Part 8

The obligations of the rich in respect to giving are far greater than those of the poor, but not generally so well fulfilled. The spirit of the Catholic religion ought to inspire them with a generous and lavish charity. The spirit of God is a princely spirit; and in the early and middle ages this princely spirit was manifested in a princely munificence. There are not wanting, in our own times, many signal instances of this same generous and noble magnanimity of Christian character in the great and wealthy. The present needs of the Holy See have called forth, in numbers of those who are noble or rich, a manifestation of that same piety, devotion, and liberality which has adorned the history of happier epochs, and given a purer lustre to so many illustrious names. {137} But our age is one of luxury and self-indulgence. The rich are exposed in an unusual degree to those temptations which have always made their state so dangerous. Therefore, they need special admonitions to administer well the goods entrusted to them by Almighty God, and beware of that excessive love of money, that pride, selfishness, and extravagance, which are so contrary to the spirit of Christianity. They need to be stirred up to give in proportion to their wealth to the sacred cause of God, and not to stint themselves to the small measure which, for the poor, is generous and honorable, but which for them is niggardly and disgraceful. To the rich, therefore, I say that they should imitate the example of those holy and noble persons who have consecrated their wealth to God.

You serve an exacting Master. You are placed in a position which is beset with responsibility and danger. It is a responsible position, because of the great and important duties and obligations which are annexed to it; dangerous, because of its great difficulties and temptations. Those who are favored and elevated above their fellows by Divine Providence, have not received these blessings in order that they may make a display of themselves or indulge their passions, but in order that they may glorify God and do good to their fellow-men. {138} If they wish to be safe in the midst of the allurements and seductions of this world, to derive real and lasting advantage from their wealth, and to save their souls, they must consecrate their riches to the service of God. There is but one end for which one can live in this world which is worthy of a Christian--the exaltation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Princes, nobles, men of power and influence through their talents, learning, station, or wealth, if they do not devote themselves heart and soul to the advancement and extension of the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church, are recreant to their trust. It is this treason of the great and rich in Catholic nations to the sacred cause of Christ and His Church which is the chief cause of irreligion and vice among the people, of rebellion and revolution, political and social disorder, and which threatens to produce convulsions still more extensive and terrible, in which the privileged classes will become the victims of a conflagration which their own folly and wickedness have kindled. The throne of the Roman Pontiff is the keystone of the arch of political and social order, public peace and prosperity, civilization and good government. Those who have the greatest stake involved in the social commonwealth have the greatest interest in maintaining the rights of that august and sacred throne. {139} It is a disgrace to Christendom that the Sovereign Pontiff of the Catholic Church should be left to struggle almost alone and single-handed with enemies who have plotted the overthrow of the Holy See and of religion. It is shameful that he should be left to bear the burden of debts and embarrassments which have been created by those who have unjustly invaded and despoiled the patrimony of the Church. The majestic figure and attitude of Pius IX. is a condemnation of the nations of Christendom in this nineteenth century before the tribunal of conscience and of Almighty God. Only those can free themselves from this condemnation who are found on his side, sustaining his cause by word and deed, proving their loyalty to Christ and His Vicar by their open renunciation of all sympathy and complicity with the enemies of the Holy See, and by their zealous and active support of the spiritual supremacy and temporal princedom of the Roman Pontiff.

By the grace of God, my dear brethren, we will not incur that condemnation. We are true and faithful members of that Holy Catholic Church which was founded on the day of Pentecost. Although remote in the distance of space from the See of Peter, the Holy Roman Church, we acknowledge with pride and joy that the Mother and Mistress of Churches is the Mother and Mistress of the Church of this Western world. {140} We are the loyal and devoted children of our Holy Father, Pius IX. His rights we will sustain while life shall last. Our prayers shall never cease to ascend to heaven for his success and triumph; our generous contributions to his temporal necessities shall never fail him. We rely on the unfailing word and almighty power of our Lord Jesus Christ to give victory and triumph to the cause of His crowned and anointed Vicar and of His Holy Church; and we will, therefore, do our duty zealously and faithfully to promote that victory, that we may share in its glory and reward.

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The Sermon IX.

The Living God.

(For Trinity Sunday.)

Jer. x. 10.

"__The Lord is the true God: He is the living God__."

To-day the Church makes a solemn profession of faith in the mystery of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. It is true this is a profound, inscrutable mystery, which we could never have discovered, and which, even now that it is revealed, we cannot fully grasp with our reason; but it is not so absolutely impenetrable that we may not reason about it in so far as to see a fitness in it, and to recognize its truth and conclude its necessity from its perfect harmony with the other mysteries of the Christian faith. We can see how the whole system of religion, which shows us God as the Creator of the universe, and the Redeemer and glorifier of the human race, finds its fittest sanction and most reasonable explanation in its truth; while the rejection of it would leave the mind oppressed and bewildered with a thousand difficulties impossible of solution, and of such a nature as to lead us to abandon the belief in God as a living personal Being, and seek for their explanation in some theory of Pantheism or Polytheism, the first of which denies the personality, and the second the unity, of God.

