Abu

“THE DIVINE ROMANCE
by

FULTON J. SHEEN, PhD., DJfc, LL.D„

Professor of Philosophy of Religion,

Catholic University of America.

Seven addresses delivered in the Catholic Radio Hoar,

sponsored by the

National Council of Catholic Men

L Man’s Quest for God. II. The Blessed

Trinity. III. Love’s Overflow. IV. God’s

Quest for Man. V. The Divine Equation.

VT. The Pulpit of the Cross. VEL Dying

and Behold We Live.

National Council of Catholie Men

Sponsor of the Catholic Radio Hour

1314 Massachusetts Avenue

Washington, D. C.





“THE DIVINE ROMANCE”

by

FULTON J. SHEEN, PhD., D.D., LL.D.,

Professor of Philosophy of Religion,

Catholic University of America.

Seven addresses delivered in the Catholic Radio Hour,

sponsored by the

National Council of Catholic Men

I. Man’s Quest for God. II. The Blessed

Trinity. III. Love’s Overflow. IV. God’s

Quest for Man. V. The Divine Equation.

VI. The Pulpit of the Cross. VII. Dying

and Behold We Live.

National Council of Catholic Men

Sponsor of the Catholic Radio Hour

1314 Massachusetts Avenue

Washington, D. C.



PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD

This volume is published with the purpose of

giving permanent form and a wider hearing to

the seven addresses which the Rev. Dr. Fulton J.

Sheen, professor of Philosophy of Religion at the

Catholic University of America, delivered in the

Catholic Radio Hour, beginning March 9, 1930.

Following their delivery, the National Council

of Catholic Men, sponsor of the Catholic Hour,

has received from many hundreds of Catholics

and non-Catholics requests for copies of these

addresses. It is believed, therefore, that not only

all of these men and women but thousands of

others whose minds and hearts were moved by

Dr. Sheen’s eloquent and scholarly exposition of

the fundamental Truths of Christianity with

which he dealt in the Catholic Hour will covet

the opportunity to possess the addresses in print.

In order to insure a country-wide and con-

tinuous circulation of this book, the price of it

has been fixed practically at the cost of publi-

cation.

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR

Printers and Publishers

Huntington, Indiana

Distributors

Oeacfcfified



AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

Our Blessed Lord on one occasion told. His Apostles to

“preach on the housetops,” an injunction which long ago had

its figurative fulfillment, but which, with the radio, now seems

to have its literal realization as well. This course of sermons

which is the first series to have been broadcast over the

Catholic Hour is now, at the request of listeners, offered to

the public on the printed page under the title of “The Divine

Romance.”

The course forms a unity, beginning as it does with the

quest for Life and Truth and Love which is to be found in

God. In the second sermon some attempt is made, with the

aid of revelation, to learn something of the inner Life of God.

In the third sermon, Love is revealed as going outside of

itself and creating a moral universe, and in the fourth,

Love appears personally to restore the pristine beauty of the

moral universe. The last three sermons show how Love In-

carnate, which is Christ Himself, continues to live in Hi*

new Body which is the Church; to die through sin on the

part of those who “crucify Christ again in their souls,” and
finally to rise again in the permanency of His Church with

which He abides even to the consummation of the world.

The course is in no sense controversial, seeking, as it does,
to be to a mind what bread is to a starving man. It ha#
already been preached from the “house-tops;” it now remains
to be written on the fleshy tablets of human hearts, and if
one single heart permits that message to be written on it
by the finger of God, the author will feel that much will al-
ready have been done to make this world a better place in
which to live.



Dedicated to

MARY IMMACULATE

with filial homage



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 5

MAN’S QUEST FOR GOD

The quest of God is essentially the search for the

full account and meaning of life. If we but had the

power to take our soul from our body, put it in a

crucible, and distil out the meaning of that quest

what would we find it to be? If we could but make

the inmost heart of all humanity speak out its inmost

yearnings, what would we discover them to be?

Would we not find that every heart and mind and

soul in creation desires fundamentally three realities

and only three realities—Life, Truth, and Love. In
fact, so deep are these three realities, Being, Truth,

and Love, that we can say the whole universe over-

flows with them. Of each thing in the universe it

can be said that it is. Of each thing in the universe

it can be said that it is true, for it is related to a

mind, and of each thing in the universe it can be

said that it is love, for it is related to a will and a

desire.

The first deep-seated yearning, then, in the human

heart is the yearning for Life. Of all our treasures

it is that which we surrender last, and with the

greatest reluctance. Titles, joys, and wealth, power,

ambition, honor,—all of these we will let go pro-
vided we can hold on to that precious, palpitating,

vibrating thing called Life. The very instinct which

impels a man to put out his hand when he walks in

the dark, proves that he is willing to sacrifice a part

of his body rather than to endanger that which he

holds most precious—his Life. Not even the sad
fact of suicide disproves the reality of this yearning,

for in every suicide there is an illusion and a senti-

ment. The illusion is that suicide is total destruc-



6 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

tion. The sentiment is the desire for repose or the

will to shake off the worries of life. Suicide is not

so much the desire that one wants to be annihilated,

but rather that one wants to be at ease, which is

just another way of saying one wants to have a

different life.

The second most fundamental craving is the de-

sire for Truth. The very first question we asked

when we came into this world was the question

“Why?”; a question which betrays that we are all

born incipient philosophers. As children, we tear

apart our toys to find out what makes the wheels go

round. As grown-ups, never having lost the desire

to know the “Why” and “Wherefore” of things, we

tear apart, by our mental analysis, the very toy of

the universe to find out what makes its wheels go

round. We turn our telescopes on the sun and ask
it to divulge its secrets; we ask the stars to tell us

the story of their twinkling; and the very ocean to

surrender the mystery of its depth. We are incura-
bly bent on knowing and discovering the truth of

things—that is why we hate to have secrets kept
from us.

But that is not all. The third fundamental inclina-

tion of human nature is the desire to love and to be

loved. From the first day in the Garden of Eden,

when God said : “It is not good for man to be alone,”

on even to the crack of doom, man has thirsted and

will thirst for Love. Each child that is born into

the world instinctively presses itself to its mother's

breast in testimony of affection. Later on he goes

to his mother to have his play-wounds bound, and

to shed his tears down the cheek of his mother.

Finally, when the child has grown to man’s estate.



THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 7

he looks for a companion, young like unto himself,

one to whom he can “unpack his heart with words;”

one who will measure up to that beautiful definition

of friendship; “one in whose presence we can keep

silence”—it is only before strangers that we must
speak. Then the love of spouse for spouse is sealed

in the bonds of matrimony, and when monotony

threatens its sanctity, then there comes a child

which makes an earthly Trinity. Thus the love of

parents for children becomes the love of grandpar-

ents for grandchildren and so the quest goes on from

the cradle to the grave.

We desire life and truth and love, but do we find

them in their plenitude on this earth ? Do we carry

within ourselves the energy, the force and the power

to realize them to the highest degree ? Are we such

masters and captains of our fate that we may give

to ourselves an overflowing measure of these most

precious of all gifts? We possess a fraction of life,
a fraction of truth, and a fraction of love, but do we

possess them in their fullness ?

Certainly Life is not completely under our control.

Successes of life are soon exhausted. Reputations

wane and are forgotten. Schemes have their hour

and come to naught. The science of one age is super-

seded by another. The taste of one age is unintelli-

gible to the next—Poets become silent. Each tick
of the clock brings us closer to the grave; “our

hearts are but muffled drums beating a funeral

march to the grave.” “From hour to hour we ripe

and ripe; from hour to hour we rot and rot.” Life

may be a great torrent outpoured from the inex-
haustible chalice of eternity, but we are permitted
but a few drops of it in the cup of our own life.



8 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE
1

And although Truth is a condition of our nature,

neither do we possess it in its fullness, for the more

we study the less we know, or rather the less we

think we know. Learning opens up a thousand new

vistas of knowledge down which we might travel for

a lifetime, if we had a thousand lives. What man is

there who has devoted his life to study who will not

honestly avow that he really knows less now than

what he thought he knew the night he graduated

from high school? How often, too, the search for

truth corrects the prejudices of youth, and how often

earnest seekers after truth have come to mock and

remained to pray? Great minds like Newton have

confessed that all their knowledge seemed to leave

them standing on the seashore of truth before which

stretched an ocean of infinite truth. Thomas

Aquinas, the greatest mind the world has ever pro-

duced, declared at the end of his life that all that he

wrote seemed to him as straw compared to a vision

which Divine Truth had accorded him.

Finally, Love in its perfected state is not to be

found in this world. Broken hearts, ruined homes,

young widows, divorce courts, orphans, all are so

many eloquent proofs that man has not found a true

and lasting love. Unfortunately, with the passing

of time it often loses its delicacy. How rare, for

example, is the young man who can treasure for days

and for weeks and for years the gift of a rose or

the touch of a hand of a friend. Quaff as he will the

magic of love’s wine and drink deep as he may of her

springs, a day must finally come when the last cake

is crumbled at life’s great feast, and the last em-

brace is passed from friend to friend. The noblest



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 9

and best of human love ends, and nothing is perfect

that ends.

Though we are the lord and master of the uni-

verse, though we possess these strong yearnings,

which are the very main-springs of our beings, yet

• we do not find these yearnings fulfilled on this earth.

Life is mingled with death ; .Truth is mingled with

error
;
and Love is mingled with hate. Our life, then,

is not in creatures; our Truth, then, is not in the

spoken word
;
our Love, then, is not in what we see.

Life cannot exist with death; Truth cannot exist

with error
;
and Love cannot exist with hate.

But where find the source of these three realities?

Where find the author of Existence and Truth and

Love that vibrates through all creation? Shall we

say that they have no source? But, if they have no

source, how can they be and affect our lives at this

moment? They are things that are reasonable and,

therefore, must have been intelligently produced.

They cannot come from the dismal slime of primeval

jungles, for then the mind would be confronted with

the absurdity that the nobler comes from the less no-

ble. Where, then, find their source?

Suppose I am in search of the source of the light

which is in this broadcasting room. Where shall I find

it? The source of the light is not to be found under

that distant chair, for there light is mingled with

shadow. The source of the light is not to be found

under the microphone, for there there is light min-

gled with darkness. Where find the source of light?

I must go out to something which is nothing but

pure light, namely, the electric bulb glowing in the

center of this room. So, too, if I am to find the

source of the Life and the Truth and the Love that



10 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

is in this world, I must go out to a Life that is not

mingled with the shadow, death; I must go out to

a Truth which is not mingled with the shadow, error,

and I must go out to a Love which is not mingled

with the shadow, hate. I must go out beyond “the

margent of this world,” out past the “golden gate-

ways of the stars,” out past the clotted clay of all

humanity, out even to the “hid battlements of eter-

nity,” out to Some One who is Pure Life, Pure

Truth, and Pure Love.

“There is a quest that calls me
In nights when I am alone,
The need to ride where the ways divide

The Known from the Unknown.

I mount what thought is near me
And soon I reach the place,
The tenuous rim where the Seen grows dim,

And the sightless hides its face.

I have ridden the wind,

I have ridden the sea,

I have ridden the moon and stars,
I have set my feet in the stirrup seat
Of a comet coursing Mars.

And everywhere
Thro’ the earth and air

My thought speeds, lightning-shod,
It comes to a place where checking pace

It cries ‘Beyond lies God/
”

Oh, would that I had the speech of angel tongues or

the language which Adam spoke in Eden, or a tongue

like Isaiah which had been touched with a coal from

the very altar of God—then, perhaps, I could make
you understand what God is. But our untempered

speech which descends “grimy and rough cast from

Babel’s brick layers,” strong it is to damn, strong it



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 11

is to speak of cheek and lip and bosom; for these

things move with light ease in the speech of the

working day. But to speak of God: it moves with

the clumsiness of the hieroglyphs. Poor as it is, lan-

guage may tell its story that God is not some dim

far-off abstraction, not some “spatio temporal config-

uration ;” not “an epochal occasion not an energy,

but the fullness of Life and Truth and Love. God

is that Life Which has throbbed throughout the age-

lessness of eternity, wherein each moment is eternity

and eternity is as a moment; that Life whence has

come all existing things from the stars, the “glim-

mering tapers lit about the day’s dead sanctities,” on

even to the smiling face of a babe in a crib.

God is that Truth in Whom darkness and ignor-
ance can find no place, before Whom all is spread out
in its widest extent and smallest detail; that Truth

the Greek academicians sought as they walked the

streets of Athens, the truth the scientist seeks as he

uncovers fossils in the strata of the earth, the truth

the saint seeks as he leaves the lights and glamors of

the world for the shades and shadows of the cross

where the saints are made.

God is that Love Who ever wills and loves the
Good because it is His nature, that Love whence has

come the love of spouse for spouse, and that yet

stranger love of a Stephen who loved and prayed for

those who stoned him in hate
;
and the purer love of

“passionless passion and mild tranquilities” wherein

the heart confides in God alone.

