CHAPTER XV.
THE PRIEST'S LIBERTY.
Has a priest more liberty than a layman? At first sight we say yes; because the office of the priesthood lifts him in privileges above other men, and makes him to be their judge and censor and guide. Moreover, he is rector of his mission or parish, and has a large discretion in all things: he is uncontrolled master of his own house, of his hours, of his habits, and, excepting in the discharge of his spiritual duties, he has the absolute control and disposal of his whole life. He may go where he will, stay as long as he likes, choose his own society. There is no one all day to check or to cross his liberty, and unchecked liberty easily grows to license. He is altogether independent of all except his Bishop, and his Bishop is at a distance. A priest is therefore, if any question arises, the judge in his own case. He decides and applies the law to himself. This is indeed a great and dangerous liberty, far beyond that of a layman.
Nevertheless a priest is under obligations from which the layman is free. He is bound in a special degree by the divine tradition of faith and morals, and that not only to observe it, but to make others to observe it. He is bound by the discipline of the Catholic Church, by the Pontifical law, which is partly common and universal, and partly the local law of the diocese to which he belongs. But beyond this he is bound by three chief obligations—that is, by the law of chastity, which is equivalent to a vow. And this obligation involves separation and abstinence from everything that can affect the inward purity of his soul, or withdraw his heart from the supreme love of his Divine Master. He can have no unbalanced human attachments. He is bound also to the spirit of poverty, and therefore to a life in the spirit of poverty. He may possess a large patrimony, and hold a rich benefice. He is not bound by law to give his patrimony to the poor. He may lawfully spend on himself and his house. But all things that are lawful are not therefore fitting or sacerdotal. Of his benefice he may take his due maintenance, but all beyond ought to go to pious uses. He may be rich, but if he would live as a priest, he ought to live as a poor man. If he live as a rich man, even though he commit no sin, he does not live like his Master. And the servant ought not to be above his Lord. In the measure in which he loves Him he will desire to be like Him, and will choose His lot.
Thirdly, he is bound to obedience. And that obedience has its rule in the laws of the Church and of the diocese, but it has its motive in the love of our Lord and of souls, and it has its obligation in the promise made in ordination in the hands of the Bishop.
But beyond these obligations, which come by spontaneous contract in receiving the priesthood, there is a law and an obligation which binds every member of the mystical Body of Christ, and above all the chief members of the body—that is, the Bishops and priests of the Church—namely, the law of liberty. S. James says: "So speak ye and so do as beginning (or being) to be judged by the law of liberty."[1] This law is anterior to all other laws, bonds, or vows; it is universal, and constrains every regenerate soul. It is supreme, and has no limit in its requirements except the power we have to fulfil it.
S. Paul, writing to the Galatians, calls the law of Moses the law of bondage, and the Gospel the law of liberty. Writing to the Romans, he says that the law of bondage is the law of sin and death. But S. James has a higher meaning.
1. This law of liberty is, first, the law of God written upon our heart in our regeneration. By our first birth we were born in the bondage of sin and death. The knowledge of the law of God, and even of the existence of God, was obscured in us. By our regeneration we received from the Holy Ghost the virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Baptism was called φωτίσμος, and the baptised illuminated.[2] The knowledge of God and of His law was restored to us. The will, which was wounded and weakened by original sin, was liberated from the bondage of weakness and restored to its liberty. It was this that God promised, when He said: "This is the testament which I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I will give My laws in their hearts, and in their minds will I write them."[3]
By our regeneration we are made sons of God. By the infusion and indwelling of the Holy Ghost the will is elevated and empowered to do the will of God. By our first birth it was deprived of the Holy Ghost. By our second birth the will is invested once more with supernatural power. "As many as received Him to them He gave power to become sons of God." The weakness of the will and the strength of passion brought the will into a bondage. It had always its freedom, but it was bribed by its lower affections to betray itself. By our regeneration we enter into the liberty of the sons of God. S. Paul describes this: "There is now, therefore, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh; for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath delivered me from the law of sin and of death."[4] They are set free from the guilt of original sin: from its power, and from its fascination. The chief danger in sin is its sweetness and its subtilty. It fascinates and deceives the soul. It draws by desire and it deceives by its dissimulation. There is no duty of a son of God that the regenerate cannot fulfil if they have the will. They have both the power and the freedom. This, then, is the first step in the liberty of the children of God. They are free from eternal death. It has no claim or power over them; nor can it regain its power unless they betray themselves.
