|
THE DIVINE PERSONALITY OF JESUS Taken from Our Savior and His Love
for Us
IF WE would glimpse at the intimate life of our Lord as it has been from all eternity, we must pause and contemplate the mystery of His Divine personality. We have seen with what reserve He at first manifested Himself so as not to arouse a wholly external enthusiasm in a crowd craving for marvels and for earthly prosperity. Now we can understand a little better why in the beginning He showed Himself under the veil of the parables as the Sower of Divine truth, as the Good shepherd who gives His life for His sheep, as the only son of the master of the vineyard who was sent after the servants had been ill-treated and killed by the husbandmen. In the last-mentioned parable He announced that He would be put to death. In the course of His ministry He gradually showed Himself to be equal to the Divine Lawgiver of Sinai, since He came to perfect the Divine law. When He cured the paralytic He claimed the power to remit sins, to remake or regenerate men's souls: "Come to Me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I will refresh you." [Matt. 11:28.] Finally, as His Passion approached, He declared more openly the fact of His Divine Sonship. He affirmed it before the Pharisees with an authority that can belong only to God. He who was meek and humble of heart did not fear to tell them: "Amen, amen I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am." He declared: "I and the Father are one." "I am the way and the truth and the life." [John 8:58; 10:30; 14:6.] He did not merely say, as had the prophets, "I have received the truth that I might transmit it to you." He said: "I am the truth and the life," words that God alone can rightfully use. Such was Jesus' teaching with respect to His Divinity and it was so understood by the Apostles. St. Peter saw in Him "the Author of life." [Acts 3:15.] St. Paul spoke of Him as "the Son of His [God's] love . . . Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature," in Whom "were all things created in Heaven and on earth, visible and invisible;" [Col. 1:13-16.] the Son who being equal with God the Father "humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross." [Phil. 3:6-8.] St. John the Baptist looked upon Him as "the Lamb of God . . . Who taketh away the sin of the world." [John 1 :29.] And St. John the Evangelist called Him the Word made flesh: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" [John 1:1]. Thus the Church merely repeats the testimony that
Jesus gave of Himself when she professes in the Creed that He is "the
only-begotten
Son of God, light of light, true God of true God . . . being of one
substance
with the Father," and that by Him "all things were made" [Nicene
Creed]. Such in brief is our Lord's testimony about His Divine Sonship. With the help of theology, let us meditate on the meaning and scope of this testimony. Let us also ask God to give us the grace of contemplating this mystery. For in this contemplation our souls must find their daily nourishment and they must live by it more and more with each passing day. In order to penetrate even a little into the mystery of the Divine personality of Jesus, we must understand the fittingness of the Incarnation with respect to both God and man. This will give us much light. Jesus has claimed for Himself the properties of Divine nature and those of human nature as well. He has shown Himself to us as truly a man, Who was born in time at Bethlehem and died on the Cross. At the same time He had told us: "I am the way and the truth and the life." I am the truth and the life in their fullness. How can one and the same person have two natures that are infinitely apart, Divine nature and human nature? We have perhaps ceased to look upon this with astonishment, the holy astonishment of contemplation. There is, of course, another form of astonishment that leads to negation. Incredulity objects: A God made flesh would be no longer God or man, but a fabulous being, a myth, half-God, half-man. He would have a hybrid nature, neither Divine nor human [this was Eutyches' error]. The incredulous ask: How could the infinite God who governs the world be in person in the body of a helpless little child? An infinite God in the womb of a virgin! Thus does human wisdom speak, seeing only darkness in supernatural truths that are far too lofty and too mighty for it. Indeed, the union of humanity and Divinity in the person of Jesus remains an incomprehensible mystery for the believer, and it will be definitely explained only in Heaven. Yet the light of faith shows us even here below that on the one hand God tends to communicate Himself as much as possible to man and that, on the other hand, man tends to be united as much as possible to God. When we place these two truths side by side, we begin to glimpse from afar the union of humanity and Divinity in the person of the Savior. We shall strive to develop these two points in what follows. God Has Given Himself in Person to Humanity God, on the one hand, tends to communicate Himself as much as possible to man. Why? Because God is the Sovereign Good, and goodness is essentially communicative. The good naturally tends to pour itself out, to share the riches within it. [Cf. St. Thomas, IIIa, q.1 a. 1.] And the more perfect a good is, the more it tends to communicate itself fully and intimately. [Cf. St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II, no. 1.] The sun sheds about it light and heat. Plants and animals having reached adulthood