Our Lady Saint Mary

by J. G. H. Barry

What we find in S. Mary as she passes through the ceremony of her purification from a child-bearing which had in no circumstance of it anything impure, is the spirit of sacrifice which submission to the law implies. She has caught the spirit of her Son, the spirit of selfless offering to the will of God. It is the central accomplishment of the life of sanctity. The life of sanctity must be wrought out from the centre, from our contact with God. No one becomes holy by works, whatever may be the nature of the works. Works, the external life, are the expression of what we are, they are the externalization of our character. If they be not the expression of a life hid with Christ in God they can have no spiritual value, whatever may be their social value. The kind of works which "are done to be seen of men" "have their reward," that is, the sort of reward they seek, human approval; they have no value in the realm of the spirit.

But the life that is lived as sacrifice, as a thing perfectly offered to God, is a life growing up in God day by day. It is our Lord's life, summed up from this point of view in the "I come to do thy will, O God." Its most perfect reflection is caught by blessed Mary with her acceptance of God's will: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord." But it is the life expression of all sanctity; for the saint is such chiefly by virtue of his sacrificial attitude. It is the completest account of the life of sanctity that it "leaves all" to follow a divine call. It is the response of the Apostles who, as James and John, leave their father Zebedee and the boats and the nets and the hired servants, to follow Jesus. It is the answer of Matthew who rises from the receipt of custom at the Master's word. It is the answer of all saints in all times. Sanctity means the abandonment of all for Christ: it means the embracing of the poverty of Jesus and Mary.

Is sanctity then, or the possibility of it, shut within the narrow limits of a poor life? Well, even if it were, the limits would not be so very narrow. By far the greater part of the human race at any time has been poor, as poor as the Holy Family. Unfortunately, Christianity is forgetting its vocation of poverty and becoming a matter of well-to-do-ness. But we need not forget that the poor are the majority. However, the fact is not that economical poverty is automatically productive of spirituality, but that accepted and offered poverty is the road to the heart of God. It is not denied that the rich man may consecrate and offer his goods to God and make them instruments of God's service; but in the process he runs great risk of deceiving himself and of attempting to deceive God--the risk of quietly substituting for the spirit of sacrifice the spirit of commercial bargaining, and attempting to buy the favour of God, and of ransoming his great possessions by a well-calculated tribute. It is not so much our possessions as the way we hold them that is in question; it is a question whether the inner motive of our life is the will to sacrifice or the will to be rich. "They that desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition,"

These dangers S. Paul noted as the besetting dangers of riches are counteracted by the possession of the spirit of sacrifice which holds all things at the disposal of God, and views life as opportunity for the service of God. And in so estimating life, we must remember that money is not the only thing that human beings possess. As I pointed out the vast majority of the human race have no money: it by no means follows that they have no capacity or field for the exercise of the spirit of sacrifice. There is, for instance, an abundant opportunity for the exercise of that spirit in the glad acceptance of the narrow lot that may be ours. Probably many, indeed most, poor are only economically poor; they fall under S. Paul's criticism in that "they desire to be rich," and are therefore devoid of the spirit of sacrifice that would transform their actual poverty into a spiritual value. But all the powers and energies of life do in fact constitute life's capital. A poor boy has great possessions in the gifts of nature that God has granted him. He may use this capital as he will. He may be governed by "the desire to be rich," or by the desire to consecrate himself to the will and service of God--and the working out of life will be accordingly. He may become very rich economically, or he may devote his life to the service of his fellows as physician, teacher, missionary, or in numberless other paths. Once more, the meaning of life is in its voluntary direction, and whatever may be his economic state, he may, if he will, be "rich toward God."

