from Adam's fall, has strongly emphasised this mark of finite and borrowed being. And yet, having come forth from God's hands, it must return thither, it must, that is, procure his glory; and this it cannot do, save on the condition of there being removed that unhappy division, which separates it from both God and its fellow-creatures; its very multiplicity must reproduce, as it tends towards its Maker, an image of the fruitful harmony of the Three Divine Persons. That they, also, may be ONE in us, as we also are ONE:1 there is the grand revelation of God's intentions, when he produced creatures; and the revelation is made to us by the Angel of the great Counsel, who is come upon this earth, that he might carry out the divine plan. Now, what is it that brings all the several elements of the social body into oneness, by bringing them back to their Creator? It is religion. And what is the fundamental act of religion? Sacrifice. Sacrifice is both the means and scope of this magnificent unification in Christ; its perfect realisation will mark the consummation of the eternal kingdom of the Father, who will have become, through his Christ, all in all.2 But, this royalty of endless ages, which is to be procured for the Father by Christ's reign here below,3 has enemies, and they must be subdued. The principalities, and powers, and virtues, of Satan's kingdom are leagued against it. They were jealous of Man, the image of God's own likeness; and that envy made them turn their attacks upon man; they led him to disobedience, and disobedience brought death into the world. By man, now become its slave, sin took occasion, by every one of God's commandments, to insult that God. Far from studying how to offer 1 St. John, xvii. 21, 22. 3 Ibid. 24, 25. 4 Wisd. ii. 23, 34. 5 Rom. vii. 11. to its Maker the homage due to him, the human race seemed bent on intensifying the poverty of its original nothingness, by adding to it the baseness of every sort of defilement. So that, before being capable of acceptableness with the Father, the future members of Christ have need of a Sacrifice of propitiation and acquittance. Their Christ will himself have to live the expiatory life, which comports a sinner; he will have to suffer their sufferings, and die the death. Yes, death was the penalty threatened, from the very commencement, as sanction of God's commandment; it was the severest penalty the transgressor could possibly pay, and yet was not adequate to the offence offered, by the transgression, to the infinite Majesty of God, unless a Divine Person, taking upon himself the terrible responsibility of this infinite debt, were to undergo himself the punishment due upon man, and, by so doing, restore man to innocence. Oh! then, let our High Priest come forth; let the divine Head of our human race and world show himself! Because he hath loved justice, and hated iniquity, therefore hath God anointed him with the oil of gladness, above his fellows, his brethren. He was Christ by the priesthood destined to be his from the very bosom of his Father, and confirmed by a solemn oath; he is Jesus, too, for the sacrifice he is about to offer will save his people from their sin: Jesus-Christ, then, is to be, for ever, the name of the eternal Priest. What power and what love are there not in his Sacrifice! Priest and Victim at one and the same time, he swallows death, in order to destroy it, and, by that very act, crushes sin by his own innocent flesh suffering its penalty; he satisfies, even to the last farthing, yea, and far beyond it, the justice of his Father; he takes the decree that was against us, nails it to the 1 Gen. ii. 17. 2 Ps. xliv. 8. 3 Ps. cix. 4. Cross, and blots out the hand-writing; and then, despoiling the principalities and powers of their tyrant sway, he triumphs over them in himself. Our old man was crucified together with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed; renovated by the Blood of his Redeemer, he can rise, together with him, from the tomb, and begin a new life. Ye are dead, says the Apostle, and your life is hidden with Christ in God; when Christ shall appear, who is your Life, then ye also shall appear with him in glory. For, it is as our Head, that Christ suffered; his Sacrifice includes the whole body, of which he is the Head, and he transforms it, by uniting it to himself, for an eternal holocaust, the sweet fragrance of which is to fill heaven itself. "The word comes forward," says St. Ambrose, "in the robes of the High Priest, which Moses de"scribed; he is clad with the world in its magnifi'cence, that he may