The Beauty of Holiness by Ralph Birdsall

 (A sermon originally published in Birdsall's book "Sermons in Summer, Delivered at Christ Church, Cooperstown." 1912)

As Jesus prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. — Luke 9:29

That Jesus Christ is human — that He is Man — has never been so fully realized, since the days of His first disciples, as at the present time. Whatever unbelief in His divinity may be mingled with the modern emphasis upon His humanity, there is a gain, on the whole, in the apprehension of the old faith of Christendom, whenever the Founder of our religion is described as Perfect Man. The modern humanitarian can never conceive of a more splendid ideal than that of the Christian faith, which, if it asserts that God became Man and walked the fields of Galilee and the streets of Oriental cities nineteen hundred years ago, also proclaims, since the Man Jesus now sits at the right hand of God, as one who has experienced human sorrow and love and toil, that a Human Heart now beats at the very centre of the Universe.

The primitive disciples, lacking our theological prepossessions, were the companions of an intensely human Christ. He was their intimate personal friend. If they witnessed His mighty deeds, they shared with Him also the drab commonplace of everyday discomfort. Gracious words of divine blessing fell from His lips, and utterances that burned like flame, but the disciples could remember that He was rejected with contempt by His own town of Nazareth, where were the carpenter's bench, and the hammers, and hatchets, and saws, and gimlets, with which His hands had wrought a common trade.

Then there came a crisis of experience in which all this crude realism was penetrated by the vision of a deeper reality. They climbed one evening to a mountain-top — Jesus and His three most intimate disciples, Peter, and James, and John. They looked down upon the sunset view which a later tourist describes, and perhaps with the same impressions, for two thousand years have left the scene unchanged: "The Sea of Galilee was lit up with a delicate greenish-yellow hue, between its dim walls of hill. The flush died out, and a pale, steel-colored shade succeeded. A long pyramidal shadow slid down to the eastern foot of Hermon, and crept across the great plain; Damascus was swallowed up by it; and finally the pointed end of the shadow stood out distinctly against the sky — a dusky cone of dull color against the flush of the afterglow. It was the shadow of the mountain itself, stretching away for seventy miles across the plain — the most marvelous shadow perhaps anywhere to be seen in the world. The sun slid into the sea. Overhead shone out in the blue summer sky, one by one, the Oriental brilliancy of stars.”

As the night deepened, the three disciples lay stretched upon the earth in slumber, while our Lord kept lonely vigil, absorbed in prayer. All at once the sleeping men were startled by a sense of strangeness, and a glow of dazzling light. They looked upon the Master, and were amazed to behold Him glorified by a mysterious effulgence that, emanated from His person, and wrapped Him in white- flaming splendor. His countenance blazed with an unearthly light of supreme exaltation. His whole figure became luminous. His garments gleamed and glittered with the shimmering of radiant energy. The fire of divinity shone through the vase of humanity. This Galilean peasant, this carpenter of Nazareth, was a glare with the glory of God, and His coarse garments were resplendent with the awful majesty of the King of kings.

The Transfiguration is the one incident in the Gospel story which seems designedly de scribed as spectacular — an event in the life of Christ held up not for imitation, but for admiration. Other events stand for His pity, His power, His sinlessness. The Transfiguration presents Him as an object of contemplation. Here alone He is represented as a Being of terrible and blazing beauty. Here alone the Christian religion seems to offer the Beautiful as an attainment, quite apart from the utilities. For no doctrine has ever been based upon the Transfiguration, and no Christian practice has ever been evolved from it — almost it may be said that no lesson can be drawn from the incident as it stands alone. It is a spectacle of Beauty.

That which is true in the sphere of grace is true in the realm of Nature. One of the most mysterious attributes of Nature, if one reflects upon it, is Beauty. A materialistic philosophy has no explanation of Beauty in Nature. It will not do to say that the sense of beauty is caused by the adjustment of the eye to reactions of the outer world. For then the most accustomed view would seem most beautiful, because the eye would be best adjusted to reactions that are frequent. But, in fact, the most supreme beauty is exceptional and rare. There is always some marvelous view, or exquisitely lovely face, once beheld, that stands out beyond all others in the memory.

