baptist and Pilate, the angels and the devils, thunder and miracles, all cried out : Behold him ! There he is ! Ecce Agnus Dei ! Ecce Homo ! The Jews (but not all of them) disowned him ; they Introduction. 7 5 are yet unmindful of him. But in disavowing him they admit that they expected him ; and their peculiar fate, which they could not remedy, and which the world was not able to complete, being also foretold, attests that He who is come is also he who was to come. The unbelievers of new generations, as ungrateful as the Jews, and less blinded, ignore this brilliant proof of their common folly. Embarrassed by the testimony of the prophets, at one time they eschew those great documents and Hebraical history ; at others they treat them as reveries, as wild fancies artfully interpreted. The entire life of a people is rendered suspicious, in defiance of the most certain and authenticated monu- ments the world could have produced. And this is done for the purpose of putting out of sight the very first page of the history they pretend to write. What ) an avowal of this Godhead, over which so many veils ) • S must be thrown, and which pierces them all for ) ever ! To speak correctly and truly, the history of Jesus Christ has no commencement, nor will it have an end : " In the beginning was the Word. Of his reign ther. shall be no end." But, even in the order of his tern \ poral manifestation, Jesus neither commences in the crib nor does he end on the cross. He proceeds from the creation of man to the consummation of destined humanity — to the last judgment. The Christ was, he is, and he will be. When the slime of the earth, fash- ioned by the hands of God, received the breath of God, and became a living flesh united to an immortal soul, here and then commences the temporal life of Jesus with the life of the Church, according to the saying of St. Epiphanius : " The beginning of all things is the holy Catholic Church." There the historian com- 76 Introduction. mences, if he does not entirely wish to betray his God, who is truth, and men, who stand in need of truth. All the evangelical demonstrations contain, with rea- son, this history of Christianity before the Christ. Let us pay attention to a short summary of it. After the fall, at the moment when driven out of Paradise, Adam and Eve, punished, not cursed, under- stood this word of God addressed to the serpent, organ of the spirit of darkness, who had counselled disobe- dience, and who had triumphed: " I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed : she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." These are the words which the ancient Jews have always applied to the Messiah. " It was," says Bossuet, " by this divine germ, or by the woman who should bring forth this germ, that the ruin of the human race should be repaired, and the power of the prince of this world be destroyed." Abraham humbly and faithfully obeys God. Through obedience he quits his country to go into a land God had pointed out to him. And God said to him : "I will cause to issue forth from you a great people, and I will render your name wonderful, and you shall be blessed, and all the people shall be blessed in thee." Soon after God puts him to another trial. He demands of him the sacrifice of his only son, born when Sarah was very old and a long time barren. Abraham nevertheless obeys ; the victim is tied ; he is about to be immolated. God arrests the stroke : " By my own self have I sworn, saith the Lord ; because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake : I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the sea-shore: thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies. And Introduction. 7 7 in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice." The same promise is renewed in the same terms to Isaac, son of Abraham. Jacob, son of Isaac, saw in the dream of the mysterious ladder, whose foot was placed on the earth, and whose top touched the heavens — "angels of God ascending and descending "—a figure of the reconciliation of heaven with earth, through the incarnation of the Word, and the Lord said unto him: " I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac : The land wherein thou sleepest, I will give to thee and to thy seed. . . . And in thee and thy seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed." Jacob, near to his death, foretold the destinies of his children. He speaks of Juda, and instantly cries out : " The sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations." Having related these promises, which he could equally have known by tradition, at that time not far removed, or by divine revelation, Moses is filled with the Holy Ghost, and predicts in his turn the Liberator of whom he was the true and imposing type: "And the Lord said to me : They have spoken all things well. I will raise them up a prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to thee ; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak all that I shall command him. And he that will not hear his words, which he shall speak in my name, I will be the revenger." Of all the prophets who have appeared after Moses, none has been like him, except Jesus Christ, who surpassed him in every- thing. The prophets succeed each other, and traits more and more precise foreshadow Him "who is about to fô Introduction. come." Micheas salutes the humble Bethlehem, where first he will see the light ; David speaks of him as if he were present, or speaks of him as if actually contemplat- ing him ; Habacuc is overjoyed in Jesus, the Saviour- God ; Isaias declares that he will be of the race of Jesse (father of David); that he will be born of a virgin ; that he will be called God with us. He called him Christ, King of Israel. The name of Son of David was given him by Jeremias and by Ezechiel. Isaias points out the object of his mission, depicts his sweetness, de- scribes his miracles, and beholds him in humiliations, the object of disdain and the contempt and ridicule of men. David characterized his preaching. Many of the prophets described his Passion, just as it was recounted by the Evangelists. They saw in it the council of Jews, the betrayal of Judas, the agony in the Garden of Olives, the flight of the disciples, the outrages in the house of the high-priest, the thirty pieces of silver given to the Iscariot, the way of Calvary, the cruci- fixion, the garment for which lots were cast, the gall and vinegar, the injuries endured even on the cross, the prayer for the executioners, the last cry — " My God, why have you abandoned me? Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." They descried afar off in his Passion the reprobation of the Jews, the resurrection, and the triumph. Daniel : " The Christ will be put to death, and the people who will have denied him shall no more be his people." David : " I have been in a profound sleep, and I awaked." Isaias: "At that time the branch of Jesse, elevated as a sign of salvation before all the people, will be adored by the nations, and his sepulchre will be glorious." David: "Throughout the entire earth his Introduction. 7 g miracles will be remembered, and it will be converted ! to the Lord, and the immense family of nations will be < in adoration before him. ... for the entire posterity \ yet unborn will be declared to belong to the Lord. And the heavens will announce his justice to the people yet unborn, to the people whom the Lord has made." Malachias: " From the rising to the setting of the sun, my name is great among the nations, and they will sac- rifice me in all places, and they will offer to my name an oblation all pure, because my name is great among the nations, says the Lord, the God of armies." And there the prophets are silent to the coming of John the Baptist, the Precursor, who pointed him out living, " Behold the Lamb of God." There is yet another general prophecy, and not less striking than the ardor wherewith the prophets sigh for the Messias. Love had never sweeter or more penetrat- ing accents : " Lord," says Jacob, " I will live on the expectation of your salvation " ; " Lord," says Moses, ) " I implore thee send down him whom you are bound ! to send " ; " Arouse your strength," says David, " and J come and save us " ; " Hasten the time, hasten the i end," says Ecclesiastes, " that men may recount your j wonders"; " Ye heavens, drop down dew, rain down the Just One, and let the earth open up and bring forth j its Saviour." The names and titles which thev give him, the images under which they represent him, express this same love and prophecy again. The Patriarch Jacob calls him the " Desired of the Eternal Hills " ; the Prophet Aggeus, the " Desired of all the Nations " ; the Prophet Isaias, " God with us," the " Father of the future world," the " Prince of Peace." Isaias com- pares him to the gentle and fertilizing dew which be- ) ) 8o Introduction. dews the earth and ascends to heaven. Osee says his uprising is like the morning sun ; " for," says an interpreter, "as the aurora is buta half-sun which is momentarily becoming more luminous, till it bursts out in its majestic effulgence, so the infant Jesus grows exteriorly in wisdom and grace before God and men ; and as the light of the morning is very pure and very agreeable, and very mild to men, fatigued by the dark- ness of a long night, so the birth of Jesus Christ is the mildest, most precious aurora that comes to delight humanity, plunged for four thousand years in the re- gions of death." Behold, among many others, a few traits of the character of the Messias, dictated by God to the prophets, so that he might become known to Israel and to the world. Without doubt all that regarded him was not equally clear, and could only receive from himself its full and perfect light ; and doubt- less even all the Jews, congregated in great numbers at Rome and throughout the empire, did not under- stand in the same degree what might have been un- derstood even at that time. He was known well enough to wake up the traditions that lay dormant in the bosom of very remote history; to cause more rays of light to penetrate the Gentiles than their sages wished to receive of him. We now know how it is whence came the idea to Socrates, so strange, of the Just One hated and nailed to the cross ; we now compre- hand how Plato and Cicero got those sublime ideas I touching the divinity and the immortality of the soul ; and of what voices those presentiments of the people were the echoes, the supernatural predictions, an- nouncing the King who established himself in Judea, Introduction. 8 1 the wondrous Babe who changed the course of things, and established a new order. For us, who came in the order of time, God has manifested to us the fulness of those wonders ; we can compare the original to the portrait executed in advance, and the portrait appears to us so much the more finished. A writer ingeniously brings out the miraculous nature of this divine work: "Figure to ) yourself an excellent statue formed of many pieces, ( inlaid and chiselled by many sculptors at divers times : ) the one commences the head at the first age of the ) world ; the other forms the body a thousand years after ; another comes afterwards who makes an arm ; another a foot, then another a hand. Each one makes ) part of it, so that not one of those learned masters knows anything of the work of his companions ; and, nevertheless, putting all together, you will find the true -, form and figure of the Messias; that this statue, made \ a long time before his birth, represents him in every \ particular just as he was when he conversed among men. You would say those prophets always lived with him, that they acted in concert, not only among them- selves, but with the Evangelists, so great is the relation between what the latter recounted as passed and what I the former predicted as about to happen." ( This harmony has been clearly perceived. Indeed, < | and in order to avoid seeing it, some sa7-nnts have ) boldly plunged themselves into the ridiculous. They ( have said that many prophecies have been introduced ? or interpolated ; and, as this invention gave them small ( chance of keeping up the falsehood, since the Old [ Testament has a certain fixed date, many centuries anterior to Christ, others have explained the mystery by advancing that the Gospel had been manufactured 4 82 Introduction. from the prophecies. Later historians circle as much as they dare around this system, and the science of negation springs from it. But this system does not procure for them any great advantages, many of the prophecies of the Old and New Testament not having received their fulfilment until a long time after the nearest epoch wherein it could be possible to place the Gospel story. It must be avowed that these falsifiers, if they were learned enough to have conceiv- ed their Christ from the model prophecies, have more- over been themselves prophets. Such objections are shameful. Let us lay them aside, and recall the last prophecy given by God to compel incredulity to shelter itself in unreasoning denial. At a distance of fifteen hundred years the prophet Daniel fixes the very year, and probably the very day, of the advent of the Messiah. " During the captivity [of Babylon] Daniel saw in order, at different times and under various figures, four monarchies under which the Israelites were obliged to live. He marked them by their proper characters. We see rushing along like a mighty torrent the empire of Alexander, king of the Greeks. Through its fall we behold another empire established, less than his and weakened by its divisions ; it is that of his successors. We behold coming forth at last in all its grandeur the ' reign of the Son of Man.' By this name you ac- knowledge Jesus Christ ; but this reign of the Son of Man is also called 'the reign of the saints of the Most High.' All peoples are subject to this great and pacific kingdom ; eternity is promised to it, and it must be the only one whose power will never pass away to any other empire. God clearly discovers to Daniel when this Son of Man shall come, this Jesus so r~ Introduction, 33 long desired, and how he will accomplish the work committed to him — that is to say, the redemption of the human race. Whilst Daniel was occupied with the captivity of his people in Babylon, and the seventy years it pleased God to detain them therein, amid the sighs and invocations he poured forth to God for the deliverance of his brethren, he is suddenly elevated to the highest mysteries. He sees another number of years and another deliverance far more important. Instead of the seventy years predicted by Jeremias he sees seventy weeks, commencing from the ordinance of Artaxerxes, about the twentieth year of his reign, to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. Here is pointed out, in precise terms, at the end of these weeks, the remission of sins, the eternal reign of justice, the entire accom- plishment of the prophecies, and the anointing of the Holy of Holies. Christ must assume his charge and appear as conductor of the people after sixty-nine weeks. After sixty-nine weeks [for the prophet re- peats it] the Christ will be put to death ; he will die a cruel death. He will be immolated on the cross to fulfil the mysteries. One week is marked out among others — it is the last, the seventieth ; it is that wherein Christ will be immolated, wherein the covenant will be confirmed, and in the middle of which offerings and sacrifices shall be abolished — without doubt, through the death of Christ, because it is in consequence of the death of Christ that this change is marked. After this death of Christ and the abolition of sacrifices we behold only horror and confusion ; we behold the de- struction of the holy city and of the sanctuary, a people and a general who come to destroy everything, the abomination in the temple, the last, irremediable desolation of a people ungrateful to their Saviour. 84 Introduction. "These weeks, reduced into weeks of years accord- ing to Scriptural usage, make four hundred and ninety years, and lead us precisely from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes to the last week — a week full of mys- teries in which Jesus Christ, immolated, put an end by his death to the sacrifices of the law, and fulfilled its types and figures. " The learned make different calculations to make this time quite exact. There is nothing surprising in that, since there is found some uncertainty in the dates ; and a few years on which they were able to dispute about a reckoning (four hundred and ninety years) would never make an important question. God has decided the difficulty, if there were any, by a decision which admits of no reply. A manifest event places us beyond and above all the subtilities of chro- nologists ; and the total ruin of the Jews, which follow- ed a little after the death of our Lord, demonstrate to x the most short-sighted the fulfilment of the prophecy."* The weeks of Daniel reach to their term, and already the sign indicated by Jacob strikes every eye. The sceptre is departed from Juda. On the throne of \ David, Herod, a stranger to the royal blood, and even ! to the blood of Israel, reigns a tyrant by the favor of the Romans. The policy of Herod embellishes the temple and dishonors the priesthood. He has put up S to public auction the sovereign pontificate. Alter- nately changed, established, deposed, by the prince or by the Roman governor, the high-priest is but the I ephemeral creature and the sport of these intruded I powers. Religion declines amid the pomp of ceremon- \ ies. The sects become numerous, and fill with bitter con- ) * Bossuet, Dis. on Univ. History. "1 Introduction. 85 J \ tests the city, the schools, and even the interior of the s temple. The Sadducees, rich, unbelieving, cynical, ) inculcate contempt of the law. The Pharisees, full of pride and hard-heartedness, outrage it in another manner, by overloading it with insupportable practices, overpowering to the weak and odious to reason ; the Esscnians, imposing on themselves the rules of an austere life, chain legitimate liberty, but in compensa- tion they free themselves from the precepts, reject the traditions, and pretend to honor God without offering sacrifice. Great immoralities follow from this disorder of minds — sure sicrn that those doctrinaires are not ignorant. In the hearts of the just and the wise the presentiment of a catastrophe is mingled with the cer- tainty of expectation. ( All are awaiting it. As regards the Messias there are no unbelievers; but, at the same time, mostly all lose by degrees a true notion of the divine embassa- dor. National pride contributed thereto no less than sectarian spirit. The domination of the Romans, though relatively moderate, exasperated a people who were not without reasons for esteeming themselves above their arrogant masters. Besides their rapacity and cruelty, they were reproached for their sacrilege. Their insolence had oftentimes violated religious usages. The Messias was therefore especially ex- pected as their avenger. The Jews accustomed them- selves to believe that the Desired of nations would come with an army, terrible and triumphant, to satisfy their cupidity, and to substitute them as the masters of the world. Thus in those hearts, turned towards the earth at the very time the light was about to dawn, a darkness arose thicker than had been their night. The Messias will say, '' Blessed are the pure of heart " ; Introduction. and those only will see him who will ask, not their kingdom, but his. However, peace reigned in Judea, as it did every- where else. Augustus had subdued all seditions in Rome, all revolts in the world. The doctrinal tu- mults of Jerusalem, quelled by a sense of expectation, troubled not this general state of tranquillity. No longer was any party politically formidable at Jerusa- lem. This was a rare instance in history. Rome pos- sessed a hypocritical temple among those she raised up — the Temple of Peace, whose portals remained open as a continual form of prayer during the war, to recall banished peace. But from Numa to Augustus, seven centuries, the Temple of Peace had been closed but twice, and then but for a short time. However, to demonstrate at what price might alone can pacify, twice again the homicidal hand of Augustus was pleased to close the dreadful portals, or rather Augus- tus had clogged them up with the dead bodies of the citizens. They were reopened, and he once more closes them ; and to do this he employs the sword of Tiberius. By his wars in Germany Tiberius becomes the enactor of what one may call the first evangelical fact — he makes the din of arms cease, and in the midst of the silence God whispers forth the word of the true and eternal peace. The empire commences to accomplish the designs of God. Henceforth, whether it likes it or not, it can no longer act any other part. The deeds of war, the only resounding events of antiquity, are everywhere silent ; it has been predicted the earth would enjoy peace at the hour to which we now approach. Hour of joyful song, hour of triumphs ! At Rome, Horace and Virgil sing at the feet of the conquerors, Tiberius and Augustus; in Judea, beneath Introduction. 8/ the crib wherein reposes a poor, new-born Infant, ce- lestial voices, heard only by a few shepherds, are about to intone the summary of the eternal Gospel : " Glory to the Most High God, peace to men of good-will! " This was a solemn hour for all nature. In the vast firmament the stars have not deviated from their course; there was nothing to repair; no perturbation shook those inviolable kingdoms from their regularity. Nevertheless, there is a circumstance about to signalize the advent of the new Adam, of the new Moses, of the new Josue, of the Man whom the demons, and the an- gels, and the wind, and the sea, and the planets, and all created things are to obey. This circumstance was the universal jubilee of the planets. All at this moment had accomplished their revolutions, and held them- selves ready for labor or rest ; all, obedient, set out again for a new course, the same as the day on which the Word of God having called them from nothing, each one by his name, each one answers, " Behold, here I am," and takes the route which has been marked out for him. lie who has created the world is about to appear, living our life in the infirmity of our flesh. It is the God whom we seek, it is the Man who is going to manifest himself. But the Man manifests himself only to raise us up to God. We will have no difficulty in acknowledging him. However, let us ask of him a good-will. Jesus is now no more concealed or disguised ; he has passed through the world in infirmity ; he now dwells in glory. But for nineteen centuries this Sun, always more brilliant, encounters blindness and dark- ness more obscure. Such is the mystery of human liberty ; in the presence of evidence it preserves the merit of believing : it has the dreadful power of deny- ing. If, having conspired to remain in darkness, we have not the desire to depart from it, let us ask the aid of grace. Our reason is subject to troubles which the intellect cannot formulate, nor divine, nor ap- proach. Prayer obtains grace ; grace brings with it light and truth. Let us pronounce the powerful words which the Holy Ghost has suggested to us to conquer ourselves and to overcome God, as the mother suggests to the guilty child the word which the father requires before pardoning so much ignorance and obstinacy. Let us not be so headstrong against the divine mercy ; let us not refuse salvation. We can always say : " Lord, grant I may see." We always believe enough, and always little enough, to give us cause to repeat that word addressed to Jesus : " I believe, Lord ; help my unbelief." BOOK I. THE rROLOGUE OF THE GOSPEL. CHAPTER I NAZARETH— BETHLEHEM— THE JORDAN. ZACHARY the priest, and his wife Elizabeth, both just and irreproachable before God, had no posterity, nor did they expect any, on account of their very advanced age, and because Elizabeth was barren. One day, as Zachary, selected by lot, exercised his office in the Temple, the angel of the Lord appeared to him, and told him that his prayer was heard; that Elizabeth would present to him a son, whom he would call John. The angel added that this son should be great, filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother's womb, and would walk before the Lord with the power of the prophet Elias, to prepare mankind to receive the Holy One. Zachary doubtless did not ask a favor which he con- sidered impossible to obtain, and confined himself to praver for the coming of the Messias. He was frigh- 1 J 89 9o The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. tened, not having understood the announcement of the angel, and did not believe him. The angel -reproached him for his incredulity, and declared to him that God, in order to punish him, would render him mute till the accomplishment of the thing predicted ; and Zachary departs from the Temple pale and voiceless. His appearance made known that he had had a vision. Elizabeth conceives. Humbly retired, she gives thanks to God, who took away from her the opprobrium of her barrenness. Six months after, the Angel Gabriel, the same who appeared to Zachary, was sent by God to a virgin of the race of David, who remained at Nazareth, in Gali- lee. She was called Mary. Sweet, tender orphan, she had been brought up in the Temple. A little while after the high-priest, or, according to others, those who adopted her, betrothed her to Joseph, a just man, much older than she was, and, like her, of the blood of David. Joseph worked for a living; his occupation was that of a carpenter. Mary was then fourteen years of age. The angel presents himself before this virgin, say- ing to her: " I salute you, O full of grace! Thou art blessed among women, and the Lord is with thee." He then announces to her Him who would be born of her, adding that she should call him Jesus — that is, the Saviour. Accustomed, as it appears, to the vision of angels, but not prepared for the solemnity of such a message, the humble daughter of David is troubled. She doubts not, like Zachary. Her prudent response was that she had made a vow to God to remain during her life a virgin, and that she would not nor could not violate it. The ancfel then informed her how she would become The Life of our Lord j/'esus Christ. 9 1 a mother by the power of the Holy Ghost, and that therefore the Holy One who should be born of her should be called the Son of God. He made known to her " that she whom they called barren " was in the sixth month of her pregnancy — because it was proper that Mary should know before all others the secret of the miraculous conception of the Precursor. Mary, having understood these things, said : " Behold the ] handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word." And the angel left her. " Behold the servant of the Lord." In pronouncing this word of humility, the word that accomplished our salvation, Mary was the echo of the incarnate God. By the lips of David, predicting his coming on the earth, he calls himself, not the son of the virgin, but the son of the handmaid : " Ego servus tuus et filius an- \ cillai tuœ." As soon as Mary is acquainted with the \ designs of God the mystery of the incarnation is ac- complished. " And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us." Instructed by the revelation of the angel, and obey- ing the inspiration of Him who already dwelt in her, the Virgin Mary with haste goes to the mountainous country at Hebron, where Elizabeth dwelt. Jesus was anxious to sanctify his precursor by his hidden pre- sence. On entering the house Mary salutes her cousin. Instantly the child leaps in the womb of Elizabeth, and Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Ghost. Addressing herself to Mary, she cries out with a loud voice: " Blessed art thou among women ; and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For be- hold, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. And ^J g 2 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. blessed art thou that hast believed ; because those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to thee \ by the Lord." Mary bursts forth in this sublime can- ticle : "My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour: because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid : for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done great things to me : and holy is his name. And his mercy is from genera- tion to generation, to them that fear him. He hath showed might in his arm : he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent away empty. He hath received Israel his servant, being mindful of his mercy. As he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed for ever." The term of Elizabeth having arrived, she gives to the world a soil. On the day of the circumcision, which was the eighth, the relatives wished to give him the name of his father. Elizabeth demanded that he should be called John, which Zachary, yet dumb, con- firmed by writing: "John is his name." At that instant the tongue of Zachary is loosened, and he prophesies and blesses the God of Israel for having been mindful of his mercies toward his people, and for having raised up for them a Saviour of the house of David. And addressing himself to his son, he tells him that he will walk before the Lord to prepare for him the way, so that the remission of sins may be obtained from this rising Sun who is coming to enlighten the darkness and the shadow of death, and to direct our feet in the way of peace. The rumor of these things is spread throughout the The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 93 mountains of Judea, and men say one to another: " What, think you, will this Child become? " Mary, on her return to Nazareth, remained in silence, relying entirely on her God. And Joseph, instructed in a dream by the angel of the Lord, kept his spouse, whom he had thought of putting away. He knew then that the Son of the Virgin should be called Jesus because he would be the Saviour of Israel. Joseph, just and pious, versed in the Scriptures, knew then that what was going to happen would fulfil the prophe- cies of Isaias : " Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and give to the world a son." There was another prophecy to be accomplished. It was written that the child should be born at Bethlehem > ) N ) ) ) ) of Juda. A pressing circumstance obliged Joseph to quit Galilee and come to this city with Mary, although she was near her confinement. Bethlehem being the ) place of David, their common ancestor, there they were obliged to have their names recorded for the general enrolment commanded by the Emperor Augustus. Therefore they came to Bethlehem, whilst a throng of strangers flocked to it from Jerusalem, where they were celebrating the feast, and, finding no place where- in to lodge, they sought refuge in a grotto in the field. There it was in the middle of the night, without suf- fering any of the pains and sorrows of childbirth— as the sun emits his light, and as the flower sheds its fra- grance— that Mary brought forth to the world her first- born and only Son— he whom St. John calls the " only- begotten Son of the Father," and St. Paul "the first- born of God." She wraps him up in swaddling clothes and places him in a manger. Tradition gathers round this cradle an ox and an ass, whose breath gave warmth to the new-born Babe. Those animals had been led by 94 The Life of our Lord Jïsus Christ. Joseph — the ass to serve the purpose of carrying Mary, the ox to be sold and to defray the expenses of the journey. Isaias has said : " The ox knows him to whom he belongs ; the ass its master's stable." The field wherein Jesus was born was the property of the Temple. On it they fattened cattle destined for the sacrifice. Shepherds were there, too, who watched ;> during the night. Suddenly those men beheld an angel encircled by a luminous cloud of heavenly light. The angel told them not to fear, but rather to rejoice ; for he came to announce to them a great joy. " To- day," he continues, " in the city of David, a Saviour is born to you, and he is the Christ our Lord. Behold the sign by which you shall know him : You will find an Infant wrapped up in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger." Instantly numerous troops of the heavenly host unite themselves to the angel, causing the air to resound with the song : " Glory be to God in the high- est heaven, and peace on earth to men of good-will." The shepherds say one to the other: "Let 'us go over to Bethlehem." They find Mary and Joseph, and the Child laid in the crib, and they acknowledge the truth of what had been told them. Immediately, having returned to their \ flocks, they published what they had heard and what they had seen. > Mary lost nothing of those things, and treasured \ them up in her heart. \ Some time after men from the East called Magi, on account of their knowledge, appeared at Jerusalem. They said the King of the Jews had been born, because ( they had seen his star, and they asked where they could find him, having come to adore him. Their presence puts the whole city in commotion. Herod, The Life of our Lord ycsus Christ. 95 King of the Jews, is quite anxious to speak with them. He was a suspicious, cruel, and deceitful prince. Be- ( lieving that he was about to have a competitor to his royalty, he enquires diligently where the Christ was to be born. The ancients, scribes, and priests all answer him: "At Bethlehem of Juda." Herod sends off [ the Magi there, after having besought them to inform him where they had seen the child, in order, said he, that he might be able to adore him. Joyful and con- fidant, the Magi departed. The star which guided them to Jerusalem, presenting itself again, conducts them to the place where Jesus was. .They found the Child and his mother. Having adored him, they offered him gold, frankincense, and myrrh ; then, warned in a dream not to see Herod again, they re- turned to their own country by another route. The Judaical circumcision had taken place eight days after his birth. The fortieth day was fixed for the double ceremony of the purification of the mother and the presentation of the Child. Every first-born male, being consecrated to the Lord, should be re- deemed with an offering of silver, in memory of the deliverance from Egyptian bondage. The parents of Jesus therefore brought him to the Temple to fulfil the law. At the same moment, urged on by the inspira- tion of the Holy Ghost, a just man, who expected the consolation of Israel, arrives at his side of the Temple. X He was named Simeon. It had been revealed to him that he should not die until he saluted the Christ. Simeon, having seen the child Jesus, took him into his arms, and instantly burst forth in acts of thanks. "It is time," says he, "O Lord! that, according to your word, you would let your servant depart in peace ; for behold my eyes hath seen the salvation which L 96 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. comes of you, the light which is revealed to the na- tions, the salvation of Israel your people." The ven- erable old man blesses Mary and Joseph, and, divinely enlightened, he prophesies. Addressing himself only to Mary, he says to her: "Behold this child here present has been born and placed in the world for the destruction and salvation of many in Israel. He will be set up for a sign of contradiction, that out of many hearts the truth may be revealed ; and you, his mother, your soul shall be pierced with a sword of grief." There was there also a prophetess called Anna, daughter of Phanuel. She was a widow, aged eighty- four. Since the death of her husband, whom she had espoused when a virgin, she departed not from the Temple, where she passed the nights and days in prayer and fasting. She also saw Jesus, and she also praised the Lord, speaking of the Child to all who awaited the redemption of Israel. After these things, all that the law required being executed, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in sleep, and commanded him to flee into Egypt, be- cause Herod sought the Child to put him to death. Joseph obeys without delay ; and whilst Jesus thus escapes, Herod, having learned of the departure of the Magi, caused all the male children around Bethlehem up to the age of two years to be put to death. Herod dies some years after this crime. Then, by a fresh warning of the angel, received in a dream like the pre- ceding ones, Joseph brings back the Child into Israel. But because Archelaus, son of Herod, reigned over Israel, he dare not go there, and, always obedient to the divine admonitions, he establishes his dwelling at Nazareth of Galilee. This was the will of God, so that those words might be fulfilled : " I have called my Son The Life of our Lord Jïsui Christ. 97 from Egypt " ; and elsewhere, " He will be called a Nazarene. The Gospel relates but one fact more of the infancy of Jesus. At twelve years, age of precepts, his parents conducted him to Jerusalem for the Passover; but, when they were journeying home, he remained in the city for a whole day. Neither Joseph nor Mary per- ceived his absence, because the men and women travelled in separate bands, and each thought he was with the other. Retracing their steps, in vain they sought him for three days. At length they found him where he ought to be — in the Temple, seated in the midst of the doctors, whom he heard and interrogated, manifesting to them a wisdom that filled them with admiration. His mother said to him : " My son, why have you acted thus with us ? Behold, we have sought you quite sorrowful, your father and myself." He answered them : " Why have ye sought me ? Did you not know that it was necessary I should be employed about the business of my Father." They did not understand the service or business about which he spoke ; but his mother preserved the remembrance of all. Forthwith he follows them to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And he grows in age and grace be- fore God and man. In the meantime the son of Zachary and Elizabeth had from his infancy retired into the wilderness. He there led a life the most mortified, clothed with sack- cloth, praying and fasting ; unknown in that solitude, as was Jesus in the obscurity of Nazareth. At the age of thirty years he awaits the order of God for the day of his manifestation. At length, in the fifteenth year of the empire of Tiberius Caesar, the word of the Lord is made known to John, the son of Zachary, according 98 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. to what the prophet had announced : " Behold, I will send my angel before thy face, and he will prepare the way before thee." And elsewhere: " A voice of one crying out in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord ; make straight his paths." John then commences to preach in the desert of Judea and the country about the Jordan. He baptizes and preaches the baptism of penance, which was to dis- pose men to obtain the remission of sins. He cries out, " Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He chastises severely the hypocrisy of the Pharisees ) and the impiety of the Sadducees, mingled in the throng > that flock to him. " Ye brood of vipers, who has taught ; you to flee from the wrath of God now pending over \ ye? Bring forth fruit worthy of penance. Do not say among yourselves you have Abraham for your father, because I say to you of these very stones God can raise up children to Abraham. Now the axe is laid to the root of the tree, and every tree which produces not good fruit shall be cut down and cast in the fire." The exhortations of John, supported by his holy life and the remembrance of his miraculous birth, made all Judea shudder and quake for fear. From all sides they come in crowds to the preacher of penance. Those vast multitudes, deeply moved, confess their sins, and ask what they must do to receive baptism. John recom- mends to all the precept of almsgiving. " Let him who has two coats clothe him who has none, and let him who has something to eat nourish him who has no- thing.'' To the publicans, collectors of taxes, he says: " Do not require anything beyond what is commanded." To the soldiers: "Use no violence, accuse no person falsely, be satisfied with your pay." The people are very soon persuaded that John was The Life of our Lord Jrsus Christ. 99 the Christ. He says to them : " I baptize you with water, so that you may do penance; but He who is about to come after me is greater than I am, and I am not worthy to stoop before him to untie the latchet of His shoes. It is he who will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire : whose fan is in his hands, and he will sweep clean his barn floor: he will gather the wheat into his granary, and he will cast the chaff into the fire that shall never be extinguished." Jesus quits Nazareth to be baptized, and appears be- fore John on the borders of the Jordan, among that throng of sinners who do penance. John, living in the desert from his infancy, could have never before that moment seen the Son of Mary. However, he acknow- ledges him by an inspiration which a visible sign quickly confirms. He hesitates to baptize, saying to him, " It is I who should receive baptism of you, and you come to me." Jesus answered him, " Do it, nevertheless^ it is proper that we accomplish thus all justice." Then John baptizes him. And whilst Jesus was going out of the water, praying, the heavens opened up, and the Holy Ghost, under the form of a dove, descended and rested upon him, and a voice like a clap of thunder burst forth from heaven, " You are my well-beloved Son." Jesus immediately retires into the desert. He remains there forty days and forty nights, living among the beasts, and suffers himself to be tempted by Satan. Whether the temptation may have lasted the forty days, or whether the Son of God may have permitted it only after this long fast, the Gospel relates three attacks on Kim in the desert by Satan. When, therefore, Jesus began to feel the pangs of hunger, Satan says to him, " If you are the Son of God, The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. command that these stones be changed into bread." Jesus answered him, " It is written, Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word proceeding out of the mouth of God." Foiled by this expression of un- bounded confidence which Providence expects of man, the enemy wishes in his turn to avail himself of the arm of the Scriptures and of the confidence in God. He trans- ports Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, and says to him : " If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down ; for it is written he has chargedthis angels to take care of you, and they will bear you in their arms, lest you hurt your foot against a stone." Jesus replied, " It is also written, You shall not tempt the Lord thy God." Vanquished a second time, Satan tries the last assault. He carries \ him up to the top of a high mountain, and displays be- ) fore him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ( " I will give you all these," said he to him — " the entire power and glory of these empires ; because these things are mine, and I can give them to whom I wish. Adore me, and they will be yours." Jesus answered' him, > " Begone, Satan; for it is written, You shall adore the Lord your God, and serve him alone." Satan, having i vainly essayed the temptations, withdrew, and the angels surrounded Jesus, and adored him and served him. John continues his ministry, and his reputation ex- cites the hatred of the Scribes and Pharisees. They j send to him trustworthy persons to learn of him who he was, hoping without doubt to receive such replies as might afford a pretext for his persecution. John openly declared that he was not the Christ. They asked him if he was Elias or some other prophet. He answered no. " Who, then, are you ? " say they to him. " What do you say of yourself? " He replies as "1 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. iot ) he previously had done, " I am the voice of which > Isaias speaks — the voice of one who cries out in the | desert, Make straight the way for the Lord." They insist: "If you are not the Christ, nor Elias, nor a prophet, why, then, do you baptize with water ? " John replies again: " I baptize with water; but there is One in the midst of you whom you know not — he who shall come after me, and who is before me ; and I am not worthy to untie his shoe-strings." The deputies of the Jews interrogated him no more» and John added nothing; but the following day, seeing Jesus passing, he said : " Behold the Lamb of God ; be- hold him who takes away the sins of the world. . . . This is he of whom I have said, There comes after me One who is before me. For he is more ancient than I am. I know him not, but I am come to baptize in water, that the people of Israel may know him." He adds: " I have seen the Spirit descend from heaven in the shape of a dove, and light on him. I did not know him ; but he who has commissioned me to baptize with water has said to me, He upon whom you will see the Holy Spirit descend and rest, he it is who baptizes in the Holy Ghost. And I have seen ; and I render testi- ) mony that he is the Son of God." The day after, John, being with two of his disciples, saw Jesus again passing, and says: " Behold the Lamb of God." Forthwith the two disciples of John follow Jesus, who was going away. Jesus turns about, and asks them, "Whom do you seek?" "Master," say they to him, " where do you live ? " And he answered them, "Come and see." They came and remained. One was John, the son of Zebedee; the other, Andrew, brother of Simon. Andrew said to his brother, " We have seen the Messias." He then led Simon to Jesus, 102 The Life of our Lord Jestis Christ. and Jesus, having cast eyes upon him, says to him : " Thou art Simon, son of Jona ; thou wilt be called Cephas — that is to say, Peter." Such is the prologue of the Gospel reduced to the nakedness of the fact. Nothing can be conceived so simple and so magnificent ; and God, if one might dare so speak, could not express less to man, and give at the same time more to God. God, according to a remark of one of the fathers, can do humble things without prejudice to his nature, Avhilst man renders himself criminal in attributing to himself the supernatural and divine. Let a king act as a soldier for the salvation of all — it is the work of a king; the little things which save- the world are the works of God. There was once a god-king — a god of the world, ac- cording to the spirit of the world, in the world. He was enthroned at Rome ; he was called Augustus. He lets Herod reign, whom he well knows; he deposes Tiberius, on whom he had passed sentence. The his- tory of those times are full of those horrible names. Messalinas, Herodias, Drusillas, Agrippinas, Poppseas, surround and bow before those gods of the earth. They have for ministers Narcissuses the Sejanuses. The court of the God made man is composed of the rarest personages. A few, such as Zachary and Eliza- beth, Simeon and Anna, seem to have been preserved from the general corruption to proclaim his entry into life. He comes to increase their number, or rather to create anew their exhausted race. This is his work — the only work worthy of him. Before appearing he con- cealed himself in the womb of Mary ; he sanctifies John in his mother's womb; immortal words greet him, sublime dialogues between the saints of the Old and the ) ) ) ) I The Life of out Lord yes us Christ. 103 New Law, who are all his saints ; prophecies of his reign, which accomplish the prophecies of times past. The chain of love once more links together heaven and earth ; Bethlehem throws open again the gates of Eden ; heavenly songs announce the reconciliation; miracles abound; nature, divinely energetic, produces unheard- of wonders; all is resurrection and mercy; figures be- come realities ; all these immortal realities are so many types of humanity rejuvenated, so many torches lit up to guide it to the kingdom of God. Following the fathers, let us read the Gospel differently from those who interrogate it, as the Jews interrogated the Precursor and interrogated Jesus, only to have some pretext to condemn them to death. Jesus, whom they have put to death, is not dead, and the Gospel which they blaspheme will annihilate them. Let them accomplish this prodigy of finding death in the source \ of life. But let us grasp what is offered us. Let us drink in life. MHS iic^l fis! BlEEa^Ws ^53&i >y^X'jgjl SI -xSs OÉ& j|§§ CHAPTER II. Zachary — Elizabeth — Mary — John — JosEni — The Crib— The Shepherds — Simeon— Anna— The Magi — Herod. ST. LUKE begins by these words, which may seem indifferent : " In the days of Herod, King of Judea." These words undeniably prove that the pre- diction of Jacob is accomplished. Juda has "lost its temporal and warlike royalty. The days of the Prince of Peace are near at hand. Very soon this Desired of Nations, the hope of the last divine instinct that hu- manity retains, shall appear to the world. The angels are deputed as ambassadors to men. Zachary, in some respects distrustful and incredulous, although just, re- presents his nation, forsaken and barren. His justice is rewarded far beyond his expectations ; his incredulity is punished by loss of speech. Israel has no more prophets, and will have no longer a priesthood until the day wherein, born again of faith, she shall become worthy of a true priesthood, and then she will recover her voice to praise God. The angel intimates to Zachary the name of the child, his son : " You shall name him John " — that is, he in whom is grace. "He will walk in the spirit and virtue of Elias, ... so as to prepare a perfect people Virgin. Such was the commencement of the reparation The Life of our Lord yitsus Christ. 