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If I needed an apology for endeavoring to show the reasonableness of this doctrine, it would be that in our day it is famentably true that the great body of so-called Christians, who have cast off the primary authority of revealed truth, and set up the destructive theory of private judgment in its stead, are fast losing their faith in this necessary truth of Christianity, and falling away into Rationalism and Infidelity. It becomes the Christian preacher, therefore, to raise his voice in defence of this fundamental doctrine of Christianity. Christianity is true only because the Trinity is true. Abandon that, and belief in Christ the incarnate Son of God is impossible.

Let us consider, then, with all due reverence, the mystery of the being of God, and express the reasons which our own mind can present to confirm the faith of the Christian, when, signing himself with the sign of Christ, he adds the solemn declaration of his belief in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

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First of all, it is proper to state distinctly what the doctrine of the Trinity is. We believe that there is one infinite, eternal Being, whose nature is in no way divided, nor can be conceived of as partly one thing, and partly another thing. We believe that God, though one in being, is a Trinity in person. This Trinity of person in God does not separate His being into parts any more than His attributes, such as His wisdom or His justice, could divide Him, making His wisdom or justice one thing, and Himself another thing, which is not wisdom or justice.

It is God who is both wise and just, and His wisdom and justice have no existence but in Him. So it is God, one Being, who is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and these three Persons, taken together, or one by one, are not something else besides the being of God, but they, each and all, are God. God __is__ the Trinity. So that the Father cannot regard the Son, or the Holy Ghost, as some other being--some other God, because the Son and the Holy Ghost are the same God as the Father is. In being God is not three, but one. Nor does the fact of there being three Persons add anything to the being of God, or lessen the absolute perfection of His unity, by introducing an element of division: on the contrary, we shall see that a perfect being must exist in three persons, and a being with only one person, such as we are, is necessarily an imperfect being.

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And when we say that the three Persons are distinct one from the other, so that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Holy Ghost, that again in no manner can affect the unity of the Divine Being, which in all three is identically the same. God, whose being is one, lives in three persons, and we can address ourselves to any one of the three separately, to God living as the Father, to God living as the Son, or to God living as the Holy Ghost; but the Being who __lives__, either as Father, or as Son, or as Holy Ghost, is One, and cannot be addressed in any manner as if He was double or triple. This very reasonable distinction between a being and the person of that being seems to be something which many wise and learned men appear either unable or unwilling to understand.

The being of God lives. He is the living God, and the three persons are His life. Not that God has three different lives; that as Father he has one life, and as the Son a second life, and as the Holy Ghost a third life. There is but one life in God, and it is the three persons that live that life. This appears to me to be the most reasonable explanation of the Trinity which our minds are capable of conceiving, and I will develop this thought in a few words.

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God is a __living__ being. Let us ask ourselves whence does God receive the life of His Divine Being? Who is the author of His life? Plainly, from no one but from Himself. He is the first, and only, and complete cause of His own life. There was nothing before Him from which He drew His infinite being, nor upon whose prior existence He depends for life. There is nothing now that can sustain Him or support His life, neither can there be anything after Him. He is the eternally living God. He is, then, the eternal cause of His own life.

What is He as cause, and what is this divine life of His being which is the effect of that cause? As cause, He is the Father, the Parent, the Progenitor, the Producer, the Begetter of His own life. And that life, which is begotten in Himself, is the Son. He is the eternally living God, and hence the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. The Person of God who begets His own life is the Father. The Person who is the Life begotten is the Son; and is a Person, because it is God who says by the mouth of the Son--I am the Life begotten.

Both the Father and the Son are equal, because it is the same Divine Being who is both Father and Son, as we profess in the Creed--"__consubstantial with the Father__." Both are eternal. The Father does not exist before the Son, because it is the same Divine Being which is the life as Son, as well as Giver of life as the Father. God is the Father, because He begets a Son--His Life. {146} God is the Son, because He is the Life begotten of the Father--the Divine Progenitor of the Life of the Eternal Godhead.

God is the eternally living God. He lives the life which He gives Himself. His life is infinitely perfect, infinitely lovely, infinitely good. He enjoys the life He has. We possess life, not like the life of God, it is true, because it is limited in duration, imperfect in action, subject to change, and incapable of absolute happiness; but, such as it is, we live it, we enjoy it. The enjoyment or living of our life proceeds from two sources. First, from the cause of our life--from that which makes us live; and, secondly, from the life we possess. And we say--I enjoy my own life. But, mark it, we cannot say as the Father can say--I give myself life; nor as the Son of God can say--I am the life. We can only say--I enjoy the life which is given to me. Hence we are only one person--the person living, enjoying the life which is not from ourselves, but from God.

