Chapter XVII

A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO THROUGH LENT AND EASTER.

Spring, with its wealth of beauty on the earth, and its Lenten discipline in the Church, was slowly passing away in Rome; and all the time Aquileia was holding out through the three months’ agony of her siege, a perpetual reminder and symbol to the household on the Aventine of the spiritual conflict to be waged always by all. For Marius, their own Marius, was there, in what might prove the last death-struggle of civilization and Christianity, or might prove the travail-pangs of the birth of a new world of life and light. And now the fast of Lent was deepening into the shadows of Gethsemane, and the Passion-tide was bringing the pathos and strength of the Cross; and again the voice of Bishop Leo rang through the basilicas with its deep, inspiring tones.

“So it is, dearly beloved, that the true ground of Christian hope is the Cross of Christ. Whilst the blindness of the Jew does not see what is Divine in Christ Jesus, and the wisdom of the Gentiles despises what is human; whilst the former speak deprecatingly of the Lord’s glory, and the latter assume airs of pride about His lowliness, we adore the Son of God equally in His own might and in our infirmity.”

As Ethne listened, to her, Jew and Gentile were no lifeless, technical expressions; her heart went up to God for Miriam and Eleazar, that they might look up, and looking, be no longer blind, but see the love which is the glory of God. Again, in Leo’s words, she prayed “for that nation by whom the Lord had been crucified, and desired that mercy might be obtained by that people, on account of whose stumbling we have received the grace of reconciliation.”

Of the conflict in Gethsemane Leo said—“The lower will gave way to the higher, and it was shown to us what may be prayed for by one in distress, and what ought not be granted by the Healer. For since we know not what to pray for as we ought, and it is good for us that what we wish should not for the most part take place, when we seek for what would hurt us, our good and righteous Lord is merciful in refusing it. Therefore, when our Lord had by threefold prayer settled the mode of putting our own wills right, He said to His disciples, ‘Sleep on now and take your rest.’”

And the three women—mother, sister, and bride—in the agony of their Gethsemane of dread and longing for their beloved, at Aquileia or in all the perils of their journeys by sea and land, listening to those words of pardon and peace, comforted one another, and went home that night, and prayed Thy will be done, and slept and took their rest.

Even for Judas Leo had a word of sympathy, recognizing the yearning of the Master even for the traitor.

“From this man,” he said, “was withheld no condescension, lest some vexation should give him the motive for crime; for after the Lord had died for all, perhaps even this man might have found mercy if he had not hurried to his death.”

And so the tide of tender, sacred adoration flowed deeper and higher on through the days of the Passion, without a touch of morbid, melodramatic sensation, or of weak introspection. “The Festival of our Lord’s Passion,” as he called it, “suffers us not to be silent amid our exulting bursts of spiritual joy. For since the prophet says, ‘Seek His face evermore,’ no one ought to presume that he has found the whole of what he is seeking, lest by seeking to advance we fail to draw near.”

“The lowliness we see in God amazes us more than the power; we find it harder to grasp the emptying of the Divine Majesty than the carrying up on high the form of a servant.

“He shed righteous blood which was to be both the ransom and the cup of life (_pretium et poculum_) for the reconciliation of the world. Not a reluctant victim, but a willing sacrifice. For the nature which in us was ever guilty, in Him suffered, innocent and free.

“What is inflicted by ferocity is welcomed by free-will, so that the audacity of the crime completes the work of the Eternal will.

“He submitted Himself to the impious hands of infuriated men, who were busy with their own wickedness, and were doing the behests of the Redeemer. Even towards those who were killing Him, so strong was His feeling of tenderness, that in His prayer to the Father from the Cross, He asked not that He should be avenged, but that they should be pardoned.

“The might of that prayer, ‘Father, forgive them,’ had this result, that the hearts of many who said, ‘Let His blood be on us and our children,’ were converted by the preaching of Peter the Apostle, and in one day three thousand were baptized; and they all became of one heart and of one soul, and ready to die for Him Whose Crucifixion they had demanded.

“He was not only wont to heal bodily infirmities, but the wounds of sickly souls, saying to the paralytic, ‘Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee.’

“For He, without any infirmities of sin, took on Him all the infirmities that come from sin; so that he lacked not the sensations of hunger and thirst, of sleep and weariness, of sorrow and weeping, and endured the cruelest pains, even to the extremity of death. For no one could be loosed from the entangling nets of mortality, unless He in Whom the nature of man was innocent allowed Himself to be put to death by the hands of the ungodly.”

And again, lest that sacred season should become the mere commemoration of the dead, and not the communion of the living, Leo said—“We ought to honour the Lord’s Passover as present, rather than remember the Passover as passed.”

