In the Church as in the world there are special vocations. With two of these, the Priesthood and the Religious Life, I hope to deal in the course of this paper. But there is one primary vocation that is common to all members of Christ's Body, and that is to manifest the Spirit in life. To every man is given the manifestation of the Spirit. What then is the Spirit we are to manifest?
There is no room for doubt that it is the Spirit of Love. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul and strength. This is the first and great commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love they neighbour as thy self. There is the essence of true religious-Love; and love of God first. Yet if you ask the average person what Christianity really is, in ninety cases out of a hundred you will get the answer, "Loving your fellow man." Of course, this is a part, a vital part, but it is not the whole, nor even the first requisite.
One who would not claim for himself the name of Christian has written "Without the knowledge and the worship of the ideal good, the love of man is blind, not knowing in what direction to seek the welfare of those whom it loves." And it is true, if for the abstract idea of an impersonal ideal good, we substitute the living personal God revealed to us in Christ as Father. If we would love our fellow man aright, we must first know, worship, and love God. Was there ever one who loved men as Jesus of Nazareth; loving them fully, completely, perfectly, seeking their highest welfare in mind body and soul? But he so perfectly loves men because he perfectly loves God. But the test of our love of God is love of our fellow men. If a man say he loves God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar, says St. John quite bluntly. And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also. Do let us get right away from the idea that the love of God consists in feeling, emotion. If ye love Me, keep my commandments, he it is that loveth me. And this is my commandment, that ye love one another. The world is quite right when it judges the truth of our religion not by the length of our prayers, nor by any warm feelings of devotion we may, or may not have, but by the way we treat our cook.
Do not for one minute think that I wish to disparage the life of prayer and devotion. Very far from it. Rather I would say that if we are honest in applying the right test to our love of God, we are driven to our knees, to our Confessions and our Communions, to our Meditations, for we come to realise that, if we are called to manifest the Spirit of Divine Love ,we must first receive it to manifest. The very consciousness of failure in one element of our vocation should lead us to discover that there is another,-prayer and communion with God.
One result of a Congress such as this, should be that we get down seriously to self-scrutiny, The world is scrutinising us and offering its frank criticism. We are no longer a little village nestling in some remote valley, but we have become a "City set on a hill" and we "cannot be hid." It is of vital importance that we should live up to our true vocation, and manifest the Spirit of Christ. The world is not clear that we are really doing this. Its criticism is often that we are not. We must humbly and frankly examine ourselves on the counts that are brought against us, and in penitence once again begin to seek above all things to manifest the Spirit of Christ.
We have been allowed to see what may justly be called a triumph in our Movement. But a triumph is a temptation. We need to remember in the first place that the triumph is not ours, nor through us. It is God's, through those men who have passed to their rest after lives of real sacrifice in the cause of his truth. Secondly, that though a triumph, it is not a full victory. Look at your cities or towns or villages and see. Look at the world. There is grim fighting to be done. But by whom and with what weapons? Not by a dozen leaders in an isolated spot here and there, but by every man and woman who loves the Name of Christ. And the weapons? Before all else the weapons of the Spirit. There must needs be organisation, advertisement, intellectual apologetic, all that is included in the none too pleasing word "propaganda." But all this, however efficient, will be useless unless it arise from strong personal love of Christ, and be made to become by genuine love of sacrifice a means of manifesting his Spirit. If we respond to our vocation of manifesting the Spirit, we can win the country, the world for him. But not otherwise.
The Priesthood.--If it the duty of every Christian man to manifest the Spirit in his vocation in the world whatever it may be, how much more clearly is it the duty of the Priest in his special vocation? To what is he called at his ordination? Surely before all else to a ministry in spiritual things, to be a "steward of the mysteries of God." Our own Ordinal is quite explicit on the point.
Before all thing he is to be the minister of Christ, that through him Christ may give to his people supernatural gifts of truth and power, his own Light and Life. And yet we are faced with the lamentable spectacle of Priests who are snowed under by all manner of secondary things,-organisation, routine work, Societies, Clubs, Committees, and a host of other little and big jobs, things which they were not ordained to do, things which ought to be done by the laity. They provide an opportunity for the layman to show his love of God by serving his fellow men. What then is the Priest's work? The administration of the Sacraments? Yes, this indeed. But, if this is to be his only or his main function, then he will have an easy job indeed, easier even than the parson's job is supposed to be! For he will never have to deal with more than a handful of people. But the Priest is ordained not merely to administer Sacraments, but to gather in the people to receive them, and to bring back those who have forsaken them; to build them up in the knowledge of God, and in true Christian love of God and man, and to lead them in the way of service and life, that they mat more fully manifest the Spirit which they have more fully received through his ministrations as a humble and faithful Priest.
