Explanation of Catholic Morals Part 14

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE DAY OF REST.

THE third article of the Mosaic Code not only enunciates the law of rest, but says just how much time shall be given to its observance; it prescribes neither a week nor a few hours, but one day in seven. If you have a taste for such things and look well, you will find several reasons put forth as justifying this special designation of one day in seven. The number seven the Jews regarded as a sacred number; the Romans, as the symbol of perfection. Students of antiquity have discovered that among nearly all peoples this number in some way or other refers to the Deity. Science finds that nature prefers this number; light under a.n.a.lysis reveals seven colors, and all colors refer to the seven orders of the solar spectrum; the human voice has seven tones that const.i.tute the scale of sound; the human body is renewed every seven years. Authorities on hygiene and physiology teach that one day in six is too much, one day in eight is too little, but that one day in seven is sufficient and necessary for the physical needs of man.

These considerations may or may not carry conviction to the average mind. On the face of it, they confirm rather than prove. They do not reveal the necessity of a day of rest so much as show its reasonableness and how it harmonizes with nature in its periodicity, its symmetry and its exact proportion to the strength of man. As for real substantial reasons, there is but one,--a good and sufficient,-- and that is the positive will of G.o.d. He said: keep this day holy; such is His command; no man should need a better reason.

The G.o.d-given law of Moses says Sat.u.r.day, Christians say Sunday.

Protestants and Catholics alike say Sunday, and Sunday it is. But this is not a trifling change; it calls for an explanation. Why was it made?

What is there to justify it? On what authority was it done? Can the will of G.o.d, unmistakably manifested, be thus disregarded and put aside by His creatures? This is a serious question.

One of the most interesting things in the world would be to hear a Protestant Christian, on Protestant grounds, justify his observance of the Sunday instead of the Sabbath, and give reasons for his conduct.

"Search the Scriptures." Aye, search from Genesis to Revelations, the Mosaic prescriptions will hold good in spite of all your researches.

Instead of justification you will find condemnation. "The Bible, the Bible alone" theory hardly fits in here. Are Papists the only ones to add to the holy writings, or to go counter to them? Suppose this change cannot be justified on Scriptural grounds, what then? And the fact is, it cannot.

It is hardly satisfactory to remark that this is a disciplinary injunction, and Christ abrogated the Jewish ceremonial. But if it is nothing more than this, how came it to get on the table of the Law? Its embodiment in the Decalogue makes it somewhat different from all other ceremonial prescriptions; as it stands, it is on a par with the veto to kill or to steal. Christ abolished the purely Jewish law, but he left the Decalogue intact.

Christ rose from the dead on Sunday, 'tis true; but nowhere in writing can it be found that His resurrection on that day meant a change in the Third Commandment. In the nature of the event, there is absolutely no relation between it and the observance of Sunday.

Where will our friend find a loop-hole to escape? Oh! as usual, for the Sunday as for the Bible, he will have to fall back on the old Church.

What in the world could he do without her? He will find there an authority, and he is obliged to recognize it, even if he does on ordinary occasions declaim against and condemn it. Incidentally, if his eyes are open, he will discover that his individually interpreted Bible has failed most woefully to do its work; it condemns the Protestant Sunday.

This day was changed on the sole authority of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, as the representative of G.o.d on earth, to whose keeping was confided the interpretation of G.o.d's word, and in whose bosom is found that other criterion of truth, called tradition. Tradition it is that justifies the change she made. Deny this, and there is no justification possible, and you must go back to the Mosaic Sabbath. Admit it, and if you are a Protestant you will find yourself in somewhat of a mess.

A logical Protestant must be a very uneasy being. If the Church is right in this, why should she not be right in defining the Immaculate Conception? And if she errs here, what a.s.surance is there that she does not err there? How can he say she is right on one occasion, and wrong on another? What kind of nonsense is it that makes her truthful or erring according to one's fancy and taste? Truly, the reformer blundered when he did not treat the Sunday as he treated the Pope and all Church authority, for it is papistical to a degree.

