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The Epiphany of our Lord, 7

The Sixth Nicene Canon and the Papacy, . . 182

I

There was a time, my Christian friends, when God, as He had no arms to embrace us, no blood or tears to shed for us, no countenance to beam light and sympathy upon us, so He had literally no heart which could respond to ours. He was simply the Infinite God. More than that man could not learn about Him ; nearer than that man could not approach to Him. " My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor My ways your ways," said the Lord. Go back in imagination, my brethren, to the ages which preceded the Incarnation, and you will readily understand why I have

THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS.

said that the Heart of Jesus is the manifestation and embodiment of God's love for man. Remove that Sacred Heart from your thoughts and memory; take it out of this Tabernacle where it burns with eternal love for you ; and see what you have done. You have plunged us from light into darkness, from freedom into bondage. You have deprived us of our adoption of children, and thrown us back into our original condition of servants ; you have banished confidence from our breasts, and brought back the reign of trembling fear. Oh ! how cold and dreary this world would become again if the noble Heart of Jesus should cease to beat !

Not that the boundless, everlasting love with which God loves us is any more intense in the human Heart of Jesus than it is in the bosom of the Deity; for His infinite attributes can neither wax nor wane. The difference is entirely owing to the limitations and imperfections of our mind and heart. The Supreme Being is high above the reach of our faculties. His very infinitude overmasters and dazzles us. Our imagination is bewildered when we strive to picture Him ; our reason turns in despair from the task of forming any adequate conception of His essence ; and we cannot persuade our drooping hearts of the possibility of any intimate union being formed between two such extremes.

Do not misunderstand me, my brethren. It is indeed easy, it is almost a necessity of our nature for us to love our Creator. We meet on all sides so many and so striking proofs of His loving kindness, mercy, providence, goodness, as must engender love and gratitude in the most insensible breast. Behold within yourselves the grandest evidences of God's amiability. He has be- 4

THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS.

stowed upon you an intellect which can soar above space and matter, commune with angels, and grapple with any object save only the Infinite Being Himself. He has given you a will which tyrants cannot shackle nor passions enslave ; a memory which can annihilate time and take in ages at a glance. Look at the body which He has framed for you, and which even in its present degradation is the most marvelous work of the visible world. Then look abroad upon this bright universe created for your use and benefit. Behold this great earth ever teeming with food to nourish you, with forests to shade and protect you, with beautiful and gratefully-scented flowers to delight your senses. Consider this balmy ocean of air in which you live, and which conveys to your ears the cheerful utterances of the animate and inanimate creation, and the God-like accents of the human voice. Then lift tip your eyes to the brilliant orb of day in which the Lord hath set His tabernacle, and from which His blessed smile radiates far and wide. Or go forth in the night, whilst men and nature slumber, and read His beauty and His loveliness in the silvery light of the moon and in the evervarying splendors of the starry heavens. Everything above us, around us, cries out to us that our Lord is great and good, and magnificent, and worthy of all praise, love and benediction. We will praise Him then, and love Him and honor Him all the days of our life.

But, my dearly beloved, out of the very intenseness of our admiration there springs up a dark thought to assail us. The more we reflect upon the greatness of God, the more sensible we become of the existence of an infinite gulf between Him and us. Is it not, we ask ourselves,

THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS.

presumptuous to hope that He who is All-perfect should bestow a serious thought, not to speak of affection, upon dust and ashes? that the Light Inaccessible should blend with darkness ? that the All-Holy One should fail to despise and abominate wretched sinners ? What is man, O Lord, that Thou shouldst set Thy heart upon him ? He is a handful of vapor ; a fleeting shadow ; a dry leaf floating in the wind ; and generations of men are, in Thy sight, as the grass which falls before the reaper. We lose ourselves in our own insignificance ; for we are but infinitesimal units in this vast world of rational beings ; and we tremble all the more when we reflect that we are worse than nothingness — vile sinners, a blot upon God's fair creation, an abomination to be swept away by the Almighty breath of the Lord; and how often the justice of God has laid whole nations prostrate with His triple scythe, war, famine and pestilence ! How, then, is it possible that God can love met How, indeed, when all comes to all, can He have any regard for anything outside of Himself? What is there in us or in any creature, from the highest to the lowest, that can entice Him to bestow His love upon it ? Nothing ; absolutely nothing.