If, then, God is the source of the Life, the Truth,

and the Love in the universe, and if the very exis-

tence of these things depends more upon Him than



12 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

the evening rays upon the setting sun, do we not owe

Him something in return? If there are gifts shall

there not be gratitude for gifts? If a man invents

a machine, does not the government give him patent

rights entitling him to returns on his invention? If

an author writes a book, is he not entitled to royal-

ties on his writings, simply because they are the

creation of his mind? Now, we are God’s invention,

or better still, God’s creation. Is not God, therefore,

entitled to return on His creation? Is He not en-

titled to royalties on His works? And since He has

given us three great gifts which contain all other

gifts, should He not be entitled to triple returns on

those gifts ? Since He has given us Truth, are we not

in duty bound to know Him ? Since He gave us Love,

should we not love in return ? Since He gave us Life,

should we not serve Him? If we admit that triple

bond, then we admit religion, or commerce between

God and man, and such is the first lesson of the penny

catechism : Why did God make us ? God made us to

know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world

and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.

Thus I come back to my starting point : The quest

for God is essentially the search for the full account

and meaning of life. And life has a meaning because

the essence of God is Love.

God is not a Being Who does not know how to love

;

not one of those tepid hearts that have no flames,

and whose tiny sparks have not the power of en-

kindling others, but fly back only upon themselves;

not a powerless God Who knows how to love but

cannot realize His dreams; not a God Who burns

with love but has only cold words to say. God’s love

is not like a stream which runs deep and mighty as



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 13

long as it is held within narrow banks but like the

great Feast at which five thousand sat and all did

have their fill.

If we would know what God is then we need only

look into our own hearts, for something God-like is

mirrored there—for whatever is best in the treasur-
ed lives of heroic men and the serene unwritten lives

of innocent women ; whatever is best in the loyalty

of human hearts and the unwearying sweetness of a

mother's love; whatever is noble in the sacrificing

care of a father and the devotion of an unselfish

friend, is but the dim reflection, the far-off echo, the

faint shadow of that which in God is perfect. We

are but enjoying a two-billionth part of the light and

heat which streams from the sun and it may equally

be that we are receiving even a smaller fraction of

the Love and Life and Truth which is in God.

Do not think that any heart can speak with such

a rapturous language but that there is a deeper

heart, a greater love, and a nobler affection. If

your own mother seems to you to be the incarnation

of all that is loving in life, do you think the God Who
made mothers can be any less loving? If your own

father seems to you to be the realization of all that

kindness in life can mean, do you think the God

Who made fathers is any less kind? If your own
heart and mind revel in the size of the planets and

the nature of the spheres, do you not think it should

thrill at the knowledge of Him before Whom all the
nations of the earth are poised as the grains in the

balance? If there are times when the joy of living

almost transports us into other realms
;
if there are

times when the discovery of a human truth lifts us

into heights of ecstatic repose; if there are times



14 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

when the human heart in its noblest reaches and

purest affections has the power to cast us into

an ecstasy, to thrill and exalt us, then what must be

the great Heart of Hearts ! If a human heart can in-

crease the joy of living, then what must be the great

Heart of God! If the Spark is so bright, oh, what

must be the Flame!



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 15

THE BLESSED TRINITY

The burden of the last message was that man is

engaged in a threefold quest, for life, truth, and love,

and since he cannot find these in their fullness on

this earth, because here life is mingled with death,

truth with error, and love with hate, he must go out

beyond the “margent of this world”, out to Someone

who is pure Life, pure Truth, and pure Love, which

is God.

But this knowledge of God which came from rea-

son working in the visible things of the world gives

a very incomplete concept of Him. It is like the

knowledge anyone might gain of an artist by look-

ing at his painting. But I could look at that painting

from now until the crack of doom and I would never

know anything of the artist’s inmost thoughts and

loves, hopes and aspirations. I could know this only

by a personal revelation on his part.

In like manner I can divine something of the exist-

ence of God, something of His Infinite Power, Life,

and Beauty by contemplating His universe, but I

could never divine anything of His secret Thought

and Love. His creation gives but dim hints of these.

It was therefore only natural that man should de-

sire further knowledge of the inner life of God, and

in seeking that light would ask such questions as

Plato asked four centuries before Christ:

If there is only one God, what does He think

about, for if He is an intelligent being He must

think of something?

If there is only one God, whom does He love? And

to be happy one must love.



16 'THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

These questions were hurled against the high

heavens as so much brass, for there was no man to

give them an answer. The answer could come only

from God Himself, and it came when Our Blessed

Lord appeared on earth and revealed to us the in-

most life of God, when He told us there were three

Persons in God, God the Father, God the Son, and

God the Holy Ghost. This tremendous mystery,

known as the mystery of the Trinity; the mystery

which answers the questions of Plato, which is above

reason and yet not contrary to it, with the help of

revelation and analogy, I shall try to explain to you.

If we would answer the questions of Plato and

know what God thinks about, and whom God loves,

let us first ask the questions of man, for man has

been made to the image and likeness of God. The

study of man’s thought will tell us something about

the thought of God.

Man thinks; he thinks a thought—a thought like
“Justice,” “Faith,” “Fortitude,” “Charity.” But who

has ever seen “Justice”? Who ever heard of “Char-

ity” going out for a walk? Who knows the size, the

weight, and the color of “Fortitude”? No one has

ever seen, tasted, or touched these thoughts, and yet

they are real. They are spiritual thoughts, therefore.

But where did they come from? Since they are not

wholly in the outside world, they must have been

produced, or generated by the mind itself, not with

that physical birth by which animal produces animal,

but that spiritual generation by which we produce

ideas or internal words. There are other ways of

begetting life, we must remember, than the mere

physical ways we see in the world about us. The

most chaste way that life is begotten is the way in



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 17

which thoughts and 'ideas are born in the mind. Now
some thoughts of man are banal and commonplace,

trite thoughts which no man remembers; but there

are also thoughts which are spirit and life. There

are some thoughts of man into which man puts his

very soul and his very being, all that he has been

and all that he is, which thoughts are so much the

thoughts of that thinker, as to carry his personality

and his spirit with them, so that we can recognize

them as thoughts of that person
;
thus, we say, that

is a thought of Pascal, of Bossuet, of Shakespeare,

or of Dante.

Now to apply this to God. God thinks
;
He thinks

a thought. That Thought of God does not come from

the outside world
;
it is generated in His Spirit in a

much more perfect way than the thought of “Jus-

tice” is generated by my spirit. The giving of life or

the power of birth, I repeat, is not limited to us. In

the language of Sacred Scripture : “He that planteth

the ear, shall he not hear ? He that formeth the eye,

shall he not consider ?” “Shall not I that make others

bring forth children, myself bring forth, saith the

Lord? Shall I Who give generation to others myself

be barren?” Since God is an 'infinite Spirit, His

thought will not be a mere feeble reflection but

rather a Thought reaching to the abyss of all things

that are known and can be known. Into this thought

God will put Himself so entirely that it is as living as

Himself, infinite as Himself, perfect as Himself. If

a human genius can put h'is whole personality into

a thought, as we have said, in a more perfect way

God is able to put so much of Himself into a thought

that it is conscious of itself and is a Divine Person.

This thought of God may be called by a double



18 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

name : it may be called a Word, or it may be called

a Son, and the two are one and the same, except from

different points of view.

Firstly, this thought of God is a Word, as my own
thought is called a word after it is pronounced. It

is an internal word. But God's thought is not like

ours. It is not multiple. God does not think one

Thought, or one Word, one minute and another the

next. Thoughts are not born to die, and do not die

to be reborn in the mind of God. All is present to

Him at once. In Him there is only one Word. He

has no need of another. That Thought or Word is

infinite and equal to Himself, unique and absolute,

first-born of the Spirit of God; a Word which tells

what God is, a Word from which all human words

have been derived, and of which created things are

but merely the broken syllables or letters; a Word

which is the source of all the Wisdom in the world.

The latest scientific discoveries, the new knowledge,

of the great expanse of the heavens, the sciences of

biology, physics, and chemistry, the more lofty ones

of metaphysics, philosophy, and theology, the knowl-

edge of the Shepherds, and the knowledge of the

Wise Men—all this knowledge has its Source in the
Word or the Wisdom of God.

The infinite Thought of God is called not only a

Word, to indicate that He is the Wisdom of God,

but is also called a Son, because He has been gener-

ated. Just as in our own human order the principle

of all human generation is called the Father, so, too,

in the Trinity the principle of the spiritual genera-

tion is called the Father and the term of the genera-

tion is called the Son, because it is the perfect image

and resemblance of the Father. If an earthly father



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 5 19

can transmit to his son all the nobility of his charac-

ter and all the fine traits of his life, how much more

so can the Heavenly Father communicate to His

Eternal Son all the nobility with all the perfection

and eternity of His Being.

The Father is not first and' then thinks, the

Father and Son are co-eternal, for in God all is pre-

sent and unchanging. Nothing is new and nothing

is lost. Thus it is that the Father, contemplating His

Image, His Word, His Son, can say in the ecstasy

of the first and real paternity: “Thou art My Son;
this day have I begotten Thee.” “This day”—this
day of eternity, that is, the indivisible duration of

being without end. “This day,” in that act that will

never end as it has never begun
;
this day—the age-

lessness of eternity.

Go back to the origin of the world, pile century on

century, aeon on aeon, age on age, “The Word was

with God.” Go back before the creation of the an-

gels, before Michael summoned his war hosts to vic-

tory and there was a flash of archangelic spirits,

even then “The Word was with God.” It is that

Word which St. John heard in the beginning of his

Gospel, when he wrote: “In the beginning was the

Word : and the Word was with God ; and the Word

was God,” and just as my interior thoughts are not

made manifest without the Word, which, in the

language of John, “Became flesh and dwelt amongst

us.” And that Word is no other than the Second

Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word Who em-

braces the beginning and end of all things ; the Word

Who existed before creation ;the Word Who presided

at creation as the King of the Universe, the Word

made flesh at Bethlehem, the Word made flesh on the



20 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

cross, and the Word made flesh dwelling with divin-

ity and humanity in the Eucharistic Emmanuel. The

Good Friday of twenty centuries ago did not mark

the end of Him, as it did not mark the beginning. It

is one of the moments of the Eternal Word of God.

Jesus Christ has a #pre-history—the only pre-history
that is pre-history, a pre-history not to be studied

in the rocks of the earth, not in the caves of man,

not in the slime and dust of primeval jungles, but

in the bosom of an Eternal Father
;
He alone brought

history to history
;
He alone has dated all the records

of human events ever since into two periods:—the
period before and the period after His coming; so

that if we would ever deny that the Word became

Flesh, and that the Son of God became the Son of

man, we would have to date our denial as one thou-

sand, nine hundred and thirty years after His com-

ing.

We are not yet finished with the inner life of God,
for if God is the source of all life and truth and

goodness in the world, He must have a will as well

as an intellect; a love as well as a thought. It is a

fact of nature that every being loves its own per-

fection. The perfection of the eye is color, and it

loves the beauty of the sun setting in the flaming

monstrance of the west; the perfection of the ear

is sound, and it loves the harmony of an overture

of Beethoven or a sonata of Chopin. Love has two

terms: He who loves and He who is loved. In love

the two are reciprocal. I love and I am loved. Be-

tween me and the one I love there is a bond. It is not

my love
;
it is not his love

;
it is our love ; the mysteri-

ous resultant of two affections, a bond which en-

chains, and an embrace wherein two hearts leap with



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 3 21

but a single joy. The Father loves the Son, the

Image of His Perfection and the Son loves the Fath-

er. Love is not only in the Father. Love is not only

in the Son. There is something between them, as it

were. The Father loves the Son, Whom He engend-
ers. The Son loves the Father, Who engendered Him.

They contemplate each other
;
love each other

;
unite

in a love so powerful, so strong, and so perfect that

it forms between them a living bond. They give

themselves in a love so infinite that like the truth

which expresses itself only in the giving of a whole

personality, their love can express itself in noth-

ing less than a Person, Who is Love. Love at such

a stage does not speak; does not cry; does not

express itself by words, nor by canticles
;
it expresses

itself as we do in some ineffable moments, by that

which indicates the very exhaustion of our giving:

namely, a sigh, or a breath—and that is why the
Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is called the

Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost.

That breath of love is not a passing one as our

own, but an eternal spirit. How all this is done, I

know not, but I do believe on the testimony of the

Word Incarnate that that Holy Spirit has been sent

by God to rule His Church. “But when the Spirit of

Truth is come, He will teach you all truth,” and I

believe that the continuous, unbroken succession of

the truth communicated by Christ to His Church

has survived to our own day, not because of the

human organization of the Church, for that is car-

ried on by frail vessels, but because of profusion of

the Spirit of Love over Christ’s Vicar and all who

belong to Christ’s mystical body.