So God enjoys with an infinite beatitude His own life. It is the Person of the Holy Ghost. He says not--I give myself life. It is the Person of the Father which says that. He does not say--I am the life. It is the Person of the Son who says that. But he says--I am God, living My life; I am God, enjoying My life. {147} Yet it must be kept in mind that all this is one simultaneous act in God: the eternal giving of life to Himself; the life itself eternally springing into being, and the eternal enjoyment or fruition of life. These are not separate acts, but one, single, inseparable act of the Triune God. The Being which acts is God, and God is not one or two of the Trinity, but the Trinity itself. The principle of the act is attributed to the Person; the act itself to the God head. Hence, again, the Son does not live a different life from the Father, or the Holy Ghost a different life from the other two Persons, but the life they live is all one.

To the Holy Ghost is attributed the living or enjoyment of life, as we attribute the living of our own life to our own person; and, therefore, our person is, in a remarkable manner, an image of the Holy Ghost. We speak of our __spirit__ as living, rejoicing, etc., and when we die or yield up the living of our life, we say--We give up the ghost.

In Me, says the Holy Ghost, are all possible perfections; I rejoice in them. My life is all good, wherefore I love Myself with infinite love. My life is all beautiful, wherefore I admire it, and am well pleased, and take an infinite delight in it. My life is all holy. I am the supreme object of My own adoration. My life is all true, wherefore I contemplate all truth with unspeakable bliss. In My life is no conflict, no change, no anxiety, doubt, or sorrow, wherefore I am in eternal peace. {148} My life is all that is or can be, wherefore I seek not for My happiness outside of My own happy being. Such I am, and such I live, the Holy Ghost, who proceed from the Father and the Son, who, together with the Father and the Son, am adored and glorified, the great I AM, the Ancient of Days, Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, who was, and who is, and who is to come, the Almighty, Good, Wise, Just, and True, the eternal, living God.

Dear brethren, such thoughts, I know, are bewildering, and leave our poor human intellects stupefied in presence of that Majesty, the simplest idea of whom is beyond all power of expression.

But we know that God is, and that we know Him, great as He is, incomprehensible as He is, so far transcending all grasp of our feeble minds; yet even in His mysterious Being He is no stranger to us. The doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in God is wonderful, but it is not a strange doctrine. It is a truth full of light and consolation. It is a revelation of Him, who is all in all, that draws us, if I may say so, nearer to Him.

Starting with this view of Him, enlightened with this truth, all that He has done for us in the world of nature and of grace, becomes clear, plain, reasonable, and consequent. All the other mysterious truths of Christianity, as I have said before, suppose the truth of this, and, indeed, would be unmeaning without it. The consideration of one or two of these will confirm the view I have taken of it.

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Look at creation. This is fully as incomprehensible to our minds as the mystery of the Trinity itself. But without a revelation of the Trinity, it would be more difficult of belief, further away from our grasp, baffling more utterly all our attempts to form a reasonable conception of it. What is it? It is that God, who is all that is or can be, yet can create and has created something which is not God. It looks like a contradiction. Those who have rejected the Trinity and yet believe in God so regard it, and are led to imagine that the created universe and all that is in it and of it is Divine.

We read that, when God created man, He said, "Let us make man to our image and likeness." [Footnote 40]

[Footnote 40: Genesis i. 26]

The creature is, then, an image of the Creator. Creation is not God, but is an image of God; that is, the being and life of creatures, analogous to the being and life of God, is not of themselves, but is a reflected image of God, which we may compare to the reflected image of ourselves in a mirror. The image we behold is not our own being, but an imperfect likeness of it. So the creation which God beholds imaged in His own Divine mind is not His own Divine being, but an imperfect likeness of it. {150} And now it is not the image of an abstract being--of an ideal being--but of a living being. The living God is the Trinity, as I have shown. The mystery of creation is illuminated by this truth, as you will see.

We say in the Creed, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." He is the Personal Cause, the Progenitor of all creation. Yet we also say, with St. John: "The Word was God. All things were made by Him: and without Him was nothing made that was made." [Footnote 41] And with holy Job: "The Spirit of the Lord made me, and the breath of the Almighty gave me life." [Footnote 42] And again, with the Psalmist: "Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created: and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth." [Footnote 43]

[Footnote 41: St. John i. 1-3.]

[Footnote 42: Job xxxiii. 4.]

[Footnote 43: Ps. ciii. 30.] [USCCB: Ps. civ. 30.]