2. Further, the law of liberty is the will elevated by the love of God. To serve God is to reign. To love God is perfect liberty. Ubi spiritus Domini ibi libertas.[5] Charitas Dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per Spiritum Sanctum, qui datus est nobis.[6] Where the Spirit is, there is liberty; for the Spirit of God is love, and where love is, there is liberty. There can be no liberty where love is not. Where the love of God is not, the love of creatures, and of the lowest of all creatures, the love of self, reigns. There can be no greater bondage than this. The love of creatures brings with it jealousies, disappointments, resentments, and manifold temptations. A priest who has lost his liberty by any unbalanced attachment is in bondage. He is dependent for his happiness and for his peace upon something below God, which is changeful, uncertain, and transient. S. Augustine describes his own state, before the supreme love of God set him free, as a bondage of iron chains, not forged by the hands of other men, but by his own iron will.
But afterwards, when he had been redeemed into the liberty of the sons of God, he said, "Love and do what you will;" for our will then is the will of God. We have no other will than His, and in doing His will we do our own. For love is the will, and the will is love. Pondus voluntatis amor. As we love so we will. Love inclines the will, and gives it motion and momentum. It is by love that we cleave to God. Qui adhæret Domino unus spiritus est.[7] This unity is unity of will. And it is known to ourselves, and shown to the world by many sure and evident signs. First, it changes all our aims in life. Before, we were aiming at many things below God; things, it may be, evil and dangerous, or things innocent and lawful, yet below God. We were full of them, and we shaped our life so as to insure them. Now we have aims altogether new. Our aspiration is for nothing on this side of the horizon, but beyond it. The kingdom of God, and God Himself; the vision of God, and union with Him: these are the aims which govern our life.
And as our aims so our interests—that is, the governing desires of our daily life and work. Once it was for the fair, and innocent, and lawful things of this world—for of other and darker things we are not speaking now—for many things we lived, and toiled, and spent our strength, till a higher light fell upon us, and the love of God arose in our hearts. Thenceforward we turned our whole mind and will to deeper and austerer works. The salvation of souls, the spread of the faith, the extension of the kingdom of God, the hallowing of His name, the reign of His will in all around us: these became the interests which absorbed all our thoughts and efforts. We ceased to be of those who seek their own things, and became of those who seek "the things that are Jesus Christ's."[8]
To these new aims and new interests are added also new tastes—that is, new interior and spiritual perceptions of pleasure and delight in things which in time past were, for us, without sweetness or attraction; as, for instance, prayer, the reading of Holy Scripture, the Holy Mass, the solitude of the sanctuary, when we are alone in His presence; or in anything we can do for His sake, however slight; or in self-denial, when we can make a greater effort in His service. These are the things of the Spirit of God which are foolishness to the mind which judges by intellect and by sense alone. Everything we shrank from then becomes attractive. Crosses, disappointments, vexations, losses, which are a slight tasting of the sharpness and sadness of His lot, become to us pledges of His love and proofs of our fidelity to Him.
3. Lastly, the law of liberty is the will become a law to itself. "The law was not made for the just man,"[9] but for the disobedient. "Love is the fulfilling of the law."[10] "He that loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law."[11] Love anticipates all commandments. It instinctively and promptly and fully does what the law constrains the unwilling to do.
S. John says: "Whosoever is born of God committeth no sin, for His seed abideth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God."[12] That is, the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier, dwells and reigns in him; and his whole new nature, which is spiritual and supernatural, revolts at sin in all its forms and fascinations. Without violence, and a violation of his whole mind, he could not sin: it would not be against God only, but against his own will. If it were put before such a will to commit a mortal sin or to die, it would willingly die. If it had to choose between a deliberate venial sin or to die, it would rather die. If it were bidden to choose a lot in life with equal hope of salvation, the one without the Cross, the other with the Cross, it would choose the Cross out of a desire of greater conformity to our Divine Master, and from gratitude for His sufferings for us, and from generosity of love to Him.
