Joseph, her husband, being a just man--S. Matt. I. 19.
Joseph, her husband, being a just man--S. Matt. I. 19.
O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy upon thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St. Joseph her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of all saints, in mercy and goodness hear our prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. Through.
ROMAN.
hen we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with what we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for detail. There is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to think of God as Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible to conceive Him as interested in or concerning Himself with the minutiae of human life; who can conceive God as caring for a solar system or a planet, but not as caring for a baby. Surely it is a strange notion of God that thinks of Him as estimating values in terms of weight and measure: surely much more intelligible is the Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with spritual values and exercising that minute care over human life which is best expressed by the wordFather. It is very significant that as the volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler, Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our Lord's presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood which stands in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the character of God are precisely the qualities of love and care and sympathy which the word Father connotes.
And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed preparation which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into this world. There was that preparation of the Mother who was to be the source of the humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be committed. In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and His Mother would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man who should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted to the will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the world as the husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as the guardian of her virginity and as the foster-father of her divine Son. Only a very choice nature could respond to the demands thus made upon it, a nature which had been habitually responsive to the will of God and long nurtured by the richness of His grace.
We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for the office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her Son reveals the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just man," one whose judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who would be open to the consideration of any case upon its merits: a man who would not view events in the light of their effect upon himself and his plans, but who can calmly consider what in given circumstances is due to others. Such men are rare at any time for their production is a matter of slow discipline.
We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same lineage, were descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather also that S. Joseph was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he had been already married and had a family. All the notices of these brothers and sisters of the Lord imply that they were considerably older than the Child of Mary, and that they felt that they had the sort of authority over Him which commonly belongs to the elder children of a family; the sort of doubt and criticism of His course which would be the instinctive attitudes of elders toward the unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a right to infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would have been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of the situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who maintain that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a nominal union, the ultimate design of which was the protection of the virginity of Mary. I find it impossible to think of that virginity as other than of deliberate purpose from the beginning, and prompted by the Spirit of God for the purposes of God for which it served. There is, to be sure, no revelation of this in Holy Scripture, but there are facts which suggest themselves to the devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may safely take on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact is this of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the fact of her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among Catholic Christians.
To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the blessed Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she should be found with a child. Our character comes out at such times of trial as when something that we had taken quite for granted fails us, and we are left breathless and bewildered in in the face of what would have seemed impossible even had we thought of it. What was S. Joseph's attitude? The beauty and sanity of his character at once shows itself. Grieved and disheartened as he must have been, disappointed as he could not but be, he yet thinks at once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could he save her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality that we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and deliberate wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under any circumstances of life.
We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to the course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary herself. There could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest upon her. Hence "while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."
It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this angelic message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when, after facing a most trying situation, and being forced to make up our minds to act when action either way is almost equally painful, we find that we are delivered from the necessity of acting at all, that the whole state of things has been utterly misunderstood. It was so with S. Joseph; and in his case there was the added joy which springs from the nature of the coming Child as the angel explains it to him. He who had accepted the charge of Mary was now to add to that charge the charge of her Child: and the Child is the very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all pious Israelites had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph would have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God in the work of the redemption of Israel.
As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only way in which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of revelation, it becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all human life. Often we observe a purpose that we are not able to grasp, but in the light of what we know from revelation we do not doubt of its presence. Even lives that seem obscure and insignificant we feel sure must have a divine meaning; and the pathetic thing about most human life is that it never dreams of its own significance. We are consumed with the notion that God's instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is the work that is important, and the instrument becomes important through its relation to the work. We all at least have the common vocation of the Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the spiritual significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once set apart by his vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child, to protect and to nurture the years of His human immaturity. This is no doubt a unique vocation, but is it quite so far separated from ordinary Christian experience as we assume? You and I are also constituted guardians of the divine Presence. This very morning, it may be, we have received within the Tabernacle of our breast the same Presence that S. Joseph guarded--the Presence of Incarnate God. In that Presence of His humanity our Lord abode with us but a few minutes and then the Presence withdrew: but He left behind Him a real gift, the gift of an increase in sacramental grace.
Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the vocation of S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those few moments after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the altar--how do we habitually spend them? Do we spend them in guarding the Presence? There is much to be learned about the meaning and the value of guarding the Eucharistic Gift. Our thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important as our preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to think that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a side of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to us that is theappropriationof the Gift of the Sacrament. He comes to us and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of His life and death; and then having offered Himself "He makes as though he would go farther," and he does actually go, unless we are awake to our spiritual opportunity, and constrain Him, saying, "abide with us, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent."
