Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 44
Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
The Study of Scripture.
"Master, what must I do to possess eternal life?" — Luke x. 25.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Christ on Olivet II. Leo's teaching. III. Directory to life eternal.
I. Instruction : 1. Roman Christians. 2. Leo's sequence. 3. Bible as book.
II. Patience and consolation : 1. Resignation. 2. Virtue in infirmity. 3. The saints.
III. Glory: 1. Sick member. 2. Christ present, 3. The saints again.
Per.: 1. Importance as to— 1. Life eternal. 2. Temporal. 3. Patience and consolation.
SERMON.
Brethren, a few Sundays ago, if you remember, we read in the Gospel how Christ wept over Jerusalem, foretold its destruction, and drove from the Temple them that sold therein and them that bought. In that Gospel, short as it was, we discerned three strong arguments against the anti-Christian spirit of our times — three convincing proofs of Christ's divinity. Now, taking that Gospel as an exarqple of the power of the Scriptures, as a weapon with which to defend truth and vanquish error, we drew for conclusion that lesson Leo XIII. is so anxious should be taught and learned, viz., how useful, how necessary, how sacred a duty it is for each to have his Bible, and to read it occasionally. To-day I wish to still further emphasize this lesson — to show you the value of the Scriptures not only as an intellectual weapon, but especially as a prolific source from which may be derived the strength, the guidance, the suggestive inspiration necessary to bring a human soul through life to God. Were one of you to arise and ask with the lawyer: "What must I do to possess eternal life?" I would answer in Christ's own words: "What is written in the law — in the Scriptures? How readest thou?" For, says St. Paul to the Romans: " What things soever were written, were written for our instruction, that through patience and the comfort of the Scriptures, we might have hope unto life everlasting."
Rich with meaning are these words of St. Paul. The Romans, whom he addressed, were a newly converted people — a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, that did not mingle very well — for the Jews looked with suspicion on the apparent laxity of the Gentiles; while the Gentiles, on the other hand, despised the Jews for their observance of the obsolete customs of the Old Law. Hence St. Paul's epistle to them is primarily a plea for Christian unity, wherein he recommends the study of the Scriptures as the great unifier of Christianity. And taking his own epistle as an example, especially the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters, I know no more appropriate reading for the two great divisions of Christianity at the present day. " But thou," he says to one party, " why judgest thou thy brother; or thou," to the other, " why dost thou despise thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgement-seat of Christ." From St. Paul and from the Scriptures generally we learn a Christlike spirit of forbearance, so that the most erring Judas receives from us not the Pharisaical: "What is that to us; do thou see to it," but rather a hearty greeting as friend and brother. And it is characteristic of the foresightedness of Leo XIII. that he gives this power of the Scriptures for Christian unity its true value. In one of his latest encyclicals there is a logical sequence wherein, beginning with the subject nearest his heart — the working man, the labor question — he advocates a union of Christendom as the only means of solving that problem, and recommends the study of the Scriptures as the surest method of bringing disunited Christians together.
" What things soever were written," says St. Paul, "were written for our instruction." In this age of the writing mania and cheap literature, there are books innumerable, not, unfortunately, all written for our instruction, and none of which, even the best, deserve the name, if compared with the Book — the Scriptures. For the Bible is the Book of books, having God for its Author, and for its matter a subject worthy of Him — God Himself. It differs from and is superior to all others in that it has a double sense, the literal and the spiritual. As a history it is the most universal of all — beginning by the very cradle of humanity, following its past vicissitudes and illumining its future path through all time with the search-light of prophetic vision. It is at once a repository of history, art, science, and literature. The history, not of the rise and fall of this city or that — this nation or that, but of the building up and tearing down of the universe. Its preaching seeks to excite emotions more than human — divine. Philosophic speculation reaches to the highest stars, but the Scriptures lead us higher still, to the very throne of God. There we find, too, the sciences — medicine, dealing not merely with the ills of the body but with the wounds of the soul; and law, interpreting for us God's last will and testament, and settling our heirship to the kingdom of heaven. Nothing human is perfect. No merely human agent, be he ever so great or holy, but can strike his breast and say: " I have sinned — forgive me my trespasses," and even Homer sometimes nods; but the Bible recounts the achievements of God whose works are perfect, and so perfect is the style of the original that to assert there is even one useless word in its pages, is called by St. Basil downright blasphemy.