Why have I forced these disagreeable thoughts upon your mind? Simply to make you feel how greatly we are indebted to our knowledge of Christ's Blessed Heart for our present unwavering conviction and placid confidence that we possess God's tender love. This conviction is the exclusive inheritance of Christians. Certainly the poor heathen had no such assurance. They held a very false conception of their great Creator. God was to them an object, generally

THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS.

of terror, sometimes of veneration, sometimes even of admiration and gratitude, but never of intimate, personal affection. He was a Deity .who had ever to be appeased by cruel sacrifices, in so much that it was not unusual among them to endeavor to propitiate Him by offering up human victims, nay, their own beloved offspring. Even the Hebrews, His chosen people, were so imperfectly acquainted with His true character, that they served Him like trembling slaves. They had a belief, that no one could look upon His face and live ; and when the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai to converse with them, they were struck with terror, and cried out, " Let not the Lord speak to us, lest we perish. "

Yet all this time God was really loving man — not mankind in general, but each individual soul that He had created ; and not as one might love a pretty toy or a trivial object, but with the same boundless, eternal love with which He must love His own Infinite Essence. But how were men to be persuaded that this was the case ? Clearly they could not be brought up to the level of the Infinite. God and man, though near in space — for in Him we live, and move, and are — remained infinitely wide apart in ways and thoughts. You know, my brethren, how this great abyss between us and our God was bridged over. Since man could not rise to heavenly heights, God deigned to lower Himself to the level of man and earth. He assumed a human nature, put on human sensibility, spoke with a human tongue, re-cast His love in the familiar mold of a human Heart, and thus translated into a language intelligible to mortals that Gospel of eternal charity which He had been preaching, eloquently indeed, but, as it seemed, in an un-

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known tongue, from the foundation of the world. Rejoice, therefore, children of Adam ; you shall now become more intimately acquainted with the attributes of your God. He will come to you openly ; you shall see Him, embrace Him, and speak to Him. Be not afraid, like those that shuddered at the foot of Mount Sinai ; for see ! He comes shorn of terrors. There is nothing stern, forbidding or imperious in His look. Behold your God ! Not such as you foolishly pictured Him to yourselves ; but meek, humble, tender-hearted, pitiful, affable, long-suffering beyond compare. See that God-like Heart, how it throbs responsive to all your joys, your fears, your hopes, your sorrows. Lay aside Jewish trembling and heathenish superstitions, and see for yourselves. O Divine Heart of Jesus, Thou art a book which the dullest can read. We need but look upon Thee, and all our doubts and misgivings are dispelled. Thou art the Heart of our God. In Thee is concentrated, embodied and made visible the eternal love with which He loved us before the mountains were lifted up, or the foundation of the earth was laid. How sweet it is to ask myself in Thy presence, whether God cares for me ! What think you, brethren ? Look upon that Heart cut in twain for each of us ; and see if God does not love us, personally, intimately, as a parent loves his child. Yes, indeed, you will say, " Dilexit me;" He loved me, and delivered Himself to sorrow and death for me.

Does God love us and care for us individually? Let those of our race answer who knew Him best. Let Mary, ever Virgin, answer, whom He favored more highly than all the Angelic Host. Let St. Joseph answer, who lived with Him intimately for so many years, and who expired in

His arms. Let St. John answer, who leaned upon His breast and felt the throbbings of His Sacred Heart at the Last Supper. Let the little children answer, whom He blessed and took to His sheltering arms.

