Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 23
Psalm Sunday
Humiliation and Exaltation.
"He humbled Himself even unto the death of the cross, wherefore also God exalted Him, that every tongue should confess the Lord Jesus." — Phil. ii. 8, 9, 11.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : Christ's I. Humiliation. II. Exaltation. III. Acknowledgment.
I. Humiliation: 1. Knowledge and power. 2. Gethsemani. 3. Sold, scourged, crowned, and crucified.
II. Exaltation : 1. Died as seed. 2. Plant (Church) grew. 3. Glories of cross.
III. Faith spread by self-sacrifice : 1. Toward God. 2. Neighbor. 3. Self.
Per.: 1. God's hatred of sin. 2. Redemption. 3. Faithfulness to cross living and dead.
SERMON.
Brethren, Our Lord's tragic earthly career divides itself naturally into three parts, His private life, His public life, and His Passion, and each act or part ends with a triumph. When, ere His hour had yet come, He at His Mother's bidding changed the water into wine at the marriage-feast of Cana, He manifested His glory, says the Gospel, and His disciples believed in Him. Again, at the close of His public mission, when for the last time He approached Jerusalem, the populace acclaimed Him in the words: " Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." Lastly, at His Resurrection His final victory over death and sin was so unmistakably proclaimed that the world has not yet ceased to echo Alleluia! nor the doubting Thomases to confess Him as their Lord and their God. Now self-abasement preceded each triumph. In His youth He went down to Nazareth and was subject to Mary and Joseph; in His manhood He meekly became all things to all; in His Passion He utterly effaced Himself. St. Paul, with an eye to the close connection and dependence of these three, voluntary humiliation, spiritual exaltation, and the spread of faith, thus admirably sums up the Lord's life and its lesson: " He humbled Himself even unto the death of the cross; wherefore also God exalted Him, that every tongue should confess the Lord Jesus."
He humbled Himself even unto the death of the cross.
Brethren, try as we may, we shall never succeed in arriving at a just appreciation of the enormity of the Saviour's sufferings. " Thou alone," He says to His heavenly Father, " Thou alone knowest My ignominy, My confusion, and My dignity." The majesty of Christ is adequately known only to the Father, and until He reveals it to us we shall never fathom the depths of Christ's voluntary humiliation. Of all created beings, in fact, man seems the least affected at Christ's sufferings, for while the sun grew dark and the earth quaked, and even the dead arose, the throng on Calvary scoffed or else looked on unmoved. Still, we perhaps, on sober second thought, can better realize the Passion of Our Lord. Christ, the All- Wise, knew that the greater His sufferings the more perfect would be our Redemption, and being omnipotent and prompted by an infinite love, His sufferings naturally exceeded all bounds. For what will not love, even carnal love, endure for its beloved! Jacob served Laban seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a day because of the greatness of his love. What dreadful torments the martyrs underwent for Christ, finite as was their love, and though limited the power of their persecutors to devise new tortures! In His task of satisfying the infinite demands of divine justice, Christ's knowledge and power and choice and charity knew no such limitations. Sustained by their heavenly Comforter, the martyrs exulted amid their agonies, but in His Passion Christ seems to have denied Himself the smallest consolation. In the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus we read how a sin-offering of two goats was made, one of which was sacrificed and the other allowed to go into the wilderness. These animals prefigured Christ's dual nature, the divine temporarily withdrawing itself while the human expiated the sins of men. In mind and soul and body, in all that it was and had, His humanity suffered. Anticipation of suffering, we know, is agony more acute than even the reality. This accounts for the sadness that so overwhelmed Christ after the Last Supper, and the horror of what was to come that seized Him in Gethsemani and forced from His body the sweat of blood. In the annals of human suffering no fact equally stupendous is recorded, because never was there woe like unto His woe. For over and above the chalice of bodily torture He was to drain to the dregs, He saw with God's eyes the world's sins, the