By Rev. Francis A. Baker
Feast of St. Laurence, Martyr
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service.” Romans 16:17
I
A
There is, my brethren, among many men who practice Christian duties to a certain extent, one remarkable want. I will call it the want of the Spirit of Sacrifice. Compare such men with any of the saints, and you will see at once what I mean. One saint may differ a great deal from another, but this is common to them all – a vivid sentiment of God’s greatness and Sovereignty, of His right to do with us what He wills, and a willing and reverent recognition of that right.
B
Now the defective Christianity to which I allude lacks this spirit altogether. It differs from the Christianity of the saints not only in degree but in kind. Not only does it fail to produce as many sacrifices as the saints made for God, but the idea of Sacrifice is completely strange and foreign to it. It bargains about the commandments of God, and, when any commandment is difficult, postpones fulfillment, or refuses it altogether. To prevent any of you from being content with so imperfect and unsatisfactory a sort of religion, I will give you this morning some reasons why you should aim to serve God in the spirit of sacrifice.
II
A
First, then, I assert that the spirit of sacrifice is necessary. God requires it of us. On this point I think some people make a mistake. They seem to think that a willingness to make sacrifices for God is one of the ornamental or heroic parts of religion, and that everyday people are not required to have it. But this is not so.
B
The Spirit of Sacrifice is required of everyone. I infer this from the fact that an external sacrificial worship is necessary. It is frequently said that there is no religion without a sacrifice. And this is true. There never has been, nor indeed could there be, a true religion without having some external act of sacrificial worship. But why is this necessary? Not simply because we are sinners and need propitiation, for some theologians have thought that sacrifices would have been necessary, though man had never sinned.
C
What religion requires a sacrifice for, is this – to express our sense of God’s supreme Sovereignty. In a Sacrifice there is something offered to God and destroyed, thus signifying that God is the Author of Life and Death, our Creator, our Ruler, our Supreme Judge. The excellence of the Christian Sacrifice – the Sacrifice of the Mass – consists in this, that the victim offered is a living, reasonable, Divine Victim, even the Son of God Incarnate, Who by His Life and Death rendered most worthy homage to the Divine Majesty, and still in every Mass, continually, offers it anew.
III
A
This, then, is what the Mass is given us for, and this is why we are required to assist at the Mass, that we may in a perfect and worthy manner recognize God’s Sovereignty and our dependence on Him. When we assist at Mass, the meaning of our action, if put into words, would be something like this: “I acknowledge Thee, O God, for my Sovereign Lord, and the Supreme Disposer of my Life and Death, and because I am not able worthily to express Thy Greatness, I beg of Thee to accept, as if it were my own, all the submission with which Thy Son honored Thee on the Cross, and now again honors Thee in this Holy Sacrifice.”
B
Now, it cannot be imagined that we are required to make this profession to God without at the same time being required to have in our hearts that sentiment of God’s greatness and sovereignty which we express with our lips. Our Lord did not come to suffer and die, and give His life a sacrifice to the Father, to dispense us from the obligation of worshipping God ourselves, but to give to our worship a perfect example and a higher acceptability.
C
Without our worship the Mass is incomplete. On our Lord’s part, indeed, the Sacrifice of the Mass is always efficacious, for He is present wherever it is celebrated; but on our part it is empty and unmeaning if no one really fears God, submits unreservedly to Him, is willing to do all He commands, and acknowledges that all that could be done for Him is too little. A worship of Sacrifice implies a life of sacrifice. This is beautifully illustrated in the life of St. Laurence, whose martyrdom we celebrate today.
IV
A
St. Laurence was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome in the third century of the Christian era. As deacon, it was his office to serve the Mass of St. Sixtus, who was at that time Pope. When the persecution broke out under the Emperor Valerian, St. Sixtus was seized and carried off to martyrdom. As he was on his way, St Laurence followed him weeping and saying: “Father, where are you going without your son? Where are you going, O holy priest, without your deacon? You were not wont to offer sacrifice without me your minister, wherein have I displeased you? Have you found me wanting to my duty?
B
Try me now and see whether you have made choice of an unfit minister for dispensing the Blood of the Lord.” And St. Sixtus replied: “I do not leave you, my son, but a greater trial and a more glorious victory are reserved for you who are stout and in the vigor of youth. We are spared on account of our weakness and old age. You shall follow me in three days.” And, in fact, three days after, St. Laurence was burnt to death, his faith rendering him joyful, even mirthful in his sufferings.
V
A
Now, I do not look on this conversation as poetry. Times of affliction are not times when men look around for fine ways of expressing themselves. As such times words come straight from the heart, I see, then, in the words of St. Laurence the sentiments with which he was accustomed to assist at Mass.
