Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 35
Third Sunday After Pentecost.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus.
" What man hath a hundred sheep, and if he shall lose one of them, doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert, and go after that which was lost? " — Luke xv. 4.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Charity Sunday. II. Parabolic crescendo. III. Love human and divine.
I. Charity : 1. First essential. 2. Hope and consolation.
3. Christianity's origin.
II. Loving heart: 1. Light and heat. 2. Food and drink. 3. Clothing and wealth,
III. Sacred Heart: 1. Model. 2. John on Jesus' breast. 3. Love of men for Jesus.
Per. : 1. Gift of God. 2. Keep Commandments. 3. Worship Sacred Heart.
SERMON.
Brethren, to-day might very appropriately be styled Charity Sunday. The Gospel theme is charity, and the week's devotion has been the adoration of the body of the Lord — the bond of charity, and the worship of the Sacred Heart — the symbol and the source of love. As a feast, it is religion's very own, for religion is charity, and its most appropriate emblem the Sacred Heart. " Charity," says St. Paul, " is patient, charity is kind, charity is not provoked to anger, but beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things," and the Sacred Heart is charity incarnate. It yearns after the sinner as did the father for his prodigal son, and receives him returning with as much joy as though the recovery of that one child were the consummation of all its desires. Not content with that, it seeks him out, as the widow the lost coin, with all the invincible constancy of a woman's love. Nay more, like the shepherd, leaving all else behind, it goes after him into the very desert of sin, and brings him back rejoicing. The Scribes and Pharisees took umbrage at seeing Our Lord consorting with publicans and sinners. Alas! what a significant contrast between divine and human charity; between the heart of man and the heart of God!
Brethren, the prophet Samuel tells us that in forming an estimate of a man's moral worth, the Lord judgeth not as a man judgeth, for men looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. Mind and heart, faith and love — both are essential elements in religion, for, as St. Augustine says, "the worship of the mind should be strictly commensurate with that of the heart." Still, in the ideal Christian, more important even than a believing mind is a loving heart. According to St. Paul, love is first for " faith," he says, " worketh through love." To love is the first commandment — the sum of them all: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all the powers of thy being, and thy neighbor as thyself for the love of God." Christ's most striking characteristic was His love for all sorts and conditions of men. As we read to-day, He ate and drank with them, becoming all things to all; He comforted and cured them; He died for them. And His teaching was the gospel of love. " This is My commandment," He says, " that you love one another. By this shall all men know you for My disciples, that you love one another." This same gospel of love, His disciples after Him taught. St. John the Evangelist, when too old and feeble to preach, was wont to sit before the people and repeat over and over: " Little children, love one another." When asked why he always said the same words, he replied: " Because this is the commandment of the Lord, which, if fulfilled, will suffice." St. Paul's first address to the Corinthians goes still deeper into the matter. What, he asks, is the most eloquent orator with a heart devoid of love? A sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. A monstrosity, deaf and yet not mute, a milestone ever pointing heavenward but never going there, a round of blank cartridge making much noise but doing little execution among the enemy. And if, he adds, my mind were possessed of all knowledge and of faith that could move mountains, yet were I nothing without a loving heart. Yea, he continues, were I to distribute millions among the poor and die a martyr's death, yet would I be nothing without love. Therefore, he concludes, so persuaded am I that the heart is the prime factor in religion that no created power, not even death itself, shall ever move me from the love of God.