We speak of creation, then, either as of the Father, of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost, because it is of the Trinity--one act of the Godhead. But we attribute creation properly to the Father, because He is the Infinite Personal Cause. We attribute it to the Son, because He is the Infinite Personal Life. "In him was the life," says St. John, in the next sentence after that in which he says all things were created by the Word, "and," he adds, "the life was the light of men." {151} So chant we in the Credo: __Lumen de lumine__--Light of light. It is the first word spoken by God at the creation--"__Fiat lux!__" Admirable conception! Light is, as it were, the Creator of the image reflected in a mirror, and the Divine Word is the light--the Creator of the creature who is the image and likeness of God. St. Paul calls our Lord, who is Man united to the Word, "the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature. In Him were all things created in heaven, and on earth, visible, and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him: and He is before all, and by Him all things consist." [Footnote 44] Because our Lord was the Word of God, the same thing is declared of Him, as the Eternal Wisdom, by the inspired prophet: "I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the first-born before all creatures." [Footnote 45] The creative act is, then, an image of the Son of God being divinely begotten by the Father; and creation in existence is an image of Him who truly said, "I am the Life."

[Footnote 44: Coloss. i. 15-17.]

[Footnote 45: Ecclus. xxiv. 5.] [USCCB: Sirach xxiv. 3.]

We attribute the creation to the Holy Ghost when we say in the Creed, "And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver."

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Recall what I said about the Holy Ghost, that He is God living, enjoying His Divine life. Creation is the image of God living, and hence of the Holy Ghost. When man was created, the Sacred Record says, "God breathed the breath [or spirit] of life into his face, and man became a living soul." With man, everything lives and enjoys its being with an enjoyment which is a reflection of the supreme living beatitude in God. Thus exclaims the writer of the Book of Wisdom: "The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole earth: and that, which containeth all things, hath knowledge of the voice." [Footnote 46]

[Footnote 46: Wisdom i. 7.]

It is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, the Lord and Life-giver, who, as holy Job declares, "hath adorned the heavens" with their radiant beauty, who hath filled the whole earth, and vivified it, so that it is not a dead but a living image of the Eternal, Omnipotent, Living God. Did I not say well, my brethren, that the mystery of the Holy Trinity is an illumination of the mystery of creation?

Look, again, at the Mystery of the Incarnation, in which are included the other Mysteries of the Regeneration and Redemption of man. We can not understand its manner. We cannot see how it is, any more than we can understand how the Son is begotten of the Father, or how the Holy Ghost proceeds from them both. {153} But the Trinity illuminates that also, and enlightens us to see and believe it, now that it is revealed to us. Like Creation, it is an act of the Trinity, because it is God uniting His Divine Person of the Son to humanity, His created image. This is why our Lord, as Man as well as God, calls Himself the Son of God. This is why the Apostle calls us, who are His brethren in the flesh, sons of God. It is the act of God as the Father. "God so loved the world, as to give his only-begotten Son." [Footnote 47] It is an act of God as the Son. In His last discourse, Jesus says to His disciples: "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father." [Footnote 48] It is an act of the Holy Ghost. As we say in the Creed, and as the Scripture testifies, "He was conceived by the Holy Ghost."

[Footnote 47: S. John iii. 16.]

[Footnote 48: __Ibid__. xvi. 23.] [USCCB: John xvi. 28.]

The mystery of the Trinity thus enables us to recognize the Divinity of the Person of Jesus Christ, as also the sublime character and object of His Incarnation. It reveals to us the true destiny of man, and shows us how the very reason of creation is in God Himself, and is to find its end, its accomplishment and fruition in God. For, as you see, the Incarnation was an act, of which the Person of God Himself was the object. {154} It was God communicating His Divine Life to the creature, and thus all creatures, through Jesus, who is the First-Born of them all, are to find their destiny, the end of their creation, in eternal union with the Divine Life. "I am the Life," said our Lord, and "because I live, you shall live." [Footnote 49] He and the Father are one. But, O wonderful revelation! "In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." [Footnote 50]

[Footnote 49: St. John xiv. 6 and 19.]

[Footnote 50: __Ibid__. 20.]

"God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world," says St. John, "that we may live by Him." [Footnote 51] "Ye are the temples of the living God," [Footnote 52] exclaims St. Paul. "We are made partakers of the Divine nature," [Footnote 53] says St. Peter. And St. Paul again designates us, first, as the "partakers of Christ," [Footnote 54] and next as the "partakers of the Holy Ghost." [Footnote 55]

[Footnote 51: Ep. St. John iv. 9.]

[Footnote 52: 2 Cor. vi. 16.]

[Footnote 53: 2 Ep. St. Peter i. 4.]

[Footnote 54: Heb. iii. 14.]

[Footnote 55: Heb. vi. 4.]