If what we are seeking is to follow the Gospel-life, if we are seeking to express toward man the spirit of the Master, we find abundant field for the exercise of this spirit of sacrifice in our daily relations with others. S. Paul's rule of life: "Look not every man to his own things, but every man also to the things of others," is the practical rule of the sacrificed will. It seeks to fulfil the service of the Master by taking the spirit of the Master--His helpfulness, His consideration, His sympathy--with one into the detail of the day's work. It is one of the peculiarities of human nature that it finds it quite possible to work itself up to an occasional accomplishment, especially in a spectacular setting, of spiritual works, which it finds itself quite impotent to do under the commonplace routine of life. The race experience is accurately enough summed up in the cynical proverb: "No man is a hero to his valet." It expresses the fact that in ordinary circumstances, and under commonplace temptations, we do not succeed in holding life to the accomplishment which is ours when we are, as it were, on dress parade. In other words, we respond to the opinions we desire to create in others; and the spirit of sanctity is a response not to public opinion, but to the mind and thought of God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and seek to reproduce that mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by it, then we shall gladly render back to God all life's riches which we have received from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty that "all things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee."

The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as force. Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of power. The only power that we understand is the power that compels, that secures the execution of its will by physical or moral constraint. With this conception of power in mind men are continually asking: "Why does not God do this or that? If he be God and wills goodness, why does He not execute goodness, use power to accomplish it?"

It ought to be unnecessary to point out that such a conception of power is quite foreign to the Christian conception of God. Goodness that is compulsory is not goodness. Human legislation, in its enforcement of law, looks not to the production of goodness but to the production of order, a quite different thing. But God's heart is set upon the sanctification of His children and is satisfied with nothing less than that. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." But sanctification cannot be compelled. The divine method is, that "when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Through this method we "were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." The result is not that we are compelled to obey, but that "the love of Christ constraineth us." The account of the apostolic authority is not that it is a commission to rule the universal Church, but "now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."

The study of this divine method should put us on the right track in the attempt to estimate the nature of sanctity and the results we may expect from it. We shall expect nothing of spiritual value from force. We shall be quite prepared to turn away from the governing parties in Jerusalem as from those who have repudiated the divine method and are therefore useless for the divine ends. We shall turn rather to those who gather about the temple and there, in a life of prayer and meditation, wait for the redemption. It is to these, who are the real temple of the Lord, that the Lord "shall come suddenly," that the manifestation of God will be made. And their hearts will overflow with joy as they behold the fulfilment of the promises of God.

The power of God is the power of love; and it is that love, and that love alone, that has won the victories of God. It is a very slow method, men say. No doubt. But it is the only method that has any success. The method of force seems effective; but its triumphs are illusory. Force cannot make men love, it can only make them hate. The world is being won to God by the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it is as well to remember, when we are tempted to complain of the slowness of the process, that the slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow because men will not consent to become the instruments of God's love for the world, will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their fellows. They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools of all sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return for their co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not blinded by prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern religions of all sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride of opinion which keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary condition, and which approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided Christendom with the preliminary announcement that no separated body must be required to admit that it has been in the wrong. Human disregard of the divine method of love and humility can hardly go farther; and the only practical result that can be expected to follow is such as followed from the negotiations of Herod and Pontius Pilate--a new Crucifixion of the Ever-sacrificed Christ.

We have risen to the divine method when we have learned to rely for spiritual results upon God alone. Then is revealed to us the power of sanctity. We turn over the pages of the lives of the saints, of those who have been great in the Kingdom of God, and we are struck by the growing influence of these men and women. They are simple men and women whose life's energy is concentrated on some special work; they are confessors or directors; they work among the very poor; they lead lives of retirement in Religious Houses; they are preachers of the Gospel; they are missionaries. The one thing that they appear to have in common is utter consecration to the work in hand. And we see, it may be with some wonder, that as they become more and more absorbed in their special work, they become more and more centres of influence. Without at all willing it they draw people about them, become centres of influences, arouse interest, become widely known. In short, they are, without willing it, centres of energy. Of what energy? Obviously, of the energy of love: the love of God manifested in them draws men to God. The man at whose disposal is unlimited force compels men to do his will; but he draws no one to him except the hypocrite and the sycophant who expect to gain something by their servility. The saint draws men, not to himself, but to God; for obviously it is not his power but God's power that is being manifested through him.