Nor can Beauty be accounted for on the basis of utility. It may be that the plumage of the peacock is designed for the attraction of a mate. It may be that the flowers of the field are gorgeous in color in order to attract insects for pollination. But in most of these beauties of Nature there is no utility whatever; none in the rainbow; none in the flaming colors of sunset; none in the glory of autumnal foliage. Beauty refuses to be discovered by a detective, or measured in foot pounds and horse-power. Beauty exists in and for itself, without any reason whatsoever. There is no explanation of beauty except you see in Nature an intelligent Creator who loves Beauty, and lavishes it upon created things.

When we turn from Nature to art, we find the same law, which refuses to measure beauty in terms of utility. There are, indeed, certain canons of structural art, by which ornament is made subordinate to utility, so that that is most beautiful which is best designed to fulfill its purpose. But the critic of art who judges paintings is less likely to choose a picture useful to tell a story — which the uneducated eye prefers — than to hit upon some canvas that tells no story, but, because of some inner harmony, succeeds in being merely beautiful. In music, the untrained listener desires compositions that are useful to represent concrete images or events — the roll of thunder, the caroling of birds, the trickling of water, a woman singing at her spinning-wheel. Saul believed that music was useful to drive away his madness, and ended by hurling his javelin at the musician. Your true musician denies that music has any ultimate purpose or function, except as a form of beauty. It is not concerned in the representation either of thunder or moon shine. The musician's delight is a Bach fugue, having form without color, which none but the trained ear can appreciate, and whose beauty lies in an internal harmony of construction.

The highest possible form of beauty is moral beauty, the inner harmony of spiritual qualities in the soul of man and the Universe of God. Much as we stress the practical bearing of morals, moral beauty, too, holds aloof from the utilities. Virtue does not al ways find happiness. Honesty does not always triumph. Generosity is often abused. Nothing is more deadly, in fact, than a bargain-counter morality that insists upon having something in exchange for being good. But moral beauty is indifferent to practical consequences. It insists upon being made an end in itself. And there is a yearning in every human soul, if we give it room that reaches everlastingly toward the attainment of moral beauty.

The perception of the beauty that streamed from the majestic figure of Christ on the Mount of the Transfiguration was a revelation to His disciples. The perception of a beautiful ideal is always a revelation. It belongs to the serene mountain-top. It is not drawn from the actual life of the world in the turmoil of the valley below. The ideal is drawn from above. It is independent of the reality. It exists for itself, as a form of moral beauty.

The passion of the heart for the attainment of moral beauty gives a superb quality to human effort, in its high disdain of consequences, and its independence of sordid utilities. It shuns an ignoble deed, not so much from fear of being found out as from a determination to keep the ideal unsullied, and to retain the true self-respect that falls short of pride. Nothing, perhaps, needs more emphasis in this age than the cultivation of a supreme contempt for practical consequences in the pursuit of a worthy ideal.

 If the real Christians of the First century were slain with the sword, sawn asunder, flung to the lions, then we should expect to find, among the real Christians of the Twentieth century, professional men who turn their backs upon fame rather than stoop to devious arts, merchants who choose poverty with honor before affluence with crookedness, politicians who would rather lose an office than win it, or hold it, by corruption. And some such, thank God, there are!

There comes into the mind of everyone, at some time, a vision of ideal beauty in terms of his own life — the ideal of possibility within his own range. In the actual contact with life in the valley this vision of the mountain-top too often becomes blurred, and fades away. We wish that we might make the vision permanent, that it may never cease to guide us, and to inspire us. So S. Peter, not knowing what he said, desired to make the Transfiguration permanent, to build a tabernacle for his glorified Lord, and keep Him there upon the mountain, and worship Him ever. But we are not equal to the permanence of such high visions.

 Duty calls us back to the level of the valley. The test of our vision lies in the power to work on in the light of it when appearances seem to be against it, and when the dull commonplace of duty shows no reflected gleam of it. Nothing is more pitiful than the gradual blotting out of fine idealisms by the slow rubbing of contacts with the world. For one actually begins then sometimes to believe that the beautiful ideal was mistaken, and that the ugly afterthought is true. But it is the cynical afterthought that is ever false. It comes from the world. 

The idealism comes from above, and is a vision of permanent beauty. Browning sounds the depth of a great truth when he declares that "tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man would do!"

