THEOLOGY AND SANITY - by F. J. Sheed - Sheed & Ward London & New York. First published 1947 - by Sheed & Ward Ltd. 110-111 Fleet Street London, E.C.4 - & Sheed & Ward Inc 830 Broadway New York - 5th impression 1951. This edition prepared for katapi by Paul Ingram 2004.
WE have observed the modern tendency to ignore the Devil; there is a tendency almost as great to ignore the Apostles. And if the first ignoring leaves unexplained a most important element in the work Our Lord came to do, the second badly falsifies Our Lord's plan for the continuation of His work upon earth. At any rate it is clear that Our Lord attached an enormous importance to what He would do to the Devil and to what He would do through the Apostles. Our concern now is with the Apostles.
Consider what He said to them at the Last Supper, these men who were just about to desert Him almost in a body: I do not speak of you any more as My servants; a servant is one who does not understand what his master is about, whereas I have made known to you all that My Father has told Me; and so I have called you My friends. It was not you that chose Me, it was I that chose you. The task I have appointed you is to go out and bear fruit, fruit which will endure. (John xv.15-16.)
Clearly He was preparing them for some great thing, and clearly we shall not understand His plan for mankind unless we see their place in it.
In that plan for mankind there are many elements, but as His teaching proceeds two emerge as dominant. One is the coming of the Kingdom, the other the spiritual shaping of men's souls by the gifts of truth and life that He brings. Take the teaching on the Kingdom first. The angel who announced to Mary that she was to be His mother said of Him: His kingdom shall never have an end ; and it was on His claim to found a kingdom that the Jews framed the charge upon which Pilate sentenced Him to death. But Our Lord made it clear that His kingdom was not the kind of kingdom the Jews wanted, nor the kind of kingdom that Pilate would have thought worthy of drastic preventive action. The interchange between Our Lord and Pilate, indeed, is worth noting. Our Lord had said: My kingdom is not of this world ; Pilate asks: Thou art a king then? Our Lord answers: It is thy own lips that have called Me a king. What I was born for, what I came into the world for, is to bear witness of the truth.
Here as elsewhere we see that Our Lord's kingdom is bound up with the spiritual gifts He had come to bring. He was founding a kingdom in which those who believed in Him should receive truth and life.
Just as the Kingdom and the gifts were two sides of the one reality, so we find the thing for which He was preparing the Apostles stated sometimes in terms of the Kingdom and sometimes of the gifts. Thus at the last Supper Our Lord told them: I dispose to you as My Father has disposed to Me a kingdom. The key-words here are as My Father has disposed to Me.
We are all meant to enter the kingdom, but as citizens of the kingdom. Our Lord was set over the kingdom as ruler by His Father; and now we know that the Apostles are to be rulers in the kingdom, and not simply citizens. In that kingdom the ruler must be not only one who commands but one who serves: Christ serves supremely; but in their measure the Apostles like-wise must serve. His service we have already seen analysed as opening the Way to Heaven by the sacrifice He offered, and giving the Truth and the Life that men need to tread the Way. He equips the Apostles to continue to serve in all those same ways. They may, in the religious sphere, require obedience to their commands, for without that there would be no unity and very soon no society. But this is simply the background to service. They are to dispense the gifts of Truth and Life, for these cannot be given once for all, but each new generation born into the world, each new person born into the world, must receive them. This continuance of the gifts of Truth and Life must strike us as obvious once we grasp what the gifts are. But there is another continuance, too— the sacrifice is in some way to continue upon earth. At the Last Supper Our Lord makes His Apostles not only teachers and ministers of the sacraments, but priests, too, offerers of sacrifice. For there was to be sacrifice in the Kingdom: St. John says in the Apocalypse Thou wast slain in sacrifice— Thou hast ransomed us with Thy blood and given us to God. Thou hast made us a royal race of priests to serve God. (v.9.)
Before coming to a detailed examination of the kingdom Our Lord founded, let us summarize rapidly the preparation He had given the Apostles. First, as dispensers of His Truth: there was the three-year period in which they heard Him teaching others, and received special teaching for themselves: It is granted to you to understand the secret of God's kingdom; the rest must learn of it by parables. (Luke viii. 10.)
At the Last Supper Our Lord promised them further aid from the Holy Ghost: Well, when the truth-giving Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, has come to befriend you. He whom I will send to you from the Father's side. He will bear witness of what I was. (John xv. 26.)
After His Resurrection He enlightened their minds to make them under-stand the Scriptures. (Luke xxiv.45).
