Editor’s Notes

Following the terrifying parable of the Great Banquet, read on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, the Gospel on the Third Sunday recounts two parables about God’s love for those who seek repentance – and, in fact, his determination to seek them.

The two parables read at Mass – the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin – immediateley precede the longer parable of the Prodigal Son. Although this latter parable is not read at Mass, its proximity and treatment in the same chapter of Fr Coleridge’s work make it appropriate to include it with the articles for this Sunday.

These parables directly follow the Pharisaic murmuring over Christ’s association with sinners, and they represent Our Lord’s answer against this criticism. They recall earlier controversies over the same matter (e.g., St Matthew’s feast).

Here is the Gospel:

At that time, the publicans and sinners were drawing near to Him to listen to Him. And the Pharisees and the Scribes murmured, saying, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. But He spoke to them this parable, saying, What man of you having a hundred sheep, and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the desert, and go after that which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it upon his shoulders rejoicing. And on coming home he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost.’ I say to you that, even so, there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, more then over ninety-nine just who have no need of repentance. Or what woman, having ten drachmas, if she loses one drachma, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the drachma that I had lost.’ Even so, I say to you, there will be joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

The three parables progressively reveal God’s joy at the conversion of sinners – first through metaphors of ownership (sheep, coin), and then through the full human story of father and son. Each builds upon the last, and continues the themes of loss and pursuit, discovery and conversion, and the responses provoked in others.

These parables affirm both the Church’s mission to seek sinners and the joy of Heaven at each conversion. They also rebuke the spirit of the “elder brother,” found then in the Pharisees – and still today, both inside and outside of the Church. They offer a lesson of continuing importance: zeal for purity cannot turn into “purity spirals,” and cannot eclipse charity – lest one fall further than the penitent.

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Parables of God’s Love for Sinners

The Preaching of the Cross, Part II

Chapter IX
St. Luke xv. 1—32 ; Story of the Gospels, § 124
Burns and Oates, 1886.
(Read at Holy Mass on the Third Sunday after Pentecost)

Part I: How Jesus responds to the charge of associating with sinners

The captiousness of the Pharisees prompted Our Lord to respond with three distinct parables.

1. How Jesus responds to the charge of associating with sinners

Part II: The accusation you might miss in the Parable of the Lost Sheep

This parable is not just about God’s love – it’s also a condemnation of hirelings who should be shepherds.

2. The accusation you might miss in the Parable of the Lost Sheep

Part III: How a wandering sheep differs from lost coin in Christ’s parables

The parable of the lost coin reveals how souls may be lost through negligence within the Church, not merely by wandering away from her.

3. How a wandering sheep differs from lost coin in Christ’s parables

Part IV: Does God love repentant sinners more than those who stay faithful?

Heaven’s joy over repentant sinners is like our own relief after loss.

4. Does God love repentant sinners more than those who stay faithful?

BONUS ARTICLES: THE PRODIGAL SON

Part V: Why does the younger son want his inheritance, when he lacks for nothing?

The Prodigal’s rebellion begins in craving independence – the root sin beneath the others.

5. Why does the younger son want his inheritance, when he lacks for nothing?

Part VI: Why does the father give the Prodigal his portion, knowing what he will do with it?

God honours our freedom by letting rebellion run its course, and uses the consequences as a means of awakening us to our plight.

6. Why does the father give the Prodigal his portion, knowing what he will do with it?

Part VII: Why God’s pardon can be a greater triumph to Him than a benefit to us

The father’s extravagant welcome reveals God’s pardon, restoring the penitent to full sonship rather than the mere servitude for which he had hoped.

7. Why God’s pardon can be a greater triumph to Him than a benefit to us

Part VIII: Does the Prodigal’s Elder Brother represent the Jewish people?

In one sense, yes; although as we shall see in the next part, he can also represent us too.

8. Does the Prodigal’s Elder Brother represent the Jewish people?

Part IX: Can WE be the Prodigal’s Elder Brother?

Although a primary reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is about the vocation of the Gentiles, it also contains a lesson about how Catholics should behave towards converts.

9. Can WE be the Prodigal’s Elder Brother?

LISTEN: Why you can and should return to God TODAY

The parable of the Prodigal Son is the dawn at the end of a period focused on sin, death, judgement and Hell.

• Why you can and should return to God TODAY

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

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Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:

• Why Christ let many disciples leave rather than soften his doctrine

• How the miracle of the loaves and the manna in the desert are connected to the Holy Eucharist

• What miracles teach us about trusting Our Lord when his doctrine seems difficult.

He shows us that Christ’s miracles prove his authority, and his authority demands faith.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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The Discourse in the Synagogue

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter IV
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

2. How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

3. How Jesus used the loaves to explain his doctrine to the people – and to us

After the discourse

It would seem that here at last is a pause in this great discourse. Our Lord had finished the teaching on the subject in the words last recited. And St. John adds, ‘These things He said, teaching in the synagogue in Capharnaum.’