Much as one may fail, if the ideal be kept in sight, he shall reach at last the goal of eternal beauty. No man's performance is good enough to reveal the full measure of his soul. "His reach exceeds his grasp."

Yet it would leave the thought incomplete to suggest that the ideal is independent of the reality, in the sense that one may think on a high plane, and live at a low level, with consistency. The ideal is independent of circumstances only in the sense that it comes from above, and not from below; it does not arise out of circumstances. The relation of the ideal to life arises out of the fact that the ideal, once revealed, transfigures life. Every great ideal is a Transfiguration. As the Galilean carpenter was seen to glitter with the glory of the Son of God on the Mount of the Transfiguration, so all life reveals inner splendors in the light of idealism. Startling magnificences appear in common life that is touched with the flame of great ideals.

Raphael revealed this truth when he painted his last great work — the picture of the Transfiguration that hangs in the Vatican gallery. Into this picture he put all his experience of art and life. And the strange thing is that he seems deliberately and intentionally to have violated a canon of art in order to convey his final message to the world. For he divided the interest of his composition by introducing two different spheres of action upon a single canvas. In painting the Transfiguration, he added the view of what succeeded the Transfiguration. 

He remembered that the mystic idealism of the scene upon the mountain was immediately followed, when Jesus and His disciples descended, by the appeal of practical life in the valley, where the demonized boy, jostled by the throng, appealed for help. And so this great picture represents not merely the Transfiguration, the beauty of the ideal, but the transfiguration of common life in the valley by the light of the splendor revealed upon the mountain. We are trying too much to interpret life from below, in terms of economic and material problems. For, without underrating the importance of such concerns, the true interpretation of life must be from above. Jesus Christ did more than to divert attention from this world to another. He interpreted the life of this world by viewing it from above, and showing it transfigured in the light of His revelation.

God has put into your soul the vision of an ideal. It is for you to keep it unsullied. And because the contacts of the world would mar it, He has given you at His altar an eternal tabernacle, in which the Most Holy dwells in Sacramental Mystery. Here you are to come continually to renew the ideal, and to carry out into life the vision of the King in His beauty.

The Difficult Task of Moral Perfection

John 6:24-35

They asked of Jesus, “What must we do to be doing the Works of God?”  

This is an admirable question indeed! Many an earnest and conscientious individual has asked this same question seeking to live a life of virtue that is pleasing and honoring to God. If we are Christians, we have no doubt admitted the excellence of the example of Christ and his Saints and see them as worthy of imitation.  In fact, most all of us—whether we are Christians or not--desire, at least in principle, to live a moral life. It is the rare soul who is self-consciously devoted to wickedness. And yet despite these good intentions, we all Sin. We find that even our good intentions fail to be completely pure, but are continually dashed upon the rocks of pride and self-seeking.

Many of you may have read the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin during your school days. In it he recounts how one day—while attending Divine services—he was inspired by a reading from the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. He writes, “It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection…As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other.” 

After much consideration, he came up with a list of twelve virtues, which he believed, if mastered, would lead him to his goal. He determined to work on each, one at a time, and even kept a log of his progress in his diary. This is the list he came up with,

1. “Temperence: Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation.”

2. “Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.”
3. “Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.”
4. “Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.”
5. “Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”
6. “Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.”
7. “Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.”
8. “Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”
9. “Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
10. “Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.”
11. “Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.”
12. “Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring — never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”

How did he do? As you can imagine, he found himself frustrated and disappointed in his attempt. He tells us, “I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined.” Although he had some success in white knuckling it while focusing on one particular virtue he writes, “While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another.” The experience was an illuminating one. He found, to his surprise, that he was in fact much fuller of faults than he had ever expected.

Moreover even his successes seemed only to aggravate his fault because he found that he became puffed up with pride. His superior attitude was gently pointed out to him by a Quaker friend which led him to add a 13^th virtue to his list of twelve: Humility.

Franklin’s story is instructive. It is a difficult thing to be doing the works of God, because we are fuller of faults than we at first might suspect. Even if we somehow manage to be externally blameless in our conduct, it is our hearts that trip us up in the end, which is where number thirteen on Franklin’s list comes in.  We can do all the right things, but be proud in our hearts. Jesus’ message to the morally scrupulous of his time was, “You are like white-washed tombs, scrubbed clean on the outside, but inside full of dead men’s bones.”