B
As he knelt at the foot of the altar at which the Pope was celebrating, clothed in the beautiful dress of a deacon, his soul was filled with the thoughts of God’s greatness and goodness, and along with the offering of the heavenly Victim, he used to offer to God his fervent desire to do something to honor the Divine Majesty, the color sometimes mounting high in his youthful cheek as he thought how joyfully he would yield his own heart’s blood as a sacrifice, if the occasion should offer. Martyrdom to him was but a natural completion of Mass. It was but the realization of his habitual worship.
VI
A
In the early history of the city of St. Augustine, in Florida, it is related that a priest, who was attacked by a party of Indians, asked permission to say Mass before he died. This was granted him, and the savages waited quietly till the Mass was ended. Then the priest knelt on the altar steps and received the death-blow from his murderers. With what sentiments must that priest have said Mass! With what devotion! With what reverence! With what self-oblation!
B
So, I suppose St. Laurence, and St. Sixtus, and the Christians of the old time were accustomed always to assist at Mass, with the greatest desire to honor God, the most complete spirit of self-sacrifice. Now, I do not say we are all bound to be as holy as these great saints. I do not even say we are bound to desire martyrdom; but I do say there is not one kind of Christianity for the saints and another for ordinary Christians; one kind, all self-denial for them, and another kind, all self-indulgence, for us.
C
I say God is to us what He is to the saints – our Creator and our Sovereign; and He demands of us the worship of creatures and subjects – the worship of sacrifice – willingness to do all he demands of us now, and a readiness to do greater things the moment that He makes it known to us that such is His Will.
VII
A
How many difficulties, my brethren, such a spirit takes out of the way of Christian obedience! It cuts off at one blow all our struggles with the decrees of God’s providence. How much of our misery comes from murmurings against the providence of God!
B
One is suffering under sickness and pain, another is overwhelmed with reverses and afflictions, another is irritated by continual temptations. No one can deny that these are severe trials; but see how the spirit of sacrifice disposes of them. It says to the sick man, to the suffering man, what Isaac said to his father Abraham on the mountain: “See, here is fire and wood, but where is the victim for a burnt offering?! Here are the materials for a beautiful act of sacrifice.
C
It wants only a meek heart for a victim, and love to light the flame, to turn the sickbed, the house of mourning, the soul agitated by temptation, into an altar of the purest worship, and the language of complaint into the liturgy of praise.
D
Again: it sometimes happens that a man gets involved in relations of business or friendship, or becomes addicted to some indulgence, which threaten to ruin his soul, and he is required to renounce them, to give up the intimacy, to change his business, to deny himself that indulgence. The command of God is distinct and peremptory: “If your hand or your foot scandalize you, cut it off and cast it from you. And if your eye scandalize you, pluck it out and cast it from you.” (Matthew 18:8)
E
How does he receive it? He says: “It is too hard.” Too hard! And is it, then, only God for whom we are unwilling to do anything hard? We must make sacrifices of some sort in life, and heavy ones, too. We cannot get rid of the necessity of making them, do what we will. The world requires them of us. Our families require them. Our health requires them. Our pleasure requires them. Nay, our very sins require them.
F
And what we do willingly for the world, for our families, for our health, our pleasure, our sins, shall we refuse to do for the great and good God? for Christ our Savior, who did not refuse the Cross to give us an example of the obedience we owe His Father?
VIII
A
Or take another example: A person who is not a Catholic finds much that is reasonable in Catholic doctrine, but makes a great stumbling-block of confession; or even a Catholic gets a dread of it, and stays away for years and years from the sacraments of the Church.
B
Now, of course, in such cases it is only charitable to show that the difficulty of confession is very much magnified, and that, like many other things that frighten us, it loses its terror when we approach it; but, to say the truth, I always feel something like shame when I hear one trying to prove to such persons that confession is easy; partly because I know he cannot succeed perfectly, since confession is of its own nature arduous, and in particular cases may be very difficult; but chiefly, because I cannot help thinking if God Himself were to answer them, it would be in the few strong words He has used in the Holy Scripture: “Be still: and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:11) A creature must not parley with his Maker, a sinner with his Judge.
IX
A
Yes, we shrink from the very mention of sacrifice, yet it is the spirit of sacrifice that makes all our duties easy. No doubt it is our privilege to reason about the commandments of God; and we shall often see, what we know is always the case, that they are full of wisdom and goodness; but we need in practice some principle that is ready at hand always to be used in every time of trial, in every difficulty, and that is the Spirit of Sacrifice, a profound reverence for God, and unquestioning conviction of His absolute right to dispose of us as He will.