The law of liberty, then, is the law which moved God liberrimo consilio by His most free counsel of wisdom, to create us,[13] and to give His Son for our redemption. It moved the Son to take upon Him our manhood, and to offer Himself of His own will for us upon the Cross. Oblatus est quia ipse voluit.[14] It was the law of liberty that moved the ever-blessed Trinity to predestine, to call, to justify, to glorify us by the adoption of sons; to call us to the priesthood, to make us the first-fruits of the first-fruits of the Spirit. As all things are for His glory, so He ordained us for His greater and for His greatest glory. All this was without necessity or constraint. It was done only and altogether of the free will of God; for the will of God is His wisdom and His love in one perfect act, and His wisdom and love are His law. He is the law to Himself. Law and liberty are distinct, but indivisible. And this law of liberty was manifested to the world in the Incarnate Word. In Jesus Christ we see a will that is a law to itself; and all who are like Him in the measure of their likeness become their own law in the use of their liberty. This law leaves behind it all literal commandments, as the learned becomes unconscious of the alphabet, and the skilful singer unconscious of the octave. It is a law more constraining than any commandment. It moves the heart, and urges the conscience, and prompts the will by a continuous pressure. By this law we shall all be judged; but, above all, by this priests will have to answer.[15]
We ought, then, to live by it now. In all our life we have never done wrong but we might have done right. The liberty and the power were with us. Again, we never left the right undone but we might have done it. We have never done right but we might have done better. We correspond with a few graces out of a multitude, and with inadequate fidelity, and with intermittent efforts. All these are failures in the law of liberty.
What motive, then, is there wanting to constrain a priest to the highest aspiration? We all are bound by the law of nature to obey our Maker with the utmost powers and affections of our whole being; by our redemption we are bound to glorify our Redeemer, for He has bought us for Himself. By our regeneration we are bound to obey the Holy Ghost as sons of God; by faith we are bound to obey the revealed law of God; by hope, to use all means of attaining eternal life; by charity, to love Him super omnia, with our whole soul and strength. This is true of all. But priests are bound beyond all men—by their higher predestination, by their greater grace, by the unction and character df their priesthood, by their participation in the character and priesthood of the Son of God, by the commission and charge He has given to them, and by the promises they have made to Him, by their love as disciples and friends, by gratitude, and by generosity — to use their liberty, not grudgingly or by constraint, but with gladness, joy, and self-oblation, even with denial and sacrifice of self in its fairest and most innocent forms, if need so be, that they may serve Him more perfectly in saving the souls for whom He died. "All things are lawful to me," but I will not therefore do or enjoy all that is lawful, for "all things are not expedient." They will not advance my salvation, my sanctification, my sacerdotal perfection. "All things are lawful to me, but all things edify not." If, by my example, I mislead any one, or embolden any one to do with danger to himself that which is no danger to me, or if I relax his perseverance or lower his aspiration, or if, by my unconscious influence, I undo what I have tried to teach to others, or give them scandal, then the use of my liberty, however lawful, will be not only not expedient, but a hindrance to their salvation, and still more to my own.
Happy is the priest who offers up his whole liberty to his Master, and restricts it generously in all his contact with the world. If we must go into it, we need to have continually in our ears the words Quid hic agis, Elia? The priest who is seldom seen in society is the priest whom men desire most to have beside them when they die. S. Jerome says of priests: Si quis sæpe invitatus ad convivia non recusat, facile contemnitur. Our Lord did indeed go to the house of Simon, and to the marriage in Cana. But everywhere He was the Son of God. He went nowhere but by divine charity. If we use our liberty for Him as He used His for us, we shall live in the world to save it, but live out of the world to save ourselves. Priests and pastors have a special need of protection: and also a special promise of safety so long as they use their liberty for His sake with generous abnegation of self. "Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given Me. While I was with them I kept them in Thy name. Those whom Thou hast given me have I kept; and none of them is lost but the son of perdition. I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil."[16]
Our Lord used His liberty to die for us. And this He did to redeem us and to win back our love. We use our liberty to live for ourselves. S. Paul describes the perilous times of the last days by a list of sins, chiefly spiritual, and he winds it up by saying that men will be "lovers of their own selves:" "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God."[17] He says in another place that "all men seek the things that are their own, and not the things that are Jesus Christ's:"[18] that is to say, they are sinners, who break the laws of God; or worldly, in whom the love of the Father is not; or self-seekers, who have an end in everything, whether in high ambitions or in petty gains; or selfish, who with a sectarian spirit care nothing for others—the fraternity of Cain, who first said, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
So long as they have a seat in church and get their confessions heard, they have no care for the sheep. Souls may perish all around, but it does not matter to them. Finally, among those who seek their own are the spiritual gluttons, who crave intensely after the consolations and enjoyment of religion, which they would speedily forsake if they were not allured like children. Those that seek the things that are Jesus Christ's are the innocent and the penitent, the disinterested, the self-denying, the good soldiers who endure hardness and the Cross in their zeal for souls, for the Church, and for the priesthood. The first use their liberty for themselves; the last, for their Master. In one of these two categories every priest will be; for there is no neutrality where loyalty is a duty: and there is nothing but lukewarmness between cold and hot.