ingratitude of men, Jerusalem's extermination, and the torments of the damned of which Jerusalem's destruction was but a tiny figure. If parents wail so over one son lost, how must He, the infinitely loving Father, have grieved over the loss of millions of His children. So utterly downcast was He that He seems to have dreaded being alone. Misery, they say, loves company. Though nothing was dearer to Christ through life than holy solitude, He now time and again interrupts His prayer to seek His Apostles. A sense of utter loneliness oppressed Him. Judas He saw already negotiating His betrayal, and the other Apostles asleep but sure to flee at the first alarm. In heaven, on earth, or in hell, He found no being who was not either permitting or desiring or actively procuring His destruction. His enemies the Jews, the Gentile Romans and the devils worked for it; His friends, the souls in Limbo longed for it; and His heavenly Father let them have their will. When God permitted Satan to torture Job He bade him to spare Job's life, but not so now; it was completely the devil's hour and the hour of the power of darkness. Christ saw Himself like another Isaac bearing on His shoulders the wood of the sacrifice, while by His side, like a second Abraham, walked His Father, bearing in one hand, yes, the fire of love, but in the other, alas! the sword of justice. In all heaven there was no angel to come and stay His hand or point to a substitute victim. Aye, and another sword He saw of keener blade, the sword that was to pierce the heart of Mary standing by the cross. Eve looked upon the forbidden tree and Adam wrought our ruin by eating from it, and justice demanded that Mary should gaze on Jesus while dying on the rood. Abandoned by all she yet would cling to Him, but her very constancy, He saw, would only serve to aggravate His torments.
Brethren, the horror Christ conceived from His foreknowledge of His sufferings was justified by the event. The first indignity heaped upon Him was that of being sold as a slave or a beast, sold by His friend to His bloodthirsty enemies, sold for the paltry sum of thirty pieces of silver. Such was man's estimate of Christ's value— of Christ, who did not reckon His own heart's blood too dear a price wherewith to purchase man. But even the silver pieces were considered on second thought beyond His worth, for presently He was auctioned off, He and the outlaw Barabbas, and the multitude cried: " Give us Barabbas, but as for Christ, crucify Him, crucify Him." The healer of bodily ills, the restorer of the dead to life, was rejected for a murderer! Then came the scourging, a punishment considered by all so shameful that Rome guarded by law her humblest or wickedest citizen from such indignity. In Christ's case, then, the tender body of the noblest of noblemen was subjected to chastisement usually administered only to rustics and to slaves. That His scourging was excessive, too, is evident, for to such pitiable state was He reduced that Pilate was led to hope the sight would move the people to repent and let Him go. But his expectation was not realized, for the multitude loudly demanded that the prisoner be further punished with crown and cross. The crown of thorns was a species of torture altogether new, unheard of before or since, the devil's masterpiece. The cross, too, was to the ancients what the gallows is to-day — an object of shame and horror. Modern justice is merciful enough to draw the black cap over the criminal's head and face to hide from his eyes the scaffold, but Christ was made to look upon His cross, to embrace it and to carry it. He, so dignified, so gentle, so modest, made to run half-naked through the streets, to be exposed presently quite naked on the cross! And through it all He never uttered a complaint. Animals that cry out in pain do not excite such pity as the horses and sheep that suffer dumbly, and loud-mouthed human sorrow meets with scanty sympathy. This is the secret of the Passion's pathos, that Christ opened not His mouth, or if He spake at all it was but to pray for His tormentors, to sympathize with Mary and John, or to beg for a little water. Dives, we read, Dives buried in hell, was denied one drop wherewith to allay his thirst, but human cruelty was crueler still, for not content with refusing Christ's request, they gave Him instead vinegar and gall. Christ died, the Gospel says, crying out with a loud voice. It was the cry of a broken heart to humanity to come and see if there ever was or could be, even in hell, woe like unto His woe.