CHAPTER L.

KEEPING THE LORD'S DAY HOLY.

THE Third Commandment bids us sanctify the Lord's day; but in what that sanctification shall consist, it does not say. It is certain, however, that it is only by wors.h.i.+p, of one kind or another, that the day can be properly kept holy to the Lord; and since interior wors.h.i.+p is prescribed by the First Commandment, exterior and public wors.h.i.+p must be what is called for. Then, there are many modes of wors.h.i.+p; there is no end to the means man may devise of offering homage to the Creator.

The first element of wors.h.i.+p is abstention from profane labor; rest is the first condition of keeping the Sabbath. The word Sabbath itself means cessation of work. You cannot do two things at the same time, you cannot serve G.o.d and Mammon. Our everyday occupations are not, of their nature, a public homage of fidelity to G.o.d. If any homage is to be offered, as a preliminary, work must cease. This interruption of the ordinary business of life alone makes it possible to enter seriously into the more important business of G.o.d's service, and in this sense it is a negative wors.h.i.+p.

Yet, there is also something positive about it, for the simple fact of desisting from toil contains an element of direct homage. Six days are ours for ourselves. What accrues from our activity on those days is our profit. To G.o.d we sacrifice one day and all it might bring to us, we pay to Him a t.i.the of our time, labor and earnings. By directing aright our intentions, therefore, our rest a.s.sumes the higher dignity of explicit, emphatic religion and reverence, and in a fuller manner sanctifies the day that is the Lord's.

We should, however, guard ourselves against the mistaken notion that sloth and idleness are synonymous of rest. It is not all activity, but the ordinary activity of common life, that is forbidden. It were a sacrilegious mockery to make G.o.d the author of a law that fosters laziness and favors the sluggard. Another extreme that common sense condemns is that the physical man should suffer martyrdom while the soul thus communes with G.o.d, that promenades and recreation should be abolished, and social amenities ignored, that dryness, gloom, moroseness and severity are the proper conditions of Sabbatical observance.

In this respect, our Puritan ancestors were the true children of Pharisaism, and their Blue Laws more properly belong in the Talmud than in the Const.i.tution of an American Commonwealth. G.o.d loves a cheerful giver, and would you not judge from appearances that religion was painful to these pious witch-burners and everything for G.o.d most grudgingly done? Sighs, grimaces, groans and wails, this is the homage the devils in h.e.l.l offer to the justice of G.o.d; there is no more place for them in the religion of earth than in the religion of heaven.

Correlative with the obligation of rest is that of purely positive wors.h.i.+p, and here is the difficulty of deciding just what is the correct thing in religious wors.h.i.+p. The Jews had their inst.i.tutions, but Christ abolished them. The Pagans had their way--sacrifice; Protestants have their preaching and hymn-singing. Catholics offer a Sacrifice, too, but an unb.l.o.o.d.y one. Later on, we shall hear the Church speak out on the subject. She exercised the right to change the day itself; she claims naturally the right to say how it should be observed, because the day belongs to her. And she will impose upon her children the obligation to attend ma.s.s. But here the precepts of the Church are out of the question.

The obligation, however, to partic.i.p.ate in some act of wors.h.i.+p is plain. The First Commandment charges every man to offer an exterior homage of one kind or another, at some time or another. The Third sets aside a day for the wors.h.i.+p of the Divinity. Thus the general command of the first precept is specified. This is the time, or there is no time. With the Third Commandment before him, man cannot arbitrarily choose for himself the time for his wors.h.i.+p, he must do it on Sunday.

Public wors.h.i.+p being established in all Christian communities, every Christian who cannot improve upon what is offered and who is convinced that a certain mode of wors.h.i.+p is the best and true, is bound by the law to partic.i.p.ate therein. The obligation may be greater if he ignores the principles of religion and cannot get information and instruction outside the temple of religion. For Catholics, there is only one true mode of public wors.h.i.+p, and that is the Sacrifice of the Ma.s.s. No layman is sufficient unto himself to provide such an act of religion.

