We hear much nowadays about the failures of Christianity. Let us be quite clear to start with that this means the failures of Christians, and not the failures of the religion of Jesus Christ. But the story of Christianity is not by any means the story of a series of failures on the part of Christians. It will do us all a lot of good if we turn our attention to some of the successes of Christianity. If you were going to start in business as a plumber or a carpenter, you would not fix your whole attention on the plumbers and carpenters who have failed or are failures at their business. You don’t judge music and painting by the performance of that multitude of amateurs who “paint a little” or “play a little.” So, if you are going to start in business as a Christian, you will want to consider the people who have made a success of that business. You will judge the power and value of Christianity by the lives of the Saints, and by the great works of love and mercy which Christianity has done in the world. Why should the Christian religion be the one and only thing in the world to be judged by the failures of its followers and not by their successes? What has been the power behind all the great triumphs of the Christian religion in the world and in the lives of Christian people? Without any hesitation at all one says that it has been the power of the love of Jesus. For the love of Jesus men and women have given [1/2] up riches and pleasure and comfort in order that they might minister to the poor, the sick, and the fallen. For the love of Jesus Christian people have gone out on great adventures to save their brethren from misery, shame, and sin. For the love of Jesus people have given up all that this world counts dear in order that others might have happier and better lives. Look round at all the hospitals, schools, orphanages, and rescue homes that Christians have founded and maintained. Look at all the multitude of faithful parish priests who have quietly spent their lives in taking care of men and women and children. Look at all the thousands of men and women who, in brotherhoods and sisterhoods, have renounced the joys of home and children and made themselves absolutely poor in order that they might make many rich, tending the sick, comforting the sorrowful and lonely, slaving away in foetid slums and on leper islands. These are the triumphs of the love of Jesus. They believed that Jesus loved them, and that he loved all men and women and children everywhere, and they made this response to his love.

There are, of course, people who say “all this talk about the love of Jesus is nothing but sentimentalism.” I am sure you have often heard people say that Catholics are a sentimental lot of people, whose religion is nothing more than a sensuous delight in ravishing music, sweet-smelling incense, gorgeous vestments, glittering tapers, and outward forms and ceremonies. That is really the greatest nonsense. I should like to take a personally conducted [2/3] tourist party of people who talk like this and write like this in novels and magazines and show them round some of the places where Catholics are labouring for the love of Jesus.” Ravishing music! Well, if you call the everlasting crying of poor little ill-fed babies, and the howls and shrieks of dogs and cats, and the yells and curses of a street fight, and the perpetual pounding of a steam hammer in the works behind the Clergy House ravishing music, you can get as much as you like of it free, gratis, and for nothing! Sweet odours! I would introduce you to a variety of odours, but yours is an optimistic nose if you could call any one of them sweet. Here are these Catholics, priests and Sisters of Mercy, labouring in the thick of all this, week in, week out, Sundays and weekdays, all the year round. If they are sentimentalists, then God give us more sentimentalists, for they seem to be the very salt, of the earth.

The love of Jesus. We begin with his love for us: “Herein is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us.” How do we know that God loves us? There are some people who seem to think that we can find out about God through all the things that he has made and through the universe and the laws that govern it. Can you find out all about a carpenter through the things that he has made or about a watchmaker through the, watches he has made? Here is a table. It was made by a carpenter. Can you find out from that table that the carpenter was the sort of man who loved his wife and children and paid his debts [3/4] punctually and regularly? On examining the mechanism of a watch, could you come to the conclusion that the watchmaker was a very precise man, who was the soul of punctuality, and did everything with the regularity of a machine? Of course you would not. You know perfectly well that you must know the man himself before you can tell what he is like. The man must reveal himself to you or someone else must reveal him to you before you can have any certain knowledge about him.

God has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ—God the Son, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity—who was made man for us and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We know that God is love because we have seen the love of God in God the Son, Jesus Christ. Love can only be known in and through a Person who loves. The Catholic religion is founded upon the love of God in Jesus Christ. God has revealed his love as human love. The human affections and love of Jesus Christ reveal and make known to human beings the love of God. That is what we mean when we speak of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Perhaps you have seen those pictures and statues of our Lord in which he is represented as pointing to his heart. Sometimes “high-brow” folks tell us that these statues and pictures are misleading, because the heart is only a blood-pump and is not really the seat of the affections. Of course we all know that. But from time “immemorial that organ of the human body has been an emblem of human love and affection. Therefore we are glad to use these pictures and statues to make [4/5] people understand that our Blessed Lord loves us with a real human love. Human love cannot be separated from the thought of human homes. Catholics have always believed that Jesus admits them to the love of his home—his home on earth and his home in Heaven. He wants us to love Mary and Joseph and the Saints and Angels because they are the “dear ones,” as we say, of his home. Our Blessed Lord wants us to come close to him like that. The Catholic religion is simple and homely, not superior and “high-brow.” If you have got a very great friend he makes you welcome in his home, doesn’t he? The Catholic religion teaches us that Jesus makes us very, very welcome in his home, and wants us to know and love Mary and Joseph and the Saints and Angels. Suppose you had a great friend and he said: “I’m not going to take you to my home because I’m afraid you might want to talk to my mother and my brothers and sisters, and I should be very angry if you talked to them or liked them. I should be jealous.” You would be badly disappointed in your friend, wouldn’t you? You would say he had a selfish, jealous nature, and you would be right. There is nothing selfish or jealous about the love of Jesus. The Catholic religion is, before anything else, devotion to the Person of Jesus Christ. It is not just a book or a collection of rules for conduct and behaviour. It is not just first of all an Institution or a Church. First of all, and before anything else, it is the devotion of persons to a Person—the Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is this which makes such a [5/6] wonderful bond between Catholics and many devout Nonconformists. Devout only means devoted—devoted to the love of Jesus. Time and again, when Catholics have been persecuted and slandered, these Nonconformists have had the courage and the kindness to come forward and stand up for them. They have said: “We do not understand or agree with all that these men say or do, but we know that they are devoted to Jesus Christ, and so are we, and therefore we are ready to stand by them.” If you are devoted to a person you want to be near him, and you want to know that you are near him. If any person to whom we were devoted were to say, “Now I don’t want any sentimental nonsense; you can be just as devoted to me without seeing me or haying me near you, so I shan’t come and see you and you need not come and see me,” what would you think? You would say to yourself: “Well, of all the cold-hearted, callous prigs! Heaven defend me from a friend like that!”

Why would you say this? Because you are human, and what your friend said was utterly inhuman. Our Blessed Lord is utterly human. In the Blessed Sacrament he comes to us in his perfect humanity. He is there at the altar so that we may come to him human-wise and be in his Presence and feel his human love. That is what we mean when we say that we believe in the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. If you have got a really human love for the perfectly human Christ your whole soul will go out in response to his love in the Blessed Sacrament.

[7] I wonder if you will think that I have said too much about our Lord being human, and too little about his being Divine? Don’t you see that his perfect Divinity can only be known through his perfect humanity, that Divine love is by the will of God revealed and made known to us in the perfect human love of Jesus? His Heart is the heart of God revealed in the human heart of the Son of Mary.