We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing heart he enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the Holy Family. The marriage which he had been upon the point of abandoning he now enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming Child his full protection.
So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S. Mary was consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically they convey no such implication; the mode of expression is perfectly simple and well known by which a fact is affirmed to exist up to a certain time without any implication as to what happens after. And the meaning of the passage which is not at all necessitated by its grammatical construction is utterly intolerable in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the Church is the perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before and in and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic named Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has never been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold otherwise shows a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of values and but a superficial grasp upon what is involved in the Incarnation.
The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great simplicity and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which was later praised by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce much impression on the superficial observer, but they are of great spiritual value. They are the concomitants of a special type of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness is a quality much praised and little practiced. But the open-mindedness which is commonly praised is not the open-mindedness which is praiseworthy. What is at present meant by open-mindedness is in reality failure to have any mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude of doubt which never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have an open mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions loosely, to consider all things open to question, to be ready to abandon what now appears to be true in favour of something which to-morrow may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to base life on pure scepticism.
Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some sort, whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind has to believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt without affirming a belief in its own intellectual processes. The open mind that never reaches any certainty to fill it is a very poor possession indeed. And it is not at all what we mean when we say of S. Joseph that he was open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is impossible: they inevitably fall away unless they are going forward. When the power of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are spiritually in a dying condition.
What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that one has this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe. The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean a power of discrimination between food offered him,--that he assimilates what is wholesome and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to the existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for fear that he should believe something that is not true. The saint, with the test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows in grace, and consequently in the knowledge and the love of God.
Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions, readiness for spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut across much that has seemed to us well settled, and such advance involves the upset of his established ways of thought. What distinguishes the evolution in the thought of the sceptic from that in the thought of the saint is that in the one case the result is destructive and in the other constructive. The sceptic is like a man who starts to build a house, and then periodically tears down what he has so far built and begins again on a new plan; the saint is like the house builder who broadens his plan in the course of construction, and who finds that within the limits of his general scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never gets any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than he had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his work.
In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in appearance than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to believe in the virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact that the Child soon to be born was He Who was to save Israel from his sins. He was asked to accept these incredible statements and to act upon them by taking Mary to wife as he had proposed. And he did not hesitate to accept the evidence of a dream and act in accordance with it. How could he do this? Because the required action which seemed so revolutionary of all his previous notions was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of God and of the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he was a simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God which would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of God. Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled, after the event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We were actually being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take place. And thus, no doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the teaching of the Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue every Sabbath day, would find that this new act of God on which he was asked to rely was, in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of that Providence which had for centuries been shaping the history of his nation.
It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which is ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though religion were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit of expectancy. But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because it is only expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a world which is thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with spiritual powers. God is trying to lead us on to new spiritual experiences by which we may attain to a better understanding of Him. There is no assignable limit to our possible growth. But we fix a limit when we close our souls to further experiences by the practical denial that they exist. If we are childlike, we are always expecting new things of our Father; if we are open-minded we are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We are conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly evolutionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected riches stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed that we had exhausted.
Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have not achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the guardians of His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith." I suppose that this responsibility is commonly regarded as belonging to some vaguely imagined Church which hands it on from generation to generation, to us among others, but without imposing on us an obligation of any active sort. But we are the Church--members in particular of the Body of Christ. And in the dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us, not to some outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its faith and make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and hearts of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it active and vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by no means be mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of the faithful, are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter, but it is not. That it is not is readily seen from this fact, that when the perpetual virginity of our Blessed Mother is denied then also the Incarnation of her Son is denied or is held only in a half-hearted way. The Church stresses such facts, not only because they are facts, but because by their character they form a hedge about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we who are Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this fact. We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly by our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary, if we show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her guardian, S. Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon the truths which are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and that we shall hold them as of small moment? The whole system of Catholic thought is so nicely articulated, so consistently held together, that failure to hold even the smallest constituent indicates a faulty conception of the whole. Catholics are constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to blessed Mary and the saints and thereby encroaching upon the honour due to our Lord. The answer to the reproach is to be found in the question: Who to-day are defending to the very death the truth of our Lord's Incarnation and the truths that hang upon it? Are they those who deny the legitimacy of invocation, or those in whose religious practise it holds an important and vital place?