He has, therefore, no choice, he must a.s.sist at that sacrifice if he would fulfil the obligation he is under of Sunday wors.h.i.+p.

CHAPTER LI.

WORs.h.i.+P OF SACRIFICE.

WE Catholics contend, and our contention is based on a law of nature that we glean from the history of man, that sacrifice is the soul of religion, that there never was a universally and permanently accepted religion--and that there cannot be any such religion--without an altar, a victim, a priest, and a sacrifice. We claim that reason and experience would bear us out in this contention, even without the example and teaching and express commands of Jesus Christ, who, in founding a new and the only true religion, Himself offered sacrifice and left a sacrifice to be perpetually offered in His religion; and that sacrifice const.i.tutes the high wors.h.i.+p we owe to the Creator.

It is our conviction that, when man came into the presence of the Almighty, his first impulse was to speak to Him, and his first word was an act of adoration. But human language is a feeble medium of communication with the Almighty. Man talks to man. To talk with G.o.d, he sought out another language; and, as in the case of Adam's sons, he discovered in sacrifice a better and stronger mode of expressing his religious feelings. He therefore offered sacrifice, and sacrifice became the language of man in his relations with the Deity.

In its simplest definition, sacrifice is the offering to G.o.d of a victim, by one authorized for that task. It supposes essentially the destruction of the victim; and the act is an eloquent acknowledgment, in language that is as plain as it possibly can be made, that G.o.d is the supreme Lord of life and death, that all things that exist come from Him, and revert to Him as to their natural end.

The philosophy of sacrifice is that man, in some manner or other, had incurred the wrath of the Almighty. The pagan could not tell hi just what his offense consisted; but there is nothing plainer than the fact that he considered himself under the ban of G.o.d's displeasure, and that sin had something to do with it; and he feared the Deity accordingly.

We know that original sin was the curse under which he labored.

Whatever the offense was, it was in the flesh, the result of weakness rather than malice. There was something in his nature that inclined to evil and was responsible for sin. The better part tried to serve, but the inferior man revolted. Flesh, therefore, was wicked and sinful; and since all offense must be atoned for, the flesh should pay the penalty of evil. The wrath of G.o.d could be appeased, and sacrifice was the thing that could do it.

Another thing most remarkable among those who wors.h.i.+ped by sacrifice in the early times, is that they believed firmly in the reversibility of merit, that is, that the innocent could atone for the wicked. Somehow, they acquired the notion that stainless victims were more agreeable to G.o.d than others. G.o.d sanctioned this belief among the Jews, and most strikingly on the hill of Calvary.

This being the case, man being guilty and not having the right to inflict the supreme penalty upon himself, the natural thing to do was to subst.i.tute a victim for himself, to put the flesh of another in the place of his own and to visit upon it the punishment that was due to himself. And he offered to G.o.d this vicarious atonement. His action spoke in this wise: "My G.o.d, I am a sinner and deserve Thy wrath. But look upon this victim as though it were myself. My sins and offenses I lay upon its shoulders, this knife shall be the bolt of Thy vengeance, and it shall make atonement in blood." This is the language of sacrifice. As we have said, it supposes the necessity of atonement and belief in the reversibility of merit.

Now, if we find in history, as we certainly do find,--that all peoples offered sacrifice of this kind, we do not think we would be far from the truth if we deduced therefrom a law of nature; and if it is a law of nature, it is a law of G.o.d. If there is no religion of antiquity that did not offer sacrifice, then it would seem that the Almighty had traced a path along which man naturally trod and which his natural instinct showed him.

We believe in the axiom of St. Augustine: "securus judicet orbis terrarum, a universally accepted judgment can be safely followed."

Especially do we feel secure with the history of the chosen people of G.o.d before us arid its sacrifice ordained by the law; with the sanction of Christ's sacrifice in our mind, and the practice of the divinely inspired Church which makes sacrifice the soul of her wors.h.i.+p.