Three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; three



22 “THE DIVINE ROMANCE 5

persons in one God; one in essence, distinction of

persons, such is the mystery of the Trinity, such is

the inner life of God. Just as I am, I know, and I

love and yet I am one; as the three angles of a tri-

angle do not make three triangles but one; as the

heat, power, and light of the sun do not make three

suns, but one
;
as water, air, and steam are all mani-

festations of the one substance; as the form, color,

and perfume of the rose do not make three roses,

but one; as our soul, our intellect, and our will do

not make three substances, but one; as one times

one times one times one, does not equal three, but

one, so too in some much more mysterious way, there

are three Persons 'in God and yet only one God.

The Trinity is the answer to the questions of

Plato. If there is only one God, what does He think

about? He thinks an eternal thought, or about His

Eternal Son. If there is only one God, whom does

He love? He loves His Son, and that mutual love is

the Holy Spirit. I firmly believe that the great phil-

osopher was fumbling about for the mystery of the

Trinity, for his great mind seemed in some small

way to suspect that an infinite being must have

relations of thought and love and that God cannot

be conceived without thought and love. But it was

not until the Word became Incarnate that man knew

the secret of those relations and the inner life of

God.

It is that mystery of the Trinity which gives the

answer to those who have pictured God as an egotist

God, sitting in solitary splendor before the world

began, reduced to love Himself as a selfish deity, for

the Trinity is a revelation that before creation, God

enjoyed the amiable society of His three Persons,



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 23

the infinite communion with Truth and the embrace

of infinite Love, and hence had no need ever to go

outside of Himself in search for happiness. The

greatest wonder of all, then, is, that being perfect

and enjoying perfect happiness, He ever should have

made a world. And if He did make a world, He could

only have had one motive for making it. It could

not add to His perfection; it could not add to His

Truth
;
it could not increase His happiness. He made

a world only because He loved.

Finally, it is the mystery of the Trinity which

gives the answer to the quest for our happiness and

the meaning of Heaven. Heaven is not a place where

there is the mere vocal repetition of alleluias or the

monotonous fingering of harps. Heaven is a place

where we find the fullness of all the fine things we

enjoy on this earth. Heaven 'is a place where we

find in its plenitude those things which slake the

thirst of hearts, satisfy the hunger of starving

m'inds, and give rest to unrequited love. Heaven is

the communion with perfect Life, perfect Truth,

and perfect Love, God the Father, God the Son, and

God the Holy Ghost to whom be all honor and glory

forever and ever. Amen.



^4 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE"

LOVE’S OVERFLOW

Away back in the agelessness of eternity, in that

day that had neither beginning nor end, God was

enjoying infinite communion with Truth and Love

in the amiable society of the three persons of the

Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Wanting

nothing for His perfection, desiring nothing for His

happiness, needing nothing for the replenishing of

His life, there was no need for God ever to go out-

side of Himself. If, therefore, He ever chose to

create a world, it must have been not on account of

need, nor duty, nor constraint, but only on account

of love.

Why then did God create a world? God created
the world for something like the same reason that

we find it hard to keep a secret! Good things are

hard to keep. The rose is good and tells its secret

in perfume. The sun is good and tells its secret in

light and heat. Man is good and tells the secret of

his goodness in the language of thought. But God

is Infinitely Good and therefore Infinitely Loving.

Why therefore could not He by a free impulsion of

His Love let love overflow and bring new worlds

into being? God could not keep, as it were, the

secret of His Love and the telling of it was Creation.

Love overflowed
;
eternity moved and said to time

:

“Begin.” Omnipotence moved and said to nothing-

ness : “Be.” Light moved and said to darkness : “Be

light.” Out from the finger-tips of God there tum-

bled planets and worlds. Stars were thrown into

their orbits and the spheres into space. Orbs and

brotherhoods of orbs began to fill the heavens. The

great march of the world began, in which planet



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 25

passes by planet and sphere by sphere, without ever

a hitch or a halt. In that long procession of the un-

folding of the Creative Power of God, there came

first matter, then palpitating life and the Paradise of

Creation with its fourfold rivers flowing through all

lands rich with gold and onyx, and finally those crea-

tures made not by a Fiat but by a Council of the

Trinity—the first man and woman.
Quite naturally the mind of that Great Architect

might have conceived ten thousand other possible

worlds than this. This is not absolutely the best

world that God could have made. But it is the best

world for the purpose that He had in mind in mak-

ing it. Almighty God chose to make a universe in

which not all the creatures would be like sticks and

stones, trees and beasts, each of which is impelled

by a law of nature, or a law of instinct to a deter-

mined rigorous end, without the slightest enjoyment

of freedom. He willed to place in Paradise a crea-

ture made to His own image and likeness, but a

creature different from all others, because endowed

with that glorious gift of freedom, which is the

power of saying “yes” or “no”, of choosing to sacri-

fice oneself to duty or duty to oneself, and forever

remaining master and captain of one’s own fate and

destiny. In other words, God willed to make a moral

universe, and the only condition upon which moral-

ity is possible is freedom.

In the very nature of things, ethics and morality

can exist only upon the condition of a veto. Bravery,

for example, is possible only in a world in which a

man may be a coward. Virtue is possible only in a

world where a man may be vicious. Sacrifice is pos-

sible only in that order in which a man may be sel-



26 “THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

fish. Love is possible only when it is possible not to

love. One cannot love cold statues.

It is the possibility of saying “No” which gives

so much charm to the heart when 'it says “Yes”. A
victory may be celebrated only on those fields in

which a battle may be lost. Hence, in the divine

order of things, God made a world in which man

and woman would rise to moral heights, not by that

blind driving power which makes the sun rise each

morning, but rather by the exercise of that freedom

in which one may fight the good fight and enjoy the

spoils of victory, for no one shall be crowned unless

he has struggled.

God in His Goodness did not choose simply to

make a man moral and then give him merely the

moral rewards to which a man is naturally entitled.

He willed to do more than this. When a man be-

comes a father, is he content merely to give his child

only that which is necessary? Does he not rather

as a loving father give to his son even more than

that which is his due? So, in like manner God willed

to give man certain gifts of body and soul, which

far exceeded the nature or the capacity of man. Im-

agine a wealthy banker who would form a trust fund

for a foundling baby, in which a vast sum of money

was to be paid to the child when he reached the age

of twenty-one, provided that during that time he led

a good moral life. Now God established some such

trust-fund. He willed to give to the first man and

woman certain gifts which would be theirs perman-

ently, and for their posterity, providing that they

proved faithful in their love. Among these gifts were

immunity from disease and death, freedom from the

rebellion of flesh over reason, and above all a gift



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE” 27

of knowledge which far surpassed reason and en-

abled man to grasp divine truths in a far greater

way than a telescope reveals to the eye the distant

stars and planets; and a gift of power or grace

which made the first man and woman not mere crea-

tures of the handiwork of God, but God's own chil-

dren, and co-heirs with Him in the Kingdom of

Heaven. These gifts, be 'it undertsood, were even

less due to the nature of man than the power of

blooming belongs to marble, or the song of a poet

belongs to a beast.

But these gifts were conditioned, for the universe

is moral. They could be kept on one condition, name-

ly, by loving God, and loving God means loving what

is best for ourselves. But how try Love? The only

way to try love is in a trial which forces one to de-

clare it. The only way for Adam and Eve as free

moral beings to prove their love and gratitude to

God was by choosing Him in preference to all else,

and admitting that their added knowledge and their

added power or grace were gifts. A double condi-
tion was laid upon them to test their love : the first

was an obscure point, in order that they would admit

the added knowledge was a gift of God, and one

reserved point, in order that they would admit that

the added power of the will was a gift of God. Thus

they would show that they loved God with their

whole mind and their whole will and preferred Him

to all things else. In concrete terms, the trial was

that they might enjoy all the riches of the garden of

Paradise, but the fruit of one tree,—the tree of the
knowldge of good and evil—they were not to touch.
God did not say why they should not—and that was
the obscure point on which their intelligence was



28 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

tried. Man should believe God on this point as on all

others. God did say they must abstain from the

fruits of that tree. That was the reserved point

which was the trial of their will. God was impos-

ing a limit to the sovereignty of man, reminding him

that if he did the one thing forbidden he would im-

peril all the things provided, and that, like Pandora,

later on, if he should open the forbidden box, he

would lose his treasures and let loose confusion

worse confounded on the world.

The story of the fall as recorded in Genesis is

known to all. Satan, appearing in the form of a

serpent, tempted Eve with the question that de-

stroyed confidence which is the root of all love.

“Why has God commanded you that you should not

not eat of every tree of Paradise ?” Eve looks at the

forbidden fruit
;
it is beautiful to behold. More and

more she turns herself from the voice and thought of

God to the fragrancy and imagined sweetness of the

forbidden fruit. The lingering thought passes into a

vivid imagination, the vivid imagination into a burn-

ing wish, the burning wish into a half-formed pur-

pose, the half formed purpose into a hasty act. Swift-

ly the crisis is upon her, as all such crises are, and

the deed was done irrevocably until time shall be no

more. She gives the forbidden fruit to Adam, and

Pride and Self-Will entered into his heart. He want-

ed to show he did know what was good for him, and

that his mind need not be kept obscured on any one

point, nor his will reserved by any one condition. He

wanted to be independent and show that he could do

what he liked. And so he ate the fruit which he was

forbidden to eat because it was fair, and still more to

show his own independence. Surely, this is under-



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 29

standable. Have we not done the same thing in our

own lives over and over again? When we were chil-

dren, were we not forbidden to do something which

we wished to do? Did we not long for it and deter-

mine to have it all the more because it was forbid-

den? Adam did it for the very same reason, and

that act of disobedience by which Adam failed the

test of love is the first sin of this created universe,

the sin which infected humanity in its origin and

the sin which, for that reason, has been called ori-

ginal sin.

The whole trial was perfectly reasonable. Imagine

a wealthy man who owns a beautiful estate on Long

Island. He tells his chauffeur and his wife that he

will permit them to live in his mansion, ride in his

motor cars, use his servants, enjoy his yacht, play

about his spacious gardens, eat at his expense. In a

word, they are to enjoy everything provided that

they would not touch a certain oil painting that hung

in one of his drawing rooms. Now, if the lady per-

suaded the gentleman to touch that painting, she

would not be a lady, and, if the gentleman touched

the painting at the suggestion of the lady, he would

not be a gentleman. By doing the one thing forbid-

den they would lose all the things provided, and who

would accuse the master of the house of 'injustice

if he no longer permitted them to enjoy his gifts?

The doctrine, then, of the fall of man is far from

the travesty made upon it by frivolous minds who

make the ordinance of God repose solely on an apple,

for to do this is to miss the point of the whole story.

To say the fall does not mean merely a garden and

a serpent
;
to say that it is much more than any gar-



30 “THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

•

den or any snake is not the same as saying there

was no garden and there was no snake. It is simply

saying what is of primary and what is of secondary

importance; what is primary is the respect due to

God, the fruit of the tree being the symbol of that

respect. To make light of the fruit of a tree under

such circumstances is just as rash as to make light

of the flag of our country, as a symbol of our coun-

try’s sovereignty. A flag stands for a nation, and
the hand that carries it would retain it at the cost

of a thousand deaths rather than let it be seized and

desecrated by the enemy. It may be a small thing to

violate a cloth that is red and white and blue, but

it is no small thing to desecrate that for which it

stands. So, likewise, in the terrestrial Paradise, the

famous tree in which God resumed all the knowledge

of good and evil, was a symbol, a moral limit which

God imposed on the sovereignty of man to prove his

obedience and his love. To say it was only a fable

is to miss the great truth that things may not only

be, but may also signify, like a handshake or a smile.

There are three points that I would make in con-

clusion concerning the fall of man. The first is that

by this act of disobedience, which is called his orig-

inal sin, man lost nothing which was due to him or to

his nature. He lost only gifts and became as St.

Augustine has said, “Just mere man.” On Christmas

Day when you distribute gifts to your friends, a

person with whom you are unacquainted would not

dare come to you and argue that you had refused to

give him gifts as you had given your friends. Your

answer would be: “Sir, I have done you no injustice.

I have deprived you of nothing which is your due. I

have even given to my friends that which was not



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 31

theirs.” And so it is with original sin. In losing the

gifts of God man lost nothing which was due to his

nature. He was reduced to a state in which God

might possibly have created him, with the difference

that the loss of the gifts weakened his intellect and

will, but did not make his nature intrinsically cor-

rupt. Imagine a line of soldiers
;
notice one of these

in particular. He resembles all the others in dress,

appearance, and action, but yesterday he was an of-

ficer, thanks to a political preferment rather than

to meritorious advancement. For an act of misde-

meanor he was degraded and the badge of his office

was taken from him. He was reduced to the state in

which you see him now. Original sin, then, is not to

be in the state we are in, but to have fallen into that

state.

