|
| |
| |
| Calvary and the Mass - I |
 |
 Fulton J. Sheen
PROLOGUE
There are certain things in life which are too beautiful to be
forgotten, such as the love of a mother. Hence we treasure her
picture. The love of soldiers who sacrificed themselves for their
country is likewise too beautiful to be forgotten, hence we revere
their memory on Memorial Day. But the greatest blessing which ever
came to this earth was the visitation of the Son of God in the
form and habit of man. His life, above all lives, is too beautiful
to be forgotten, hence we treasure the divinity of His Words in
Sacred Scripture, and the charity of His Deeds in our daily
actions. Unfortunately this is all some souls remember, namely His
Words and His Deeds; important as these are, they are not the
greatest characteristic of the Divine Saviour.
The most sublime act in the history of Christ was His Death.
Death is always important for it seals a destiny. Any dying man is
a scene. Any dying scene is a sacred place. That is why the great
literature of the past which has touched on the emotions
surrounding death has never passed out of date. But of all deaths
in the record of man, none was more important than the Death of
Christ. Everyone else who was ever born into the world, came into
it to live; our Lord came into it to die. Death was a
stumbling block to the life of Socrates, but it was the crown to
the life of Christ. He Himself told us that He came "to give his
life a redemption for many"; that no one could take away His Life;
but He would lay it down of Himself.
If then Death was the supreme moment for which Christ lived, it
was therefore the one thing He wished to have remembered. He did
not ask that men should write down His Words into a Scripture; He
did not ask that His kindness to the poor should be recorded in
history; but He did ask that men remember His Death. And in order
that its memory might not be any haphazard narrative on the part
of men, He Himself instituted the precise way it should be
recalled.
The memorial was instituted the night before He died, at what has
since been called "The Last Supper." Taking bread into His Hands,
He said: "This is my body, which shall be delivered for you,"
i.e., delivered unto death. Then over the chalice of wine, He
said, "This is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed
for many unto remission of sins." Thus in an unbloody symbol of
the parting of the Blood from the Body, by the separate
consecration of Bread and Wine, did Christ pledge Himself to death
in the sight of God and men, and represent His death which was to
come the next afternoon at three.[1] He was offering Himself as a
Victim to be immolated, and that men might never forget that
"greater love than this no man hash, that a man lay down his life
for his friends," He gave the divine command to the Church: "Do
this for a commemoration of me."
The following day that which He had prefigured and foreshadowed,
He realized in its completeness, as He was crucified between two
thieves and His Blood drained from His Body for the redemption of
the world.
The Church which Christ founded has not only preserved the Word He
spoke, and the wonders He wrought; it has also taken Him seriously
when He said: "Do this for a commemoration of me." And that action
whereby we re-enact His Death on the Cross is the Sacrifice of
the Mass, in which we do as a memorial what He did at the Last
Supper as the prefiguration of His Passion.[2]
Hence the Mass is to us the crowning act of Christian worship. A
pulpit in which the words of our Lord are repeated does not unite
us to Him; a choir in which sweet sentiments are sung brings us no
closer to His Cross than to His garments. A temple without an
altar of sacrifice is non-existent among primitive peoples, and is
meaningless among Christians. And so in the Catholic Church the
altar, and not the pulpit or the choir or the organ, is the
center of worship, for there is re-enacted the memorial of His
Passion. Its value does not depend on him who says it, or on him
who hears it; it depends on Him who is the One High Priest and
Victim, Jesus Christ our Lord. With Him we are united, in spite of
our nothingness; in a certain sense, we lose our individuality for
the time being; we unite our intellect and our will, our heart and
our soul, our body and our blood, so intimately with Christ, that
the Heavenly Father sees not so much us with our imperfection, but
rather sees us in Him, the Beloved Son in whom He is well
pleased. The Mass is for that reason the greatest event in the
history of mankind; the only Holy Act which keeps the wrath of God
from a sinful world, because it holds the Cross between heaven and
earth, thus renewing that decisive moment when our sad and tragic
humanity journeyed suddenly forth to the fullness of supernatural
life.
