# Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 9

First Sunday after Epiphany
Christian Education.
"He grew in age and wisdom and grace with God and men." — Luke ii. 52.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Gospel silence. II. Reason. III. Church's liturgy.
1. Christ's knowledge : 1. Pupil's question. 2. Christ's development and ours. 3. Knowledge acquired, infused; possessed, applied. II. Imperfect system : 1. Age without wisdom. 2. Wisdom without grace. 3. Crime against individual and society.
III. Remedy : 1. Church's enemies. 2. God and Caesar. 3. Religious instruction and Holy Eucharist.
Per. : Result will be real Christians.
SERMON.
Brethren, in meditating on the mysteries of this holy season, nothing strikes one more forcibly or engenders greater surprise than the silence of the Evangelists concerning the earlier years of our divine Redeemer. After His return from Egypt to Nazareth in His seventh or eighth year, we lose all trace of Him until the beginning of His miracles in Cana of Galilee, in the thirtieth year of His age. True, we find Him momentarily appearing, at the age of twelve, in the Temple at Jerusalem, but with that solitary exception the Evangelists give us no information concerning His whole hidden life, other than that He went down to Nazareth with His parents and was subject to them. Now, this silence of the Gospels, it seems to me, was not merely accidental — it ​was intentional and judicious. It betrays the Evangelists' keen appreciation of man's natural fondness for youth — of childhood's strong claim and firm hold on our affections. There is a beauty and a freshness about childhood and youth that thrills the observer through and through like the breath of spring, and in their presence our gladdened hearts grow young again, — they respond to it as the songsters to the springtime and the skipping lambs and the laughing brooks. No invitation needed to bring the ardent Christian into communion with the boy of Nazareth. He is the Christian's richest treasure, and thither tends the Christian's heart. No need of description and details. In meditation, better far than solid facts is the vivid imagery of an unfettered imagination. Each of us, I hope, has felt this inclination — to turn betimes from the world — from its sordid cares and bitter trials, to the joy and peace of Nazareth and the blessed companionship of our youthful Saviour. In obedience to this same tendency, the Church, too, in her ritual, lingers long and lovingly over her Lord's earlier years.
St. Luke, in the second chapter of his gospel sums up the hidden life of Our Saviour in these few words: " He increased in age and wisdom and grace before God and men." One day, lately, in Sunday-school, a bright pupil asked: "Did Our Lord ever go to school? " It was a simple question simply asked, but the answer involved a profound dogmatic difficulty. It is easy to understand how Our Lord, existing as God from eternity, was still in time conceived as man, ​and progressed from childhood to youth and from youth to manhood by the same stages of bodily development as you or I. But we cannot suppose, without grave irreverence to His sacred personality, that He was less rich in wisdom and grace while in the womb of His Mother or the crib at Bethlehem, than when disputing in the Temple with the Doctors, or enunciating sublime truth in His Sermon on the Mount. Much less can we suppose Him to have ever suffered the indignity of having a mere mortal for His teacher. The mind and soul of the merely mortal, newly-born, is a virgin page — an unblown flower that opens slowly under the light and heat of the Sun of justice and truth. But even after the burden of the day and the heat, the most profound philosopher or zealous worker in the Lord's vineyard has succeeded, at best, in acquiring only a measure of wisdom and sanctity. But not so Our Lord; Abraham and Isaac and John the Baptist testified that, to Christ, wisdom and grace were given not according to measure, but that, being heir by Nature, He had a clear title from the beginning to the fulness of His divine inheritance. We, on the contrary, are heirs only by adoption and