He is to preach the Faith-and elucidate it, that men may know and more fully understand the truth. And this means that he must think it out, first for himself, and then for the minds of the class with whom he has to deal. He must be a man of study, reading and thought. But he is to preach the truth not only from the pulpit, but in his life as he moves about among his flock. He is by his life to witness to the truth he teaches, and he must lead where he calls.
If he is thus called to manifest the Spirit, he is first called to receive the Spirit to manifest; and to this end he must base all his studies and activities on a life of intense prayers, meditation, contemplation, communion with God.
The Religious Life.-There is no doubt that the vocation of the majority of Christians lies in the ordinary life of the world. They are to consecrate by dedicated use their worldly possessions, their life in home and family, their freedom to arrange their own affairs. But some are called to surrender these things and to vow themselves to a life of voluntary "poverty, chastity and obedience." There have been and still are many forms of Religious Life, but all are for one end--the perfecting of self-oblation in the service of God by a life of prayer and in such activity as God may give. And there is one motive, the Love of God.
The Religious Life is, I believe, essential to the full life of the Church. Certainly without it, our standard of spiritual vitality is lowered.
Look over history, and see what the Church owes to the Religious Orders and Societies of the past. We need not blind our eyes to the fact that they have had their decadent and evil days. The fact only serves to emphasise their surprising power of recovery, the work of the Holy Spirit in raising up amongst them reformer after reformer calling his brethren back to the ideal of their vocation. Look out over that part of their work that is perceptible to the care of the sick and dying, in the education of the young, in scholarship and learning. But behind all this energy of body and mind there is great energy of soul. They are our experts in the science of the spiritual life. Knowing God they know his dealings with the soul. Every Priest who is faithful in his personal dealings with individual souls, will acknowledge a debt to the writings of men and women who lived the life of prayer in the Religious Orders of the Church. If no other book had issued from the cloister than "The Imitation of Christ," I make bold to say that the life in Religion would have proved its worth.
We have real cause to thank God for the restoration of the Religious Life in our own communion. Its revival has been nothing short of amazing. One who has every claim to be regarded as an authority on such matters, has written: "Christendom has seen some amazing revivals, but I believe that the revival of the Religious Life in England in these last eighty years is without parallel in the history of the church in the East of the West" (Ollard, in Theology, Jan., 1923).
We praise God for those fifteen hundred women who have forsaken all and followed him. Some of us have had opportunity of seeing the devotion of their lives and can realise in part the meaning of their energy in prayer. We praise God for our Communities of men. Who can adequately estimate our debt to Cowley, Mirfield, Kelham, Plaistow, Pershore? These have done heroic work in the active field, but all in the strength of a life of quiet prayer and contemplation.
We have, then, these men who have heard the call to renunciation of the world. And we thank God for them. But why are they so few? I have said that the Religious Life is not for all; and that is obvious. But it is for some. Is it only for so few? I may be, and I believe is, for many even in these days, for many more, I cannot help but think, than those who have already heard and answered the call. If thou wilt be perfect, said our Lord to the rich young man, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come and follow me. But the young man went sadly away, for he had great possessions. But these gathered round the Christ in his life of poverty and perfect self-oblation a little band of men who had surrendered all for him at his call, the first-born of a great line of spiritual children, who were to hear and answer that same call. And to these he cries, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this times, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecution; and in the world to come, eternal life.
The reward is great indeed. What the world counts dear is gone, left behind; but a new life is found, rich in spiritual possession, rich in spiritual relationships, rich in spiritual offspring. And it is an eternal life, from which there is no severance at death. But it is to be had only at great cost.
But it is at the cost of that which the Church now wants more than anything else-sacrifice for God and readiness to suffer. May the example and the prayers of all those, living and departed, who have made the great sacrifice, and are winning, or have won the Great Life, shame us to a deeper penitence for our miserably inadequate sacrifice, and win for us fuller measure of God's Grace; that whatever our particular vocation may be, we may be more really true to that which is common to us all, the manifestation of the Spirit of Christ in a life of genuine self-oblation for love of God and man, at whatever cost.
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