What is important at this point is that we take the proper mental
attitude toward the Mass, and remember this important fact, that
the Sacrifice of the Cross is not something which happened
nineteen hundred years ago. It is still happening. It is not
something past like the signing of the Declaration of
Independence; it is an abiding drama on which the curtain has not
yet rung down. Let it not be believed that it happened a long time
ago, and therefore no more concerns us than anything else in the
past. Calvary belongs to all times and to all places. That is
why, when our Blessed Lord ascended the heights of Calvary, He was
fittingly stripped of His garments: He would save the world
without the trappings of a passing world. His garments belonged to
time, for they localized Him, and fixed Him as a dweller in
Galilee. Now that He was shorn of them and utterly dispossessed of
earthly things, He belonged not to Galilee, not to a Roman
province, but to the world. He became the universal poor man of
the world, belonging to no one people, but to all men.
To express further the universality of the Redemption, the cross
was erected at the crossroads of civilization, at a central point
between the three great cultures of Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens,
in whose names He was crucified. The cross was thus placarded
before the eyes of men, to arrest the careless, to appeal to the
thoughtless, to arouse the worldly. It was the one inescapable
fact that the cultures and civilizations of His day could not
resist. It is also the one inescapable fact of our day which we
cannot resist.
The figures at the Cross were symbols of all who crucify. We were
there in our representatives. What we are doing now to the
Mystical Christ, they were doing in our names to the historical
Christ. If we are envious of the good, we were there in the
Scribes and Pharisees. If we are fearful of losing some temporal
advantage by embracing Divine Truth and Love, we were there in
Pilate. If we trust in material forces and seek to conquer through
the world instead of through the spirit, we were there in Herod.
And so the story goes on for the typical sins of the world. They
all blind us to the fact that He is God. There was therefore a
kind of inevitability about the Crucifixion. Men who were free to
sin were also free to crucify.
As long as there is sin in the world the Crucifixion is a reality.
As the poet has put it:
"I saw the son of man go by,
Crowned with a crown of thorns.
'Was it not finished Lord,' said I,
'And all the anguish borne?'
"He turned on me His awful eyes;
'Hast Thou not understood?
So every soul is a Calvary
And every sin a rood.'"
We were there then during that Crucifixion. The drama was already
completed as far as the vision of Christ was concerned, but it had not yet
been unfolded to all men and all places and all times. If a motion
picture reel, for example, were conscious of itself, it would know
the drama from beginning to end, but the spectators in the theater
would not know it until they had seen it unrolled upon the screen.
In like manner, our Lord on the Cross saw His eternal mind, the
whole drama of history, the story of each individual soul, and how
later on it would react to His Crucifixion; but though He saw all,
we could not know how we would react to the Cross until we were
unrolled upon the screen of time. We were not conscious of being
present there on Calvary that day, but He was conscious of our
presence. Today we know the role we played in the theater of
Calvary, by the way we live and act now in the theater of the
twentieth century.
That is why Calvary is actual; why the Cross is the Crisis; why
in a certain sense the scars are still open; why Pain still stands
deified, and why blood like falling stars is still dropping upon
our souls. There is no escaping the Cross not even by denying it
as the Pharisees did; not even by selling Christ as Judas did; not
even by crucifying Him as the executioners did. We all see it,
either to embrace it in salvation, or to fly from it into misery.
But how is it made visible? Where shall we find Calvary
perpetuated? We shall find Calvary renewed, re-enacted, re-
presented, as we have seen, in the Mass. Calvary is one with the
Mass, and the Mass is one with Calvary, for in both there is the
same Priest and Victim. The Seven Last Words are like the seven
parts of the Mass. And just as there are seven notes in music
admitting an infinite variety of harmonies and combinations, so
too on the Cross there are seven divine notes, which the dying
Christ rang down the centuries, all of which combine to form the
beautiful harmony of the world's redemption.
Each word is a part of the Mass. The First Word, "Forgive," is the
Confiteor; the Second Word, "This Day in Paradise," is the
Offertory; the Third Word, "Behold Thy Mother," is the Sanctus;
the Fourth Word, "Why hast Thou abandoned Me," is the
Consecration; the Fifth Word, "I thirst," is the Communion; the
Sixth Word, "It is finished," is the Ite, Missa Est; the Seventh
Word, "Father, into Thy Hands," is the Last Gospel.