He adds that in consequence of this teaching many of the disciples forsook our Lord. In the former part of the chapter, he had told us how they murmured or objected, which is what is done when the discussion is continued on the same spot and at the same time. But it is something different to say, that the disciples, or many of them, hearing what had been said, complained of the hardness of the doctrine. And it is not of the Jews that St. John now speaks, but of the disciples themselves.

Nevertheless, it may be quite as well to suppose that the following words also may have been spoken on this occasion, especially as they contain the one explanatory clause which occurs in our Lord’s whole statement.

‘Many, therefore, of His disciples, hearing it, said, This saying is hard, and who can bear it? But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples murmured at this, said to them, Doth this scandalize you? If then you shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before!

“It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning, who they were that did not believe, and who he was that would betray Him. And He said, Therefore did I say to you, that no man can come to Me unless it be given him by My Father.’

Here again it is to be noted that, if the time had come for the full statement of the manner in which the Body and Blood of our Lord are to be made our food, He might have given a different answer from that which He did give. But He had Divine reasons for not completing His doctrine at this time, and it was not completed until the very eve of His Sacred Passion.

The words of eternal life

In order to complete this preliminary statement of the whole teaching of our Lord, we may add here, before further explanation of the several parts of this discourse, the remainder of the statement of St. John in relation to this whole subject.

‘After this many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him. Then Jesus said to the twelve, Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have known, that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God.

“Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He meant Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for this same was about to betray Him, whereas he was one of the twelve.’

What has been said may suffice as a general survey of the whole narrative of St. John in the passage before us, a survey which enables us, in some degree, to see at once the gradual advance of the discourse from an undefined promise of a Bread from Heaven, the efficacy of which shall be nothing less than the production of eternal life, to the specific and particular declaration that this heavenly food is to consist of the Body and Blood of our Lord Himself, eaten and drunk.

Our next step would naturally be the consideration of the several stages in the discourse which have been already indicated. But it will be better, before proceeding to this, to make a few general remarks which may illustrate the discourse as a whole.

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Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us how Christ unfolded the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament by degrees.

• How he declared himself the Bread of Life come down from Heaven.

• That the Jews resisted his heavenly origin before objecting to the command to eat his flesh.

• Why he strengthened, rather than softened, the hard doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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The Discourse in the Synagogue

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter IV
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

2. How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

‘Give us this Bread’

‘They said therefore unto Him, Lord, give us always this Bread!’ The exclamation is like that of the poor Samaritan woman, when our Lord spoke to her about the water of life:

‘Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come hither to draw.’1

These people did not understand what our Lord meant, but they understood that He was speaking of some great boon, and so they broke out into a prayer that it may be given to them.

The Bread of Life

Then He goes on to specify still more clearly the character of the gift. Before, He had spoken about the Bread which cometh down from Heaven, and now He says plainly that it is Himself.

‘And Jesus said to them, I am the Bread of Life, he that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he that believeth in Me shall never thirst.’

And then He goes on to speak in general terms about the necessity of faith in Himself, and to connect the promise of the Living Bread with the resurrection to a new and perfect life.

For this was in a manner more necessary, lest it might seem that He promised to those who eat of this Heavenly Bread that they should not pass through death, enjoying at once the everlasting life, which is the fruit of this Bread. And it may be supposed that He discerned among the audience some difficulty in receiving His words on this subject.

‘But I say unto you, that you also have seen Me, and you believe not. All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me I will not cast out. Because I came down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me.

‘Now this is the will of My Father Who sent Me, that of all that He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

‘And this is the will of My Father that sent Me, that every one that seeth the Son and believeth in Him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up at the last day.’

Here we find a number of new thoughts and ideas suggested by the words of our Lord, and we shall have to explain the passage presently, as far as may be, in detail. But the remark must be repeated here, that our Lord again leaves something which is most important to be the subject of future teaching. For He does not say how it is that He will raise men up at the last day.

This, then, is what we may call the third stage in the unfolding of the truths which our Lord desires to set forth on this occasion, and we can see that He has now got so far as to have declared that He is Himself the Bread that cometh down from Heaven, and so far also as to connect this statement with the future raising up, to newness of life and immortality, of those who come to Him and who believe on Him.

There is not as yet a word about eating or drinking, except so far as that idea is contained in the use of the figure of bread.

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‘Jesus, the Son of Joseph’

We can gauge accurately the impression produced on the hearers by the next objection which the people present make.

‘The Jews therefore murmured at Him, because He had said, I am the Living Bread which came down from Heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus the Son of Joseph, Whose father and mother we know? How then saith He, I came down from Heaven?’

They fasten on the statement about coming down from Heaven, rather than make any objection about His being the Living Bread.