Brethren, as time goes on the Christian world is coming round more and more to Paul's way of thinking. In the past, when the Church was struggling for existence, a docile mind was the Christian's first requisite, but since then religion has penetrated deeper into men and centred in their hearts. The age of dogmatism is past, and to-day is the era of love and benevolence. To preach to a sinner, even to convince him, is little gained, but do him an act of kindness through love of God and immediately you persuade him into virtuous action. For man's soul, illumined merely by the mind, is like a bright midwinter day, cold and unproductive; warmed by the heart, it resembles a lively summer scene, rich and fruitful. Such fruit indeed is being daily produced by this latest phase of Christianity, this religion of the heart, that to-day it is the basis of the Church's fondest hopes and sweetest consolation. See the immense throng of our separated brethren, what sacrifices they endure for Christ's sake, their boundless charity to the poor and ignorant at home and abroad, their ever-ready sympathy with the ills of suffering humanity. Whence comes the undeniable goodness of these people? Whence their success? They succeed because theirs is a religion entirely of the heart which suits the spirit of the age. Have they the true faith? They lack, alas! one half of it, their minds being darkened by heresy, but they possess, thank God! the other and more essential half — they have a Christlike spirit of love in their hearts. The Church, I say, is consoled and rejoices, for she foresees salvation for the majority of even her erring children, remembering that charity covereth a multitude of sins, and that the Lord judgeth not as man judgeth, for the Lord looketh on the heart. The Church rejoices again because in this religion of the heart she sees begun a solution of those problems that perplex society — problems of labor and capital, of the extremely rich and extremely poor, of the governing and the governed — problems, all of which must inevitably yield before the doctrine of Christian Socialism, the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. The Church rejoices again and most of all, because in this religion of the heart she sees the possibility of at last laying aside doctrinal disputes, and gathering the scattered flocks of the Christian world into one fold under one shepherd. Physiologists tell us that in the generation of a human being the heart is the first organ perfected, around which and by which the other members cluster and develop. Christianity, therefore, originated in the Sacred Heart, wherein the hypostatic union was accomplished. And since the record of that heart, from its first pulsation in the Virgin's womb to its last flutter on the cross was a story of love, so Christianity, to be true to its origin and its mission, must eventually be a law of love — a religion of the heart.
Brethren, I would that I might preach a worthy eulogy of the noble-hearted man! Of a good heart may be quoted the words of wisdom, that together with it come all good things. You may say of a man: " He is rich, he is wise, he is virtuous," even, and still, little have you said in his favor, but say of him: " He hath a good heart" and you have given him all praise. Dives the heartless is like a beautiful apple whose core is full of worms, but the loving Lazarus, after the fire of tribulation, resembles the roasted apple, homely to look upon, but rich and sweet within. For lack of love Dives becomes the beggar, but Lazarus in love alone finds a substitute for all his needs. And love is the Christian's most precious possession — his life. " God is love," says St. John; and elsewhere Christ says of Himself: " I am the life." This sentiment of the heart is the life of our life, the soul of our soul, " because," adds St. John, " whoever loves not remains in death." Now, it is not the dead but the living who praise the Lord; the body of Christ is the food not of the dead but of the living, and hence these and the other functions of religion can be fitly exercised only by him who lives by love. Without charity even the coordinate virtues are as dead as the members of the body without the soul. As medicines are stimulated into action by the body's natural heat, so the spiritual medicines of religion prove efficient only when the subject has a warm heart. Hence St. James's meaning when he says: " Faith without works [of love] is dead." Not that it ceases to be faith, but that it is to live faith what the stagnant pool is to the running stream. Aristotle says that human perfection consists in the exercise of the highest virtue, and of all virtues St. Paul assures us charity or love is the highest, the bond of perfection. Hence love is the very life of the perfect man. In the words of St. Irenaeus: "The perfect man is made up of body and soul and heart."
Next to life man's greatest need is heat, and what heat is to the body, love is to the soul. God, who is love, is called by St. John " a consuming fire "; the Holy Ghost came in tongues of fire; and we often beg Him to enkindle in us the fire of divine love. Christ came to cast fire on the earth, and He shows us how, in the two disciples of Emmaus who exclaimed: "Were not our hearts burning within us whilst He expounded the Scriptures! " A good heart is heat not only to the dead but also to the sinfrozen, thawing out the Lord's vineyard and starting up the fonts of human sympathy. Its tendency, like fire, is ever upwards, drawing all things with it. Human nature clings to the earth like the mists before the dawn, but when the incarnate love of the Son of Justice rises, shines on them and is exalted from the earth, He draws all to Himself. This explains the wondrous constancy of the early saints and martyrs, whose onward march after Christ was as invincible as a mighty conflagration. This explains that fire that so filled the heart of St. Francis of Assisi that it burst through his hands and feet and side. This explains the patience of all good Christians under cold and hunger and privations, because they have the heat of the love of Christ in their hearts. For, mind you, love and fire differ in this that whereas fire is fomented by oil and extinguished by water, love on the contrary is diminished by oil, that is, luxury, and augmented by water, that is, privation, according to the Psalmist: "Many waters could not extinguish charity." And as fire separates the rust from the metal, so love removes sin from the sinner and the just from the wicked, according to Christ's words: " By this shall all men know you for My disciples, that you love one another."
Charity, again, is food for the hungry and drink for the thirsty. Christ, the incarnate love, says of Himself: " I am the Bread of life; he that eateth of Me shall never hunger and he that drinketh of the water that I shall give shall never thirst again." Love is that stream that the Apocalypse describes as flowing from the throne of God, slaking the soul's innate thirst for heaven, uniting the individual particles of humanity into one solid mass, and raising them on its bosom to its own level, the throne of God.