Picture then the High Priest Christ leaving the sacristy of heaven
for the altar of Calvary. He has already put on the vestment of
our human nature, the maniple of our suffering, the stole of
priesthood, the chasuble of the Cross. Calvary is his cathedral;
the rock of Calvary is the altar stone; the sun turning to red is
the sanctuary lamp; Mary and John are the living side altars; the
Host is His Body; the wine is His Blood. He is upright as Priest,
yet He is prostrate as Victim. His Mass is about to begin.
THE CONFITEOR
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."-Luke
23:34.
THE MASS begins with the Confiteor. The Confiteor is a prayer in
which we confess our sins and ask the Blessed Mother and the
saints to intercede to God for our forgiveness, for only the clean
of heart can see God. Our Blessed Lord too begins His Mass with
the Confiteor. But His Confiteor differs from ours in this: He has
no sins to confess. He is God and therefore is sinless. "Which of
you shall convince me of sin?" His Confiteor then cannot be a
prayer for the forgiveness of His sins; but it can be a prayer
for the forgiveness of our sins.
Others would have screamed, cursed, wrestled, as the nails pierced
their hands and feet. But no vindictiveness finds place in the
Saviour's breast; no appeal comes from His lips for vengeance on
His murderers; He breathes no prayer for strength to bear His
pain. Incarnate Love forgets injury, forgets pain, and in that
moment of concentrated agony reveals something of the height, the
depth, and the breadth of the wonderful love of God, as He says
His Confiteor: "Father, forgive them, for they know nor what they
do."
He did not say "Forgive Me," but "Forgive them." The moment of
death was certainly the one most likely to produce confession of
sin, for conscience in the last solemn hours does assert its
authority; and yet not a single sigh of penitence escaped His
lips. He was associated with sinners, but never associated with
sin. In death as well as life, He was unconscious of a single
unfulfilled duty to His heavenly Father. And why? Because a
sinless Man is not just a man; He is more than mere man. He is
sinless, because He is God-and there is the difference. We draw
our prayers from the depths of our consciousness of sin: He drew
His silence from His own intrinsic sinlessness. That one word
"Forgive" proves Him to be the Son of God.
Notice the grounds on which He asked His heavenly Father to
forgive us-"Because they know not what they do." When anyone
injures us, or blames us wrongly, we say: "They should have known
better." But when we sin against God, He finds an excuse for
forgiveness our ignorance.
There is no redemption for the fallen angels. The blood drops that
fell from the cross on Good Friday in that Mass of Christ did not
touch the spirits of the fallen angels. Why? Because they knew
what they were doing? They saw all the consequences of their acts,
just as clearly as we see that two and two make four, or that a
thing cannot exist and not exist at the same time. Truths of this
kind when understood cannot be taken back; they are irrevocable
and eternal. Hence when they decided to rebel against Almighty
God, there was no taking back the decision. They knew what they
were doing!
But with us it is different. We do not see the consequences of our
acts as clearly as the angels; we are weaker, we are ignorant. But
if we did know that every sin of pride wove a crown of thorns for
the head of Christ; if we knew that every contradiction of His
divine command made for Him the sign of contradiction, the Cross;
if we knew that every grasping avaricious act nailed His hands,
and every journey into the byways of sin dug His feet; if we knew
how good God is and still went on sinning, we would never be
saved. It is only our ignorance of the infinite love of the Sacred
Heart that brings us within the hearing of His Confiteor from the
Cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
These words, let it be deeply graven on our souls, do not
constitute an excuse for continued sin, but a motive for
contrition and penance. Forgiveness is not a denial of sin. Our
Lord does not deny the horrible fact of sin, and that is where
the modern world is wrong. It explains sin away: it ascribes it to
a fall in the evolutionary process, to a survival of ancient
taboos; it identifies it with psychological verbiage.
In a word, the modern world denies sin. Our Lord reminds us that
it is the most terrible of all realities. Otherwise why does it
give Sinlessness a cross? Why does it shed innocent blood? Why
does it have such awful associations: blindness, compromise,
cowardice, hatred, and cruelty? Why does it now lift itself out of
the realm of the impersonal and assert itself as personal by
nailing Innocence to a gibbet? An abstraction cannot do that. But
sinful man can.
