The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others | Page 7

first
restored to the Divine favour, and finally be taken to a happy eternity.
And inasmuch as he was to be redeemed by the sufferings of One who
was at once man and not man, He was in a certain sense to share those
sufferings, in order to partake in the blessings they purchased for him.
A mystic union was to take place between the Saviour and the fallen
race, of which a community in suffering, as the instrument of
restoration, was to be for ever and in every case established. This
anguish, further, was to be twofold, including all the faculties both of
the body and the soul. Man had sinned in his whole being; in his whole
being, therefore, he was to suffer, both in the person of his Redeemer,
who was to suffer for him, and in himself, who was to suffer with his
Saviour. A "holocaust" was to be offered to the offended Majesty of
God; an offering, not only of his entire nature, but a burnt offering; a
sacrifice which should torture him in the flames of Divine vengeance,
and kill him with its annihilating fierceness.
As, however, it pleased the Divine Wisdom to postpone for forty
centuries the advent and atonement of the Redeemer, so, for the same
period, the race redeemed participated, in a comparatively slight degree,
in those restorative sufferings which derived all their virtue from the
sacrifice upon the Cross. Pangs of body and bitterness of soul were, in
truth, the lot of man from the moment that Adam sinned; but they were
the pangs and bitterness of a criminal under punishment, far more than
the sacrificial pains of the members of Christ crucified. Asceticism

formed but a small portion of the religious worship of the people of
God, until the great atonement was completed upon Calvary. Not that
any degree, even the lowest, of acceptable obedience could ever be
attained without some measure of the crucifixion of the natural man.
Patriarchs and Israelites alike felt the power of the Cross as the
instrument of their sanctification. But still earthly prosperity, including
bodily pleasures, was, as a rule, the reward with which God
recompensed His faithful servants. That which became the rule under
the Gospel, was the exception from Adam till Moses, and from Moses
until Christ. Here and there some great example of Christian asceticism
enforced upon a sensual people the nature of perfect sanctity. Elias
fasted on Mount Carmel, and beheld the skirts of the glory of the Most
High. The Baptist fasted and tamed his natural flesh in the wilderness,
and beheld not only the Incarnate Son of God, but the descent of the
Eternal Spirit upon Him. Yet, for the most part, the favoured servants
of God lived the lives of ordinary men; they possessed houses, riches,
and honours; and married wives, even more than one.
At length the Cross was set up in all its awful power; suffering received
its perfect consecration, and took its ruling place in the economy of
man's redemption. Jesus, in descending from the Cross, bestowed that
Cross upon His children, to be their treasure until the end of the world.
Crucifixion with Him, and through Him, as their Head, became their
portion and their glory. Every soul that was so buried in His wounds as
to receive the full blessings of His sacrifice, was thereby nailed, in
Christ, to the Cross, not to descend from its hallowed wood until, like
Christ, it was dead thereon. Henceforth the sanctity of God's chosen
servants assumes its new character. It is no longer written, "I will bring
you into a land flowing with the milk and honey of this earth;" but,
"Blessed are the poor, and they that suffer persecution." The lot of
Abraham and of David is exchanged for that of St. Peter and St. Paul.
In place of triumph in war with the idolaters, the Christian is promised
persecution; in place of many herds and flocks, and treasures of gold,
God gives him poverty and sickness; the fast, the vigil, the scourge,
take place of the palaces of cedar and the luxuriant couch; marriage
gives way to celibacy; and long life is a privilege in order that in many
years we may suffer much, and not that we may enjoy much. Such is
the ordinary course of the Divine dealings with the soul since the Cross

received its full mysterious saving power.
And to the full as mysterious is the new character imprinted upon the
miraculous life of Christian sanctity. The phenomena of that new
existence, in which certain souls are brought into mystic communion
with the unseen world, bear the print of the wounds of the Eternal Son
in a manner which fills the ordinary Christian mind with amazement
and trembling. It is