" He humbled Himself even unto the death of the cross; wherefore God exalted Him." Brethren, after the cross the crown, or rather the cross itself became for Christ and the world their joy and crown. In the spiritual world he that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. The proud and boastful Pharisee returned home from his devotions in the Temple less justified than the humbly penitent publican. The rich young man who refused to give up all and follow Christ was never heard of more in history, sacred or profane, but because the Apostles left their little all and followed Christ, their fame hath gone to the ends of the earth and because Mary, by vow of chastity, forfeited, humanly speaking, all claim to be the Mother of the Messias, therefore did God regard the humility of His handmaid and all generations call her blessed. The sequence between self-humiliation and exaltation Christ thus expressed: "Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Christ uttered these words in the midst of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and whenever He gave His Apostles a glimpse of His divinity and of the glories to come, He never failed also to remind them of His approaching persecution and ignominious death. Unless one forgets self, unless he hates and dies to self, he can never accomplish anything great for God or humanity or his own soul. A greater benefactor than Jesus the world has never known, and He, in the accomplishment of His mission, simply annihilated self. He was fond of comparing Himself to the seed — sometimes to the largest, the grain of wheat, and again, to the smallest, the mustard-seed. Christ was at once the greatest and the least, God and man. We see Him at His lowliest in the manger, at the pillar, thorncrowned or crucified, but He was still the greatest, for He was born of a Virgin, feared and adored by kings, hailed by angel choirs; He made the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and the dead to rise again. He was the greatest of all when, at His death, Nature was convulsed and conquered, and when, rising from the tomb, He led captivity captive. But the author of Christianity, as it exists to-day, is Christ not at His greatest but at His lowliest, for His method was to sink His divinity into His humanity, and to lower His humanity into the very earth, that dying there He might bring forth much fruit. It was necessary that He, the new Adam, should sleep the sleep of death on the cross, that out of His side might emerge the new Eve — the Church — the Mother of all the living. We read that Rachel of old gave birth to two sons, the first of whom was born without the pains of childbirth, but the second with such excruciating tortures that her child had scarcely taken his first breath when she breathed her last. So it was with God the Creator and God the Redeemer. When first He created man it was with joy and exultation, but the product of His hands proved a failure, — man abandoned Him so that God remained still practically alone. " Unless the seed die, itself remaineth alone." But man's regeneration was accomplished by the torments and death of the man-God, and the result was that the dead seed brought forth much fruit. For the Church to-day stands like a mighty tree towering above all earthly things, her branches and members spreading everywhere, clothed with the fair foliage of her rites and ceremonies, adorned with the blossoms of innocence and laden with the fruits of sanctity, and men gaze at her and marvel that so great a plant should have sprung from so small a seed, that that limp figure on the cross should be the author of so mighty and such a perfectly organized institution. Such exaltation has Christ achieved that even the instrument of His torture, the cross, previously the object of dread and horror, has become for mankind a ladder of Jacob leading heavenward, a tree of life in the midst of earth, laden with precious fruit, a rock in an arid desert from which, when struck, gush forth sweet waters, an inexhaustible widow's cruse, affording us our daily bread and the wherewithal to satisfy our heavenly creditor. With the sign of the cross temples and altars are consecrated, ministers ordained, and the sacraments administered. We place it on our spires to point us heavenward, on our foreheads to guide us as a lamp through this dark world, and we mark with it the resting-place of our dead. In our battles with the powers of darkness our standard is the one God gave to Constantine, an illumined cross with the words, " In this sign, conquer." Before the crucifix we bow in adoration, and to possess even a particle of the original cross is to be rich indeed. The sign of the cross is the uniform of mercy's army, the countersign at which the world's sentinel cries: " Friend, pass on." Whatever good we do in life begins and ends with the sign of the cross, and dying we press it to our lips. Verily of the cross as of Christ Himself may be quoted the words: " I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end."
