St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

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CHAPTER III. The second fruit to be drawn from the consideration of the first Word spoken by Christ upon the Cross.

If men would learn to pardon without a murmur the injuries they receive, and thus force their enemies to become their friends, we might learn a second and very salutary lesson by meditating on the first word. The example of Christ and the Blessed Trinity ought to be a powerful argument to persuade us to this. For if Christ forgave and prayed for His executioners, what reason can be alleged why a Christian should not act similarly to his enemies? If God, our Creator, the Lord and Judge of all men, Who has it in His power to take instant vengeance on a sinner, awaits his return to repentance, and invites him to peace and reconcilation with the promise of pardoning his treasons against the Divine Majesty, why should not a creature imitate this conduct, particularly if we remember that the pardon of an insult merits a great reward? We read in the history of St. Engelbert, Archbishop of Cologne, who was murdered by some enemies who were Iying in wait for him, that at the moment of his death he prayed for them in the words of our Lord, “Father, forgive them;” and it was revealed that this action was so pleasing to God, that his soul was carried by the hands of angels to heaven, and placed amongst the choir of martyrs, where he received the martyr’s crown and palm; and his tomb was rendered famous by the working of many miracles.

Oh, if Christians would learn how easily they can, if they wish, acquire inexhaustible treasures, and merit signal degrees of honour and glory by gaining the mastery over the various agitations of their souls, and magnanimously despising small and trivial insults, they would certainly not be so hardhearted and obstinately set against pardon and forgiveness. They argue that they would act against nature to allow themselves to be unjustly spurned and outraged by word and deed. For wild animals, which merely follow the instinct of nature, fiercely attack their enemies the moment they behold them, and kill them either with their teeth or their claws; so we, at the sight of our enemy, feel our blood beginning to boil, and our desire of revenge is aroused. Such reasoning is false; it does not draw a distinction between self-defence which is lawful, and a spirit of revenge which is unlawful.

No one can find fault with a man who defends himself in a just cause, and nature teaches us to repel force by force, but it does not teach us to take upon ourselves to avenge an injury we have received.

No one hinders us from taking precautions necessary to provide against an attack, but the law of God forbids us to be revengeful. To punish an injustice belongs not to the private individual but to the public magistrate, and because God is the King of kings, therefore does He cry out and say, “Revenge to Me; I will repay.”[1]

As to the argument that one animal is carried by its very nature to attack the animal which is the enemy of its species, I answer that this is the result of their being irrational animals, which cannot distinguish between nature and what is vicious in nature. But men, who are endowed with reason, ought to draw a line between the nature or the person which has been created by God and is good, and the vice or the sin which is bad and does not proceed from God. Accordingly, when a man has been insulted, he ought to love the person of his enemy and hate the insult, and should rather have pity on him than be angry with him; just as a physician who loves his patients and prescribes for them with due care, but hates the disease, and endeavours with all the resources at his command to drive it away, to destroy it and render it harmless. And this is what the Master and Physician of our souls, Christ our Lord, teaches when He says, ” Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.”[2] Christ our Master is not like the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in the chair of Moses and taught, but did not put their teaching in practice. When He ascended the pulpit of the Cross He practised what He taught, by praying aloud for the enemies whom He loved, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Now, the reason why the sight of an enemy makes the blood boil in the very veins of some people is this, that they are animals who have not yet learnt to bring the motions of the inferior part of the soul, which are common both to mankind and to the brute creation, under the domain of reason; whereas spiritual men are not subject to these motions of the flesh, but know how to keep them in check; are not angry with those who have injured them, but, on the contrary, pity them, and by showing them acts of kindness strive to bring them to peace and unity.

But this it is objected is too difficult and severe a trial for men of noble birth, who ought to be solicitous for their honour. Nay rather, the task is an easy one; for, as the Evangelist testifies, “the yoke” of Christ, Who has laid down this law for the guidance of His followers, “is sweet, and His burden light;”[3] and “His commandments are not heavy,” as St. John affirms.[4] And if they appear difficult and severe, they appear so because we have little or no love for God, for nothing is difficult to him who loves, according to the saying of the Apostle: “Charity is patient, is kind, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”[5] Nor is Christ the only one Who has loved His enemies, although in the perfection with which He practised the virtue He has surpassed every one else, for the holy Patriarch Joseph loved with a singular love his brethren who sold him into slavery. And in the Holy Scripture we read how David most patiently put up with the persecutions of his enemy Saul, who for a long time sought his death, and when it was in the power of David to take away the life of Saul he did not slay him. And under the law of grace the proto-martyr, St. Stephen, imitated the example of Christ by making this prayer when he was being stoned to death: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge;”[6] and St. James the Apostle, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who was cast head-long from the battlements of the Temple, cried to heaven in the moment of his death, ” Lord, pardon them, for they know not what they do.” And St. Paul writes of himself and of his fellow- Apostles: ” We are reviled and we bless; we are persecuted and we suffer it; we are blasphemed and we entreat.”[7] In fine, many martyrs and innumerable others, after the example of Christ, have found no difficulty in fulfilling this commandment. But there may be some who will further argue: I do not deny that we must pardon our enemies, but I will choose my own time for doing so, when forsooth I have almost forgotten the injustice which has been done me, and have become calm after the first burst of indignation has passed. But what would be the thoughts of these people if in the meantime they were summoned to their last account, and were found without the garment of charity, and were asked, “How come you in hither, not having on a wedding garment?”[8] Would they not be struck dumb with amazement as our Lord pronounces sentence upon them: “Bind him hand and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”[9] Act rather with prudence now, and imitate the conduct of Christ, Who prayed to His Father, “Father, forgive them,” at the moment when He was the object of their scoffs, when the Blood was trickling drop by drop from His Hands and Feet, and His whole body was the prey of exquisite tortures. He is the true and only Master, to Whose voice all should listen who would not be led into error: to Him did the Eternal Father refer when a voice was heard from heaven saying, “Hear ye Him.”[10] In Him are “all the treasures of the wisdom and of the knowledge” of God[11] If you could have asked the opinion of Solomon on any point, you might with safety have followed his advice; but “behold a greater than Solomon here.”[12]