105 for the Lord." For the Mosaic law has produced no- thing like his perfection, and the Jewish nation is but the rough draught of the great Christian people. Zachary is the son of Abia, Elizabeth the daughter of Aaron — flowers of the sacerdotal race. It was right and proper that St. John should be born of that race, in order to proclaim more impressively the new priesthood. The two principal branches of Israel, in John the sacerdotal and in Jesus the royal, are united in the work of the fulfilment. Elizabeth was barren ; Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, wives of the patriarchs, were also barren ; not through pun- ishment—for .they walked in justice— but that their fruitfulness might display the power of God. Eliza- beth was barren in order to show that God is master of all. * A virgin may bring forth, since the barren \ one has conceived. Freed from the opprobrium of hef long sterility, Elizabeth gives thanks. Her legitimate joy seems to enhance the hallowed character of Mary, the prophetess of the beauty of virginity, who had resolved to sacrifice } the greatest honor that a woman could obtain in Israel > out of love for virginal purity. The Angel Gabriel (" power of God ") is sent to the ^ 0 — .... ..„., „„w ^LnuLiiuiiiuiiui me reparation —an angel sent down to the Virgin through the goodness ot God ; because the commencement of perdition be- gan when the serpent approached the woman through the malice of the demon. Since the divine Restorer of mankind should be born in the flesh, says St. Augus- tine, he should be born only of a virgin, in order to° be unequalled in his birth. The Head should be born of a virgin according to the flesh, whose members are born of the Church— a virgin according to the spirit. too The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. Mary is at the same time both a virgin and a wife — a virgin to be full of grace ; a wife to avoid injurious sus- picions. The Lord did not wish that we should doubt the honor of his Mother. He did not wish that the Jews should seem to simply persecute the fruit of shame. The law condemned illegitimate births ; if he had appeared to carry the least stain of it, how could he be able to say, " I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it " ? Finally, this condition of wifehood was calculated to inspire trust in the words of Mary. A mother without being married, she might be supposed to wish to conceal her fault ; as a wife, she had no motive for lying, since maternity is the privilege of marriage. The angel says to her that He who is born of her shall be called the Son of the Most High, and that the Lord will give him the throne of David, his father. When the Holy Ghost reinspired these words, and dictated them to the Evangelist to be spread abroad in the world, Jesus Christ had no throne but the cross. The angel says again : " He will reign eternally in the house of Jacob, and his reign will have no end." Truly, Jesus Christ reigns in the house of Jacob. His kingdom on earth, the visible Church, which shall last as long as the world, was formed at first of those children of Jacob who received his law. The others, having rejected Christ, have thereby cut themselves off. They are no more the true Israel. The Gentiles, called in their place, form but one same people with their faithful posterity. Jacob is the common stock of the natural and engrafted branches. Thus St. Paul represents him. The people of God is a great tree, whose stem, always subsisting, loses some branches and acquires new ones. The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. l0-j Isaias, announcing the incarnation of the Word, exclaimed with admiration, " Who will recount his generation ? " Enlightening Mary, who objects to him her design of remaining a virgin, the angel says to her: "The Holy Ghost will come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you ; and for this reason : the Holy One who shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God." According to the commentary of Bossuet, the Most Pure only unites himself to purity itself. He conceives his only Son without sharing his conception with another ; he does not wish, when he causes him to be born in time, to share him with any but the Virgin. -The Heavenly Father extends in Mary his eternal generation. Of the blood of the Virgin he will compose a body so pure that the Holy Ghost only can form it. At the same time this divine Spirit will breathe into it a soul which, having but himself for its author, without the concurrence of any other cause, must be holy— holy by his nature, not a holiness derived and accidental, but substantive and essential— sanctum; that which only can be properly applied to God, who alone is all holy by his nature. . . . Behold, then, a new dignity created on earth— the dignity of the Mother of God. And such is the reward of virginity; she only could become a Mother of God. With Mary, a new beauty appears in the world. This loveliness is the virgin, the mother, the saint, the martyr ; she is the beloved one ; she is yet something greater— she is the perfection of humility. She possessed all virtues, and united them in perfect har- mony in such a degree that the beauty of her counte- nance was but the expression of her sanctity rendered visible to all who beheld her. The Spirit of God pro- ) io8 The Life of our Lord Resits Christ. \ ) ** { ) . ( phesied of her throughout the entire Scriptures. She is the gate, always closed, that Ezechiel saw, and which permits none to pass through but the Lord ; she is the temple of Solomon embellished outwardly with the white marble of purity, inwardly with the purest gold of charity. She is the rod of Aaron, which, deposited in the tabernacle, blooms forth miraculously into fruit ) and flowers. She is the fleece of Gedeon, only watered j with the heavenly dews, whilst the earth all around tables of the law, but the Author of the law. She it is who was announced to the serpent and who will crush his head. She is the new Eve, all pure and invincible, preserved from sin and victorious over sin. She has the same part in our salvation that Eve has had in our destruction. Through her the new Adam, Jesus Chnst, is about to receive a new generation, like that of the first, which was but its figure. With the divine Word enclosed in her womb, she will be the holiest temple the earth can ever behold. But the temple is the place of sacrifice ! The angel says to Mary that she " has found grace " ; she has found it only to offer it to the world. That which Eve had lost Mary found again ; the sons of Eve ask it back. The cross will restore it to them. The lovely scene of the visitation, where Elizabeth, John Baptist, and Mary prophesy under the influence of the hidden God, contains, says Bossuet, a profound evelation of the economy of grace and the manner in .vhich he acts differently on souls. We see in Elizabeth the humble astonishment of a soul that he approaches in John Baptist, the burning ecstasy of a soul that he attracts; in Mary, the ineffable peace of a soul that pos- sesses him. remains dry. She is the vessel of gold that keeps the ) manna ; the ark of the covenant which contains, not the The Life of our Lord J"esus Christ. 109 Under the influence of grace, John is already the pre- cursor. Those palpitations admonish his mother of the fact. " The infant that I carry in my womb has leaped with joy." With joy — that is, with perfect knowledge of God's bodily presence. And such is the abundance of the benediction and the splendor of the light bestowed that Elizabeth repeats to Mary the word of the angel, " You are blessed among women." She goes further: she calls her the Mother of God. And forthwith she ex- alts faith in the same terms which Jesus will employ : '' Blessed art thou, who hast believed." Jesus afterwards . says- the same to Peter, and, after his resurrection, to Thomas. The Gospel has but one language — the same on the vigil of Bethlehem as on the morrow of Calvary. Elizabeth again says to Mary: "The fruit of thy womb is blessed." The patriarch had prophesied : " The odor of my son is like to that of a sweet-smelling earth." Elizabeth prophesies the sweet fruit of the cross, destined to nourish souls and destroy in them the effects of the fatal fruit plucked through the disobe- dience of the first Eve. ( In the entire New Testament we find but seven words of Mary, all very brief and ordered by circumstances. She is mute when Joseph is inclined to suspect her — mute at Calvary. Once only she departs from this re- serve, and she chants the glorious JMaguificat, which St. Ambrose calls the ecstasy of her humility. Bossuet does not dare comment on it. Those who have dared to do so have found the matter so vast that their labor cannot be abridged here. Let us reflect only on this prophetic word : " From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." Nineteen centuries bowed down their heads in veneration, and future ages shall reverently incline their heads, and will say, Amen. no The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. The Jews, in their turn, will reverently bow down their heads in veneration of Mary. They have been, from the beginning to the present, the only ones in the world who could have hated Mary, the Mother of Jesus. It is one of the maledictions which weighs upon them, and one of the heaviest and bloodiest. Mahomet makes God to say : " Because the Jews have not believed in Jesus, and because they have uttered great blasphemies against Mary, we have cursed them." The Mussul- ) ) man's sceptre still executes the sentence. The style of the Holy Ghost in the canticle of Zach- arias is not less manifest. The holy priest praises God, ( who has visited his people ; points out the accomplish- ment of the ancient law, and prophesies the graces of the future law. Among the objects of the Saviour's mercy he names Abraham and David, and the fathers of Israel who are dead ; for Jesus Christ comes to fulfil the promises which they received — his benediction, going back to ages passed away, at the same time that it is about to extend itself to yet unborn ages, brings deli- verance to those who wait in Limbo, as it will cause an ? abundance of light to shine on those who are seated in the shadow of death. Zachary gives Jesus the name of " Orient," by which name one of the last prophets had designated him : " His name is the Orient, the Morning Sun." Thus at the cradle of the Precursor this man of the temple attests that God has sent down Him who was ordained to come. With the same inspired vision he sees the part his Son will have in the great work of salvation. No human voice could address anything more solemn than those words of Zachary addressed to ) his son, aged eight days : " And you, helpless babe, ( ') will be called the prophet of the Most High,; for you will go before the face of the Lord, preparing the ways > ( J_ / — L The Life of oar Lord Jïsus Christ. 1 1 1 for him, so as to give to his people the knowledge of salvation for the remission of their sins." ( The witnesses of John's birth say among themselves : " What do you think will this child be? " Thirty years \ later Jesus Christ will answer : " There is none born of women greater than John." Christian humanity, the sure appreciator of mor.il worth, honors the heroic loveliness of character by which St. John the Baptist is not less the imitator than the precursor of Jesus. His conception and his nativ- ity, his penitential life in the desert, his preaching and baptism, his persecution, his imprisonment, his death, were ordered to prepare for Jesus Christ. All, in him, is conformable to that august resemblance. He perfect- ed and accomplished it by his fidelity, and thus he be- came the admirable type of all the saints. The salu- tary boldness of his piety and virtue oblige the proud, even, to come and listen to the hard sayings which con- demn them ; he preaches penance to the purple, bowed down before his ragged garments. His humility equals his courage. More than all other mortals, says Bossuet, he has sacrificed his own glory to the Son of God. When all the world greets him as master, he proclaims that he is but the servant. Glory does not seduce him, and death does not make him tremble. He will say to Herod, "Non licet," and to his dis- ciples, in pointing out Jesus, yet unknown, " Behold the Lamb of God." Those who follow him will come to learn of him with a jealous feeling that the ignorant and the learned will flock to this new master. He will reply to them that this Great Being must grow in your thoughts, and self disappear from them. Such is, after the almost divine Mary, the best work of the grace of Jesus. John will be the first voice of the Word ; he Ii2 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. terminates the line of the patriarchs and commences that of the apostles ; the first who will announce the \ kingdom of heaven. He will behold first the Blessed \ Trinity manifesting itself over the waters of Jordan he will point out first Him whom the prophets have an nounced; he first will be martyr, prophet, patriarch, \ hermit, witness of Jesus Christ. When Mary returns to Nazareth, another personage manifests himself. It is Joseph — a creation not less marvellous of the grace of Jesus. The Gospel has but one word whereby to praise him : "He was just." The charge with which he was honored and the manner in which he fulfilled it demonstrate the abundance of this righteousness. He receives of God, for the sake of Mary and Jesus, the affection, watchfulness, and au- thority of husband and father. He is formed after the model of Mary ; like her, son of David ; virgin, like her; humble, like her; obedient, full of prudence and courage. He resembles the patriarch Joseph, but sur- { passes him as much by the perfection of his merits as by the character of his mission : not only chaste, but virgin ; not only instructed, but inspired and directed of God. Joseph, son of Jacob, preserves the grain necessary for himself and for the people ; Joseph, spouse of Mary, receives the Bread of life and watches over it, protects it for her and for the entire human race. It is said to him, " Take the Child," as if God had addressed to him the word that the prophet addressed to God himself: " To thyself alone belongs the care of the poor." Joseph is the type of the apostles, who carry Jesus Christ into all the universe. Thus St. John Damascene, St. Bernard, St. Hilary of Poitiers, and ) ' other fathers and doctors, express themselves. A great ( ) . . \ servant of God, who lived in our day, penetrates more The Life of our Lord ycsus Christ. 1 1 3 deeply into this beautiful mystery. When Joseph, after Mary, draws near to adore Jesus in the crib, it is, says Faber, the shadow of the Eternal Father that rests over the infant, and the temporal birth of the Son of God is completed by this figure of his nativity, without beginning and without end. Joseph was, before the face of Jesus, visibly in the place of the Eternal Father. The human soul of Jesus regarded him not only with the most tender love, but with unspeakable submission. Hence veneration is our dominant feeling towards the gentle Joseph, because of that shade of identity be- tween him and the Father. We cannot describe his sanctity, because we lack the term of comparison. ) That sanctity, more elevated than that of all the other saints of God, is still of a different kind. Joseph has been an apparition in the world — the apparition of the Eternal and Unbegotten Father. He is gentle and cle- ment; he is poor and obscure ; he is passive and docile ; and he is, at the same time, an impregnable fortress where the honor of Mary and the life of Jesus were sheltered ; hidden like God, full of divine tranquillity, just with a justice tempered by mercy, like that of God. He communicates with God during his sleep, as if his sleep was but the mystical repose of contemplation. First, after Mar}-, he adores Jesus, and the Infant sane- \ tifies him anew — elevates him to a more eminent sphere of holiness, in order that he may be qualified to be the highest official of God. Who can picture that moment at the crib when the infant Jesus contemplates for the first time with his human eyes the countenance of Mary ? Who can ex- press the joy and respect of those looks turned toward St. Joseph — the man chosen to be called his father, one who is worthy of such glory, one who is worthy to live The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. more than any other in his affections, and who, we may \ well suppose, loves him with the deepest love? Jesus, Mary, Joseph — three kingdoms of which God is the / only King; three creations, yet one only, through a ( wonderful union of love ; a terrestrial trinity ! In this miserable dwelling, full of incomparable splendors, Jesus, the newly born, just entering into a world that he is to instruct, gives one of the lessons on ( which he will insist the most. This is the " Egenus et pauper" of the Psalmist; the King who will after a while carry on his shoulders the cross as a mark of royalty; the Man who has known trials and sorrows from his youth. He is also that little Babe of whom ( Isaias speaks, who knows how to reject evil and choose irood. The to thee full of meekness" — " Venit tibi mansuetus." They answer Herod : " The King must be born in Bethlehem." And not one of them goes there : like the workers who built the ark, and who en- tered not therein. The Scriptures are useless to them, and they show to the Gentiles what they themselves do not wish to see. How did the Magi recognize that poor, helpless In- fant in his wretched home ? They did not array them- selves against the miraculous. They had the faith which can see, and the love which sees better yet ; and, having sought, they must find. And then Mary, the merciful, was there to introduce them : " They find the Child with its mother." We observe a triple confession in the words of the Magi : " Where is born the King of the Jews ? We have come to adore him." They ac- knowledge him Man, King, and God: Man, because he is born ; King, that is the name they give him ; God, because they come to adore him. The presents they offer speak the same language: to the King, gold; to the God, incense; to the Man, who dies, myrrh — per- fume for the sepulchre. The Church consecrates those beautiful symbols, and commands us to offer to Jesus the gold of charity, the incense of prayer, and the myrrh of compassion. Compassion ! it is due to the Son and to the Mother. 0 Here, in Bethlehem, end for Jesus triumphs without bitterness; here end for Mary joys without tears. Be- The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 1 9 hold already the point of the sword of which Simeon spoke to her — the sword which will pierce her heart. Joseph is warned in a dream that Herod seeks the Child to destroy it. He does not ask why this marvellous Child, to whom are promised so many noble fortunes, must fly to escape death. The Gospel is a lesson of obedience: Mary is Mother through obedience ; Jesus is born to be obedient, even to the cross ; Joseph obeys. Nothing indicates that he could have known the mys- tery of that flight : to obey is to know. He imme- diately arises: " He is submissive, and complains not; he departs and goes into Egypt, where he has no ac- quaintance, without knowing when he will return to his country, to his workshop, and to his poor, humble hut. Jesus dwells not with us for nothing; we must take part in his crosses." Hut why those crosses? " Was there no other means of saving, except that of flight so precipitate? God does not wish to do everything mi- raculously, and it belongs to his providence to follow often the ordinary course, which is as much his as ex- traordinary ways. The Son of God came in infirmity. To conform himself to this state, he has subjected him- self voluntarily to trials and encounters common to human life, and by the same dispensation which brought it to pass that, during the time of his ministry, he withdrew himself, he hid himself, to baffle the wiles and secret machinations of his enemies, he was also obliged to seek an asylum in Egypt."* The Scriptures say nothing of his journey to, nor of his sojourn in, Egypt. According to a tradition, when the Holy Family traversed the desert where the Hebrews had wandered, flowers and fruits ornamented suddenly those arid soli- * Bossuct. I20 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. tudes. At least, Jesus himself was the seed of those \ flowers and those admirable fruits that we will see ger- j initiating there when his servants shall come to the desert. \ Meanwhile, Herod causes all the children about the [ country of Bethlehem, up to the age of two years, to be put to death. Herod was the king of the world. Many ; traits of his cruelty and policy equal that of this massa- cre. When tyrants fear, they are revengeful ; and those who can do what they please are liable to fear every- body. Jeremias said : " Cries are heard in Rama ; tears and wailings innumerable. Rachel mourns for her chil- dren, and cannot be consoled, because they are no more." Rachel was interred at Bethlehem. The Holy Ghost attributes to her, in St. Matthew's gospel, those ) wailingsand lamentations of the mothers which re-echoed at the beginning of the Church. Bossuet condemns, with just indignation, those critics who would wish, in order to make certain this belief, that profane historians had mentioned this cruelty of Herod, as well as the others. Our faith depends not on what the negligence or the policy of the historians of the world make them say or not say. Human motives alone were sufficient to hinder St. Matthew from doing injury to his gospel by inserting in it a fact of this kind, if it had not been indisputable. Happy children ! whose lives were immo- lated to preserve the life of the Saviour. Jesus says: "Suffer little children to come to me." How often this word has consoled mothers! If the mothers of Bethlehem had known this mystery, instead of wailings \ and lamentations we would hear but benedictions and praise. They would have known that their sons were not dead, and that the baptism of their blood had, on the contrary, obtained for them eternal life ; and that The Life of our Lord jfcsus Christ. 121 where Christ has called the little infants his mercy wishes also to bring their mothers. Herod is no more; Joseph, always warned and al- ways obedient, quits Egypt and betakes himself to Nazareth. "He shall be called a Nazarene."' The word Nazarene contains a great mystery. Nazarene means one separated from the people, consecrated to God, consecrated to penance. Pilate accomplished the prophecies by inscribing this word on the title of the cross. But while Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies, his entire life in this world and all his words are the prophecy of future things. Why is he already persecuted? To warn the Church, replies Bossuct. " This King, whose kingdom is not of this world," Herod hates from his birth, and bequeaths ) - that hatred to his house. Thus the hatred for the rising infant Church has been perpetuated from prince to prince, from temporal potentate to temporal poten- ( tate ; thus a twofold persecution has been raised up against the Church, the first blood)-, the second less violent, but which nevertheless oppresses her. Tyranny J has not lost that odor of Herod. At the age of twelve years Jesus pronounced the fust discourse that the Gospel has preserved for us ; bespoke it in the Temple, and it proves his deity. The Gospel prepares us for it when it says that the Child, seated among the doctors, heard them and interrogated them. He is seated among the masters in spite of youthful- ness ; probably because, after having heard him, sur- ( prised at his knowledge, they themselves called him to that rank. To prove his humanity, he listens; to de- monstrate his divinity, he interrogates with intelligence ; and his answers to questions they put to him, or to l~ 122 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. those he himself proposes, excite the admiration of all those who hear him. His mother, after three days' search, finding him, full of sorrow and grief, says to him : " My son, we have sought you quite sorrowful, your father and myself." He answers with some apparent severity, " Why did you seek after me ? Did you not know I must be about the things that are of my Father?" She speaks of Joseph, and he speaks of God. Mary herself does not comprehend him. If they had comprehended and under- stood ; if they had known all that the Son of God was, how could they have withstood that majesty ? It was ne- cessary that that divine majesty should be twice veiled even to Mary. But the reverence of Joseph sufficiently showed how much of the divine appeared on this oc- casion through the human nature of Christ. " And Mary preserved all this in her memory" ; and, as it is again written, "She meditated this in her heart." She learns detachment from the world ; she makes her novitiate for the day of the cross. This recital is from St. Luke. We love to represent to ourselves St. Luke receiving knowledge of those details from the mouth of Mary. The Gospel adds : " Jesus went down with Mary and Joseph, and he was subject to them." This is one of the words which hold together human society — submissive to paternal authority, submissive in the humblest labors, submissive for thirty years ! Up to the preaching of the son of Zachary we know nothing more of the life of Jesus; only that he dwelt with his parents, and was submissive to them, earning his livelihood by the work of his hands. He did not travel to instruct himself in the famous sciences of the Egyptians and the Greeks. The Jews, astonished The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 123 at his wisdom, ask one another if this be not he whom they have seen among them in the humble condition of a mechanic, the son of a carpenter. According to the testimony of St. Justin, he made yokes for ploughs. His heavenly bread was to accomplish the will of his Father ; he earned the terrestrial bread by the sweat of his brow. For thirty years his life was one con- tinued sermon of obedience, of humility, and of travail. There is another word which astonishes us : " Jesus aiitem proficiebat." How could it be that the Eternal Word, principle of all grace and of all wisdom, could grow and increase or advance in wisdom and grace be- fore God and men ? Many fathers have examined this question, and they are truly the men who have under- stood the great difficulties of Gospel study. According to St. Gregory, those words can signify that the wisdom of which Jesus was the source was daily shed more abund antly on those who heard him, preparing them for the lights of his doctrine. According to St. Thomas, Christ did not wish from his infancy to manifest the fulness of the divinity that was in him, in order to show clearly that the human nature with which he was clothed was not an appearance, but a reality, since he submitted himself to its conditions of feebleness and progressive development. St. Bonaventurc does not fear to cast a glance into that little cottage at Nazareth where Jesus lived sub- missive to his mother and to his reputed father. There is the great levelling of human pride ; there is the life of the poor, with all its disgusts and petty annoyances. Neither preaching, nor controversy, nor miracles — no- thing but obscurity. Every day each simply earns his daily bread. Joseph, says the holy doctor, works ) ) ) ) 1 24 The Life of our Loi'd Jesus Christ. at his trade. Our Mother, with needle or spindle in hand, supplies on her part the wants of the house. She performs other womanly offices : she sees to the good order of the dwelling, prepares the repast, waits on her husband and her Son — all this she does without a helper. But why should we say without a helper ? Is not He there who is come, according to the expres- sion, to serve? Jesus, therefore, serves both her and Joseph. Doubt not that the Son of God aided his mother, and that he attended to the humblest affairs. Yes, yes, let us not hesitate to think so : the cares of the workshop and the cares of the household. And thereby can envy be rooted out of the heart of the poor, and wisdom enter therein, and that humility in every ) human condition becomes great and glorious in the eyes of the Christian. CHAPTER III. The Ancestors of Jesus— The Temptation in the Desert — The First Disciples. THIS lesson of humility is continued even to the baptism which Jesus came to demand of John. By the baptism of Jesus, says St. John Chrysostom, our sins are remitted ; by the baptism of John, the Jews promised to expiate theirs. The baptism of Jesus is a gift ; that of John a work of mortification. This is why John hesitates before Jesus, and Jesus says to him, Perform this act ; he humbles himself to penance like a sinner; and this is the very pinnacle of justice. Our Lord Jesus Christ accomplishes now "all justice " hi doing what will be for the Christian a source of all justice — that is to say, by receiving a baptism the necessity of which no one could ever after call in ques- tion. And at length, going down into the waters, he purifies them ; he banishes the devil from them ; he- sanctifies them by the contact of his sacred flesh ; he gives them the power of regeneration — "the power of purification," says St. Bernard. He communicates to them the privilege that his flesh has had of Mary, to bring forth nothing but what was pure. He does at the baptism what he will do later at the Pasch. As he will eat the paschal lamb, figure and remembrance, and give us his flesh as pledge of eternal happiness, so he 126 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. receives Jewish baptism, an inefficacious ceremony; but gives to us a Christian baptism, the true source of grace. In a word, accepting the law and giving the Gospel, he receives the shadow, and adds thereto the truth. { The Holy Ghost appears under the form of a dove. ? It was proper that John should see him. Invisible in the substance of his divinity, he has assumed this form because by baptism we ought to become as gentle and simple as a dove ; and it ought to render us peaceful like it. The dove is the symbol of reconciliation, of par- don, and of peace. The dove returns to the ark, carry- ing the olive branch, which announces that the waters ) { of wrath have receded, and that life is re-born on the earth. It is proper to make a remark here on the two gene- alogies of our Saviour, presented differently and not at the same place in Christ's history, by St. Matthew and St. Luke. Their divergences, and the different sys- tems proposed to harmonize them, are not the subject of this book. It is sufficient to observe that the gene- alogy given by St. Matthew, which is properly that of St. Joseph, spouse of Mary, is equally that of the holy Virgin, who. according to the law, could only espouse a man of her house ; and that the proper genealogy of Mary, given by St. Luke, makes her, like the other, descend from Davnd. ( From the circumstances and the place of each of these genealogies we can draw important instruction. St. Matthew, commencing with the genealogy, before relating the carnal birth, follows the proper order of all ( history, and descends from the ancestors to the chil- dren, as the Word descended in assuming our flesh. He commences at Abraham, after having first mentioned The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 127 David : " The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham." This is an echo of the fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis, entitled " The Book of the Generation of Adam," and a con- trast between the new generation which built up and the old generation which destroyed. The list points out David and Abraham, because both received a particular promise. God had said to Abraham : " All nations of the earth shall be blessed in thy race" ; and to David : " I will place on thy throne Him who shall be born of thee." Both these ancient ancestors com- bine in themselves the triple dignity of the Messias — ■ Abraham, priest and prophet ; David, prophet and king. St. Luke places the genealogy after the baptism, and, starting from this regeneration, develops another succession of ancestors. He goes 'backward from the children to the fathers, omitting the sinful, whom St. Matthew had named ; for whoever is reborn in God becomes a stranger to his guilty ancestors, being made the son of God. In both genealogies the names by their signification prophesy the Saviour by expressing some trait of his character, of his life, of his mysteries ; and many personages are at the same the figure of Christ : "Abra- ham, father of many people " ;- Isaac — gladness. " For as Isaac was born at the extreme old age of his parents to be their joy, less as a child of nature than of bene- dictions and graces, so Jesus Christ, in later times, was born of a pure mother to be the joy of the uni- verse. The one was born of a virgin, the other of one barren in her old age ; both aside from the course of nature. Abraham begets Isaac, as faith begets hope. Jacob, son of Isaac, expresses charity, which embrace? 128 The Life of our Lord ye sus Christ. two different lives — the active life, for love of the neigh- bor ; the contemplative life, for the love of God. He is born of Abraham and of Isaac, as charity is born of faith and hope." This is the interpretation of St. John Chrysostom. A great many fathers have meditated on this prophetic character of the genealogy of Christ, and have unravelled its magnificent mysteries. " All } things," says St. Paul, "happened to the Jewish people in figures." Bossuet adds, " There is not a page, there is not a word, in the Holy Scriptures that is not full of Jesus." St. Matthew, writing for the Jews, contents himself with establishing that Christ descended from David and Abraham. St. Luke, writing after him for all ; people, having become the companion and disciple of the apostle of nations, traces him backward to the first man. He passes by Noe, the constructor of the ark, which is a figure of the Church; he passes by Enoch, who, hav- ing been snatched from death, proves that Christ could have avoided death, and that he delivered himself up voluntarily to the cross ; he arrives at Adam. Thus he commences the genealogy with a son of God, and terminates it with the Son of God — in this sense : that Adam was made by the hand of God. Adam, created at first in figure, is born afterward in reality. Jesus Christ, by whom all things have been made, is truly the father of Adam. He is the Word, who, by putting on humanity, elevates his carnal ancestors even to God. He makes them children of God. Thereby again St. Luke shows that the co-operation of man has nothing to do with the generation of Christ. Adam has a Fath- er who forms him without any germ ; he has no mo- ther. Jesus, as man, has a Virgin Mother ; he has no father. The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 129 We must remark the last particularity, which is very important. Among the ancestors of Jesus St. Matthew only mentions some women, and all those whom he names are signalized by a stain of sin : two idolaters — Rahab the Chaananitc, and Ruth the Moabite ; three of bad character — Thamar the incestuous ; that Rahab whom we hold to have been the courtesan at Jericho, who received into her house the spies of Israel, and sent them away safe and sound ; Bcthsabee, an adul- tress. And this last woman is not called by her name, but by her crimes. " She who had been the wife of Uriah." We find here many deep mysteries. Rahab and Ruth, daughters of infidel people, becoming the daughters of Jacob and the .ancestors of the Messias, announce that the Gentiles will have the right to enter the Church. Rahab, espoused of Salmon, son of the chief of the tribe of Juda, notwithstanding her idol- atry and her ignominy, separates herself from the hatred of her people. Her name signifies hunger, extension, an impetuous, rapid movement. She typifies the Church of the nations, which, espoused to the true heir of Juda and cleansed of her stains, hungers and thirsts after jus- tice, whose reign she will extend upon earth. In the Gospel we rediscover Rahab in the persons of the Samaritan ; of Magdalene, converted and purified ; of \ Paul, vessel of election ; and the name of the son of Israel who wedded Rahab — Salmon — signifies : " Re- ceive this vessel." ) Ruth (" she who sees and hastens ") is another figure or type of souls that are called, another figure of the Church. The son of Salmon and of Rahab, Boaz (" he in whom is found strength"), contracts an alliance with the gentle daughter of M cab, which the law forbids. On account of her virtues he causes her to enter the 130 The Life of our Lord y es us CJirist. society of a people who should reject her as a stranger. Ruth the Moabite is the type of the woman afflicted with the issue of blood, who receives the name of ; "daughter"; she prefigures the Chaananite, so perse- ( vering, so triumphant in prayer ; the centurion Corne- lius, and every one else who, enlightened by purity of heart, abandons vain attachments and hastens to God. As to the sinful women, Thamar and Bethsabee, their presence gives us to understand that He who has desired to be born of sinners will be anxiously zealous to redeem sinners. His goodness, which takes upon it our iniquities, and subjects itself to injuries, does not disdain the bar-sinister of a tainted origin. And in order, St. Ambrose says, to remove from us the pride of birth, he has shown us the benefit of his incarnation, derived though it was from such ancestors and begin- ning with them. Bethsabee is not called by her name, because she was not only an adulteress, but guilty of participating in the death of her husband. The name of Uriah, that is used instead of hers, recalls the great- est crime of David ; and in this remembrance there are two lessons — human weakness and the power and beauty of repentance. Jesus, being baptized, goes into the desert ; and, be- fore treating with men, he puts himself face to face alone with God, to fortify himself in his intercourse with men for the service of God. The authority he comes to establish on a new principle, and to burden with duties hitherto unknown, stood in need of learning of him a practice carefully observed in his Church. He will be tempted by the devil ; he is not ignorant of this. His strength goes to seek a danger which human weak- • ness must learn to shun. He also goes to furnish a model of resistance in the inevitable combat. " If you The Life of our Lord ye sus Christ. 131 wish to serve God," says Wisdom, "prepare your soul ( for temptation." He remains in the desert for forty days. Forty is the number of expectation, of penance, of preparation — forty ages of the expectation of the Messias ; forty years of expiation between Egypt and the promised land ; forty days of deluge ; forty days of purification and mortification, to prepare the soul for the joys of the Paschal festival. Jesus is in the desert with wild beasts, and he is hun- gry. The angels are with him, and he remains there forty days without eating. We behold in him, there- fore, both the man and the God. The demon has but ^ a confused idea of the divine secrets, not knowing whether Jesus is man or God. At length he approaches j him. Against the new Adam he employs the means \ which he used against the first, and which he avails him- self of against all men. He touches successively on the three passions — on the gratification of the senses, on pride, and ambition. Under another form it is thus he ruined Eve. To Eve: " Why do you not eat of this fruit? " To Jesus: "Command these stones be changed into bread." To Eve : " You will be as God." To Jesus : " If you be the Son of God, cast yourself down." He quotes the Scriptures, and he cites them falsely, as heretics do. He says to Eve: "You will know good and evil." He says to Jesus : " I will give you the kingdoms if, falling down before me, you adore me." To fawn, crouch, and debase one's self is the road to human glories ; it is the king of nothing who promises to load us with abundance. Thus, remarks St. Gregory VII., the princes of the earth, who are not sure of a day, dare speak to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Those haughty potentates say to him: "We will give you power, The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. honor, riches, if you acknowledge our supremacy; if you make us your God ; if, falling at our feet, you adore us." Satan addressed this very language to Judas, to Ma- homet, to Luther, to many others who listen to him. Thus he still speaks, and will speak till the end of time ; and even to the end many, very many, will hear him, and will prostrate themselves before him and adore him. Some, like Judas, will receive but a paltry sum, soon followed with despair and eternal shame ; others, like Mahomet and Luther, will see themselves wielding the sword with one hand and the torch in the other, and will become lasting scourges in the world ; but they will not escape the despair of Judas, and the glory they acquire will vanish from them. Where now is the work of Mahomet ? Where is that of Luther ? Even shutting out the idea of eternal torments, what of them remains but tears and blood which they have caused to flow ? Jesus exhibits to Satan neither the frailty of man nor the omnipotence of God. Employing the vic- torious wisdom of the man instructed of God and faith- ful to God, he answers him each time with a short sen- tence of the Scriptures, and he overthrows him, as David did Goliath, with a pebble taken from the brook. Ever since the coming of the Magi the Jews had given of themselves signs of their reprobation ; they gave a second one, more decisive, after the sojourn of Christ in the desert. John the Baptist, having declared to them " that he is not the Christ nor Elias," adds : " There is One in the midst of you whom you do not know." The great, the rich, the learned, are deputed to John, hear this word, and inform themselves no more about Jesus, and John the Baptist is silent. But the following day, being surrounded by his own, who J_ ~1 llie Life of our Lord yes us Christ. 133 arc simple and just, without any question on their part, lie points out to them Jesus : " Behold the Lamb of God." And John and Andrew, disciples of John the Baptist, follow Him of whom it had been predicted that " the just will love him." Thus Jesus wished to do honor to his precursor by receiving from him his two first disciples. We have already noticed the only word that Jesus used to attach them to him : " Come and see." That is all. They remain with him. The Gospel indicates the moment : " It was at the tenth hour" — that is to say, toward the evening. Toward the evening of life, if we are covered with the shadows of sin and already touched with the cold chill of death, let us not say it is too late. Let us seek Jesus: " Lord, where dwellest thou ? " and he will conduct us to his dwelling, to the eternal mansions. Jesus waited for the signal from John the Baptist. The following day Andrew brought him to Simon, and Simon made the first act of sublime faith ; for he had not, like Andrew and John, the authoritative word of John the Baptist. Nor did any personage of the Gospel believe so firmly yet ostensibly on so light a foundation. Jesus had seen him — intuitus cum — seen into the deepest recesses of his heart, and said to him : "You will be called Peter." Philip is called afterward spontaneously by this sole word of his Master : " Fol- low me." Philip speaks to Nathanael. This person is of a different character — he jeers; Philip, a simple, unedu- cated man, does not dispute with him — what good is it ? He contents himself by saying : " Come and see." And Jesus gently compassionates the caviller, a slow but sturdy and straightforward spirit. He draws him to The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, him. "Here is," he says, "a true Israelite — one in whom there is no guile." Israel signifies sincere, who zvalks straight before the Lord ; and this name was substituted for Jacob, which means supplanter, because from Jacob should be born Him who is the truth. Nathanael replies: " How did you know me?" He thought without doubt that Philip had described him. Jesus yields to his weakness and gives him a sign. " Before Philip called thee I had seen thee under the fig-tree." Nathanael shows a sincerity that explains the condescension of the Saviour. He no longer re- sists. " Master," says he, " you are the King of Israel." Our Lord answers him, as he will at a future time reply to the confession of Thomas : " You believe because I have seen you under the fig-tree. You will see things greater than these." The words he adds have a relation to the prophetic dream of Jacob, the remembrance of which he has evoked, and, at the same time, they invite his first disciples to a higher expecta- tion than that of a temporal Messias. " Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opening over the Son of Man, and the angels ascending and descend- ing." This is all, and thus the first disciples were attracted to him — no discourses, no shining miracles, no pro- mise of earthly things. Jesus turns himself toward Andrew and John, and he looks on Peter, and he says to Philip, " Follow me," and to Nathanael, " I have seen thee." All remain, all will be faithful to death, all will die in testimony of their faith, and will see the heavens opening up. This first promise of Jesus pro- phesies Thabor, the Ascension, and the ecstasy of Stephen, the first martyr of the Gospel — that gentle Stephen who, prostrated to the earth by a volley of The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 135 stones, cries out: " I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God." Notwithstanding the brevity of this sketch and the necessity of omitting so many things, it is difficult not to recognize God in it. And nevertheless he is barely seen. But who else but God could in this way make use of occasions to announce himself by such heralds and inspire them with such language, and thus to fill up the past and the future ? The entire Gospel is contained in this prologue ; its whole dog- ma, its whole morality, its combats, its glory — in a word, its divinity. Man obeys and suffers ; God com- mands : faith is the foundation of all. Excepting the divine Person, there will appear no miracle hereafter greater than the conception and life of John the Baptist ; no sanctity more perfect than his and that of Mary and Joseph; no humility more profound than the birth at the crib and the life at Nazareth ; no labor, no endurance, harder than the forty days in the desert. Thabor will not be more luminous than the night of Bethlehem and the glorification on the banks of the Jordan; the Uncreated Wisdom will not manifest itself by acts more victorious and words more pro- found ; prophecy, that mental grasping of the future, will never more truly reveal the Master and Possessor of eternity. The King is in the midst of his court ; the Conqueror is at the head of his arm)'. He marches preceded by his prophets on earth and in heaven; he carries his crown of martyrs; he is sur- rounded with his cortege of virgins and of saints re- presenting all conditions, all ages, all characters of the Christian and religious life. Who are like Mary, Joseph, and John the Baptist, Zachary and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna? Mis people are already formed . The Life of our Lord 'jfesus Christ. the shepherds and the Magi ; the simple, to whom simplicity gives knowledge ; the learned, to whom science has afforded simplicity ; and he has shown by what arms he will conquer others. He has chosen his principal generals and captains. John is chosen, Peter is named. In fact, he has already fought the fight ; he baffled by a dream the crafty policy of Herod ; he upset by one word the power of darkness, over whom one day he will close the eternal abyss, while he will call to eternal joys the happy multitude of believ- ers, and the songs of victory will resound for ever, Gloria, pax ! celebrating him who is for ever the King of Glory and the Prince of Peace. I BOOK II. THE HAPPY YEAR. CHAPTER I. MARRIAGE FEAST OF CANA — MIRACULOUS FISHING. THREE days after the promise made to Nathanael commenced that public life of teaching and in- struction whose fruitfu lncss is inexplicable to those who do not see the Divinity operating in it. Its first scene is at Cana, a small village in Galilee, in a house where a marriage festival is celebrated. The Holy Virgin assists at it, doubtless as a kinswoman or relation, and probably presides at the feast ; Jesus goes there, accompanied by his first disciples. Through the intercession of Mary a miracle is wrought, whose pro- found meaning we will forthwith consider; but his pre- sence at the nuptials contains another lesson we should first understand. He came to regenerate man. As he went down unto the flood of penance to sanctify the waters which will be made the matter of the sacra- ment of spiritual regeneration, so he goes over to the marriage feast and renders it glorious by his presence and by a miracle, so as to honor for ever the marriage 137 138 The Life of our Lord J"estis Christ. state — the future sacrament which will purify the source of life. Marriage was then, even among the Jews, looked upon as the most undervalued of contracts. Josephus, the historian, a grave and sagacious man, informs us that he had been divorced three times. Divorce and celibacy thinned the ranks of Roman society. Augus- tus sought to apply a remedy for this. He commanded his senate to enact laws and his poets to sing verses ; but the law that enjoined marriage bore the names of two celibate consuls, and there was no more confirmed bachelor than Horace, who wrote the best verses. The emperor met almost with the same difficulty in finding young women who would accept the condition of a ves- tal ; a matron who had not been divorced ; a rich man who would marry. Jesus Christ gives to marriage a twofold majesty: it becomes sacramental and indissolu- ble. Against the enemies of all classes and degrees who would replunge it into its former degradation he surrounds and defends it with the eternal rampart of his own presence, so that, at least among the faithful, the indissolubility of the conjugal tie may prevail, over all corruption of doctrines, customs, and of ' laws. Therefore, he begins by establishing marriage — that is, the Christian family. Thus he places his own memo- rial at the base of the social edifice ; with one word he will build up the edifice, and the immense work will be consummated. Let us remark, once for all, that a great many of the words and acts of Jesus were not immediately under- The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. *39 stand them throughout the course of ages, sometimes by the fruits they have borne, sometimes again by the interpretations of the Church. The Church is a per- petual miracle : she rejoices our hearts, and our minds, and our eyes; she will rejoice to the end the pos- terity of Christ. The manna falls from heaven, al- ways the same, and yet always varied to suit the tastes of those who eat it ; the Gospel yields its harvest of truth, always the same and always new, according to the wants of the world at the different times when it buds forth. The evidences of truth brought forth in the past remain in the treasury of faith, while new evidences suggest the answers made in advance to objections not yet raised, but which the Holy Ghost has anticipated. Thus the Gospel, in which all the ancient prophecies have their fulfilment, is itself a perpetual prophecy. The miracle of Cana was one of those prophetic acts by which Jesus Christ, in manifesting himself, wishes again to prophesy of himself and his Church. During the marriage feast, the wine having failed, Mary, yielding to the natural feeling of her generous, affectionate heart, and doubtless also moved by a divine impulse, turns toward Jesus, and addresses him in this language, or rather implores him by this myste- rious prayer: "They have no more wine." Jesus appears to refuse what she demands. He says to her: " Woman, what is that to thee and me ? My hour is not yet come." But Mary says to the waiters : " Do as he bids you." There were there six stone jars which served for purification. Jesus ordered the waiters to fill them with water, and, when they had filled them up to the very brim, he said to them, " Now draw out." The 140 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. six jars, which contained each from two to three mea- sures, were found full of wine, whose excellent flavor surprised all the guests. St. John the Evangelist, an eye-witness, adds: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him." The increase of faith in the disciples was the imme- diate reason of this miracle, and a sufficient reason, since their salvation depended on their faith, as well as our salvation depends on our faith. But Jesus does nothing which is confined to circumstances, and there is nothing in what we here consider without mystery and without teaching. His reply to the holy Virgin is a new proof that he gives of his divinity; it was oppor- tune at the outset of his public career. In telling him that the guests had no more wine, Mary, as the sequel proves, asks him to perform a miracle. It is therefore to the divine nature she ad- dresses herself, and it is the divine nature that answers her: " Woman, what is that to thee and me ? What hast thou to do with me?" (Kenrick). For although Mary was the Mother of the Man-God, and, by a con- sequence of the indissolubility of the two natures, the Mother of God also, nevertheless she is not the Mo- ther of the Divinity, and there is nothing common be- tween her and the God whose hour has not yet come. Many, for want of reflection, are astonished at what they call the hardness of this language. Jesus prefers to give light to the world rather than afford a passing pleasure to his mother. But who tells them that in expressing his sovereign thoughts to her he was want- ing in gentleness and filial respect ? Mary manifests no astonishment, no uneasiness, at not being heard. She instructs the waiters to do what ) ) The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. 