Our Lord’s answer: His Flesh to be eaten

Our Lord answers this objection in the next paragraph or stage of the teaching, in which He first of all tells them that they cannot believe, unless God the Father leads them to faith, and, in the second place, insists still further on the necessity of eating this Living Bread, adding at the end the new and most startling declaration, that the Bread of which He speaks is His own Flesh.

‘Jesus therefore answered them and said, Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to Me except the Father Who hath sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught of God.”2

‘Every one that hath heard of the Father and hath learned, cometh to Me. Not that any man hath seen the Father, but He Who is of God, He hath seen the Father.

‘Amen, amen, I say unto you, he that believeth in Me hath everlasting life. I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. This is the Bread that cometh down from Heaven, that if any man eat of It, he may not die. I am the Living Bread which came down from Heaven.

‘If any man eat of this Bread, he shall live for ever, and the Bread that I will give is My Flesh, for the life of the world.’

Fourfold declaration

The advance of the doctrine here is quite evident. Our Lord does not explain away what He had said. On the contrary, He insists on it and adds to it a further statement, that the Bread of which He speaks is His Flesh.

Nor can there be any doubt that it was in this way that His words were understood by those who heard them at the time. For St. John adds:

‘The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this Man give us His Flesh to eat?’

Our Lord again answers without in the slightest manner qualifying His words.

‘Then Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say unto you, Except you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

‘For My Flesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, abideth in Me, and I in him. As the Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me.

‘This is the Bread that came down from Heaven, not as your Fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this Bread shall live for ever.’

Here, then, we have the true doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament set forth in the most solemn and dogmatic form before the institution of the Blessed Sacrament.

Nothing can be added and nothing can be taken from these Divine words as far as they go. They constitute by far the most explicit and definite statement on the subject of Holy Communion that can be found in the Gospels or in the New Testament.

And yet there is still something kept back. There is nothing direct as yet about the Adorable Sacrifice, there is nothing direct about Transubstantiation. This doctrine may be discerned, so to say, lurking under the words of our Lord, for after speaking of the eating and drinking of His Body and Blood, He goes on to speak of eating of that Bread. The Bread, therefore, which is to be eaten is the same as the Flesh and Blood of our Lord. But the doctrine which is discernible to Catholics who possess the teaching of the Church, was still veiled from those to whom our Lord was speaking in this place.

The Discourse in the Synagogue

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

2. How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

From:
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

We are beginning a new series on Our Lord’s “Bread of Life” discourse.

This series covers three chapters in Fr Henry James Coleridge' SJ’s The Training of the Apostles, Part IV:

• Chapter IX: The Discourse in the Synagogue

• Chapter X: Faith in the Son of Man

• Chapter XI: The Blessed Eucharist

The doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, announced in this discourse, is one of the most beautiful demonstrations of the love of the Sacred Heart for mankind. There could be no better time to begin this series than June, the month of the Sacred Heart.

In this piece, Father Coleridge explains how Christ prepared his hearers for the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament. In particular, he tells us:

• How the miracle of the loaves laid the foundation for Christ’s discourse.

• That St John presents the miracle and discourse as inseparably connected.

• Why Christ first demanded faith, before revealing the harder doctrine.

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The Discourse in the Synagogue

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter IV
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

The miracles and the discourse

By a prudent arrangement of His own movements, our Lord had now brought to Capharnaum a large number of those who had been present at the great miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, while at the same time He had avoided the danger to the crowd of the possible result of their enthusiasm in an attempt to make Him a King.

It is clear that if, as we have supposed, His Sacred Heart was now full of the wonderful boon of the Blessed Sacrament, which had been so pointedly prefigured by the miracle just named, and if He desired to prepare the hearts and minds of His Apostles and others, for the reception of the great and difficult doctrine which His Church was to teach after Him, concerning this great boon, it must have been a part of His plan to deliver in some public place of teaching some commentary on the miracle, which might lead to the formation in their minds of at least the lineaments and outlines of the great doctrine to which that miracle had reference.

This it was necessary should be done at once, while the marvel of the miracle was as yet fresh in their minds, for otherwise the words which He was to speak might seem to miss their full meaning. The discourse was necessary for the intelligence of the miracle, but the miracle was also necessary as the foundation of the discourse.

Thus we find that although our Lord had now for some time absented Himself from the city, and even the neighbourhood, of Capharnaum, He chose to be there now for a short time, for the sake of promulgating, at least fundamentally, the doctrine which was to fill so large a place in the dogmatic treasury of the Catholic Church.

The discourse as related by St. John

The great discourse, of which we are now to speak, is related to us by St. John, and it is only natural to suppose that he has reported it to us in the same way as the other discourses of our Lord, which form the characteristic feature in his Gospel.