Secondly, this sin of Adam was not merely the sin

of an individual, it was the sin of all humanity, for

Adam was the head of all humanity. If he had been

faithful, we would have enjoyed all of his gifts, for

he acted in our name. Since he was unfaithful, we

suffer his loss, for he acted in our name. This is not

an injustice. All humanity is bound up with one an-

other. In 1917, for example, President Wilson pro-

claimed war without any explicit declaration on our

part. He was our political head and he acted in our

name. Adam is our head and he acted in our name.

When he declared war against God we declared war

in like manner, without any explicit declaration on

our part, because of our oneness with him. And

just as in the physical order the infected blood of a

father may pass on to a son, so too the stain of the

first man has passed on to the whole human race and

stained everyone but our “tainted nature’s solitary



32 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

boast”—the Blessed Mother of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ.

Finally, original sin alone can explain the almost

contradictory character of human nature which

makes a man aspire to higher things and at the same

time succumb to the baser. The only reason we ever

seek the nobler things of God is that we once posses-

sed them
;
we seek because once we found.

All religion is full of a sense of an uneasiness and

a need of deliverance
;
every great student of human

nature has echoed as true the words of the great

Latin poet Ovid who testified that we all approve the

better things but often follow the worse ; all peoples

and nations have put their golden age in the past

when the chosen ones of their race once walked with

God. What is this universal testimony of humanity

but the witness to the fact of original sin ? Our lives

are like the great unfinished Gothic cathedrals of

Europe, ever testifying that our ideals are never

completely realized here below. The conjectures of

anthropologists about primitive man are nothing

compared to the solid fact of the sense of human sin.

By its nature the evidence of Eden is something we

cannot find. By its nature the evidence of sin is

something one cannot help finding. As a matter of

personal experience something has happened—we
are not what we ought to be.

There are ultimately only two possible theories to

account for the nature and the origin of man : one is

that the life of man is a push from below ; the other,

that the life of man is a gift from above ; the one is

that man is wholly of the earth earthly; the other,

that he is partly of the heaven, heavenly. The second

is the Christian conception : man is not a risen beast,



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 33

he is rather a kind of fallen angel. His origin is

hidden not in the slime and dust of primeval jungles

but in the clear daylight of Paradise where he com-

muned with God
;
his origin looks back not to cosmic

forces but to divine grace. On this conception man

•is supposed to act not like a beast because he came

from one, but like God because made to His own

image and likeness.

The assertion is often made today that man became

the beauty of the world and the paragon of animals

either because he lost the hand of a beast or the foot

of an animal or the visage of an orang-utang. No,

man is what he is because of the immortal soul

breathed into him by God. Let a man keep the hand

of a beast but give him an immortal soul and 'it will

not be long until he will be moving that hand over

the keys of a piano and drawing out of it the melo-

dies of a Mozart
;
let a man keep the lips of a gibbon

but give him an immortal soul and it will not be long

until those lips will not be muttering vague cries in

the dark, but calling to honest men like Demosthenes

as he walked the streets of Athens
;
let him even keep

the tail of a beast, but give him an immortal soul

and it will not be long until that tail will be picking

up a pen and writing dramas like Sophocles and

poetry like Dante. It 'is not the physical that makes

man what he is but the divine
;
it is not the loss of

something animal-like that will make something

Godlike out of man. The greatness of man is not so

much his emergence from animality as his ascent

into deity, and the power that wrought such great-

ness 'is not so much an ascent from below as a de-

scent from above in which the infinite heart of a God

calls out in the heart of a babe.



34 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

Which of these two views of man is nobler? The

one which regards him as a little bio-chemical entity

of flesh and blood, not more than six feet tall, apt

to be killed by a microbe; standing self-poised and

self-centered 'in such a universe as this, acknowledg-

ing in self-conceit no God, no purpose, no future, and

still hoping that the blind cosmic forces of space and

time will sweep him on until he becomes lost in the

bursting of the great cosmic bubble; or, that same

being awakened to his own actual ignorance, his pos-

sible wisdom, his own actual sinfulness, his possible

saintliness
;
his own actual humanity, his possible

sharing in the life of Christ, and then by an act of

self-distrust which is the highest kind of self-asser-

tion, enrolling himself under no less a person than

the Son of God made Man and crying out directly

to the Lord of the universe, “I am thine, 0 God. 0

help me whom Thou hast made.”

When a man answers this question aright he will

understand something of the true nature of man and

the love of God Who came to restore the gifts which

man had lost, and in gratitude his heart will cry out

:

“My God! My God! What is a heart, that Thou

shouldst it so eye, and woo, pouring upon it all Thy

art, as if Thou hadst nothing else to do?”



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 35

GOD’S QUEST FOR MAN

Love is naturally expansive, but Divine Love is

creative. Love told the secret of its goodness to

nothingness, and that was creation. Love made some-

thing like unto its own image and likeness, and that

was man. Love is prodigal of its gifts, and that was

the elevation of man to the adoptive sonship of God.

Love must always run risks of not being loved in

return, for love 'is free. The human heart refused to

return that love in the only way in which love can

ever be shown, namely by confidence and trust in a

moment of trial. Man thus lost the gifts of God,

darkened his intellect, weakened his will, and

brought the first or Original sin into the world, for

sin is ultimately a refusal to love.

The refusal of man to love the best created the

most difficult problem in the whole history of human-

ity, namely the problem of restoring man to the

favor of Divine Love. In short, the problem was

this : Man had sinned
;
but his sin was not merely a

rebellion against another man, but a revolt against

the Infinite Love of God. Therefore his sin was in-

finite. But, it may be asked, since man is finite, how

can he commit an infinite crime ? The answer to that

question is that an offense, an injury, or a sin is al-

ways to be measured by the one sinned against. It

would be, for example, a far greater offense to in-

sult the mayor of your own city than a citizen of

your own city, and it would be a greater offense to

commit a crime aga'inst the governor of your State

than against the mayor. In like manner, it would be

a still greater offense to commit a felony against the

President of the United States than against the gov-



36 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

ernor of any State. In other words, sin is measured

by the one sinned against. But man sinned against

God. But God is Infinite. Therefore, man’s offense

is infinite.

Such is one side of the problem. The other side is

this : Every infraction or violation of a law demands

reparation or atonement. We need only go into the
hospitals to see there that every violation of a law

of nature has its reckoning day
;
we need only go into

our asylums to see there that nature itself takes

revenge on excesses, and squares her accounts with

sin. A Judge seems to be sitting there in Judgment
executing sentence upon those who would violate her

commands. In a still higher sphere parents who

love their children demand reparation for their

faults, and judges who love society impose sentences

in atonement for crime; for a Justice which sees

evil and does not punish it, is not Justice. But since

God is Infinite Love, He might pardon man and for-

get the injury, but pardon without compensation

would eclipse the Justice which is the nature of God.

Without setting any limits to the Mercy of God, I

could understand H'is action better, if His mercy was

preceded by a satisfaction for sin, for one can never

be merciful unless he is Just. Mercy is the overflow

of Justice.

But assuming that man should give satisfaction,

could he satisfy adequately for his sin? No, because

the satisfaction or reparation or atonement which

man had to offer was only finite. At this point it may

be asked why cannot man give an infinite recom-

pense for his sin ? If he can commit an infinite crime,

why can he not make an infinite retribution? The

answer is that while injury is in the one injured,



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 37

honor or reparation is in the one honoring. If a

citizen of the Soviet State, a Minister of Finance of

France, a Senator of a South American Republic,

and the King of Great Britain came to call on the

President of our country, they would not all render

him equal honor. Honor would be in the one honor-

ing and he who held the highest office would render

the greatest tribute. Now I have said that man owes

honor and reparation to God, but since man is finite

it follows that the honor which he will render to

God would also be finite. And there is the problem of

the Incarnation.

Man who is finite owes an infinite debt. But how

can a man who owes a million pay the debt with a

cent? How can the human atone to the Divine? How

can Justice and Mercy be reconciled? If satisfaction

is ever to be made for the fall of man, the finite and

the infinite, the human and the divine, God and man

must in some way be linked together. It would not

do for God alone to come down and suffer as God

alone, for then He would not have anything in com-

mon with man
;
the sin was not God’s, but man’s. It

would not do for man alone to suffer or atone, for the

merit of his sufferings would be only finite. If the

satisfaction would be complete, two conditions would

have to be fulfilled: First, man would have to be

man to act as man and to atone. Man would have to

be God in order that his sufferings would have an in-

finite value. But in order that the finite and the in-

finite would not be acting as two distinct personali-

ties, and in order that infinite merit would result

from man’s suffering, God and man in some way

would have to become one, or in other words, there

would have to be a God-man. If Justice and Mercy



38 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

were to be reconciled there would have to be an In-

carnation, which means God assuming a human na-

ture, in such a way that He would be true God and

true man. There would have to be a union of God

and man, built upon somewhat the same lines as the

union of spirit and matter in man. Man has a double

nature, the nature of a body which is material, the

nature of the soul which is spiritual, and yet he is

only one person. The Incarnation of God would im-

ply some such union of two natures in the unity of

a Person, but quite naturally a far more perfect one.

Let me make this solution clear by an example.

On the desk before me is a pencil. That pencil repre-

sents human nature
;
of itself the pencil cannot write.

My hand now goes down to the pencil, takes it up,

moves it across a paper, and immediately the pencil

is endowed with a power which before it had not.

If after I had written, you should ask me who wrote

the lines, I would not say my fingers wrote them,

nor would I say my pencil wrote them, but I would

say, I wrote them. In other words, we attribute the

actions of various natures to a person and the one

thing that characterizes the person is not action, not

nature, not direction, but responsibility. That is

why I do not say my stomach is hungry, but I am

hungry; not my eyes see, but I see. Actions be-

long to a person.

Now let the pencil represent poor human nature,

of itself unable to pay an infinite debt to God. Im-

agine now a divine Person with a Divine Nature

coming down to that human nature, taking it up and

becoming united with it in a far more perfect way

than my hand is united with the pencil. If such an

act of condescension would ever happen, the action



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE” 3S

of the human nature and the action of the divine

nature would not be attributed to either nature

alone, as the action of the pencil would not be attri-

buted to the nature of the pencil or to the nature of

the hand alone
;
it would be attributed to the person.

But if the Person were one of the Persons of the

Blessed Trinity, namely, the Second Person, the

Eternal Son of God, it would follow that every

thought, every word, every sigh, every tear of the

human nature of that Person would be the very

thought, very word, very sigh, and very tear of God.

Then Justice and Mercy could be reconciled. God

would be just in demanding infinite satisfaction;

God would be merciful in making that possible by

coming down to earth and being found in the habit

and the form of man.

What I have just imagined for you is what has

actually taken place. Love tends to become like the

one loved
;
in fact, it even wishes to become one with

the one loved. God loved unworthy man. He willed

to become one with him and that was the Incarna-

tion. One night there went out over the stillness of an

evening breeze, out over the white chalked hills of

Bethlehem, a cry, a gentle cry. The sea did not hear

the cry, for the sea was filled with its own voice. The

earth did not hear the cry, for the earth slept. The

great men of the earth did not hear the cry, for they

could not understand how a child could be greater

than a man. The Kings of the earth did not hear the

cry, for they could not fathom how a King could be

born in a stable. There were only two classes of men

who heard the cry that night : Shepherds and Wise

Men. Shepherds: those who know they know noth-

ing. Wise Men : those who know they do not know



40 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

everything. Shepherds
:
poor simple men who knew

only how to tend their flocks, who perhaps could

not tell who was the Governor of Judea; who, per-

haps, did not know a single line of Virgil, though

there was not a Roman who could not quote from

him. On the other hand, there were the Wise Men

;

not Kings, but teachers of Kings; men who knew

how to read the stars, tell the story of their move-

ments
;
men who were constantly bent on discovery.

Both of these heard the cry. The Shepherds found

their Shepherd, and the Wise Men discovered Wis-

dom. And the Shepherd and Wisdom was a Babe in

a crib.

And from that day to this there have been only

two classes of people who have heard the cry of

Christ and who have found Christ: the very simple

and the very learned. The very simple; good souls

who know perhaps only how to tell their beads, and

the very wise minds like Pascal, Aquinas, Bonaven-

ture, or Mercier. But never the man with one book

;

never the man who thinks he knows. Only the sim-

ple and only the wise find Christ because both are

humble; both acknowledge either 'ignorance or the

limitations of human knowledge, which is humility.

In order to enter the cave, one must stoop and the

stoop is the stoop of humility. Those who possess

that kind of humility can enter the cave. There they

will find what these two groups found : a Babe out-

stretched on a bed of straw. So great was the majes-

ty seated on the brow of the Child, so great was the

dignity of the Babe, so powerful was the light of

those eyes that shone like two celestial suns, that

they could not help but cry out: “Emmanuel: God

is with us,” God revealed Himself to man again.