Brethren, this truth, that the only way to the crown is the cross, cannot be too strongly emphasized, for our instincts are contrary to the laws of Nature and grace. We recoil from the cross while we clutch the crown. But Nature acts otherwise. The tree does not spring up unless the seed dies. Far otherwise, too, is the service of God. Whoever have done great things for Him have succeeded because they held the goods of this life and life itself at their true value and sacrificed all for the life to come. " If any man will come after Me," says Christ, " let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." The same is true of our efforts in behalf of humanity — our self-sacrifice will be the measure of their success. Why if, in purely secular spheres of human activity, men succeed because they literally put their heart, their soul, their life unto their task, how much more so, in the work of spreading the kingdom of God! The martyrs because they died and with their blood fertilized the ground, bore increase a hundredfold, for their spirits, released and diffused abroad through their example, spread about a very epidemic of faith and hope and love. By such means, too, must our own salvation be procured, for unless we rise superior to self we shall never accomplish our highest destiny. " He that loveth his life shall lose it," says Christ, " and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal." Our tendency is to load ourselves down with good things of earth, whereas, to wrestle successfully with Satan, we must be as abstemious and as thinly clad as an athlete. It is the heavy load on the rich man's back that makes the way to heaven appear to him so steep and the gate so narrow. The one argument against salvation for the majority is the amount of selfishness in the world, and Christ's threat that whoever loves his life here shall lose it hereafter. For no man, whose efforts in the work of salvation began and ended in himself ever did, or ever can, reach heaven. Faith is all very well, but it is not enough, for Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example to be followed. The true economy of salvation, therefore, is to save ourselves by sacrificing self for the salvation of others. Woe to him who approaches his Judge single-handed and alone. Like the wicked servant who hid his talent in a napkin, his master will order him to be cast into exterior darkness. Our work, whether it be the suppression of our own passions, or the giving* of our substance to relieve the poor, or the bestirring ourselves to lead sinners back to God, or the laying down of our lives for the brethren — whatever it be we must never allow self to stand between us and our duty. But the battle must first be fought and victory gained at home — in and with ourselves. For a Christian to gratify all his cravings would be not less unreasonable than for a fever patient to indulge in copious draughts of cold water with the certainty of fatal consequences. Our natures perturbed by sin require homoeopathic treatment — further perturbation by self-denial will restore them to life and health.
" He humbled Himself — and God exalted Him, that every tongue should confess the Lord Jesus." Brethren, besides confessing the greatness of Christ's sufferings and the greatness of His glory we must not forget to acknowledge the malice of our sins for which He suffered. When Joseph's brethren sold him into slavery and to prove his death falsely exhibited to his father a bloodstained garment, Jacob cried out: "A most wicked beast hath devoured Joseph." How much more wicked was that beast of sin which sent back to His Father Christ's earthly garb — His torn and bleeding humanity! Christ was to His Father as a vase of priceless worth, but when filled with our putrid wickedness the Father crushed and ground Him unto dust. Christ was the only begotten and well-beloved Son of the God of armies, but when He donned the rebel uniform of sin His Father caused Him to be tortured and executed. And if God spared not His beloved Son defiled by the sins of others, will He spare us laden with our own? If the fire of God's vengeance so fiercely devoured Christ, the green wood, will not we, the dry wood, be utterly consumed? If Christ's Passion be the measure of God's hatred of sin, who shall deny that hell exists and is eternal? But here we must acknowledge, too, Christ's boundless goodness for that He saved us from a fearful doom, for by sacrifice of self He restored the earthly paradise and reopened heaven. Wherefore it is that every tongue should confess the Lord Jesus, and every Christian imitate His virtues. While adoring the dead cross of Christ, let us not forget our duty regarding the living crosses of our lives. In sinning our guilt was more than that of merely having looked on sin, and our expiation calls for more than merely looking on Christ crucified. Like St. Paul, we ought to be fixed to the cross with Christ, we ought to live, not we, but Christ in us. We ought, like St. Francis, to bear in our bodies the stigmata, or, like St. Clare, have the cross imprinted on our hearts. Mary and John were dearest of all to Christ because nearest to His cross, and we, if we imitate them, shall be by Him exalted unto the glory of God His Father.