Hence He, who loved men unto death, allowed sin to wreak its
vengeance upon Him, in order that they might forever understand
its horror as the crucifixion of Him who loved them most.
There is no denial of sin here and yet, with all its horror, the
Victim forgives. In that one and the same event, there is the sign
of sin's utter depravity and the seal of divine forgiveness. From
that point on, no man can look upon a crucifix and say that sin is
not serious, nor can he ever say that it cannot be forgiven. By
the way He suffered, He revealed the reality of sin; by the way He
bore it, He shows His mercy toward the sinner.
It is the Victim who has suffered that forgives: and in that
combination of a Victim so humanly beautiful, so divinely loving,
so wholly innocent, does one find a Great Crime and a Greater
Forgiveness. Under the shelter of the Blood of Christ the worst
sinners may take their stand; for there is a power in that Blood
to turn back the tides of vengeance which threaten to drown the
world.
The world will give you sin explained away, but only on Calvary do
you experience the divine contradiction of sin forgiven. On the
Cross supreme self-giving and divine love transforms sin's worst
act in the noblest deed and sweetest prayer the world has ever
seen or heard, the Confiteor of Christ: "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do."
That word "Forgive," which rang out from the Cross that day when
sin rose to its full strength and then fell defeated by Love, did
not die with its echo. Not long before that same merciful Saviour
had taken means to prolong forgiveness through space and time,
even to the consummation of the world. Gathering the nucleus of
His Church round about Him, He said to His Apostles: "Whose sins
you shall forgive, they are forgiven."
Somewhere in the world today then, the successors of the Apostles
have the power to forgive. It is not for us to ask: But how can
man forgive sins?-for man cannot forgive sins. But God can forgive
sins through man, for is not that the way God forgave His
executioners on the cross, namely through the instrumentality of
His human nature?
Why then is it not reasonable to expect Him still to forgive sins
through other human natures to whom He gave that power? And where
find those human natures?
You know the story of the box which was long ignored and even
ridiculed as worthless; and one day it was opened and found to
contain the great heart of a giant. In every Catholic Church that
box exists. We call it the confessional box. It is ignored and
ridiculed by many, but in it is to be found the Sacred Heart of
the forgiving Christ forgiving sinners through the uplifted hand
of His priest as He once forgave through His own uplifted hands on
the Cross. There is only one forgiveness-the Forgiveness of God.
There is only one "Forgive"-the "Forgive" of an eternal Divine Act
in which we come in contact at various moments of time.
As the air is always filled with symphony and speech, but we do
not hear it unless we tune it in on our radios, so neither do
souls feel the joy of that eternal and divine "Forgive" unless
they are attuned to it in time; and the confessional box is the
place where we tune in to that cry from the Cross.
Would to God that our modern mind instead of denying the guilt,
would look to the Cross, admit its guilt, and seek forgiveness;
would that those who have uneasy consciences that worry them in
the light, and haunt them in the darkness, would seek relief, not
on the plane of medicine but on the plane of Divine Justice; would
that they who tell the dark secrets of their minds, would do so
not for the sake of sublimation, but for the sake of purgation;
would that those poor mortals who shed tears in silence would find
an absolving hand to wipe them away.
Must it be forever true that the greatest tragedy of life is not
what happens to souls, but rather what souls miss. And what
greater tragedy is there than to miss the peace of sin forgiven?
The Confiteor is at the foot of the altar our cry of unworthiness:
the Confiteor from the Cross is our hope of pardon and absolution.
The wounds of the Saviour were terrible, but the worst wound of
all would be to be unmindful that we caused it all. The Confiteor
can save us from that, for it is an admission that there is
something to be forgiven-and more than we shall ever know.
There is a story told of a nun who was one day dusting a small
image of our Blessed Lord in the chapel. In the course of her
duty, she let it slip to the floor. She picked it up undamaged,
she kissed it, and put it back again in its place, saying, "If you
had never fallen, you never would have received that." I wonder if
our Blessed Lord does not feel the same way about us, for if we
had never sinned, we never could call Him "Saviour."
Copyright, 1936 P.J. Kenedy & Sons
|
|
The Fulton Sheen Store
