Paradoxes of Catholicism by Robert Hugh Benson
page 8 of 115 (06%)
page 8 of 115 (06%)
|
can receive the Gospels as they were written; none but a man who
believes that Christ is both God and Man, who is content to believe that and to bow before the Paradox of paradoxes that we call the Incarnation, to accept the blinding mystery that Infinite and Finite Natures were united in one Person, that the Eternal expresses Himself in Time, and that the Uncreated Creator united to Himself Creation--none but a Catholic, in a word, can meet, without exception, the mysterious phenomena of Christ's Life. (ii) Turn now again to the mysteries of our own limited life and, as in a far-off phantom parallel, we begin to understand. For we too, in our measure, have a double nature. _As God and Man make one Christ, so soul and body make one man_: and, as the two natures of Christ--as His Perfect Godhead united to His Perfect Manhood--lie at the heart of the problems which His Life presents, so too our affinities with the clay from which our bodies came, and with the Father of Spirits Who inbreathed into us living souls, explain the contradictions of our own experience. If we were but irrational beasts, we could be as happy as the beasts; if we were but discarnate spirits that look on God, the joy of the angels would be ours. Yet if we assume either of these two truths as if it were the only truth, we come certainly to confusion. If we live as the beasts, we cannot sink to their contentment, for our immortal part will not let us be; if we neglect or dispute the rightful claims of the body, that very outraged body drags our immortal spirit down. The acceptance of the two natures of Christ alone solves the problems of the Gospel; the acceptance of the two parts of our own nature alone enables us to live as God intends. Our spiritual and physical moods, then, rise |
|