Indeed, as has been said, it is clear that he might not have given us any narrative of the miracle itself, but for the sake of the subsequent teaching of our Lord, and that he has given both is an evidence that, in his mind, the two are inseparably connected.

This discourse in the Gospel narrative is comparatively short, not with reference to other discourses, but with reference to the importance of the subject and the length of time which was probably occupied by the actual conversation or teaching of our Lord on this occasion.

It is the manner of St. John, as indeed of St. Matthew also, to give us in our Lord’s own words the heads of the discourses which he records, rather than the whole of what He said. The discourse before us was evidently one which proceeded gradually onward, our Lord taking advantage, so to say, of the interruptions by His audience, or of the effects produced upon them, as He went on, to add line upon line of the full doctrine which He desired to set forth.

All through He claims their faith, and expects His word to be accepted as authoritative, and He also seems to add, after each break in the continuity of His words, some things still more difficult of belief than what had preceded. The last and the greatest of the difficulties which are raised, He hardly explains at all, as we shall see.

Its explanation is suggested by the miracle of the loaves, and also by the image of the manna. But no direct explanation is given as to the marvellous way in which the Body and Blood of our Lord are received as food, under the species of bread and wine. This must be remembered all through in our commentary. It is well to take a general view of the discourse, in its successive stages, before examining each stage by itself.

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First question and answer

The discourse begins with the question of the people as to how our Lord came to be found at Capharnaum. They had seen Him send away His disciples, and remain Himself on the further side of the lake. Thus they had expected to find Him in the morning where He had last been seen, especially as they knew there was no boat that could have brought Him over.

Our Lord answers nothing to this inquiry.

‘And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when camest Thou hither?’

There seem to have been some people in the boat as well as the Apostles, but whether they had published the new miracle of the walking on the waters or not, our Lord did not choose to refer to it Himself. He proceeds at once, in the report of St. John, to put His finger on the weak motives which had brought so many of them to seek Him on this occasion.

‘Jesus answered them, and said, Amen, amen, I say to you, you seek Me not because you have seen miracles, but because you did eat of the loaves and were filled.’

Thus He directly establishes the connection of the teaching which He is about to impart with the miracle of the loaves. And He goes on at once to raise them from the thought of the material bread which they had received at His hands, to that of a far more wonderful and powerful Bread which He does not yet explain, but of which He says three things, that it endures to life everlasting, that it is the gift of the Son of Man, and that it is His gift because the Father has sealed Him.

‘Labour not for the meat that perishes, but for that which endureth unto eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for Him hath God the Father sealed.’

Thus the Heavenly Bread is at once put before their minds, as the chief subject of the teaching.

The second stage

The next stage in the discourse is what it is, on account of the questions to which our Lord’s former words led. ‘They said therefore to Him, What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?’ taking up, apparently, the word which in the last verse has been translated by the English word ‘labour,’ and repeating it in the form of a question.

The word is the same in both verses in the Greek. ‘You bid us work,’ they say, ‘for the Bread of life everlasting; what are we to do to work this work of God?’ Our Lord answers them by requiring their faith.

‘Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe on Him Whom God hath sent. They say therefore to Him, What sign therefore dost Thou show, that we may see and may believe Thee?’

For they reasoned rightly, that faith must be founded on some evidence, not of the things that are to be believed in, but of the Divine mission of the Person Who speaks in the name of God, and so claims belief.

And then they go back at once to the evidence of the mission of Moses, which was in their minds in consequence of the resemblance between that evidence and the miracle which they had lately witnessed.

‘Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from Heaven to eat.’1

They seem to have attributed the words of the Psalm which they quote to the person of Moses, as if he had been the giver of the manna, instead of God.

Our Lord corrects them, and at the same time goes further in the development of the doctrine which He has now to impart. In the former sentence He spoke of the bread that endureth unto life everlasting, which is to be the gift of the Son of Man. Now He speaks of the bread as something personal, as coming down from Heaven, and as giving life to the world.

‘Then Jesus said to them, Amen, I say to you, Moses gave you not bread from Heaven, but My Father giveth you the true Bread from Heaven. For the bread of God is that which cometh down from Heaven, and giveth life to the world.’

The original words may mean, ‘He that cometh down from Heaven, and giveth life to the world.’

There is therefore an advance in the teaching in this statement, and a preparation for the further doctrine which immediately follows.

The Discourse in the Synagogue

From:
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

The Gospel on the Second Sunday of Pentecost recounts a parable told in the house of one of the Pharisees.

In response to Our Lord’s teaching about humility, and giving without expectation of return, one of the men at table said, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God.”

The Parable of the Great Supper is told in response to that comment, as if to ask: “But who, of those invited to this blessing, will accept it?”

