The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1956-03-23


appreciation our prayers upon the price paid by
GodmadeMa for saving. The sufferings
and death of Our Lord are the theme of this
holy time. We go over what well know; we
examine what we have examined many times
before We all dull pupils who must relearn
even the familiar lesson. We must relearn
this lesson, because it is indspensably import
ant We simply dare not miss knowing it, and
living in the light of the knowledge.
But this is not learning by rote. Our relearnng
of the needfu lesson is not matter Of tedious
repetition. No. each relearnng is new relearn-
ing. For what we study is nexhauStibly rich in
treasure for souls and every serious review
of it gives us CLEANS of precious value that we
had not caught before What we relearn in our
review is the infinite doing of the infinite God,
and no conceivable number of Studious and pray
erfu reviews could make it prosy, dull, or tire
some.
Our Lord, who is God as we'll as Man suffered
pains and death in His human nature. Human
nature is the human essence (body, blood, souD
considered as operating as functlonng, When
we say that Our Lord has true human nature,
we mean that He has true human body true
human soul, and true human powers of body
and soul In ordinary human beings, human
nature is made to have its complete existence
in person, an individual with its own subsist-
ence. But the human nature of Christ has its
subsistence in the Person of the Eternal Son of
God Thus, while Our Lord has true human
nature land lis made like to us in all things
saving SIM He is not human person. He is
Divine Person, the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity who has taken and united to HIMSELF
in the unity of His divine Personality, human
nature. BY the Incarnation, the Eternal Son Of
God is now the same changeess and eternal Per
son, but has henceforth forever two natures: the
nature of God (Which is one and undivided in all
Three Persons of the Trinity, and in each of the
Three Persons), and also the nature of man.
s%@
Thus Our Lord is truly God and truly man.
All that Our Lord actively does, apart from
these bodily operations which involve passivty
or undergoing,-we attribute to Him as God.
We can say with accuracy that since Our Lord
is God il is God who changes water into wine;
it is God who raises the widows and who
calls Lazarus from the tomb, it is God who for
gives the sins of Magdaen and of the good
thief on the cross. But all that Christ undergoes
or suffers He suffers in His human nature and
not in the divine nature, for the divine nature
cannot be subjected to any action causes; the
divine nature cannot suffer or die. Thus we can
not say that God dies on the Cross, though
Christ dies, and Christ is God. II is in His human
nature that Our Lord suffers and dies.
Yet we must always remember that the hui
nature of Christ is never, since the Incarna-
ton severed or separate from the divine ma
ture The Body of Our Lord on the Cross, as we'll
as His Soul in Limbo is adored with divine ad-
Grafton For the divine nHure,-the Divinity,
the Godhead,--remains inseparably united with
both the Body and the Soul of Christ whether
these be in union as before His Death and after
His Resurrection, or separated as they were
from the moment of His death until the moment
of His rising from the dead.
Our Lords sufferings and death have infinite
value and pay the infinite debt of the sin of
human nature committed by our first father
Adam. For even though they are suffered in the
human nature this nature is united with the
One Divine Person OF God the Son, and it
dures what God accepts to be endured. Rightly
and accurately does Scripture say of Our Lord
in His Passion, "He suffered because He Himself
wilIed it,"
Certain holy writer's tell us that when Our
Lord came prisoner from the Garden of His
agony He was already dying. They say that the
revulSon of Our Lords perfect human nature
in His Agony, which caused His blood to fall
like drops of sweat upon the ground, had actually
riven the Sacred Heart SO that He could not
have lived, without miracle, for many hours.
However that may be, He actually wiled 10 &C.
cept death from the tortures inflicted upon Him
by those who Scourged and crucfied Him. And
thus, though He suffered in the finite human
nature He suffered by the will of the Infinite
God and His suffering, even in its least detail,
is of infinite value
When God became Man, this was not done
by turning existing human individual into
Himself-that would be quite impossible. The
human nature of Christ was created at the instant
that the Divinity was joined with it. The body
of Our Lord was drawn from the virginia. flesh
of Mary; His human soul created at the in
stant it was united with that body. II is the Per-
sonaty of the Eternal Son that actually con
SttuteS the human nature of Christ existing
in Mary's womb. And therefore Our Lord has a
true human mother, but no human father; He
is truly conceived and born of Mary by "the
power of the Most High by the Holy Ghost
which overshadowed her"
In becoming man. the Eternal Son of God
underwent no change whatever If change can
be spoken of here at all, it is the human ele
ment that ndergoes it, not the divine element
The Eternal Son is God, one and the same and
undivided and unchanged in all Three Divine
Persons,-and with God there is no change nor
shadow of alteration" Without change God
assumes in time, according TO His own eternal
decree tho nature Of man He does not cease
to be God He does not in any sense become less
Godlike, He does not descend to human nature,
but raises human nature to substantial union
with the divine nature in the one Person of the
SON And while the Incarnation is effected in
the Person of the Son, and not in the Person
of the Father the Person of the Holy Ghost,