141 Jesus might tell them. She knows the power of her prayer. And, indeed, Jesus is forthwith influenced by it, and performs the miracle she desires. Thus he him- self explains in advance, in the first act of his public mission, that profound expression which he pronounced ) from the summit of the cross when his mission termi- by changing the substance when he wishes to show that he is the author of nature. The withered branch blos- soms again ; the rod is changed into a serpent ; vast bodies of water become blood ; the hand of God makes a dry road through the vast watery deep, and causes nated : " Man, behold your Mother" — behold her who incessantly prays to me for you, and whose prayers I will always hear and render effectual, even to changing \ the order of nature and the course of things. By a complete change of substance the water be- comes exquisite wine. This miracle is the effect of the simple will of God, of his inward thought, not ar- ticulated. The word of man only signifies ; that of God accomplishes at the same time it signifies ; it creates what it says. The earth was not, the heavens were not, the sea was not ; God speaks — those things spring forth, they exist. The same word which gave existence to what was not can cause what is to remain, to cease, ) or to be transformed, and it can cause it to be changed without ceasing or being transformed. According to the will of God, all matter, every particle of matter, can either fall back into nothingness, or be reduced to any degree of inconsistency whatever, or be raised to any form of consistency that he may please to give to it. He suspends it, he penetrates it, he changes its qualities — in short, he makes of it what he wishes it to be, and it is what he commands it to be. God, says St. Ambrose, possesses this art of acting 142 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. the rushing torrents to stand as liquid walls to protect the dry path through the sea; the iron floats on the |j surface of the fountain ; the handful of meal and the j drop of oil cannot lose their value ; the bitter waters are sweet to drink. The Scripture is full of such won- ders, so that we can know that everything is from the / hand of God, and that all obey him. ) In renewing at Cana this mark of his sovereignty he brings to pass more quickly what he does elsewhere > every day just as wonderfully, though we take no heed of it. Every day the dew and rains falling from the heavens, distilled into the bowels of the. earth, sucked in by the roots of the vine, and distilled a second time in that alembic under the rays of the sun, swell out into the bunch of grapes. The instantaneous transmu- tation is not more difficult nor more mysterious than the other. He who from nothing created substances and the means by which they are transformed, can transform them without employing any medium what- ever. At the same time, this change which Jesus makes in the nature of the water is the prophecy and figure of < that which he is about to accomplish in human nature. 1 The six urns set apart for the water of purification are those six periods between which we divide the times which have preceded the coming of the Messias — from > Adam to Noe, from Noe to Abraham, from Abraham to > Moses,' from Moses to David, from David to the Cap- tivity, from the Captivity to Jesus Christ. These six periods contained the revelation of the future Messias, expressed by water, in the language of Scripture ; and ( without this revelation, necessary for the purification of the Jews, the times that went before would remain bar- ren and void. Christ, therefore, was contained in them, ) The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 143 but concealed, as in a certain manner the water con- tains the wine, without our being able to discover it therein. By order of Jesus the six jars or pots are filled up to the brim, because the prophecies have re- ceived in him their accomplishment or fulfilment. Thus the changing of the water into wine represents all the mysteries of redemption : the prophecies have an- nounced them, Christ brought them to reality. The Jews have had this water, and it has been to them but water — the instrument of a material, incom- plete purification, or rather of a vain ceremony, like the repeated ablutions of the Pharisees. They washed their hands, and did works fruitless and impure ; they drank, and their hearts received no warmth, no strength, no joy. The books of the prophets, says St. Augustine, are insipid and wearisome, if we do not understand them ; and to understand them, we must discover Jesus Christ in them. Because the Jews did not discover Jesus Christ in them, they read them without under- standing them, and interpreted them only to disfigure them ; because Jesus Christ appears to us in them, they inebriate our souls with joy. Now we comprehend the merciful heart of Mary when she says to her Son : " They have no wine " — that is to say, Lord, they stand in need of strength ; they stand in need of happiness, of joy ; they stand in need of light ; have pity on them ; bring forth your light ; give them the wine of truth. And Jesus, by turning water into wine after he heard this prayer, promises that he is about to replace the literal sense by the spiritual sense — the letter which kills by the spirit which quickens, the figure by the reality. He will turn the water into wine when he shall give his disciples the true knowledge of the Scriptures, inebriating their souls with the joy of God by means ! 144 The Life of our Lord ye s us Christ. that hitherto left them cold and indifferent. " Pour out now." This miraculous wine will procure another transformation, another miracle, by which the unchaste will be chaste, the proud will become humble and meek, those who tremble before the world will be filled with courage to confess God. For a greater wonder will happen, and the wine of Cana is but the figure of the true beverage. Remove this last veil ; we see the mystery of mysteries appear — the Eucharist. The first act of the public life of Jesus is, therefore, the foretelling of what is to be the object of his mission. He prepares them to believe in the sacrament which is to be the crowning and the incomprehensible and im- mortal miracle of his mission. He has deigned, by this act at Cana, says a father of the Church, to give us a token in advance of the power by which later he would, in the institution of the Eucharist, change the wine into his blood, as, in reality, the wine which is consecrated is a real, true blood, just as the water at Cana instantly and really became pure wine. It is written of this vine of the chalice " that it would bring forth virgins," because its virtue, remov- ing every earthly desire, enkindles in souls a pure love for the Sovereign Good, or creates an unbounded love of God. Although the wine of Cana was but a figure of it, yet Jesus does not fail to attach his grace to it. Not only those to whom he had given the wine of Cana believed in him, but, we learn from tradition, many fol- lowed him. The bridegroom became the apostle St. Simon ; the bride dwelt near the Holy Virgin. The presence of Jesus and Mary at their nuptials had sanctified the affection by which they were united. The grace of virginal chastity recompenses those pure hearts. They love one another with a most holy love, The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 145 which, sacrificing all for God, receives from him in re- ) turn a charm eternally lasting and holy. Such were the works of this great day at Cana — the first day of the manifestation of the Lord. " They re- present what Jesus Christ had come into the world to accomplish: the faith of the disciples, which is the be- ginning of the Church ; the intercession of Mary ; the communion of saints. The best wine, at the end of the repast, is the perfect doctrine for the last age of the world, now inaugurated; water turned into wine typi- . fies the law changed into the Gospel ; figure into reality ; the letter into the spirit; fear into love." It is thus Bossuet sums up the teaching of the fathers. By this recital we perceive how Jesus remains concealed, even in the Gospel, to those who pretend to find him without the lights of the Church; and we can judge of the re- spect the "historians" have for their readers and for themselves when they content themselves by saying, apropos of Cana, that Jesus liked private parties, and that one of his miracles was performed to enliven a ) marriage feast in a small village. ( From Cana Jesus repairs to Capharnaum, where he preaches penance. Capharnaum, which signifies vil- lage of consolation, village abounding in fruits, was an opulent little town, well peopled and busy, situate on the confines of Zabulon and Naphtali, at a spot where the Jordan flows into the Lake of Genesareth. This part of Galilee was called Galilee of the Gentiles, on account of the pagans whom they permitted to dwell among them, which had led them to fall into them wicked and impure. Isaias said : " Land of Za- bulon and Naphtali, which borders on the sea, the country beyond the Jordan, the Galilee of the nations. \ ( ( spiritual apathy so marked that the Jews considered ! 146 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. A people who were seated in darkness have seen a great Light ; the Light has risen upon those who were seated in the region of the shadow of death." Jesus was this light, and he comes into this shadow. He says to them : " The time is come, the kingdom of God is at hand. Do penance, believe in the Gospel." A more important work even than this preaching is about to signalize his first sojourn among the Caphar- naumites. His presence at the marriage feast and the first public manifestation of his power gave honor and dignity to the marriage state, the source of the human race; a second miracle is about to be performed to in- contestably prove the establishment of the Church and signify her mission. Jesus passes along the border of the sea. He sees Simon and Andrew, who were casting their nets, for they were fishermen ; and after the first interview, as already related, they return to their business, by which they lived. He says to them : " Follow me " ; thence advancing a little, he sees in a bark James and John, also fishermen, working at or mending their nets, and he likewise calls them. At this moment the peo- ple run to hear him and press around him ; he ascends into one of the barks, which was Simon Peter's, and, having besought Simon Peter to move out a little from the shore, he sits down and teaches. When his discourse was finished, he says to Simon Peter: " Con- duct your vessel out into deep water, and cast the net." " Master," replies Simon, " we have been laboring all \ night and caught nothing ; but at your word I will throw ) out the net." And at this haul they take in so many fishes that the net threatens to break. They make signs to their companions in another boat to come and ) aid them. The two boats were so full that little more The Life of oar Lord jfcsus Christ. *47 might have sunk them to the bottom. Then Simon Peter, casting himself at the feet of Jesus, says to him : " Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner." He and his companions were frightened at this miracle. Jesus says to Simon : " Fear not ; henceforth you will be- come fishers of men." And forthwith, having brought the barks ashore, they quit all and follow him. The Church is established and foretold. Those first chosen apostles are laboring men, hard- working men, living by the labor of their hands, and not by the fruits of iniquity ; this is what renders them worthy of their calling. They are simple and illiterate. Knowledge will be given them later on ; but at first it is necessary the faith of the believers should be the effect of the divine power, and not of human eloquence. They are called : forthwith they obey ; the children of Zebedee forsake their father — nothing must hinder them from following Christ. There are two ships : that wherein Jesus ascends to teach is Peter's; there words are spoken which beget faith. Out of this bark Jesus teaches the vast multitudes, and out of this bark he will instruct nations. He begs Peter to haul out a little from the shore ; he must preach to the people in a measured way, not attaching them to the things of the earth, nor yet carrying them too far into the re- gions of mystery ; he must condescend to the infirmity of all to guide mankind, floating, amid the changeful and bitter things of this life, towards a haven of peace. Then Jesus says : " In deep water." That was said to Peter ; for he must visit all shores, and he has no- thing to fear, either from the depth of controversies or from the fury of the storms. The bark of Peter is figured in the Old Testament by the ark of Noe, which ascends higher in proportion as the waters are increased The Life of our Lord yest/s Christ. and are shaken by the storms : " Multiplicatae sunt aquse, et elevaverunt arcam in sublime." "Cast out your nets in deep waters " — in the middle of the ocean. Peter is fatigued, laboring the whole night, and has caught nothing; so the prophets have labored in the obscurity of the Old Law. But Peter does not re- fuse to labor; at the word of the Master he throws in the deep the net of the Gospel— the ample and pliable net-work formed by light and charity, which hurts not those whom it catches, and which, from the deep wherein they were struggling, fetches them up toward heaven. ? The great day of grace is at hand ; the net is replete to bursting ; so those who, on the word of the Master, will cast out the net of doctrine, will gather together the multitude of nations. [ Peter is humbly frightened at the miracle, and at- > tributes nothing of it to himself. He only considers that he is a weak, sinful man. Jesus gives him cour- age : " Fear not ; henceforth you will be the fisher of men." This word is also addressed to others, but especially to Peter; it is he who superintends and directs the fishing, who throws out into the deep the great net, who calls out to the others to come and help him. " You will be the fisher of men." Other pro- mises as magnificent will be made to him, and they will be as magnificently accomplished. St. Ambrose translates: " You will bring men to life." And in guiding their barks to dry land the fisher- men quit all to follow Jesus — figure of the end of those ages wherein those attached to Jesus will quit for ever the sea of this world. A numerous people have seen and daily see those realities and receive those symbols and those promises. "1 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 149 There are on the lake hundreds of fishing barks con stantly and actively occupied. The Gospel fishing is carried on in the full light of day. It has been re- marked that the Gospel land, in its inhabitants and the configuration of its soil, was quite typical. Near to the Dead Sea the Jordan flows on in a lingering, serpentine way, as if it feared the bed of the sulphurous lake. The instinct of the fish warn them to turn back, be- cause those the current has carried into the deep water instantly die. This is the reason why this place was frequented by fishermen. Simon, Andrew, John, and his brother went there to cast their nets — a figure of what will one day happen when they will become fishers of men : at the extremity of the stream of life they will catch for the kingdom of God those whom the proximity of that frightful gulf will cause to tremble and recoil. Jeremias has said : "A day will come when I will send a number of fishermen, and they shall catch men." By the chariot of those fishermen, says St. Jerome, we are caught up towards the heavens like Eliseus. They are the four angels of the first church erected, the four Hebrew letters of the divine name. Their example urges us to obey the call of God, to forget the vicious throng, to quit the bark of our former life and the delights of the paternal mansion — this tissue of worldly solicitudes, this spider's web wherein, if caught, we, like so many gnats, will hang without support. CHAPTER IL NICODEMUS— THE SAMARITAN WOMAN. AFTER some days passed at Capharnaum Jesus returns to Jerusalem. There he performs other miracles and celebrates the Pasch. The custom and connivance of the priests allowed the merchants to establish themselves under the porticos of the Temple. He drives them thence for the first time, saying : " You make of my Father's house a den of thieves." Later they remember what is written : " The zeal of your house has eaten me up." The merchants do not resist him, although his hand was armed only with a whip of small cords ; and they did not invoke the aid of the priests, who tolerated them. Doubtless they were intimidated by the aw- ful majesty of his countenance. However, some among the doctors demanded of him by what right he acted in such manner, asking him to perform a miracle to prove his mission. He replied to them : " Destroy this temple, and within three days I will build it up again." They understand him to speak of the Temple out of which he chased the buyers and sellers — that Temple whose ruin he would very soon predict, and which never should be rebuilt ; but he spoke to them of the temple of his body, wherein dwelt the fulness of the Divinity, and of the miracle of 150 Tlie Life of cur Lord jïsus Christ. 151 his resurrection three days after they should have put him to death. For the Mcssias was the living Temple of God ; and the Jews themselves declare it. In the course of time many believed that the Messias was born at the time the Romans destroyed the Temple. According to St. Mark, Jesus pronounced those words the day on which each one purchased the paschal lamb, and, according to the computation of some his- torians, on the same day on which (three years after) he arose from the dead. His replies are quasi enigmatical, and he ordinarily refuses an answer when interrogated by unbelief, vain curiosity, or pride. He spoke clearly to the meek and docile of heart. He granted them the favors they de- manded. Whatever might be the expression that issued from the lips, he seizes on their thought ; those even who are silent hear him answering their very thoughts. He knows all men thoroughly. He merci- fully regulates his discourses to suit their intelligence and their faith, giving them only what they can actu- ally bear. ( Many came to him who were merely surprised at his miracles. Some he retained, and others he let go, He called some who did not present themselves. Levi the publican was seated at his bureau of finance. Jesus passes and calls him : " Follow me." The publican rises and forthwith follows him ; leaves his bureau, as Peter and John had left their nets, and be- comes Matthew the Apostle. Some time after, a doc- tor of the law presents himself to him, and says : M Mas- ter, I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus saw the heart of this savant ; he replies to him : " The foxes have their dens, and the birds their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lav his head." The The Life of our Lord ffesus Christ. savant withdraws himself from Christ's presence. He only wishes to advance in knowledge ; the labor of the Gospel, rough and disinterested and unselfish, did not please him — type of those thieves who harass the Church in order to steal from her whatever knowledge they can use to their own profit. Another— who was, on the other hand, called — asks a delay till he buries his father. Jesus answers him: "Let the dead bury the dead." Come to the work of the living ; learn that the first duty toward men is to preach the Gospel, and that your Father himself needs that you forsake all to obey the voice of God — an everlasting answer to the objections of false charity. Jesus does not im- pose a weight that he refuses to take upon himself. He does not wait to close the eyes of his mother. At Jerusalem, among those who first approached him, there was a senator named Nicodemus. He Came in the night, with an upright but timorous heart. He was afraid of the Jews, dreading, perhaps, at the same time their wrath, already manifested, and their railleries. We find him again, more courageous at Calvary. Jesus declares to him unreservedly his di- vinity. In the discourse which he holds with him he reveals to him the whole plan of Christianity. In it he points out his death on the cross, and pronounces these words, which are the adorable reason of the In- carnation : " God so loved the world as to give his only Son for it." Then he unveils the causes of in- credulity: "The Light came into the world, and men rather prefer darkness, because their works are wicked. For whoever does evil hates the light ; but he who comes to the light is led by the truth." This is he who declares himself judge on the last day. Having thus received with kindness the timid Jew, The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 153 he goes himself to win the Samaritan woman to divine truth. The Samaritans were the remnant of colonies, form- ed of divers peoples, which the Assyrians had estab- lished. They pretended that they sprang from the race of Abraham, and they received the books of Moses, but mixed up with them much of their ancient idolatry. The Jews treated them as strangers, and a reciprocal hatred divided them. The synagogue forbade all rela- tions with these schismatics, save to buy and. sell. Jesus sjoes towards them ; he rises above national and politi- sa r 1 cal enmities, as he will shortly put himself above the traditions and prescriptions of the Pharisees regarding the Sabbath. We behold here his first public mission to those outside the Jewish pale. Travelling, then, through Samaria to get back again into Galilee, and finding himself at the gates of a city called Sichem, Jesus rests himself, feeling the fatigue of the journey. The road, says St. Augustine, was the flesh he had taken to arrive at humanity ; and the fa- tigue he was pleased to endure makes us comprehend the labor of his apostolate. His disciples enter the vil- lage to purchase something to cat ; for he so disdains the comforts of life as ordinarily to carry with him no provision. Once he spoke of a loaf they had for the whole company, and which the apostles forgot. But Sichem was not a place without a memory. Abraham, returning from Mesopotamia, had erected an altar there ; and God made known to him that this place belonged to him. It was here that Simon and Levi, sons of Jacob, had killed a great number of the Amorrhites to avenge the outrage done to their sister Dinah. Jacob, having purchased here a territory for a flock of an hundred sheep, had given it as an inheri- The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. tance to Joseph, and he had dug a well that is yet called Jacob's well. Thus, on this strange soil, Jesus, Son of God and Son of the patriarchs, was doubly at home. He comes there to reveal the true God, to bring pardon to the abode of vengeance, to open up the fountain of the true living waters which gush forth even to eternal life. Whilst Jesus, remaining alone, rested himself, seated on the brim of Jacob's well, a woman comes from Sichem to draw some water. She was a woman of bad morals and of bad repute. She represents the Church not yet purified, but about to be so. The woman comes from among strangers : the Church will be es- tablished among the nations. It is said that Jesus stopped here at the sixth hour, at mid-day. The ma- terial sun, arrived at his highest point, begins to de- crease ; the Sun prophesied by Zacharias, the true Orient, rises to enlighten those who are seated in the shadow of death, and he comes to direct their feet in the way of peace. The sixth hour is yet to be the hour of sacrifice, when, bleeding and bruised, the Sa- viour will rest himself from his fatigues by lying down on the bed of the cross, and then from those bleeding wounds of his will gush out the sources of salvation. Jesus says to the Samaritan, " Give me to drink." On Calvary he-will say, " I thirst," It is the same thirst he expresses here ; she replies in the language of rail- lery, common to her class : " How ! you, a Jew, ask of me a drink — I being a Samaritan ? " The Jews, be it re- membered, even refused to make use of the vessels of the Samaritans. Jesus gently reprimands her: " If you knew what the gift of God is, and him who is speaking to you, asking you to give water to drink, you yourself would be the first, or should be to ask a drink of water The Life of our Lord yes us Cluisi. J55 from him, and he would have given you to drink of the living water." The Samaritan, yet scoffing, but astonished and more respectful, says to him : " Sir, you have not where- with to draw, and the well is deep. Whence have you living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob» who has given us this well ? " She knows no other water than that which quenches the carnal thirst, and, though impressed with respect, she treats lightly the stranger who asks her to give him a little water, whilst she holds possession of the means of drawing it. Thus it is that the pride of the rationalists will dispute for a long while. Jesus answers her: "Whoever will drink of this water will thirst again; but he who will drink of the water that I will give will never thirst, because the water I will give will become a fountain that will spring up to eternal life." The water of the well is the sen- sual pleasures which dwell in dark recesses of the human heart. He who partakes of the pleasures of this world, he who drinks of this water, Avili thirst again. The living water of Jesus is the Holy Ghost, who will satiate all the desires of the soul, and raise up man to eternal life, being the principle of resurrection. He who has this fountain within him will never thirst. The Samaritan does not yet comprehend Christ's meaning. Always preoccupied with carnal thirst, but more and more respectful, she says to Jesus : " Sir, give me to drink of this water, so that I may thirst no more, and that I may come no more here to draw water." She inhabits the country where Eliseus, the great pro- phet, had, among other prodigies, lived forty days with- out drinking and without eating. Remembering his history, she believes that he who speaks to her can give 156 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. her the true secret of Eliseus. Jesus wishes to confer on her a gift far more precious. He says to her : " Go, call your husband, and return." For the first time, perhaps, in her whole life, as we can conjecture it from what is about to be revealed, this woman at the same time fears to lie and to be sincere. She says : " I have no husband." Jesus replies : " You have reason to say, I have no husband, for you have had five ; and he with whom you are now living is not your husband." Repudiated successively by five hus- bands, this sinful woman lives in sinful connection with an adulterer. In a mystical sense, a father of the Church sees here the five senses, the domination of the flesh which presses on all men, before they can make use of their reason. Error follows the passions of the senses; it has no husband, legitimate guide, but an adulterous lover. Remove your error; put away that adulterer who corrupts you ; appeal to your reason to comprehend the truth. The Samaritan woman makes this noble effort. She bows down before the light that appears to her, and acknowledges her sins and her shame. " Lord, I see well you are a prophet." And forthwith, leaving off every question of temporal interest, she seeks after more light by proposing clearly the point of doctrine 1 that divides the Samaritans and the Jews. In the I midst of all her crimes, this woman had not dis- dained to meditate at times on the importance of salvation ; the Son of God knew this. Then she says to him : " Our fathers have adored on this mountain, and you say (you, the Jews) that Jerusalem is the place ) where we must adore." Jesus, without answering her directly on this point, 5 which thenceforth would have but little importance The Life of our Lord J^sus Christ. 157 either for the Samaritans or the Jews, raises her up higher than she thought to ascend. " Woman," says he to her, " believe me, the time is at hand when you will no longer adore the Father on this mountain nor in Jerusalem (for the sacrifices of the Samaritans, as those of the Jews, would be abolished). You adore what you do not know, and we adore what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and it is at hand, when the true adorers will adore the Father in spirit and in truth ; for those are the adorers whom the Father desires. God is a spirit, and those who adore him must adore him in spirit and ) in truth." This parable at once upsets the symbols of the Jews and the idols of the Samaritans. Both neglect the soul, seeking by every means to purify the body. Jesus Christ declares that God, who is a spirit, is honor- ed by the purity of what there is incorporeal in us, the purity of the understanding which he calls the spirit. The Church adores in spirit, because she offers up a spiritual victim ; she adores in truth, because her sacri- fice is not purely figurative, but gives the reality of the sacrifices of the ancient law and of what its signs re- present. The Samaritan says to Jesus: "I know that the Messias, whom they call Christ, must come. When he does come, he will instruct us in all things." It needs but the five books of Moses for the Samaritan to ex- pect the Messias, so often is his advent predicted therein, and so much is Christ the object of the whole ancient Testament. Jesus replies: " This Mes- sias whom you expect is now speaking to you : it is myself." The Son of God reveals himself to the simple heart that confesses its misery to him. It was only in ; ; » t ) ( ) The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. the presence of the cross the Jews could obtain this clear expression ; for they only asked him if he was the promised Messias to deny, to insult him. At this moment the disciples return. They were [ astonished to behold their Master holding conversation with this strange woman ; for it was, to their eyes, a i sort of a transgression of the law, and doubtless, also, a ) condescension quite contrary to Jewish haughtiness. Nevertheless, they do not question him. They had learned, says a father, to observe their rank of disciples ; they respected and feared him. The Samaritan, leav- ing the vessel she carried to the well, returns to the city, and publishes what she had seen. She said to all she met with : " Come and see a man that has told me all that I have ever done. Might he not be the Christ ? " An admirable example of God's workings in our hearts ! The conversion of this sinful woman is, so to speak, instantaneous, and yet all the degrees of it are perfectly marked. She passes from haughty, mocking indiffer- ence to respect ; from respect to the desire of riches which are promised her, and of which she is ignorant; she acknowledges Jesus to be a prophet, and at the same time she avows that she has prevaricated ; she is instructed, and she is docile ; as soon as she possesses the divine light she exerts herself to spread it abroad. Leaving there her pitcher, as the fishermen leave their nets, she acts the part of evangelist by publishing, to the honor of Him who had enlightened her, the words which have humbled her. She blushes not to reveal this truth ; the soul, once illumined by the divine fire, regards not the things of the earth, neither glory nor honor. She knows, says St. Chrysostom, only the flame of holy love that vivifies her. She leaves her urn or pitcher, says St. Augustine: the urn is the love of the The Life of our Lo?ui jfesus Christ. i 59 world, the cupidity by which men seek to draw pleasure from the dark depths of earthly life, of which the well ( is an image. r Whilst the Samaritan woman was applying herself to ( make known the gift of God, the disciples press Jesus to eat. The Lord says to them : " I have other food ( to take " ; and they thought somebody had brought him something to eat. Thus Jesus does not refuse to receive nourishment from the hands of strangers, since he possessed nothing, so that those who assisted him might be rewarded for it, and also that his disciples might learn to honor poverty. But he carries their thoughts far from this. " My nourishment," says he, " is to accomplish the will of Him who sent me, and to perfect his work." ( To perfect a work is to labor to realize the design of him who has conceived it and who has commanded it. If the work of God is perfected by Christ, it therefore was not perfected before him. But what can there be wanting to perfect the work of God ? Origen replies : The perfection of the reasonable creature is the perfec- tion of all nature ; it is for the perfection of this nature, hitherto incomplete, that the Word was made flesh. Man was perfect in a certain degree ; but transgression [ rendered him imperfect. The Saviour was sent clown, firstly, to accomplish the will of Him who had sent him ; | secondly, to perfect the work of God, not only by restoring man to his original condition, but by elevating him to his perfection, which is to nourish himself with the knowledge of God. The Son of God accomplishes and perfects in two ways the work of the Father — in man, when he makes us behold in his person human nature, without sin, without corruption, worthy of the divine love ; in the law, for Christ is the end of the law : L i6o The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. he conducts to maturity all it contains, and he elevates the world from carnal to spiritual worship. This was the lesson Jesus Christ taught his disciples, by telling them that they should reap what others had sown, and that this harvest, which would be fruitful to eternal life, would rejoice those who worked first — that is to say, the prophets. It was also to indicate how the accomplishment of the law and the work of salva- tion is but one work of God, undertaken from the begin- ning. They did not yet understand him, but they remembered. They also thought reapers must become sowers; for the missionary of Christ reaps and sows at the same time. He performs the double labor of prophet and apostle. Because the Church is one in duration of time, differently to what passes in the world, the joy of him who harvests with full hands is the recom- pense and joy of him who has sown in sorrowfulness and barrenness, and who has not even seen the furrow become green. The Samaritan had said to her fellow-citizens : " Come and see. May not this be the Christ ?" A great number received this word. Departing from the city, they flock around Jesus ; they implore him to re- main with them. He stays with them two days; and after having heard him speak, a great many more of them believed in him. They say to this woman : " We believe no longer on your testimony ; we have heard him ourselves, and we know truly he is the Saviour of the world." They affirm what was pre- sented to them but as doubtful. However, they had seen no miracles; the word alone converted them. As they depart from the city to hear the word, so in re- ceiving this sincere word they renounce every other doctrine. The Evangelist, according to the saying of The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 6 1 ! i Origen, takes care to say that they implored him not to enter the city, but " to dwell among them." Foi Jesus dwells among those who importune him by prayer; especially when, departing from their city, denying themselves, they come to him. The episode of the Samaritan woman signalizes the advent and character of definite religion, and clearly points out to us the form and miracle of the preaching of Jesus. The whole possesses the simplicity of the most ordinary things of life, and yet all is divine ; it seems that all might be by pure chance, and the more we regard it, the more we find eternal depths in the preparation, in the fact and the consequences, which last for ever and will be eternal. Let us remark that this mission to Samaria was an > act that could greatly compromise Jesus among the Jews, if he had, as they did say, sought popularity. The aversion for the Samaritans was universal, and rendered public opinion even more formidable than \ legal prohibitions. This city of Sichem, where he dares to sojourn, the Jews called Sichar, which means in- ebriation, drunkenness. He heeds not their prejudices. His immense compassion for human miseries never flattered error — a twofold mark of his divinity: that he did it not, and that he was incapable of doing it.'::' ) * The Roman martyrology and the Greek mcnology make mention, on the 20th of March, of the Samaritan woman, and call her Photina. She attaches herself to our divine Lord. Tradition says she was at Calvary and at the Last Supper. St. Photina was exiled into Africa, where she received the crown of martyrdom at Carthage, in the year Co of the Redemption, at the same time as her two sons, Joseph and Victor, and her five sisters, whom she had converted. Their relics are at Rome, in the basilica of St. Paul {Cornelius à Lapidi). ÉSIi ^ fflwff*y~i5i s8§j#a S^$^r aE^i^l siït ^^ 3b P2§1 §§§ CHAPTER III. THE SICK HEALED— THE TEMPEST CALMED- VANQUISHED — THE PHARISEES. -DEMONS JT was almost as a fugitive that Jesus Christ travelled through the territory of Samaria. Herod Anti- pas, King of Judea, had at that time arrested John the Baptist. By the power of his preaching he continues to draw to him vast multitudes. The Precursor irri- tates the Pharisees. Herod respects him, and would have willingly let him preach penance ; but John re- proaches him for his public violation of God's law. This tyrant had espoused Herodias, his sister-in-law. The man of God says to him : " It is not lawful for you to take to wife your brother's wife." Non licet ! John was the first who had the honor and glory of pronouncing this salutary word, which the Church has been obliged so often to repeat almost daily, like him, at the price of her civil liberty and her blood. Princes demand of the Church to teach obedience to the civil laws ; but when she contests the right they have to infringe on those laws, then they accuse her of sedition and cast her into irons, or they put her in chains. The Gospel is a complete picture of all human history. In the eyes of the Pharisees Jesus was already guilty of the crimes of John the Baptist. Those hypocrites were not ignorant of what the voice in the desert said 163 //eves ! The divine Word performed a double miracle, accompanied by a twofold grace : the body of the son \ is healed, and the heart of the father is changed — the one receives health, the other faith. The same sovereign authority appears in all the works of Jesus. By a word he cures the blind, the deaf, the lame ; he banishes demons from the bodies of the pos- sessed. Sometimes, however, he uses certain signs or marks : he touches the sick or imposes hands on them. He wishes to act thus either to give a particular in- struction, or, as we will see elsewhere, to make mani- fest, as St. Augustine says, that his body is the organ of the Divinity. At Capharnaum, where he remains in the poor cot- The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 163 ( of him, and they were impatient to make him an object of equal suspicion. His hour was not yet come ; he seeks shelter from their wrath — giving an example, to the Church to fly from danger when the occasion re quires it. She often has had and will have need of this example. Arrived at Galilee, he continues to teach and work miracles. "They were all astonished at his doctrine ; because he taught as a man who had authority, and not as the Scribes do." So authority is the character of his miracles. At Cana an officer approaches him, beg- ging of him to heal his son, who was dying at Caphar- naum. Jesus, knowing his faith, though it was yet im- perfect, says to him : " If you people do not see mira- cles and great wonders, you do not believe." The officer, engrossed with the danger of his son, does not attempt to justify himself. "O Lord!" says he to Jesus, " come before my son dies." Jesus says to him : " Go ; your son lives." The Gospel adds : " He believes what Jesus tells him, and he goes his way." He be- ( ) ,,-1-iof- T™..~ «.«11.. 1,." — 1 1-_ i.:_ __ >> tt 7 ) ) 164 The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. tage of Simon Peter — a significant circumstance — all the sick and the possessed are led to him. In pre- sence of all the inhabitants assembled before the gate he cures them, fulfilling this expression of the prophet: "He has taken on him our infirmities, and he has loaded himself with our maladies." " And the demons, departing out of the bodies of the possessed, cry out, You are the Son of God ; but Jesus makes them keep silence, because they knew he was the Christ." Let us mention here particularly one of the cures, which was a promise for the Jews, so often reproved and so terribly chastised. Simon Peter's mother-in- law, worn down by age and afflicted with a violent fever, was in danger of death. The disciples entreat Jesus to relieve and comfort her. He commands the fever to leave her, and forthwith this malady is not only cured, but, full of vigor, she rises and serves them. To seize the spiritual sense of the miracle, and to com- prehend what the mother-in-law of St. Peter represents, let us recollect that the spouse of the Prince of the Apostles is the Church. The mother-in-law is there- fore the synagogue, of which the Church is born. ■ She is that poor, sick creature, wearied with envy, avarice, hatred, decrepitude, and devoured by care and anxiety about profane things. She will not die ; she will be re- suscitated, and enjoy a life she had not known. The Saviour, who stops at Simon Peter's house, will extend his hand toward her, and she will rise up to bless and serve him. One day Jesus embarked on the lake to seek a little repose in the neighboring solitude. He encountered a great tempest. The water, entering into the boats, threatened them with sudden shipwreck. Notwith- standing all this, Jesus seems to sleep. The disciples, The Life of oar Lord Jesus Christ. terrified, cry out: "Lord, save us; we perish." But the fathers say it is written the Guardian of Israel never sleeps, nor will he ever slumber. He sleeps as if he were taking a repose at the well of Jacob, to show us that he has taken a body like ours. His divine nature is on watch, and the Divinity has ordained that this storm should break forth, so that we might have a proof of the power of Jesus alike over men and over the ele- ments. Therefore, he awakes, and says to the disciples : " Men of little faith, why do you fear ? " Then, stretch- ing out his hand over the winds, he says to the sea : "Be still"; and suddenly there came a great calm. David had chanted: The waters have seen thee, O Lord ! and they have feared ; thou commandest the roaring billows of the sea, and curbest its billows, and stillest its raging fury. By this miracle, says St. Jerome, we ought to understand that all creatures acknowledge Jesus Christ for their author, and obey his voice. Not that mate- rial things may have a soul and senses, as certain here- tics have dreamed, but such is the majesty of God that things insensible to us may become sensible before him.& And the witnesses, the disciples and the others, though they were about to perish, seized with a new fear, say to one another: " Who is this Man who com- mands the winds and the sea, and they obey him? " It is no longer Peter that is fearful. The Church, in favor of whom the miracle was performed, attests its renewal, or rather its permanency or lasting duration ; she derives from this miracle an invincible confidence. Very often has she seen the winds toss the sea to and fro. But she knows the power of Him who watches when he seems to sleep. She invokes him ; and whether he appeases the sudden storm, or whether he lets it fol- [66 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. low its course, the menaced bark 13 never overwhelmed. On the contrary, the tempest itself protects it by the shipwrecks it multiplies around the Church while en- deavoring to submerge it ; and Peter, standing in the bark in place of his Master, governs amid perils with a firmness, boldness, and courage that no earthly threat or fear can trouble. During this evangelical journey Jesus publicly shows anew his power over the devil. A frenzied, possessed man comes to him and adores him ; and at the same time the demons who torment this man say through his mouth : " Lord, what have we to do with you ? Thou art Jesus, Son of the Most High God." Forced to quit their prey, they implore Jesus not to command them to plunge into the abyss, but to permit them to enter the flock of swine that feed hard by. He consents to their wish, because all belong to him ; because the owners of the swine gave scandal ; and because he wishes to prove that the devil can have no power over us nor over the things which belong to us, except in- asmuch as God permits him. Forthwith the possessed was delivered, and the swine are precipitated into the lake, where they are drowned. A Roman poet boasted, some years before, of being " a pig of the herd of Epicure." We may judge accu- rately whence he got this taste and this inspiration : surely from Satan. The sort of wisdom which the poet celebrates has cherished the same sympathies for hogs; and it drowns them in the watery deep of infidelity and rationalism. When Jesus returns from Capharnaum, they bring to him a paralytic, so that he might cure him. Not be- ing able to force his way through the crowd, the men who did this gooa work hoist up the sick man to the \ Tlie Life of our Lord ye sus C/irisf. 