Paradoxes of Catholicism by Robert Hugh Benson
page 51 of 115 (44%)
page 51 of 115 (44%)
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such a soul as this, if called to such a life, there is no need that the
Church should declare explicitly that the Contemplative Life is the highest. She knows it already. (ii) The _First Great Commandment_ of the Law, then, is inevitably followed by the Second, and the Catholic interpretation of the Second is thought by the world, which understands neither, to be as extravagant as her interpretation of the First. For this Divine Church that knows God is also a Human Society that dwells among men, and since she in herself unites Divinity and Humanity, she cannot rest until she has united them everywhere else. For, as she turns her eyes from God to men, she sees there immortal souls, made in the image of God and made for Him and Him alone, seeking to satisfy themselves with Creation instead of with the Creator. She hears how the world preaches the sanctity of the temperament, and the holiness of the individual point of view, as if there were no Transcendent God at all and no objective external Revelation ever made by Him. She sees how men, instead of seeking to conform themselves to God's Revelation of Himself, attempt rather to conform such fragments of that Revelation as have reached them to their own points of view; she listens to talk about "aspects of truth" and "schools of thought" and the "values of experience" as if God had never spoken either in the thunders of Sinai or the still voice of Galilee. Is it any wonder, then, that her Proselytism appears to such a world as extravagant as her Contemplation, her passion for men as unreasonable as her passion for God, when that world sees her bring herself from her cloisters and her secret places to proclaim as with a trumpet those |
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