fill all with the fulness of God. "He is the Head which rules the body, and he unites "it closely to himself. Speaking of himself, he said: "And 1, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things unto myself." David had sung all this, in the "Psalm, wherein he said: All flesh shall come unto "thee." How so? Because," answers St. Augustine, "he took flesh; and that flesh, which he took, shall "draw all flesh. He took its first-fruits, when he took 'flesh from the Virgin's womb; the rest will follow, "and the holocaust will be complete ;"s the holocaust, of which this same Psalm says, that the vow shall be paid in Jerusalem. For, what is this vow, made by Christ, our Head, but the row which he himself describes so fully in the next Psalm? I will go into thy 1 Coloss. ii. 14, 15. 5 De fuga sæculi, xvi. 7 Ps. lxiv. 3. 8 Enarrat. in Ps. lxiv. house with burnt-offerings; I will pay thee my vows, which my lips have uttered. And my mouth hath spoken, when I was in trouble: I will offer up to thee holocausts full of marrow, with the incense of rams; I will offer to thee bullocks, with goats.' 2 What is this day, whereon our High Priest was in trouble? It is that of which the Apostle speaks, when he tells us, that, with a strong cry and tears, he offered up prayers and supplications to Him, (his Father), who was able to save him from death. But, why does this Jesus mention rams and bullocks and goats,those offerings become useless and rejected of God? Did he not himself say, when he came into our world: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not; but a Body thou hast fitted unto me?3 Yea, truly and it is this Body of Christ, says St. Augustine, which is here shown to us, in this Psalm; he presents his Body, as the offering he vows to his Father; the rams are the leaders of the Church. Hear my prayer, continues the Psalmist, prophesying of our High Priest,—0 hear my prayer: all Flesh shall come unto thee. Princes and people of all nations, children, young men and old, Jews and Gentiles, Greeks, Romans, Barbarians, -all are on the Wood, and are the victim vowed to the Father. It is with all these, and in their name, and for their sakes, in the entirety and unity of his Body, that Christ said to his Father: I will go into thy house with burnt-offerings; send thy Fire, the fire of thy Spirit, the divine flame of me, Eternal Wisdom; let it burn and wholly burn this Body which I have taken to myself; let it be a holocaust, that is, let it be all thine, O Father!" Come, then, O ye children Lord the offspring of rams. 1 Ps. lxv. 13-15. 2 Heb. v. 7. 6 of God! bring unto the The voice of the Lord 4 Enarrat. in Ps. lxv. 5 St. Aug. passim in Psalmos. has been heard in its power; he bids the flame of Fire come down upon the mount; the Holocaust is already burning, and, from Calvary, the fire will spread throughout the world. The divine Fire pursues its work, each succeeding generation; it absorbs into itself each of the members of the great Victim, that is, each one of the Faithful; it devours sin; it burns out the dross of vice; it purifies, even in the dust of the grave, the flesh that has once been sanctified by the touch of Christ, in the sacred Mystery. It is a true fire of Heaven; it is the uncreated flame; it destroys nought but evil; it sends, indeed, suffering and death among men, but it is only that it may deliver them from the wreck and ruin of the Fall, and, by expiation, remake the whole human race. The day will come when this Fire of the great Sacrifice, having drawn into itself the last member of Christ's mystical body, the very flesh itself of the elect will re-appear all spiritual and glorified; and this wonderful transformation of the victim will make it a sacrifice truly worthy of the Lord God, and an assertion, far stronger than was its destruction by death, of the sovereign power and dominion of Him who is the Author of Life. Then will the complete body of the Word Incarnate ascend, like purest incense, from the holy mount whereon the Church had fixed her tent here below, and make its way even to the Altar of heaven; it will be the eternal aliment of the divine flame, the immense holocaust, in which "the city of the redeemed, the people of the "saints, will be offered to God, as the universal sacrifice, by the great High Priest, who offered himself "for us, in his Passion, in the form of a servant and slave, that we might be the body of so great a "Head."1 66 In this "universal Sacrifice," as we have just heard St. Augustine calling it, in this Sacrifice of adoration 1 St. Aug. De civit. Dei, x. 6. |