receive our talents, five, two, or one, at Our Master's option and each according to his proper ability. Christ was the head wherein are focused all the senses; we are but the members of His mystical body, endowed with one or other sense, and that imperfectly. From the first moment of its creation, Christ's human mind was in the actual possession and exercise of every branch of human knowledge, and ​His soul adorned with every possible virtue. This is the teaching of the Scriptures. " Behold," says Jeremias, prophesying the coming of the Messias, " Behold, the Lord hath created a new thing on earth, a woman shall encompass a man." The prodigy was that the Virgin Mary bore in her womb the body, indeed, of a babe, but the mind and soul of a fully developed man. Elsewhere the prophet speaks of the Word made flesh as the flower from the root of Jesse, upon which, as dew, should descend the spirit of the Lord — the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and fortitude; the spirit of knowledge and piety; and He shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord. "The Word was made flesh," says St. John, " and we saw Him full of grace and truth." " In Him," says St. Paul, " were hidden all the treasures of wisdom." With the exception of Origen and St. Ambrose, all the great Doctors of the Church — St. Augustine, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome and St. Bernard — all unite in teaching that Christ, during His mortal life, acquired neither knowledge nor virtue, because there was none He had not already possessed from the beginning. How then, I ask, are we to explain St. Luke's words that " Jesus increased in wisdom and grace before God and men "? We must distinguish between infused knowledge and knowledge acquired — between revelation and science. Infused knowledge comes directly from God without any effort on our part to attain it; acquired knowledge is the result of our own industry. Now, all the knowledge and sanctity of Christ's ​human nature were infused into it by reason of the hypostatic union, whereby two natures were made to coalesce in the single personality of Our Saviour. But the possession of wisdom and grace is one thing and their practical application quite another; and so Our Lord may be said to have advanced in wisdom and grace according as He began to bring more and more into use the knowledge and virtues He previously enjoyed in abstract contemplation. " In Him," says St. Paul, " were hidden all the treasures of wisdom." In Him, in fact, was hidden the author of wisdom and sanctity, and His progress was His gradual manifestation to the world of His divinity. Not that there was any subjective change in Him, the change was entirely objective— on the part of the observers. The rising sun, for example, gives but a feeble light and little heat; higher still it becomes brighter and warmer; until from the zenith it sends down its most brilliant and scorching rays. It is ever the same sun, throwing off the same amount of light and heat, that rises in the east, that crosses the meridian, and disappears in the west. The change is in us — due to our change of position. So too, it was with the Sun of truth and justice, Christ Jesus our Lord. Ever the same, He still, at His conception, suffused with His truth and love only Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and John. He is born, and the illumined circle widens beyond the shepherds on the hillside. Brighter still, until even decrepit Simeon sees the light to the revelation of the Gentiles. Higher and brighter, until the Gentiles walk in His light and the kings in the ​splendor of His rising. Into the dark aisles of the Temple and abroad through all the land until, lo! the zenith is reached and the world is amazed and men say, one to another, " never did man speak as this man." Such was Christ's manifestation of Himself — such His progress in wisdom and grace. And just as men, like roots under the sun, were beginning to rise heavenward, there came the dark hours of the Passion and death — the sun declined and sank and the mists settled down again; some, until the coming of the Paraclete, and some, alas! forever.