But, you may say, these were all saints and innocents ; perchance, whilst He loves the just, He cares not for sinners. Is this true, Mary Magdalene ? Tell us, thou whom men called the sinful woman. Did Jesus gather His cloak about Him, when He saw thee approaching ? Did He spurn thee, when thou daredst to kiss His feet ? O no ! Whilst the Pharisees reviled thee, and reproached thy Lord for not bidding thee be gone, He shielded thee, pleaded for thee, pardoned-thee, smiled upon thee ; and that heavenly smile enlightened thy repentant soul through all thy after life, whether in the streets of Jerusalem, or on the summit of Calvary, or at the open grave of thy Master, or in thy grotto at Marseilles. Does God love poor sinners ? Tell us, Blessed Peter, whom He melted into repentance by that one look so kindly sad, so compassionately reproachful. Tell us, ye publicans, with whom He ate; ye Samaritans, with whom He reasoned ; tell us, thou poor adulteress, whom He would not condemn ; tell us, repentant thief, to whom He spoke words of comfort on the cross ; tell us even thou, stony-hearted Judas, whom He kissed. And without going back to times long vanished, tell us, contrite souls here present, to whom He has granted the remission of innumerable, and possibly heinous, offences. Has He ever dealt with you harshly, or overwhelmed you with bitter reproaches, or scorned your easy tears, or taunted your frequent relapses and your hollow pledges ? Did He break

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the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax ? Rather did He not welcome you, time and again, with the warm embrace of a father who loves his Absalom in spite of his undutifulness, or of a husband whose fond heart still cleaves to the love of his youth, though her infidelities be repeated and notorious?

Will you again inquire whether God loves men personally and whether He is interested in their individual joys and sorrows? What was His whole life from the manger to the Cross but one continued holocaust of love? He loved the good, to perfect them. He loved the wicked, to reclaim them. He loved the poor, the wretched, the outcast ; did He not love His very persecutors? He comforted the afflicted, He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, vigor to the palsied, life to the dead. His divine Heart beat in unison with every effort which mankind made to raise themselves out of the abyss into which the original sin had plunged them. With a far better right than that ancient heathen whose humane utterance has been so much applauded, He could affirm that " Every concern of each human being awakened a corresponding interest in His heart." Men were found so perverse and blind as to hate their Incarnate Lord ; but their malice was not powerful enough to estrange his affection from them. " When He was reviled, He did not revile; when He suffered, He threatened not."

There is, however, one manifestation of the hidden character of God's love for man made by the Sacred Heart of Jesus to which I wish, in a special manner, to draw your attention. As we all know but too well, God has uttered a decree

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unalterable that sin shall ever bear its perpetrator bitter fruit. " The wages of sin is death;" and in executing this law the Almighty moves with the calm inexorability of fate. For six thousand years the children of Adam have been sinking into their graves in rapid succession, in consequence of the sin of their first father. For the same space of time, the reprobates have been cast into endless torments in punishment of their own misdeeds. In neither instance is there any indication or possibility of God's relenting. Now we may ask : Does it grieve the Almighty to behold the miserable fate of His creatures? Of course, we are certain that He takes no pleasure in the destruction of the living. " For He created all things that they might be ; and He made the nations of the earth for health/' " He wills not the death of the sinner;" and He gives to each soul abundant means of salvation. But, I would ask, does He feel what I may call pity, or sympathy, for the fate of those whom He justly condemns? A philosopher would be likely to answer that, in such cases, pity, or sympathy, would be a weakness incompatible with the infinite perfections of the Deity. But the history of our tender-hearted Jesus is a far safer revelation of God's attributes than are the idle fancies of philosophers. Have we not seen Him shed tears over the hard fate which doomed Lazarus to dissolution and corruption, although that fate was but the execution of His own divine law ? And can we forget how bitterly He wept over faithless Jerusalem, against which He was soon to let loose Rome's irresistible legions? Hence we have learned that His justice no more restrains His mercy than His mercy impedes the march of retribution. We have learned, moreover, that though He often is obliged to inflict punishment, yet He never rises to pronounce sentence upon the most unworthy that His kind Heart does not feel a pang.

To sum up our remarks upon this head, we repeat that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the visible embodiment of God's tender affection for us. It is the common meeting-ground of the Creator and His creatures. It is the interpretation of things all but uninvestigable into the language of love understood by the rudest. If, then, the consideration of God's almighty power and eternal majesty overpower us, if the unsearchableness of His ways, and the severity and the stern inflexibility of His decrees terrify our souls, we can always flee for refuge to His opened Side, where we shall find all His attributes tempered and brought within the easy reach of our mind and heart. Hail to Thee, therefore, Sacred Heart of Jesus, Incarnate Love of God !