As dispensers of Life, their preparation was as thorough. He sent them out to administer baptism, whereby men are born again into the life above nature; He gave them the power to change bread and wine into His Body and Blood and administer it to men, for unless we shall eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood we shall not have life in us (John vi. 54); He gave them the power to forgive sins, that is to restore to the souls of men the life they have lost by rejecting God's will for their own.
All this adds up to too vast a preparation for a dozen men who were, even the longest-lived, to survive Our Lord by so short a space and were then to leave the world, as He had left it. What He was doing was to establish the framework of His kingdom, the kingdom of which there should be no end. In that kingdom He would work upon men through men until the end of time. The Apostles were to be the first of a line. They would multiply successors, and the successors would die and their successors after them, but the line would never fail; and the come and go of men would not matter, since it is the one Christ operating through all of them.
But although these men are simply to be human instruments in the hand of Christ Our Lord and what they do is only of value because He does it, yet for the coming alive and continuance in life of His kingdom, the Holy Ghost must come upon it and abide with it. I am sending down upon you the gift that was promised by My Father; you must wait in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. So St. Luke tells us in his account of Our Lord's last words before the Ascension (xxiv.49). In the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles St. Luke adds to this. The Apostles had been asking Our Lord about the restoration of the Kingdom. He answered: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will receive strength from Him; you are to be my witnesses in Jerusalem and throughout Judea, in Samaria, yes, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts i.8.)
So saying He ascended into Heaven and ten days later the Holy Ghost came upon
them: When the day of Pentecost came round,
while they were all gathered together in unity of purpose,
all at once a sound came from Heaven like that of a strong wind blowing,
and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
Then appeared to them what seemed to be tongues of fire
which parted and came to rest on each of them;
and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in strange languages
as the Spirit gave utterance to each. (Acts ii.1-4.)
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Our Lord sees His kingdom and speaks of His kingdom with great precision of detail. Just before His Ascension He said to His Apostles: Going teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and lo, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world. (Mt.xxviii.19-20.)
Notice first the threefold all— all nations, all things, all days. There has been plenty of disputation over the word Catholic. But this one phrase of Our Lord's should have prevented most of it. Catholic, we say, means universal; but that is merely to exchange a Greek word for a Latin one. Examining the word universal we see that it contains two ideas, the idea of all, the idea of one: universal is some sort of unity embracing all, some way of having all in one. But all what? All nations, all teachings, all times. So Our Lord says. It is not an exaggerated description of the Catholic Church. Not by the wildest exaggeration could it be advanced as a description of any other.
You will observe that the mission Our Lord gave the Apostles was to last till the end of the world, so that He was speaking to them not as themselves only, but as officials in His kingdom who should have successors until the end of time. Now look closely at the things He gave them to do. They were to teach, that is they were to communicate truth; and they were to baptize, that is they were to communicate life. He who is the Way and the Truth and the Life sends these men out to bring to the world His gifts of truth and life: and to bring men to the Way, too, for in finding them we find Him; where they are He is—I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.
This continuous presence of Christ with His Apostles gives us a double guarantee; first the certainty that the truth and the life we receive from them we are actually receiving from Him, so that they are true truth and living life. His gifts to us not their gifts to us; second, and even more vital, the certainty that in contact with them we are in contact with Him. He had already given us some hint of this in His lifetime. Sending out the seventy-two disciples He said to them (Luke x.16) He that hears you, hears me ; in the same sense we may note how St. John says in one place that Our Lord baptized people, and in another that He Himself did not baptize, but His disciples (John iii.22; John iv.2): those who are baptized by them are baptized by Him.
But if Our Lord was to be with them in their teaching and baptizing and their work for the kingdom generally, why did they need the Holy Ghost? A little precision here will be rewarded with a great deal of light. Christ Our Lord was the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity working among men in and through the human nature He had made His own. We have already seen that, because it was a human nature, it needed the supernatural life, the operation of the Blessed Trinity in the soul by grace, which is appropriated especially to the Holy Ghost. As God, Our Lord was infinite; but as man He needed the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, not only to elevate and sanctify His human nature, but to give the special light and strength it needed for the special things which the Son of God was to do in it. We have seen how Our Lord is constantly spoken of as being acted upon by the Holy Ghost. God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, so that He went about doing good, and curing all those who were under the Devil's tyranny. (Acts x.38.)
For his temptation He was led by the Holy Ghost into a desert place. It was by the Holy Ghost that He offered Himself to God upon Calvary (Hebr.ix.14). It was by the Holy Ghost that He gave these commandments to the Apostles (Acts i.2). Now just as the human nature through which He worked upon earth received light and strength from the Holy Ghost, so the human society through which He was to continue to work would need light and strength from the Holy Ghost in order that it might be maintained at the level of what He would use it to do.