167 flat roof of the house, and forthwith lower him gently near to the Saviour. Jesus, touched at their perse- verance, tenderly says to the paralytic : " My son, take ) courage ; thy sins are forgiven thee." In the throng there were Scribes and Pharisees, doubtless very overbearing, and as persuaded of their justice as ever. They thought among themselves, " This man blasphemcth. Who can remit sins but God alone? " Jesus, penetrating their thoughts by his own mind, speaks to them thus : " Which is the easier, to say to a paralytic, Your sins arc forgiven you ; or to say to him, Rise up, take your bed, and walk ? Dut that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, I will order him to do this. He says to the paralytic, Arise, take up your bed, and re- turn to your home." The man forthwith stands on his feet, takes his bed, and walks away, publishing the wonders of God. Among those murmuring Pharisees many were sent from Jerusalem to spy after Jesus. From this very moment we behold pharisaical hatred concocting and laying plans to entrap him. Jesus was dining at the house of the publican Levi, who afterwards became Matthew, the apostle and evangelist of our Lord. As usual, the divine Master is found in the midst of publicans and sinners, many of whom follow him. The Pharisees were scandalized at this. Jesus replies to them : " It is not the healthy and strong who stand in need of a physician, but the sick, the weak." Conceive what this expression of the prophet Osee signifies: I wish mercy, and not sacrifice; because I am not come to call to repentance the just, but the sinners. By the irony of this language the Pharisees feel that The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. Jesus does not view them with that courteous regard they had for themselves. With the design of embar- rassing and ensnaring him, they bribe certain of the disciples of John the Baptist, who say to him : " How comes it the disciples of John and those of the Pharisees frequently fast and pray, and that yours eat and drink, and do not fast ? " Jesus responds: "The friends of the Bridegroom are not in mourning, and do not fast whilst the Bridegroom is with them ; but a day will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they will fast." He draws a compari- son which is an admirable lesson of gentleness and con- descension toward novices, whose weakness we should not discourage by wishing forthwith to raise them to a state of perfection. In establishing the Church he in- structs her for ever ; since her office and duty are al- ways to cure the sick and convert sinners. But the Pharisees could not see so far, and do not yet see. As to Jesus Christ himself, prayer, fasting, and apostolic labor were his principal nourishment, according to that word he uttered : " My food is to do the will of Him who sent me." CHAPTER IV. THE WOMAN AFFLICTED WITH THE ISSUE OF BLOOD — THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS. THE Pharisees, nevertheless, availed themselves of every occasion to recur to the power and good- ness of Him whom they endeavored to persecute, vilify, and censure. It is probable that Jairus, the chief of the synagogue at Capharnaum, belonged to this party ; but he had a daughter, twelve years of age, who fell sick. Believing her about to die, Jairus flew to Jesus, who was teaching on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, and prostrated himself at his feet, and, with a carnal faith, he implores him to come and restore his dying daughter to life, persuaded that he could and would accomplish it, but, on the other hand, as a carnal and worldly man, believing that his presence and the impo- sition of his hands were necessary for the accomplish- ment of his desire. The Lord, without reproving him, rises up and follows him. Amidst the throng of people following him there was a woman from the city of Cesarea. She came, doubtless, to see Him about whom so much had been said everywhere. For twelve years she suffered from a flow of blood, which baffled the skill of the most noted physicians; for instead of ameliorating her condition, 169 170 The Life of our Lord "jesus Christ. they made it worse. This woman, not daring to accost him nor ask anything of him, but full of faith, and more enlightened by a supernatural light than by any other teaching, says within herself: " If I could but touch the hem of his garment, I would be cured." Instantly the Lord turns around and asks who touched the hem of his garment. And as all declared themselves guiltless of the act — a fact which shows the profound respect in which he was held by the people, even when he allowed himself to be annoyed and worried by them — Peter says to him : " Master, the throng press around and overpower you, and you ask who has touched you." But Jesus, continuing to look upon the vast multitude that flocked about, replies : " Some one has touched me ; for power has gone out from me." The influences of Jesus are incorporeal, and do not proceed from him in a material way, so as to communi- cate themselves to others, as if this power abandoned him, the same as science does not forsake him who teaches it, to go to him who is taught. Jesus turns about and questions, so as to show that he knows that this woman is cured, and how she is healed, and thereby to honor her faith. " Who has touched me ? " — that is, by faith and desire. The multitudes who press about me do not. touch me, because they do not touch me by faith and desire. The woman afflicted with an issue of blood, terrified, casts herself at his feet, avowing what she had done. Jesus says to her : " My daughter, have courage; your faith has made you whole. Go in peace." She becomes his daughter when she obtains the faith ; it is her faith that heals her, and not, says Tertullian, her profound knowledge of the Scriptures. This is a great lesson The Life of our Lord y'esus CJirist. 171 taught the Scribes. Jesus requires of her this declara- tion to impart to us that teaching, so that our souls may hear it.* "Confide, filia, fides tua te salvam fecit." To what innumerable souls has not this word brought peace, strength, and salvation ! Jairus, doubtless, was the first in whose soul it in- creased faith. To him word is brought that at this very moment his daughter had expired. Although some body in the crowd advised him not to importune the Saviour any more, " Lord," he cries, " my daughter is dead ; but come, put your hand upon her, and she will live." O happy father ! O thrice happy for having thus spoken ! One word of Jesus strengthens his hope. They arrive at the house ; lamentations and sobbings and weepings are heard on every side. Jesus says to those who were lamenting and weeping: " Why do you weep ? The young girl is not dead : she sleeps." The people jeer at him, because they had seen the girl dying. Jesus causes the pressing throng to be turned out, also the musicians, who were there accord- ing to funeral usage. Observing near him only the father and mother and three of his disciples— Peter, James, and John — he takes hold of the hand of her that was dead. "Young woman," says he, "arise." The young woman arises and walks. Jesus orders them to give her something to eat. At the same time he ex- pressly forbids the parents to divulge anything of what they had seen ; but they disobey him, as well as many others who had received the same injunctions. He has \ * According to a respectable tradition, the woman afflicted with an issue of blood is that very same woman, called Veronica, who, on the ) road to Calvary, dried the sweat and blood from the adorable body ( f Jesus with a linen handkerchief, on which he left the impress of his ) countenance. 172 The Life of our Lord ffesus Christ. sometimes forbidden and sometimes commanded the publishing of his miracles, for various reasons, which cannot be quite well comprehended ; for the explica- tions given of them are not always quite satisfactory. The truest reason is that he wished that his disciples would learn to conceal as much as possible the gifts he conferred upon them, so as to avoid the danger of vain- glory. But why has he commanded this miracle to be concealed rather than others? No doubt he desired it for motives worthy of himself, and we ought to know how to ignore what he has judged proper for us not to know. What we understand is sufficient, and is all that is necessary to be known. The fathers have remarked and have clearly explain- ed for us the mysterious connection of these two mir- acles, related on the same page of the Gospel, and which are equally prophetic and equally fulfil the ancient pro- phecies. In the first miracle, the healing of the woman afflicted with the flowing of blood, wrought by the sim- ple touch of the Saviour's garment (by which the Savi- our has justified the veneration of holy relics), are signal- ized a remembrance of Aaron's, and a promise of Christ's priesthood, and a shining figure of the Incarnation. It is said that the unction shed on Aaron's head flowed even to the extremity of his garment, and preserved throughout it its power and virtue. The sick woman comprehended this symbol. More learned by faith than all the Jewish doctors, with their learned researches, without pausing to reflect on the apparent weakness of visible nature, she believes the Man of miracles who passes before her, tormented and harassed, and pressed by the vulgar throng, is God himself, and that the divine ) virtue went forth from that garment of flesh wherewith ( ) . ( ) he touched the earth as if with the hem of his garment. ( The Life of cur Lord Jesus Christ. But the mantle of Christ is his Incarnation, by which the Word has put on our humanity; and the hem of this garment are the dogmas of faith which depend from the Incarnation. And this sick woman who extends her hands to touch the garment of Christ, so as to be healed— this sick and afflicted creature who year by year loses her natural strength— this afflicted woman, given up as incurable, is the Church of the Gentiles, lost and ruined by phi- losophy, wisdom, science, and crime, and about to die if He who is the expectation of the world had not appear- ed. In vain does she interrogate the physicians. There is no doctor to be found to cure her malady. Plato, Jupiter, Caesar, only torment and destroy her. What- ever they may say, whatever she may do, her blood flows. In the eyes of the Jews, this loss of blood, though they cannot stop it, renders her corrupt and impure ; the Jews do not trouble themselves about her, only to exclude her from offering sacrifices in the Tem- ple to the Lord. She must die ; she is so exhausted from the malady she cannot live. It is then Jesus shows himself, and prevents her by a sublime faith. She does not say, on beholding him, " Perhaps " ; she says, " Certainly I shall be healed." She follows him in the throng of those who follow him and press around him, but do not touch him, who rather, as St. Peter says, "oppress him and afflict him," because their curiosity admires him ; but their hearts ask nothing of him, and, above all, offer him nothing. She follows him ; she touches him to be healed, and she is healed . Thus the Church of the Gentiles, says St. Leo, without having seen Jesus in his mortal flesh, but having heard him in his apostles, as it were seized by the hand the mystery of Incarnation. She presses forward, says St. ) 174 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ, \ Hilary, to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is the fruit and adornment of the Incarnation of the j Word, and flows from it just as the fringe hangs from ) the garment that it adorns and borders. And as the woman afflicted with the issue of blood, healed with- out being seen, is called back to acknowledge the ) benefit and receive the sweet name of daughter, so the ) Church of the Gentiles, which Jesus Christ healed by the ministry of the apostles, without having seen him with the eyes of the body, received from him that sweet, paternal expression, " Confide, filia." However, when Jesus cured the woman afflicted with an issue of blood, it was not to her he seemed to go. She is encountered on the way by his will, which has ordered all things to instruct mankind ; but he goes elsewhere. He follows Jairus, who had come to him, to restore his dying daughter to life. The name of Jairus signifies illumined and illumining. By this name, and by the title of chief of the syna- gogue, Jairus represents Moses. His daughter was twelve years of age ; the synagogue, daughter of Moses, existed for twelve centuries. And as the woman *) afflicted with the issue of blood suffered for twelve years, so for twelve centuries the Gentile nations, more and more oppressed by idolatry, lost more and more their patrimony of natural virtues, and bled under the hand of false sages, from whom they demanded in vain light and peace. The Church, says Raban Maur, was weak, whilst the synagogue was vigorous and full of life ; and when the synagogue perished because of her infidelity and incredulity, then the salvation of the Gentiles began. Jesus also offered salvation to the dying synagogue. He did not wish to destroy, but to accomplish what ) \ — The Life of our Lord jfcsus Christ. 175 Moses, his prophet and his precursor, had prepared. I [e walked in his footprints, and said to the Jews: "The books of Moses contain the history of my life." And 1 instead of establishing the Church on the ruins of $ the synagogue, he offers to the synagogue, spread out to the boundaries of the earth, to receive all nations into her bosom, and to become herself the Church. At the time we arc speaking of, observes St. Je- rome, he had wrought seven miracles ; the eighth (the complement of the mysterious number which expresses the New Law — that is to say, the new cre- ation by redemption) was the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus ; the renovation, by a second birth, of the synagogue, the daughter of Moses. But the synagogue did not believe, and she did not implore to be healed or cured by faith; and in view of faith her rank is taken by the humble and fervent Gentiles. The last to demand aid, the Church is first to be heard ; she ) ) is substituted for the synagogue. David announced ) • • ( that dark Ethiopia — heathendom — blackened with in- numerable vices, would be the first to extend its hands toward the Saviour ; and Jesus himself said to the Pharisees that the publicans and fallen women would precede them in the kingdom of heaven. The salvation destined for the synagogue, says St. Hilary, was given to the Church, and thus was accomplished the mystery whereby the Gentiles were put in posses- sion of the benefits promised to the Jews, but refused by them. In replacing the synagogue Jesus, the Son of God, on all occasions shows that he does not forget her. lie continues his route toward the house of Jairus, toward the daughter of Moses, thereby teaching us before- hand what St. Paul so admirably interpreted in his ! The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. Epistle to the Romans on this point : " Has, then, God rejected his people ? By no means. . . . God permitted the blindness of a portion of the Jews, so that the fulness of the nations may enter into the Church : and then all Israel shall be saved." All the episodes of the miracle confirm this doctrine. There are indeed other meanings in it various and pro- found, for the divine character of the Scriptures, es- pecially of the Gospel, has an inexhaustible variety in the consistent unity of its teaching, and this is why the fathers say the Gospel is typified by those beasts of the Apocalypse who are covered all over with eyes. On arriving at the house of Jairus the Saviour meets with tumultuous throngs of mourners and funeral musicians. These were the useless band of rabbis by whom the Jewish people were environed. They called themselves the doctors of Israel ; they were but the sad mutes of the funeral of its expired reign, of its defunct priesthood, of its annihilated temple. They did not comprehend the canticles which they sang in their temples on the Sabbath day ; they were incom- prehensible to them. Their Sabbath was destroyed, like everything else. What is dead is dead, and they knew it ; but they did not wish to know that all would revive with Christ when Christ would reassume life. Jesus caused those sycophants to be still ; he imposed silence on those who filled the ears of the dead body with vain words, as if to prevent the entrance of the words of Christ — words which revivify, words which are " spirit and life." There was in the house other tumult — a confusion of lamentations and wailings. The Jewish people, re- marks St. Jerome, are not a believing, but a turbulent, seditious people. Jesus, with his majestic self-posses- The Life of our Lord jTesus Christ. 177 sion, says to them : " The young woman is not dead ; she is only sleeping." They ridicule this language, whose mildness already consoles those who are afflicted with real grief. Behold indeed, says St. Hilary, the men whom Jesus endeavors everywhere to convert — everywhere he finds them unwilling to believe; these very men were ready to mock all his doctrine, and he drives them off, for they were unworthy longer to behold his works. The Jews did not assist at the re- storation to life of her who to them was dead, but who only slept before Him who is the life eternally victorious. This young woman was no more dead than Lazarus, of whom he also said, " He sleepeth," although Lazarus at that moment was sleeping in the tomb. He sleepeth, but I will go and awake him ; I will draw him from the sleep of death, which is also my servant, and which obeys like the sea and the winds. I will call upon death, and it will come ; I will send it ) away, and it will go away. I will demand again of it what I had permitted it to seize, and it will render it back again. As regards you who surround me, the girl is dead ; but before me she is only sleeping, for I possess the power of life and death : Vo&is mortua est, viiJii dormit. This is the commentary of St. Jerome on the words spoken in the house of Jairus. The faith of the Christian will triumph ever the phantom of death. St. Paul, speaking the language of Jesus, says to them, \ Let us only shed tears of hope for those who sleep in Christ ; for they will rise up with Jesus who have fallen asleep in him. And this people of God will call the field enriched with life-giving blessings " Dormitories," where its ashes repose, as it were an immortal brood under the wings of the cross. In accomplishing the resurrection from the dead 178 The Life of our Lord ye sus Christ. Jesus took care to have near him the father and mo- 1 ther and the three disciples. Resuscitated by virtue / ) of the promise made to Moses, the Jews will receive \ life by the preaching of the apostles. S And the Lord takes the young girl by the hand, be- ) cause no other hand but that of Jesus can render life to < the Jews, whose hand put him to death. And when [ the dead girl rises up and walks, he orders them to give < her something to eat — give her the divine nourishment < of Christians, give her the Eucharist, and let the syna- gogue drink out of the new chalice, from which even ) now the Gentiles and the Samaritans drink together, so that all may have life, and an eternal abundance of life. Such is the prophetic sense of the resurrection of the ) daughter of Jairus, in harmony with the curing or 1 healing of Simon Peter's mother-in-law and every work of Jesus. There is yet another sense we will ) have to consider further. Departing from the house of Jairus, Jesus meets with two blind men, who cry out to him : " Son of David, have mercy on us." He appears not to hear them ; \ but the blind men, without ceasing, follow him even to > his lodgings. There he demands of them if they be- > lieve he can accomplish what they desire of him. They reply: "Yes, Lord." Then he touches their eyes, saying, " Let it be done according to your faith,' and their eyes were opened. Soon after they present to him a man who became dumb by the power of the devil. Because this mute person was deprived of his liberty, he heals him without asking him any questions, just as we give baptism to little children. The peo- ple, full of admiration, cry out: " Nothing of the like ) has ever been seen in Israel." The Pharisees, acknow- ) The Life of our Lord Jtsm Christ. ng lodging these miracles, which they could not deny said : • It is by the means of the prince of devils lie casts out devils." That very same day he had cured sick ones whose disease baffled all human power healed infirmities, conquered devils and death ■ but the impiety of pride would not believe. 4 iifi SbF/^œp* ÉB8^^vœ\S Prl ÏÉPtIS ËliDiTAÏ VM *^"A>-_ ^S&l WmM®m CHAPTER V. THE SICK MAN AT THE POOL — MAGDALEN. T ESUS, teaching and healing on his way, returns to ' Jerusalem to be present at the feast of the Jews — what many understand to have been the Pasch. He knew he would meet Pharisees as malevolent as, and more powerful than, those in Galilee. Since the miracle of Capharnaum, the Pharisees conspired against him — not that he could or had as yet attacked them much, but because lie preached a penance different from theirs; because he had performed other works which they could not do; and because he led a life other than theirs. They accused him of blasphemy. His charity furnishes them wherewith to impute to him another crime. The miracle whose recital is about to follow is one of the most signal, by its importance, in the life of the Saviour, and by the vast and deep mean- ing of the circumstances which accompanied it. There Avas at Jerusalem a pool celebrated by the favors God bestowed on it. It was called the Pool •)f Bethsaida, and in Greek the Pool Probatica, or the sheep-pond. Bethsaida signifies the house of mercy. The priests were accustomed to wash therein the sheep destined for the sacrifice — thereby the name of sheep- pond. It was a basin or pool of rain-water, enclosed The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 8 1 by five galleries of architecture. A vast number of all diseased persons assembled — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, and others — who awaited the stirring of the waters. For it happened at certain times of the year the water was suddenly stirred by the invisible action of an angel, and the sick person who descended the first into the pool after the water had been so stirred was forthwith healed, whatever might be his infirmity. Like these sick persons assembled under the galleries of the pool, awaiting that the waters might become healing and curative, the Jewish people, separated from other peoples named in the five books of Moses, ex- pect the Redeemer. But that people became sick and infirm, and their law did not heal them. Given only to make sin known, the law accused the sinner; it could not absolve him. However, it kept him near the pool, near to salvation. That vast multitude of inva- lids, animated by faith and hope, represents, then, the throng of faithful Jews, hastening by their aspirations the advent of the Messias. In specifying diseases, ag- gravated and quite incurable, the Gospel extends the type to the rest of the human race. The Gentiles were sicker than the Jews — they were the blind, igno- rant of the fundamental truths; the maimed, become even incapable of practising the natural law, of which they only preserved a vague notion ; the consumptive, in whom the ardor of voluptuousness had dried up the sap of divine love. Those, therefore, radically lost could expect nothing save from a miracle. They were the mighty plague lying on the earth. To cure this disease, says St. Augustine, it required the ser- vices of the great Physician descended from heaven. This Physician was Jesus Christ. The prophets had announced him; the angel of the pool typified him. 1 82 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. The angel descended invisible — the divine Word, covered with the veil of humanity; the angel stirs up the waters: Jesus Christ, by his doctrine and miracles, stirs up the consciences and relieves the torpor of the things of this life. Life will no more stand in need of stagnant waters, as in former times. The sluggish mire in which the soul expected the healing of its original wound leads but to death. Unheard-of ener- gies will be aroused in it ; their sharp, stirring contact will fortify the debilities that effeminacy engenders. Jesus brings to the world three things — trouble, fire, and the sword ; and these three things will establish therein peace. Peace be with you ! I give you my peace ! This peace is the excellent fruit of the su- preme power — the peace which surpasses eveiy other ) good. Whatever infirmity they were afflicted with, the first that plunged into troubled water was instantly healed. By this interpreters of Holy Writ recognize two im- portant figures or symbols: baptism and our Saviour's passion. By the Passion of Jesus Christ, who was, is, and will be ever the great trouble of the world, the wa- ters of baptism receive their virtue of healing or curing souls. The reality surpasses the figure in as far as the power of God exceeds man's understanding. Never- theless, the figure is the exact expression of the reality. The water of the pool possessed no virtue of itself; the baptismal water, of itself, has none. The water of the pool required the descent of an angel and the move- ment he excited in it ; it was also necessary that Jesus Christ should descend into the Jordan, so that the water, through the contact with his immaculate flesh, might acquire what St. Bernard calls the jus baptismi— should become the water of baptism; and it baptizes ! The Life of our Lord 'Jesus Christ. 183 not, it effaces not sin, until put in motion and stirred in \ a certain manner by the Holy Trinity, who suddenly < unites to it the grace of the Holy Ghost. The action of plunging one's self in the pool expresses faith in the Passion of Jesus Christ : by the sacrament of penance, which renews in us the splendor of baptism, we descend into the pool wherein the blood of Jesus Christ, wash- ing away our impurities, heals our infirmity. And it was the sheep-pond! This place bears this name, wherein breathes the mildness and tender- ness of the Gospel. They washed therein the sheep destined for the sacrifice; this is what the world then ' knew. Now we see the prophecy of the Sacrifice I offered for the sheep. While Jesus appears under those porticos, witnesses of so great and so constant a miracle, the name and the miracle, the past and the future, all are illumined by his splendor. Behold the Lamb of God at the sheep-pond— the Lamb, the Ruler, the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world. Be- hold Him who will give his flesh and his blood for the sins of the world ; and he is, at the same time, the shep- herd of the lost sheep, who wanders through briers and thorns to find it out, who carries it back on his shoul- ders, and who will take care of it in the eternal sheep- fold. It is He who, by the prophet, had called his faith- ful " the sheep of God's pasturage "—he who will say to Peter: " Feed my lambs, feed my sheep." Behold him on the border of the pool : type of the treasures which he carries with him. He comes where the sheep of sacrifice are washed, himself the true Victim, who will anxiously wish to be washed in his own blood when the hour shall come to die for us. As he gives meaning to the place, so he is the mean- ing of the miracle. This great miracle, renewed each The Life of car Lord Jesus Christ. year for so many ages, recalls to the Jews, in a striking \ manner, both the inefficacy of the law to purify from j sin and the power of the Messias to save mankind. The healing qualities of the pool explain the mysteries } announced in the Temple ; they inspire prayer, strength- en hope, and predispose to faith by baptism. Since water can heal diseases of the body, by water the dis- ) eases of the soul can equally be healed. But why is it that there was but one cure performed each time the water was stirred ? To signify unity, answers St. Augustine — only one God, only one bap- tism ; he only is purified from all spiritual infirmity who participates in the unity of the Catholic Church and in the mysteries of Jesus Christ. In vain can the baptism of heretics be called a true baptism ; it will not save those who live knowingly and voluntarily be- yond th-e pale of unity of the Catholic Church. Salva- tion is obtained only through her ; she is the only Church that has received the power from God of saving souls. This sick man, only healed by the waters of the pool, is therefore a type or figure of all true Christians, washed in the baptismal font, who form but one unique j Christian people — the first and last mystic body of Jesus Christ. Those who, although at diners times and places, receive the baptism of Catholic unity, are mem- bers of the one same divine body; they descend into the sacred bath, and rise up out of it as only one man. Others, not pertaining to the body of the Church, are like those who plunge themselves into the waters ) after the first, and who derive no advantage from them. They arrive too late ; they receive a baptism which, so to speak, apostasy effaces, and therefore nothing is left for them. Thus Providence sustains the Jewish faith, and, The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. 185 advance, fortifies and enlightens ours, giving to it the foundation of the figurative testimony and the founda- tion of the apostolic testimony— both indestructible bases, whereon is built up the divine edifice of religion, whose corner-stone is Christ. But there was crouched there, under the porticos of j the pool, a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus, knowing the long duration of his infirmity, says to him : " Do you wish to be cured ? " The sick man replies : " Lord, I have not a man who will assist me to descend into the waters when they are troubled : whilst I am coming another goes down before me." Jesus says to him: "Rise, take up your bed, and walk." Forthwith, this man was healed. He takes his bed and walks away. The Jews, seeing this, say to him : " This is the Sabbath da}', and it is not lawful to carry your bed." He responds : " He who has cured me told \ me to do so ; to take up my bed and walk." They ask \ him : " Who told thee to take up thy bed and walk ? " But this man did not know who was his benefactor, and could not point him out, because Jesus mingled among the throng. Even when we do not know the Physician, he will reveal himself by his boundless mercy and goodness, as well as by his power. This infirm man is the human race. He suffers for thirty-eight years. This number is not marked out without a purpose : two great inter- preters, St. Augustine and the Venerable Bcde, have studied its mystery. Forty, they say, made up of the number ten four times repeated, marks the perfec- tion of the law in all its works. This number is the symbol of a holy and perfect life ; for the just observe with exactness the ten commandments of God, repeat- ed in the four books of the Gospel of Christ. But one 1 86 The Life of oitr Lord Jesus Christ. cannot observe the divine law without the practice of two precepts of charity, towards God and towards his neighbor; and where this twofold love is wanting the whole perfection of the law is broken, although man possesses otherwise the knowledge and faith of it. This is why this number thirty-eight — forty less two — demonstrates to us that the infirm man at the pool is an image of guilty and suffering humanity. It possess- es the knowledge of the law of God, engraven divinely on the hearts of all men ; it does not possess the two- fold love by which alone this law is accomplished. Such is the explanation of St. Augustine, developed by Bede. The world is unaccustomed to these kinds of researches, and little disposed to admit their results. Nevertheless, no sound mind will deny that the thirty- eight years cover a mystery, and will not disdain a solution which such men have proposed. One will more easily comprehend the preference which Jesus gave to the infirm man at the pool over all other sick or afflicted persons whom he could have cured. Thirty-eight years of expectation and useless efforts have not conquered the faith of this man. He always hopes ; he always struggles in the hope of being cured. For having beforehand put in practice the lesson the Lord will give later on perseverance in prayer, he is saved by a miracle greater than that he hoped for. Jesus at first asks him if he wishes to be cured ? The physician and the priest ask questions. How many implore to be cured, and in their hearts do not wish to be healed — that is to say, do not wish to do what is necessary for curing them ! This sluggish will to avoid being healed manifests itself especially in spiri- \ tual matters. "I prayed," said St. Augustine, "and X I was afraid I would be heard too soon." The Life of our Lord yes us Chris/. 187 The word the Lord addresses to this infirm man warns us anxiously to desire our deliverance from temporal and spiritual infirmities ; for every word dropped from his lips is addressed to every man in this world. Besides, it opens up to the infirm man the way of faith. Jesus does not require an act of faith from this infirm man, who did not come to him, who asked nothing of him, who did not know him ; but he wishes that he might know and remember that he had been the object of a miracle, so that his soul also might be healed and saved by faith. The infirm man humbly responds as a man who has profited by his sorrow. He murmurs not, accuses not Providence, and doubts not of the virtue of the divine remedy. " Lord, I have no man to help me down to the pool; and -whilst I am dragging myself along to endeavor to plunge in, another person de- scends into it before me.'' Here there is no com- plaint. Every soul that Jesus predestines exhibits this ground-work of righteousness, humility, and great- ness. This is without exception in the Gospel. Not- withstanding all abjectness and humiliation, in spite of all stains, the divine impress remains on the last drachma. The eye of God only can discern this mark ; he recognizes it, and there is no mire wherein he will not thrust his hand to seize his property and his treasure. He will go to Samaria and to the borders of Tyre and Sidon ; he will go among the publicans and Pharisees ; he will even go down to hell, where those await him who, overtaken by the Deluge, rais- ed their eyes to heaven and confessed that they sinned. Later, we will see his grace sometimes penetrating like the morning dew, and sometimes like the im- petuous stroke of a thunderbolt, into places shut and The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. fortified against him. He does not disdain to stand by the criminal on the scaffold, nor does he disdain to enter the cabinet of the learned, nor even — O mir- acle ! — the shameful haunts of the voluptuary ; he will enter wherever a tear, a sigh, protests against the triumphs of Satan and says to him : " I have no man ; come assist me." Jesus said to the infirm man : " Arise " — that is, be healed. These words give power and force to the in- firm man which he had not before. He adds: " Take thy bed and walk." Two commandments addressed to the cured man to prove incontestably a miracle, to convert the Jews, and to strengthen our faith. The human family, in the person of the paralytic, said : I have no one ; no man is found. Pilate will say to him : Ecce Homo — Behold the Man. The word of the para- lytic prepares the word of Pilate, and both these mys- terious words explain one another in all their wonder- ful mysteriousness. It is, then, the whole human race Jesus commands: Arise, get ye up, my people, from your prostrate condition. Now you are making an effort to get out of the mire of sin wherein you wallow ; you have only to will to accomplish what you desire. The pool is always open for you, the water always stirred, and every, infirmity of the soul always healed. Take up thy bed! The bed of the soul is the body. In this corrupted body you lie ; raise it up from the earth, snatch it away from corruption. By the grace of the sacraments your soul is the mistress of your body, and you can bring it under subjection. " Go forth !" Re- move yourself from this empoisoned air in which you sicken ; ascend to the healthy mountains upwards to heaven. The paralytic obeys. The Jews interfere, with their r The Life of our Lord Jésus Christ. 189 worldly sneers: "What are you doing? You violate the law." " I only do what I was commanded ; I only ( do what he who cured me told me to do." The Jews insist. They ask the paralytic, not who cured him, but « who told him to take his bed and walk. They cared nothing about the miracle, and were not anxious to know its Author. They wish only to know who had ordered what they regarded as a violation of the Sab- bath. This is the character they display everywhere, as faithful to themselves as Jesus to himself, persever- ing in their justice inspired by hatred, as he is per- severing in mercy inspired by love. The paralytic cannot name him nor point him out. He does not know Jesus, and Jesus hides himself among the crowd. The throng is clamorous, says a father; Jesus wishes to be seen in secret. Amid the crowd of those who are spiritually sick, figured by the infirmities of the body, among sinners, and among the wicked, there is none able to raise himself to the know- ledge of God. Nevertheless, the paralytic knows well who had cured him. Jesus finds him in the Temple. This fact of being in the Temple is a new feature, cre- ditable to this man. Using his recovered strength, he does not go to mix himself up in the affairs and plea- sures of the world ; he goes to the Temple. Hereby he merits the honor to behold Jesus. Jesus says to him : " Sin no more, lest something worse happen to you." Therefore, this man's infirmity was the consequence of his sins. Though all bodily diseases do not origi- nate from sin, says St. Chrysostom, yet sin is the most general cause of them. God punishes the body with the transgressions of the soul ; so that the infirmity of the body may make us reflect on that of the soul, which we shamefully abuse. His clemency turns the affec- 190 The L;fe of our Lord yes us Christ. tions of the flesh to the advantage of the spirit. We fall sick only by the dispensation of Providence, often hidden, always useful, never unjust. We can cure our- selves more surely by prayer than by doctor's medi- cines, whose wisest prescriptions have besides for their object our restoration, at least materially, as regards the law of God. The law of God is given to the body as well as to the soul ; to fulfil it is as useful to the one as to the other. What we take from the body we give to the soul. The warning of the Lord is terrible : Take care, lest something worse happens to you. This sinner passed thirty-eight years, almost his whole life, in the captivi- ty of a malady more dire than imprisonment. What has he to dread worse ? Nothing in this world ; every- thing in the other. The fathers interpret this menace as the chastisements of the future life, reserved for the obstinate and imprudent, who cease only to sin when they cease to live. The longest afflictions of this life are as nothing compared to the eternal punishments in hell. Enjoy yourselves, you men of mind, says St. Chrysostom ; riot in all sorts of dissipation, let go the reins of your passions, plunge into every vice, whilst \ you are here — you who do not admit the divine justice could punish the sins of a moment with eternal tor- ments. Had this sick man sinned for the space of > thirty-eight years, since he was to be punished for the space of thirty-eight years? He had committed sins in an instant ; you see the duration of his punishment. The world does the same. Homicide is the crime of an instant ; the punishment is perpetual. But why do ) we speak of the crime of a moment? The act is in- (, ) .... . ( ) stantaneous. The intention is irrevocable. The sin- ner would wish to live always to sin ; always sin for- I ) the organ he holds from the goodness of God to en The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. j g r sakes him, not he sin. In hell the desire of sinning is inherent in the sinner. He does not say that he hates sin ; there is an immense difference between hating sin and doing penance for it for salvation. Repen- tance, contrition, is a grace which makes one detest sin, not only as disastrous and deceitful, but as offen- sive to God. This grace does not descend to the eter- nal abyss of hell ; for it requires the beginning of love which makes penitents— a love impossible to the damned. Sin is an apostasy— a voluntary separation from God. If man dies in that state wherein God has not placed him, he remains there, because he finds no means of reconciliation but in the Church and during life. Apostasy becomes irrevocable; the apostate remains there irrevocably. St. Irenaeus compares the reprobate to a man who, with full knowledge, plucks out his eyes. This madman remains blind for ever— not blind for the want of light, but blinded through himself, having been, by his own will, deprived of joy light. Such is the dreadful mystery of the damned wishing always to sin, and detesting sin ; wishing al- ways to repent, and detesting repentance; irrevo- cably attached by his will to all that his will detests ; fixed and riveted to what is intolerable ; not even able to imagine a state he would wish to be in, nor to con- ceive anything but the state he is in. For if he dreamed only of another state, even more horrible, he would take refuge in his dream and esteem himself happy. " There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." This is an eternal revolt from God, an eternal hatred of God, an eternal writhing and torment of the soul; this is an immortal and eternal sin, a punishment mortal and eternal. 192 The Life of oar Lord yes it s Christ. As the grace of repentance, and the beautiful charac- ter of the sinner penitent and pardoned, appear in the j paralytic, so the character of the reprobation is mahi- ) fested among the Jews who surround him. This infirm man has been humbled ; he is found at the Temple ; , and, according to many interpreters, Jesus, so anxious not to discourage the sinner, gave him this severe les- son only because he found in him a soul truly patient and a docile mind. Indeed, he listens respectfully, and manifests his gratitude. The Jews asked him who had ordered him to carry his bed on the Sabbath — that is, in their mind, to transgress the law. This was the only thing they wished to know. As soon as he knows Jesus he goes to them, not to say, " He who has ordered me to carry my bed," but, " He who has healed me is Jesus." In other words, according to the divine signification, He who has cured me is the Saviour. They denounce him as a criminal. He boldly and fearlessly confesses the truth. He is not slow, says St. Augustine, to publish what he has seen. But the Jews continue to make no account of tlie miracle nor of the benefit, and only adhere to what they considered as a transgression of the Sabbath. They saw Jesus showing himself on all occasions a strict observer of religion ; but it was not their religion, for their religion was only what they had made them- selves by their pride and self-interest. They think of j nothing else from this moment but to put him to death, and begin to persecute him, publishing every- where that Jesus of Nazareth violated the law of the Lord. ( Jesus replies to them : " Up to this moment my Father has not ceased to act, nor have I myself ceased to act." By these words he affirms his divinity. God \ \ ) ) The Life of our Lord yes// s Christ. 193 rested on the seventh day, in this sense only : that he ceased to create. He did not cease, nor does he cease, to act lor the preservation of created things. In call- ing God his Father, and establishing his unity of ope- ration with him, Jesus therefore affirms, declares. proves, the unity of the divine nature. He does not call himself the Son by adoption only — what the Jews do not object to — but the Son by generation. He attributes to himself the divine nature, the perfect equality with God. So this is what the Jews understood, and what we are absolutely bound to understand, like them, or like them also accuse Jesus of imposture, and consequently deny the divine mission, as well as his divinity. For if Jesus Christ is not God, he is not even a sincere man, and consequently he is not the envoy of God. But how can human reason prove that he is not God, without believing Christ Jesus God — how can human reason comprehend the New Testament, Christianity, God, even herself ? After having related the healing of the paralytic, St. John narrates the discourse by which Jesus establishes the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and produces to the Jews un- doubted titles of his mission. Before these words, burning with a divine glow, reason bows down; she acknowledges profoundly the master of life and death : "Amen, amen, I say unto you, that he who hearcth my word, and bclieveth him that sent me, hath life everlasting; and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say unto you, that the hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so he hath given to the Son also to have life in him- The Life of our Lord ye sit s Christ. self: and he hath given him power to do judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Wonder not at this, for the hour cometh wherein all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that have done good things, shall come forth unto the resurrection of life ; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment." But " the Jews were now more eager to put him to death, not only because he violated the Sabbath, but because he said God was his Father, and made himself equal to God." Jesus detests the vices of the Pharisees, not their persons. He accepts the invitation to dine with one of them called Simon. During the feast a woman enters the hall carrying a vessel of alabaster which contains an odoriferous liquid. She was called Mag- dalene. She was a sinner; the whole town knew her wicked, scandalous life. In the presence of the in- vited guests she prostrates herself behind Jesus, bit- terly weeping for her sins. She kisses his feet, pour- ing on them her perfumes, mingled with her tears, and dries them with her hair. The master of the house, seeing the action of Mag- dalene, is astonished that Jesus should allow her so to act. He thinks within himself if he were a prophet he should know the character of this woman, that she was a scandalous sinner. Jesus wishes to show to the Pharisee that he knew better than he who this woman was, and that he knew him better than he knew himself. " Simon, 1 have something to say to you. A certain creditor had two debtors. One owed him five hundred denarii, the other fifty; and as neither the one nor the other had wherewith to pay, he remits both what they owed him. Which loved him the more?" ; — I The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. 195 " According to my opinion," answers Simon, " he to whom the most was remitted." "You judge rightly," replies Jesus. Then, turning himself toward the sinner, but con- tinuing to speak to the Pharisee : " Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You prepared no water for me to wash my feet ; this woman has be- dewed them with her tears, and has dried them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss ; she, since she > has entered, has not ceased to kiss my feet. You have not poured oil on my head ; she has poured out her perfume on my feet. This is why I say to you her many sins are forgiven, because she has loved much. But he to whom less is forgiven loves less." ) The perfume of Magdalene has filled all earth and { times. Accepted by Jesus, it has become even the ) odor of Christ, the odor of infinite clemency, which { attracts to eternal life. Magdalene is the Saviour's first penitent. She acknowledges him truly the Saviour, in the sense that he was "to save his people from their sins"; she implores him to heal her perfectly ; \ she begs of him to heal the mortal wounds of her soul. She makes true satisfaction ; she satisfies with her tears ; she pays the true tribute — that of her love. Jesus decrees to her a glory which he has not given to any other: "She loved much." This is a word never before pronounced in the world, and the world never imagined anything approaching it ; it re- mains in the world more powerful over hearts than ) all the lights of reason, than the books of morality, < than all the constraints of the law. Jesus then says to this great sinner, henceforth the great penitent: "Your sins are forgiven." The Phar- isees murmur, as the}- did at Capharnaum on hearing ( ( 196 The Life of our Lord Jesus Clirisi. the same language. " Who is this," they say among themselves, " who even pardons sins ? " The world \ in such a case does not permit us to condemn, nor does it permit us to pardon. It permits either an infamous indulgence or an implacable rigor. God sees the repentance, pardons and purifies. Without replying any more to the Pharisee, Jesus says to Magdalene : "Your faith has healed you." He does not say to her what he said to the paralytic, what he will later on say to the adulterous woman : " Sin no more." She loves, and he has nothing more to say to her. This sinful woman is the same Magdalene of whom it is elsewhere written that our Lord cast out from her seven devils ; she is also the same person known as Mary Magdalene, sister of Martha and Lazarus, of whom Jesus said she had chosen the better part. She will be at Calvary at the side of the blessed Mother of Jesus and St. John — two of the purest vessels of virginity ; she will be there as the reality of the promises of the im- mense mercy of which Thamar and Rahab, the ances- tors of the Messias, were the figures. Exalted by grace, she will yet have the glory of being the first among the disciples who will see Jesus issuing victorious from the tomb. And the Church, instructed and guided by the Holy Ghost, chants, on the festival of the Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin, the gospel wherein it is re- lated that Mary, seated at the feet of the Lord, re- mains listening to him. Such is this woman — a touch- ing and sublime type among so many others, which Jesus created and gave to the earth for ever by mould- ing with his own hands and with his own blood the slime of humanity. About this epoch the time is ended which St. "1 The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. 