give life to other plants and animals. At a higher level, the artist and the scholar, who have conceived ideas, strive to make them known. The apostle who loves goodness passionately, desires to communicate it to others. Goodness is fundamentally communicative; the higher its level the more abundantly and intimately it gives itself. Whereas the friendship of a superficial soul remains totally external and a matter of the affections, the friendship of a noble soul is the generous gift of its innermost self. Thus, since God is the Sovereign Good, it is highly fitting that He communicate Himself in the highest degree possible to His creatures, both intimately and fully. But this Divine communication, fitting as it is, remains free-----something that the Neo-Platonists did not understand. It is in no way necessary to the infinite beatitude of God. For He finds His beatitude in the possession of His own sovereign goodness, which is infinitely superior to all created goods and cannot be increased by them. [Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q.19, a.3.] God created all things freely. At the dawn of creation it was through His goodness that He gave His creatures being, life, intelligence. Through a wholly gratuitous love He raised men and Angels to the supernatural life of grace, to a participation in His own intimate life. Is this the limit of what God can do? Why could He not give Himself in person? Is it not the peculiar quality of friendship to inspire us to give our innermost selves? Why could not the Word of God give Himself in person to a privileged soul, in such a manner that the Word, this soul and its body would form only one person, a single self, that of the Word made flesh, in whom would dwell Divine perfections and human properties, a person who could truthfully say: "I who speak to you am the way, the truth, and the life." Thus in a marvelous manner would be realized the principle that God, the Sovereign Good, tends to communicate Himself to man in the highest degree possible. Goodness is essentially communicative, and the nobler it is the more abundantly and intimately it gives itself. This is the most elevated aspect of the mystery of which we are speaking. The Full Development of the Human Personality and Union with God The unbeliever objects: But then, since Jesus would possess no human personality, He would not be truly a man. This was the objection once raised by Nestorius and his disciples. Some modern rationalists expand this view by saying that human personality consists primarily in the consciousness a man has of himself and in the liberty by reason of which he is his own master. [Günther and Rosmini erred in thus viewing Christ's personality. Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 1917.] Thus, if Jesus did not have a human personality-----and this is what the Church teaches-----then He had no human consciousness of Himself nor any human liberty, but only a Divine consciousness and a Divine liberty. Hence, they claim, He was not truly a man, and having no human liberty He was powerless either to merit or to obey. If on the other hand, these rationalists add, it is held that He had both a human consciousness and human liberty coexistent with a Divine consciousness and a Divine liberty, then it must be said that there were in Him two personalities, two persons, doubtless very intimately united by knowledge and love, but none the less two persons and not a single person. Therefore, the rationalists conclude, Jesus is only the greatest of the Saints who was intimately united to God in a truly extraordinary degree; but He cannot be called God. In short, if personality is formally constituted by consciousness or liberty, in order for Jesus to be only one person, He could have only one consciousness and one liberty. Thus He could not be at one and the same time truly God and truly a man. This objection is based on a superficial and false conception of personality, and it leaves out of consideration the very intimate relationship between the full development of a human personality and union with God. We have to lay very much stress on this matter, for it is the second aspect of the mystery of Christ's Divine personality. To understand how Jesus, without having a human personality, a human ego, can be truly a man, and how His humanity is glorified and not lessened by the Divine personality of the Word, we must consider for a moment the nature of personality in general. This would be an easy enough task had not so many errors piled up regarding this matter. We must therefore clear them away so as to preserve the true meaning of the words "I" and "me" which everybody uses. With St. Thomas we must ask ourselves what is personality, and rise progressively from the lowest degrees of human personality up to the most perfect. We shall then be able to glimpse through the twilight of faith at the personality of the Savior, far above that of a St. Paul, a St. Peter, or a St. John. Personality is a positive thing. It is that which
makes every being endowed with reason an independent subject who can
say
"I," "me"; and which makes him a being who belongs to himself, his own
master sui juris; and by reason of which are attributed to him a
reasonable nature, being, and ability to carry on the operations in
which
his activity consists. In this sense it is ordinarily said that Peter
and
Paul are persons, two distinct persons. Each of them is an independent
subject and a totality to which we attribute human nature, existence,
activity.
