Our Lady Saint Mary

by J. G. H. Barry

For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part of the world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find Satanic activities. One of the outstanding features of the literature of to-day in the Western world, the world that had known from childhood the story of Jesus, is its utter hatred of Christianity; its revolt from all that Christianity stands for. This is markedly true in regard to the Christian teaching in the matter of purity. The contemporary English novel is perhaps the vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth. There have been plenty of unclean books written in the course of the world's history--we have only to recall the literature of the Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in careless or boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still regarded as existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral propaganda--it is deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of careless levity, but out of deliberate intention. You do not feel that the modern author is just describing immoral actions which grow out of his story, but that he is constructing his story for the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He hates the whole teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of purity. He has thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an "unnatural" restraint. To those who have studied the development of thought since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.

But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of being surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians take their religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they admit that they are not getting anything out of it; but it is harder to get them to admit that the reason is that they are not putting anything into it. You do not expect to get returns from a business into which you are putting no capital, and you have no right to expect returns from a religion into which you are putting no energy. What is meant by that is that those Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are going to High Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so much as they do, and that they see no point in permitting it further to interfere with their customary amusements and avocations. I do not know what such persons expect from their religion, but I am sure that they will be disappointed if they are expecting any spiritual result. Naturally, they will be disappointed if they look in themselves for any evidence of the virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under the circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.

We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian Religion by this which seems to be the failure of God. We are not to echo the cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter pointed out to those pessimists that all things do not continue the same, that there are times of crisis which are the judgments of God. Such a judgment was that of old which swept the wickedness of the world away, "whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." He goes on to state that the present order likewise will issue in judgment: "The heavens and the earth which are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." What renders men hopeless is the feeling of God's inactivity; but this declaration of impending judgment certifies the active interest of God. God's dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final scene. But every society, every individual life, is being judged through the whole course of its existence, and there is no need that either society or individual should be blind to the fact that such a judgment is taking place. There is no failure of God. There is a failure on our part to understand the works of God.

We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual life is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art that is acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is attained through the careful training and exercise of the faculties wherewith we have been endowed. The answer to our question is itself a perfectly simple one, as simple as would be the answer to the question: "Do you speak French?" We speak French if we have taken the trouble to learn French; and we have gained results in the way of spiritual development and culture if we have taken the trouble to do so. I do not know why we should expect results on any other ground than that.

But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained any results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in that case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture to think of his past history. What sort of character-development has so far been going on? Commonly it happens that there has been no spiritual effort that is worth thinking about; but that does not mean that nothing spiritual has been happening. It means on the contrary that there has been going on a spiritual atrophy, the spiritual powers have been without exercise and will be difficult to arouse to activity. In such a case as that spiritual awakening will be followed by a long period of spiritual struggle against habits of thought and action which we have already formed, a period in which unused and immature spiritual powers must be roused to action and disciplined to use. The simplest illustration of this is the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic beginner in holding the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the various forms of prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity there will be the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states of mind and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can be overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call for the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the virtues characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and the feeling that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have quite possibly made a mistake about the whole matter.

This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come if we look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the ground that we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we ask: "Why hope?" we shall see that our basis of hope is not in ourselves at all but in God. We hope because of the promises of God, because of His will for us as revealed in His Son. "He loved us and gave Himself for us"; and that giving will not be in vain. "He gave Himself for me," I tell myself, "and therefore I am justified in my expectation of spiritual success." So one tries to learn from the present failure as it seems; so one repents and pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of purpose that one attains results.

And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results that I covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation all about me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other Christians past and present. They are reality not theory, fact not dream. And what has been so richly and abundantly the outcome of spiritual living in others must be within my own reach. The results they attained were not miraculous gifts, but they were the working of God the Holy Spirit in lives yielded to Him and co-operating with Him.

Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I do find results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I am justified in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not believe that any one can look back over a year's honest labour and not see that the labour has born fruit.

In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking for does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem that our Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor any that answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the wrong place or listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked that the outcome of our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom should be restored to Israel; and when they turned away from the tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt that what they had looked for and prayed for was hopeless of accomplishment. But the important point was not their vision of the Kingdom at all, but that they had yielded themselves to our Lord and become His disciples and lovers. This is not what they intended to do, but it is what actually had happened: and when the grave yielded up the dead Whom they thought that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with a mission for them that was infinitely wider than their dream: the mission of founding not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of David's Son. All their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being transcended, and they found themselves in a position vastly more important than had been reached even in their dreams.

Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience. We conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and seem always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to us what He has been doing, and we find that through the very discipline of our failure we have been being prepared for a success of which we had not thought: and when we raise our eyes from the path we thought so toilsome and uninteresting, it is to find ourselves at the very gate of the City of God. It will be with us as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour of their imagined failure, when they were gathered together in hiding from the Jews were startled by the appearence among them of the risen Jesus, and were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.