197 Jerome calls the year of peace, the sweet, mild year of I our Lord ; for, indeed, Jesus up to this time met with but little contradiction, and was almost accepted by the world. The Pharisees had not organized their re- sistance ; the people, left to themselves, received with love the goodness of God. These just recitals of the Gospel, in spite of their austerity, excite a certain feeling of divine joy. One I breathes in them the sweet fragrance of opening day. It seems that nature, enriched with its share of graces, should appear in those happy moments more smiling, as if adorned with the reflection of Eden. There was without doubt something more perfect in the serenity of those nights that beheld Jesus praying ; in the clear- ness of those waters which bore him on their bosom; in the purity of that air which received his breath. If the perfumes of Magdalene made fragrant the whole house wherein they were poured out, what an odor of life must not all that country rejoice in which was filled with the breath of Jesus! Do penance, for the king- dom of God is at hand ! The sweet, mild voice of Jesus repeats and confirms this cry of John the Baptist. At the same time the divine Master spreads abroad the beauty of the doctrine and the abundance of miracles. Never had anything like this been presented to the eyes or hearts of men. Nowhere before had there been a question of the proximity of heaven. The golden age was passed ; behold, it comes, it is at hand, and repen- tance is a tear of the heart, immediately compensated by the fulness of love in the truth of God. BOOK III. THE STRUGGLE. CHAPTER I. CONSPIRACY OF THE JEWS — MIRACLES ON THE SAB- BATH DAY — INSTITUTION OF THE APOSTLES — JUDAS. AFTER Simon's banquet the Pharisees exert themselves to keep a watchful eye on Jesus. Everywhere he goes they surround him, controlling his actions and criminating his words, making an effort to avoid the truth. One day, as Jesus passed through a field of wheat, his disciples, feeling the pangs of hun- ger, plucked a few heads and ate them. This was on the Sabbath day. The Pharisees were present. They reprimanded the disciples sharply, and said to the Mas- ter : " See how your followers do what is not permit- ted on the Sabbath day! " Jesus responds to them that the priests who serve the Temple violate the Sab- bath without being guilty. He recalled to their me- mory David, who on a Sabbath day ate the loaves of presence placed before the altar. Accused himself, he does not vindicate himself by alleging the continual The Life of our Lord yes us CJirist. 199 travail for his Father. When the question arises of excusing his disciples, he is satisfied with producing the example of David, a servant like themselves. He declares to the Pharisees that God prefers mercy to sacrifice , and at length, to give them a knowledge of • the law, and to assert anew his own power, he adds: " The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath : the Son of Man is even master of the Sab- bath." St. John Chrysostom remarks that in this question of the Sabbath, which so often presents itself, Jesus not only justifies himself as regarded his di- vinity, but also as regarded his humanity alone. Sometimes in one manner and sometimes in another he takes care to establish both, endeavoring to enforce the mystery of his humiliations and his divine dignity. The Pharisees could oppose nothing to this sublime wisdom, and became more furious on that account. A little while after — it was on the Sabbath day — Jesus enters into the synagogue to teach according to his custom. They demanded of him if he believed it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day; for they had resolved among themselves to impute to him as sinful those acts of mercy. They await his reply to cry out scandal or to force him to contradict himself. Jesus knows their thoughts. There was a man seated in the midst of the assembly whom he commanded to rise, and this man's hand was withered. Then, addressing himself to the Pharisees, he demands of them if it be permitted on the Sabbath day to do good or evil, to save life or to destroy it (in not saving it when one has the power to do so). They are mute. Jesus proceeds : " Is there any one among you who, having but one sheep, if it falls in the pit on the Sabbath day, will not drag it out ?" And how far The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. superior and more excellent is man to the sheep ! He ? is, therefore, allowed and permitted by the law to do good on the Sabbath day. They continue to keep silence, raging with spite. Jesus, afflicted at the hard- ness of their hearts, looks on them with indignation. Then he says to the man who had his right hand with- ered : " Stretch out your hand." Forthwith the with- ered hand becomes sound like the other. This is the man of the world. His left hand, the hand of carnal works, is living, active, and able. His right hand, the hand of holy works, remains idle, and becomes withered. If you wish your hand to be heal- ed, extend it, apply it to the works of justice. Open it to the poor. Let charity distribute what avarice and fraud have amassed. ) The Pharisees go away and deliberate with the He- rodians on the means of destroying Jesus. The Hc- rodians were of the Sadducees, infidel in religion, abso- lute in politics, partisans of Herod and the Romans, ) whom the Pharisees detested. The riçorists and the corrupt, hitherto enemies, commenced to agree toge- ther against the Just. This is the future history of religion. The sects and the impious always and every- \ where have ended by coming to a mutual understand- ( ing to oppress the Church. But means are required. Herod had not yet dared to kill John the Baptist, be- cause of the people. The Pharisees seek a pious pre- text to put Jesus to death. He proves and believes it permissible and lawful to perform miracles on the Sab- bath day ; but he only has employed his word for that purpose. " Was he forbidden to speak on the Sab- bath day, or was he bound to exclude from the number of works permitted, those which healed the sick?" The conspiracy, so visibly formed, attests the veracity T/ie LJfe of our Lord ye su s C/nisf. 201 of the Gospel history. The two cardinal points of accusation against our Lord are that he called himself the Son of God, equal to God, and that he violated the Sabbath day. But he has never violated the Sabbath, except by performing miracles. But the hour had not come, and Jesus gives them time to deliberate against him. He retires towards the sea. A mighty throng of people follows him from Jeru- salem and the various countries of Palestine. Tyre and Sidon flock together after him. The sick and infirm arc carried and laid at his feet. He heals them all. The demons who torment the possessed prostrate themselves before him, and cry out: "You are the Son of God." This testimony, coming from his declared enemies, proves his divinity. The prophecy receives its accomplishment in the full light of day : " Behold my Servant whom I have chosen, my Well Beloved. I will pour out my Spirit on him, and he will announce justice to the na- tions. He will not contest, nor will he repine ; nobody will hear him breaking out in high places in complaints ; he will not trample on the bruised reed, and he will not extinguish the lamp that yet burns, until he causes justice to triumph; and it is in them the people will be saved." His tender compassion for the present and future miseries which he healed, and the necessity of divulg- ing his mission, were not the only causes that caused him to multiply miracles. He wished to confirm the faith of his disciples. The moment had come to in- stitute the Apostolic College, which existed in germ since the first calling of Peter. Jesus could himself alone convert the world ; but since he had united him- self with human nature, he could not confer a greater honor on it than associating it in the work of salvation. 202 The Life of our Lord jf esus Christ. Therefore, after having passed the night in prayer, so that the Church may well comprehend how im- portant it is for her to be aided by the Holy Ghost in the election of her ministers, he calls the disciples, and chooses twelve from among them, for the purpose of sending them over the world to preach his Gospel. He gave them the name of apostles — which signifies sent or envoys of God — with the power to cure the sick, and to have power over and cast out devils. Here are the names of the twelve : Simon, to whom Jesus had given the name of Peter ; James, son of Zebedee ; John, brother of James ; Andrew, brother of Peter ; Philip ; Bartholomew; Matthew, the publican; Thomas; James, son of Alpheus ; Jude, his brother, called Thaddeus; Simon, of Cana ; Judas the Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. It is believed that Bartholomew is the same as Nathanael, who appears at the first calling, brought by Philip. James and Jude, or Thaddeus, sons of Al- pheus, are children of Mary, wife of Alpheus, or Cleophas, and sister of the Blessed Virgin. The Evangelists do not assign all of them the same rank. St. Matthew puts Andrew immediately after Peter, and he places himself after Thomas, whilst the others place him before. Peter is always the first, and Judas the Iscariot the last. We find in the fathers divers interpretations of the name of each apostle, having relation to some sym- bolical trait of their vocation. The surname of chil- dren of thunder may signalize the ambition of the children of Zebedee, who wished to elevate them- selves above others. This term, applied to John, an- nounces the future author of the Apocalypse and of the Gospel of the Word. Apropos of Peter interpreters The Life of our Lord j'esus Christ. 203 apply the words of St. Paul: "The Rock was Christ." As to the number of twelve, it is predicted and typified many times in the books of the Old Testament. If we regard them, says Rodolfus, as the Christian fa- thers, we will find them with twelve patriarchs, fathers of God's people. When they irrigate the world with the abundant waters of doctrine, they resemble the sources of living water which flow miraculously from the Rock of Elim. When they ornament the Church with the splendor of their virtues, they are the twelve precious stones that decorate the pectoral of the high-priest. When they nourish souls with the Word of Life, they are the twelve consecrated loaves placed before the altar of the Lord. When they pene- trate the divine secrets, which they communicate to the faithful, they are the twelve spies whom Moses sent into the promised land, and who, at their return, gave the people so glowing a description of it. They ( are also the twelve stones set up in the running stream of the Jordan, against which the billows of the age arc dashed to pieces ; they are the twelve young lions of . ( the throne of Solomon, the twelve pillars of the altar of the Jehovah, the twelve oxen that bear up the molten sea, typified by the baptism wherein every stain is washed away. They are the twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, the twelve unshaken, immov- able foundations of its holy walls, and especially they are the twelve brilliant stars which encircle and form the eternal crown of the well-beloved Spouse. The title alone of apostle recalls the miracle of miracles. St. Paul, who received it from Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, insists on the wonder of which he himself is the most wonderful instrument : " Wonderful work! God converted the world, not by the art of. human wis- 204 The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. dom, but by the simple manifestation of his doctrine, which is spirit and truth. He has not taken advantage of the learned, according to the flesh, nor of the powerful, nor of the noble, to establish his Gospel ; but he has chosen a few men, the most impotent, the weak- < est, the most illiterate, to confound the strong. He made use of what was nothing to destroy what was, so that none might glorify himself in having succeeded in so great an enterprise, but that all might be attributed \ to the power of God." The apostles, then, were all poor boatmen and sin- ners, people of low extraction. Judas was the only Jew ; the eleven others were Galileans. The proverb says : The Galileans love honor, the Jews gold. Judas was charged with the common purse. It is believed he came from the town of Karioth, situated on the confines of the Dead Sea — a miserable place, ) whose name indicates many sinister significations. Is- ) cariot : the man of Karioth, the man with the purse, the man addicted to usury, the man of murderous in- ] tent, the traitor. Why did our divine Lord, cognizant of all things, past and future, and who reads the inner- ( most thoughts of the soul, admit this miserable man among his apostles? There are many reasons for it, all of çreat instruction. Our Lord wishes to do him a favor; he does not desire to take away from him the > . . liberty of making a bad use of it, rendering himself more guilty by slighting it. It was by his will alone Tudas becomes guilty, just as he might become a saint y the right exercise of his will. His fall teaches us with what fear and with what vigilance man must al- ways labor to be saved. On the other hand, it is cer- tain that Judas, when he preached by virtue of the ) choice of Jesus Christ, was as privileged to be heard > The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 205 as St. Peter; hence \vc learn that the ministry is inde- pendent of the pastor, and that we ought to respect the pastors in the exercise of the mission they lawfully have received, leaving them to answer before God for their personal unworthiness. Thus Judas is a great witness of this. By the crime of his betrayal he ac- complishes and fulfils the prophecies ; by the crime of his death he attests the innocence of Jesus. Incredu- lity has well understood this, and has insinuated that perhaps Judas did not commit suicide. If he had had any testimony to render against his Master, he would have lived ; if he had lived, we would have known him. Nor would the synagogue wish to leave him in the shade, nor the Church consent to let him fall into despair; either the Pharisees would have made him write, or the apostles would have made him weep. St. Augustine adds that the Lord having taken upon him our human frailty, he did not wish to refuse this bitter destiny of human infirmity, to be betrayed by his apostle. It is not only in the time of his Passion he is obliged to give us an example of patience in the crudest torments. He gives himself up, bearing with Judas' perfidy, so that every one may learn to bear with moderation an error of judgment and contempt of benefits conferred. ISsffÉ »iBBp^P^'v^VvS y#*5** ïiïlaSa CHAPTER II. SERMON ON THE MOUNT — THE LEPER HEALED — THE CENTURION — THE WIDOW'S SON — THE ENVOYS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST — THE PHARISEES. ABOUT the time of the institution of the Apostolic College — a few days before, or a few days after, or the very same day — Jesus delivers his sermon on the mount. He addressed it principally to his disciples, but making himself heard by the multitude. This dis- course contains the whole morality of Christianity. The Saviour prophesies in it the destiny of the Church ; and by traits full of majesty and empire he takes pos- session of the future world. It is enough to notice here what belongs more to -history and to the character of the Man-God. Listen, then, to what he says to those men of low extraction and humble parentage — men without name, without fortune, without education — who are grouped around him in little circles, on some mound of earth, on some unknown hillock, in a tributary province. He proclaimed the beatitude of the poor, of the meek, of the afflicted, of the oppressed, of the merci- ful. He adds : " You will be happy when men will heap on you opprobrium and all manner of insults on account of me and the doctrine I preach to you ; they will persecute you ; they will say all sorts of evil about 206 The Life of out Lord jfesus Christ. 207 you contrary to the truth. Rejoice and give vent to your joy, because the reward that awaits you in heaven is very great. You arc the salt of the earth ; you arc the light of the world." But what kind of light should they carry? The truth that he reveals, which surpass- es all comprehension, which absolutely requires faith. And what is the salt they must spread over the earth? A morality which he imposes, and which he makes in- comparably severer than all the duties, the yoke of which the most part of men find already too heavy. " You have learned that it has been said to your forefathers, You shall not kill ; but for my part I say to you, whosoever is angry with his brother merits to be condemned.^ . . . You have learned that it has been said to vour ancestors, You shall not commit adultery ; I say to you that whosoever looks on a wo- man with lustful eyes has already committed adultery \ in his heart. It has been said, Whosoever puts away his wife, let him give her a bill of divorce ; but I, of ) my own authority, say to you that whosoever will put \ .... \ away his wife, if it be not on account of adultery, ex- poses her to commit adultery ; and that he who marries her after that her husband has put her away commits adulter}-." Three times he repeats this all-powerful, sovereign expression. Ego autem dico vobis — But I say to YOU. The history of Christianity, from the first to the last page, is but the history of the triumph of these few words ; by their force and character, which would seem to indicate more of defeat than vic- tory, this triumph continually surrounds with the to impose it on the world, and who has known how the world should submit to it. If Jesus Christ had ; ( radiancy of the Divinity the Man who has wished 2o8 The Life of our Lord ye su s Christ. ended his divine mission on Calvary, if his graces had ceased to flow thenceforth, he would only be a sublime madman ; astonished reason would ask itself how this man of miracles, this model of all wisdom, of all justice, and of all truth, could have believed himself God. It Avas in the sermon on the mount that he taught ) and, we might say, created prayer ; for few men had till then truly prayed, not truly knowing who God was, nor what man was, nor what man ought to ask of God. From the lips of the Man-God went forth to resound eternally the common prayer of the human race — that short but significant demand, the two first words of which consecrate the brotherhood of men in the paternity of God : Our Father ! As Jesus descends from the mount a leper comes to him ; bending the knee, he says to him : " Lord, if you wish, you can heal me." Jesus commiserates his forlorn, helpless condition. He stretches out. his hand, touches him, and says: "I will: be thou healed." Forthwith the leprosy of this man disappears. The touch of the leper renders one defiled ; nevertheless, Jesus touches him, and, putting himself above, beyond, and superior to the legal observances, demonstrates that charity abolishes them. Other diseased, infirm persons were continually brought to him, and he healed them all. The leper who comes to Jesus, or rather towards whom Jesus descends, is the human race in the state in which the divine Word finds them when he humbles \ himself by coming down from his glory in heaven and assuming our nature. He is the man who has not re- ceived or who has lost the gift of God. The leper, in the language of the Scripture, is the type or figure, the very name, of sin. Inherited by blood, it is origi- The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. 209 nal sin ; contagious, it is actual sin. It burns, inflames like envy, it withers up like avarice, it inflates like pride, it enervates and destroys like sloth ; it corrupts, it devours; it spreads infection and horror. Like the leper, man, a prey to every vice, is separated not only from God and the angels, but from men. The)' fly from him, they exclude him from society. The con- demned of human justice, like the lepers, formerly wore a particular dress. The bagnios or prisons are the lazar-houses of sin. Human law, impotent like the Old Law, excommunicates by excluding from society those miserable wretches. It enchains its lepers ; it does not pretend or undertake to heal them. There 1 are many among them whom it declares incurable. There are main- among them it kills. So Jesus goes towards those, and many of them say to him : " Lord, if you wish, j'ou can heal me." He wishes it, and he cures them; and if all would say to him, Ileal us! all would be healed. However, he seeks solitude to pray ; but charity or love leads him back among the mighty throng implor- ing his aid. Having returned to Capharnaum, the chief J men of the town entreat him to come to the house of a centurion to cure his servant, dangerously sick. Jesus ) answers them : " I will go and cure him." He sets ) out on his way to perform acts of mercy — the only Son of the living God goes to cure a poor invalid in the service of a stranger. The centurion, notified of his approach, says to him, or causes to be said to him : " Lord, I am not worthy you should enter into my , house ; but say only this word, and my servant shall be cured." Jesus, admiring this language, declares that he had not found so much faith in Israel. He announces the conversion of the Gentiles and the reprobation of I The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. the Jews : " Many will come from the east and from the west, and will be placed at the feast with Abra- ham, Isaac, and Jacob ; but the children of the king- / dom shall be cast into darkness." Then he says to the centurion : " Go, and be it done to you according \ to what you have believed." At the same hour the servant was healed. \ The Gospel makes mention of three soldiers to whom the gift of faith was given : he whose son our Lord had cured, this one, and he who presided at Cal- vary. Further, tradition states that the soldier who pierced the side of the crucified Saviour was converted. It is believed he it is whom the Church honors under the name of St. Longinus. Cornelius was the first Gentile whom St. Peter received into the Church. The sol- diers are seen flocking to the preaching and the bap- tism of John the Baptist. The profession of arms, the profession of obedience, of devotedness, and of sacrifice, ( arouses in the hearts of men certain dispositions which lead them to God. Christianity causes them to enter- tain sentiments of humanity, of which they were ig- norant ; it elevates and ennobles their profession, raises it to an honor it never could have attained with- out religious influence, and which it loses at once when that influence departs from it. After this Jesus proceeds to the city called Nairn. i As he drew near to its gates he meets with a sad and mournful multitude ; they are carrying to the grave a widow's only son. The poor, heart-broken mother was there. He says to her, "Weep not." And, touching the bier, he says to the dead man : " Arise ! " And he that was dead arose, seated himself, and be- gan to speak ; and Jesus gave him over to his mother. This is the second resurrection mentioned in the ) ) The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 211 Gospel ; and there will be a third. Each one has its dif- ferent signification, which will be explained further on. The noise of these miracles resounded throughout all Israel. John the Baptist hears them spoken of i.i prison, where Herod Antipas held him captive, without preventing him from seeing, at least sometimes, some of his disciples ; and, though captive, he continued to announce the Messias. What he knew of Jesus did not allow him to be unmindful of him ; but his disci- j pies, as it often happens, neither understood well his lessons nor his true greatness. Seeing Jesus elevat- ing himself far above their master, they conceive a ) jealousy of him which leads them to incredulity. Through a false zeal for John they refuse his testi- mony. The Precursor wisely wishes that they should \ use the testimony of their own eyes. For this reason ) he sends two of the most obstinate to Jesus, and they s demand of him on the part of John : " Art thou he who was to come, or are we to expect another? " Are you the person predicted by the prophets ? The re- sponse of Jesus was divine. At that very moment he cures a vast number of diseased and infirm and pos- sessed persons who encompassed him. Forthwith ad- dressing himself to the disciples of John the Baptist: " Go, tell John what you have seen. The blind see, the lame wall;, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead come to life again, and the Gospel is preached to the poor; and happy are those who shall not be scandalized in me" — words clearly referring to those of Isaias, announcing that when the Messias should come on earth the lame would bound forth like the deer, the tongue of the mute would be loosened, and the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind would be opened. Thus the disciples of John received a double 212 The Life of our Lord .yesus Christ. proof: the one of miracles, the other the fulfilling of the prophecies. Forthwith Jesus eulogizes John, pro- claiming his firmness, his austere life, and his rank among the prophets: "Yea, more than a prophet. Of him it is written, Behold I send before you my angel, who will prepare the way for you. And I say to you truly, Among children born of women, there is none greater than John the Baptist." The death of the Precursor occurred a little while after. Herod, who kept him under his own eye for a whole year in his house, where he celebrated his inces- tuous marriage with his brother's wife, gave his head to a daughter of this Herodias, as a recompense for having danced before him at the winding-up of the feast. It was the custom among women of high rank to dance, in imitation of the two celebrated buffoons and mimics, Pylades and Bathyllus, whom Rome ad- mired. Such were the king and potentates of the world at the epoch of Jesus Christ. However, Jesus went through cities, towns, and vil- lages,, announcing the kingdom of God. The twelve apostles accompany him, forming themselves on this divine Model for the ministry yet unknown, and which they must one day fulfil. There were in his train of followers, as custom allowed it, some women already cured of diseases or delivered from wicked spirits. They were Mary Magdalene; Joanna, wife of Chusa, Herod's steward ; Susanna, and many others. They assisted our Lord with their means. He, therefore, received rich persons among his friends ; and the Gos- pel, frequently remarking this circumstance, refutes the error of those who would wish to see in Jesus a sort of leveller, a preacher of equality of possessions and con- ditions. In reality, those wealthy persons were poor of The Life of out Lord ye su s Christ. 213 heart ; they were bound to be so, since nobody can serve God and Mammon. Jesus teaches them the good use of riches; but he imposes poverty only on those whom he calls to the ministry of the Gospel. The Pharisees also follow him. Mingling in the throng, they endeavor to corrupt the right minds of this people, who could neither understand Jesus nor contemplate his miracles without acknowledging him the envoy of God. Often, when he had entered a house to take a little repose, so many flocked about him he could not cat bread. They conduct him to the sick ; the sick are cured, and the people exclaim : " Is not this the Son of David ? " This popular enthusiasm increases the hatred of the Pharisees. Unable to deny the miracles, they begin saying that Jesus expels demons by the aid of demons. Others demand of him to perform some prodigy in the heavens. One day he assembled them, and pointed out to them the absurdity of this reproach ; for the demon never acts against himself, and it is not in the name of Satan one can cast out Satan. He adds, "If it be by the Spirit of God I cast out Satan, the kingdom of God has come without doubt." But these sages did not wish to be converted. He sees their obstinacy, weeps for them, and is obliged to condemn them : " I say to you, every sin and every blasphemy shall be pardoned unto men (on sincere repentance), but the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven. And whosoever shall have spoken against the Son of Man, he shall be pardoned for it ; but he who will have spoken against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor the next." This he says, remarks the Gospel, " because they accuse him of being possessed of an unclean spirit " — that is, the spirit of deceit, of The Life of our Lord yesus Christ, lying, which is the proper name of Satan. He that hath ears, let him hear. He refuses those who demand of him to work won- ders in the heavens, as he had refused Satan, who dared to tempt him in the desert. At the same time he announces to them a miracle which they did not de- mand, more wondrous than any — that of his resurrec- tion. This is a wicked race. " They ask a sign, and no other will be given to them than that of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the womb of the earth." As he finished speaking, a woman, raising her voice in the midst of the multitude, cries out, " Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and blessed are the paps that gave thee suck." " Rather say," replies Jesus, " blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it." It is thus his wisdom and the public ad- miration confound the Pharisees. Nevertheless, those perfidious wretches from that instant combined to sow the seeds of ignorant defiance and brutal hostility, which burst forth in cries of death to him before Pilate on the day of his crucifixion. Some of his relatives, according to the flesh, dreaded that the leaven of the Pharisees would ensnare him to ruin. One day, according to St. Matthew, his mother and his brothers called on him while he was speaking. According to Mark (who does not mention here the Blessed Virgin), they came to arrest him. Their faith, yet weak, allowed them to be overcome by fear. This fear was doubtless awakened by some evil dispositions which they perceived growing in wicked minds.* * It is not known who were those relatives. Of the four cousins of our Lord, whom the Gospel calls brothers, three were at. that moment TIte Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 215 However it be, our* Lord, who knew the danger lutter than the)', replies conformably to the beauty and majesty of his divine character: "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? " Casting his eyes on those who sat around him, he adds : " Behold my mother and my brothers ; for whoever docs the will of my Father who is in heaven, that is the person who is my brother, my sister, and my mother." To the shepherds of Bethlehem, representatives of the human race, the angel said, " A child is born to you." Jesus ratifies once more the promise of the angel. He be- longs to the human family more than to his relatives i and his mother. This harmony of the Gospel is the joy and light of the heart. Forthwith Jesus proceeds to teach the multitude. He speaks to them in parables — a sort of instruction by which he facilitates for ever the comprehension of the sublimest truths by the simplest and most illiterate minds. The prophet had said in his name : "I will speak in parables, and I will make manifest things which have been hidden since the beginning of the world." Jesus fulfils the prophecy by prophecies of a new or- der, clearer and not less profound, whose fulfilment, daily revived, will be in his Church a perpetual source of light and faith. near him with the apostles. It is not, therefore, of those that there is a question. Whoever they were, their fear is quite comprehensible* The humble life of Jesus at Nazareth revealed to them but his perfect virtue — that is, the quality that men observe the least — and by no means his power. The Blessed Virgin kept in her heart what she knew; but she knew him well, and we cannot admit that she could have conceived the thought of interrupting the mission of her Divine Son. It is thought, therefore, that she came only to see him, without knowing the design of his relatives. CHAPTER III. THE SOWER — THE TARES — THE MUSTARD- SEED- NET CAST IN THE SEA. -THE THE parable of that day concerned the salvation of souls and announced the Church. The Sower had sown. A part of the seed fell on the roadside ; the birds came and ate it up. Another part fell on stony ground ; the grain at first fructified, but was dried up by the scorching winds and the sun. Another part fell among thorns, and the smothered stems pro- duced nothing. Another part fell on good earth, and the grains rendered some thirty, others sixty, and others an hundred for one. The seed is the word of God. The explanation given by Jesus himself discovers the different dispo- sitions the word of God will find in the heart of man. In those who hear by the wayside, without quitting the ways of the. world, the word will never germinate ; upon this trodden road every error passes, on it every vice sojourns. Vain thoughts, brutal passions, like ra- venous birds, devour the good seed as soon as it has fallen. The stony places are the hearts that fear more than they love. Occupied with the interests of the flesh and life, they have no depth whereby the root can be secured. The word has been received, it fructifies, 216 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 217 some penitential works appear ; but as soon as trouble, temptation, or persecution arises, this feeble germ suc- cumbs. ( The thorns that. grow up are the tumult of human affairs. In hearts which are represented by this soil the depth is not wanting ; but the trumpery of ambition and riches smother the divine plant ; amid the increas- ing cares of the world it remains unfruitful. But the fathers say nobody neglects the divine ) thorns are those who bear no fruit. Thus the seed is the same for all ; it falls from the hand of God, ready to fructify in all hearts ; the Divine Sower gives it to all. But woe to him who renders himself a barren, un- fruitful soil — a stony soil, a soil full of thorns and briers. For there are many soils wherein the seed of the Lord cannot fructify. The parable of the tares is allied to that of the seed, and contains a more especial teaching. While the ser- vants were asleep the enemy comes and sows tares in the field that the father of the family had sown with word but in the ways which are here predicted : contempt of the word, carelessness or instability of character, and enslavement by the riches of the world. Such is the natural order: a road, stones, and thorns. The first thing we require is thought- fulness, then courage, and lastly a contempt of the things of the earth. And this is what our Lord expresses when he adds : " What falls on the good ground represents those who, having heard the word with a good and upright heart, retain and preserve it, and bear fruit through patience." Indeed, those who are on the roadside do not retain the word ; those among the rocks and stones cannot withstand patiently the assaults of temptation ; those who are among the 2li The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. good seed. The tares make their appearance, and the negligent servants propose to pluck them up. " No," replies the father of the family, " lest you might also root up the good grain. Let both grow till the day of harvest. Then I will say to my reapers : First ga- ther the tares; they shall be bound into sheaves, and cast into the fire ; and the wheat shall be put into my granary." The field is the world, the Father of the family is God, the enemy is the devil, the tares or the bad grain are the seed of schism and heresy, which he will cast on the earth when the pastors of the Church become negligent. There is no question about the different sorts of seeds, but only about the tares or bad grain. The seed of the tare produces a stem resembling that of wheat. At the beginning heresy veils its presence ; when its liberty is well rooted, and when it has acquired parti- sans, then, says St. John Chrysostom, the fruit shows itself; then heresy spreads its poison. However, the Father of the family forbids the plucking up of the tares — not that he accepts or sanctions this bad weed, since it is reserved for the fire ; the reason he permits it to grow up is that, in rooting it out, they would run the risk of pulling up the good grain. But there is another reason, all merciful and divine. In this fruitful soil of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the tares or bad grain can become pure wheat ; for there is a sap which corrects the plant it nourishes. As it requires time for one to ripen, so it requires time, says St. Jerome, for the other to repent and do penance; and we are forbidden to effect the sudden destruction of our brother. Such as are to-day corrupted by a perverse and wicked doctrine can become to-morrow 'ws1 The Life of cur Lord yesus C/irist. 2 1 9 the defenders of the truth. " For fear you might, at the same time, pluck up the wheat." For it may be, says St. Augustine, that the future wheat may be rooted up under the actual appearance of tares. By patience you become perfect ; and this patience, which brings forth thirty, sixty, an hundred fold, tolerates the wicked, in order that they may become good. In plucking up the bad grain you tear up the wheat ; whereas the grace of God and your patience ought to be sufficient to change the bad into the good. You hinder the good themselves, whom they are bound to yield to, in spite of themselves. " Let them grow till the harvest-time " — that is, till the day of judgment. That will be the time to root them out, when they no longer will have time to repent or to change their lives, and also because the contrast of their faults will then be no longer useful to stimulate the good to virtue. This precept, or rather counsel, does not contradict that which commands us to root out evil from among us. We are not forbidden, St. John Chrysostom re- marks, to oppose ourselves to heresy, to prevent its assemblies and its propagandism, to cause the truth to prevail against it, to confine and punish its abettors. It was at first the opinion of St. Augustine that nobody should be compelled to the unity of Christ : to act only by discussion, to convince only by reason. He feared that those who were known as determined heretics might thus be changed into hypocritical Catholics. Notwithstanding, his opinion, he says, was not combated by words, but yielded to contrary examples. He thought of those terrible laws which command kings to serve the Lord with trembling. Many render God thanks for having constrained them through fear, through force, through persecution, and 2 20 The Life of cur Lord Jesus Christ. who, in forcing them, had delivered them from another constraint immeasurably more humiliating and unendur- able— the constraint of error. He concludes that the kings of the earth are bound to serve and obey Christ in publishing the laws in favor of Christ ; for the wor- ship of Christ is in unity. The house of David could not obtain peace unless by the destruction of the re- bellious Absalom, although- David had recommended that he should not be molested, and only awaited his repenting to pardon him. David wept for this guilty man, and was consoled at the thought that peace was \ restored to his people. Thus it is that the Catholic Church, our mother, when she acquires a vast number of children by the perdition of some, finds consola- / tion in the sorrow at beholding so many souls saved. ) Heretics cry out and rebuke us : To whom has Christ done violence ? Whom has he forced or compelled ? ) Behold the Apostle St. Paul ; Christ compelled him, then instructed and consoled him ; and it is worthy of remark that he who enters by the coercion of cor- poral chastisement labored more than those whom the word alone had called. Why should not the Church compel those to return who, by their wandering from the truth, have led others to perdition ? And woe to those who, not open to persuasion and rebellious to compulsion, will not be changed ! The time of the harvest will arrive ; the reapers, the re- doubtable angels, will enter the field, and they will make a definite separation, and the tares, bound up in sheaves, will be hurled into the fire. Observe, says an interpreter, that punishment is announced to those who " do evil," not to those who have done evil. Only those will be eternally punished who persist in their sins, and by no means those who do penance. Re- ) The Life of our Lord jfesus Clirisi, 221 mark, says another interpreter, the love of God. lie is prompt to confer benefits, slow to inflict punish- ments. When he sows, it is by himself; when he punishes, it is through others — through the angels whom he sends out, or delegates from heaven. The grain of mustard-seed — this small grain, the smallest grain of all — is also the Church, is Jesus Christ himself, is the faith in the hearts of the faithful. What did the twelve apostles appear in the eyes of the world, or Jesus Christ lying under the tombstone ? What does an obscure and unknown man appear to be in whom an humble, kind word has sown the grain of mustard-seed, the germ of faith? We know what has issued from the tomb and what the apostles became. The man who receives the faith has something in him ( greater than humanity. He may have been before- hand skilled in all sciences and in all errors. He may have been devoted to every species of ambition, aban- doned to every vicious seduction, enslaved to sensual- ity, and harnessed to the yoke of every tyrannical pa sion. Faith now rules in him above science and error; she arms him against temptation ; she delivers him from slavery; she is stronger in him than the world, stronger than himself. This tree, with its mighty branches, grows out from his barren soul, and where reigned decay and death, now abundant fruitfulness abounds. ) ) Jesus says again: " The net, cast into the sea, gath- ers in all sorts of fish. When it is full, the fishermen put aside the good and cast away the bad fish. Such will be the case at the end of time : the angels will se- parate the wicked from the just, and will cast them into the furnace. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 22: The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. The Church gathers in all kinds of fish ; for she calls all to do penance for the remission of sins — rich and poor, ignorant and learned, foolish and wise. When the net shall be full, the destiny of the human race shall be sealed. Then we will behold what the net contains. Then a distribution shall be made. In the parable of the tares the point at issue is about those who persist on account of the perversity of heretical doctrine, because they have not discerned or embraced the truth. Here the point in question is concerning those who perish on account of the perversity of their lives, though taken in the net and having received the knowledge of God. We should here, says St. Gregory, rather tremble than comment. The torments of the damned are here announced in proper terms, so that nobody can allege his ignorance, and plume himself on the obscurity of the dogma of eternal punishment. In giving these instructions Jesus made the apostles understand that they should repeat them all over the earth. " No person, after having lit a candle," says he to them, " covers it with an urn or puts it under the bed ; but they put it on the candlestick, so that those who enter may see the light." ' This recommendation will suffice to show that the word of God is not, can- not be, bound up, tied up, even when those who are commissioned to disseminate it are loaded with chains. The light will be put on the candlestick. It will shine ; it will illuminate ; it will cast all over the world an ef- fulgence of heavenly light. And at length, to warn his hearers and to attract their minds to meditate on the mystery of the parables, Jesus frequently said : " He that has ears to hear, let him understand." r H-wNIrl |Wh h> -- ffiiffyil^BPff ^ff^wCT' / 'jrtaOHmS pj^ra^SJB ■f/#r%i^ i^j^\^Jj nUErW SlOt^B br r4wffiQ "jP^R n£> m 'WJoSJvJBÏjKA 7P SE jMmMt^ ^OÊ/T aarVr^SMEJgMM ■f -fcV—".-i~— » ,^J^— — « CHAPTER IV. INCREDULITY OF NAZARETH— FIRST MISSION OF THE APOSTLES— THE FIVE LOAVES— PETER WALKS ON THE WATERS— ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE EU- CHARIST. JESUS retired from the place where he had given these instructions, and returned to Nazareth, his country. He enters the synagogue on the Sabbath day to teach, according to the privilege and right of every son of Israel. He rises up to read. The book of Isaias is put in his hands, which was liturgical read- ing at that season of the year; for he changed nothing from the ordinary course, and carefully fulfilled all things according to the law. On opening the book he finds this passage : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and this is why I have received his unction to evangelize the poor, to heal those who have a broken heart, to announce deliverance to captives, light to the blind, to publish the happy year of the Lord and the day of retribution." Having closed the book, he hands it to the priest of the synagogue, and sits down. All the bystanders eye him closely. He says to them, " Those words are fulfilled on this day that you hear them." The majesty of this expression is the more striking as our Lord was not ignorant of the wicked disposi- The Life of our Lord fêsus Christ. tions of his hearers. They are affected by a twofold ( feeling. At first they admire, but soon after the leaven - of the Pharisees manifests itself and predominates. This leaven could ferment at Nazareth more freely than elsewhere. The Nazarenes doubtless regarded the gift of. prophecy and of miracles as a great favor ; they were jealous that this gift should have fallen on a man whom they esteemed so little. They begin to say to one another, " Is not this man the son of Joseph the carpenter, the son of Mary? Do we not know his brothers, his sisters? Are they not in our midst? Whence, then, comes all this to this man? " Jesus reads the secrets of their wretched hearts, and foresees the unjust request they were about to make to him. " Perform miracles, if you be God ! " The first who utter this malicious cry had seen the dead resusci- tated. When miracles shine forth, they seek to prove them unlawful, or they attribute them to the power of the demon. Jesus reminded them that Elias had been sent to the widow of Sarepta, although widows were not wanting in Israel; that Eliseus did not heal the nume- rous lepers of Israel^ but only Naaman, who was a Syrian. This was to warn them to dispose themselves to receive grace by renouncing their jealousies and their incredulity. But they, on the contrary, revolt against the Saviour, cast him out from their synagogue, and drag him off to the summit of the mountain, with the design of precipitating him from it. His mercy spared them from attempting this crime. " Jesus, passing right through their midst, goes his way " ! He had either rendered himself invisible to their eyes, or he had paralyzed their hands. This was almost the only miracle he performed at The Life of our Lord Jïsi/s Chris/. 225 Nazareth — the miracle by which he daily baffles so much intervention of impiety. He renders himself invisible, he paralyzes the furious, he passes through their midst, and vanishes when they contemplate his destruction. He refused them miracles which their insolence re- quired ; he accomplishes them when their incredulity sees not, and their souls profit not by them. Nevertheless, his clemency for his fellow-countrymen could not absolutely remain inactive. He imposes ) his hands on those who were sick, and cures them. The sacred text adds: "Their incredulity astonishes i him." He forsakes those ungrateful, hard-hearted, incrcdu- ) lous people, and resumes his journey of mercy, passing over routes which the prophets and the patriarchs had passed through, imparting throughout health, hope, and life. " He had pity on them, because they were heavily oppressed with many evils, and hiding here and there like sheep without a shepherd." Having then assem- bled the apostles, he sent them out two by two in different directions to succor those who could not come. This first mission was but an easy step to the novi- tiate of the hard and trying labors of the apostlcship. I All at once Jesus gives to his ambassadors heavenly } instruction, which, later on, must make them breast every peril, and which, transmitted by them to their successors, will render those too victorious ^ over death. He enjoined on them poverty, prudence, and mildness. He bade them not to carry with them two pairs of shoes, nor two coats, nor money; to have but one stick for their journey ; not to resist nor to defend themselves. He gave them power to cast out devils and to heal the sick ; he warns them against the 226 The Life of our Lord ye sus Christ. attachments of flesh and blood : " Who loves his father or his mother more than me is not worthy of me ; who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me ; who loves his life more than me will lose it, and who loses it for my sake shall save it." Behold the conquerors of the world ! At that time the name of Jesus came to the ears of the tetrarch Herod. This tyrant believed that the prophet of whom so many great things were spoken was no other than John the Baptist resuscitated. He desired to see him, but Jesus withdrew himself. Herod's malady was not that of those he spontané- s ously goes to heal. '-. The apostles return to render him an account of what they had done. The good Master anxiously desires to lead them to some solitary spot, so that they might enjoy a little repose; for the throng did not leave them even time to eat. He took them with him in his bark, and steers his course towards a solitary place in the territory of Bethsaida. The vast multitudes fol- lowed here, as they did everywhere else. He compas- sionates them, as is always his wont. He conducts these poor people to the mountain ; then, having seated himself in the midst of his apostles, he heals those afflicted with various diseases, and speaks of the king- dom of God. The day advances. The twelve entreat the Lord to dismiss the multitude, as it was high time, so that they might arrive at the village to purchase something to eat before the shades of night should overtake them, because no one among them had any provisions ; more- over, the place was a desert. Jesus says to them : " Give them yourselves something to eat." At which they ask him if they should go and purchase two hun- ) The Life of out Lord JZsus Christ. 