Each of them says "I," "me." This fact differentiates the person as a
primary
subject of attribution from all that is fitting to him, and the person
cannot be attributed to another subject. We say: "Peter is a man, Peter
exists, Peter speaks well." But we cannot attribute Peter to another
subject.
He himself is the primary subject of attribution existing and
functioning
as a separate entity. It follows that our personality, or that by which every being endowed with reason is an independent subject, an entity to which its nature, its existence, and its operations are attributed, cannot be formally constituted by anything which is attributed to it as a part. Our basic personality can therefore not be formally constituted either by our body, or even by our soul, that is, by either of the two parts of the nature which is attributed to us, nor by anyone of our faculties or of our acts. It is therefore clear that our basic personality, from the ontological point of view, cannot be formally constituted by our consciousness. Consciousness of the ego, the "me," is not the ego, the "me." The former presupposes and knows the latter, but does not constitute it. Nor does our liberty formally constitute our personality. It is merely a psychological and moral manifestation of our basic personality, the latter belonging to the ontological order, or the order of being. For the act presupposes being: in order to act, one must first be. Thus our personality is more fundamental than consciousness and liberty. Personality is what makes each one of us an independent subject to which is attributed all that is fitting to him. And if we can attribute to Jesus as to a single independent subject two intelligences [one Divine and the other human] and two liberties, it will follow that there are not in Him two persons, but only one. [When we say with St. Thomas that our personality is that by which every reasonable being is an independent subject to which is attributed his nature, his existence, and his operations, we are not conceding that what formally constitutes our personality is our existence. Existence is a contingent attribute of every created person, and it is not what makes a person a primary subject of attribution. No created person is his own existence, he merely has existence; in this respect he differs from God. The Thomists say: Persona Petri, imo personalitas Petri, non est suum esse, sed realiter distinguitur ab eo. And St. Thomas himself wrote (IIIa, q. 17, a. 2 ad 1) : "Being is consequent upon person . . . as upon that which has being." Cajetan has shown with much penetration (In IIIa, q.4, a. 2, no. 8) that without this notion of personality we cannot explain the truth of the following judgments: Peter is a man, Peter exists, but he is not existence. From this it also follows that in Jesus there is only one person, a single subject, and one existence (IIIa, q. 17, a. 2) and that He was truly able to say: "I am the truth and the life," that is, being itself.] All this contains a great mystery which we cannot understand. But it is not unintelligible or absurd. On the contrary, we can progressively rise to it, starting from the lowest degrees of the human personality. It is easy enough to see that from the psychological and moral point of view a human personality grows in the measure that it tends to become more intimately united to God, obliterating itself before Him. This union in self-effacement, far from being servitude, is a glorification. [Cf. St. Thomas, IIIa, q. 2, a. 2 ad 2.] If we study this fact carefully, we shall get a glimpse of what is realized in Christ, not only from the psychological and moral points of view, but from the point of view of being or of the basic personality. Whereas God, as we were saying earlier, tends to give Himself as much as possible to man, the perfect man tends to become as closely united as possible to God. Some have thought that personality develops in the measure that man becomes more and more independent in his existence and in his action from all that is not himself, and in the measure that others depend upon him. In this sense, the personalities of Napoleon and Goethe have been glorified. Such a concept leaves out of account the fact that our personality consists especially in independence with regard not to all things, but to those which are inferior to us and which we dominate by our reason and our liberty, such as the independence of the soul which can subsist after the dissolution of the body. When we glorify certain human personalities that have disregarded the rights of God, we are forgetting that our special independence with regard to inferior things is based on the very strict dependence of our souls with regard to the superior things, that is, Truth and Goodness, and in the last analysis with regard to God. If our reason rules space and time, the things of the senses, it is because it was created to know God, the supreme Truth. If our liberty conquers the attraction of the things of the senses, it is because it was created to prefer God to them, and to love Him, the universal and total Good above all else. From these facts derives a noble and neglected
law, namely, that the full development of the personality consists in
becoming
more and more independent of inferior things, but also in becoming ever
more closely dependent upon Truth, Goodness, that is, upon God Himself.