Again—“He it is Who, making no exception of any nation, forms out of every nation under heaven one flock of holy sheep, and is daily performing what He has promised in the words, ‘And other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring; and they shall hear My voice, and they shall be one flock and one Shepherd.’

“For although it is to blessed Peter in the first instance that He says, ‘Feed My sheep,’ yet the care of all the sheep actually belonging to all the shepherds is under the direction of the one Lord; and those who are on the rock He nourishes in such pleasant, well-watered pastures, that numberless sheep, strengthened with the fulness of love, hesitate not themselves to die for the name of the Shepherd, even as the Good Shepherd Himself was pleased to lay down His life for the sheep. He it is in Whom not only the glorious courage of martyrs has a share, but also the faith of all who are new-born.

“The fiery sword by which the Land of Life was shut in has been quenched by the sacred blood of Christ.

“Before the true Light the gloom of the old night has given way. The Christian people are invited to the riches of Paradise; and to all the regenerate has been laid open a path of return to the lost Fatherland, if only no one causes that way to be closed against himself, which could be opened to the faith of the robber.”

Ethne’s thoughts went back to Dewi the pirate.

So the forty days of the fast and the week of the Passion passed on, and the lives of Christians were gathered into the life and death of Christ; until at the close the grave voice of Leo, as a faithful leader of souls, led the people from the contemplation of the Sufferer into the fellowship of His sufferings.

“If it was a grievous offence to neglect the Paschal Festival, it is more dangerous to take our place in Church assemblies whilst we are not gathered into the fellowship of our Lord’s Passion. For who does really honour Christ as having suffered, died, and been raised again, save he who also suffers, dies, and rises again with Christ? These events are carried on in the children of the Church. The warfare is perpetual, the enemy malignant and strong as ever. Here then, at the Cross, let the Christian station himself, where Christ lifted him up with Himself; and to that point let him direct all his life, where he knows human nature was saved. For the Passion of our Lord is prolonged even to the end of the world; and as in His saints He is honoured and loved, and as in the poor He is fed and clothed, so in all who suffer for righteousness’ sake He suffers too. Unless, indeed, we are to think that since faith has been multiplied all over the world, all the persecutions and all the conflicts which raged against the blessed martyrs have come to an end; as though the necessity of taking up the Cross had been incumbent only on them. But very different is the experience of pious men who are serving God, and very different the witness of the Apostle. ‘All who resolve to live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ By which sentence he is proved to be sadly lukewarm and indolent who is attacked by no persecution. For none but those who love the world can be at peace with it; and there is ‘no fellowship at any time between iniquity and righteousness,’ no concord between falsehood and truth, no agreement of darkness with light. It is safer for man to have earned the devil’s enmity than his friendship; therefore the wise souls who have learned to fear and love our Lord do not stoop either to dread their foes or to do them homage. For they prefer God’s will, ever, to themselves, and love themselves all the better, inasmuch as for the love of God they love themselves not.

“For in those who, after the Apostle’s example, chastise the body and bring it into servitude, the same enemies are being despised by the same courage, and even now the world is being overcome by Christ.”

At length the light of Easter Day broke in on Christian Rome, the first Easter Ethne had ever spent in a city, had ever spent in Christendom. The joy of the festival swept her away in its great tide, the bells pealing from every basilica, the stately Ambrosian hymns filling the churches, the streets, and the homes with their grave and exulting music. The morning broke with the “_Aurora lucis rutilat_,” and the “_Hic est dies verus Dei_.” The voices of priests and people, in what was then the vulgar tongue of all, rose high in the “Ad cœnam Agni Providi.”

“The Supper of the Lamb to share,
We come in raiment white and fair.”

And still through all, penetrating and rising above all the tides of sound, sounded the deep voice of Leo. Through the Passion-tide he had been preaching to them the duty of the taking up the Cross of Christ, that their actual life might enshrine within it the Paschal solemnity. “If then, dearly beloved,” he said, “we believe in our hearts what we profess, we also have been raised the third day, for ‘ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ Let the people of God acknowledge themselves to be a new creation in Christ Jesus, and, with souls on the watch, understand Him by Whom they have been apprehended, and Whom they may apprehend.

“Let not the things that have been made new return to the old state which abideth not; and let not him who put his hand to the plough give up his work, but fix his attention on what he is sowing, not looking back to what he has left.”

Again—“Though the rolling away of the stone, the emptying of the sepulchre, the laying aside the linen, the shining of the angels, did abundantly establish the reality of our Lord’s Resurrection, yet He mercifully appeared to the women; He suffered Himself to be handled with careful and inquisitive touch by those of whom doubt was taking hold.”

Thus the faithful voice led the people on through Easter to the Ascension. Very quiet were the words, not exhausting the joy in a burst of rapture, but leading it onward and upward in an ever-rising tide of certainty and victory “too deep for sound or foam”; very quiet, quiet and strong as the first flood-tide of the first joy of the first Easter.