This is why Jesus responds to the question, “what must we do to be doing the works of God,” not with a list of virtuous actions—or even Ten Commandments for that matter—but with the simple statement, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

This seems somewhat counter intuitive. At this point many people may think, “Isn’t how we live our lives, how we treat other people, so much more important than what we say we believe?” There is truth in that which is why I don’t think Jesus is talking about merely what we profess with our mouths. The fact is that our actions say more about what we really believes than our words. Our actions are always an expression of what we really love, what we have put our faith and trust in.

Jesus is saying that the more we put our trust in him the more we will show fourth the works of God in our lives. This is a power that bubbles up from within, rather than a list of requirements that is laid on us from the outside. What the law was powerless to accomplish because of the weakness of our sinful nature, Jesus is able to do through his power working in us.

Jesus is more than just a lawgiver, he is the bread of life! It wasn’t Moses who gave us this bread. Moses gave us the law, which although a good and holy thing, is unable to do anything but reveal to us the depth of our fault. Jesus is the bread that comes down from heaven. He gives life to the world.

The Work of God—the one work that is necessary—Faith—is like eating.

When people are perishing they need more than a pep talk, they need food! Think about the act of eating for a minute. When we eat or drink, we take the nutrients and virtues of that food or drink and make it our own. We make it part of us. We absorb its power so that we can live. Well Christ gives us his own flesh and blood as food and drink. In consuming him, we are united with him and his righteousness becomes ours. His divine power becomes the source of life for us. Just as death was unable to keep his body in the tomb, so our sin is unable to resist the strength of his indestructible life. 

What is it that we put our faith and trust in really? What is it that we are striving for? Are we working for that one who can give us real and eternal life or have we contented ourselves with something far less? Too often we are satisfied with the mere appearance of virtue rather than true interior righteousness. We are more concerned with the opinions of other people and their estimation of us than we are God’s judgement. 

The praise of human beings is a fleeting thing. One need only look at the celebrity tabloids. One day someone is on top of the world, the next they are vilified or a laughing stock. Those who seek the world’s praise have their reward, and what a fleeting thing it is. What is fifteen minutes of fame compared to an eternity of God’s glory? That glory—the love and praise of God—is ours in Christ.

The best thing about the Love of God is that it is free. There is nothing we need to do to earn it. We need only believe that he sent his Son for our salvation. Oh Lord, give us this bread always!

THE ROMANCE OF MODERN LIFE.

A Sermon by Ralph Birdsall former rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Cooperstown, NY. originally published in his book Sermons in Summer. 

There sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep; and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. — Acts xx, 9.

Here is given a brief but vivid glimpse of a service of the primitive Church. Little of the pomp and ceremony of later ecclesiastical life appears. It is not amid the dim aisles of some imposing cathedral that the Christians of Troas gather to celebrate the Sacred Mysteries and to hear the word of God from the lips of S. Paul, greatest of missionary apostles.

The hoary ruins of the city of Troas show how much its architectural magnificence was built upon other than Christian foundations. Fragments of colossal masonry that belonged to baths and theatres still loom from the site of Troas over the Aegean sea, and the waves of the ocean for a thousand years have sported there amid granite columns torn from the vast arches of ruined temples. These memorials of ancient splendor serve to throw into relief the humble simplicity of the shrines of primitive Christianity.

In the midst of this city of palaces and temples the Christian disciples are huddled together in the upper room, probably of some private dwelling. The ship which is to carry S. Paul to Jerusalem rocks in the harbor. The prospect of his departure has brought every Christian in Troas to the place of meeting, to receive Holy Communion at his hands and to hear his final words. The night is dark, for three weeks have not elapsed since the Pass over feast, when the moon was full. The atmosphere of the upper room is hot and stifling. There is added to the intense heat of the evening not only the sweltering of the crowd that chokes the entrances and windows, but the reeking of many lights that are set about for illumination and ceremonial use.

Every preacher who has attempted to ad dress a congregation on a hot summer day, and every member of a congregation who has attempted to listen under such conditions, can realize that there is no sort of ordinary discomfort which renders more difficult the effort of commanding or giving sustained attention. S. Paul is preaching earnestly, and, in the fervor of his enthusiasm, thinks not of heat, or discomfort, or the lateness of the hour, or of the length of his discourse. Many preachers prolong their sermons beyond what they intend, partly because it is easier to expand one's thoughts than to state them concisely, but chiefly because time passes with such incredible swiftness to one who speaks of what interests himself. As the seven years which Jacob served for Rachel seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her, so the discourse which sometimes wearies the congregation by its prolixity seems to the preacher to occupy but a few moments, because of the love he has for his subject.

