Paradoxes of Catholicism | Page 2

the central Objective Light of the World
reflected in ourselves, should be full of yet more amazing anomalies.
Let us examine the records of that Life and see if it be not so. And let
us for that purpose begin by imagining such an examination to be made
by an inquirer who has never received the Christian tradition.
(i) He begins to read, of course, with the assumption that this Life is as
others and this Man as other men; and as he reads he finds a hundred
corroborations of the theory. Here is one, born of a woman, hungry and
thirsty by the wayside, increasing in wisdom; one who works in a
carpenter's shop; rejoices and sorrows; one who has friends and
enemies; who is forsaken by the one and insulted by the other--who
passes, in fact, through all those experiences of human life to which
mankind is subject--one who dies like other men and is laid in a grave.
Even the very marvels of that Life he seeks to explain by the
marvellous humanity of its hero. He can imagine, as one such inquirer
has said, how the magic of His presence was so great--the magic of His

simple yet perfect humanity--that the blind opened their eyes to see the
beauty of His face and the deaf their ears to hear Him.
Yet, as he reads further, he begins to meet his problems. If this Man
were man only, however perfect and sublime, how is it that His sanctity
appears to run by other lines than those of other saints? Other perfect
men as they approached perfection were most conscious of
imperfection; other saints as they were nearer God lamented their
distance from Him; other teachers of the spiritual life pointed always
away from themselves and their shortcomings to that Eternal Law to
which they too aspired. Yet with this Man all seems reversed. He, as
He stood before the world, called on men to imitate Him; not, as other
leaders have done, to avoid His sins: this Man, so far from pointing
forward and up, pointed to Himself as the Way to the Father; so far
from adoring a Truth to which He strove, named Himself its very
incarnation; so far from describing a Life to which He too one day
hoped to rise, bade His hearers look on Himself Who was their Life; so
far from deploring to His friends the sins under which He laboured,
challenged His enemies to find within Him any sin at all. There is an
extraordinary Self-consciousness in Him that has in it nothing of "self"
as usually understood.
Then it may be, at last, that our inquirer approaches the Gospel with a
new assumption. He has been wrong, he thinks, in his interpretation
that such a Life as this was human at all. "Never man spake like this
man." He echoes from the Gospel, "_What manner of man is this that
even the winds and the sea obey Him_? How, after all," he asks himself,
"could a man be born without a human father, how rise again from the
dead upon the third day?" Or, "How even could such marvels be related
at all of one who was no more than other men?"
So once more he begins. Here, he tells himself, is the old fairy story
come true; here is a God come down to dwell among men; here is the
solution of all his problems. And once more he finds himself
bewildered. For how can God be weary by the wayside, labour in a
shop, and die upon a cross? How can the Eternal Word be silent for
thirty years? How can the Infinite lie in a manger? How can the Source

of Life be subject to death?
He turns in despair, flinging himself from theory to theory--turns to the
words of Christ Himself, and the perplexity deepens with every
utterance. If Christ be man, how can He say, _My Father and I are one_?
If Christ be God, how can He proclaim that _His Father is greater than
He_? If Christ be Man, how can He say, _Before Abraham was, I am_?
If Christ be God, how can He name Himself the Son of Man.
(ii) Turn to the spiritual teaching of Jesus Christ, and once more
problem follows problem, and paradox, paradox.
Here is He Who came to soothe men's sorrows and to give rest to the
weary, He Who offers a sweet yoke and a light burden, telling them
that no man can be His disciple who will not take up the heaviest of all
burdens and follow Him uphill. Here is one, the Physician of souls and
bodies, Who went about doing good, Who set the example of activity in
God's service, pronouncing the silent passivity