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Page 17
For if there is one element in Catholicism that the man-in-the-street
especially selects for reprobation it is the life of the Enclosed
Religious. It is supposed to be selfish, morbid, introspective, unreal;
it is set in violent dramatic contrast with the ministerial Life of
Jesus Christ. A quantity of familiar eloquence is solemnly poured out
upon it as if nothing of the kind had ever been said before: it is said
that "a man cannot get away from the world by shutting himself up in a
monastery"; that "a man should not think about his own soul so much, but
rather of what good he can do in the world in which God has placed him";
that "four whitewashed walls" are not the proper environment for a
philanthropic Christian.
And yet, after all, what is the Contemplative Life except precisely that
which the world just now recommended? And could religion possibly be
made a more intimate, private, and personal matter between the soul and
God than the Carthusian or Carmelite makes it?
The fact is, of course, that Catholics are wrong whatever they do--too
extreme in everything which they undertake. They are too active and not
retired enough in their proselytism; too retired and not active enough
in their Contemplation.
II. Now the Life of our Divine Lord exhibits, of course, both the Active
and the Contemplative elements that have always distinguished the Life
of His Church.
For three years He set Himself to the work of preaching His Revelation
and establishing the Church that was to be its organ through all the
centuries. He went about, therefore, freely and swiftly, now in town,
now in country. He laid down His Divine principles and presented His
Divine credentials, at marriage feasts, in market-places, in country
roads, in crowded streets, and in private houses. He wrought the works
of mercy, spiritual and corporal, that were to be the types of all works
of mercy ever afterwards. He gave spiritual and ascetic teaching on the
Mount of Beatitudes, dogmatic instructions in Capharnaum and the
wilderness to the east of Galilee, and mystical discourses in the Upper
Chamber of Jerusalem and the temple courts. His activities and His
proselytisms were unbounded. He broke up domestic circles and the
routine of offices. He called the young man from his estates and Matthew
from custom-house and James and John from their father's fishing
business. He made a final demonstration of His unlimited claim on
humanity in His Procession on Palm Sunday, and on Ascension Day
ratified and commissioned the proselytizing activities of His Church for
ever in His tremendous charge to the Apostolic band. _Going, therefore,
teach ye all nations ... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all the days, even to the
consummation of the world._
Yet this, it must be remembered, was not only not the whole of His Life
on earth, it was not even a very considerable part of it, if reckoned by
years. For three years He was active, but for thirty He was retired in
the house of Nazareth; and even those three years are again and again
broken by retirement. He is now in the wilderness for forty days, now on
the mountain all night in prayer, now bidding His disciples come apart
and rest themselves. The very climax of His ministry too was wrought in
silence and solitude. He removed Himself _about a stone's throw_ in the
garden of Gethsemane from those who loved Him best; He broke His silence
on the Cross to bid farewell even to His holy Mother herself. Above all,
he explicitly and emphatically commended the Life of Contemplative
Prayer as the highest that can be lived on earth, telling Martha that
activity, even in the most necessary duties, was not after all the best
use to which time and love could be put, but rather that _Mary had
chosen the best part ... the one thing that is necessary_, and that it
_shall not be taken away from her_ even by a sister's loving zeal.
Finally, fault was found with Jesus Christ, as with His Church, on
precisely these two points. When He was living the life of retirement in
the country He was rebuked that He did not go up to the feast and state
His claims plainly--justify, that is, by activity, His pretensions to
the Messiahship; and when He did so, He was entreated to bid his
acclaimants _to hold their peace_--to justify, that is, by humility and
retirement, His pretensions to spirituality.
III. The reconciliation, therefore, of these two elements in the
Catholic system is very easy to find.
(i) First, it is the Church's Divinity that accounts for her passion for
God. To her as to none else on earth is the very face of God revealed as
the Absolute and Final Beauty that lies beyond the limits of all
Creation. She in her Divinity enjoys it may be said, even in her sojourn
on earth, that very Beatific Vision that enraptured always the Sacred
Humanity of Jesus Christ. With all the company of heaven then, with Mary
Immaculate, with the Seraphim and with the glorified saints of God, she
_endures, seeing Him Who is invisible_. Even while the eyes of her
humanity are held, while her human members _walk by faith and not by
sight_, she, in her Divinity, which is the guaranteed Presence of Jesus
Christ in her midst, already _dwells in heavenly places_ and is already
_come to Mount Zion and the City of the living God and to God Himself_,
Who is the Light in which all fair things are seen to be fair.
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