It is fair to assume, however, that S. Paul holds the close attention of his congregation, with the single exception of this young man named Eutychus, who sits in a window where the lattice, overlooking the courtyard, is open for air. There is a descriptive exactness in the tense of the Greek verbs in the narrative that brings this young man vividly before us. As S. Paul continues long in preaching, the young man's head begins to droop, the words of the sermon grow indistinct and drowsy, his body relaxes, his head sinks low upon his breast ; — suddenly he lurches and falls head long from the window into the courtyard be low. The congregation is thrown into confusion. Some rush down the outer stairs into the courtyard. Eutychus lies there, apparently killed by the fall. But S. Paul hastens to the spot, flings aside the crowd, throws his arms about the young man, and cries, "Trouble not yourselves. For his life is in him!"

There is perhaps no person mentioned in the New Testament who has so singular a claim for distinction as Eutychus, since the one thing we learn of him is that he went to sleep while S. Paul was preaching. Judas was a traitor, and Ananias was a liar, and Stephen was a hero, and Peter was a prince of apostles. Such claims to fame and infamy are comprehensible. But the name of this man is preserved for nearly two thousand years, who went to hear S. Paul, and in the discourse of one of the most flaming and dominant personalities of all human history was so little interested that he fell asleep. S. Paul was a man who universally stirred either the most intense devotion, or the most implacable hostility. The jailer who imprisoned S. Paul at Philippi heard him speak, and fell at his feet a suppliant ; the people at Lystra heard him speak, and brought oxen and garlands to do sacrifice unto him, believing him to be one of the gods ; Felix the governor heard him speak, and trembled upon his throne; the mob at Jerusalem heard him speak, and cast off their clothes, threw dust in the air, and cried, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live!” Nero heard him speak, and had him put to death by the sword.

But Eutychus heard him speak, and went fast asleep. Eutychus was a man whose purpose and profession were Christian, else he would not have been attracted by that gathering of Christians in Troas. But he was lacking in Christian enthusiasm, else he could not have fallen asleep, despite adverse conditions, while listening to the foremost Christian hero of his time. He stands as a type of conven tional Christian, who if he does little evil, does very little good. He is unenthusiastic, lukewarm. He is a Laodicean. Dante discovers such a type in his Inferno :

This miserable measure the wretched souls maintain, Of those who lived apart from infamy or praise; Mingled are they with that caitiff choir of angels, Who were not rebels, nor holding faith to God, But lived all for themselves. To be not less glorious, the heavens chased them out, Nor doth the depth of Hell receive such shades Because the damned would have some glory from them.

As we look back through the vista of centuries to the conquests of S. Paul and his companions, they appear among the most romantic exploits of Christian heroism. But we can perhaps realize, in recalling the actual scene at Troas, that to a man like Eutychus the whole thing was most unromantic. A hot, upper room crowded with perspiring people, and a converted Pharisee talking for hours about the conquest of the world! Where was the romance in that?

As Eutychus looked at the things of his day, so, perhaps, we are tempted to look at ours. The romance is always of yesterday.

Today lacks the picturesque touch that stirs enthusiasms, and high resolves, and noble sacrifices. When you stand in a gallery of old portraits — knights in armor, ladies bedizened in head-dresses of long ago — the romantic spirit is stirred within you, and you muse fondly of the part in life that these men and women played amid the pleasing quaintness’s of antiquity. How rich was their life in the poetry and adventure that inflame enthusiasms and make it glorious to be alive! Yet, if such portraits could speak, they would say to us: "Our life appears to you antique; to us it was modern: to you it is full of poetry; to us it was practical: to you it is romantic; to us it was commonplace: some of the bitter problems of your day had their origin through our failure to recognize the interest and importance of forces that developed before our very eyes.”

