By Henry Aloysius Barry
Faith, hope and charity ought to be prominent in our lives, a beacon to all men, arresting the attention and commanding the respect of all men.
Relative types of perfection may vary. The christian, as such, has his own ideal, which was represented by Christ and His teaching. Time cannot alter nor discount one feature of it. No christian is, or can be, held exempt from its tenets and exactions. Whatever we profess we should be. To depart from the ideal is an untruth and a scandal. In a general way, first of all, a christian man should search after God's will. Any selfreliance that ignores this is paganistic. The carnal world loves the vertebrate; the spiritual world admires the man whose backbone is God. Too much self-reliance is stubbornness. From a world-point of view success might be said to attend a certain extravagance of wilfulness, but in God's view, failure is oftentimes stamped on the results. God's blessing is not there, it is the will of man pure and simple. To consult God in our lives and subordinate all to God's will and law is characteristic of the christian; to love temporalities, merely as means that will lead us to God, is another general characteristic that goes to the working out of the christian type. Unworldliness is an essential element of the christian ideal.
These principles give our life a background and atmosphere and equip us for emergencies or such events in our lives as escape the letter of the law. They constitute the spirit, the general principles of a christian life. Add to this the ten commandments and other faithful observances and the christian fulfils his ideal—the christian is christian, he has the spirit and the letter of the ideal, the virtue of the ideal; the body, soul and heart of Christ, so to speak, are on one's lips and in one's actions. Christ's personality means a personification of Christ, not from a theatrical point of view, nay, but from the point of view of living cultivation, vital imitation and spiritual absorption, a soul-blending so intimate in its character that Godliness is dominant and the carnal and merely human is perfectly subservient to the law of faith,—"I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me." Another item of food may be gathered from the idea of personality in the Trinity.—The perfect equality of the Three in face of their several distinctive relations, that the Father precedeth the Son and the two precede the Holy Ghost — logically speaking. The difference between the three is purely relational, however, and the three are, nevertheless, God. Human life ought to reflect this divine economy. Surely society, religious, civil, domestic must be. Inequalities, therefore, not intrinsic, not substantial, but such as are strictly relational and incidental to society must correspondingly exist.
Is there not in life, sometimes, offered in our manner of executing authority an occasion for the suspicion that we held ourselves of a substantially higher grade of being than those over whom we have been given power and control? The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are substantially coequal. The Father must be, the Son must be and the Holy Ghost must be. There is not a substantial, so to speak, intrinsic inferiority. One has his origin of another, yet all are eternally infinite, God. Superiority in life has its domain, and its rights and privileges must be respected like all rights. At the same time, outside that accidental election or selection, the purely social segregation of myself in the interests of society to have power does not, should not, and is not intended to, after all, operate in my personal character any substantial differentiation from my subordinates. As images of God, and as christians, as heirs to the kingdom of heaven, aye, in all the substantial of life and being, they are my equals. Supremacy has its ideal. "If, then, I, being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also." (St. John, xiii, 14,15).—"If any man desire to be first, he shall be the last of all and the minister of all."
The washing of feet safeguards supremacy whilst thus pointing out the danger of its pride, the misconception of its character, its abuse and offensive ministration, whereby the ideal is not reflected and the right purpose of it is defeated. Authority, therefore, is not left without its ideal, from which it may not deflect without sin. Of all the things in life that occasion a tendency to self-misconception, power takes the first rank, hence our Lord's attitude—upon His knees with a basin of water and towel—lest we forget and go astray, undoing instead of doing and in this way be lost. Our Lord showed by the feet-washing that we are children, not slaves, under His law. Those who would have us by their affected assumption and arrogance forget or underestimate our dignity and the respect due to us as men and christians, are not humane or christian rulers, but tyrants.
Inferiors and subordinates have their rights accorded to them freely by Our Divine Master. Our Lord respected them always—Abba, Father!
Faith, hope and charity ought to be prominent in our lives, a beacon to all men, arresting the attention and commanding the respect of all men.
Relative types of perfection may vary. The christian, as such, has his own ideal, which was represented by Christ and His teaching. Time cannot alter nor discount one feature of it. No christian is, or can be, held exempt from its tenets and exactions. Whatever we profess we should be. To depart from the ideal is an untruth and a scandal. In a general way, first of all, a christian man should search after God's will. Any selfreliance that ignores this is paganistic. The carnal world loves the vertebrate; the spiritual world admires the man whose backbone is God. Too much self-reliance is stubbornness. From a world-point of view success might be said to attend a certain extravagance of wilfulness, but in God's view, failure is oftentimes stamped on the results. God's blessing is not there, it is the will of man pure and simple. To consult God in our lives and subordinate all to God's will and law is characteristic of the christian; to love temporalities, merely as means that will lead us to God, is another general characteristic that goes to the working out of the christian type. Unworldliness is an essential element of the christian ideal.
These principles give our life a background and atmosphere and equip us for emergencies or such events in our lives as escape the letter of the law. They constitute the spirit, the general principles of a christian life. Add to this the ten commandments and other faithful observances and the christian fulfils his ideal—the christian is christian, he has the spirit and the letter of the ideal, the virtue of the ideal; the body, soul and heart of Christ, so to speak, are on one's lips and in one's actions. Christ's personality means a personification of Christ, not from a theatrical point of view, nay, but from the point of view of living cultivation, vital imitation and spiritual absorption, a soul-blending so intimate in its character that Godliness is dominant and the carnal and merely human is perfectly subservient to the law of faith,—"I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me." Another item of food may be gathered from the idea of personality in the Trinity.—The perfect equality of the Three in face of their several distinctive relations, that the Father precedeth the Son and the two precede the Holy Ghost — logically speaking. The difference between the three is purely relational, however, and the three are, nevertheless, God. Human life ought to reflect this divine economy. Surely society, religious, civil, domestic must be. Inequalities, therefore, not intrinsic, not substantial, but such as are strictly relational and incidental to society must correspondingly exist.
Is there not in life, sometimes, offered in our manner of executing authority an occasion for the suspicion that we held ourselves of a substantially higher grade of being than those over whom we have been given power and control? The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are substantially coequal. The Father must be, the Son must be and the Holy Ghost must be. There is not a substantial, so to speak, intrinsic inferiority. One has his origin of another, yet all are eternally infinite, God. Superiority in life has its domain, and its rights and privileges must be respected like all rights. At the same time, outside that accidental election or selection, the purely social segregation of myself in the interests of society to have power does not, should not, and is not intended to, after all, operate in my personal character any substantial differentiation from my subordinates. As images of God, and as christians, as heirs to the kingdom of heaven, aye, in all the substantial of life and being, they are my equals. Supremacy has its ideal. "If, then, I, being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also." (St. John, xiii, 14,15).—"If any man desire to be first, he shall be the last of all and the minister of all."
The washing of feet safeguards supremacy whilst thus pointing out the danger of its pride, the misconception of its character, its abuse and offensive ministration, whereby the ideal is not reflected and the right purpose of it is defeated. Authority, therefore, is not left without its ideal, from which it may not deflect without sin. Of all the things in life that occasion a tendency to self-misconception, power takes the first rank, hence our Lord's attitude—upon His knees with a basin of water and towel—lest we forget and go astray, undoing instead of doing and in this way be lost. Our Lord showed by the feet-washing that we are children, not slaves, under His law. Those who would have us by their affected assumption and arrogance forget or underestimate our dignity and the respect due to us as men and christians, are not humane or christian rulers, but tyrants.
Inferiors and subordinates have their rights accorded to them freely by Our Divine Master. Our Lord respected them always—Abba, Father!