Many false ideas arise about the development of personality because the mystery of the Incarnation is no longer contemplated and because it is forgotten that the full development of the human personality consists in being effaced before that of God, by becoming as united as possible to Him. We must consider this fact most carefully that we may begin to understand how it is that the humanity of Jesus is in no sense diminished because in Him human personality has made way for the Divine personality of the Word. This is the culminating point of the lofty law: Human personality grows by effacing itself before that of God. Indeed, wherein lies the superiority of the good man over the libertine? It is that the good man conforms his will to God's. Whereas the libertine is crushed by adversity, the good man grows with it, ever conforming his will more closely to God's. Whence comes the superiority of the man of genius over the ordinary worker? He is inspired by God; he is closely dependent upon a superior inspiration. Nobler than the man of genius, a higher and more powerful personality has manifested itself through the ages: that of the Saints. Personality is measured by the profound and lasting influence it can exert. Now, the influence of a Saint is not limited to his own country or his own time. In a sense it extends to the whole Church in a sphere superior to space and time. For almost two thousand years millions of souls have been living by the epistles of St. Paul, as if these pages had been written yesterday, whereas almost nobody, except for a few scholars, reads the letters of Seneca. For the past seven centuries thousands of religious have lived by the thought of a St. Bernard, a St. Dominic, a St. Francis of Assisi, of a St. Catherine of Siena and a St. Claire. How is it that these Saints have exerted such a tremendous influence on souls? Whence comes their prodigious personality that raises them above the limits of their country and their time? The secret is that in a sense they were one with God. They had died to themselves in order to live for God. No one but the Saints has fully understood that human personality can truly grow only by dying to itself so that God may reign and live ever increasingly within it. That is why the Saints, and only the Saints-----as St. Catherine of Siena tells us-----declared war on their own egos, the ego composed of self-love and pride. They have sought to live more and more not for themselves but for God, and consequently to die to their own judgment and to their own will, in order to live solely by the thought and the will of God. They have willed that God should be their alter ego, more intimate than their own ego. They have willed to become the servants of God, just as the hand is the servant of the will. They have willed to become genuinely adopted sons and friends of God, to the point of living continually for Him and of orienting the basic tendencies of their thought and of their will always toward Him. At certain moments of union they were able to say with St. Paul: "I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me." [Gal. 2:20.] The full development of human personality consists in losing itself in that of God. [This superior impersonality of the Saints is the fruit of their interior life. We can see it in St. John the Baptist, who wished ever more ardently to efface himself so that our Lord might be increasingly acknowledged. Likewise St. Thomas Aquinas retired more and more into the background of his books so that only the light and the truth might shine out of them. By this self-effacement the Saints make place for God, and at certain moments it is clear that it is God who lives and speaks in them.] And yet even the greatest Saint remains a being distinct from God, a creature. He has indeed substituted Divine ideas for his human ideas, and the Divine will for his own will, but he is none the less a being distinct from God. Even our Blessed Lady during moments of most intimate contemplation remains a creature. At the summit of holiness we find our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him God has given Himself in person to the greatest extent possible to humanity, and humanity has been personally united to God to the greatest extent possible, to the point of forming a single ego with the Word of God. In Jesus Christ, God's ideas have been substituted for human ideas, and the Divine will has fully subordinated the human will. But that is not all. Something far more fundamental has taken place. At the root of the intelligence and of the will, at the root of the soul itself, in the order of being, the Divine person of the Word has assumed the humanity of Jesus. That is why He could say: "I Who speak to you, I am the way, the truth, and the life." "The Father and I are one." [We can see here the profound difference