A PANEGYRICK ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
I do not tremble, when I writeA Mistress' praise, but with delightCan dive for pearls into the flood,Fly through every garden, wood,Stealing the choice of flow'rs and wind,To dress her body or her mind;Nay the Saints and Angels areNor safe in Heaven, till she be fair,And rich as they; nor will this do,Until she be my idol too.With this sacrilege I dispense,No fright is in my conscience,My hand starts not, nor do I thenFind any quakings in my pen;Whose every drop of ink withinDwells, as in me my parent's sin,And praises on the paper wrotHave but conspired to make a blot:Why should such fears invade me nowThat writes on her? to whom do bowThe souls of all the just, whose placeIs next to God's, and in his faceAll creatures and delights doth seeAs darling of the Trinity;To whom the Hierarchy doth throng,And for whom Heaven is all one song.Joys should possess my spirit here,But pious joys are mixed with fear:Put off thy shoe, 'tis holy ground,For here the flaming Bush is found,The mystic rose, the Ivory Tower,The morning Star and David's bower,The rod of Moses and of Jesse,The fountain sealèd, Gideon's fleece,A woman clothèd with the Sun,The beauteous throne of Salomon,The garden shut, the living spring,The Tabernacle of the King,The Altar breathing sacred fume,The Heaven distilling honeycomb,The untouched lily, full of dew,A Mother, yet a Virgin too,Before and after she brought forth(Our ransom of eternal worth)Both God and man. What voice can singThis mystery, or Cherub's wingLend from his golden stock a penTo write, how Heaven came down to men?Here fear and wonder so advanceMy soul, it must obey a trance.
She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrappedhim in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;because there was no room for them in the inn.S. Luke II. 7.
She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrappedhim in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;because there was no room for them in the inn.S. Luke II. 7.
It is very meet to bless thee who bore the Christ, O ever Blessed and Immaculate Mother of God. More wondrous than the Cherubim and of greater glory than the Seraphim art thou who remaining Virgin didst give birth to God the Word. Verily, do we magnify thee, O Mother of God. In thee, O full of grace, all creation exults, the hierarchy of angels and the race of men. In thee sanctified temple, spiritual paradise, glory of virgins, of whom God took flesh, through whom our God Who was before the world became a Child. Of thy womb He made a throne, and its dominion is more extensive than the heavens. In thee, O full of grace, all creation exults: glory to thee.
RUSSIAN.
e see a man and a woman on the road to Bethlehem where they are going to be taxed according to the decree of Augustus. Bethlehem would be known to them as the home of their ancestors, for they were both of the lineage of David. It was a painful journey for them for Mary was near the time of her delivery. We follow them along the road and into the village, as the twilight fades, and see them seeking shelter for the night. Bethlehem is a small place and the inn is crowded with those who have come on the errand with them, and the only place where they can find refuge for the night is a stable. But they are not used to luxury, and the stable serves their purpose.
It also serves God's purpose. One understands as one reads this narrative of the Nativity what is meant by the Providential government of the world. We see how various lines of action, each free and independent, yet converge to the production of a given event. The different characters in the drama are all pursuing their own courses and yet the result is a true drama, not an unrelated series of events. Caesar's action, Joseph's lineage, our Lord's conception, all working together, bring about the fulfilment of prophecy by the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. There is in the universe an over-ruling will which works to its ends by co-operating with human freedom, and not destroying it. We are not the sport of chance, not the slaves of fate, but free men; and yet through our freedom, through our blunders and rebellions and sins as well as through our obedience, the work of God is moving to its conclusion. Man did all that he could to defeat the ends of God and to thwart God's purpose of redemption. Yet on a certain night in Bethlehem of Judea the light of God overcame the human darkness, and the voices of God's angels pierced the human tumult, and Jesus Christ was born. "God of the substance of his Father begotten before all worlds, man of the substance of his mother, born in the world; perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
The manifestation came to certain shepherds watching their flocks in the fields about Bethlehem; simple men, quite unable to take in the meaning of what they see and hear. One cannot help thinking of what it would have meant in the way of an intellectual revolution if to some Greek or Roman philosopher, speculating on the destiny of humanity, the truth could have come that the future of the world was not in the court of Augustus, that it was not dependent on the Roman armies or Greek learning, but that it was bound up in the career and teaching of a Baby that night born in a stable in an obscure village in Judea. As we imagine such a case we see in the concrete the meaning of the revolution set in motion by this single event; and we are led to adore the ways of God in that He has chosen for the final approach to man for the purpose of redemption, this way of simplicity and humbleness. Man would not have thought of this as the best path for God to follow in this purpose of rescue, but we can be wise after the event and see that this Child born in poverty and obscurity would have fewer entanglements to break through, fewer obstacles to overcome.