And Jesus increased in age and wisdom and grace with God and men. Brethren, it is deeply significant that in this model of all youth, youth's three graces — age, learning, and piety — are linked together as inseparable companions. It is an essentially imperfect system of education that proposes the development of only one faculty. If the body alone be educated,, the result is, at best, an ignoble modern gladiator. More pernicious still is a mind illumined by knowledge with a heart uninflamed by the love of God and humanity. The light of the sun without its heat would be a positive curse, serving only, as it would, to reveal the horrors of a frozen world; and what heat, alone, would be without light may be judged from a concept of hell. St. Bernard, speaking of the coeducation of mind and heart, says: "To be brilliant is vain; to be ardent is little; but to be both brilliant and ardent is perfect." John the Baptist, because he was a shining and burning light, was eulogized by Our Lord as the greatest born of woman; more than ​a prophet — an angel. Lucifer, on the contrary, from an angel became a devil, because he burned not with God's love, but only shone with His splendor. Mind education is but a means toward the education of the heart, for what will a world of knowledge profit a man if he have not religion, if he love not his soul? Religion is an integral part of every perfect system of education. Not that we love science less, but religion more. Let no squeamish scruple bar to us the treasure house of pagan literature— of secular science and art. St. Paul, in his Epistle, quotes from the pagan Euripides and the poet Menander. Secular learning, of itself well worth study and research, enables us besides to snatch the sword from the enemies of religion and fight them with their own weapons. As did the Israelites to the Egyptians of old — we, by divine right, invade the realms of worldly wisdom and appropriate whatever we find of sterling worth or golden truth. None the less we maintain that education without religion is essentially imperfect, for when science leads to its highest attained point it is religion's function to become guide on and up to the very throne of God. To separate religion and science is to rob religion of her noblest ally, and put a dangerous weapon in irresponsible hands with no instruction as to its use. Such a system is a crime against the individual and the community. Each individual has an inborn right to the whole truth, but this system hides from him its better half. He studies a geography, for instance, from whose pages are cancelled the names or true significance of Bethlehem, Jeru​salem, and Rome. He studies history — the history of the first centuries of our era, disregarding the influence on that age of Christ and Christianity; the history of the Middle Ages, with never a mention of those saviours of civilization, Saints Dominic and Francis of Assisi. Who can read the history of the sixteenth century and ignore St. Francis Xavier; of the seventeenth and leave out St. Vincent de Paul? In such a materialistic spirit are the arts and sciences cultivated nowadays, that from the exception it has become almost the rule for pupils in our higher universities to begin to doubt of the soul's immortality and the very existence of God. When such a mind turns to the study of Holy Scripture, what is the result? A blasphemous monster like Renan, who reviled Our Lord as an undutiful son for having never gone to school, for having run away from His parents, and rebelliously snubbed them for seeking to bring Him under control. A scholar without a conscience is a menace to society. Learning makes the criminal all the more insidious and dangerous. And even if he have no marked criminal tendencies, still, see how, in the hands of even the best of them, literature and art minister to sensuality, and philosophy is made to war against truth. The spoils of office become the chief motive for enlisting in the public service, and even so-called ministers of the Gospel degrade their sacred calling by pandering to the debased prejudices of their audiences, for filthy lucre. So true is it that, though a sound mind in a sound body be an inestimable blessing, still the soundness of neither one nor ​the other can withstand the corrupting influences of this world, unless seasoned with the salt of the earth — the saving truth of true religion.
Brethren, the best efforts of every enemy of the Church, from Julian the Apostate down to the modern pseudo-patriot, have been directed to the divorce of religion and education. That alone, together with the woeful results attending the success of those efforts in the world to-day, should thoroughly convince us how important a lesson is the example of Christ's earlier years — how criminal it is for any man or set of men to put asunder what God hath joined together. Those of us whom love or duty interest in the training of youth, should take this lesson well to heart and see to it that our charges, while giving to Caesar in time and attention the things that are Caesar's, should not neglect the still more important duty of giving to God and religion the things that are God's. Of the many means to this end, I will mention only two — first, to seize on every opportunity for directing the children's minds heavenward; and second, to insist on the frequentation of the sacraments. Teach them, mornings, to light the fire of God's love in their hearts by prayer; and at night, by prayer, to go to sleep on the bosom of God. God is the light of the world and, to be illumined by Him, one must turn towards Him. Public worship on the Lord's day and religious instruction in Sunday-school, help to lift the soul of the child out of the shadow of earthly things into the clear light of a higher and better world. By such pious exercises, ​their whole being- is purified and beautified, as was Christ when He prayed on Thabor — when the shape of His countenance was altered, and His raiment became white and glittering. But most important of all is to receive regularly what, of right, should be our daily bread — the Holy Eucharist — the Author of truth and virtue, that the children, living, not they, but Christ in them, may become other Christs, increasing in age and wisdom and grace with God and men.