between personality and individuality. Individuality derives from matter, which is the principle of individuation. Thus two men are two distinct individuals because in each of them human nature has been received in a determinate portion of matter, at a given point in space and in time. Likewise two drops of water, similar as they may be, are two because the nature of water is received in each in a given portion of matter and in a given quantity. Individuality, deriving as it does from matter, is thus a reality of a very low order. Personality, on the contrary, is something very lofty. For it is that by which every reasonable being is an independent subject, sui juris, the subject of existence and of his operations (IIIa, q. 2, a. 2 ad 2) .This fact is true not only of man but also of the Angels and of the divine persons of the Blessed Trinity. Each of the three divine persons is a distinct "I" even though all three possess the same indivisible nature, fully communicated by the Father to the Son and by Them to the Holy Ghost: Goodness is fundamentally diffusive of itself, and the more intimately and fully diffusive it is, the higher the order to which it belongs-----(Cf. St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II.) It follows that in Jesus the personality, which is that of the Word, is uncreated, whereas in Him, as in ourselves, individuality derives from matter, the principle of individuation, by virtue of which His body is a specific body rather than some other and occupies a given portion of space rather than any other. Thus individuality and personality are quite distinct: to develop one's individuality often means to become ever more egotistical; whereas the real development of personality is to be Found, as we have seen, in an ever more intimate union with God.] That is why Jesus has a unique manner of pronouncing the word "I," a word that the Saints rarely use except to accuse themselves of their faults. They know that all the good we do is accomplished through the power of the Lord, whereas evil comes only from ourselves. They know that our egos, composed of self-love, are, as Pascal has said, hateful, whereas the ego of Jesus is adorable: It is the ego of the Word made flesh. [Here we get the full meaning and scope of the following words of St. Thomas (IIIa, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2): "Personality pertains of necessity to the dignity of a thing, and to its perfection so far as it pertains to the dignity and perfection of that thing to exist by itself (which is understood by the word person). Now it is a greater dignity to exist in something nobler than oneself than to exist by oneself. Hence the human nature of Christ has a greater dignity than ours, from this very fact that in us, being existent by itself, it has its own personality, but in Christ it exists in the Person of the Word. Thus . . . the sensitive part of man, on account of its union with the nobler form which perfects the species, is more noble than in brutes, where it is itself the form which perfects."] He alone has been able to say: "He who loves his father and his mother more than Me is not worthy of Me." No one but God can speak thus. How is it that Jesus infinitely surpasses all the Saints whose model, light, strength, and life He is? It is because in Him, in the strictest meaning of the words, human personality, the human ego, has been replaced from the first moment of His conception and for all eternity by the Divine personality of the Word. In Jesus Christ there is no human personality,
no human ego, and yet He is truly a man. His humanity, far from being
lessened
by personal union with the Word, is glorified by this union. From its
union
with the Word, Christ's humanity receives, as we shall see, an innate,
substantial, uncreated holiness. Similarly, our imagination is nobler
than
that of the animals because it is united to our intelligence. In us
imagination
serves a superior faculty, and it is elevated by this sub ordination,
as
is strikingly clear in artists of genius. It is the glory of the
inferior
to "serve" and thus to contribute to the realization of an end superior
to itself. This has been understood by those who have associated the
words
"servitude" and "greatness." "T o serve God is to reign," and no
creature