So it may be, perhaps, that a future generation will marvel at us, that we have not recognized the romance of our everyday surroundings, that we have not addressed our selves with more enthusiasm to the problems that loom in the foreground of our daily life. We shall appear, perhaps, as Eutychus, who went to sleep while a spirit was abroad that was about to change the current of history and to alter the face of the world. We need to develop a kind of idealism which refuses to assign different spheres to romance and to modern interests, but recognizes that just so far as modern life is creating a new world, and is tireless and venture some and unconquerable, it is permeated with the spirit of romance.

It was a son of this Church and parish who first revealed the romantic possibilities of American life. James Fenimore Cooper was the first of men to perceive that the pioneer life in America was as full of romance as the exploits of the ancient Greeks of which Homer sang, or the adventures of armored knights, who made the Middle Ages glorious with spears and banners and minstrelsy. To the common view nothing was more sordid than the rude life of our American forefathers, with its dirty log cabins, its squalid tasks, and its contact, hostile and friendly, with filthy savages. But Cooper touched this life with a magic that transfigured it, and revealed its splendor. All the world recognized that in his works of fiction a new truth had been disclosed. His tales were translated into the languages of Europe, and Cooper has won historic fame as the discoverer of American romance.

Romance is always a discovery. It is the mission of the greatest poets to reveal to us the power of romance, not in the dead past, but in the things that be. What Cooper did for the pioneers, Rudyard Kipling has done with even greater artistry, for modern life. He has shown us that steam-engines are romantic, and whirring dynamos, and thundering locomotives. What can compare with the romance of the bridge-building which Kipling describes, and tunneling, and track-laying, and the grappling of engineers with problems so intricate that brawny men break down and sob like children in their solution! It is important to the maintenance of idealism in modern life that the romantic spirit be preserved, with its elements of courage and chivalry, and its demand upon the self-sacrifice of the individual to the triumph of great and sacred causes. War, as Prof. James once said, is the romance of history, and since war is a gradually diminishing force in civilized life, there perish also the heroic qualities which war develops in mankind unless we can somehow discover them anew in the pursuits of peace.

The great heresy of modern life is the belief that success means the success of the individual. The one thing too commonly assumed is that you cannot expect a man actually to risk his promotion or prosperity out of devotion to a mere ideal. Such is not the spirit of romanticism. It is as if there should be a fair maiden chained in yonder castle, and here an armored knight who says, "There is an exceeding fierce dragon in the castle keep, and while I would fain rescue the maiden, it would too greatly endanger my life." Or here is a soldier upon the battle field who says, "Captain, I would have captured the flag, as you commanded, but some of the enemy with loaded guns were there, and I feared that I should risk my skin!” Truly we should re-write all our romances to discover such sentiments as these!

Yet do we not hear exactly the same thing in the life of today? Here is a business man who declares that the whole modern system is rotten, "but," he says, "while I should like to keep my hands clean, if I don't pay graft and resort to sharp methods like the rest, I shall surely fail." The knight and the dragon! Here is a politician who says, "It is all very well to talk about righteousness in politics, and I am for it, but if I don't agree to certain unpleasant things and close my eyes to certain other things, there are influences that will put an end to my political career." The soldier and the flag! Here is a minister of the Gospel who says, or perhaps only whispers to himself, "I ought to be a pastor of the poor, but if I don't please certain people I can't get the money to run the church." Christ and Satan on the mountain top!

This is the tragedy of modern enterprise, with each man assuming that you cannot possibly expect him to fail, if he must, for the sake of some nobler triumph, each assert ing that he, poor, pygmy individual, must win his little personal success in the vast on ward and upward movement of the ages! As battles are won, and truths are vindicated, and nations are glorified, through the blood of the men who risk all upon the issue, so the religious, and civic, and commercial, and industrial life of today waits for men who are willing to go down into the dark of failure for the establishment of principles more important and lasting than their own success. Every man who fails in public life merely because of his honesty makes it a little more difficult for the next man to succeed by means of dishonesty. Every man who fails in business merely because of his incorruptibility hastens the day when none shall dare succeed by corrupt methods. The fame of such failures would ultimately compass the ruin of dishonorable success. The story of such failures would be incomparably more brilliant in splendid recklessness and courage than all the annals of knightly chivalry, or pioneer bravery, or military conquest. To carry such failures to their logical conclusion would be to write the most thrilling chapter in the romance of humankind.

