The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871

by Various

Here it can be seen with how much reason those philosophers who call themselves rationalists sneer and wax indignant at the fact, constant in time and place, of the importance which mankind has attached to prayer for physical reasons, as for rain, for fair weather, for a good harvest, and the like. They show evidently how far they are from understanding the sublime hierarchical harmony of the cosmos, which the simple ones of the earth, who have faith in God, instinctively feel and acknowledge. For if God did not create the cosmos at random without a plan or design, he assuredly must have followed and maintained the necessary relations of things. Now, if substantial creation and its mode of action is hierarchically—that is, in comprehension of being—inferior to the supernatural term and its mode of action, if the latter is the end and type of the former, and if they are not to be kept apart, but to be brought together into unity and harmony, and must thus harmoniously act, it is clear to the rudest understanding that the one mode of action must be subject to the other, and that consequently, when a prayer is in opposition with the realization of natural law, the natural law must yield, and the prayer must prevail.

Nor will it do to say that if such were the case the natural order would no longer enjoy any stability or permanence, because some prayer or other might come continually in opposition to it. For the whole series of actions of substantial creation is marked out eternally in the mind of the infinite. Likewise the whole series of actions of the supernatural moment is marked out in the same mind; they are brought together in beautiful harmony in the same divine intellect from all eternity. God has foreseen when and how a prayer would require the suspension of the natural law, and has willed and decreed it, so that no suspension of natural law, consequent upon a prayer, can take place which has not been foreseen and arranged harmoniously from all eternity; and if we could for a moment cast a glance into the mind of the infinite, we should see an infinite series of actions of substantial creation; an infinite series of actions of the supernatural moment; all intertwined in a most harmonious whole, and the different exceptions here and there only linking together the two orders, putting them in bolder relief, and enhancing the beauty and harmony of the whole cosmos. The theory which we have been vindicating explains also a phenomenon so frequent and so common in the history of the Catholic Church—the saint who works miracles, or the Thaumaturgus.

A saint is one in whom a certain fulness of the supernatural term resides, and hence a certain fulness of the particular mode of action belonging to that moment. A saint can pray well; therefore he can work miracles, and does oftentimes. Protestantism has not only denied most of the miracles not recorded in the Bible, but has gone so far as to deny the possibility of such miracles ever occurring after the establishment and propagation of Christianity, on the plea that they are no longer necessary. It was but a logical consequence of its doctrine of justification. If man is not really made holy in his justification, if he does not receive in his soul the term of the supernatural moment as really inherent in him, it is clear he cannot have or possess the mode of action of that moment, still less a certain fulness of it. Consequently, neither is he elevated above substantial creation, nor is his mode of action superior to the action of that same moment, and therefore he cannot exercise a power and an efficacy which he has not. In other words, a man justified according to the Protestant doctrine cannot be a saint intrinsically, and cannot consequently pray. And how could he work miracles? It was natural to deny such possibility.

But endow a man with the supernatural term in a certain fulness, and hence suppose him possessed of a fulness of its mode of action intrinsically superior in energy to the mode of action of substantial creation, and you may suppose he is likely to exercise it, and work miracles oftentimes.

As to the plea of necessity, it is absolutely futile. A miracle would be necessary even after the establishment of Christianity in all times and places, which, by the bye, has not been accomplished yet, if for no other reason, in order to assert and vindicate from time to time the existence and the supremacy of the supernatural over the natural.

The third truth emanating from the qualities of the supernatural moment is that those created persons in whom the term of that moment is realized are essentially mediators between the Theanthropos and substantial creation.

The principle follows evidently from the fourth quality essentially belonging to the supernatural term, that of being mediator between the other moments, the hypostatic and the substantial.

For if the term of that moment in intensity of being and perfection hold a place between the other two moments, it is evident that those in whom the moment is realized must hold the same middle place and be, consequently, mediators. Hence, it appears how the Catholic doctrine of the intercession, and, by logical consequence, of the invocation, of saints, is a cosmological law, as imperative as any other law of the cosmos. For what does the word mediator mean? Limiting the question to location or space, it signifies a thing placed or located between two others; in a hierarchical sense, confining the question to being and essence, it expresses a thing in essence and nature inferior to one and superior to another; in the same sense, confining the question to action and development, it exhibits a thing in its action and development inferior to the action and development of one and superior in the same to another. The person, therefore, in whom the supernatural term is realized is mediator in the sense of being in essence, nature, attributes, action, and development, superior to the same things of substantial creation, and inferior to those of the Theanthropos. Now, as the cosmos is not governed by the law of hierarchy alone, but also by the law of unity and communion, and as these laws imply a real and effective union and communication of being and action between the terms of the cosmos, it follows that the person in whom the supernatural term is concreted is in real and effective communication with the Theanthropos, as inferior, and in real and effective communication, as superior, with substantial creation; he is in communication with the former as subject and dependent, with the latter as superior, and with both as medium; that is, a recipient relatively to the Theanthropos, as transmitting what it receives from the Theanthropos relatively to substantial creation; both relations being exercised by the person elevated in every sense, either as receiving from the Theanthropos and transmitting to substantial creation, or as representative of substantial creation before the Theanthropos.

And as we are speaking of moral persons, that is, free, intelligent agents, in what can these relations consist but in this, that elevated persons, acting as mediums, may intercede and obtain favors for created persons from the Theanthropos, and these may invoke their intercession in their behalf?