ever served Him so well as did the holy humanity of our Savior . Innumerable corollaries could be deduced from this doctrine. Let us merely mention the more important ones. The Hypostatic Union We can see that this personal or hypostatic union [that is to say, the union in a single person or in a single subject of Divinity and humanity] is not merely a moral union born of the conformity of the human will with the will of God through grace and charity. Indeed, this moral union with God, which exists especially among the Saints, can become most intimate. In the Old Testament, Abraham was called the friend of God, but he remained infinitely removed from God. The same holds for the apostles and for the greatest Saints. Nor is this personal or hypostatic union a natural and essential union, for it does not constitute a single nature or essence. The two natures remain completely distinct, although intimately united. As a matter of fact, Divine nature is absolutely immutable and cannot convert or change itself into a created nature; and if it could, then Jesus would no longer be truly God. On the other hand, human nature cannot be converted or changed into Divine nature; and if it could, Jesus would then not be truly a man. Nor can the two natures enter into the composition of a third nature, for this would presuppose a modification or alteration of Divine nature, which is absolutely immutable, and which cannot be the incomplete part of a whole that is more perfect than itself. The personal or hypostatic union of Divinity and humanity in Jesus does not in any sense involve the confounding of the two natures. Likewise, in ourselves the union of body and soul does not involve any confusion of the two. Within limits we might make the following comparison and say that, just as our body is dominated, vivified by our soul, and will be reanimated by it on the day of resurrection, thus in Jesus human nature is completely dominated by God, possessed by the Word. [Yet there is a notable difference: whereas our body and our soul are the two parts of our human nature, the humanity and the Divinity of Jesus are not parts of a single nature, but they are united in the same person.] Christ is not a fabulous being, demi-god and half-man. He is true God and true man, without any pantheistic confusion of the two natures united in His Divine person. Thus are supernaturally realized in this sublime mystery God's desire to give Himself as much as possible to man, and man's yearning to be united as much as possible to God. This is the strongest and most intimate union possible, after the union of the Blessed Trinity. In the Blessed Trinity the three persons are necessarily one and the same Divine nature. In Jesus it is a fact that the two natures belong to the same person. This personal or hypostatic union, which constitutes the God-man, is incomparably more intimate than that of our soul with our body. Whereas the body and the soul are separated at death, the Word is never separated either from the soul or from the body which He has assumed. [Even when the body of Jesus was separated from His soul after His death, it was not separated from the person of the Word. There remained on the Cross and in the holy sepulcher the sacred cadaver of the Word made flesh. Cf. St. Thomas, IIIa, q. 50, a. 2.] The union is immutable and indissoluble for all eternity. We do not contemplate enough this ineffable mystery of merciful Love. The sublimity of the mystery derives from the very fact that two natures infinitely remote from each other, one supreme and the other lowly, are so intimately united. Beauty results from unity shining through variety. When the diverse elements are infinitely removed from each other and yet intimately united, we have not merely beauty but the truly sublime. Only Divine love is strong enough thus to associate supreme riches and human nature, with all the sufferings which can overwhelm it. When we make the way of the Cross and contemplate Jesus on His painful journey, bowed beneath the weight of our sins, let us remember that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and through Him we shall go toward this ocean of Divine life where He alone can lead us, by giving us the grace of perseverance. We love to contemplate the sea and the mountains, and to gaze long at them in admiration. Why do we not contemplate more often this immense mystery of the Incarnation, which brings us salvation? Very simple souls, molded by the Gospel and the liturgy, attain this contemplation, as has happened quite often in the countryside of France, Spain, and Italy. When we enter a church we often do no more than ask for a special favor for ourselves and for our dear ones. Should we not remember sometimes to thank God for having given us our Lord? The Incarnation surely merits a special act of thanksgiving. This thanksgiving which must begin here below will be continued by the Saints for all eternity. This will be the canticle of the elect about which we read in the Apocalypse: "To Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, and honor, and glory , and power, forever and ever." [Apoc. 5:13.] A soul that thanks God daily, in the intimacy
of meditation, for having given us His Son, is certain to attain to a
high
degree of union with God. Any humble soul, even one lacking in human
culture,
can thank God for the infinite gift He has given us.
|