B
Abraham had this spirit, and therefore faltered not a moment when the command came to sacrifice his son Isaac. Moses had it, and therefore “when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer persecution with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a time.” (Hebrews 11:24)
C
The Christian saints have had it, and therefore they trampled on every repugnance, every attachment, when it came in the way of their perfection. And this principle is the life of the great religious and charitable orders of the Church. These institutions are a mystery to Protestants. Soon after the “Little Sisters of the Poor” were established in London, a Protestant writer, in one of the periodicals of the day, described a visit he had made to their establishment, and after giving a most interesting account of the self-denying labors of the community, he says he was curious to trace the feelings that actuated these ladies in devoting themselves to duties so apt to be repulsive to their class.
D
He supposed that benevolence was the impulse most concerned, but, on questioning the Sisters, found that this was not the case, but that the basis of their action was a principle of self-renunciation for Christ’s sake. To him such a motive had in it something strange and unnatural; but, really, this is always the sustaining principle of all high religious action.
E
Everything fails sooner or later but the spirit of sacrifice. This is the spirit that does great things for God, that cuts down the mountains in our road to heaven and fills up the valleys, making straight paths for our feet.
X
A
How pleasing is such a spirit to God! Even among men such a spirit is highly esteemed. Who does not admire a generous, self-sacrificing man? In a family, who is so much loved as the one whose thoughts are all for others? Where are such tears shed as over the fresh grave of a self-forgetful friend? What makes the character of a mother so beautiful but the trait of self-sacrifice? And so before God there is nothing so beautiful as the spirit of sacrifice.
B
A religion which does not center in itself, but which centers in God, that is His delight. There is nothing abject in such a spirit. To serve God is to reign. God knows our nature, and He requires of us nothing but what gives to our whole being its highest harmony. The man who has the spirit of sacrifice is a royal man.
C
How beautiful, my brethren, is an altar! Everything connected in our minds with an altar is beautiful. When we think of an altar, we think of sweet flowers and burning lights, and smoking incense, and a meek victim, and worship, music, and prayer. So, in the heart where the spirit or sacrifice reigns, there are sweet flowers of piety, and flaming zeal, and the silent victim of a heart that struggles not, and the incense of prayer, and the harmonies of joy and praise.
D
Oh, if there is a sacred place on earth, a home of peace, a shrine, a holy of holies, a place where heaven and earth are nearest, where God descends and takes up His abode, it is in the heart of the man who is penetrated through and through with the sense of God’s greatness, and who walks before Him in reverence and continual worship.
XI
A
My brethren, I covet for you such a spirit. I do not always find it among Catholics. I remember, some years ago, when collecting for a charitable object. I called on a man who was engaged in a large business, and asked for a contribution. He said, Oh yes, he thought highly of the undertaking, and wished to give a generous donation, say one hundred dollars.
B
When I called for it at the appointed time, he asked me if I did not want any goods in his line. They were articles of luxury, such as very few persons have occasion for, and I told him, no. Then he mentioned a rich gentleman with whom I happened to be acquainted, and asked me to secure from him his custom, intimating that this donation of one hundred dollars depended on my success.
C
Now I do not know that this person was at all sensible of acting an unworthy part, but I think you must all feel that this was very far from the spirit in which one ought to give anything to God; and yet, my brethren, inferior motives enter too much and too often into our religious actions. Selfishness mingles too much with our piety.
D
Oh, how diluted, how paltry and feeble is our religion, compared with that of other times! David refused the site for an altar what Areuna offered him as a gift, saying: “Nay but I will buy it of thee at a price; and will not offer to the Lord my God holocausts free cost.” (2 Samuel 24:24) Magdalene took a box of spikenard ointment, because it was the most precious thing she had, and very costly, and broke the box, and poured it wastefully on the Savior’s head. (Matthew 26:7)
E
Those who have examined the cathedrals of Europe that were built in the Middle Ages, tell us that away up on the outside of the roof, there is found carving as rich, as beautiful, and as elaborate as that on the parts in full sight. A human eye would hardly see it once a year; no matter: it was done for the eye of God and the angels. Oh that you had such a spirit! I want you to think more of God. I want you to fear Him more deeply, and to love Him far, far more fervently.
F
O my brethren, is the service you are rendering Him at all worthy of Him? Look at the earth and sky that He has made; look at the glorious Throne of Light from which He sways the universe, look at the Cross, look into your own hearts, and answer. “Holy things are for the Holy.” “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised.” (Psalm 96:4) “O Lord God Almighty, just and true, who shall not fear Thee and magnify Thy Name!” (Revelation 15:3) “As the eyes of servants are on the hands of their master, and as the eyes of a handmaid are on the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are unto Thee, O Lord our God, You that dwell in the heavens.” (Psalm 123:2)