But these thoughts are far away from the night in Bethlehem. In the stable there where a Baby is lying in Mary's arms and Joseph stands looking on, there is no speculation about the world-consequences of the event. There is rather the splendour of love: the love of the mother in the new found mystery of this her Child; the love of God who has given her the Child. And all is a part of the great mystery of love, of the love wherewith God loves the world. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Here is the Son, lying in Mary's arms, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and Mary looks into His face as any human mother looks into the face of her child. But through the eyes that smile up into Mary's face, God is looking out on a world of sorrow and pain and sin that He has come to redeem, and for which, in redeeming it, to die. Presently, the shepherds come in and complete the group, the representatives of universal humanity at the birth of their King, We have the whole world-problem in small, but here there is no consciousness of it. No echo of world-politics or of movements of thought break in here. But we know that here is the beginning of that which will set at naught world-politics and revolutionise movements of thought, that here is the centre about which humanity will move in the coming time. Here is that which is fundamental and abiding because here is the one invincible power of the universe--love. All else will fail: prophecies, systems of philosophy, religions, political and social structures; each in the time of its flourishing, proclaiming itself the last word of human wisdom,--these in bewildering succession have arisen and passed away. But love has survived them all. Love never faileth; through the slow succession of the centuries it is winning the world to God.
It were well if we could learn to look on the happenings of this world as the miracles of divine love. We think of the power, the justice, the judgment of God as visible in this world's history; but these are but the instruments of love, and all that He does has its foundation in love and receives its impulse from love. This Nativity is the divine love coming into the world on its last adventure, determined to win man, all other means failing, by the extremity of sacrifice. The final word about this Child will be that having loved his own He loved them unto the uttermost, he loved them without stinting, with the uttermost capacity of love. Understanding this meaning of the love of God, we are prepared for the further fact that God uses all sorts of instruments as the instruments of His love. He shares Himself. He pours Himself into human life. He takes men into partnership in the work of redemption. Whenever a soul is mastered by love, it becomes a tool in God's hands. The progress of the Church--of God's Kingdom--might be described as the accumulation of these tools wherewith God works--souls who are so devoted to Him as to be the medium of bringing His power, the power of love, to bear on the souls of their brethren.
To be the highest, the most perfect, of all the instruments of redemption God chose Mary of Nazareth to be the Mother of His Son. She is the most complete human embodiment of God's love. She, in her perfect purity, can transmit that love as power with the least loss of energy in the process of transmission. When we think of the saints as the means of God's action, we think of blessed Mary as the highest of the saints and the means most perfectly adapted to God's ends. Here at Bethlehem she holds God in her arms and looks into the human face that He has taken for this present work and all her being is absorbed in love. Oblivious, we think her, of her mean surroundings, of the animals that share with her their stable, of the shepherds who come in and look on in wonder, of S. Joseph standing by in sympathy. Love is all. Love is a passion consuming her being--what can the attendant circumstances matter? And to-day, after all these centuries: to-day the Child is the Ascended and Enthroned Redeemer, His risen and glorified humanity, transmitting something of the divine glory, seated at the right hand of the Majesty of God. And Mary, the Mother? Can we have any other thought than that she who on the first Christmas morning looks into the face of her Baby, still, to-day, looks up into the face of her divine Son, and the look is the same look of love? And can we think of the look that comes back to her from eyes that are human, taken from her body, though they be in very truth the eyes of God--can we think, I say, of the eyes of her Child and her God bringing anything else than the message of love? Can we think that when in answer to our invocation she presents our prayers in union with her own, that love will fail?
But let us come back to earth--to Bethlehem--on that first Christmas eve and listen to the songs of the angels as they sing over the star-lit fields. How near heaven seems! How real is God! How joyful is this season of peace to men of good will! The message is of peace, but that peace will need to have its nature explained in the coming years if men's hearts are not to fail them and their faith wither away. It is not a general peace to the world that is being proclaimed. Later on our Lord will say: "My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you." It is such a gift as can be enjoyed only by men of good will; converted men, that is to say, men whose will is close set with the will of God. For how should there be peace in any world on any other terms? How can there be peace for those who are in rebellion against God? Our Lord can promise peace, and can fulfil His promise because He is bringing a new potency into human life. He is a new way of approach to God, a new way into the Holiest of all. Through His humanity God is united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to God. And one of the results of that union is this gift of peace, and the fact that it arises from the union explains its new character, why our Lord calls it His peace.