We have seen that the word Catholic means all in one; and we have seen what the all is. Given that the Church was to teach all men all truths and that Christ was to be with it in the teaching, it seems hardly necessary to add that it was to be one Church. But there is another place in which Our Lord treats of the visible unity of His Church still more explicitly. At the Last Supper, having prayed for the Apostles, Our Lord went on to pray for all those who through their word should come to believe in Him. This was His prayer—that they all may be one, that they too may be one in us, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee; so that the world may come to believe that it is Thou who hast sent Me. (John xvii.21):
a unity among men as intense, in the human order, as the unity of Persons
within the Blessed Trinity;
a unity externally visible so that the world could see it and be driven to
conclude from it that only the power of God could account for it.
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Our Lord established His Kingdom with officials through whom He would dispense His gifts of truth by way of doctrine, and life by way of sacrament. The kingdom was to be in the souls of men since apart from that it could have borne no fruit; but it was not to be only in the souls of men. We must complete such phrases of Our Lord as The Kingdom of Heaven is within you with such phrases as The Kingdom of Heaven is like a city set upon a hill. But for the protection of the truth and the preservation of the integrity of the channels of life. Our Lord made still further provision by choosing one of the Apostles and giving him special functions. When He first called the Apostles, He said to Simon, the brother of Andrew, thou shalt be called Peter—a word which means rock. When the end of His time upon earth was drawing near. He made clear the reason for the change of names: Blessed art thou Simon son of Jona; it is not flesh and blood, it is My Father in heaven that has revealed this to thee. And I tell thee this in My turn, that thou art Peter, and it is upon this rock that I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Mt.xvi.18-19.)
At the Last Supper, when the dispute arose among the Apostles as to which should have first place in His kingdom. Our Lord settled it with the words: Simon, Simon, Satan has claimed power over you all, so that He can sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith may not fail; when after a while thou hast come back to me, it is for thee to be the support of thy brethren. (Luke x.32.)
After His Resurrection Our Lord appears among the Apostles and three times asks Peter if he loves Him. As Peter answers each question with an affirmation of his love. Our Lord utters the three phrases: Feed My lambs, Feed My lambs, Feed My sheep. (John xxi.16-17).
Taking any one of these episodes, we must see that the power entrusted to Peter was very great; taking them all together we see it as enormous. In the first he is to be the rock upon whom the Church (which Our Lord here calls also the kingdom of heaven) is to be founded. He is to have supremacy in the kingdom, for Our Lord promised him the keys which are the symbol of supremacy; and he is to have a final power of regulation and discipline, for his permissions and prohibitions are to be ratified in Heaven. At the Last Supper something is made explicit which before was certainly present, but implicitly. He is to safeguard the unity of the brethren whom otherwise Satan would scatter like chaff, because by the prayer of God his own faith would not fail, would be unfailable, which brings us to the very word infallibility. The third is the richest of all. Peter is to shepherd the whole flock, the little ones and the great. He is to feed them. With what food? The spirit of man needs three kinds of food and Our Lord came to provide them. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
So truth is food. My meat is to do the Will of Him that sent Me.
So law is food. The food I shall give is My flesh for the life of the world.
So sacrament is food. Peter must feed the flock with truth and law and sacrament.
What is significant in all this is that Our Lord, about to leave the earth, is conferring upon Peter His own special titles. Christ is the foundation (l Cor.iii.11) and He makes Peter the foundation. Christ is the key-bearer—He bears the key of David, so that none may shut when He opens, none open when He shuts (Apoc. iii. 7)—and He makes Peter the key-bearer. It is to Christ that the power belongs to hold these whom God has given Him, but He gives to Peter the charge of being a support to the brethren. Our Lord had said I am the good shepherd and He makes Peter to be the shepherd. All this is in line with what we have already seen about the Church as a whole. Our Lord was truthgiver and lifegiver, and the Church is to be truthgiver and lifegiver: that is to say He will continue to give truth and life through the Church. Our Lord is rock and key-bearer and shepherd: He will continue all that each title implies through Peter. Church or Peter, it is all the same. Neither matters save as an instrument through which Christ has chosen to work.
This then was the provision Our Lord made for the souls of men
that they might come to Him,
be united with Him,
and receive His gifts till the end of time.
His kingdom would grow as it moved outwards and onwards towards its two limiting
points—
all the nations of the earth and the end of time—
and there would be some increase of complexity in its structure to meet new
needs created by its growth.
But all would be within the living framework He established upon earth—
one kingdom, with a smaller body of officials serving the great body of plain
citizens,
and among the officials one who is head over the rest and the servant of all.
So the kingdom was, when the Holy Ghost descended upon it at Pentecost.
So it still is.
So till the end of the world it will be.
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