“At that time, Jesus spoke to the Pharisees this parable: A certain man gave a great supper, and he invited many. And he sent his servant at supper time to tell those invited to come, for everything is now ready. And they all with one accord began to excuse themselves. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a farm, and I must go out and see it; I pray you hold me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am on my way to try them; I pray you hold me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’

“And the servant returned, and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house was angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor, and the crippled, and the blind, and the lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, your order has been carried out, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and make them come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you that none of those who were invited shall taste of my supper.’”

The parable has several applications, but one of the most important is that it conveys how God’s call to Israel was rejected, and how the Gentiles were “compelled” to fill the places that they left.

This incident comes towards the end of Christ’s ministry, following his controversies with the Pharisees and Scribes and his many warnings against worldliness and carelessness.

Note: Fr Coleridge’s treatment of this incident is part of a chapter which also deals Our Lord’s healing of the dropsical man. This incident occurs on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. We will be providing those sections below – along with the final reflections in this chapter, on what Christ means by his comments about “hating” those closest to us.

Because they form part of a wider chapter, the numbering followed will reflect the order of the chapter itself. The passages particularly for today are Parts III and IV.

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Our Lord in the Pharisee’s House

The Preaching of the Cross, Part II

Chapter VIII
St. Luke xiv. 1-35.
Story of the Gospels, § 111-3
Burns and Oates, London, 1887

Part III: Christ’s warning: The Banquet will go on—with or without you

Our Lord shows the terrible danger of refusing grace, even for things lawful in themselves.

3. Christ’s warning: The Banquet will go on—with or without you

Part IV: How the call to the Church passed from Israel to the Gentiles

The contempt for Christ on the part of his people opened the door to the Gentiles. But what two classes of Gentiles are represented by the two classes of men in the parable?

4. How the call to the Church passed from Israel to the Gentiles

BONUS ARTICLES

Part I: Why did Christ provoke His enemies with miracles on the Sabbath?

Our Lord is watched closely as He enters the house of a leading Pharisee on the Sabbath. A man with dropsy stands before Him—perhaps placed there as a trap. What will he do?

1. Why did Christ provoke His enemies with miracles on the Sabbath?

Part II: Why humility is necessary even on the natural level

At a Sabbath meal in a Pharisee’s house, Christ explains why anyone with an ounce of self-respect must strive to be humble, or else look completely foolish.

1. Why humility is necessary even on the natural level

Part V: Does Jesus actually want us to ‘hate’ our family members?

Christ tells us the cost of discipleship: not only must we carry our cross, but we must ‘hate’ father, mother, wife and children—even our own life. But what did he mean?

5. Does Jesus actually want us to ‘hate’ our family members?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

Pentecost marks the end of the great cycle of the liturgical year that began on Septuagesima (or Advent, depending on one’s reckoning). From Trinity Sunday – the Octave of Pentecost – the chronological life of Our Lord ceases to dominate the Sundays of the temporal cycle. It is fitting, therefore, that the Roman Liturgy recounts on this day one of Christ’s final acts before his Ascension.

The Gospel on Trinity Sunday recounts Our Lord definitively commissioning his Apostles to bring the Gospel to all nations, and promising to be with them until the end of time. This event forms the foundation of the Church’s life.

Each Evangelist closes his Gospel with a slightly different emphasis, which we will see as we progress through the parts of this chapter.

Following the sections, we are providing a bonus article relevant to this feast.

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Before the Ascension

The Passage of Our Lord to the Father

Chapter XVI
St. Matt. xxviii. 16-20; St. Mark xvi. 14-18; St. Luke xxiv. 44-49.
Story of the Gospels, § 180
Burns and Oates, London, 1892

Part I: What Trinity Sunday tells us about the Church’s indefectible authority

Christ’s final command was to teach, govern and sanctify all men, until the end of time. On Trinity Sunday, the Church recalls this – not as a memory, but as her living mission today.

1. What Trinity Sunday tells us about the Church’s indefectible authority

Part II: What St Luke reveals about the Church’s mission and the Holy Ghost

St Luke closes his Gospel with a beginning: the fulfilment of prophecy, the command to preach repentance, and the promise of power from on high.

2. What St Luke reveals about the Church’s mission and the Holy Ghost

Part III: Why does Saint John seem to end his Gospel twice?

St John affirms Christ’s divinity, bears personal witness, and hints at truths too great for the world to contain. His final word is a call to believe, and to find eternal life in the Name of Jesus.

3. Why does Saint John seem to end his Gospel twice?

BONUS ARTICLE

Faith and Mystery: how to explain the Holy Trinity simply

The dogma of the Holy Trinity is absolutely central to Christianity, but many do not know why we believe it, or that it is expressed in the Gospels themselves.

• Faith and Mystery: how to explain the Holy Trinity simply

‘Totem Pope’—Does the mere election of a pope fulfil Christ’s promises?