This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us. This is the method of God's work, from the inside out; from the spiritual fact to its external result. We do not begin by finding peace with this world: "in the world ye shall have tribulation." And most of the failure to attain peace, and much of men's loss of faith is due to repudiation of the divine method. We live in a disordered and pain-stricken world where human life is uniformly a life of trial and struggle, and our easy yielding to temptation is an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with the world such as we think will produce peace and quiet. We constantly demand of religion that it should effect this for us. So far as one can see much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better world. Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with injustice, and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not changed all this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not changing it? Or if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at least confess to your impotence. Your self-confessed business is to make a better world."
True; but only on the conditions which love imposes. Religion does not propose to improve the world by a more skilful application of the principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn stones into bread at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does not say, "If you will support me and give me a certain superficial honour, I will bless your efforts and increase the success of your undertakings." Religion proposes to improve the world on the condition that the principles of religion shall be accepted as the working principles of life; on condition, that is, that love shall be made the ground of human association. Religion can make a better world, it can make the kingdoms of God and of His Christ; but it can only do so on the condition that it is whole-heartedly accepted and thoroughly applied. The proof that it can do this is in the fact that it can and does make better individuals. Wherever men and women have lived by the principles of the Gospel they have brought forth the fruits of the Gospel. It has done this, not under some specially favourable circumstances, but it has done it under all circumstances of life and in all nations of men. What has been done in unnumbered individual cases, can be done in whole communities when the communities want it done. It is quite pointless in times of great social distress to ask passionately, "why does not God make a better world?" The only question which is at all to the point is, "why has God not mademebetter?" The problem of God's dealing with the world is, in essence, the problem of God's dealing with me. If He has not reformed me, if I do not, in my self-examination, find that I am responding to the ideals of God, as far as I know them, there is small point in declamations about the state of society. Society that is godless, is just a mass of godless individuals; and I can understand why God does not reform the world perfectly well from the study of my own case. What in me prevents the full control of God is the same that prevents that control over the whole of society: and I know that that is not lack of knowledge, but lack of love. Men ignore the primary obligation of life: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbour as thyself." As long as they ignore that, there can be no reformed world, no world reflecting the divine purpose, no society,--whatever may be its widely multiplied legislation,--securing to men conditions of life which are sane and satisfactory.
Therefore the Child who is born of Mary in Bethlehem while the angels are singing their carols over the fields where the shepherds watch, the Child Who brings peace to men of good will, still, after nearly two thousand years, finds His gift ignored and His longing to lift men to God unsatisfied. "He came unto His own and His own received Him not"--and the conditions are not vitally changed to-day. When we think of a world of fifteen hundred million human beings, the number of those who profess and call themselves Christians is comparatively small; the number of actually practicing Christians, of men and women who do live by the Gospel, without reserve and without compromise, is vastly smaller. The resistance of the principles of the Gospel is to-day intense; the demand for compromise is insistent. We are asked to throw over a system which has obviously failed, and to accept as the equivalent and to permit to pass under the same name a system which is fundamentally different; a system whose end is man and not God, whose means are natural and not supernatural, which seek to produce an adjustment with this world that means comfort, rather than an adjustment with the spiritual world which means sanctity.
The ideal achievement of peace is here in Bethlehem where the mother holds the Holy Child to her breast, while her spirit is utterly in union with Him Who is both man and God. There is never any break in the pure peace of S. Mary because there is never any moment when her will is separated from the will of God, when her union with Him fails. This peace of perfect union has, through the merits of her Son, been hers always; she has never known the wrench of the will that separates itself from God. She has always been poor; she has been perplexed with life; she has suffered and will suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves most; but peace she has never lost, because her will has never wavered in its allegiance. What visibly she is doing in these moments of her great joy, holding God to her breast in a passion of love, she in fact is doing always--always is she one with God.