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE' 41

He who is born without a mother in Heaven is born

without a father on earth. He who made His mother

is born of His mother. He who made all flesh is

born of flesh. “The bird that built the nest is hatch-

ed therein.” Maker of the sun, under the sun;

Moulder of the earth, on the earth; Ineffably Wise,

a little Infant ; filling the world, lying in a manger

;

ruling the stars, suckling a breast; the mirth of

Heaven weeps; God becomes man; Creator a crea-

ture. Rich become poor; Divinity incarnate; Maj-

esty subjugated; Liberty captive; Eternity time;

Master a servant; Truth accused; Judge judged;

Justice condemned; Lord scourged; Power bound

with ropes; King crowned with thorns; Salvation

wounded
;
Life, dead. “The Eternal Word is dumb.”

Marvel of marvels! Union of unions! Three mys-

terious unions in one; Divinity and humanity; Vir-

ginity and fecundity; Faith and the heart of man.

And though we shall live on through eternity, eter-

nity will not be long enough for us to understand the

mystery of that “Child who was a father and of the

mother who was a child.”

The tiny hands that were not quite long enough

to touch the huge heads of the cattle, were the hands

that were holding the reins that steer the sun, the

moon, and the stars in their courses. The tiny fing-

ers that could but clutch clumsily at the coarse straw

of the threshing floor, were fingers that will one day

point in judgment to the good and to the bad. The

tiny feet that could not walk were weak, not because

they were baby feet but because those baby feet could

not bear the weight of Divine Omnipotence. There

under the tender skin of a baby brow was beating an

Intelligence compared to which the combined intel-



42 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

l'igences of Europe and America amount to naught;

an intelligence that, if it had moved in other days,

would have found Plato and Aristotle but poor phil-

osophers, Dante and Shakespeare but poor poets,

and our modern scientists but mumbling beginners.

Each breath, each sigh, and each tear of that Babe

was the breath, s'igh, and tear of God. Each one of

them would have been sufficient to have redeemed

ten thousand worlds. Then why a life of suffering

and why an existence that led to the hard bed of the

cross ? Why the shedding of the last drop of blood ?
For something like the same reason that there are

more birds than are necessary for the needed song of

man, more grains of sand than are necessary for a

seashore—because of the superfluity of Love. Love
which is real, loves even to the point of sacrifice, in

fact loves even to the end which is the giving of

one’s own life. Christ loves to that extent, for

“greater love than this no man hath that he lay down

his life for his friend.”

The drying of the blood of Christ on an infamous

gibbet, then, is something more than some in our

day would have us believe, who declare that Christ’s

death is interesting and valuable because of the sub-

jective effect it has on the mind of the believer. He

went to death, tney tell us, in order that man might

be impressed with His Heroism. No! He went to

death not to impress us subjectively, but to save us

objectively. Imagine a man sitting on a pier on a

bright sunny day, lazily fishing and apparently with-

out a concern 'in the world. Now suppose that a

stranger wishing to impress that fisherman with the

great humanitarian love he bore him, would rush

forward, cast himself headlong over the pier into the



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 43

sea, and drown. The whole matter would be ridicu-

lous, for there is no relation between the fisherman's

need and the act of the benefactor. But suppose the

fisherman had fallen into the water and was drown-

ing. Then the friend came and threw himself in to

save him and gave his own life in the rescue
;
in such

a case we would say : “Greater love than this no man

hath that a man lay down his life for his friend.”

Here there is an objective relation between the man’s

need and the rescue
;
so, too, in the greater drama of

Salvation there is a relation between man who was

lost in sin, and God Who came to save him—not by
gold or silver, but by the outpouring of His Precious

Blood. And if you were the only person in the world

who ever lived, He would have come down and suf-

fered and died just for you alone. That is how much

God loves you.

It takes a Divine, an Infinite Being to use the very

instruments of defeat as the instruments of victory.

The fall came through three realities: First, a dis-

obedient man: Adam. Secondly, a proud woman,

Eve. Thirdly, a tree. The reconciliation and redemp-

tion of man came through these same three. For the

disobedient man, Adam, was the obedient new Adam

of the human race, Christ
;
for the proud Eve, there

was the humble Mary
;
and for the tree, the cross.

In the face of this cardinal doctrine of Christian-

ity, which is the Incarnation of God, how tawdry and

poor appear the substitutes offered in which we are

asked to venerate a system, prostrate ourselves be-

fore a series of abstract nouns or fall down on our

knees before the cosmos. These things are too un-

real, for the very reason that they are systems and

hence will never appeal to the heart of man. Hu-



44 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

manism is impossible because it is too academic
;
love

of humanity is impossible because there is no such

thing as humanity—there are only men and women

;

the religion of progress is impossible because pro-

gress means nothing unless we know whither we are

progressing. Philosophical systems, scientific con-

structions and slogans leave the heart of man cold.

Even a theory about love means little as long as it

remains a theory. But let love become personal in

some one and then it pulls at every heart-string in

the world. There is the secret of the appeal of the

Incarnation. Love became Incarnate and dwelt

amongst us. Since that day hearts that have known

what the Incarnation means can never content them-

selves with any system which asks us to adore the

cosmos. Man never has loved, never will love any-

thing he cannot get his arms around, and the cosmos

is too big and too bulky. That is why the Immense

God became a Babe in order that we might encircle

Him in our arms.



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 46

THE DIVINE EQUATION

Love tends to become one with the one loved:

This was the Incarnation in which God became man.

Love knows no limits in its giving: This was the

Redemption through the merits of Jesus Christ, ac-

complished through the Person of God taking upon

Himself a human nature, like unto ours in all things

except sin. Thus far we have progressed in our un-

folding of the Divine Romance.

Now we go on to inquire what did Christ do with

the human nature which He assumed and united to

His Divine Person? What did He do with that body

which He took from the Blessed Mother Mary, and

which 'in its physical state lived from the crib to

the cross ? He did many things with it, but they are

all reducible to three : He taught, He governed, and

He sanctified.

First, He taught, not as the Scribes and Pharisees,

but as one having authority. Conscious that He was

the Eternal Word of God that illumined every man

coming into the world, He taught not as a searcher

of truth but as one communicating ’it from its very

source and Fountain Head: “I AM THE TRUTH.”
Desiring that others should share in that truth, He

gathered men about Him and bade them go out and

teach the nations of the earth to observe all things

whatsoever He had commanded.

Secondly, He used His body not only to teach but

also to govern and found a Kingdom. All govern-

ment is based upon power. Conscious of His union

with His Heavenly Father, He could say: “ALL

POWER IS GIVEN TO ME IN HEAVEN AND IN
EARTH.” Gathering the elements of His First



46 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

Kingdom, consisting mostly of ignorant men, He

chose from the twelve of them one as their Chief and

Guide—Peter the Rock, on whom He said He would
build His Church, and to whom He committed the

supreme power of feeding His lambs and feeding His

sheep.

Thirdly, with His body He sanctified: “I AM
COME THAT YOU MAY HAVE LIFE AND
THAT IN ABUNDANCE.” Through the instru-
mentality of that body He opened blind eyes to the

light of God’s sunshine, unstopped deaf ears to the

music of the human voice, forgave penitent Magda-

len, sanctified the woman at the well, and re-made

Nicodemus as one born anew. But as He sent out His

Apostles to teach His Truth, to establish the govern-

ment of His Kingdom, He now sends them out as His

Father had sent Him to forgive sins, to cast out

devils, and renew His Sacrifice in commemoration of

Him, and to baptize in the name of the Father and

of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

In other words, the human nature or the body of

Our Blessed Lord was the conjoined instrument by

which He taught, governed and sanctified ; by it He

communicated His Truth as Teacher, His law as

King, and His Life as a Priest, for He was the

Truth, the Way and the Life.

The remarkable thing about His earthly life was

the fact that He often spoke of it continuing after

His death, for He Who laid down His life could take

it up again. He reminded His Apostles over and over

again, that after His resurrection He would assume

another body, not a body like unto the one which He

took from the Blessed Mother, but rather a kind of

social body which would be made up of all those who



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE' 47

become incorporated into His Kingdom. He said

that this union between Himself and this body would

be organic, vital and life-l'ike, like a union of the

vine and the branches, and just as the branches could

not live without the vine, so neither could this new

body of His live without Him; He promised them

that He would not leave them orphans but that He

would remain with them all days even to the con-

summation of the world, and that when two or more

were gathered together in His name He would be

in the midst of them. Finally, He told them that He

would become so much identified with the poor, hun-

gry, persecuted members of this new body that who-

ever would do a kindness to any one of them or even

give them a drink, would be doing it unto Him ; that

this body would not be like an institution but like

a mustard seed that would grow from small begin-

nings to fill the whole earth, and that between it and

Himself there would be something of the unity that

existed between Him and His Heavenly Father
—

“I

IN THEE AND THOU IN ME.”

He did say, however, that His union with this new

body would not be complete until the day of Pente-

cost, for He would not ‘‘assume” His new body until

He had taken His own from this earth. He left the

elements of this new body on earth, when He as-

cended into Heaven, namely, His Apostles. But this

little group of men gathered about Him as yet were

wanting a soul for their corporate unity, fighting as

they were for first place in the Kingdom of Heaven

and even returning to their nets and their boats

after the Resurrection. They were like the chemicals

that exist in a laboratory, which chemicals could

make up the physical constituents of a body and yet



48 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

cannot, because they lack a soul or vivifying spirit.

They were as yet a kind of organization; but they

were to become an organism under the influence of

the spirit of Christ that would come on Pentecost.

Ten days after the Ascension of Our Blessed Lord

into Heaven, the Holy Spirit descended upon the

Apostles gathered in the upper room of Jerusalem,

baptized them with fire, gave them a soul, made them

one, signed them with a sign and sealed them with

a seal, and at that precise moment the new body of

Christ was born—the body of Christ is His Church.
In the fiery glow of that Pentecostal gift, the small

and scattered rays combined to form one great radi-

ance, and they who before had been but men of little

faith filled with childish egotism now went into the

world conscious that they were the beginning of that

new body of Christ which would grow as the mus-

tard seed even to the consummation of the world.

Am I teaching a strange and novel doctrine when
I say that the Church is the body of Christ? Recall

to your mind an incident that happened within

twenty years after the day of Pentecost, within

which time that new body of Christ had grown and

expanded to fill much of the then known world. The

incident that I refer to is that of Saul of Tarsus, the

fiery Hebrew of the Hebrews, who hated Christ and

things Christian as much as any man could hate.

Armed with letters from the Synagogue of Jerusa-

lem, he sets out for the City of Damascus to seize and

persecute the Christians there who belonged to the

Church of the body of Christ. While on the way sud-

denly a great light shone round about him. He falls

to the ground and hears a voice saying to him:

“SAUL, SAUL, WHY PERSECUTEST THOU



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 49

ME ?” The heat of the oriental sun gives him
strength to speak and nothingness dares ask the

name of Omnipotence: “WHO ART THOU, LORD?”
The answer comes back: “I AM JESUS WHOM
THOU PERSECUTEST.” Saul is persecuting the
Church of Damascus and the Christians of Damas-

cus, and Christ says to Saul: “WHY PERSECUT-
EST THOU ME?” Christ and the Church, are they
the same thing? Precisely, the Church is Christ and

Christ is the Church—such is the Divine Equation.
Saul learned the unforgettable lesson that day

which he afterwards taught as Paul: the lesson

which Christ Himself had taught to His Apostles,

the lesson which 'is taught to us now, namely, that

the Church is the body of Christ. And that Christ

Himself sitting at the right hand of the Father is

the Head of that body. This new body, sometimes

called a mystical body, is to be understood after the

analogy of the human body which is made up of

many members performing different functions and

yet all cooperating toward the harmony of the whole.

The hand is not the foot, the eye is not the ear, the

heart is not the lung. So, too, the priest is not the

layman, the apostle is not the disciple, the Vicar of

Christ is not the deacon, and yet all are one in the

same spirit. As St. Paul puts it: “As in one body

we have many members, but all the members have

not the same office : so that being many are one body

in Christ and every one members one of another.”

The Church, then, in the language of Sacred Scrip-

ture is the body of Christ, not the physical one like

to the one that was born in Bethlehem, was crucified

in Jerusalem, but rather a mystical one in which He

continues to live and to act and to think (though in



50 “THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

another sense than He did in Judea and Galilee).

And He, Christ in Heaven, is the Head of that Body.

As He took a body from Mary who was filled with

the Holy Spirit, with which He lived a physical life

of thirty-three years, so He lives today His mystical

life in a new body taken from humanity but likewise

overshadowed with the Pentecostal Spirit, which we

call the Church. As His Incarnation was made up of

a visible and an 'invisible element, a human and di-

vine: so, too, His continued Incarnation in His

Church is made up of two elements, human and

divine. The human element in it is poor weak hu-

manity, and the divine element is the life of- God.