The greatest of all romances is found in the eternal truth of the Christian religion, which shows the God of the Universe Him self entering the lists for the glory of His Kingdom and the salvation of the world. Nothing that the romantic imagination can conceive is so wonderful as the truth of the sacrifice of the Son of God upon the Cross, and the splendor of that shameful death. If we have not been fully alive until now to the claims of Christian privilege, let us pray that some genuine apostolic fervor may awaken us, as S. Paul raised Eutychus to life, to seize the possibilities of romantic adventure in the Church, and in our home, and in our vocation.

Above: James Fenimore Cooper 

Marriage is a Dangerous Business

A homily preached at the wedding of Adam and Carly Wassel.

Song of Solomon 2:10-13; 8:6-7

Marriage is a dangerous business.

Love—the kind of love that causes a person to make the reckless choice of signing the rest of one’s life away to the service of another person—isn’t all cooing doves and sweet smelling flowers. Oh it starts out that way, but be on guard! Its dangerous stuff. The author of the Song of Songs—from which our Old Testament lesson comes—describes love with language almost sinister:  Its jealousy is unyielding as the grave! It blazes like a mighty fire! 

In a more contemporary example, June Carter described the experience of falling in love with her husband Johnny Cash this way:

I fell into a burning ring of fire,

I went down, down, down as the flames went higher

 And it burns, burns, burns

It is no wonder that the repeated refrain of the Song of Songs is, “O Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you, do not stir up or awaken love before its time!” Love is not easily extinguished, “many waters cannot quench love,” it is a force that can drive a person to leave house and home, to give everything they have to possess the object of their desire and affection. 

Love is like plutonium. It has explosive power and must be handled with respect, and approached with caution.

It is with this blazing fire, what we call falling in love that marriage begins, but marriage is about more than fireworks . It requires that we go deeper beyond the initial excitement. The experience of falling in love can turn many a person into a pyro maniac. They are forever chasing that rush of euphoria and the dazzling flame. If we play with fire, however, we can easily burn our house to the ground and turn our life to ashes.

No, the initial conflagration of love, is not meant to go on indefinitely. It is foolish to expect that it should. Who could bear to be in that intoxicating agony for even five years let alone a lifetime? How could we possibly carry on with the ordinary business of life in such a state? The wildfire of early courtship becomes the kindling flame of the hearth.

Falling in love is a kind of temporary insanity that causes us to let our guard down long enough to get sucked into a commitment we would probably never make sober minded. Why? Because love—the kind of love that emerges after the fireworks have quieted down—is incredibly difficult.

This is not so much the fire of ecstasy as it is the caldron of purification. The state of marriage, in which two people make vows to love one another for the rest of their lives, is an ascetical discipline designed to make us holy.

We have all heard of monastics who take vows of celibacy in the pursuit of holiness. The vows of marriage are no less demanding. The home and family will be your monastery.

In the Christian faith, we believe that marriage is a sacrament. If you can remember your days of Sunday school or CCD, a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. So for instance in the sacrament of baptism the water represents the cleansing power of the death and resurrection of Christ to rid us of the stain of sin. In the Eucharist, the bread and wine represent the Body of Christ broken and his blood poured out for our salvation. 

The outward and visible sign of marriage is your spouse. According to Saint Paul, the union of man and woman in the bonds of holy matrimony, is a profound mystery that is meant to represent the love of Christ for his people. 

What this boils down to is that loving your spouse means taking up your cross and following Christ. Marriage is a relationship so intimate and up close that there is no place to hide our deepest sin. Your spouse will be like a mirror in which your own frailty and brokenness will be revealed. You must see these faults as the biggest obstacle to the flourishing of your relationship and never give in to the perpetual temptation to resent your spouse for revealing to you your weakness. Instead you must daily make the choice to put to death this darkness in yourself, and lay down your life for the good of your beloved.

 

In order to love your spouse you need to constantly practice grace and forgiveness. You must always look beyond your partner’s sin to the person that they can become by God’s grace.  To paraphrase Goethe, if you treat your partner as they are, they will stay the way they are. But if you treat them as they ought to be and could be, they will become a bigger and better person. 

In your desire to be a true and faithful spouse, you can no better than to look to Christ, who being in the very form of God emptied himself and took the form of a servant, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, who loved us while we were yet sinners and died for us to present us to himself as radiant, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Adam, Carly, love one another as he has loved us.