The New Zealand Tablet WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1925. CHRISTIAN MORAL TEACHING

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 27, 22 July 1925, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1925. CHRISTIAN MORAL TEACHING

BY Christian moral teaching we mean, of J course, the doctrine of Christ which • ~ . is preserved pure and intact by the "’.Church which lie founded on earth and to • • which He guaranteed immunity from error • where faith and morals are concerned. Even atheists, when they were honest and learned, confessed that there was nothing more noble, more wonderful, more inspiring and (derating than Christ’s teaching. Renan declared that it is “the most beautiful moral teaching which humanity has received. . . Each one , of ns owes to it what is best in him. The Sermon on the Mount cannot be surpassed.” And Strauss said that “the moral teaching of Christ is the foundation of human civilisation.” The stamp of divinity is upon it. It could never have been conceived by man, and it has survived all the attacks launched against it by the mind of man during nineteen hundred years.

There is no limit to the perfection that may be attained by a devout and sincere . man or woman who tries to work out Christ’s law. The cardinal principle is this: “lie ye perfect, as also your heavenly. Father is - perfect.” Christ points to God, the Allperfect, the Almighty, the All-holy, and tells us that we are to strive even to be perfect as He is perfect. Hence only the limited potentiality of created nature sets any bounds to the sanctity and goodness that i may be reached by a follower of Christ. To .■c • • o make perfection easier for us He became . man, taking to Himself a human nature > like ours. Ho thus elevated and ennobled humanity and set us in His own person an example that we were to follow as far as • ; »ii A ~ - - , • • with , God’s grace was possible for us: “For - _ v ■ -. . - , ■ , • , I * have given ■ you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also.” Every

. ~ ■ . , ■ ■ ; V■- ■■ h,- ■.- -M- : , Christian is called on to be, as Tertullian’s vivid phrase : has : it, another Christ alter Christas. And to become this we must be able to say with St. Paul: “I live, now not • I, but Christ liveth in me.” We remember that in His re well, speech, before His Passion, Christ told His Apostles that -love was . f# ■ • ■ - x to be tho character of their lives, and that, it was by love He would have His own known in the world. “By this- sign shall it be known that ye are My disciples, that ye have love for one another.” And it is;by love He would have us attain to the perfection which He enjoins on us. The Commandments are the ladder of perfection: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the Commandments.” Now He Himself has reduced all the Commandments to the one law of, love which has a twofold function: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and v/ith thy whole soul . . . and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He came to kindle the fire of love on earth, thereby to convert into a heaven the world which human pas.si oris had turned into a. hell. * Out of love He died for us; out of love He remains with ■ us in the Blessed Sacrament; out of love He pleads for our love through His Sacred Heart. Stronger than death is His love whose fire many waters cannot . quench greater than even the love of a mother for her infant. And thus out of love He warns us of the consequences of failing to love, and makes Hell itself serve as an evidence ol Hjs love. Dante was right when he wrote over the gate of the Inferno Femur L'Kfnna. Pvtestade, La Snmma Snpicnza , I'd it Prim o Amo re. ■■\ . ' For love as well as wisdom and power went to the making-of. the, place of torment which burns luridly to remind sinners how terrible a thing it is to lose the love of God, which is the grace of Christ. Grace the love of Cod \ es, for He tells us that He and the - Father will make their dwelling in the man who loves Him, and God dwells in man by His grace or love; for grace means love or favor as the etymology of the word tells us, whether we derive it from gratia or from the old Irish root gradh. 9 Be ye perfect! That is the watchword of / Christion morality; it is the beacon that guided the saints through life and it ought to guide us a it guided them. ‘But, you will protest, “How-can-ire be perfect—we are, so weak, so : prone to evil, so selfish?” God never meant us to depend on ourselves, and ,as sure iaswodo we shall fail. He gives us Himself in the Blessed Eucharist ; He gives us His graces; sacramental i graces,, habitual graces,-I actual : graces, graces of state—all designed by Him to help us- to be perfect. And these graces are ours if we only ask for them, if we pray for. them, and above all if we go to the Sacraments for them. He gave us also the Communion of Saints, whereby through Indulgences we may gain /extraordinary helps; whereby through the intercession- of our own friends, of the souls for whom we pray, and of the saints and angels, ] i , • . ’ i - - J we may obtain supernatural. aids to enable , i us to succeed in our strife f ter perfect ion. ’ 1 He who clothed Himself with humanity i ' ’ ■ •■■■ ■

knew its weakness, and He knows what two* want to aid us and He will give it to us as surely as He exhorts and commands us to follow Him and to become like Him. We might discuss at -'great' length the , sublime doctrines of Christian morality, but what we have said hero is enough to lay bare to us -.. .■ - i '- : / ■ , . , Mats* its secret and to reveal to us the path we } .must 'j follow if we. want to be worthy of the Church. ' V