Much more might be said to show how the Church, in her sacramental work for souls, embraces also the inanimate creation, consecrating the altar stone, consecrating also the church’s bells. We might speak of her Rogation Days whereon she blesses the produce of the fields, and tell how on Corpus Christi Day she carries the Blessed Sacrament out into the spring-time. The whole of nature, the flowers of the field, the wax of the bee, the ears of corn, salt and incense, gold, precious stones and simple linen—there is nothing which she does not bring into the service of the sacred Mystery, and bid them speak of It with their thousand tongues. Under her hands all nature becomes a “Lift up your hearts” (Sursum corda) and a “Bless ye the Lord” (Benedicite Domino). “Everywhere,” says Niebergall, “she makes men see the Holy and she fills the whole environment of her adherents with its charm and radiance.” And where the Church herself is not active, there her children are at work. With hands that are rude and humble, but with eyes shining with the light of faith, they erect their sacred images and crucifixes in fields and by mountain paths, and carry the light and consecration of the divine up to the soaring peak and down to the foaming torrent. Amid a Catholic folk and in a Catholic land—there statues of our Lady stand by the roadside, there the Angelus bell is heard, there men still greet one another with the words, “Praised be Jesus Christ.”

We have endeavored to estimate in a few brief sentences the Church’s sacramental and mystical action in the formation of the “homo sanctus,” the saint. We have seen that she is able both comprehensively and profoundly, with realistic force and with psychological insight, to bring God’s grace down to men, and amid the dust and turmoil of everyday life to make the All Holy visible amidst innumerable candles. Yet that is only one aspect of the Christian work of redemption. In the next Chapter it shall be our business to explain how the Church, in accordance with the Catholic conception of justification, achieves the other half of her task. We shall have to show, that is, how the Church not only brings the Kingdom of God to men, but also brings men to that Kingdom.

Endnotes

1.      Heiler, op. cit., p. 261 ff.

2.      “Praktische Theologie,” 1919, p. 41.

3.      Heiler, “Das Wesen des Katholizismus,” 1920, p. 105.

4.      ibid., p. 110.

5.      ibid., p. 110.

6.      “Dichtung und Wahrheit,” Pt. II, Bk. VII.

7.      “Reden und Aufsatze,” Vol. II, p. 256 (Giessen, 1906).

8.      K. Lechler, “Die Konfessionen in ihrem Verhaltnis zu Christus,” 1877, p. 161.

Chapter XII: The Educative Action of the Church

Sanctify them in truth; thy word is truth (Jn. xvii, 17).