227 dred pemies' worth of bread. But Jesus, not appear- ing to hear them, contemplates the multitude. There were there about five thousand men, without reckoning the women and children. Jesus, knowing well what he would do, says to Philip : " Where will we get means to purchase food for this vast multitude?" Philip answers: " With two hundred pennies' worth we can- not purchase enough of bread that each one may get a little." Then Jesus is informed of the provisions they » can obtain, and Andrew advances to tell him: "There is a boy here with five barley loaves and two fishes." He adds: " What is that among so many?" Never- theless, Jesus orders the apostles to make them all sit down in order on the grass. Then, having taken the five loaves, with the two fishes, and raising his eyes to heaven, he blesses them, he breaks them, and gives them to the disciples to distribute them to those who had sat down. lie commands his disciples to give them as much as they could eat. All eat, and all are satisfied, and with fragments that remain they fill up twelve baskets. Thus the Eucharistie bread satisfies the world, and is never exhausted, never fails. This is not the only sense of this miracle, which further on he will speak of. The people wondered exceedingly. They said among themselves: "This is surely the Prophet that was expected to come ; let us make him king." Jesus dismisses them to prevent their design, and to teach his priests that they must not seek popular fame. Forthwith, having ordered his disciples to embark and await him on the other side of the lake, he flies off to the mountain, where he remains alone in prayer. But the bark which carries the disciples struggles against the wind. Toward the fourth watch of the 228 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. night they had made not more than twenty-five or thirty furlongs. Jesus, seeing they rowed with diffi- < culty, draws near to them, and walks on the boisterous billows. The disciples perceive him, directing himself as if he would pass them by, and they imagined they ) saw an apparition. They cried aloud. Jesus says to them : " It is I ; fear not." Peter cries out : " Lord, if it be you, command that I may go to you on the waters." Jesus says to him, " Come." And Peter left j the bark— walked also on the sea. But the wind was strong. Peter was afraid, and at the same instant he was sinking. He who fears not to trust himself to the mighty deep suffers himself to be terrified by the noise of the wind. This is the very same man whom love for Jesus will drag to the pretorium, yet whom ( the voice of a servant will frighten into denial of him. ' i Yet the apostle does not outrage the heart of his Master so far as to forget his power and goodness. He cries out: " Lord, save me." Jesus takes him by the (' hand, and says to him : " Man of little faith, why have you doubted ? " If his faith had been strong, the winds would not have power to hurt him, the sea would have remained solid under his feet. It was not Peter who walked on the waters, says St. Jerome ; it was faith. Peter had need to learn it. Jesus had given it to him, in order that he might know him for ever. He takes j him by the hand, as a mother, seeing the danger of \ her little one that goes out too soon, takes it under her wings and brings it back to the nest. Then Jesus as- cends with Peter into the bark, and forthwith the winds cease, and immediately the bark is at the shore which they were going to. Jesus walked on the waters ; he made Peter walk on ~1 The Life of our Lord Jbsus Christ. 229 them; he appeased the tempest; a passage of many hours was accomplished in an instant. The eyes of the disciples were not opened by the multiplication of bread ; but those recent miracles, multiplied for them alone, at length caused the bandage to fall from their eyes. They adore their Master, saying to him : " You are truly the Son of God." Everywhere the people were made acquainted with the wonderful prodigies of Jesus, and of his presence among his people. Into whatever place he withdrew, town,&village, or city, they bring him the sick. Ranged along in rows in public places, they implored him to let them but touch the hem of his garment, and all went away cured. The men who had profited by the multiplication of the loaves always wished to proclaim him king. After having sought him on the borders of the lake, after the day of that miracle, they met in great crowds at Ca- pharnaum when he entered it. In the depth of their zeal they had but one desire, as is proved from what follows— that is, to lead an indolent life with an abun- dance of the good things of earth. They desired no- thing more of the Mcssias. The moment had arrived to give them a more sublime idea of him, and make them understand what sort of bread the Messias brought from heaven to the world. Then Jesus told them they sought him because he had satisfied them with bread ; that, notwithstanding, they must labor, not for the food that perishes, but for that which remains unto eternal life; and that this was the bread which the Son of Man would give them. They ask him what works would render them pleas- ing to God. Jesus answers them : "The work of God is that vou believe in Him whom he has sent." For The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. faith produces humility, desire, love, and all the other virtues of this life. But the spirit of the Pharisees was fermenting in them. They deny that the miracles of which they were witnesses should or could oblige them to believe. Alluding to the multiplication of the loaves, which was but a moment ago the foundation of their hopes, they object that Moses had done more feeding and nourish- ing their fathers in the desert with manna; whence it is written, " He had given them to eat of the bread of heaven." Jesus replies to them: "The true celestial bread is not of Moses, but of my Father; for the true bread of God is that which comes from heaven and gives life to the world." They say to him : " Lord, give us always of that bread." Then Jesus, entering into the depths of the mystery, says to them : " I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger; and he who believes in me shall not thirst. . . . This is the will of my Father who sent me — that whoever sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life ; and I will raise him up on the last day " — words literally true, but which the Jews did not understand, nor did they wish to under- stand. That eternal life of which Jesus speaks, being ex- empt from the miseries and wants of the present life, it is literally true that whoever will possess it shall hunger and thirst no more, but shall be perfectly satiated. And although the eternal life may be said to commence only at the resurrection, yet in the present life the eternal exists in those who are nourished or fed with the living bread. Mingled with their flesh, the Eucharistie bread implants in them a spiritual, immortal germ of eternal life, and natural ; î The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 231 death will not destroy it. This immortal germ shall be preserved in their dry, withered bones ; not an atom of their scattered dust shall be separated from it. It will sleep with them till the day whereon God shall command it to bud forth ; and forthwith that flesh shall live again, or rather shall bloom in fulness of glory, clothed with immortality, rid of concupiscences, which have been the cause of its corruption. Nothing im- pure will remain in it any more. Nothing in it can feel the sting of death; the contact with the Son of God will destroy and consume the principle of death. What the faith of man has believed and desired the love of God has willed and accomplished. Instead of believing and awaiting an explanation of what they did not comprehend, the Jews began to murmur like those of Nazareth, many of whom, per- haps, were among them. " Is not this man Jesus, the son of Joseph ? Why does he tell us that he descend- ed from heaven?" Jesus sternly warns them not to murmur, and after some sublime words, reserved, so to speak, for the interpretation of St. Paul and the Church, and for a later development of this mystery of grace, he continues his discourse. Imposing upon their rebellious reason the yoke and weight of divine j authority, he informs them that this mysterious bread he announces to them was himself — was his own flesh. " Verily, verily I say to you, he who believes on me has eternal life. I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert, and they are dead. This is the bread descended from heaven, so that if any one cats of it he shall not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If any one cats of this bread, he will live for ever ; and the bread which I will give is my flesh." 232 The Life of our Lord Jïsus Christ. At these words they redouble their murmurings: " How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? " Hozv ! true Jewish word, says St. Cyril. By the right, power, and authority of his divinity. Jesus replies, reaffirm ing what he had already said by a new asseveration " Verily, verily I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and if you do not drink his blood, you will not have life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day ; for my flesh is truly meat and my blood is truly drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him. As my Fa- ther, who is living, has sent me, and as I live by the Fa- ther, so also he who eats me shall also live by me. This is the bread which has descended from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and died : who eats this bread shall live for ever." Man, says Bossuet, always reasons against the good- ness of God, and consequently against himself. Those people believed that Jesus spoke to them of the flesh of man like that of others, of the flesh of the son of Joseph ; that it would be a flesh like that with which men nourish their bodies, and so a flesh they should consume by eating. To these three er- rors Jesus makes three replies: "I am the living bread descended from heaven " ; therefore the bread which I promise is not the flesh of the son of Joseph : ) it is the flesh of the Son of God — flesh conceived of the Holv Ghost and formed of the blood of the Virgin. " The will of my Father is that I should not lose any of those whom he has given me, and that I will raise them up on the last day. ... He who eats of this bread, of my flesh, that I will give for the life of the world, will live for ever " ; therefore the life that The Life of our Lord jfcsus Clirist. 233 his flesh preserves is not this ordinary and mortal life, but eternal life, as well of the soul as of the body, whereby we will be changed and become like to the angels of God. " You will see the Son of Man ascend whence he came " ; therefore, though his flesh is given for the food and nourishment of our souls, it is not on that account less living and whole. St. John, who relates these divine things, adds : " This is what Jesus said, teaching in the synagogue at Capharnaum." It was meet that those things be said at that time, so as to prepare the apostles for the insti- tution of the Eucharist ; and it was proper they should be said in the synagogue publicly, so that when the apostles, the only witnesses of the institution of the Holy Eucharist, would have to propound this formid- able, tremendous mystery, they could invoke or refer to the public expression of our Lord. On all occasions the merciful wisdom of Jesus has taken care to aid our ) . 1 incredulity. Nevertheless, the greater part of those men, who could so easily believe him because of the miracles ) they had seen, did not believe him. There were even ) among the disciples unbelievers. " Many went away. ' \ This is an exact fulfilment of the prophetic parable of the seed sown. Jesus was not surprised at them. He knew from the commencement, " from all eternity as God," and from his conception as man, who they were who would not believe in him, and who he was who would betray him. He says to the twelve apostles : " And you — do you wish also to go away?" Peter, in the name of the others, not doubting but they were like himself, full of humble, submissive faith, answers: "Lord, to whom shall we tro ? You have the words of eternal 2.34 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. life. We have believed, and we have acknowledged it, that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus says: " Have not I chosen you twelve? And yet there is one among you who is a demon." Oh ! how long the tender, compassionate heart bleeds before it is pierced. BOOK IV. EDUCATION OF THE ATOSTLES. CHAPTER I. FALSE PURIFICATION — THE CHANAANITE — THE DEAF MUTE — THE SECOND MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES. E might say that the Gospel is the history of the training of St. Peter ami the apostles. Jesus, because he is a perfect man, is the worshipper and perfect Priest, and this was his mission : to form worshippers and priests. From the period at which we have arrived he begins to apply himself to the furtherance of his mission with not more untiring, but more direct, zeal. Instruction holds the chief place instead of miracles. His manner of instructing is in the form of parables or of controver sies with the Pharisees, scribes, and doctors of the law. These men, who abounded in Jerusalem, were else- where numerous. Mingling with the people, they follow Jesus step by step, always read)- to propound captious questions to him, so as to obtain answers in which they might discover something objectionable. 236 The Life of our Lord jfesus Chrish ) ) \ ) ' j ( { If we had in our possession the accounts they sent .to the Sanhedrim, we would have the substance and the artifice of all the calumnies which shall ever be hurled against the Church. ( ( One day, having observed that some of the disciples ate without having washed their hands, they stigmatize as a trangression this forgetfulness of customs. We read in the prophets : "wash yourself and be pure " ; " Purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord," and other like expressions. That sentiment was- directed towards the correction of heart and soul. The Pharisees interpreted it in a material sense. Their continual ablutions dispensed with tears, alms, and other justifiable works. They said to Jesus: " How comes it that your disciples violate the traditions, and do not wash their hands before eating?" Jesus dis- dains to reply to them. ( This is one of the petty circumstances which weak minds avail themselves of to do injury to the simplicity of the Gospel. " Behold the Son of God," say they, " contesting about the point of knowing whether or not it is right to wash the hands before eating dinner ! " Happily for us, the Son of God despised less than those our littleness. He willed this dispute as he willed to appease the tempest, as he willed to resus- citate Lazarus, as he willed to die on the cross. The childish question of the Pharisees gives him an op- portunity to point out the character of true purifica- tion, as distinguished from formalism, in which the pharisaical mind made piety consist. He severely reproves those censures which manifest so much respect for the minuteness of a tradition pure- ly human, but which did not fear to violate the most essential precepts ; scrupulously cleansing the rim of The Life of our Lord j'csus Christ. 237 the vessel, and leaving foulness at its bottom ; filter- ing the water to avoid swallowing a gnat, and yet swal- lowing a camel lie rebukes them for having a tradi- tion, or rather a sophism, which dispenses the son from assisting the father, even in need, provided he does not fail to make an offering to the Temple. " Ye hypocrites ! you pretend to be very holy by dispensing with the commandments of God to attach yourselves to your traditions." lie then addresses himself to the people, who had not heard this reprimand, and, with upraised voice, he continues: "All of you pay attcn tion and understand well : not what enters a man's body defiles it ; what proceeds from a man — that ib what defiles him." The disciples, alarmed at the wrath of the Pharisees, perhaps scandalized themselves, ask an explanation of an expression new to them, and which seemed op- posed to a prohibition so respected as that against eat- ing unclean meats. This Jewish barrier too must disap- pear, but later. Peter, according to usage, had spoken for all. The Master replies : " What enters man from outside cannot defile him, because it docs not enter in the heart; but what goes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart. It is from the interior and from the heart of man that wicked thoughts proceed ; impurities, homicides, robberies, avarice, blasphemies, pride, and every other crime — that is what renders im- pure, and not eating with unwashed hands" — fruitful words of the number of those which have given to man new thoughts, and which have given him knowledge of himself. The heart of man, says Origen, is great whilst it is clean ; its corporeal littleness hinders it not from receiving the Lord, who is spirit. When the heart of man possesses cleanness, it embraces truth. I 238 The Life of our Lord ycsits Christ. Jesus quitted this place, and went away to the con- fines of Tyre and Sidon. After having condemned the superstitious observances of the Jews, who did not wish to hear him, he directs his attention toward the pa- gans. From this we derive instruction analogous to that we infer from his mission to Sichar, in Samaria. The patient Master accommodates himself to the weak- ness of the disciples, and often repeats the same les- sons, but adds thereto each time something which en- graves it better on their enlarged intelligence. This time he conceals himself, because the time of his preaching to the Gentiles had not yet arrived. How- ever, among the throng, that must not know his pre- sence, there was one faithful, believing soul, whom he was anxious to recompense, and that one knew well how to approach him. A Chanaanite woman, from the country of Syro- Phcenicia, rushed towards Jesus, saying and crying out along the road : " O Lord, Son of David ! have pity en me ; my daughter is cruelly tormented with a devil." The Holy Ghost, who inspires prayer, says all in a few words: "Lord" — this woman confesses his divinity. " Son of David " — she confesses his humanity. " Have pity on me " — she does not say, Have pity on my daughter; for the affliction of the daughter is the grief of the mother herself. " My daughter is cruelly tormented with a devil." Behold the malady ex- posed to the Physician in all its force and in all its gravity. The action of the Chanaanite woman is as sagacious as her prayer. She asks nothing from men. Relying on faith, she addresses herself directly to God. However, Jesus seems not to hear her, and answers her not a word. The disciples, compassionating her r ) The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 239 sorrow or importuned by her wailings, implore him to dismiss her by granting her what she solicited. He ( tells them he had been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and he continues his course. But \ the Chanaanite woman, manifesting as much faith as maternal love, follows him, and enters into the house where he was. She casts herself at his feet, crying out always : " Lord, assist me ; deliver my daughter from the devil." Then, with a severity which was not usual to him, and in order that this pagan might know the power of faith, he says to her : " Let the children be first satisfied ; for it is not proper to take the bread of the children and cast it before dogs." This harshness (doubtless tempered by his tone) could not repulse or dishearten this suppliant. "It is true, O Lord ! " she replies; "but even little dogs may eat the crumbs of bread that fall from the children's table." By this trait of humility, after a perseverance so determined, Jesus, as it were conquered, says to her: " O woman ! your faith is great. Be it done to you as you wish. 6*">, your daughter is cured." \ The daughter of the Chanaanite woman and the ser- vant of the centurion are both cured without the Saviour having entered their houses. The nations that Christ had not visited were to be saved by his word and by the prayers of his Church. The Church is this mother, whose tenderness and faith never allows her to be repulsed. She goes on saying always : " O Lord ! have pity on me ; heal my sick child." Like the wo- man afflicted with an issue of blood, and like the Samaritan woman, both of whom set out from their homes, so the Chanaanite woman quitted her native country ; and she symbolizes the Gentiles. Like Ruth the Moabite, named among the ancestors of the Lord. 240 The Life of our Lord J^esus Christ. she is admitted into the house of God by the power of her love and of her faith. Jesus then quits the country. If he did not perform other miracles in it, this one, by which he powerfully inculcates the efficacy of prayer, contains a second les- son ; it teaches us that the welfare of one soul sufficed for the Son of God to undertake the labors of a special mission. He returns to the shores of the Galilean sea, and as soon as they know of his return thereto they bring to him a man deaf and dumb. He draws him aside, touches his ears and tongue, and raises up his eyes to heaven and sighs. Then he says : " EpJiplicta " (be opened), and the deaf mute hears and speaks. The removal from the throng of people, the eyes ele- vated to heaven, and the sigh, are to warn the apostles against vainglory ; to remember that it is from heaven we must expect all good ; that everything is obtained of God by heart-felt prayer ; and that humility is by far more powerful than miracles. This sighing, which was in Jesus the effect of compassion, ought to be in us the disavowal and the expiation of evil. When we know how to lament, to mourn, it is then we efficaci- ously demand deliverance from the consequences of sin. Jesus touches the infirm man to show that his body, united to the Divinity, is enriched with the power of the Divinity, and works divinely ; and this fact is an argument against future heresies. Appearing in our j flesh, he has shown it re-established in all its perfection, j and invested with all the glory which shall be given to it. He makes use of his finger to open the closed ear, and of his spittle to loose the mute tongue, and at length he commands, EpJiplicta. The two natures are here distinguished without separation. He prays, sighs The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. 24 1 mcKirns, and toils as man. He heals the deaf man with one word of God alone : " Be opened." Other miracles follow in great numbers. The dumb speak, the lame walk, the blind see. A shout of joy bursts forth from the hearts of the multitudes : " He has done all things well." All publish the praises of the God of Israel. As the multitude was considerable and the place a desert, Jesus renews the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. The disciples had already forgotten the first. They were yet preoccupied about the means whereby they could purchase so much bread, so as to feed and satisfy more than four thousand persons, ex- clusive of the women and children. There were there but seven loaves and a few little fishes. Jesus blessed them with that benediction by which at the beginning the Word gave to creatures the virtue of increasing and multiplying, and they multiply in his hands as the grain multiplies in the earth. All ate and were satisfied, and with the crumbs that remained they filled up seven baskets. Besides divers particular senses, very copious and very beautiful, the two miracles of the multiplication of the bread have a general sense which is peculiar to them, and by which they are the complement one of the other. Before examining it let us turn our thoughts to the solution that the teaching which re- sults from these miracles can actually give to one of the greatest difficulties of the world. The point in question is the multiplication and distribution of C riches. The problem to solve is how to give food to nourish a whole people : five thousand the first time ; four thousand the second, besides the women and children ; 242 The Life of our Lord Jïsus Christ. on both occasions their numbers might at least be doubled. To face the want there was nothing. They were in the desert. The apostles, who represented hu- man power, were disquieted at the situation. They propose to Jesus what human wisdom may propose: " Dismiss this vast throng, so that each one may pro- vide for. himself the best he can." Jesus replies: "Give them bread to eat yourselves." The apostles then thought of purchasing bread, and generously desired to employ all they possessed for that object. A sudden and sad reflection discourages them. Even should they put together for this purpose the two hundred silver pennies (probably more than the common purse contained), this would not be sufficient to give each of them a morsel. However, according to their human views, there was no other alternative. It seems they must now leave the vast multitude to them- selves to do the best they can, without regard to the feeble and little ones — that is, sacrifice the poor or cast into a gulf the public treasure ; that is, sacrifice the rich ; and even this sacrifice would be insufficient. A third means is suggested, but suggested with shamefacedness, so foolish does it appear. Among this famishing multitude there is one rich person found — a boy having five barley loaves and two little fishes. He possesses more than is required for him. They despoil this rich one, who possesses too much, for the good of those who have nothing, and make his abundance, his five barley loaves and two little fishes, common pro- perty. " But," says the inventor of the plan, "what is all that to divide among so many mouths?" To abandon the poor, to feed them for a moment at the expense of the state, to ruin the state by de- spoiling the rich without benefiting any one, and with- The Life of our Lord yes us Christ, 243 out saving the state from peril — so this problem pre- sents itself. More and more governments behold themselves hemmed in by these perilous abysses. Out of them no political science can find an issue. In the Gospel history Jesus interposes. Jesus is bound to provide for this vast throng of people, who have followed him into the desert to hear his word, and who consequently have fulfilled the precept " of \ first seeking the kingdom of God." > First of all, he commands the apostles to create order among the crowd, and to distribute them in groups of hundreds and fifties, and to make them sit down on the greensward. Then, when the mob is put in that order, which places each band and each individual under the direction of a pastor, he orders the slender provisions which they had discovered to be brought to him, and he blesses them. It is to him they bring them, because to him they belong, as the Creator of all and every good, of all wealth, riches, and power, and the Master of all creatures. Raising his eyes to hea- ven, he blesses them, because it is of God we must implore every blessing and every increase. He distri- butes them by the hands of the apostles, because it is he who has the right to dispose of them. They suffice, because his benediction has multiplied them. Much is ! left of them after each one has eaten and is satisfied, > because God gives all things abundantly; because he has made this law : that alms impoverish not him who bestows them, but, on the contrary, enrich him. Such is the social economy of the Gospel, to inspire the people with a taste for the things of God ; to estab- lish order among them, and provide them with pastors ; to teach them to despise the unlawful desires which render them insatiable ; to ask of God to bless and 244 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. multiply the real, material riches which are necessary for our existence. Nowadays all that evangelical econ- omy is despised ; but the abyss of pauperism is opened up, and for a remedy communism is seriously proposed. One can already foresee that the communistic institu- tions will open circuses more easily than they will give bread. The mystical signification of the twofold multiplica- tion of bread is, as in many other miracles, the accom- plishment of the law by the institution of the Eucharist and the ministry of the Church. " I have pity on this people," says Jesus before the second miracle. " They have nothing to eat ; and if I send them away hungry, their strength may fail them on the way, for many have come from afar off." Else- where it is said that Jesus regarded them with compas- sion, " because they wander as sheep without a shep- herd." But Jesus is come into the world to feed and nourish them, and to give them pastors whom he will have chosen ; and he it is who will be, at the same time, the everlasting and supreme food and nourish- ment, and the Eternal and Supreme Pastor. The first miracle feeds and nourishes five thousand, all from that country. This is the number of those who will be converted at the second preaching of St. Peter, and who will be all Jews. At the second miracle there were four thousand, " come from afar off," according to the remark of the Lord. By the number of four thou- sand the miracle is already figurative of the conversion of the Gentiles, who were bound to come from each quarter of the globe, and, as the Scripture says, " from the four winds." At first the apostles consider the wants of the multitude. They are weighing the matter of send- ing them away, so as they may go off to provide for them- '~î The Life of cur Lord yesus Christ. 245 selves, each one as best he can. This is the character } of the Jewish priesthood. It has nothing to give to J " strangers," and little to others. Nevertheless, even this anxiety of dispersing them indicates some interest in their well-being. The patriarchs and prophets pray- ed to God for the people of Israel. The second time, though the throng was there a long while, and the desert more arid, no one thinks that they can suffer from hunger. Jesus only thinks on them ; he only has had pity on the sad and afflicted throng of nations : he casts on them a look of tender love. " I do not wish they should depart hence with- out food. They will faint on the road." In the first miracle there were five barley loaves ; in the second, seven loaves of wheat-bread. The Evan- gelists, says St. Cyril, could have contented themselves with relating that the Saviour satisfied avast multitude of people with a little food carried by a child. Since they so exactly marked the number and the quality of the loaves, it is clear that these circumstances conceal a mystery. In effect, the five loaves of the first miracle indicate the rites of the Old Law contained in the five books of Moses, whence the Jewish people drew their spiri- tual food ; and the seven loaves in the second miracle admirably represent the Evangelical Law, in which the seven-fold grace of the Holy Ghost is distributed to all the faithful by the preaching of the Word and by the sacraments. These seven loaves, says the Venerable Bede, represent the seven sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ to nourish Christians on their journey to eternity. The five loaves of the first miracle were barley. Barley is the food of beasts of burden and slaves. 246 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. The spirit of the Old Law was a spirit of fear and ser- vitude. The nutritive part of the barley is recovered from very tough coverings ; the vital food of the soul, in the Mosaic law, was enveloped in very thick cover- ings. The barley loaves are found in the possession of a child, who carried them without eating them ;' the Mosaic books were placed in the hands of a priesthood and a people who understood them but in a childish sense, and who even observed them without reaping any profit from them. The wheat of which the seven loaves of the second miracle are formed is the nourishment of men, the prophesied nurture : " He has nurtured them Avith the purest wheat ; by the product of the wheat are they multiplied." Thus had David chanted this feast of the Messias, and nothing can better express the spirit of the New Law, the sweetness, the grace, the love, the abundance, of Christ. Christ himself is typified in the feast. The fish drawn through the fire represents Jesus Christ from the hour of his Passion. This symbol is as ancient as the Church. Père Ventura thinks the two fishes indicate the two characters of priest and victim which Jesus united together on the Cross. The five barley loaves and the seven wheat loaves : the rites of the Mosiac law and the sacraments of the new law draw their effi- cacy for the salvation of souls from his immolation. Jesus did not see fit to create out of nothing, which he could have done, those loaves with which he fed the multitude ; nor did he desire to command them to fall from heaven, like the manna, in sufficient abundance. On the one hand, the bread had already descended ; it existed, such as he wished to give them. It was him- self. He multiplies it ; he only multiplies it by a The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ. 247 miracle as great as the Creation, to indicate that it is indeed himself, and that he gives his own bodily sub- stance. On the other hand, really receiving the loaves and the fishes from the hands of the apostles, he sup- plies anew instructions. At the same time he makes man co-worker with himself in his heavenly labor, as he did on innumerable occasions by other acts, nota- bly by the institution of the apostles ; he confirms the ministry of the Church ; he completes, in fine, the sym- bol which it has pleased him to give, and renders more sensible the truth he wishes to instruct us in. In the sacraments he does not create ; he receives from the Church the matter of which they are formed. In the hands of the disciples the loaves were un- savory, insufficient, useless ; in the hands of Jesus, and by his benediction, they were multiplied, they acquired a marvellous virtue, they sufficed, and some were left. So the water, the bread, the wine, the oil — matter of the sacraments — are of themselves incapable of pro- ducing any moral effect ; but by the benediction of Jesus Christ this matter receives the virtue of confer- ring and augmenting the grace which satisfies the soul and fills it with spiritual strength. The fishes, like the bread, are carried by the apostles. The fish arc the booty of the fishermen, who have caught them in deep waters — there where they were told to cast out their nets. The most intimate pos- session of Jesus Christ is the lot of those who have given themselves more than others to him, who have with greater eagerness heard his word, whom he has chosen ami with whom he dwells. They distribute the bread by preaching, especially by the preaching of his sufferings, which attracts people to the sacraments and communicates to them his divine sweetness. " I preach The Life of cur Lord ye su s Chrisf. but Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified," says St. Paul. The fish is with the bread, because the preach- ing of the mysteries of Jesus Christ enlightens the understanding; whilst the bread of the sacraments nourishes the heart, and both are the nourishment of God's people. The fathers make another remark. As the loaves, they say, were sufficient only because Jesus Christ blessed them, we only see their interior because he broke them. Thus we know that the prophecies of the Old Law and the mysteries of the New Law would remain concealed from us, if we had not the divine light of the Word. Neither would the ancient rites nor the new sacraments possess any virtue to support the Jewish people and to nourish the Christian people if Jesus Christ had not at first himself in figure, then in reality, given fecundity to them by his all-powerful benediction. This benediction, pronounced at the commencement of the world on all creatures, gives to them life through the faculty of reproducing and multiplying themselves ; the same benediction, pro- nounced on the spiritual institutions of the law and the Gospel, assures to each of them duration and effi- cacy without measure. Thus the first miracle typifies the ancient covenant ; the second the new. And in both Jesus having oper- ated, he indicates to us thereby that the heavenly Mediator, born according to the flesh, in the fulness of time, is also the Word of God anterior to time — the God of the law and the God of the Gospel, who gave to the prophets the knowledge of the future mysteries, to the apostles the knowledge of mysteries accomplish- ed; the same who nourished the Jewish people with the barley-corn of the figurative sacraments, and who The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. 249 power, immediately through faith ; and that, conse- quently, there is no need of bishop nor of sacerdotal ) intervention. Assuredly Jesus could cause it to be so. He could accomplish all by himself, without recurring to the dis- ciples ; but assuredly he employed them not without design. This design the apostles understood from the Saviour himself. " Let every one," says he, " con- sider us as the ministers of Jesus Christ and the dis- pensers of the mysteries of God." All the circum- stances of both miracles reveal this doctrine. 1 Jesus commences by saying to the apostles: "It is feeds the Christian people with the wheat of the real sacraments. However, Jesus does not wish to crush human liberty under the weight of miracles. What he does so well the enemy, whom he lets free for a time, will undertake to destroy. Satan will raise up heretics who will endeavor to infuse poison into the bread that Christ gives. The providence of Christ foresaw this danger. Without taking away from men the merit of combating it, he furnishes them in advance the means to avoid it. With this power and this sovereign wisdom, which by one word can enlighten four thou- sand years of mystery, by an act of the will can mul- tiply and enlarge a morsel of bread so as to feed and nourish a people, Jesus also concentrates in a few words and in a few simple circumstances instructions which will baffle all the subtleties of heresy, even to the end of the world. Heresy will deny the necessity of the ecclesiastical ministry for the dispensing of the doctrine and the grace of Jesus Christ. It will pretend that everybody ) ) ) \ can obtain light from God, without any intervening ( ( 25° 77/i? Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. not necessary to send away these people ; give them to eat." By this mysterious language, prophetic of what was going to happen, Jesus, remarks Origen, gives ex- clusively to the apostles and their successors the power of nourishing and feeding the faithful people. He fixes from that moment, adds St. Ambrose, the economy of the evangelical preaching for the food and nourishment of souls. " Give them to eat." This is the very same word that will be said to them at a later period : " Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; whosoever shall believe and be baptized shall be saved." The apostles put in order the vast multitude, and make them sit down on the grass. They group them in distinct bands. We might say they arrange and place them in order by dioceses, by churches. There- fore it is the will of God that it does not belong to the faithful to unite themselves in religious assemblies nor to govern themselves. To the bishops only, as the apostle teaches, belongs the care of establishing and governing churches. Jesus does not distribute with his hand the miracu- lous bread, but, as the evangelists remark with a sort of emphasis, he gives it to the apostles, so that the people might receive it ; and they, the apostles, gave to each one his share. Thus it is the divine wisdom of Jesus Christ which establishes the means by which he wishes that life may be distributed in his Church. He does not give to the apostles the loaves entire, but broken. He opens them, just as, before giving them the supreme order to distribute the Gospel, he opens out to them the mysteries of the Scriptures. How is it people do not understand by that manner of The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 251 acting, asks St. Augustine, that he has confided to the bishops and to the priests only the true sense of his mysteries and the distribution of the sacred aliment? Finally, when the multitude were satisfied, he com- mands the apostles to gather up the remains. At the first miracle they fill up twelve baskets brimful ; and I these twelve baskets arc the twelve apostles them- selves, who will contain henceforth, teeminsj and ) ^ > t> ( abundant, the doctrine hitherto bound up, as if bar- ren, in the five books of Moses. The apostles appear- ed then of little worth in the eyes of worldly men ; however, these fragile baskets, mean and despicable in appearance, are interiorly enriched with the treasures of God. At the second miracle, after the seven ) loaves, there are seven basket fuis. As for me, says ) ( St. John Chrysostom, I do not admire less the miracle of this superabundance than the miracle which fur- nished what was necessary. The seven basketfuls are the seven sacraments, always prepared and ready for the faithful people ; ever living, immortal as the God who instituted them. But what became of the seven basketfuls ? They remain at the disposal of the apostles ; so that, says Origen, the seven baskets or hampers of the living and spiritual bread, the seven sacraments, have been left by Jesus Christ in the hands of the ministers of the Church, who have cared for them and preserved them, even to the present time, and will preserve, guard, and defend them till the end of time. All this happened at evening, at the hour the sun declines, at the hour of the cross. CHAPTER II. THE BLIND MAN OF BETHSAIDA- PETER — THABOR. -CONFESSION OF NOW the Pharisees and the Sadducees, irreconcil. able among themselves, but perfectly in accord against Jesus, according to the constant usage of sec- taries and infidels, endeavored to withdraw the con- fidence of the people from him, so that they might more easily afterwards deprive him of his life and liberty. They always approach him suddenly and una- wares, always artfully surprise and ensnare him. Once more they ask him to work wonders in the heavens for them. Jesus replies to them that they knew well when the heavens portended calmness or a storm, but that their hypocrisy hindered them from learning to know the time they lived in, and to discern what is right ; that is to say, they did not wish to see that the epoch of the Messias had arrived. Heaving a deep sigh, he again declares that that perverse and wicked race should have no other sign than that of Jonas ; and he left them. He betakes himself to Bethsaida, where he restores sight to a blind man, with these particular circumstan- ces : that the healing, instead of being sudden, is per- formed only by degrees. Jesus takes the blind man by 252 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 253 the hand, and leads him out of the town ; touches his eyes with spittle, lays hands on him, and asks him if he sees anything. The blind man says : "I see men walk- ing who appear to me like trees." Jesus again lays his hand on his eyes. The blind man begins to see, and at length is healed. } These circumstances are for the instruction of preach- ers and the ministers of the Gospel. The Saviour, says Bede, takes the hand of the blind man, in order to render him capable of practising good works. He conducts him out of the city. Man, separated from the world, meditates better on divine truths. Whoever desires to be illuminated with the eternal light must follow Jesus into solitude. If Jesus does not heal the blind man by a single word only, it is to show the depth of our blindness, and so that his priests may learn not to despair, but redouble their efforts by prayer and patience, when the ignorant and the sin- ner arrive only by degrees, almost insensibly, to the vision of the truth. The Lord uses spittle with the imposition of hands ; thus does he act every day, teaching men in two ways : by the invisible gifts of the Spirit, and by the visible sacrament of his Incarnation The order he gives to the blind man cured is to return into his house ; he warns the sinner to look into his own heart, to enter into his interior, and meditate upon the benefits of God. S Very soon after Jesus puts to the test the faith of the apostles. Being on the road, in the environs of Cesarca, he suddenly asks them : " Who do they say is the Son of Man ? " They answer him, " Some think he is John the Baptist ; others Elias ; others Jeremias ; others one of the ancient prophets arisen from the dead." " And you ? " says he to them. Simon Peter ,; The Life of our Lord J"esus Christ. responds: "You are Christ, Son of the living God." Jesus says to him : " Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jona, for flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father who is in heaven." > The quality, son of Jona, given to the apostle, re- ceives from the circumstance an importance quite i peculiar. Son of Jona signifies sou of the dove. Jona, father of Simon Peter according to flesh and blood, is not the subject of consideration, but the grace which ( Peter received, and by which the Spirit of truth, the Dove which appeared over Jordan, brought forth in ( him the word of truth. ( Jesus adds : " I solemnly declare that thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And what- soever you will bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and what you shall loosen on earth shall be loosed in heaven." After this declaration and this promise he expressly forbids the apostles to tell any one that he was the Christ. Then forthwith, without giving them time to form in their minds a flattering image of the glory that awaited them, tearing away the veil of the future, he points out to them Calvary. " He commences from that instant to declare to them that he must go to Je- rusalem, to endure the Passion, to be condemned by the ancients, by the high-priests, and by the scribes, be put to death, and to rise up again on the third day." He spoke to them thus openly. Peter cannot understand him. " No, Lord. God forbid ! No. It shall not be so." But Jesus, looking on the apostles, says to Peter with a reproving look : " Withdraw, go behind me, Satan ; you are to me a The Life of oar Lord Jïsas Christ. 255 scandal, for you have no desire or taste for the things of God." Peter, who knew that Jesus saw the love ( of his heart, neither replies nor justifies himself. The \ others, like himself, keep silence. \ Then Jesus, ordering the throng to approach him, pronounces unheard-of words, which exceed by excess of divine greatness all that the masters of the world could say. "If any one wishes to walk in my footsteps, let him deny himself; let him carry his cross daily, and let him follow me. For he who would wish to save his life (at the expense of duty) shall lose it ; and who loses his life for my sake and for the Gospel shall save it. And what will it avail a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " Behold what was said on that day on the dusty road not far from Cesarea, which is now no more. It is thus \ that Jesus brought down from above a new fire on the earth; it is thus he educated Peter, the disciples, and the whole world, or, rather, he created a new human- j ity. He had terminated this discourse by announcing that many among his disciples would not taste death until they should have seen the kingdom of God. Eight days after this promise was accomplished. He takes with him Peter, James, and John, and conducts them alone and apart up to a high mountain, where he be- comes absorbed in prayer. Whilst he is praying he becomes transfigured. His face is resplendent as the sun ; his garments shine with a soft, white, living light like that of snow. Near him two men, full of ma- jesty, who were Moses and Elias, spoke to him of the death he was about to suffer at Jerusalem. Peter, astonished and overwhelmed with joy at the sight, says ) ! ) 256 The Life of our Lord jtesus Christ. to Jesus: " Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tents here — one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elias." The apostles were wonderfully amazed. They were plunged in a mixture of joy and terror. When Peter spoke again, without knowing what he said, a luminous cloud overshadowed Moses and Elias, and a voice descended from the cloud, which said : " This is my well-beloved Son, in whom I place my delight. Hear ye him." The apostles prostrate themselves on the earth. When they rose up at the command of Jesus, they saw him alone. He had sus- pended this heavenly splendor, which tended continu- ally to usurp or invade his humanity, which was the proper and natural state of the only Son of God, but which, by his omnipotence, he contains within him, so that the Son of Man, the Victim, might not disappear in him. For the wonder was, not that the divinity should throw out a flood of heavenly light, but that the humanity should be enabled to veil it, and in some sort absorb it. The three who beheld this vision of Thabor — Peter, James, and John — were the same whom Jesus retained near him to be witnesses of the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus. They are seen apart by themselves in the Garden of Olives at the hour of the agony. Peter was the chief of the new alliance ; James must be the first martyr in the order of the apostles ; John repre- sented the virgins who follow the Lamb wherever he goes — all three, represent the perfect type of the de- finitive priesthood which is about to be born at the foot of the cross. The glory of the God-Man was not to be manifested till after his Passion. Jesus commands the witnesses of Thabor to reveal to no one what they had seen until 27/ e Life of our Lord ffesus Clirist. 