Again, charity is clothing for the naked, for, as the Apostle Peter says: " Charity covereth a multitude of sins." Charity is the nuptial garment rich enough to be worn at the wedding-feast of even the King of kings, and ample enough in its folds to hide from view the moral deformities of many an unfortunate brother. A garment as light as air, but as strong as death, is the love of God and humanity. Said Our Lord to His disciples: " Wait ye in the city until ye be clothed with power from on high." And when the Spirit of love, the Holy Ghost, did come upon them, those previously timid Apostles, as though now clothed in invincible armor, went bravely forth to battle for the faith and to die in the cause.
Finally, a good heart is a treasure such that the possessor of it, be he ever so poor, is rich indeed. They are woefully mistaken who put forth mighty efforts and bear untold privations for worldly ends, and neglect to cultivate the love of God and their neighbor. They cull life's flowers but lose its fruits; they fish the world through and dine well on their catch, but they fling back the pearls of great price the shells contain. Faith, hope, humility, and the other virtues are as so many coins wherewith we purchase heaven. But charity alone is golden, and, as only gold is currency in heaven, we must pay our entrance fee in love or in some baser metal washed in the gold of charity. It must be a coin, too, that has the genuine ring to it — coined in the mint of a heart that loves not in word and tongue alone, but in deed and in truth.
Brethren, this is the month and Friday was the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus — that heart wherein human love and love divine met and mingled and became one. That is our model, that is the central fire from which each and every one of us should enkindle the flames of the love of God and humanity in the sanctuaries of our own hearts In all religion there is no more significant picture than that of the Evangelist John at the Last Supper reclining his head on the breast of the Saviour. It indicates to us the source of all good things. It interprets Christ's words: " Whoever loves Me, dwells in Me and I in him," for if we have a Christlike love in our hearts we need no more — we dwell in a celestial paradise surrounded with every luxury, with the King of kings for our guest. Nay more, be we ever so wretched, ever so friendless, ever so sinful, we can feel that one great heart throbs for us with the unreasoning love of a mother for her scapegrace boy, of a father for his prodigal son; searches after us as perseveringly as the woman after the lost groat, goes after us as the shepherd after the lost sheep, and brings us home exultingly. Christ's charity is the sunlight of the world. It shines impartially on the good and bad; as well as on those who close their eyes to the light as on those awake to grace. The merely human eye is dazzled with it, and appreciates it better from a study of its created reflection. Love alone can enkindle love. There was nothing attractive in Christ's surroundings or history — the manger, the cabin, the cross, persecution, death, and yet humanity answers with St. Peter: " Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." The Apostles suffered and died for love, love inspired the Crusades, it was the love of Christ that sustained the martyrs amid their torments; it was the battle-cry of the Christian legions in their onset on the hordes of barbarism; it rent the fetters from the limbs of the slaves; it is food and drink for the missionary in the wilds of the wilderness; it is a shield for the gentle nun amid the horrors of the battlefield; it is the secret of every heroic sacrifice, the corner-stone of every institution of Christian charity; it is the love of Christ that with steady hand has built in modern society the noble edifice of fraternal love on the demolished ruins of selfish interest. We can best appreciate the love of the Sacred Heart for men from the love of men for the Sacred Heart. " I came," says Christ, " to cast fire upon the earth; " and what must have been the latent intensity of that fire that could enkindle and sustain such a mighty conflagration!
Brethren, you will ask me what this love is, and how you are to know whether you possess it or not. Love of Jesus is never a product of our own industry. It is a garment, so precious that it can be woven only by the hand of God Himself. It is a delicate tropical plant, which will not flourish in the frigid climate of our hearts unless planted therein and nourished by the celestial gardener. But it is ours to cooperate, not in word alone, not in sentiment nor in tearful emotion, but in an honest and persevering effort to do the will of God in deed and in truth. " If any man loves Me," says Our Lord, " he will keep My commandments." " Love God above all things and thy neighbor as thyself " is an epitome of the Decalogue, and since, in the Sacred Heart, God and humanity are inseparably blended, therefore the love and the imitation of the Sacred Heart is the whole law and the prophets. This devotion is the surest mark of predestination; it is peculiarly the devotion of the saints, for by it they are made participants of the divine nature here and hereafter. " If any man love Me," says Christ, " My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him here, and we will manifest ourselves to him hereafter in the happy kingdom of the blessed."