"What things soever were written, were written for our instruction, that through patience and the consolation of the Scriptures, we might have hope unto life everlasting." Patience and consolation; patience and consolation — patience in bearing with others, and the consolation of having others bear patiently with us, so that reading the Scriptures with faith, we learn mutual charity and so hope unto life everlasting. But, " patience and consolation " have here a still deeper meaning. They give us the double secret of Christian resignation taught in the Bible from Genesis to the Apocalypse and embodied first in St. Paul's words: " All that wish to live piously in Christ must suffer persecution," and secondly in the words of the Psalmist: "I am with him in tribulation, I will deliver him and I will glorify him." No cross, no crown; through a gloomy Good Friday must we go to a glorious Easter Day, for every true disciple must take up his cross and follow the Master. Nay, the more holy one is, the more tribulation he experiences, for Christ says: " The branch that bears fruit I will prune, that it may bear fruit the more." Through many tribulations men enter into the kingdom of heaven. And why? First, because man wills it, and secondly, because God ordains it. The good and the bad in this world are like fire and water. You plunge a live coal into water — the temperature of the water is raised and the coal is extinguished. So, too, the brighter virtue shines in this world, the hotter grows the angry persecution of the wicked to dim its lustre. No where, not even in the little band of Apostles, will you find the good without the wicked, and everywhere they conflict, because, says Christ, " The world loves its own, but since you are not of this world, therefore does the world hate you." This, besides being natural, is a divine dispensation. For, above all things, God desires His disciples to preserve the spiritual goods with which He endows them, and who is ignorant that virtue is often lost in prosperity and perfected in infirmity? A straight column is stronger the heavier load it bears, but the crooked gives way under the strain. Saul the shepherd, was an innocent lad; but Saul the king, was a villain. King David when deposed and a miserable fugitive, could pardon his would-be assassin, but, restored to his throne, he murdered his most devoted servant. So it ever is; the lot of the virtuous is affliction. The Patriarchs were virtuous, and their wandering lives were a series of miseries, threatened or experienced; the prophets were virtuous, and see the tortures they endured and the deaths they died; the Apostles were Christ's own, and St. Paul tells us they were treated as the refuse of this world and the off-scouring of mankind; and as for Christ the God of virtue — the crucifix is the history of His life.
" But the Scriptures," says St. Peter, " foretell not only the sufferings that are in Christ but the glories that should follow." " I am with him," says the Holy Spirit, " in tribulation, I will deliver him and glorify him." Where virtue is there is affliction; and where affliction is patiently borne, there are God's sweetest consolations. " Blessed are they that mourn," says Our Lord, " for they shall be comforted." If a particular portion of the human body is wounded, the blood quickly rushes thither, and the whole man is soon so concerned about that particular member as to seem to have forgotten about the others. So, too, you recollect how, long ago, when your brother or sister was taken ill, your father and mother and the entire household danced attendance on him or her until, possibly, your little breast was filled with envy and you said to yourself, " What a blessed thing it is to be sick! 99 Now, each of us is a member of Christ's mystical body, and He loves each so intensely that, without Him, not even a hair of our head can fall to the ground. Hence, I say, He is with us in tribulation, and the greater the tribulation the more evident His presence. The world dearly loves the rich and the happy, while the poor and wretched vainly cry to it for justice, but God is the Father of the orphan and the Judge of the widow, and the only source of true consolation. Brethren, were there no other lesson than this in all the Bible, it would still preserve its full claim to our attention as a masterpiece of wisdom. For happiness here or hereafter is essentially every man's pursuit, and here in this lesson we have the secret of true happiness. St. Andrew rejoicing at the sight of his cross; St. Stephen praying for his murderers; St. Lawrence smiling at his tormentors from amid the flames; St. Theodore complaining only when his torturers desisted; all these and thousands of such like raises are inexplicable to one who has not studied the Scriptures and mastered their prevailing idea. Their prevailing idea, I repeat, for patience and consolation are the underlying thoughts that run through them all from cover to cover. Daniel in the den of lions; Jonas in his novel prison-house; Susanna between infamy and death; the three youths in the fiery furnace; and Job, destitute, friendless, and afflicted — these are but a few of the cases wherein we find God's promise fulfilled: " I am with him in his affliction; I will deliver him and I will glorify him."
Brethren, if what things soever are written in the Sacred Scriptures are written for our instruction, there must be a corresponding obligation on our part to read and study them. From these sacred pages we learn what we must do to possess life eternal. From them we learn, too, how to make our temporal life endurable. Be our specialty history, science, art, or literature, we will find in the Bible ample matter for our study and entertainment. In it, also, we will find the key to the solution of the principal problems that confront the Christian world to-day. And travelling, as we are, through this world, falling often among its thieves and suffering at their hands, we will learn from the Scriptures the comforting presence of Him who enables us to bear wrongs patiently; or if the more fortunate, we learn how to be the Good Samaritan to some less fortunate brother. Thus profiting by the things written for our instruction, through patience and the comfort of the Scriptures, we will have reason, indeed, to have "hope unto life everlasting."