The victim we have is Jesus Christ Himself, and none other than He. He gave us His flesh and blood to consume, with the command to consume.

Our sacrifice, therefore, consists in the offering up of this Victim to G.o.d and the consuming of it. Upon the Victim of the altar, as upon the Victim of the Cross, we lay our sins and offenses, and, in one case as in the other, the sacred blood, in G.o.d's eyes, washes our iniquity away.

Of course, it requires faith to believe, but religion is nothing if it is not whole and entire a matter of faith. The less faith you have, the more you try to simplify matters. Waning faith began by eliminating authority and sacrifice and the unwritten word. Now the written word is going the same way. Pretty soon we shall hear of the Decalogue's being subjected to this same eliminating process. After all, when one gets started in that direction, what reason is there that he should ever stop!

CHAPTER LII.

WORs.h.i.+P OF REST.

PARTIc.i.p.aTION in public wors.h.i.+p is the positive obligation flowing from the Third Commandment; abstention from labor is what is negatively enjoined. Now, works differ as widely in their nature as differ in form and dimension the pebbles on the sea-sh.o.r.e. There are works of G.o.d and works of the devil, and works which, as regards spirituality, are totally indifferent, profane works, as distinguished from sacred and sinful works. And these latter may be corporal or intellectual or both.

Work or labor or toil, in itself, is a spending of energy, an exercise of activity; it covers a deal of ground. And since the law simply says to abstain from work, it falls to us to determine just what works are meant, for it is certain that all works, that is, all that come under the general head of work, do not profane the Lord's day.

The legislation of the Church, which is the custodian of the Sunday, on this head commends itself to all thoughtful men; while, for those who recognize the Church as the true one, that legislation is authority.

The Church distinguishes three kinds of profane works, that is, works that are neither sacred nor iniquitous of their nature. There is one kind which requires labor of the mind rather than of the body. These works tend directly to the culture or exercise of the mind, and are called liberal works, because under the Romans, freemen or "liberi"

almost exclusively were engaged therein. Such are reading, writing, studying, music, drawing--in general, mental occupations in whole, or more mental than corporal. These works the Church does not consider the law includes in its prohibition, and they are consequently not forbidden.

It is impossible here to enumerate all that enters into this cla.s.s of works; custom has something to say in determining what is liberal in our works; and in investigating, we must apply to each case the general principle. The labor in question may be gratuitous or well paid; it may cause fatigue or afford recreation: all this is not to the point. The question is, outside the danger of omitting divine service, scandal or circ.u.mstances that might lead to the annoyances and distraction of others--the question is: does this work call for exercise of the mind more than that of the body? If the answer is affirmative, then the work is liberal, and as such it is not forbidden on Sunday, it is not considered a profanation of the Lord's day.

On the other extreme are what go by the name of servile works, which call forth princ.i.p.ally bodily effort and tend directly to the advantage of the body. They are known also as works of manual labor. Before the days of Christianity, slaves alone were thus employed, and from the word "servi" or slaves these are called servile works.

Here again it is the nature of the work that makes it servile. It may be remunerative or not, recreative or not, fatiguing or not; it may be a regular occupation, or just taken up for the moment; it may be, outside cases of necessity, for the glory of G.o.d or for the good of the neighbor. If it is true that the body has more part therein than the mind, then it is a servile work and it is forbidden. Of course there are serious reasons that dispense us from our obligation to this law, but we are not talking about that just at present.

The reason of the proscription is, not that such works are evil, but that they interfere with the intention we should give to the wors.h.i.+p we owe to G.o.d, and that, without this cessation of labor, our bodily health would be impaired: these are the two motives of the law. But even if it happened, in an individual case, that these inconveniences were removed, that neither G.o.d's reverence nor one's own health suffered from such occupations as the law condemns, the obligation would still remain to abstain therefrom, for it is general and absolute, and when there is question of obeying a law, the subject has a right to examine the law, but not the motives of the law.