Still I hear some further objecting. If we resolve to return good for evil, a kindness for an insult, a blessing for a curse, the wicked will become insolent, scoundrels will become bold, the just will be oppressed, and virtue will be trodden under foot. This result will not follow, for often, as the Wise Man says, “A mild answer breaketh wrath.”[13] Besides, the patience of a just man not unfrequently fills his oppressor with admiration, and persuades him to proffer the hand of friendship. Moreover, we forget that the State appoints magistrates, kings, and princes, whose duty it is to make the wicked feel the severity of the law, and provide means for honest men to live a peaceful and quiet life. And if in some cases human justice is tardy, the Providence of God, which never allows a wicked act to go unpunished or a good deed to pass unrewarded, is continuallywatching over us, and is taking care in an unforeseen way that the occurrences which evil men think will crush them, shall tend to the exaltation and the honour of the virtuous. So at least St. Leo says, ” Thou hast been furious, O persecutor of the Church of God; thou hast been furious with the martyr, and thou hast augmented his glory by increasing his pain. For what has thy ingenuity devised which has not turned to his honour, when even the very instruments of his torture have been carried in triumph?” The same may be said of all martyrs, as well as of the saints of the old law. For what brought more renown and glory to the Patriarch Joseph than the persecution of his brethren? Their selling him in their envy to the Ishmaelites was the occasion of his becoming lord of the whole of Egypt, and prince of all his brothers.

But omitting these considerations, we will pass in review the many and great inconveniences those men suffer who, to escape merely a shadow of dishonour before men, are obstinately determined to have their revenge on those who have done them any wrong. In the first place, they act the part of fools by preferring a greater evil to a lesser. For it is a principle acknowledged on all sides, and declared to us by the Apostle in these words: “Let us not do evil that there may come good.”[14] It follows by consequence that a greater evil is not to be committed in order to obtain any compensation for a lesser one. He who receives an injury receives what is called the evil of a hardship: he who avenges an injury is guilty of what is called the evil of crime. Now, beyond a doubt, the misfortune of committing a crime is greater than the misfortune of having to endure a hardship; for though a hardship may make a man miserable, it does not necessarily make him wicked; a crime, however, makes him both miserable and wicked; a hardship deprives a man of temporal good, a crime deprives him of both a temporal and an eternal good. Accordingly he who would remedy the evil of a hardship by committing a crime is like a man who would cut off a part of his foot to make a pair of very small shoes fit him, which would be a sheer act of madness. Nobody is guilty of such folly in his temporal concerns, yet there are some men so blind to their real interests as not to fear to offend God mortally in order to escape that which has the appearance of disgrace, and maintain a semblance of honour in the eyes of men. For they fall under the displeasure and the ùvrath of God, and unless they amend in time and do penance, will have to endure eternal disgrace and torment, and will forfeit the everlasting honour of being a citizen of heaven. In addition to this they perform an act most agreeable to the devil and his angels, who urge on this man to do an unjust thing to that man with the purpose of sowing discord and enmity in the world. And each one should calmly reflect how disgraceful it is to please the fiercest enemy of the human race, and to displease Christ. Besides it occasionally happens that the injured man who longs for revenge mortally wounds his antagonist and slays him, for which murder he is ignominiously executed, and all his property is confiscated by the State, or at least he is forced to go into exile, and both he himself and all his family drag out a miserable existence. Thus it is that the devil sports with and mocks those who choose to be fettered with the manacles of a false honour, rather than become the servants and friends of Christ, the best of Kings, and be reckoned as the heirs of a kingdom the most vast and the most enduring. Wherefore, since the foolish men who, in spite of the command of God, refuse to be reconciled with their enemies, expose themselves to such a total shipwreck, all who are wise will listen to the doctrine which Christ, the Master of all, has taugllt us in the Gospel by His words, and on the Cross by His deeds.


ENDNOTES

1. Rom. xii. 19.
2. St. Matt. v. 44.
3. St. Matt, xi. 39.
4. I St. John v. 3.
5. I Cor. xiii. 4-7.
6. Acts vii. 59.
7. I Cor. iv. 12, 13.
8. St. Matt. xii. 12.
9. St. Matt. xxi. 13.
10. St. Matt. xvii. 5.
11. Coloss ii. 3.
12. St. Matt. xii. 42.
13. Prov. xv. 1.
14. Rom. iii. 8.