Sermons by the Fathers of the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle, Volume VI.

by Paulist Fathers; N.Y.) Church of St. Paul the Apostle (New York

[Footnote 70: 2 Cor. x. 1]

We might be tempted to think he would feel this infirmity most keenly as a serious drawback to his success as an orator, as we ourselves would judge it to be. But no. He will rather glory in his infirmities as the source of his power; and here at the outset we get an insight into the whole spirit of this champion of the Gospel. From the instant of his miraculous conversion, he appears to be wholly absorbed in the contemplation of the sublime mystery of the voluntary abasement of God in concealing the awful majesty and splendor of his Divine Being in human nature, that what he, with apostolic hardihood, calls the "foolishness of God" and the "weakness of God," might subdue and atone for the sinful pride and vainglory of men. He rejoices, therefore, that he has nothing in himself which might cause the admiration of men and make void the humility of Jesus and His cross—a thought which so fills his soul that he says he knows nothing else besides. The less he has in himself to glory in, the greater is his consciousness of the power of the Gospel of the Crucified, which he only lives to preach. "Power is made perfect in infirmity," was the revelation made to him when caught up to the third heaven. "I will glory, therefore," he exclaims, "in my infirmities." I am glad that I am weak in bodily presence and contemptible in speech. Freed from this temptation of human vanity, which in turn would divert the souls of my hearers from the Gospel to the preacher of the Gospel, the power of Christ will dwell more fully in me. "When I am weak, then am I powerful." When I, Paul the Apostle, am nothing, then will the victory of grace be complete in the souls who, through me, believe and are converted—when I have nothing in me to please and attract the sight, men will see only the Cross which I hold up to their gaze.

So fearful was he of attracting to himself any personal affection, that he avoided baptizing his own converts and receiving them into the church, lest they should say—I am of Paul, I belong to the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, instead of acknowledging, as he was always doing himself, "By the grace of God, I am what I am—a Christian saved from hell by God's mercy."

Let us look now at his second and greater infirmity—his weakness as an orator. He had a strange, difficult, shocking, and what he terms a scandalous doctrine to preach—the redemption of the world by a crucified God. Surely, this man, who is so lacking in the external qualifications of an effective speaker, possesses at least the magic power of sublime eloquence. He who has such a repulsive truth to announce will seek the most polished phrases, and cover up the hard things which he has to say by flowers of rhetoric, and, with studied art in his tones of speech, will charm his unwilling audience to receive and obey the austere lessons of the Gospel. By no means. Such was his infirmity in this respect that his disciples called his speech contemptible, and he acknowledged the truth of their judgment, and reminds his beloved Corinthians that he was "with them in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling," adding, "My speech and preaching was not in the persuasive words of human wisdom." [Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: I Cor. ii. 4.]

Not only do we see in the discourses recorded of him the most simple and unadorned phraseology, but even his writings, full as they are of the most profound and heavenly doctrine, are the most inartificial, disconnected, and poor in imagery that could well be imagined. What a misfortune for an orator! cries the world. "What a glory is mine infirmity!" responds the Apostle of that Gospel which is wisdom hidden from the self-sufficient rich and the insolent magnates of a depraved world, but a revelation of divine truth to babes. And I, who praise St. Paul, will praise this infirmity of his as well, knowing that he has not rested his power as an apostle and his hopes of success upon it in vain.

If St. Paul be unable to use, or disdain in his preaching all rhetorical flourish and tricks of oratory, if his language is almost rude in its plainness and harsh from the total absence of brilliant metaphor or well-rounded period, it is because he has nothing to preach but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. All those harmonious cadences which flatter the ear, all that fanciful imagery in which the orators of human doctrine and science deal so largely and are paid with clapping of hands, are at best but showy tinsel, unworthy of the Incarnate Wisdom, and a vain mockery of the lowly speech and simple words of the Man of Sorrows. What we adore in our Lord's person is His lowliness and humility, mingled with a certain divine and grand simplicity of character. So are all His words, plain and simple; spoken evidently without passionate gesture, and in no loud or clamorous tone. Simple, because all that is divine is simple; all else is human pride and sensuality. Such is what I may call the divine instinct of the Church, the Body of Christ, who also disdains, when she lifts her voice in prayer or praise, all the effeminate and meretricious ornaments of harmony or melody, which are the sources of attraction and admiration in worldly music, and adheres to what is simple in its enunciation, grave in movement, and moderate in tone, as one who reveals divine thoughts, and not the dreamy, overwrought imaginations of impassioned genius, which minister rather to the senses than to the soul.

Behold, therefore, the great Apostle, inspired by this simplicity of Divine truth, going out upon his great mission to become the preacher of that truth to the whole world, but so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the meek and humble-hearted Jesus that he speaks in weakness, in much fear and trembling, yet with such power that even Greece, that mother of philosophers and orators, forgets the fervid eloquence of her Plato and Demosthenes to drink in the divine lessons of the Gospel from the lips of this unskilled orator; and Rome herself, the mistress of the world, at his word overthrows her idols and consecrates her majestic temples of glory to the worship of a Man crucified at Jerusalem. O glorious Apostle! well mayest thou glory in that which before men is thy weakness! Thine infirmity is thy power. Without human power, thou abandonest thyself wholly to the divine power of Christ, and that—that is more than enough power to conquer the world. That world in its pride will criticise you, and ridicule your want of polish and lack of rhetoric, and your trembling, hesitating gesture, but it will believe in Jesus Christ and Him crucified whom you preach. Its orators will not follow you as a model, but they themselves will beat their breasts, and confess their sins, and do penance at your bidding.

But, powerful as he is in the infirmity of his speech, to fully convince the world of the truth of his awful and austere doctrine, he has yet to measure his strength against a more obstinate and unyielding enemy to the Gospel of the Cross. The mind of man cannot long blind its sight to the illumination of the truth; but who shall subdue and win the hardened heart? O wondrous science of the saints! O divine enigma which no one shall understand who does not write its solution in his own blood! "Regnavit a ligno Deus!" "God hath reigned from the wood of the cross." Even God cannot reign in the kingdom of the hearts of men until He is a crucified man, whose streaming blood cries aloud and pleads, with the irresistible torrent of the eloquence of suffering, to heaven. Yes; to heaven must the voice of suffering preach; for Paul may plant, and Apollos water, but God alone can give the increase. From God alone can come the grace that achieves the consummation of the triumph of the truth, and completes the labor of the Apostle. When was Jesus Christ the Master of the world? Where was it that He drew all things to Himself by the cords of Adam and the bands of love? Was it when He went about doing good, working miracles, preaching His divine doctrine? Ah no! It was when He was lifted up the pleading Victim, whose blood and wounds spoke better things than the blood of Abel, and whose requests could not be denied. Well does the Church say, "Regnavit a ligno Deus!" And what shall we expect, if even Jesus is only powerful from His cross, but that His chosen vessel of election, who shall carry His Gospel to the whole world, first shall say: "I judge myself to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified"; and that afterwards his life should prove the truth of his same infirmity in himself: "With Christ I am nailed to the cross," [Footnote 72] "I die daily;" that he should be stoned and scourged, and imprisoned and persecuted, and driven from city to city, "in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from the Jews, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren, in labor and painfulness, in long watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness;" [Footnote 73] and, added to all these sufferings, those interior trials and bitternesses of spirit with which God invariably purifies the souls of His elect. He must preach in the stead of Christ, and therefore he must suffer in His stead. Wherefore he says: "I fill up in my own flesh those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ." [Footnote 74]