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Brookline Carmel Bulletin
December 18, 1960
Cogitatio Sancta
(Holy
Meditation)
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us. (John 1: 14)
One of the remarkable
things about the Gospels is their lack of exuberance. Their name stands for ‘good news’, yet everything in them is
related in disinterested fashion, almost as if the authors were uninterested,
merely reporting staid facts. The line
quoted above is a good example. It is
the most startling truth in the entire ensemble of Christian Revelation, yet
St. John introduces it as he might any after-thought: “And the Word was made flesh…”
The fact of the
Incarnation is the heart of the Catholic Faith. Almost all the other truths are related to it as spokes of a wheel
to a hub, fanning out, radiating from it.
One in particular I would like to single out for your consideration this
week: the inestimable value of human
life.
The Incarnation has
impressed upon us the sublime worth of human nature in a manner and with a
certainty that can never be matched.
Because it is not beneath His dignity to have taken a human nature to
Himself and become man, we know God has created it inherently, natively good. For whatever is intimately united with the
supremely good, transcendently good God must itself be exceedingly precious and
deserving of love and esteem. From the
opposite point of view, unless human life was surpassingly worthwhile, God
would never have been able to become incarnate.
Whence derives the innate
goodness of human nature? From
intellect and free will. In virtue of
these faculties man is the natural image and likeness of God. In God, too, there is intellect and will,
since He knows Himself, Who is truth, perfectly, and He loves Himself, Who is
goodness itself, adequately. Indeed,
the operations of intellect and will are involved in the intimate Trinitarian
Life of God. As St. Thomas has it, the
Father eternally begets the Son by way of intellectual generation (for the Son
is the Word of God). By a mutual act of
selfless love (the proper act of the will), the Father and Son jointly breathe
forth the Holy Spirit, the third Self or Person, in the Trinity. So wherever intellect and will are found,
there we have something that is of outstanding value, something to be
cherished, for there we have the natural image and likeness of God. But wherever we find a man we find intellect
and will. Every man, therefore, is
intrinsically worthy of love, lovable.
Notice, accidental
features were not considered in establishing the dignity of human life. It is a serious error, therefore, to judge
the worth of a man according to appearances.
Appearances may be delightful and pleasant to the senses, or they may be
utterly loathsome. But all the
appearances in the world do not change the innate value of human life. I may be deprived of several members, or
otherwise physically deformed; I may have leprosy, or be covered with hideous
and foul ulcers; I may have skin of any one of various colors; I may be
incredibly backward and crude or I am, perhaps, a vicious criminal. Despite all this, I am still a human
being. I am still objectively worthy of
love and esteem; I am still precious in the eyes of God.
We may look upon a soul,
as did St. Teresa of Jesus, as a very costly diamond. When clean and polished and placed in the full glare of the sun,
it gives off gleams and flashes of beautiful color, thereby manifesting the
various constituents of white light.
When a human soul stands in the full light of God’s truth (a virtuous
soul), it makes known to the world some of the beautiful virtues and
excellencies hidden in God under the all-embracing aspect of subsistent
goodness.
When the diamond is hidden
in filth, or enveloped in thick darkness, none of its splendor is discernible. Still, it remains a diamond; it is still
very costly; it has not lost any of its native properties. A similar state of affairs obtains for a
soul covered with the filth of serious sin, a soul that keeps to the dark; it
is still precious. God shows His love
and esteem for it by not doing it violence.
He does not force it to return to Him.
He leaves it sovereignly free.
He merely attracts it by continuing to lavish on it greater proofs of
love.
We all are aware of the
obvious conclusion: we ought to do in
like manner. We are never so at
variance with Jesus’ example as when we do not love our neighbor. We are inconsistent if we claim to be
Christians and do not share our good things with the less fortunate. Jesus made Himself one of us; we ought to
identify ourselves with suffering humanity everywhere. No one should be excluded from the embrace
of our good will. Jesus descended an
infinite distance to become one of us.
We have only to more out slightly, horizontally. We too are sinners.
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