257 the Son of Man should have arisen from the dead. ? They obey, but they were not forbidden from speaking \ to one another about it. They ask themselves what \ could this mean • " Until he should have arisen from [ ( the dead." What is so clear now to us was not so to J them then. Having no idea of the second coming, they believed that the death of their Master would be the end of all he should do in this world ; and they are astonished that Elias, who is to precede the Mes- ( sias, had not yet reappeared on the earth. Our Lord tells them, indeed, that Elias will come to re-establish all things, and would be, like the Son of Man, perse- cuted and treated with disrespect. He spoke of the second coming. He adds: " But I tell you Elias has already come, and they have not known him, and that they made him suffer as they willed, and that it is thus they will treat the Son of Man." They under- stand that this Elias was John the Baptist, whose violent death foretold more and more intelligibly the Passion of the Messias. It was in descending the slopes of Thabor Jesus announced so clearly his end. By this discourse the disciples, equally dazzled with light and shade, receive an instruction which they comprehended later on. Al- ready they have had Christ in his entirety, with his igno- minies, with his glory, with the attributes of the divinity, and the shortcomings of humanity. Very soon they will recognize the Christ of the prophets, the all- powerful God, and at the same time the lowest and most abject of mankind, seated in the highest heavens, nailed ( to the cross. Wonderful contrasts, incomprehensible, yet contained, nevertheless, in the name of Jesus alone : Saviour ! ( Saviour! He can only be so by saving men from 25S The Life of our Lord yes us CJuist. the consequences of their sins ; only so by satisfying for them ; only so by taking on him the rigor of their 1 chastisements. He must humble himself, suffer; he \ must be God, and he must be something else than > God. If he had been only God — a strange expression — the conditions of the humiliations and the sufferings could ) not have been fulfilled ; but that he should be simply a creature, simply a man, was also impossible. What relations could the sufferings of a simple crea- ture have with the rights of infinite justice ? What ( ) love and what acknowledgment would the human race have preserved of him ? Who would have believed to-day that this foolish holocaust had been offered, had been accepted, had truly satisfied ? And, finally, whatever may be the value of the Just, by what right should such a satisfaction be offered ? The human race, created by God, is nothing before God ; but, nevertheless (in comparison with the rest of creation), it is not so little a thing that a simple creature could redeem entire humanity, from the first man who existed and who sinned to the last who shall live and sin. One dares to say that God had no right to come to agree- ment in this suit between man and himself. Either his disdain should have contented itself with the blood of goats and the oblation of the fruits of the earth, or his justice should exact the offering up of the blood of a God. In other words, either there is no redemp- tion or Christ is God, and this God is Man at the same time as well as God. To-day the children of faith know these divine things. The apostles possessed but confused ideal forms of them, and they remained buried in their mem ories until the Holy Ghost came to enlighten them : The Life of our Lord Jesus Chrisi. 259 In reserving the co-operation of this Spirit of light Jesus Christ gave another great lesson. He informs us thatexterior teaching profits only inasmuch as the in- terior light is united to it. It is not, therefore, withou reason and without fruit, says a commentator, that he announced to his disciples truths of whose connection he left them ignorant. He engraved on their hearts mysterious characters. The Holy Ghost gave them the key to unravel and explain them. They learned all of Jesus ; they comprehended all through the Holy ) Ghost ; and it is thus the Holy Ghost taught them all ) things. EJS'JjTI ^Ë^8 Hïr^ WÊ sTjKSXs WÊËiP lïXais ^*H tEjH ^=^=Ës CHAPTER III. THE CHILD AFFLICTED DELIVERED FROM THE DEVIL — THE DRACHMA — PRECEPT OF FORGIVE- NESS. AS Jesus descended from the mountain a vast throng of people preceded him. The Evange- list St. Mark says that at his aspect "all were struck with astonishment and fear." Something, without doubt, remained with him of that splendor which had prostrated the three apostles to the earth. A man casts himself at his feet, beseeching him to deliver his son, possessed of a devil, whom the disciples had not been able to drive out. At the command of Jesus they conduct the sick lad to him ; he was very young. The demon had tormented him from his in- fancy, and often had cast him into water and fire, that he might perish. He writhes, he foams. " If you can do anything," says the father, addressing himself to our Lord, " have pity on us and aid us." To this prayer of an imperfect faith Jesus replies: " If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes." The father, with tears in his eyes, exclaims: " I believe ; O Lord ! aid my unbelief." Then Jesus commanded the devil to depart out of the youth, and to enter in no more. The unclean spirit now uttered 360 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 261 hellish yells; then the boy, violently shaken, lay mo- tionless on the ground, so that many of the multitude thought him dead. But Jesus, taking him by the hand, aided him to rise, and from that moment he was cured. By these details, which the apostles enter into, we perceive that on this occasion, as well as on every other, he applies himself to inspire faith. The reply he makes to the afflicted father corresponds to his request, stamped with doubt. Instead of forthwith curing him, as he did the leper, who prayed with a heart full of con- fidence, he obliges him to describe this terrible malady which the disciples were not able to conquer, and he permits the sick person to be tormented in his pre- sence. Besides, the evil is deep. He paints the soul totally buried in sin. Nothing less than the power of God can deliver it. But what matter, since God is there, since he always descends from the mountain toward those who know how to importune him ? From the age of this youth, tormented from his in- fancy, St. Augustine draws a proof of original sin against Julian the Pelagian, who asserted that all men are born without any stain of sin and quite inno- cent, such as Adam was at the creation. How could this boy, possessed of a devil, be tormented from his infancy, if he were not conceived and born in original sin ? What sin could he have committed peculiar to his stage of life ? How could childhood be guilty of actual «in ? The Venerable Bede also remarks that Jesus cures by touching with the hand him whom the enemy had rendered like unto death ; and thus by this veritable touch is refuted in advance the folly of Manes, who denies that the Saviour could be clothed with the same flesh as ourselves. But it is not in this place alone, it is everywhere, that the Gospel refutes and will refute all heresies. Nevertheless, the apostles demand of the Lord why this demon had resisted their power. Jesus answers : " It is because of your little faith." They say to him : " O Lord ! increase our faith." If your faith, continues Jesus, equalled the grain of mustard-seed, you could say to this tree, Uproot yourself and transplant your- self in the sea, and it would obey you. Yes, indeed, if your faith only equalled a grain of mustard-seed, you could say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it would remove ; nothing would be impossible to you. To impart to them a more special instruction on what had transpired, he adds that this sort of demon which had baffled them could not be chased away but by fasting and prayer. St. John Chrysostom eloquent- ly comments on this text. There is nothing, he says, more powerful than the man who prays as he ought. He who prays as he ought, and who fasts, has no need of many things. He has two wings swifter than the wind, and he is superior to terrestrial nature. "I believe; O Lord! assist my unbelief; O Lord ! increase our faith " — profound prayers, full of pious depth and thought ; triumphant words, by which the world was conquered. Whoever will sound the depth of this first prayer will understand the true wound and real want of the soul. Whosoever will have been heard pronouncing the second shall reign for ever. • The faith of the apostles had increased as they had implored it, save especially in what regarded the dolorous part of the mystery of Jesus. They did not doubt his power — sufficient proofs of it were given to them every day ; but these multiplied miracles ren- The Gospels relate but one of the miracles which Jesus performed at Capharnaum during his last sojourn there. In this we equally behold the power of the Son of God and the humility of the Son of Mary. Those who had charge of the didrachma which was raised for the maintenance of the Temple sought in- formation of Peter whether his Master paid taxes or not. Peter forthwith flew to his Master to acquaint him of the circumstance, and to notify him of their sinister motives ; but our Lord foresaw their malignant designs. He asks him, From whom do the kings of n The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 263 dered it more difficult for them to believe or compre- hend that he could or ought to suffer. Jesus conducts them to Capharnaum, which he wished to visit for the last time. This journey was a / triumph. The people celebrate the praises of the Man sent by God who cures all maladies and all diseases, and who had all power over devils. Our Lord says to the disciples : " I implore you, engrave well on your hearts what I announce to you : the Son of Man must be delivered up. They will put him to death, and, after having put him to death, he will rise up the third day." j The time of opprobrium approaches. He must pre- pare and fortify those hearts naturally infatuated by so many wonders. He must also, by those repeated discourses, teach them that the Passion and death of the Son of God should be entirely voluntary, since he could foresee them, could also easily avoid them. But as yet they did not comprehend, and this language saddens them. Their ambition was wounded by it, not less than the love they bore their Master. Divid- ed between love and hope, they were afraid to interro- 1 gate him on this point. The Lije of our Lord yesus Christ the earth exact tribute : is it from their children or strangers? Peter answers : " From strangers." Jesus replies : " Then the children are exempt from it. However," he adds, not to scandalize them, " go, cast the hook and catch the first fish that comes up ; in its mouth you will find a piece of money to the value of four drachmas. Give it to them for yourself and for me." Jesus, says Origen, does not carry the image of Caesar. The prince of this world had no power or con- trol over him ; he had nothing to do with him. This is the reason why he draws from the bosom of the sea what he did not possess — the coin wherewith to pay the tribute. It was not his intention to refuse this tribute, which he discharges in the ordinary manner. It was only after having clearly pointed out that he was not subject to the law that he submitted. He pays, so that the tax-gatherers might not be scandalized, and also he does not wish to scandalize his disciples. These remarks and recent attestations of the Di- vinity cause the disciples to forget the apprehensions they had entertained. A contest arose to know who was thegreatest among them. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, asks them, some moments after, what they were dis- puting about ; but they dared not answer him. They were instructed enough to foresee that he would con- demn their ambition. Then he says to them : " If any one wishes to be the first, let him be the last of all and the servant of all." And taking a child, he places it in the midst of the apostles ; he extols the candor and simplicity of childhood. " Whosoever, therefore," he adds, " shall become humble as this little child, that one shall become the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, 26: After this instruction on humility he speaks to them of charity. It was there and then that the sweet, tender parable was proposed of the faithful shepherd leaving his entire flock on the mountains, and going to seek the lost sheep. He gives an admirable precept never to refuse pardon. In this intimacy with his apostles and disciples, as a good father, he lets himself be interrupted and interro- gated. Peter says to him : " How many times ought I to pardon my brother, who has offended me seven times ?" Jesus answers: " I do not tell you to pardon seven times, but seventy times seven " — that is, always. This sovereign expression had not been addressed to P»ter without containing a deep meaning and a certain object in view. The chief or head of the Church ought and must be the inexhaustible dispenser of pardons. CHAPTER IV. TEACHING IN THE TEMPLE — THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY. AFTER that Jesus hastens with pious eagerness to the Feast of Tabernacles — one of the three which the Jews were bound to celebrate at Jerusalem. He goes there in a sort of secret manner, and after hav- ing expressed some doubt as to his intention ; for the hour had not yet arrived to give rein to the designs of those who wished to take his life. On the road ten lepers, who were kept separated from the people to obey the law, ran forward and cried out to him, " Jesus, our master, take pity on us." " Go," said he to them, " show yourselves to the priests." For the leper made clean was bound to receive the purification of the priest and to make an offering. They departed forthwith, and on going they found themselves cleansed of their loathsome disease. One of them returns and prostrates himself to the earth before his benefactor, and gives thanks. He was a Samaritan; the others were Jews. They were un- grateful, perhaps at the instigation of the scribes, who were incessantly prowling around Jesus. Our Lord says : " Were there not ten cleansed ? And where are the nine others? There is none but this stranger to return and give thanks to God." Then he says to the ! i TJie Life of our Lord ycsus Chris/. 267 leper :" Arise, go thy way: for thy faith hath saved thee." This superior and sublime faith not only heals the body, but obtains the salvation of the soul. Arrived at Jerusalem, Jesus begins to preach. A great division is manifested among the people at his subject. As the venerable old Simeon had predicted, he was a sign or mark of contradiction. Neverthe- less, the wisdom of his words subjugated the entire world. Friends and enemies admire that eloquent science of a Man who had never studied. He says to them : " My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do the will of him, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself. He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory ; but he that seeketh the glory of Him that sent him, he is true, and there is no injustice in him." \ Knowing what accusations the Pharisees and the scribes brought against him on the subject of the Sab- \ bath, since the healing of the paralytic he gives them \ new proofs that the law had not been violated by that act of mercy, but that they violated it themselves by not judging according to equity. He demands of them why they sought to put him to death. Irritated at ) seeing their perfidy unveiled, some among them cry out : " Who seeks to put you to death? You are pos- sessed of a demon ! " Others are inclined to believe that he was the Christ. But those ignorant blasphemers add: "However, we know whence this man came; and when the Christ will come, nobody shall know whence he comes." Their error probably proceeds from a too literal interpretation of that text of Isaias : "'■ Who will recount his generation ? " What the pro- phet understood was the mystery of the Eternal Gene- ration. 268 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. Jesus says in a loud voice : " You both know me, and you know whence I am : and I am not come of myself; but he that sent me is true, whom you know not. I know him, because I am from him, and he hath sent me." Here those Jews, his enemies, very well understood that Jesus said he was the Son of God, and that he was equal to God. Although some of his adherents, beginning to fear, did not boldly manifest their faith, they let it be seen they were of the number of Christ's followers. Among the multitude many said : " When the Christ will come, will he perform more miracles?" The scribes and the Pharisees, the heads of the priest- hood, judged that this sentiment should not be. allowed to grow among the people ; and to arrest its influence they sent out their subalterns to seize Jesus. But he himself, without being in the least degree disturbed by those premature and powerless measures, says to those who surround him, perhaps to those who had been charged to arrest him : " I am yet with you for a little while, and I go to him who has sent me. You will seek me, and you will not find me ; and where I am you canrtot come." " Where I am " — ■" ubi ego sum " — words of God. Jesus Christ, present and speaking on the earth, is also in heaven, where he ceases not to dwell. The Feast of the Tabernacles lasted a week. The last day they were accustomed to draw water from the fountain of Siloe, and they sprinkled that water on the altar, imploring of God an abundance of the fruits of the earth. That day Jesus, according to his wont, seizing the occasion of the circumstance, says in a loud voice : " If any one thirsts, let him come to me, and let him drink. From the heart of him who believes in The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 269 mc floods of living water will flow." lie speaks of the Holy Ghost, which will be given to those who believe I ia him. Among the people there were spies charged to seize ^ him ; as on the days preceding, they did not dare execute their commission. To the reproaches of the Pharisees and the princes of the priests they replied : "No man has ever spoken like that man." These fanatics demanded of them if they had allowed them- selves to be thus duped and seduced like the popu- lace, and if they had not seen that no person among the rulers and the distinguished citizens esteemed this Galilean. However, Nicodemus, the senator, had the boldness and courage to make an objection. He invoked the legality of the law, finding that no one could judge even a Galilean without knowing what he had done. Now, what crime could be imputed to this man ? The Pharisees were more and more transported with rage. There is room to believe that their design was to put Jesus to death without any formality of. law, only by virtue of the excommunication pronounced against him. "Arc you also a Galilean?" they say to Nico- demus. " Search the Scriptures, and learn that out of Galilee there comes no prophet." Such were their rea- sons ; the difficulty of finding out better ones has made such as these be still advanced. He listened only to the ignorant and the populace. He is a Galilean. That has been said for a long time, and it is still repeated. The miserable Emperor Julian thought to destroy Christianity by this impious expression ; the descen- dants of those who invented it, everywhere submerged in the ignominy of the Jewish name, yet call Jesus the Galilean. 270 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. \ Whilst they were plotting his ruin Jesus retires to the Mountain of Olives. He was accustomed to pass the nights there when he sojourned at Jerusalem. ) Judas knew it. The Mountain of Olives is the moun- tain of perfumes — the mountain of unction ; there should dwell the Christ, the anointed with the holy oil, who has anointed us with his strength to com- bat the mortal enemy; anointed us with his grace to weep for our faults, with his love to obtain pardon for them. The Mountain of Olives represents to us the sublime goodness of Jesus. The fruit of the olive, says Alcuin, is appropriate to this mystery. Placed un- I der the press, it yields oil — a sign of God's mercy ; for s the oil swims on the top of all other liquids, as it is written, " The mercies of the Lord are above all his works." In the wandering life of Jesus there are but two places that one can call his abodes : the Mountain of Olives, the mountain of mercies; and the house of Simon Peter, whom he has commanded to pardon seventy-seven times a day. Having, therefore, passed the night on the mountain, the next day, at the dawn of the morning, he returns to the Temple. The throng eagerly flock to hear him. Urged on by an instinct of salvation, the people rush around Him who had said through the prophet : " I will draw them by the bonds of love." He had sat down, and was instructing them, when the Pharisees appeared, dragging along a woman, whom they placed in the midst of the assembly. " Doctor," they say to him, " this woman is an adulteress. Moses command- ed us to stone such guilty ones; what do you think about it?" According to what Jesus would pronounce, they were prepared either to accuse him of disrespect for The Life of our Lord jfesus Christ 271 the law of Moses or severity toward sinners. Jesus, observing silence, stooped down and wrote on the ) earth with his finger. According to one tradition, he wrote the secret sins of the accusers of the adulteress. According to others, he contented himself with tracing out some short sentence of the Scriptures applicable to their wickedness; as, for example, this text of Jercmias: " O earth, earth ! write that these men are damned." However, the Pharisees continued to interrogate him, and wished to force him to answer. When he stood erect, he said to them : " Whosoever among you is without sin, let him take up the first stone and throw it at her " ; and without regarding them, probably to give them time to make a retreat, he stooped down again and began writing. Whether the words he had ( said had been sufficient to arouse their wicked con- sciences, or whether it had the power of unmasking more clearly their hypocrisy, all her accusers went away one after the other; the oldest left the first. Within the circle which was formed, says St. Augus- tine, only two personages remained — misery and mercy. Jesus said to the adulteress: "Where are those who accused you ? Has no person condemned you?" " No person, Lord," said she. " Nor shall I condemn you," replies the Saviour; " go, and henceforth sin no more." / " Come forth," David cried, " establish thy reign in truth, in sweetness, and in justice ! " By one word the Son of David caused mercy to triumph, without wounding the law; unmasked hypocrisy; confounded malice ; delivered the adulteress from their evil machi- nations; and, we may believe, converted her heart. Nevertheless, he observes all justice and all truth. "Sin no more." By this, at the same time, he shows mercy and he condemns. He is the protector of the ) ! ) 272 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. sinner, but not of the sin. If he had wished to absolve the crime, he could have said to the guilty: " Go, love as you like, and be sure I will deliver you from hell." But he says to her: " Sin no more." Let those pay attention to this who would wish to see only clemency, and let them fear ; for the Lord is clement and just. This is St. Augustine's commentary. After this scene Jesus resumes the instruction it had interrupted. His discourse turned on his mission and his divinity. By its profoundness, often difficult to be understood, it seemed rather destined for those who would meditate on it in future ages than for those be- \ fore whom it was pronounced. It is supposed the \ Evangelist preserved but the substance of it, and that our Lord gave developments to it that suited the in- telligence of the auditors. It is said that many be- lieved in him, despite the denials and the injurious in- ( terruptions of the Pharisees. \ These latter did not cease to demand of him who he was. He said to them : " When you shall have raised up the Son of Man, you will then know who I am, and that of myself I do nothing, but that I do the things the Father has taught me. He who sent me is with me, and he has not left me alone, because I always do what pleases him." This is what he had said to Nicodemus from the beginning, what he had announced to the apostles and the Jews themselves, declaring to them that they should have no other miracle but that of Jonas. They understood it after they had raised him on the cross. When he adds. " He who sent me is with me," he proclaims the unity of nature, which renders the Father inseparable from the Son. He informs us, besides that great and consoling truth of Christianity, that God attaches himself inseparably to r~ The Life of out Lord Jesus Christ. 273 ( those who always do what is pleasing to him, and never leaves them alone. As many in the throng believed, he said to them to X strengthen them: "If you remain attached to my ( words, you will be truly my disciples; you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." At this the Pharisees affect to misunderstand him, and to stand on their dignity of being the children of Abraham, .and of never having been slaves of anybody. Jesus tells ) them that he who sins becomes the slave of sin ; that, children of Abraham according to the flesh, but by their works enemies of the truth and of justice, they " In truth," he says to them, but at the same time he says it to the human race for all time — " verily, if any f I render themselves children of another father. " We have but one father," they say, "who is God." " If God be your father, you would love me," replies Jesus; " for it is from God that I proceed and that I am come. You are the children of the devil, and what your \ father desires, that you wish to do. From the com- mencement he was a murderer ; he has not remained \ in the truth, and this is why the truth is not in him ; and when he lies, it is from the depth of his own \ wickedness, because he is a liar and the father of lies. For my part, because I tell you the truth you do not believe me. Who among you will convict me of sin ? " At this word they keep silence. The Saviour continues: " Why, then, when I speak the truth, do you not believe me ? " And answering himself, he \ says : "lie who is of God hears the words of God ; and you do not hear them, because you are not of God.' The\- replied to him in recriminations, saying he was a demoniac and a Samaritan. Their insults were powerless to weary his patience. >X from them ; neither did he curse them nor forsake 274 The Life of our Lord jfesits Christ. one keep my word, he shall not see death for ever." They cried out again: "Now we know for certain that thou hast a demon ! How ! Abraham is dead, and the prophets are dead, and you say, ' If any one keep my word, he shall not taste death.' Are you greater than our father Abraham and the prophets who are dead ? For whom do you proclaim yourself? " Jesus answers: "If I glorify myself, my glory is no- thing. He who glorifies me is my Father, whom you declare to be your God. And you have not known him, but I know him ; and if I said I did not know him, I would be like you — a liar. But I know him, and I obey his word." Reverting to Abraham, whom they cited so much, he added these words, full of majesty and light : " Ab- raham, your father, desired ardently to see my day. He saw it, and he has been filled with joy." The Jews cry out : "You are not yet fifty years old, and you \ have seen Abraham." " Truly, truly," Jesus answers : " I say to you, before Abraham was known I AM." To define himself he was obliged to create an expression which was not that of men. This word expresses his \ divinity. Before indicates the past ; I am, the present. \ In the Divinity there is neither past nor future, but al- ways being. " Before Abraham was I am " — an ex- pression similar to that which the Jews had already understood : " I am who am." \ By this flash of lightning they get a glimpse of his equality with God, and they take up stones to stone him who speaks in such a manner; but Jesus be- comes invisible to them, and he departs from the J Temple. ( ) In concealing himself from their fur}- he did not fly ( ) J TJie Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 275 them. That same day a great miracle at once demon- strates to them Ins power, his mercy, and also his per- severance in the doctrine for which they upbraided him touching the observance of the Sabbath. I CHAPTER V. THE MAN BORN BLIND. JESUS sees a man born blind, and his disciples say to him : " Master, is it this man who has sinned, or his parents, that he was born blind ? " Jesus answers : " Neither himself nor his parents have sinned, but that the works of God may be manifested in him. It is necessary that whilst there is light I should do the works of Him who has sent me. The night cometh, when no person can work. Whilst I am in the world I am the light of the world." Having said these words, he moistens a little earth with his spittle, and with this clay he anoints the eyes of the blind man, and says to him : " Go, wash yourself in the pool of Siloe (which signifies One Sent)." The man born blind obeys, and returns with perfect sight. But his neighbors, and those who before had seen him begging, said : " Is not this he who sat and begged, asking alms?" Some said: "This is he"; others, " No, but he resembles him." And the blind man, now having got his sight, said : " I am he." " But how were your eyes opened ? " He replies : " That man whom they call Jesus made a little clay, rubbed my eyes, and said : ' Go to the pool of Siloe. and wash,' 376 ■ The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 277 ) ) blind — " what do you say of him who has opened your eyes?" He replies: "He is a prophet." But those Jews did not wish to believe that he had been blind, nor that he had received his sight, until they had made his father and mother come. They in- terrogate them. They ask: "Is this your son, who you say was born blind ? How, then, does he now see ?" The father and the mother answered : " We know he is our son, and that lie was born blind. How he now sees we know not ; nor do we know who has opened his eyes. Ask himself; he is of age. Let him speak for himself of what concerns him." Those poor people were afraid of the Jews; for they had already agreed among them that they would cast out from the synagogue whoever should acknowledge Jesus for the Messias. This is why they said, " He is of age ; interrogate him." Having recalled the man who had been blind, the Jews say to him, speaking of Jesus: "Give glory to God We know that this man is a sinner." " If he be and I went and washed, and I see." They said to him : "Where is that man?" He answered: "I know not." And they conducted him to the Pharisees. It was on a Sabbath day that Jesus thus moistened a little earth and opened the eyes of the man born blind. In their turn the Pharisees asked the man born blind how he recovered his sight. He said to them : "He put a morsel of clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I saw." Some among the Pharisees, speaking of Jesus, said : " That man who does not keep the Sabbath is not of God " ; others, " How can a man who is a sinner per- form such miracles?" And they were divided among themselves. "And you," said they to the man born 278 The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. a sinner," he says, "' I know it not. I only know I was ( blind, and that now I see " ( They reply: "What has he done? How has he opened your eyes? " He repeats: " I have told you already, and you have heard it. How comes it you wish to hear it again ? Do you also wish to become his disciples? " Then they said to him, cursing him : " Be, then, yourself his disciple. As regards us, we are the disciples of Moses. We know God spoke to Moses ; but as to this man, we know not whence he came." " Behold, here is a wonderful affair," re- torts the man born blind, " that you have not known i whence he came, and nevertheless he has restored to me my perfect sight ! We know that God does not hear sinners; but if any one honors God and does his ) will, God favorably hears that person. Since the be- ginning of the world it is unheard of that anybody could open the eyes of, and give sight to, a man born blind. If this man did not come from God, he could not do this." They said to him : " You were wholly born in sin, and do you teach us ! " " And they cast him out." Jesus meets him and says to him : " Do you believe in the Son of God?" " Lord, who is he, so that I may believe in him ? " Jesus replies : " You have seen / him," and it is he who speaks to you. The man born blind says : " Lord, I believe." And prostrating himself before him, he adores him. i In reading this recital of incomparable candor Ave see that the Holy Ghost has answered by anticipation those who demand that the miracles of our Lord should be proved by cross-examination. We have here an enquiry in all the forms: denunciation of the fact — witnesses called — information — judgment. There H The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 279 is nothing wanting for their proof; all bears the stamp of truth. Nevertheless, the splendor and evidences of the Gos- pel recital contain more beauties and truths than they reveal at first sight. When we regard them with an eye of intelligence, the circumstances of the miracle, already so vivid, and speaking to the eye of flesh, be- come so many images of the greatness of God. We cannot follow the fathers in the long and beautiful ex- position they have given of it; but a few traits will suffice. Alone, poor, desolate, covered with tattered clothes, without hope and without friends, seated on the public thoroughfare outside the Temple, where he enters not, seated in eternal night, this beggar born blind is the human race. He lives because he is not dead. His whole life is not to die. He sees not the day, and he is silent. Here is man in the very depth of his misery and ruin. Jesus, whom the Jews come to cast out of their Temple, goes toward him ; he considers him and recognizes his worth. The apostles, having remembered that the Master had said to the paralytic to sin no more, demanded whether the blind man were in this state through the fault of his parents. Jesus answered them that neither the man born blind nor his parents had sinned — not that he was born without original sin, but that neither himself nor his parents have committed the sin by rea- son of which he was born blind. He was blind in or- der that the glory of God might be manifested, and in order that this sick man himself might receive with sight a sense far more precious than sight — -a light in- finitely superior to that of the light of day, which is also about to be bestowed on him. And Jesus adds : L~ The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. " Whilst I am in the world I am the light of the world." Whilst — that is, to-day and to-morrow, and as long as the world lasts. " I am with you even till the consummation of ages." The world shall cease to be when this light shall shine no more in it. Of a little earth and of his spittle he makes a clay, with which he anoints the eyes of the man born blind. Why this clay? On other occasions a touch, a word, was sufficient for him ; though neither touch nor word was ever necessary. At Cana an inward thought had changed water into wine. In St. Ambrose's time the Arians, on account of the clay, denied the miracle. They said this liniment was some secret of medicine to give sight to, and perfect the eyes of, the man born blind. The modern rationalists have taken up the argument of the Arians. St. Ambrose replies : " Jesus restored health. He did not use medicine; he applied no re- medies." " In restoring sight to the man born blind," adds St. Augustine, "Jesus Christ employs clay because he is the same God who formed the whole man out of clay. As he had created, he repairs ; as he had created to his image, he repairs to his image ; because this man who shall see will instantly and boldly confess the truth." St. Augustine sees here a figure of the Incar- nation. The spittle that Jesus mingles with the clay is the emblem of the Word, of the wisdom which pro- ceeds from the mouth of the Most High. The clay is the humanity — it is man formed from the slime of the earth. The eyes of our souls have been illuminated by this spittle and this clay through Christ the God-Man. The balsam which imparts light to us is the Incarna- tion. Jesus ordered the blind man to go wash himself in the fountain of Siloe. Siloe, says the evangelist, here The Life of our Lord yesus Chris/. 2S1 lifting up the veil, signifies envoy, the ambassador of God— that is, the Messias. It was meet that the incre- dulous Jews should see the man born blind, his eyes yet covered with clay ; it was meet the blind man him- self should give a proof of obedience and of faith, and receive some interior light from the name of that foun- tain where he went to recover his sight, and at the same time to receive a sort of baptism. This inexhaus- tible fountain — the fountain of the envoy of God — is a beautiful image of Jesus Christ, the eternal source of all graces. It typifies particularly his baptism, which tends to enlighten minds after the evangelical teaching is given to them ; and this is the reason the Greeks call baptism illumination. The blind man, with a faith prompt and docile, with- out raising contradictions, goes, washes himself, and sees clearly. He sees as if he had always seen. Jesus gave to him the eyes of his age — eyes exercised, and which \ knew how to see; supplying by his power all that habit and use effect, in order that man may avail him- self of his eyes. Therefore he performed not only one miracle with a little clay, but a collection of miracles. X The man born blind is not ungrateful. He had heard men speak of Jesus, and he could not be ignorant that Jesus had his enemies. He does not cease to proclaim that to him he is indebted for his siq.lit : " I am truly he. This man whom they call the Saviour prepared a little clay, and rubbed my eyes with it, and told me to go wash in the pool of Siloe. I went, I washed, and I see." In all that he says one discovers a noble and sincere soul. He does not speak of the spittle, he does not say more than he knows, and he did not know how Jesus had made this clay. Were this the place to discuss the question of the literary beauty of 282 The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. ( his words, we could point to the language so expressive of the rapidity of the miracle : " Abii, lavi, ct video " — " I went, I washed, and I see." In the presence of the Pharisees the man born blind is not less firm and resolute, and not less composed. He is a confessor — the first confessor. And those Pha- risees, those incredulous miracle-hunters— how they be- tray themselves ! The miracle is before them, living, speaking, attested by the multitude. They shut their eyes against it ; they do not wish to see it, to acknow- ledge it. And their hearts are filled with anguish and with a rage of hatred. Such will be the inward blindness of the wicked. They have not taken to heart, says St. Augustine, those eyes that beam in the countenance of the man born blind ; they have not received them, be- cause they do not Vish to obtain redemption. For as the natural light which clarifies bodies is, as it were, the reflection of the face of God, the Creator, so the super- natural light which clarifies our understandings is, according to the expression of St. Paul, the reflex of the benign countenance of God the Redeemer. What occupies the Jews is to criminate Jesus for having wrought a miracle on the Sabbath day. What is it to them that the poor are cured and consoled, that the blind see, that the beggar gets his daily bread ? The uppermost thought in their mind is to know how they can apply to the Benefactor of the poor an article of law which might authorize them to stone him. To facilitate this action of the law they take care to create a crime. They did not say that Jesus cured on the Sabbath day ; to cure on the Sabbath day is not for- bidden. They accuse him of violating the Sabbath. At the same time they would be glad to have it in their power to accuse him of imposture. Instantly he The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 283 Even in these severe words one feels how compas- sionate is his soul. But to manifest it more he pre- sents to them the touching figures of the sheepfold and the good shepherd. He sums up in these two parables says to them : " Which of you will convict me of sin ?" And none raised his head to confront him. Could they not prove that he had lied ; that this blind man who declares himself cured, and who has not seen him yet was not blind ? But all their efforts but tend to estab- lish more solidly the truth they pretended to gainsay. Conquered, divided among themselves, they give up the contest by driving from the Temple the man of heart, who will not consent to be ungrateful and a liar in order to remain there. Ungrateful and liars them- selves, they could not better forecast the character of all the contests which shall be waged against the ) Gospel. The Saviour was anxious to formulate himself the last conclusions of this procedure. He savs to the man ) ( \ born blind and cured : " I am come into this world for judgment, that they who see not may see, and they who see (and who render themselves unworthy of the light) may become blind." These words are applied to the miracle which Jesus wrought and to the faith of the man born blind, and at the same time, in a spiritual sense, to the voluntary blindness of the Pharisees. Some among them appear to understand him. They said to him: "Are we all blind ? " Jesus replies : " If you were blind, you would be without sin." But now, as you sa}', you see clearly, your sin remains. For, having the knowledge of the Scriptures, which ought to lead them to the knowledge of the Messias, they did not see, because they did not wish to see. 284 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. all the teachings and instructions which he came to give in that laborious mission against the Pharisees, but for the profit of the Pharisees themselves if they but wished it, as well as of all the lost sheep of the house of Israel. " I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved : and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pastures. The thief cometh not, but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd givcth his life for' his sheep. But the hireling and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep, and flieth : and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep. And the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling; and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd ; and I know mine, and mine know me. As the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father: and I lay down my life for my sheep. And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." But it should not be that this sacrifice, which he had so often announced, and which he yet announces, should be charged upon him one day as either an heroic folly or an inevitable and perhaps involuntary consummation, as if, at the end, life had been snatched from him rather than given up by him. He therefore declares, when concluding, two things: the first, that he died to accomplish his Father's will ; the second, that he was free to depart or not to depart life, and to take it again after having quitted it. " And this is why my Father loves me — because I give my life to take it again. No person can take it away from me ; but I The Life of our Lord J'esus Christ. 285 rive it of my own accord. And it is in my power to give it ; and 'it is in my power to take it again. Such is the order I have received from my Father." Divine clearness of the mystery of the redemption, j and which should be sufficient to make us comprehend, if the narrow heart of man could comprehend it, all the love of God ! ( ( ) t } I 1 I ( I ) BOOK V- DISCOURSES AND PARABLES. CHAPTER I. MISSION OF THE DISCIPLES — THE SAMARITAN — MAR- THA AND MARY. JESUS retires to the confines of Judea, either to Gali- lee or the country known by the name of Perea, where the powerful ones of Jerusalem could not reach him. It is generally thought that it was there he chose the seventy-two disciples to send them out to preach two and two before him in the cities where he was going to go. The number seventy-two signifies the universality of nations. As light pervades and illumines the universe in twenty-four hours, says St. Augustine, so the function of illuminating the universe by the Gospel of the Trinity is confined to seventy-two disci- ples ; for three times twenty-four makes seventy-two. They went two by two because there are two precepts of charity : the love of God and the love of neigh- bor. He who has not charity toward his neighbor ought not to be charged with the ministry of preaching. This association of two for the service of the Lord is, 286 T/ie Life of our Lord yes us Christ. 