What does Christ mean when he says “I am with you all days”? This article discusses why this is more than a promise that the Church would always exist in the world:

• ‘Totem Pope’—Does the mere election of a pope fulfil Christ’s promises?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…

• How meekness gives a man mastery over his own body and passions.

• That purity, peace, and influence all grow from the same hidden root of meekness.

• Why the meek win hearts on earth before inheriting the land of heaven.

He shows us that meekness is not weakness, but the quiet dominion which prepares the soul for the kingdom of God.

For more information on this mini-series, see Part I.

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The Meek possessing the Land

The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Chapter XIII
St. Matt. v. 4; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.

Meekness mini-series contents:

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

1. The Psalm and the Beatitude of the Meek

2. How the Meek will inherit the Earth, even in this life

3. Meekness makes all of nature ours

4. You will not win without meekness

Three meanings of the land

It must be remembered that there are also other senses which have been adopted by Christian interpreters of the text, which convey deep truths, and may also be combined with what has already been said.

In the first place, some holy writers say that the meek possess the land on which they tread, the land which they carry with them, and the land which they seek.1

The land which they carry with them is their own body, and it is a matter of daily experience that those who subdue the passions of anger, envy, revenge, self-will, and the like, are rewarded by God by the empire over their own body, the subjugation of the more carnal part of their nature, while on the other hand, pride, anger, and the other kindred passions, where they are allowed to rule, are ordinarily accompanied by or tend to the indulgence of even the filthiest lusts.

This is so true that even intellectual pride and the pride which leads men into heresy, the subjects of which are usually men of cultivation and even of religious profession, are nevertheless frequently chastised by the rebellion of the lower appetites.

Meekness and purity

The pattern of all purity, on the other hand, is our Blessed Lady, the humblest and the meekest of the daughters of Eve, she to whom the Church sings—

Virgo singularis,
Inter omnes mitis,
Nos culpis solutos,
Mites fac et castos.

It cannot be too much insisted upon, that any indulgence of anger, pride, irritability, a domineering temper, or again, of vanity, conceit, and the other faults which have so great a tendency to blind men to their own defects, is nearly connected with the rebellion of the lower appetites, and that it may be in vain to chastise the flesh and to endeavour to keep down the more carnal passions by mortification, as long as those others are left unchecked.

For as Cassian writes:

‘As much as a man advances in gentleness and patience of heart, so much will he advance also in purity of body. And so much the further as he has driven back the passion of anger, so much the more firmly will he grasp the virtue of chastity. For no one will avoid the fiery heat of the body, but he who has first repressed the movements of the mind. And this is most openly declared by that Beatitude which is praised by our Lord’s own mouth, when He says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.”

‘In no other way, therefore, shall we possess the land, that is, in no other way shall the rebellious earth of this our body be subjected to us, but by the firm foundation of our mind, in the first instance, on the gentleness of patience: nor will any one be able to keep down the rising battles of lust in his own flesh, unless he be first armed with the weapon of meekness. For “the meek shall possess the land, and shall dwell therein for ever”.’

Father Coleridge Reader is a labour of love. But curating, cleaning up and publishing these texts takes real work.

To keep this project going, and to make more of this treasury available, we rely on reader support. Some posts are reserved for members to sustain this mission.

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Editor’s Notes

In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…

• How meekness frees the soul to enjoy God’s gifts with gratitude and peace.

• That pride, passion, and ambition blind men to immaterial goods

• Why only the meek truly inherit the earth – by using creation as children of God.

He shows us that meekness is not weakness, but the disposition which enables man to understand, possess, and rejoice in all that God has given.

For more information on this mini-series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

The Meek possessing the Land

The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Chapter XIII
St. Matt. v. 4; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.

Meekness mini-series contents:

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

1. The Psalm and the Beatitude of the Meek

2. How the Meek will inherit the Earth, even in this life

3. Meekness makes all of nature ours

Meekness and intellectual enjoyment

Men of strong passions, untamed ambition, reckless lust, who indulge their natural greed for power or pleasure, or who strain themselves in the continual pursuit of wealth or the honour of this world, may be rich in lands and possessions, and have all the means of temporal enjoyment at their command and yet after all they do not enjoy life or their own possessions.

They can no more enter into their inheritance in all these matters, than an idiot can inherit intellectual treasures of literature or art which his fathers have accumulated for him, and this, not for lack of the act of possession, but for lack of the faculty of possessing anything in a rational manner. The defect in the idiot is the absence of intelligence; the defect in the men who are the slaves of passion or ambition or avarice or the disquiet of worldly cares or the restlessness of an evil conscience, is the lack of meekness of mind and heart.

To those who have this meekness, the whole world is a possession and a home, they enjoy even the riches and treasures of others, whatever has delight and joy and profit to give yields them to the meek, and they inherit it as the children of Him Who gave the earth to man, not by the law of human inheritance which allots what is called property in this world, but by the right of the Creator of all things, Who has made all things to be used, and given to men of humble hearts the title and the power to use them.