That undisturbed peace of a never broken union is never possible for us. We have known what it is to reject the will of God and go our own way and indulge the appetites of our nature in violation of our recognised standards of life. If we are to come to peace it must be along the rough road of repentance. And it is wholly just that it should be so; that we should win back to God at the expense of shame and suffering; that we should retrace the road that we have travelled, with weary feet and bleeding heart. This after all does not much matter: what does matter immensely is that there is a road back to God and that we find it. What matters is that we discover that repentance and reformation are the only road to peace. We are offered many other roads alleged to lead to the same place; but not even a child should be deceived by the modern substitutes for repentance, by the shallow teaching whereby it is attempted to persuade men of the innocence of sin. They are never worth discussing, these modern substitutes for repentance. Men accept them, not because they are rational or convincing, but because they offer a justification for going the way that they have already made up their minds to go. But it is plain that whatever else they do they do not afford a basis for peace. They are no rock foundation for eternity. Other foundation for peace can no man lay or has laid than the acceptance of the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. He is our peace; and when we discover that, He makes peace in us by the application to our souls of the Blood of His Cross. This is the peace He came to bring. This the peace that the angels announced as they sang over Bethlehem. This is the peace which is ceaselessly proclaimed from the altars of the Christian Church, the peace of God which passeth understanding, the peace which is offered to all men of good will.
How shall we attain it? By being men of good will, plainly. But what constitutes good will in a man? That which I have already discussed, perhaps abundantly, simplicity and childlike obedience of character. S. Joseph, the guardian of Mary and her Child here in Bethlehem, is the best example we can have of a man of good will, a man who under the most difficult circumstances responded with perfect readiness and complete obedience to the heavenly message that came to him. This is to be his course through the few years that he will live, to give himself to the will of God in the care of Jesus. We are men of good will if we do whatsoever our Lord says to us, if we are seeking first of all the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, if our estimate of values corresponds to our Lord's.
There is our trouble--that old trouble of feebly trying to live the life of the Kingdom when what we actually want is the offer of this world. There is, there can be, no peace in a divided life. There is a certain spiritual sloth which has the exterior look of peace, as a corpse looks peaceful, but it has no relation to the peace which God gives. It is in fact the wages of sin, wages easily earned and long enjoyed. But so long as we are spiritually alive, so long we cannot enjoy whole-heartedly even the most fascinating of sins because there is lurking in the background the sense of the transitoriness of our sin and of the imminence of death and judgment. There is the skeleton in every man's closet until he finally makes choice on one side or the other. For we are not ignorant of the spiritual obligations of life. We always know more than we have achieved. When we talk about our ignorance and perplexity, we are not meaning ignorance and perplexity about the obligation to live in a certain way, and to perform certain duties, on this particular day: rather we are making this alleged ignorance of the future an excuse for not taking action in the present, action which we know to be obligatory.
And peace is so wonderful a gift! To feel oneself in harmony with God, to know that one is carefully seeking His will and making it one's first and highest duty to perform it. To have found the peace of the forgiven soul as the result of absolution, at the expense of much shame and repugnance, it may be, but with what marvellous compensations when we go away with a sense of restored purity and the friendship of God--life looks so different when we look at it through purified eyes! The old life has held us so tightly, the old sins have clung so close; and then there was a day when we gave up self and turned to God and the Gift of God in Jesus Christ; and then we saw how miserable and vile and naked we had been all through the time of our boasted freedom; and we came as children to Mary's Child and offered ourselves to Him for cleansing. We kneel and offer to Him our wills and ask that they may be made good, and kept good in union with His most holy will. Then we find how true this word is: "In Me ye shall have peace: in the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." It is true, is it not? not only as we commonly interpret, that the disciples of Christ shall have tribulation in this world; but that much that we, giving ourselves to the world, counted joy, was in reality tribulation, and we are glad to be rid of it.
A babe is born to bliss us bring.I heard a maid lulley and sing.She said: "Dear Son, leave Thy weeping:Thy, Father is the King of bliss."Now sing we with Angelis:Gloria in excelsis."Lulley," she said and sung also,"My own dear Son, why are Thou wo?Have I not done as I should do?Now sing we with Angelis:Gloria in excelsis."Nay, dear mother, for thee weep I nought,But for the woe that shall be wroughtTo Me ere I mankind have bought.Was never sorrow like it i-wis."Now sing we with Angelis:Gloria in excelsis."Peace, dear Son! Thou grievest me sore:Thou art my child, I have no more.Should I see men mine own Son slay?Alas, my dear Son, what means all this?"Now sing we with Angelis:Gloria in excelsis."My hands, Mother, that ye now see,Shall be nailed to a tree;My feet also fast shall be,Men shall weep that shall see this."Now sing we with Angelis:Gloria in excelsis."Ah, dear Son, hard is my happeTo see my child that lay in my lap,--His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,--Be so nailed; they never did amisse."Now sing we with Angelis:Gloria in excelsis."Ah, dear Mother, yet shall a spearMy heart asunder all but tear:No wonder if I care-ful wereAnd wept full sore to think on this."Now sing we with Angelis:Gloria in excelsis.