With this new body taken from humanity and filled

with His Spirit, Christ is re-living His life at Beth-

lehem, Nazareth, Galilee and Jerusalem. He is doing

with this new body three things, as He did three

things with His physical body: with it He teaches,

He governs and He sanctifies.

First of all, He teaches. But how does He teach?

He Who is invisible teaches through the instrumen-

tality of His body. A teacher in a class room, for
example, wishes to communicate a spiritual truth,

such as love of duty. That spiritual truth is some-

thing which has no matter, no size, no weight or

color, and yet it is communicated materially by writ-

ing, by words, or by examples. It does not become

a different truth when it is communicated visibly or

audibly. So, too, when Christ teaches He teaches

through the visible head of His mystical body who

is His Vicar on earth. Just as His own physical body

had a visible head, so, too, His mystical body has a

visible head. This visible head is the successor of

His first Vicar on whom He built His Church and



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 51

promised that the gates of hell would not prevail

against it. Two conclusions follow : The first is, that

the truth which is communicated to the body

through its visible head, the Vicar of Christ, is not

a distinct spiritual truth from the truth existing in

the invisible head of the Church, which is Christ

Himself, any more than the spiritual truth of the

teacher became another truth when articulated. The

Truth of Christ and the truth of His Vicar are one

and the same, and such is the meaning of the words

:

“HE THAT HEARETH YOU, HEARETH ME.”
Secondly, the truth will be necessarily infallible, or

free from error, for it is essentially the truth of

Christ, and hence the infallibility of the Vicar of

Christ is only another way of saying the infallibility

of Christ. Infallibility is an endowment of the Body

with which its Visible Head thinks and speaks the

Mind of Christ. And to deny that Christ can com-

municate His truth as He communicated it centuries

ago, is to limit the truth of the Son of God to Pales-

tine as a Space and to thirty-three years as a Tine.

To the members of that body Christ speaks through

the Peter of our own day as He spoke through the

Peter of the first.

Secondly, Christ not only teaches through the in-

strumentality of His body, which is the Church, but

He also governs through it. The supreme, legisla-

tive, executive and judicial decisions of the Vicar

and those under his authority are the decisions of

Christ and therefore binding with the authority of

Christ. My will, for example, may direct that my
hand be moved. The decision of my will is invisible,

but the manifestations of the will are external and

visible. So, too, the will of Christ and the govern-



52 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

ment of His Church are expressed through the visi-

ble head of His body and those joined to him as the

other Apostles were joined to Peter. This alone gives

the key to the childlike obedience so incomprehensi-

ble to the outsider which we give to the Church, an
obedience whereby we submit to it as the will of
Christ expressed in the action of His Vicar. It is

for us no slave mentality, no corpse-like servitude,

but a profoundly religious act, an absolute devotion

to Christ paid by His children who are enjoying the

glorious liberty of the children of God.

Finally, Christ does a third thing with His body

and that is He sanctifies with it. The body of Christ

is continually receiving through seven mysterious

physical signs the Energy of the Divine Life and the

liberating handling of His Precious Wounds, for

each Sacrament is a kiss of God, a material thing

used as a means of spiritual sanctification and the

true minister of every Sacrament is none other than

the Supreme and Eternal High Priest—Christ Him-
self.

In summary, then, Christ Who in His human

body taught, governed and sanctified, now continues

to do the same in His mystical body, and her teach-

ings are Christ’s infallible teachings, her commands,

Christ’s divine commands, and her Sacramental

Life, Christ’s Divine Life.' The Church, then, is the

continuation of the Incarnation. It is not an insti-

tution like a bank, but a life, not an organization like

a club, but an organism, not something horizontal

extending from the Apostles as men to us as other

men, but as something vertical in which Divine Life

descends first from God to Christ and then on to

us in the Church.



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 63

The Gospel therefore is being re-l'ived by the pre-

sence of Christ in His new body, which is the

Church. Just as His own human body was subject

to physical weaknesses, just as it became tired at

Jacob’s well, and had its lips blistered with the kiss

of Judas, so I see His own mystical body subject not

to physical weakness, but to moral weakness and

scandals, and even to other betraying lips. But I

can see no more reason for doubting the divinity of

His mystical body because of its failures and weak-

nesses, than I can see a reason for doubting the

Divinity of Christ because three of His Apostles

slept in the garden. Through the lips of the Church

I hear Christ speaking and her words I accept as the

very words of Christ. When she lifts her hands in

the confessional and bids the sinner go and sin no

more I see once more Christ lifting His hands in for-

giveness as onlookers taunt Him: “How can man

forgive sins ?” When I see some of her own children

leave her because they cannot accept her doctrine, I

see Christ once more permitting His own chosen dis-

ciples who found His sayings hard to leave Him and

walk with Him no more. When I see her hold aloft

a white Host in the Chalice and say to me : “Behold

the Lamb of God,” I believe that Christ Himself is

as really and truly there as if He should throw open

the Tabernacle door and declare unto me His living

presence. When I see a priest mount the altar steps

to renew the Sacrifice of Calvary, I see once more the

bleeding feet of Christ climbing the hill and His

wounded hands outstretched on the gibbet of a cross.

When I hear her call men and women away from the

lights and glamours of the world to the shades and

shadows of the cross where saints are made, I hear



54 “THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

once more Christ commending Mary because she

had chosen the better part, and that, after all, only

one thing in life is necessary and that 'is the salva-

tion of a soul. When I hear her misunderstood and

hated by the world, I can hear Christ once more

reminding us : “Because I have taken you out of the

w'crld, therefore the world will hate you. But re-

member that it hath hated Me before you.” In those

moments when she is accused of being unscientific,

behind the times, and the Church of the poor, I hear

men once more asking Christ: “Can anything good

come out of Nazareth?” In those other moments

when the world shouts and acclaims her and would

almost crown her King, I see the palm branches of

triumph change into spears of threat. Then in those

moments of sorrow when the Church goes on trial

and I hear her condemned for being too dogmatic,

I am reminded of Annas’ complaint that Christ

would not speak out concerning His ministry and

His doctrine. When I hear her charged with being

too worldly and unpatriotic, I take the charges mere-

ly as echoes made before Pilate’s palace that Christ

was perverting the nation and refusing to give tri-

bute to Caesar. When I hear her condemned for

being too unworldly and refusing to compromise, I

can almost see Herod once again robing Christ in

the garment of a fool beacuse He would not do a

worldly trick to gain His release. When the charges

are added, viz, that she is too dogmatic or too undog-

matic, too worldly or too unworldly, I recall that

they are contradictory charges and that the only

fitting punishment for one condemned on contradic-

tory charges is the sign of contradiction: the cross

on which one bar is at variance and in contradiction



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 5 55

with the other. The Church, then, must have her

passion days even as Christ must be condemned in

three languages, in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, in the

cultures of Jerusalem, Rome and Athens, in the

name of the good, the true and the beautiful. Now

as then the representatives of these three cultures

pass beneath the cross and ask that the Church give

up and come down. Those who crucify in the name of

the good, shout unto her: “Come down from your

belief in the spiritual destiny of man; come down

from your belief that man has been made to the im-

age and likeness of God: come down from your be-

lief in the sanctity of marriage, come down and we

will believe.
,,

Those who crucify in the name of the

true, pass beneath the cross and plead : “Come down

from your belief that there is such a thing as truth

;

come down from your belief in the Divinity of

Christ and the existence of God; come down from

your belief in the continued life and truth of Christ

in His Ghurch. Can you not see that there are other

crosses on Calvary beside your own? Come down

and we will believe.” Those who crucify in the name

of the beautiful shout : “Come down from your belief

that salvation is purchased through mortification;

come down from your belief that the only way to

save a life is to lose it; come down from your belief

that another world is to be purchased by the tem-

pered enjoyment of this one! See the straits to

which your philosophy has already led you. Your

flesh is hanging like purple rags. Come down and

we will believe.”

The divinely supreme miracle of Christ’s whole

life and the whole life of the Church is that she does

not come down. The miracle of the crucifixion is the



56 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

fact that Christ still hangs there. Divinity in such

moments is shown by restraint of power. A human
being would have stepped down with the same im-

petuousness with which weak men answer timid

challenges. The miracle ‘is to be able to come down

and yet not to come down. It is human to come

down, but it is divine to hang there. It would be

easy for the Church to come down; to have been

Gnostic in the first Century; to have been Arian in

the fourth, and to be pagan in the twentieth. It is

always easy to let the age have its head, but it is

difficult to keep one’s own. It is always easy to fail

;

there are a thousand angles at which a thing will

fall but only one at which it stands, and that is the

angle at which the Church is poised between Heaven

and earth and from that angle she o’erlooks the pas.

sing fads and fancies of the ages and sings over

them in deep and sonorous tones a requiem in the

language of Hebrew, Latin and Greek, awaiting the

day when she shall come down to walk in the glory

of her new Easter morn.



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 57

THE PULPIT OF THE CROSS

Our Blessed Lord during His mortal life chose

many varied and picturesque pulpits from which to

deliver His sermons—the Words of Eternal Life.
Sometimes His pulpit was Peter’s bark pushed out

into the sea. At other times, it was the crowded

streets of Jericho; on another occasion, the golden

gate of the Temple, and on still another Jacob’s well.

It seemed as if almost any pulpit pleased Him, until

the day came for Him to deliver His last and fare-

well address to the world. Then He would not be

content with any pulpit; then He would demand a

pulpit which, like the words He was uttering, would

be remembered down through the arches of the

years. And on that Good Friday morning, as He

stood on the sunlit portico of Pontius Pilate, per-

haps He thought of making that portico the pulpit of

His last and farewell address to the world. There

was a vast sea of faces before Him and hearts hun-

gering for the Bread of Eternal Life
;
there was an

audience like unto which any one would have loved

to open his heart. But, no, He would not make that

portico the pulpit of His last and farewell address.

He would wait for a few hours, for another pulpit

which would be given Him at the foot of the steps

of Pilate’s palace and that pulpit He would put upon

His shoulders, carry to Golgotha, and that pulpit

would be—the cross. Once on those heights He of-
fered Himself to His executioners. Hands of the

carpenter hardened by toil; hands from which the

world’s graces flow ; feet of the Miracle Worker that

went about doing good and that trod the Everlast-



58 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

ing Hills, now had the rough nails applied to them.

The first knock of the hammer is heard in silence;

blow follows blow and is faintly reechoed over the

city walls beneath. Mary and John hold their ears.

The sound is unendurable; each echo sounds as an-

other stroke. The cross is lifted slowly off the

ground, staggers for a moment 'in mid-air, and then,

with a thud that seemed to shake even hell itself, it

sank into the pit prepared for it. Our Blessed Lord

has mounted His pulpit for the last time, and what

a majestic pulpit it is! In itself the cross is a ser-

mon. How much more eloquently it speaks now

when adorned with the Word of Eternal Life

!

Like all who mount their pulpits, He o’erlooks His

audience. Far off in the distance, down over the

Valley of Jehosaphat, and over on the other side of

the valley, He could see the gilded roof of the Temple

reflecting its rays against the sun, which was soon

to hide its face in shame. Here and there on Temple

walls He caught gilmpses of figures straining their

eyes to catch the last view of Him Whom the dark-

ness knew not. Nearer the pulpit, but off at the bord-

er of the crowd, stood some of His own timid disciples

ready to flee in case of danger. Greeks and Romans

were there, too, as well as Scribes and Pharisees

from Jerusalem. There were Temple priests in the

crowd asking Him to come down and prove His Di-

vinity. There were the Deity-blind, mocking and

spitting at Him. There were some who had followed

Him for an hour, taunting Him that others He

saved, but Himself He could not save. There were

Roman soldiers throwing dice for the garments of a

God. And there at the foot of the cross stood that

wounded flower, that broken thing, Magdalen, for-



THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 59

given because she loved much. And there, with a

face like a cast moulded out of love, was John. And

there, God pity her, was His own Mother, Mary.

Mary, Magdalen and John. Innocence, penitence,

and priesthood: the three types of souls forever to

be found beneath the cross of Christ.

All is silence now. The Scribes and Pharisees

cease their raillery, the Roman soldiers put away

their dice. The sky is darkened and men grow fear-

ful. They are awaiting the farewell address of the

Son of God. He begins to speak, but like all men

who die, He thinks of those whom He loves most.

His first word was a word about His enemies:

“FATHER FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW
NOT WHAT THEY DO.” His second word was
about sinners and He spoke to a thief : “THIS DAY
THOU SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE.”
And the thief died a thief, for he stole Paradise ! His

third word was to His saints. It was the new An-

nunciation: “MOTHER, BEHOLD THY SON.” As
the sermon went on, it seemed to gain in emphasis

about the love of God for man and at this particular

point that we are now considering, when He began

to speak, it was not a curse upon those who crucified

Him
;
it was not a word of reproach to the timid dis-

ciples off at the border of the crowd; it was not a

word of withering scorn to those who taunted and

mocked Him
;
it was not a proud prophetic word of

power to those who taunted His weakness; it was

not a word of hate to the Roman soldiers; it was

not a word of hope to Magdalen
;
it was not a word

of love to John; it was not a word of farewell to His

own Mother
;
'it was not even to God at this moment,

it was to man ! And out from the abundance of the



60 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

Sacred Heart there welled the cry of cries: “I

THIRST.”