God’s Providence and gifts

Again, a great part of the natural inheritance which is intended for God’s children in this world is the teaching concerning Himself which is contained in the course of history, His providence in the government of mankind, of the Church, of single souls, which, to those whose eyes are enlightened by Him is full of sweetness and beauty and tenderness, as well as of justice and holiness. But for the understanding of all this, meekness is necessary; for ‘He will guide the mild in judgment, and He will teach the meek His ways’.1

The reverent faith which recognizes Him as the Ruler of all things in His providence, which sees His hand in all that comes about, adores His judgments and waits patiently on His will, is rewarded by the gifts of intelligence and wisdom, while the contrary spirit of pride and self-will and independence grovels in darkness, and in its ignorance is tempted to find fault with and rebel against what it cannot understand.

Thus meekness is necessary in order to use the gifts of God, natural as well as spiritual, aright, to understand them and see His action in them and take home the lessons and instructions they are meant to convey.

The same may be said even of their enjoyment. For they are not truly gifts to, nor are they truly enjoyed, by those who use them as their own or as the instruments of pride or of sin, and so, though in this sense they may occupy the land, they do not possess it or inherit it. To the meek they are the works of God, the gifts of their Father, all that is good and beautiful and profitable in them is a quality which reflects Him in His beauty and goodness, and the quiet, tranquil thankfulness of a childlike spirit enables them to use them as they are meant to be used, and to recognise and rejoice in their loveliness with a simple depth of discernment and intensity of delight which can have no place in the soul disturbed by passion.

It may be said that even the common beauties of nature are sealed books to the proud and passionate, because they require in those who are to enjoy them something in harmony with their own peace and obedience and dependence on their Creator and Lord, Whose ineffable repose and beauty and might they reflect in their several degrees.

Thus it is that the gentle heart inherits all that is soothing and elevating in what human genius has produced, such as the restful music of poetry or art, in which the soul pours out her longings for higher and nobler things than she as yet possesses. The contact of nature, even in her simpler scenes, and of whatever bears on it the stamp of natural piety in human works, has a soothing influence for them, of which sensuality, dissipation, frivolity, or the sterner tempests of ambition, envy, or hatred, deprive the souls in which they reign.

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Three meanings of the land

These are considerations, then, which suggest that, when we enlarge our ideas of what our Lord may have meant by the earth or land which the meek are to inherit, we may find that there is no difficulty in understanding the words in their plain literal sense.

And it is only an extension of the same interpretation to understand that our Lord means to teach us that meekness is the condition on which alone any gifts of God to man can be truly enjoyed and used as they ought to be by His children, that it is the key which unlocks His treasures, which opens the secrets of Scripture or of doctrine to the student, secures the guidance of the Holy Spirit to those who have to rule or teach, and enables men to profit by all holy inspirations and means of grace of whatever kind that are provided for them in the Church.

It is in an especial manner true that meekness is necessary for the discernment of the manifold action of God upon the soul, for He speaks ordinarily when there is calm and peace, and in the same way the soul that would converse with God in prayer must be quiet and docile. And this is the account to be given of the inability of many Christians to pray and meditate: there is some inordinate passion in the soul which has not been conquered, some end of self-love which has not been abandoned, and there is in consequence an absence of that docility and tranquillity which prayer requires.

If, then, we consider that in the ‘inheritance of the earth’ may be included the intelligent and profitable use of all that God has given to His children as their possession in this life, whether spiritual, moral, intellectual, or material, ‘whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,’2 it may be said that meekness is the one disposition and virtue which enables man to use and enjoy and possess all these things according to the intention of his Creator.

Meekness mini-series contents:

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

1. The Psalm and the Beatitude of the Meek

2. How the Meek will inherit the Earth, even in this life

3. Meekness makes all of nature ours

From:
The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Further Reading:

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Father Coleridge Reader Mug

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

• The WM Review

• Twitter (The WM Review)

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Editor’s Notes

In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…

• How the meek receive from God what they refuse to seize by force, or cling to out of natural attachments

• That divine providence governs the world by exalting the humble and casting down the proud.

• Why meekness alone allows men truly to inherit and understand God’s creation.

He shows us that the meek inherit the earth because they see God’s hand in all things, trust in his providence – and receive as sons what others vainly struggle to grasp for themselves.

For more information on this mini-series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

The Meek possessing the Land

The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Chapter XIII
St. Matt. v. 4; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.

Meekness mini-series contents:

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

1. The Psalm and the Beatitude of the Meek

2. How the Meek will inherit the Earth, even in this life

Promise of providential aid to the meek

Our Lord’s words may be understood as a promise that the meek shall have that blessing and protection from God’s Providence, which is so constantly mentioned in its successive verses.