Nor did he forget the doubt, the heavy weight of apprehension, the slow reviving to faith of the hearts of the disciples benumbed by sorrow; the magnitude of the weight which gives the true measure of the power which lifted it.

“For the death of Christ,” he said, “had sorely disturbed the hearts of the disciples, and a kind of torpor of distrust had slowly crept into minds oppressed by sorrow, on account of the humiliation of the Cross, the yielding up of the spirit, the burial of the lifeless body.

“For when the holy women in the gospel history had announced to the disciples that the stone was rolled away from the tomb, that the body was not in the sepulchre, and that angels bore witness that the Lord was alive, their words seemed to the apostles and disciples as idle tales; and surely this uncertainty would in nowise be allowed by the Spirit of Truth to exist in the hearts of his preachers, unless their trembling anxiety and inquiring hesitation had laid the foundation of our faith. It was for our perturbations and our dangers that provision was being made in the case of the apostles; we, in them, were being instructed against the calumnies of the impious, and against the triumphs of the world’s wisdom; we have been taught by their seeing, we have heard by their hearing. Let us give thanks to the Divine Providence, and to that necessary tardiness of our holy fathers. Doubts were felt by them, that no doubts might be felt by us.

“Those days, dearly beloved, between the Resurrection and the Ascension did not pass away in an inactive course; but in them great and sacred truths were confirmed, great mysteries were revealed. To the Magdalene He said, ‘Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father;’ that is, ‘I will not have thee come to Me corporeally, to recognize Me by the sensations of the flesh; I am putting thee off to something loftier, I am preparing thee for something greater. When I shall have ascended to My Father, then thou shalt handle Me more perfectly and more truly, being about to apprehend what thou touchest not, and to believe what thou seest not.’ When He took Himself away to the majesty of the Father, He began in an ineffable manner to be more present in His Divinity. And a truly great and unspeakable cause of rejoicing it was, when, in the presence of that holy multitude, the nature of manhood was ascending above the dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the angelic ranks, and to be elevated above the high seats of the archangels; and not to let any degree of loftiness be a limit to its advancement, until it should be received to sit down with the Eternal Father, and associated in the throne with His glory, to Whose nature it is united in the Son. Since then Christ’s Ascension is our advancement, and whither the glory of the Head is gone before, thither is it the hope of the body to be summoned, let us, dearly beloved, exult with befitting joys and devout thanksgiving. For to-day have we not only been confirmed in the possession of Paradise, but in Christ we have penetrated to the heights of Heaven, having won through the unspeakable grace of Christ nobler gifts than we had lost through the wiles of the devil.

“This faith, increased by our Lord’s Ascension, and strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit, has not been overcome by chains, nor imprisonments, nor banishments, nor famine, nor the sword, nor the teeth of wild beasts, nor by any torments invented by the cruelty of persecutors. For this faith, throughout the whole world, not only men but even women, not only young boys but tender maidens, contended to the shedding of their own blood; whatever had before caused them fear now turned into joy.

“Let us therefore, dearly beloved, follow after charity, without which no one can shine; that through this way of love whereby Christ descended to us, we also may be able to ascend to Him, to Whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost belong honour and glory for ever.”

So the tide of Christian joy flowed on fuller and fuller to Whitsuntide, when the great company of the newly baptized gathered around the fonts in their white robes, as at Easter. Then Ethne’s heart went back to that glad white-robed company of neophytes which had gathered around the well, beside the little chapel of rough-hewn stones in her own island. It was but a year since she had sat with her brother in the white robes of baptism on the cliff by her father’s house. And in looking back from the pomp of these great assemblies in the stately basilicas on that homely gathering, she felt more than ever how glorious had been that simple beginning of new life in the new world, as at the first Pentecost. “From Him, the Holy Spirit,” Bishop Leo said, “comes the thirst; from Him, the calling on the Father; from Him, the groans of suppliants. As in that first exultant choir of all human tongues, the majesty of the Holy Ghost was present, let the minds of the faithful rejoice, because now through all the world our God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is praised by the acknowledgment rendered in every tongue, and because that indication which was given in the form of fire is still witnessed, alike as a work and a gift. For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the house of His glory shine with the radiance of His own light, and wills not to have in His temple anything dark or lukewarm.”

“The house of His glory also,” Ethne murmured to Damaris, “was that little round stone cell of Patrick’s building in our Ireland.”

“The house of His glory is Patrick’s heart and Leo’s, and, in their humble place, thine and mine,” Damaris said. “Did not our Leo say, _Templum Dei sumus, si Spiritus Dei habitat in nobis_? Greater is what the faithful Christian has in his heart than what he wonders at in the heavens.”