He, the God-man ! He Who holds the earth in the
palm of His hand, He from whose finger-tips have

tumbled planets and worlds, He Who threw the stars
into their orbits, and spheres into space, now asks

man, a piece of His own handiwork, to help Him. He

asks man for a drink. Not a drink of earthly water,

that is not what He wanted, but a drink of love

—

I thirst for love.

There is perhaps no word in the English language

that is more often used and more often misunder-

stood than the word that rang out from the Pulpit of

the Cross on that day: the simple word love. Love

as the world understands it means to have, to own,

to possess: to have that object, to own that thing,

to possess that person, for the particular pleasure

which it will give. That is not love ; that is selfish-

ness, that is sin. Love is not the desire to have, to

own, to possess. Love is the desire to be had, to be

owned, to be possessed. Love is the giving of oneself

for the sake of another. Love as the world under-

stands it, is symbolized by a circle which is always

circumscribed by self. Love as our Lord under-

stands it, is symbolized by the cross with its arms

outstretched even unto infinity to embrace all hu-

manity within its grasp. As long as we have a body,

then, love can never mean anything else but sacri-

fice. That is why we speak of “arrows” and “darts”

of love—something that wounds.

But if love, in its highest reaches, means sacrifice,

then these words of Our Blessed Lord from the cross

are the climax of Love’s ways with unloving men.



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 61

Love did not keep the secret of its goodness—that
was creation. Love became one with the one loved,

and that was the Incarnation. But if love had merely

stopped with God becoming man, we might say that

God did not do everything He could do to show His

love; we might say that He was like the heathen

gods that sat indifferent to the woes and ills and

heartaches of the world and hence never drew from

the heart of man a beat of love. If Divine Love

stopped merely by appearing amongst us, man

might say that God could never understand the suf-

ferings and the loneliness of a human heart; that

a God could not love as men do, namely, to the point

of sacrifice. If, therefore, love was to give of its full-

ness, it must express itself even to the point of sac-

rificing itself for the salvation and redemption of

mankind. If, therefore, He Who suffered on Cal-

vary, He Who was now preaching from the Pulpit

of the Cross, were not God, but a mere creature or a

mere man, then there must be creatures in this

wrorld better and nobler than God. Shall man who

toils for his fellowman, suffers for him, and if needs

be die for him, be capable of doing that which God

cannot do? Should this noblest form of love, which

is sacrifice, be possible to sinful man, and yet im-

possible to a perfectly good God ? Shall we say that

the martyr sprinkling the sands of the Colosseum

with his blood, the soldier dying for his country, the

missionary spending himself and being spent for

the good of heathens; aye, and more, shall we say

that those women, martyrs by pain, who in little

hovels and lowly cottages have sacrificed all the joys

of life for the sake of simple duties, and little charit-

ies, unnoticed and unknown by all save God,—shall



62 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’’

we say that all those, who from the beginning of the

world have shown forth the beauty of sacrifice, have

no divine prototype in heaven ? That they have been

capable of displaying a nobler form of love than

He Who made them ? That they have shown greater

love than Love Itself? Shall we say this, or shall

we say with John and Paul, that if man can be so

good, God must be infinitely better
;
that if man can

love so much, God can love infinitely more. Shall we

not say this, and find in the Cross of Calvary the

perfect expression of love by an All-Perfect Being, of

Whom perfect condescension and sacrifice were re-

quired by naught in heaven or earth save by His own

perfect and inconceivableLove which He now preach-

es from the Pulpit of the Cross ? If we do say this,

that He is very God of God, and love is now reaching

its climax in the redemption of mankind, then no

longer can men say, “Why does God send men into

the world to be miserable when He is happy ?”—for
the God-man is miserable now. No longer can men

say, “God makes me suffer pain while He goes

through none,’’ for the God-man is now enduring

pain to the utmost. No longer can men say that God

has a heart that cannot understand, for now His

own Sacred Heart understands what it is to be aban-

doned by God and man as He suffers suspended be-

tween the kingdoms of both, between heaven and

earth, rejected by one and abandoned by the other.

Now it is true to say of Love Itself that it is really

dying for us, for greater love than this no man hath

that a man lay down his life for his friend.

The drama of that day is an abiding one. For

Calvary is not just a mere historical incident, like

the battle of Waterloo; it is not something which



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE' 63

has happened, it is something which is also happen-

ing. Christ is still on the cross.

“Whenever there is silence around me

By day or by night

—

I am startled by a cry.

It came down from the cross

—

The first time I heard it.

I went out and searched

—

And found a man 'in the throes of crucifixion

And I said, T will take you down’,

And I tried to take the nails out of his feet.

But He said, ‘Let them be

For I cannot be taken down

Until every man, every woman, and every

child

Come together to take me down/

And I said, ‘But I cannot bear your cry.

What can I do?’

And He said, ‘Go about the world

—

Tell every one that you meet

—

That there is a man on the cross/
”

Because of sin Christ dies again, for as St. Paul

reminds us, as often as we sin we “crucify again

to ourselves the Son of God/' The scars are still

open. “Earth's pain still stands deified/' and still

like falling stars Christ's blood-drops crimson the

robes of other Johns and the hair of other Magda-

lens. As long as earth wears wounds, still must

Christ's wounds remain, for each new sin draws

aside the curtain of another Crucifixion. Christ is

still on trial in the hearts of men, and every sin is

another act by which Barabbas is preferred to



64 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

Christ. There still are other Judases who blister His

lips with a kiss, there still are other Pilates who

condemn Him as an enemy of Caesar, there still are

other Herods who robe Him in the garment of a fool,

there still are gambling idlers who cast their dice,

gambling away the riches of eternity for the baubles

of time
;
there still are other Calvaries, for sin is the

crucifixion over again. Arms that are outstretched

to bless, we nail fast. Feet that would seek us in the

devious ways of sin, we dig with steel. Eyes that

would look longingly after us as we set out for

foreign countries, like other prodigals, we fill with

dust. Lips that would speak to us words of tender

pleading and forgiveness, we burn with gall. A heart
that would pant for us as if we were fountains of

living waters, we pierce with a lance. And when

the last nail has been driven and Christ, like a

wounded eagle, is unfurled upon His banner of sal-

vation, we begin to say in our own heart of hearts

that after all He could not be God, for if He were

God how could we have crucified Him? With the

job of sinning done, which means the crucifixion, we

make ©ur way down the hill of Calvary and then

there comes not the quake of earth but the quake of

conscience which makes us say in our soul with the

Centurion : “Indeed, this is the Son of God.” As un-

easiness and remorse creep upon us, we look back td

Calvary and wonder why He does not come after us.

Why, if He is the Good Shepherd, does He not pur-

sue His sheep? Why, if He is the Lord of all good

gifts, does He not raise His hands to bless ? Why, if

He is the Lord of sinners, does He not bid us return

to the foot of the Cross?

Qh! tell me, how can hands bless that are nailed



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 5 65

fast? How can lips that are bruised and parched

with desolation preach the tidings of Divine Love?

How can feet that are dug with steel go after souls

that are lost? They cannot. And if we are to undo

the harm that we have done, we must make our way

up the penitential slope of Calvary, up to the chalice

of all common miseries, and cast ourselves at the foot

of the Cross. We must kneel there at the foot of that
Pulpit of Love and confess that when we stabbed

His Heart it was our own we slew. But, oh, it is

such a difficult thing to climb up the hill of Calvary.

It is such a humiliating thing to be seen at the foot

of the cross. It is such a painful thing to be with

one in pain and to be seen with one condemned by

the world. It is such a hard thing to kneel at the foot

of the cross and admit that one is wrong. It is hard,

but it is harder to hang there!



66 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

DYING AND BEHOLD WE LIVE

Having delivered His farewell address from the

pulpit of the cross and finished the work of His Eter-

nal Father, Jesus bows His head and dies. To make

certain of His death, a centurion, Longinus by name,

pierces His Heart with a lance and the Divine Mas-

ter, Who saved up a few drops of His Precious
Blood, now pours them out to prove that His love is

stronger than death.

Two men who lacked courage to declare their af-

filiations while He was living, Joseph of Arimathea

and Nicodemus, brought perfumes and spices and

embalmed the Body of Jesus. It was first laid on

Mary’s lap, and it seemed to her that Bethlehem had

come back again,—but really it had not. Between
Bethlehem and Calvary our sins had intervened.

The body was lifeless. Jesus was dead.

His enemies remembered that He had said that

He would rise again, but they were certain He would

not. They were afraid that the Apostles would come

and steal away the Body and then say He had risen.

Guarding against such deceit, they went to Pilate,

asking him to set a watch of soldiers about the tomb

for three days in addition to which they would at-

tach their own official seal to the stone before the

entrance. Pilate acceded to their request. Then the

Evangelist Matthew fittingly closed h'is Gospel with

the most ironic sentence in literature : “And they de-

parting made the sepulchre sure.” The seal was

placed on the sepulchre and a great stone rolled in

front of the door. They took every precaution

against fraud, but could take none against Divinity.



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 67

As they made their way down Calvary's hill, such

thoughts as these ran through their minds: ‘‘Now,

His fishermen can go back to their nets and their

boats; their Kingdom is a mockery. As for their

Master, His Heart was so pierced that blood and

water came from it. Even though He had a breath

of life left in that bloodless body, it is now being

suffocated by the hundredweight of spices with

which He was embalmed. Our viligance and that of

the soldiers will not permit any one to steal away the

Body. He Who said He had life in abundance is now

dead
;
He Who said He could summon twelve legions

of angels to His assistance now is cold as death ; He

Who said He could raise up a child of Abraham from

a stone is now buried under stone. The Impostor is

dead ! How wonderfully effective is a Roman death

!

Nothing can survive a Crucifixion! He wi-ll never

rise again
!”

Is that true? Can one rise from the dead? Does

not the very fact that He was born in a stranger's

cave and buried in a stranger's grave prove that

human birth and death are equally foreign to Him?

Look about at nature. Is not the springtime the

Easter Day of the Good Friday of winter? Has not

all death within itself the germs of life? Does not

the “falling rain bud the greenery"? Does not the

falling acorn bud the tree? Why should all creation
rise from the dead and not the Redeemer of crea-

tion?

“If this bright lily

Can live once more,

And its white promise

Be as before,



68 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

Why can not the great stone
Be moved from His door?

If the green grass

Ascend and shake

Year after year,

And blossoms break

Again and again

For April's sake,

Why can not He,
From the dark and mold,

Show us again

His manifold

And gleaming glory,

A stream of gold ?

Faint heart, be sure

These things must be.

See the new bud

On the old tree ! . . . .

If flowers can wake,

Oh, why not He?”

Sunday morning came, and it was one of calm,

like the sleep of innocents, and the clear, benign air

seemed almost as if it had been stirred by angels'

wings. Mary walked in the garden and someone

near her spoke a word, and pronounced it longingly,

wistfully in that touching and unforgettable voice

which had called her so many times : “Mary.” And

to this one and only word, she made an answer, a

word and only one: “Rabboni.” And as she fell at

His knees in the dewy grass and clasped in her

hands those bare feet she saw two scars,—two red-



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE” G9

lined marks of nails, for Christ was now walking

in the glory of His new Easter morn.

That was the first Easter Day. Centuries have

whirled away since, and on this new Easter Day as

I turn from that garden to the altar, I behold placed

over the tabernacle, on this Resurrection Day, the

image, not of a Risen Savior, but the image of a

dying one, to teach me that Christ lives over again

in His Church, and that the Church, like Christ, not

only lives, not only dies, but always rises from the

dead. She is in love with death as a condition of

birth, and with her, as with Christ, unless there is a

Good Friday in her life, there will never be an Easter

Sunday; unless there is the crown of thorns there

will never be the halo of light, and unless there is

the cross there will never be the emptly tomb. In

other words, every now and then the Church must

be crucified by an unbelieving world and buried as

dead, only to rise again. She never does anything

but die, and for that peculiar reason she never does

anything but live. Every now and then the very life

seems to have gone out of her; she is palled with

death; her blood seems to have been sapped out of

her
;
her enemies seal the tomb, roll a stone in front

of her grave and say: “The Church will never rise

again !” But somehow or other she does rise again.

At least a dozen times in history, the world has

buried the Church and each time she has come to

life again. V*
r

e choose but a few such instances.