287 besides, very ancient. God delivered Israel by the as- sociation of Moses and Aaron ; and it is written, " A brother sustained by his brother is like a fortified city." Jesus gave the new missionaries instructions like those the apostles had received, with the power of cur- ing and healing diseases and casting out devils. This is the complement of the foundation of the apostle- \ ship : " I send you as lambs among wolves; in whatsoever house you will enter, first say : ' Peace be to this house.' Eat and drink of whatever will be there ; for the labor- er is worthy of his hire. Cure the sick you will find therein, and say to them : ' The kingdom of God is nigh unto you' ; and if any city receives you not, say to the inhabitants : ' We shake off the very dust of your city, which clings to us, against you.' And I say to you that on the last day Sodom will be treated less rigo- rously than that city. . . . He who hears you hears through the virtue of your name." Jesus answers them with a gentle severity, in a manner to preserve them in me ; and he who despises you despises me ; and he who despises me despises Him who sent me." The seventy-two went and returned joyful. " Lord," they say, " the demons themselves are subject to us ) ) ) humility : " Behold, I have given you power to tread on ser- pents and scorpions, and on all the power of the enemy, without receiving any hurt from them. However, do not rejoice that you have power over the devils ; but rejoice that your names arc written in heaven." And at the same time, thinking of the happiness of those he loved, he rejoices in the Holy Ghost and says: " My Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I give you ( i r^ 288 The Life of our Lord yes us Christ. thanks because, keeping those things concealed from the learned and the wise, it has pleased you to reveal them to the little ones." And in order to show that he disposes of all things as the Father, he adds : " All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knoweth who the Son is but the Father, and who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." He says again to the disci- ples: "Happy the eyes that see what you see. For many kings and prophets have desired to seethe things that you see, and have not seen them ; to hear the things that you hear, and have not heard them." And then, addressing himself to the multitude, to those who have lived in bygone ages, to us who now exist, to those who shall exist till the end of the world, " Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will re- fresh you ; take my yoke on you and learn of me, be- cause I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find peace to your souls ; for my yoke is sweet and my burden is light." St. Augustine gives brilliancy of thought to the deep meaning of this discourse. Those who take upon them the yoke of Jesus, says he, have to bear such afflictions that it seems to them not to pass from labor to repose, but, on the contrary, from repose to labor; but the Holy Ghost is there, who incessantly renews the interior man amid the ruins of the outward man. Through the affluence of the delights of God all dejection and sadness are turned into interior joys ; those who love cannot suffer. Thus Jesus appears to us always meek, humble, com- passionate, and divine ; lavish of the wealth of his unbounded compassion in proportion as he multiplies the proofs of his universal sovereignty. The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 289 The same day a doctor of the law, probably one of those mischievous declaimers who overran Judea, de- famers of Jesus, says to him, with a view to entrap him: " Master, what must I do to gain eternal life?" He hoped for some expression contrary to the law of Moses. Jesus answers him : " What does the law command ? What do you read in it ? " By this ques- tion he obliges him to give of himself an evangelical re- sponse. He will prove to him afterwards that in citing the text of the law he is ignorant of its meaning. The doctor then replies: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind ; and thy neighbor as thy self." Jesus said to him : "You have answered well. Do that, and you will live." Forthwith the doctor, wishing to glorify himself in his justice, says to Jesus : " And who is my neighbor ? " We see here that the first question of this man was crafty, and that he had no love for this neighbor, since he did not esteem that any one could or should be his neighbor. He repeats very well what it was necessary to do to acquire eternal life, but he does not consider the first word of what he recites. He is full of himself, and void of the love of God. Not loving his brother, whom he sees, he cannot love God, whom he does not see. But St. Cyril adds that he knows not his neighbor, because he does not believe in Christ. He who does not know Christ is ignorant of the law. Misunder- standing the truth, he cannot know the law which declares the truth. Jesus says: "A certain man went down from Jeru- salem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, who also stripped him, and having wounded him went away leaving-; him half dead. And it chanced that a certain 290 The Life of oar Lord yesus Christ. priest went down the same way ; and seeing him, passed by. In like manner also a Lévite, when he was near the place and saw him, passed away. But a certain Sama- ritan being on his journey, came near him ; and seeing him was moved with compassion. And going up to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine ; and setting him upon his own beast brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two pence, and gave to the host, and said : Take care of him ; and whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I at my return will repay thee." Jesus, addressing himself to the doctor of the law, demanded of him : " Which seems to you to have been the neighbor of him who had fallen into the hands of robbers?" "He," replied the doctor, " who had had compassion and who assisted him." Jesus says to him : " Go, and do likewise." This man who went down from Jerusalem — the vision of peace — towards Jericho — the city of evil — is Adam; it is the human race. He quitted his country for exile ; he goes down from sunny heights, and wanders in re- gions of darkness ; and there he meets with angels of darkness, who strip him naked, cover him with wounds, and leave him helpless. He is half dead, and what of life remains in him is not sufficient to enable him to raise his drooping head. Wounded and bruised in his free will, Adam could not regain the eternal life he had Jost. Behold him, then, helplessly prostrate, covered with wounds. Aaron the priest sees him and can do nothing for him ; he passes by. Moses the Lévite sees and can do nothing for him, and he passes him by. Neither the law nor the prophets can cure the human race ; and because they cannot cure, they must pass by. The law made known the sin, but did not abolish it. The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 291 And, besides, it was not given for that purpose, because at the beginning man could not receive the mystery of Christ. And if the priest and the Lévite have felt a first movement of compassion, it was very quickly stifled by the hardness of their hearts ; and they pass by with the law unaccomplished, which tells them in vain to love their neighbor as themselves. They do not love their neighbor, because they do not love God ; and on account of this obduracy they are enemies to them- selves without knowing it. There comes a Samaritan. That man, a stranger by race, is a neighbor by compassion. Jesus himself is that Samaritan. Samaritan means guardian, protector. It is written of him: "He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor will he sleep." When they accused him of being a Samaritan and possessed of a devil, he denied that he was possessed ; he does not protest against the injury which one of those titles inflict on him — that of guardian of the weak and afflicted. Now, this Samaritan was on a journey ; Jesus was really a traveller, and he descended for us to earth, and turned not from his course. The object of his journey was to help the human race wounded, bleeding, stripped naked, half dead. He becomes our neighbor by assuming our nature — our neighbor through mercy. He had compassion, and he drew near to us. The distance he had to traverse to come to our relief was immense. What more separated than God and man ? The divine wisdom, that it might reach mankind, created the miracle of Jesus. Having in himself justice and immortality, seeing in us sin and death, Jesus took not upon him the two evils which would have rendered him equal to us, and would have placed him in the necessity of being re- The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. deemed with us. In order to be near us, with us, and not be what we are, though he could not become a sinner, he became mortal. Assuming chastisement without assuming guilt, he abolishes both guilt and punishment. The Samaritan, coming to the abandoned and help- less man, bandages his wounds, after having poured on them oil and wine — the oil of mercy, which assuages, | mollifies the wounds ; the wine of justice, which cleanses from corruption. The oil is the consolation of hope ; the wine is the exhortation to fervor. The oil, again, represents the human nature of the Physician ; the wine, his divine nature. For Jesus Christ has acted ) sometimes humanly and sometimes divinely. He has poured out oil and wine by saving us by his humanity and his divinity ; he has taught us to mingle severity \ with gentleness, so that we may be neither ulcerated by excess of rigor nor mollified by excess of condescen- sion. And after having dressed our wounds he bound them up by imposing on us a check of a severe law, without which it would be impossible for us to regain our former health. The Samaritan puts the bleeding and bruised man on his horse ; the Good Shepherd carries on his shoulders the lost sheep. Jesus Christ eradicates the infirmity of our flesh by taking it upon himself. Under the figure of the Samaritan behold him already open- ing his arms, between which we shall be, not led, but carried off, to the bosom of the Church, where our re- storation to health will be achieved. The law did not receive all men. It is written that the Moabite and the Ammonite did not enter into the Church of God; but now the Church is the inn open to everybody who wills to believe. Come, ye from every nation ; come, ye bowed down with every sor- "1 The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 293 row ; come, ye wounded ; come, ye bruised and bleed- ing ; come to the baptism of God, to the feast of God, \ to the hospitality and friendship of God. For the Samaritan is satisfied with lodging and caring for the wounded man in the inn. He enters with him, dwells with him, takes care of him. Nevertheless, the Samaritan cannot remain. The following day he gives the innkeeper two pieces of sil- ver, and says to him : " Take care of this man, and what you charge over and above at my return I will pay you." These two pieces of money are the two Testaments, which are stamped with the likeness of the Eternal King, and in which the Church finds the in- ) finitely precious value of his charity ; they are the two commandments of the love of God and of the love of neighbor which the apostles received to evangelize the earth ; they are the promise of the present life and of the future life: "Hoc fac et vives." Those two pieces of money are also the knowledge of the mystery by which the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father. The Church receives this illumination, this heavenly insight, in recompense for the care she af- fords to the man, wounded and bruised, who has been confided to her, and whom the Saviour himself took j care of for some time. " And what ycu demand over and above I will pay to you on my return." For this innkeeper, this new priest, is not the mercenary who renders only those services whose price is stipulated for and paid ; nor the mechanical instrument, as it were, that goes not beyond the required labor. The apostles, full of the Spirit of God, paid over and above. To precept they added counsel ; on duty they placed the crown of per- fection. Although it might be allowed them to live The Life of our Lord J"esus Christ. by the Gospel, yet they lived by the labor of their hands ; they sought the cross when they could have avoided it. But it is not possible for man to be more generous than Jesus. " At my return I will pay you." This return, his coming back again, will be the day of judgment. He will pay without measure those who have served him without measure. After this recital Jesus interrogates the doctor. " Which was this man's neighbor?" The doctor, puffed up with the knowledge of the law, must never- theless admit that neither the priest nor the Lévite, who lived under the law, knew what the law com- manded. The Samaritan alone fulfils its prescriptions. Jesus says to him : " Go, and do likewise." When you see an unfortunate creature, whether he be Jew or Gentile, behold your neighbor. The dignity of the priesthood is nothing, the knowledge of the law is no- thing, if good works be wanting. Whosoever is merci- ful, he it is who fulfils the law. Other circumstances led the Saviour to repeat the instruction on prayer. He speaks of the power of constant prayer, of which the example of the Chanaan- ite had been so striking an example. To him every- thing was an occasion of instruction, and he hastened to seize it. He spread abroad those creative words which revealed to men the spiritual1- life and establish- ed charity. At the same time the hypocrisy, pride, false knowledge, and obduracy of the Jews and of the doc- tors of the law are overwhelmed with terrible anathe- mas. Through charity for those whom their false jus- tice and false wisdom led astray, and through pity for themselves, he treats them as they were accustomed to treat sinners; but he applies himself especially to portray them in order to give a lesson to his Church The Life of our Lord ye su s Christ. 295 so that the illusion of false justice should never be able to corrupt the truth in her. In reality, he has preserved her from this danger. There are Pharisees in the midst of Christianity, because all the vices are of human origin ; but there is no greater stranger to the Church than Phariseeism in doctrine and in morals. At that moment a sentiment wis expressed justly considered among the profoundest and the most fruit- ful that may have fallen from the lips of the God- Man. Passing through Bethania, Jesus stops at the house of a woman named Martha, sister of that Mary Mag- dalene, the penitent and pardoned sinner, whom we saw at the banquet of Simon the Pharisee. Martha occupies herself at once with the repast she wished to prepare for her guest and the disciples, while Mary, seated at the feet of the Master, hears him speak ; for Jesus, giving an example to the apostles, did not enter solely to rest, but chiefly to teach. But Martha pre sented herself before him, and said: " Lord, do you not see how my sister leaves me to serve all alone? Tell her, then, to come and assist me." Jesus answers her affectionately : " Martha, Martha, you trouble your- self about many things; but, truly, there is but one thing necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, vvhich shall not be taken away from her." Of all this discourse of Jesus the Holy Ghost has preserved for us but this saying, which expresses the only thing necessary for the present and the eternal happiness of the soul ; the only thing without which all the rest is but trouble and torment, or but a tran- sient joy which will be very soon snatched away from us. Jesus did not blame the eagerness of Martha, The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. who was anxious to serve him ; but he warned her that every work done for God must be done with calm- ness and humility, and that it is by love he is best served ; that there is nothing more timely than to lis- ten to Jesus Christ and to attach one's self to him alone. By this expression he raises the contemplative life far above the active life, however laudable may be the action ; for it is the contemplative life which is truly fruitful for heaven, which produces even here below the greatest works. The contemplation of God makes known his beauty ; beauty illumines love ; love gives out that ample flame, that living fire, which is sacrifice. All the saints have contemplated God ; and this is why they wished to live and die for him. Martha served the Lord, but Mary contemplated him ; and it is Mary who will be at the foot of the cross. CHAPTER II. THE WOMAN BOWED TOGETHER— THE BANQUETS AT WHICH JESUS ASSISTED— THE DROPSICAL MAN- LECTURES TO THE PHARISEES. AMAN came to ask Jesus to divide an inheritance between himself and his brother. Jesus did not wish to do it, and said to him who besought him : " Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses." On this occasion he pro- poses the parable of the rich miser of whom God de- manded an account of his soul, whilst he was intent on filling up his granaries with the fruits of the earth. He insists on alms, on confidence in God, on humi- lity and penance. All these short and sweet words have become the noble laws of Christian society. He min- gles in them prophecies concerning the Church, the second coming, the reprobation and conversion of the Jews. Thus he everywhere taught wherever occasion pre- sented itself, but more particularly on the Sabbath day, in the synagogues, where the people thronged to hear him ; and this was a continual motive of wrath among the Pharisees. One day, being at the synagogue, he saw among the audience a woman bent down by a spirit of infirmity 297 298 The Life of our Lord Jïsus Christ. for eighteen years. She could not look upwards. He said to her: "Woman, you are freed" ; and forthwith she raised herself and glorified God. The chief of the Pharisees was much irritated at this. But not daring to attack Jesus, whose retorts he dreaded, he attacks and blames the poor woman now healed and all the peo- ple who manifested joy. " Are there not six days in the week," he says to them, " to work? Come, then, on one of those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day." Despite this cunning shift, the Pharisee could not avoid the telling reprimand : " Ye hypocrites, doth not each of you on the Sabbath day loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead it to the water ? And this woman, whom Satan has held bowed down for eighteen years — is it not proper to heal her on the Sabbath day ? " Whether on account of Adam's transgression, which introduced into the world infirmities and death, or whether on account of her own crimes this woman suf- fered through the malice of the demon, God has left to Satan this power, so that mankind should experience the desire of becoming better; but because Satan is wicked, he endeavors to exercise his power, so as to render mankind more wicked. He applies himself to remove from their view the sight of heaven, so that men may suffer and lose all hope ; he bends down the wicked to the earth like the brutes. The head of man was made to turn itself towards heaven ; this woman could not raise her head and look heavenward. Jesus calls her by a movement of his preventive grace : " Thou art freed." He touches her with his hand. " Now, daughter of Abraham, look heavenward. The demon has no longer power over thee ; thy bonds are broken." She stands erect and glorifies God. The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 299 Like those who were enraged against the man born blind, the ruler of the synagogue, witness of the mira- cle, sees in it but the glory which will result to Jesus ; he would prefer that this woman should always remain in her deplorable condition, bent down to the earth like a beast, rather than that Jesus should be glorified. We see here all rulers of synagogues, all masters and disciples of every school of error. They would prefer that the Church should not do the good that she can and does accomplish, so that she might not be honored and esteemed. Above all, those teachers of error do not wish that she would reform mankind and make it look heavenward. Some seek a pretext for curbing her influence in the very worship of God. Others seek a pretext in the well-being of man himself. They say that it is ruinous to man to raise him up ; that his interest is to grovel and be bent down to the earth. They employ every sophism ; they use force to turn away the people from coming to Jesus Christ, whether on the Sabbath day or on other days. They fear, above all things, that man should hear this word : Sur sum corda. Yet, at the very time that they strain every nerve to extinguish the light of the Gospel, they throw off its yoke. They unharness the ox and the ass, the brutal instinct ; they lead them to the pool ; they have ready muddy and stagnant waters that extinguish rea- son and make the light hateful. When they have thus accustomed man to a taste for uncleanness and a love of darkness, they will say to him : " You see ! We have set you free." And they will make him work for them. Christ instructs his Church to fear not : Those ene- mies will say what they wish, they will do what they can, against you. I say to you, speak, act, accomplish, 3oo The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. the work of my love. In spite of their menaces, spread abroad the truth, spread the light ; and, if it be neces- sary that you should give light to the world from the gibbet's height, that those victims of the demon may raise their heads again and be free, do as I have done — die! A few days after that Jesus provoked anew his ad- versaries. He went in to eat on the Sabbath day to a house of the Pharisees. All observed him. Among the number there was a dropsical man who stood be- fore him. Jesus said to the doctors, " Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?" They all kept silence. Then Jesus took the dropsical man by the hand, healed him, and sent him away. Then, knowing the thoughts of the guests, Jesus said to them : " Who among you, if his ox or his ass should fall into a ditch, would not forthwith draw it out ? " And they knew not what to answer. This was the fourth banquet at which we behold Jesus. As at others, he performs at this also a great act of mercy, and imparts sublime teaching. He went to those feasts because there also they had need to see him, and because those whom he found there did not come to hear him. It was his ardent desire to save the Pharisees themselves, at the same time that he brought the benefit of his presence to their servants, to whom they would not allow the freedom to go to him, Like the dove that embraces her little ones threatened by the fowler, says St. Augustine, he appeared corpo- rally amid the rejoicings of the world. Even now he appears again to our mind to recall us to where there are true feasting and true joy. On account of the great renown of Jesus, the Phari- sees voluntarily received him ; they even invited him, The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. but, instead of hearing him, they watched him. He \ knew it ; he saw their malice when the dropsical man I advanced and stood before him, a model of faith in his mute and persevering prayer. The Pharisees thought within themselves: "What will he do? If he cures this malady we will accuse him of violating the Sabbath ; and if he sends him off without healing him, he is then not so merciful as the simple and weak- minded people supposed he was." Jesus, by one word, already pronounced on a similar occasion, baffles them: " Is it permitted to heal on the Sabbath day? " The Pharisees dared say nothing. This question, which they unanimously solved against Jesus, was con- troverted among themselves. Many contended that none should administer a cure unless there were danger of death ; others were less rigorous. Jesus shows them that, despite their malice and wicked intent on his life, they are powerless to seize him without his voluntary surrender. He despises their machinations and fears sanctify festival days, and to consecrate them to charity. He rewards the faith of the dropsical man, who humbly waits, not presuming to implore his aid, except by exhibiting before him his disease. The dropsical man is cured. Behold the crime for which the Pharisees traduce the loving Jesus. He hears the murmurs which they dare not articulate, and he replies to them : " If your ox or your ass — the least temporal ) interest that can be in danger of beine lost — were im- not their envy. He teaches them that it is good to perilled, then you would care very little about the Sabbath." ( The ox and the ass are named to renew in the mind of the Pharisees the prophecy of Isaias, and to give I them the interpretation of it : " The ox knows his 302 The Life of our Lo7'd yesus Christ. master, and the ass his master's stable ; but Israel has not known me." The ox tied to the yoke is the Jewish people, whose neck is hardened under the yoke of the law. The ass is the symbol of the Gentiles, subject to all errors. He who will come at the last day to draw them from the pit wherein they have fallen is he who cures all diseases, who delivers from all capti- vity, who dispels all darkness. What the Pharisees do through avarice he will do through charity. Avarice was the capital vice of the Pharisees. The dropsical man was a perfect figure of this vice. The dropsical man is burning with an insatiable thirst ; one part of his body is horribly swollen, the other part is dried up, parched. From this body, where all is chang- ed into corrupt humors, a fetid breath is exhaled. This is the avaricious man ; ever changing, always insatiable, poor in the lap of abundance, having no other thoughts but filthy lucre, only aspiring to quench his thirst of that gold that swells and kills him. St. Paul says that avarice is an idolatry. Who can cure this evil ? Jesus can do it. We must importune him, as did the dropsical man, by presenting ourselves before him. Erat ante ilium, says the Gospel, point- ing out with divine conciseness the steadfastness in prayer and the strength of hope in that man who wished to be healed. He came forth without being invited, and he stands there braving the gibes and sneers and taunts of the bystanders, only heeding him who healed, teaching the world to ask and obtain miracles. Jesus takes him by the hand, heals him, and sends him away. The hideous disease which this man harbored in his body the Pharisees had in their souls. So, in order to heal them and apply the remedies which were suitable The Life of our Lord "Jesus Christ. 303 for the wound of those souls, inflated and hardened, Jesus gives them the beautiful lesson not to thrust ( themselves in the first places, as they were always eager and anxious to do. " For whosoever exaltcth < himself shall be humbled ; and whosoever humblcth himself shall be exalted." He recommends them to give banquets to the poor rather than to the rich, be- cause the rich will repay what is given to them, but what is given to the poor God will repay it. These things appear to us common enough ; they that become so only through Jesus Christ and through his Church, to whom he has taught them. One of the invited guests exclaimed : " Happy the one who will be at the feast in the kingdom of God ! " Jesus replies by the parable of those who refused to resort to the feast of the father of the household. The invited guests first called alleged divers pretexts and did not come. One was going to look after his farm ; another wished to try a yoke of oxen newly purchased ; another replied that he was going to get married. Thus the care and anxiety for temporal affairs estrange men from the things of God. All that is in the world, the apostle says, is the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life. The householder orders the poor to be gather- ed in : the lame, the blind, even the vagrants who stroll along the streets ; he wishes them to be com- pelled to enter, so that the banquet-hall should be filled up. This is a prophecy of the vocation of the Gentiles and of the multitude of sinners who shall be washed and clothed with festive robes, so as to participate in the feast of God. The proud refuse ; the humble are chos- en. "Gather in those on the highways and along the hedges," says the father of the family, " and compel The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. them to enter." This is that famous compelle intrare which has so much shocked heretics and scandalized so much the false wisdom of a great number of or- thodox believers. The Gentiles come from the roads and the market-places of the town. Heretics, says St Augustine, come from the hedge-rows ; for those who plant hedges establish divisions. Let them be re- moved from the hedges. Let them be snatched from among the thorns. But they do not wish to be forced. We will enter, they say, by our own will. This is not what God has commanded : Compelle intrare. Let the necessity come from the outside. Thence is born the will. And this compulsion, adds St. Gregory, often is from God and his mercy. Those enter through vio- lence who, harassed and bruised by the adversities of the world, return to the love of God. They escape the terrible sentence which has been pronounced in those words : " I say to you that none of those who have been invited, and who have not wished to come, shall taste of my feast." Jesus betakes himself to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Dedication. Some of the Pharisees came to him and counselled him to flee, as Herod was determined to take his life. Our Lord knew that it was Herod himself who commissioned those officials. He replied to them : " Go and tell that fox, behold I chase out devils and that I heal the sick ; to-day, to-morrow, and the third day all will be consummated. To-day, nevertheless, I must travel on, and to-morrow and the day following ; for it is not proper that a prophet should be killed out of Jerusalem." At this thought, more touched at the chastisement that awaited guilty Jerusalem than at his own punishment, he allows his love and his sorrow to speak: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 305 you who put to death the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often have I desired to gath- er together your children, as the hen gathers her young brood under her wings, and you have not wished it ! " The Pharisees of Jerusalem, resolved to get rid of him, accost him in the Temple with one of those cap- tious questions by which they meditated taking his life. They say to him : " How long will you hold us in suspense? If you be the Son of God, tell us boldly." What they demanded they knew well, and Jesus for a long while had satisfied them on this point; but they were bent on ensnaring him in his words and thereby condemning him. Everybody expected a tem- poral kingdom of Jesus Christ. Jesus, by saying, " I am he " — by this word only would have constituted himself in a state of rebellion against the Roman na- tion. Yet if he kept silent, impiety could take advan- tage of his silence. The question of the Pharisees might indeed em- barrass human prudence ; they had not reckoned on the divine wisdom, and it confounds them. Our Lord did not wish either to conquer as a common victor or per- ish as a seditious citizen ; nor did he wish to afford any pretext for their wicked designs. He says to them : " I speak to you, and you do not believe me. The works which I do in my Father's name give testimony of me. I and the Father are one." On hearing these words they took up stones to stone him. They understood, but their avowal was required, so that the word which they endeavored to draw from him should issue from their own mouths. He continued : " I have done many good works be- 306 The Life of out Lord yes us Chris/. fore your eyes by the power of my Father ; for which of those works do you stone me ? " The Jews replied : " It is not for any good work that we stone you, but for your blasphemies ; because you, a man, make your- self God." It is they who say it, confessing with the same breath the object for which they interrogated him. Jesus, however, without departing from the prudence which it pleased him to use towards those perfidious wretches, confirms what they had understood: " Is it not written in your law, I have said, you arc gods ? " If, therefore, the Scriptures — which cannot be destroyed — call the judges of Israel gods, why do you say to him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world — why do you say to him, You blaspheme, be- cause he has said, I am the Son of God ? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not ; but if I do them, even if you do not wish to believe my word, believe in my works, and know and believe that the Father is in me, and that I am in him. The Jews did not undertake to reason. They sought to lay hands on Jesus ; but he escapes them, as he had already done, by rendering them immovable or by ren- dering himself invisible, and he departs from Jerusa- lem. L CHAPTER III. THE SHEEP — THE DRACHMA — THE PRODIGAL SON. JESUS came from beyond the Jordan to a spot where John at first baptized, and he dwelt there. His goodness continued to attract around him a multitude of publicans and sinners. He rejected nobody, and he instructed them. The Pharisees, the scribes, and the doctors, always the same, did not cease to blame his condescension towards those of low birth and public immorality. " See," said they, "this man receives sin- ners, and eats with them." Jesus answers by a parable of a shepherd who leaves his flock of an hundred sheep to find out only one lost sheep, and that of the woman who rejoiced at finding her lost drachma. He said to the Pharisees that the angels of God in heaven rejoiced more at the conversion of one sinner than at the penance of ninety-nine just. In order that they yet might take a higher and more just idea of the munificence of divine mercy, he pro- poses to them the parable of the prodigal son, wherein the heart of the father of the family is pictured with traits so touching. And yet we know this does not represent the entire love of God and the entire love of the Saviour. For the father of the parable awaited his son ; he looks out for him ; but God, the true Father, calls, moves, the sinner plunged in his crimes ; he be- 307 308 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. seeches, implores, him to return ; he assures him of his pardon ; he goes himself to find him out And to reach the ungrateful sinner through what roads has not Jesus passed ? These three parables (so to speak) make but one. The Gospel does not contain a more touching and affecting lesson. The hundred sheep of the first parable are the univer- sal domain of God. The hundred, a perfect number, re- presents all creatures. The lost sheep is the human race. The Son of God, the good Pastor, leaves the faithful flock, and comes on earth. Having recovered his sheep, he does not chastise it ; he does not lead it back by rudely hurrying it on with the whip of hirelings and with the teeth of dogs. He carries it on his shoulders. We here recognize the Samaritan. Jesus Christ takes upon himself the burden of our humanity. We know what is this weight, what are the ways of return ; but he found what was lost. And as the shepherd calls his friends and his neighbors, Jesus Christ invites his saints and his angels, and says to them : " Rejoice with me." He does not say, " Rejoice with the sheep that was lost," remarks St. Ambrose, but " Rejoice with me." Our life is his joy, our return to heaven is the fulness of his happiness. The parable of the sheep teaches us that we are the creatures of God, and that we belong to him. The parable of the drachma teaches us more clearly that we are made to his image and likeness ; for the drachma, a royal coin, bears the figure of the king. The woman who searches for her lost drachma holds a lighted lamp in her hand. The lighted lamp is a shining, brilliant light in an earthen vessel. Jesus is the Divinity in terrestrial flesh ; the woman is the Church. She The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 309 holds the light of Christ in her hand ; she also holds \ the doctrine of truth. By the eflfulgency of this im- \ mortal lamp, by the strength of her faith, the Church I triumphs over darkness. She searches without ceasing; she stirs up and moves about the refuse of humanity; she purifies it. At length she finds the lost soul, and her joy is great, and all those who love her rejoice with her. In this woman who "sweeps" we recognize again him of whom John the Baptist has said: "He will take the winnowing fan, and he will make clean his thrashing-floor; he will put the good grain in his gra- nary, and he will cast the chaff into the fire which will never be extinguished." The same sense reappears more extensively in the parable of the prodigal son. We see more clearly in it the fault of the sinner ; by it we are far better moved by the mercy of God, whose object the sinner is. There is in it, besides, another great lesson regarding the Jews. Their obduracy and their jealousy arc vividly depicted ; their return to the faith is again predicted. The householder has two sons, who represent the two peoples. The eldest stays in his paternal man- sion; the other claims his patrimony. He receives it and goes away. The Jew retains the worship of God ; the Gentile abandons himself to the worship of idols. This son has received his fortune : reason, free-will, the riches of nature and of the earth, and, in a certain degree, the treasures even of grace — that is, the re- membrance of the primitive revelation and the promise of the Redeemer. He wanders far from his father, not by the distance of space, says St. Augustine — be- cause God is everywhere — but by alienation of the heart. The sinner shuns God and keeps himself far 3IQ The Life of our Lord yesits Christ. away from him. He goes off and squanders all the patrimony that had been apportioned to him. De- bauchery devours all. In this estrangement from God wherein he is plunged, in this sea of the world, in these grottos of the siren, he abandons his soul to error, his heart to its passions. He destroys the faculties of the mind, the purity of the soul, the just discernment be- tween good and evil. Incredulity surrounds him, weakens his will, smothers his reason, and leads him to idolatry. He leaves his father; he finishes by for- getting him. This is the climax of his ruin. When all is spent, famine supervenes. There is no more truth, no more love ; there is famine of the soul and famine of the heart. Then he engages in the service of one of the in- habitants of the country, and he is sent out into the fields, where he is obliged to herd swine. By the work with which this prodigal son was charged one recog- nizes the master he had selected. This master fed him not, or the nourishment or food he gave him did not satisfy him, did not satiate his appetite. The water he drank quenched not his thirst. The bread he ate satiated not his craving appetite. " And he desired exceedingly to fill his stomach with the husks that the swine did eat," but nobody gave him any. Those husks with which the master of the prodigal son fed his swine; those shells of food, void ofsubstance, which fill up and clog the body, but never nourish it — St. Augustine well remembers having eaten of those husks. They are the customs of the age and its high-sounding vanities; gross, swinish sensualities, and festivities in which they wallow in obsceneness ; pleasures that, ener- vate the powers of the soul. But the prodigal son had not even these. O son of the king Î you have de- The Life of cur Lord y e su s Christ. 311 voted yourself to herding the flock of Satan. Satan will not even give you the food of his swine. Drive them on, feed and fatten them, play with them, and live in their filth and mire. They may excite your envy; you shall not taste their joys. This is the last shift of the sinner, the last grace God will send him. He is miserable. In the excess of this misery he thinks of himself ; he enters into himself; he forms the resolution to go back to his father. In the depth of his soul he feels his father will repudiate him. Of the riches he took away nothing remains for him save that instinct, that gnawing worm — his conscience ; that he cannot destroy without annihilating his very self. As soon as he thinks of his father he says to himself that his father would pardon him. In order that we might not be able to squander even this part of our inheritance, the Father does not put it into our hands, which would let it fall, nor has he written it on the tablet of our mind, lest it might be effaced ; but he engraves it on the innermost recesses of the heart, where this sacred writing resists all and every- thing. The world recognizes God when it says he is good. Despite the blindness in which he was plunged, the prodigal son instantly knew what he should do. - ( " I will arise, I will go to my father, and I will say to him : My father, I have sinned. I am not worthy to be called your son ; treat me as one of the servants who arc in your household." This language is the very es- sence of human nature, and those are its sentiments. It is thus constituted : it stands in need of purifying itself by the confession of its faults; it stands in need of proclaiming itself unworthy, such as it knows itself to be — unworthy not by origin, since it calls God its Father, but by its fault and its wicked works ; it stands The Life of our Lord ffcsus Christ. in need of proclaiming that of itself it cannot raise it- self, replace itself in the high position of honor and dignity it formerly occupied. So the prodigal son rises and goes to seek his fa- ther. When he was yet afar off the father saw him. He did not wait for him ; he did not wait till he should speak and humble himself; he runs to meet him, throws himself on his neck, and embraces and kisses him. Thus God is revealed in him who has appeared, says St. Paul, as the love and goodness of God. He runs, says St. John Chrysostom. The weight of our crimes hinders us from reaching the desired, happy spot ; but he, being able and willing to descend, does descend, and before we can say a word he kisses our lips, whence the confession is about to issue which ascends from a penitent heart. We have not even articulated the confession when he has already receiv- ed it. He hears our most secret thoughts, says St. Ambrose, and, even when we are a long distance sepa- rated from him, he runs lest some enemy might stop and seize us. He runs by foreknowledge, and he em braces us by his clemency. By the outpourings of pa- ternal love he hastens to raise up that which was fall- en ; to set up again heavenwards that which was bent towards the earth. But what is this arm of the Father which so tenderly entwines itself around the sinner? The Father, says St. Augustine, has not withdrawn from his only Son, through whom he has made this long and tedious journey in search of the lost sheep. For God was Christ reconciling himself to the world. He casts himself on the neck of the sinner — that is to say, he lowers towards us his arm, which is the Lord Jesus Christ As man works through and by the arm, God works through Jesus Christ, and that is why the The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. 313 Christ is called the power of God. Isaias has said : "To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" And then the prodigal son makes a confession. He 1 ( says : " My father." He declares he has sinned ; he de- clares that he is not worthy ; but he does not add what ) he had proposed to himself to do: "Make me one of your servants." He could not say so after he had pro- nounced this name of father, in the face of his father, and after his father had embraced him. He feels he is ) reinstated, and that his rank of son is restored to him ; and the father docs not blame him, does not recall to him that course of crime, of shame, and of sorrow. That is effaced, blotted out ; the material trace of it must disap- pear. Hide these tattered clothes ; give him his first ) robe — his robe of innocence. Thus do I restore my son to his former purity. Put a ring on his finger — the mark of nuptials, the pledge of union between him and God, the symbol of faith which will shine in his works. Put shoes'on his feet, that his feet no more may slip on the way, and may no more touch the earth. Kill the fatted calf, and let us cat and rejoice ; because my son was dead, and now he is alive again. The fatted calf was the victim the priest offered for sins. Here it typifies the Eucharist — the victim which is destined to feed and nourish humanity restored in this son who was dead. And they placed themselves at table and began the feast. And now, says St. Augustine, the feast is celebrated throughout the entire universe. Those three parables must have enraged those who reproached Jesus for having paid so much attention and devotion to sinners. The episode of the eldest son awakened their murmurinsrs. \ ( This eldest son, who did not wish to enter into the house because the return of his brother was honored 3i4 T7ie Life of our Lord yesus Christ. by a grand banquet, and who resisted even the en- treaties and prayers of the father of the family, is the Jewish people. It is said he returned from the fields. He did not set out fora far-off country, and neverthe- less he is not in the paternal mansion. He is in the fields, occupied listlessly in manual labor. He serves his father, but he does not love him. The prodigal son, thinking on his father, had unbounded confidence in his paternal tenderness and kindness of heart ; he is resolved to approach humbly and penitentially. The eldest son doubts the justice of the father, or rather de- nies it. With a base jealousy he waits outside ; his doggedness prevents him from entering the house. His father, in a pathetic and loving manner, implored him to come in ; but he refused. We see every day this headstrong, obdurate son ; he represents those whom the Church of God calls daily to the feast of the Lamb, but who will not receive the food of angels, to be found only in the Catholic and Apostolic Church. However, the Father does not in vain go out to call in this eldest son. He will use tender vio- lence to this rebellious heart ; but he will await the proper time, when the fulness of the nations shall have entered. Like those who murmured about the price paid the laborers at the eleventh hour, this eldest son also re- presents those faithful, or rather exacting, but still nar- row-minded zealots who live uselessly in the broad sphere of Christianity. They would almost dare quar- rel with God for affording the graces of conversion to sinners at the last moment. Because they look on themselves as just, and in fact really are so (they have a cold, frozen justice which of itself stands in great need of pardon), they would willingly expect that those The Life of our Lord ycsus Chris/. 3 1 5 should not be received whose sins are more notable- But God hates this Phariseeism. God is rejoiced at the conversion of sinners. Let them take care that their disrespect for the sinner and their spite against the mercy of God may not prevent themselves from entering. The man who cries out from a bruised and ) sorrowful heart, " My Father," and gives to God his ' true name, wishes to do the true tiling that God re- quires. " And who, then, are you," says St. Ambrose to them, " to exact of the Lord that he should not par- don ? Let us applaud and praise God that our sins are forgiven through penance, lest our sins should not be forgiven. Let us not repulse those who return from i a far-off country ; for we ourselves have been in those ) 1 » > remote regions, and it is by God s overflowing mercy we were brought back." \ The same doctor shows that those three parables \ agree and harmonize with each other, and that they re ( present three parts of one great whole. They contain the essence of all good. He saw in them three great consolations afforded to our misery; three consoling ) motives of hope in the abyss of our sins; a triple chain which the divine mercy casts to us when in danger \ of being for ever engulfed in the sea of eternal death. The father is God, the shepherd is Christ, the woman is the Church filled with the Holy Ghost. Jesus the Saviour is everywhere. He seeks after our ) souls as the humble mother ot the family sought after ) what she considered most precious. He leads us back ) L I from our errors and wanderings, and watches over us ( as the vigilant shepherd, and he welcomes us home as a tender father. We are his sheep. O Pastor ! O Good Shepherd ! lead us, conduct us, into the eternal pasturage. We are the drachma. O King ! we bear 3 1 6 The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. engraved on our souls your image and your name; take us out of the mire and restore to us our former beauty. We are the prodigal son. O Father! come to us; run. Take away from us this yoke of the devil, that hangs so heavily on us ; give us the yoke of your love ! The divine Master, always speaking that sweet lan- guage of the parable, gives us new lessons on the con- tempt of riches. He also wished to teach men the way to purify riches unjustly acquired. " Nourish, provide for the poor with them," said he; "by alms make friends for yourselves in heaven." The rich Pharisees, both proud and avaricious, con- sidered that the wealth they possessed was but a just recompense of the virtues they attributed to themselves. They sneered and mocked these discourses. Jesus re- plies to their mockery by the parable of the poor Laza- rus and of the wicked rich man. The poor Lazarus, covered from head to foot with ulcers, implores of the rich man for the crumbs that fell from his table, and could not obtain them. He dies ; the angels carry him into the bosom of Abraham. The rich miser dies in his turn, and hell is his tomb. In the midst of those flames he cries out to Abraham: "Have pity on me, and send Lazarus here to dip his finger in water to quench my burning thirst." Abraham answered this damned soul : " Between Lazarus and you justice has placed an abyss that neither you nor he will ever be ) able to bridge over." *-l 'J&aSOfia iïliÉlSE pi" Sr'J "SHk Se ) • CHAPTER IV. THE UN'JUST JUDGE— PRAYER — MARRIAGE. THE Pharisees were not converted, but the disciples were instructed; and those divine lessons dwelt in their memory, to be transmitted to humanity for unborn generations. Jesus spoke to them again of perseverance in prayer. He had antecedently taken the example of a man who rose in the middle of the night, and who gave what he did not wish to give, solely to rid himself of the impor- tunity of him who ceased not to knock at his door. "If man does this," added he, "what will not your Father do, who is good and just ? " lie repeats this lesson by another representation: " We ought always to pray and never to cease praying. There was a judge who did not fear God and who did not care for men. A woman came to him and said to him, Do justice to me on my side. For a long time he refused her ; but at last he said within himself : Although I fear not God nor do I care for men, never- theless, because this woman urgently solicits me, I will render her justice, lest at the end she might offer me an insult. You hear what the unjust judge said. And will not God do justice to his elect who cry to him day and night, and will he not have patience in 317 ) The Life of our Lord yesus Christ. their, regard ? I say to you he will quickly avenge them." The vengeance of the just — that which he has ordered them to ask — is their deliverance from sin and hell. They do not ask to be avenged, as the world understands it ; and as it is forbidden to them to avenge themselves, they could not do it without ceas- ) ing to be just. They ask to be delivered, not from the unjust Judge, but from his iniquity. They ask also to be delivered from the temptations of the enemy within them ; especially they ask to be delivered from the world. God hears this prayer, and in a short while they are delivered. Life is short for the oppressed as for the oppressors ; the things of life are shorter yet, and God disposes of them in such a way that they always tend to justice. In the end the just are always avenged, even under the yoke of iniquity, when God affords them that patience and that strength by which he humbles iniquity, even in its triumph of a moment. The prisoner who carries away with him justice into his dungeon, full of serenity, is already avenged of the judge. The martyr, smiling amid tortures, is already avenged of the executioners. Whoever accepts op- pression rather than abandon truth, God forthwith avenges him, filling his heart with the gifts of truth, and planting like iron claws, in the heart which prides itself in not fearing God and not caring for man, spite, and shame, and barren remorse. The world has always had solemn examples of this, and it is not even now deprived of it. Everybody can see where iniquity is triumphant and degraded ; where justice is oppressed and full of glory, rejoicing in a profound peace, already avenged. All that the Saviour said and did bears a relation in .J The Life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 319 j some way to his Church. We find the type of the Church in that widow forced to plead so warmly her just ( cause before an unjust judge. Until the coming of him who now mysteriously pro- \ tects her the Church is the widow, and her history pre- sents to us the continual spectacle of that justice, so long refused, granted with difficulty and promptly avenged. The wretched tortures of mind that vex and agitate the unjust judge, and at last compel him to do justice, all-powerful and perverse as he is, do not trouble the mind of the Church. She fears God, but she does not fear either insults, affronts, or persecutions. She importunes her earthly judge, and even threatens him ; she implores her heavenly Judge, and she well knows he will judge ( ( ( ( t justly. She bears patiently; she is cast off, loaded with irons ; she is bound hand and foot, and cast into prison, condemned to death ; but she sits crowned with ( justice, immortal as justice, serene as truth itself, and as tranquil and calm as immortality. O beauty of God on earth ! she will be delivered from her enemies, and she will be avenged. ( But why, asks St. Augustine, does the widow say, " Avenge me " ? Why did the chosen servants of God, even the martyrs, speak thus in the Apocalypse of St. John ? We are not expressly commanded to pray for our enemies and our persecutors. By this vengear.ee of the ju.st we must understand that they demand of God the destruction of the reign of the wicked, whe- ther by their return to justice and truth or by the chastisement which destroys their power. Or yet, as St. Cyril expressed it, if the offence is personal to us, it is our glory to forget it ; but if the injury or the insult attacks God himself, then we invoke God against the ) enemies of his