There are five signs of the wise and generous use of our liberty.
(1) The first is not to be content unless we return Him love for love. He has loved us with an everlasting love before we were, and with a personal love when we came into the world, and with a redoeming love in our regeneration, and with a love of friendship since we came to know and to love Him. What love can we offer Him in return but a love above all things with our whole soul and strength? How can we be so self-satisfied when we read: "If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha"?[19] And again: "No man can say, The Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost."[20] His love and His service are high and austere realities.
(2) The second sign is zeal for Him; that is, an unresting and ardent desire to use all time, and faculties, and means for the fulfilment of His will, for the spread of His truth, for the honour of His name, for the service of His Church, for the saving of souls.
(3) The third is a sorrow with Him and for Him, because of the sins committed by those who do not know Him, and, still more, by those who do, against the faith, against the unity of the Church, against its authority, against His love by ingratitude, against His person by sacrilege, against His pastoral care by scandals which destroy the souls for whom He died. The sight of souls perishing within and without the Church, to those who have love and zeal, will be a daily sorrow.
(4) The fourth is generosity in giving ourselves and giving up our liberty in anything we can do or sacrifice for His sake, spending and being spent for the elect's sake.[21]
(5) The fifth is a joy in crosses. They may be of three kinds. First, those that are deserved for our faults, for our imperfections, and for our past sins. Secondly, for those we have not deserved, as false accusation, contempt, and hatred without a cause. Thirdly, those that are voluntary—that is, incurred by any acts or restriction of our liberty which may offend those who indulge their liberty too much.
The stream of the whole Christian world at this day is running fast to a liberty which ends in license. It is the time-spirit and the downward course of these last days. We are so acclimatised to a soft self-sparing life that we interpret even the words of the Holy Ghost till they become colourless and metaphorical. Who now takes as a rule of life the words, "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I unto the world"?[22] What sign of crucifixion is there in our blameless easy life? Or again, "With Christ I am nailed to the Cross; and I live, not now I, but Christ liveth in me. And that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself for me."[23]
What marks of the nails are there in our free life, and what sign of Christ reigning in us and through us upon all our words and actions? We seem to read the law of liberty backwards: "So speak ye and so do as they who, if they do not willingly sin, need not deny themselves in anything;" instead of "So speak ye and so do as they who desire to restrict their liberty in all things, that they may be conformed to the Son of God, who denied Himself for us."
- ↑ S. James ii. 12.
- ↑ Heb. x. 32.
- ↑ Ibid. x. 16.
- ↑ Rom. viii. 1, 2.
- ↑ 2 Cor. iii 17.
- ↑ Rom. v. 5.
- ↑ 1 Cor. vi. 17.
- ↑ Philip. ii. 21.
- ↑ 1 S. Tim. i. 9.
- ↑ Rom. xiii. 10.
- ↑ Ibid. xiii. 8.
- ↑ 1 S. John iii. 9.
- ↑ Concil. Vat. Const. Dogm. De Fide Cat. c. i.
- ↑ Isaias liii. 7.
- ↑ "Si reddenda est ratio de iis quæ quisque gessit in corpore suo, quid fiet de iis quæ quisque gessit in corpore Christi quod est Ecclesia."—Inter Opp. Sti. Bern. Ad Prælatos in Concilio.
- ↑ S. John xvii. 11, 12, 15.
- ↑ 2 S. Tim. iii. 4.
- ↑ Philip, ii. 21.
- ↑ 1 Cor. xvi. 22.
- ↑ Ibid. xii. 3.
- ↑ 2 Cor. xii. 15.
- ↑ Gal. vi. 14.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 19, 20.