A hunted Saviour must always have hunted chil-
dren and in those days of the Roman persecution

the Church, like a mole, had to dig into the caves of

the earth. There, under the foundation of Rome’s

proudest temples, under roads that rocked with the



70 “THE DrVINE ROMANCE”

tramp of Rome’s resistless legions, these children of

God were nourishing themselves on the Bread ui

Life, fortifying their bodies as well as their souls,

for the day when they would be led to the “thumbs-

down” crowd of the Roman Colisseum to testify to

their faith, even with their blood. The day came;

they were led into the center of that great amphi-

theater with enemies round about : there was no es-

cape, except from above—but that was enough. They
met death with a smile upon their lips. Caesar’s

minions scattered fresh sands to hide their blood

but could not still their voice. It rose from the din

of that arena; it entered into the very chancery of

God’s Justice; it pierced the mist of undawned ages

with no uncertain challenge : “In our blood has been

mingled the blood of the Living God, dying and be-

hold we live.” Roman swords blunted by massacre

no longer fitted their sheaths
;
the wild beasts over-

fed on the living flesh of the Church lost their crav-

ing for food, but still the bloody warfare went on.

Caesar was certain he had conquered. He rejoiced

that the Church was dead. Her life was sapped and

drained
;
she could never survive the Roman sword.

A stone was rolled before the door. The Church
would never rise again. And as they set their watch,

and even as they watched, the Church like her Risen

Saviour came from the grave of the Catacombs and

was seen walking in the glory of her new Easter

Morn.

There came other moments in her history when

in the eyes of the world she seemed to have her very

life drained out of her. Whenever the Palm Sundays

of earthly rejoicing came her way, and the world

proclaimed her King, and strewed palm branches be-



“THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1 71

neath her feet, in a word, whenever a great measure

of temporal prosperity came her way, and she began

to rely more upon action than prayer, she became

weak. The yoke of Christ then seemed heavy to her

children; bodies craved for the line of least resist-

ance and hearts yearned for the flesh-pots of Egypt.

It is a strange but certain fact that the Church is

never soweak as when she is powerful withtheworld,

never so poor as when she is rich with the riches of

the world
;
never so foolish as when she is wise with

the fancies of the world. She is strongest with Di-

vine Help when she is weakest with human power,

for like Peter she is given the miraculous draught of

fishes when she admits by her own power she has

labored ail the night and taken nothing.

When her discipline, her spirit of saintliness, her

zeal for Christ, her vigils, and her mortifications

become a thing of less importance, the world makes

the fatal mistake of believing that her soul is dead

and her faith is departed. Not so! The faith, even

in those days of lesser prayer is solid, for it is the

faith of the centuries: the faith of Jesus Christ.

What may be weak is her discipline
,
her prayerful-

ness, and her saintliness, for these are of men,

whereas her faith is of God. A renewal of spirit,

then, will come not by changing her way of thinking,

for that is divine, but her way of acting
,
for that is

human.

But the world, failing to make this distinction be-

tween the Divine and the human in her, as it failed

to make it in Christ, takes her for dead. To the

world, her very life seems spent; her heart pierced,

her body drained; in its eyes she is just as dead as

the Master when taken down from the cross, and



72 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 5

there is nothing left to do but to lay her in the sepul-

chre.

Once more a great stone 'is rolled before her tomb

;

the official seal of death placed upon it, the watch

set; but as they watched saintliness came back,

Christ stirred in Peter’s bark, and at the very mo-

ment men were saying she was dead, she was seen

walking in the glory of her new Easter Morn.

Then came our own times and with it another

death. Her death this time was inflicted not by exe-

cutioners, but by other Pilates. These were danger-

ous days, for any civilization is in a bad way when

it becomes indifferent, like another Pilate, to the

answer to the question: “What is Truth?” From

inside and outside of the Church sprang up that old

Greek error that there is no truth—an error, which
for want of a knowledge of its ancient ancestry, was

called Modernism. Truth was derationalized, error

rationalized, and proofs brought forward to prove

all proofs were worthless. Teachers who bedecked

themselves in the robes of prophets became insulted

if told they were not gentlemen, but remonstrated

mildly if told they were not Christians. Minds now

were told, and they began to believe, with the force

of repetition, that we must be indifferent to both

error and truth
;
that it is a lack of broadmindedness

to make up one’s mind; that it makes no difference

whether God exists, whether Christ is God, or

whether the Sacraments do actually communicate

Divine Life
;
the only thing that matters is the sub-

jective 'impression such beliefs have upon the feeling

of the believer. Minds began to live by catchwords,

phrases covered up loose thinking and there was

hardly an ear that did not hear such catchwords and



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’ 73

phrases as “Life is bigger than logic/’ and “The

Christ of Faith is not the Jesus of History.”

The new spirit of the age was seemingly burying

the Spirit of Christ. Books and articles were shot

from the press, and in 1907 there hardly was an arti-

cle written that did not say that the Church had now

definitely reached its end. The world was asked to

chant her Requiem; a great stone was rolled before

the door of her sepulchre
;
the watch set. “She would

never rise again.” And according to every human

law she never should have risen from the dead ! But

for some mysterious reason the Giant stirred. War

was on. Long range guns were tearing great gaping

wounds in majestic Cathedrals; plough-shares were

beaten into swords
;
cannon fire changed poppy fields

into Haceldamas of blood. And lo ! and behold ! That

which was thought dead was seen on the battlefields

pressing a crucifix to dying lips
;
and when the smoke

of battle cleared and the mist lifted, she was seen

^walking in the glory of her new Easter Morn; and

even now as men watch her she grows ! Christ, then,

must have meant what He said when He declared

that His Church would endure even to the con-

summation of the world.

There emerges, then, from her history one great

and wonderful lesson and it is this : Christ rose from

the dead, not because He 'is man, but because He is

God. The Church rises from the sepulchre in which

violent hands or passing errors would inter her, not

because she is human, but because she is Divine.

Nothing can rise from the dead except Divinity.

The world should profit by experience and give up

expecting the Church to die. If a bell had been tolled

on a thousand different occasions and the funeral



74 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE 1

never took place, men would soon begin to regard

the funeral as a joke. So it is with the Church. The

notice of her execution has been posted but the exe-

cution has never taken place. Science killed her and

still she was there; History interred her, but still

she was alive. Modernism slew her, but still she

lived.

Even civilizations are born, rise to greatness, then

decline, suffer and die, but they never rise again.

But the Church does rise again; in fact she is con-

stantly finding her way out of the grave because she

had a Captain Who found His way out of the grave.

The world may expect her to become tired, to be

weak when she becomes powerful, to become poor

when she is rich, but the world need never expect

her to die. The world should give up looking for the

extinction of that which so many times has been

vainly extinguished.

Like a mighty oak tree which has stood for twenty

centuries she bears fresh green foliage for each new

age that the age may come and enjoy the refreshing

benediction of its shade. The flowers that open their

chalices of perfume this spring are not old things,

but new things on an old root. Such is the Church. She

is reborn to each new age, and hence is the only new

thing in the world. It is the errors that are old, for

our so-called new thought is only an old mistake with

a new label; it is not a new enthusiasm nor is it a

new loyalty. The Church has put to bed all the er-

rors of the past for she knows that to marry the

passing fads of any age is to be a widow in the next.

She is therefore not behind the times, but beyond

the times, always fresh while the age is dying.

She will go on dying and living again and in each



‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE* 75

recurring cycle of a Good Friday and an Easter Sun-

day her one aim in life will be to preach Christ and

Him Crucified. As a student I may be expected to

know something of her aims, and as her priest I

may be expected to know something of her secrets,

and I honestly assure you, at the close of this series,

that the Church seeks not the overthrow of govern-

ments, desires not to impede progress, strives not to

persecute those who differ with her; (I know all

these things are said about her). But what she does

seek, with the full ardor of her soul, is to bring

minds captive to the understanding of Christ, to lead

wills to the glorious liberty of the sons of God, to

thrill human hearts with the Love that leaves all

others cold, and to open eyes to a Beauty that leaves

all other beauty pain. And, hence, if any single

word of mine has lifted up but one soul to a nobler

understanding of Christ, or fanned a single spark

of love for His cause into a flame, or induced the

tendrils of a single heart to entwine about the Heart

of Hearts, then I shall believe that my words and

my life shall not have been spoken or lived in vain.

The Hour will go on, under still nobler guidance,

but its end and purpose will ever remain the same:

to bring the peace of Christ to the souls of our

countrymen. There will be no weapons to make that

peace an armed peace, but there will be two insigni-

ficant instruments used, which have been used from

the beginning, and they will be the instruments Our

Lord taught His Apostles to use, namely those of

fishermen and shepherds. I might say, therefore, we

will go on “by hook and by crook” and the hook will

be the hook of the fisherman, and the crook will be

the crook of the shepherd; and with the hook we



76 ‘THE DIVINE ROMANCE’

will catch souls for Christ, and with the crook we

will keep them, even to the end of time ; for as fish-

ers of men and shepherds of souls we are committed

to the high destiny of making Christ the King of

human hearts, and with only the sign of Jonas the

prophet, the fulfillment of that destiny can never be

doubted, for if Truth wins, Christ wins; if Truth

Ah! but truth can
f

t lose.



CARDINAL HAYES STATES AIMS

OF THE CATHOLIC RADIO HOUR

(Extract from his address at the inaugural program in the

Studio of the National Broadcasting Company, New York
City, March 2, 1930).

Our congratulations and our gratitude are extended to the

National Council of Catholic Men and its officials, and to all

who, by their financial support, have made it possible to use

this offer of the National Broadcasting Company. The heavy

expense of managing and financing a weekly program, its

musical numbers, its speakers, the subsequent answering of

inquiries, must be met. That responsibility rests upon the

National Council of Catholic Men ....
This radio hour is for all the people of the United States.

To our fellow-citizens, in this word of dedication, we wish to

express a cordial greeting and, indeed, congratulations. For

this radio hour is one of service to America, which certainly

will listen in interestedly, and even sympathetically, I am

sure, to the voice of the ancient Church with its historic

background of all the centuries of the Christian era, and

with its own notable contribution to the discovery, explora-

tion, foundation and growth of our glorious Country. . . .

Thus to voice before a vast public the Catholic Church is

no light task. Our prayers will be with those who have that

task in hand. We feel certain that it will have both the
good will and the good wishes of the great majority of our

country-men. Surely, there is no true lover of our Country

who does not eagerly hope for a less worldly, a less material,

and a more spiritual standard among our people.

With good will, with kindness and with Christ-like sympa-

thy for all, this work is inaugurated. So may it continue.

So may it be fulfilled. This word of dedication voices, there-

fore, the hope that this radio hour may serve to make known,

to explain with the charity of Christ, our faith, which we

love even as we love Christ Himself. May it serve to make

better understood that faith as it really is—a light revealing
the pathway to heaven: a strength, and a power divine

through Christ: pardoning our sins, elevating, consecrating

our common every-day duties and joys, bringing not only

justice but gladness and peace to our searching and ques-

tioning hearts.



RADIO STATIONS BROADCASTING THE “CATHOLIC

HOUR”

Sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Men

(The National Broadcasting Company, through the coopera-

tion of its Associated Stations, furnishes, without charge,

the facilities by which this nation-wide weekly broadcast

is made possible).

New York WEAF New Orleans WSMB

Boston WEEI Jacksonville WJAX

Providence WJAR Miami WIOD

Worcester WTAG Richmond, Va. WRVA

Portland, Me. WCSH Clearwater, Fla. WFLA

Philadelphia* WFI St. Petersburg, Fla. WSUN

Philadelphia* WLIT Jackson, Miss. WJDX

Washington WRC Memphis WMC
Schnectady WGY Nashville WSM

Buffalo WBEN Fort Worth WBAP

Pittsburgh WCAE Houston KPRC

Detroit WWJ Oklahoma City WKY
Akron WFJC Tulsa KVOO

Cincinnati WSAI San Antonio WOAI

St. Louis KSD Phoenix, Ariz. KTAR

Chicago WENR Denver KOA
Davenport* woe Portland, Ore. KGW

Des Moines* WHO San Francisco KPO
Omaha WOW Oakland KGO
Kansas City WDAF Los Angeles KECA

Duluth-Superior WEBC Seattle KOMO

Minneapolis-St. Paul KSTP Spokane KHQ

These stations broadcast Catholic Hour alternate weeks.





«



.

SM t . - •#':
>.

wSk&sy*}*. : . • /. . .- .-. .
,

fcfjrA > • hMBSMTO
, r c

1

vvMS'v
, „

‘ ^ <K
'

.

.•V

.

«

•i" ; ; v<};
•’:

v;-’--V 'W ""i:

ww^y :, .,*&£ ^
.

'

-.1
r M ,

." "v './'
r

" •'
•-. •

,

.

-,; V
‘'-

...,

,

;

:W#:

*WM
:

:
.

MMMmrn
m.K :r-yn%m

-S’MS'b :

,<

-