God will take care that they shall have the inheritance that is theirs, which they abandon to His protection, contenting themselves with the quiet observance of His law, without any attempt to vindicate themselves, to claim their right, or oppose the wicked and the oppressor with their own weapons.

What belongs to them by virtue of God’s promise will come to them by His Providence, though they do not strike a blow for it. David himself is the great historical example of the fulfilment of his own words, for the kingdom became his though he would use no violence to win it. The meek are of all others the persons to act in this way, and the promise therefore specially falls to them.

In this sense we may understand our Lord’s words as referring to a law of God’s Providence, which is carried out even as to temporal goods in the case of the meek, unless there be some higher law to operate in particular cases, the working of which puts them in a better and loftier position than the allotment of temporal goods.

The rules of God’s government

There are some such laws mentioned in Holy Scripture, as for instance that which promises long life to those who are dutiful to their parents, or that which St. Peter quotes from the Psalms: ‘He that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile,’1 and the rest, or again the promise of special deliverance in the evil day to the man ‘that understandeth concerning the needy and the poor’.2

These blessings are rules of God’s government of the world, and though the temporal benefits which they promise may often be superseded by spiritual favours which are far more precious, it may still remain the method of God’s action to bless the dutiful, or those who guard their tongue, or those who are merciful to the poor and afflicted of every kind, in the face of the whole world, in order to make known His regard for the virtues which are thus practised, while on the other hand He constantly visits the undutiful, or the unmerciful, or men of a bad tongue, with temporal punishment as well as with eternal.

St. Chrysostom’s interpretation – Abraham and David

We find that this interpretation of our Lord’s words is adopted, with his characteristic simplicity and directness, by the great St. Chrysostom, who illustrates it by the example of Abraham, who was so meek that he would bear no contention between his own herdsmen and those of Lot, to whom accordingly he gave the choice in which part of the land of Canaan he would dwell.

And then when Abraham had made this sacrifice for the sake of peace, we are told that God bade him lift up his eyes and look from the place whereon he then was, to the north and to the south and to the east and to the west; ‘all the land that thou seest, I will give to thee and to thy seed for ever’.3 Thus what he gave up by meekness he received as an inheritance as a reward of his meekness.

This then is a general law, as our Lord implies, in the kingdom of God, and the meek are blessed, because it secures them abundantly, fully, permanently, and from God Himself, what they are not willing to contend for among men. The principle is expressed in the Psalm, from which our Lord takes His words, with reference to the temporal possession of the promised Land, exactly as if the case of Abraham had been in the mind of David, and because such was the language which befitted the time of the old Covenant.

But the promise of God and the enforcement of that principle of His government to which allusion is here made, cannot be limited in operation to temporal benefits alone. Or rather, perhaps, it should be said, that promise and that principle, as far as they regard temporal possessions and the inheritance of the earth, rest upon features in God’s character as it is revealed to us, which have far higher and more spiritual effects in His dealings with His creatures.

Our Blessed Lady dwells upon this among other numerous characteristics of God, in the Magnificat, when she says, ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble’.

He requires meekness, submissiveness, humility, in those to whom He grants the possession of the infinite treasures of different orders which He has thrown open to His creatures. He has from the very beginning given the inheritance to the meek, and will do so until the end.

The fallen angels fell through pride, the angels who were confirmed in grace and made heirs and possessors of heaven, won their crowns through meekness. So it has been in the history of man, in the election and rejection of nations for empire, in the choice God has made of those whom He has specially favoured or reprobated in whatever order. The proud are always cast down, the meek receive the inheritance.

Enjoyment of the physical world

Before passing on to the more spiritual instance of the working of the law, which have suggested the interpretation put on these words of our Lord by the majority of commentators, it may be well to consider how large is the range of meaning in which they may be taken almost literally.

The earth is given by God to man as his inheritance, and this may well be understood of all that is so given, life and all its circumstances and conditions, fraught with a number of blessings and benefits which address themselves to his various needs and to the different parts of his nature, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual.

It may be said that those alone inherit this life, who enjoy it, understand it, profit by it, gather from it the instruction and help and blessings of various kinds which the great Father of all intends for His children.

There are, for instance, savage nations in occupation of some of the fairest and wealthiest regions of the earth, who may be said to dwell in them without inheriting them. The civilized traveller from a country less blessed by nature can see and understand the resources of the land, which are unknown to its occupants.

The soil is fertile and rich, there are streams to turn a thousand mills, pastures on which flocks without number may be fed, plains which may yield exhaustless crops of corn and maize, the climate is so fostering and genial that the vine, the olive, the palm, the fig may flourish there, along with the richest spices and most delicious fruits of the most favoured islands of the East.

The mountains are full of metallic treasures, and forests and quarries are there to supply all the wants of architecture and commerce, while the coast is rich in natural harbours, and the land lies in such a position on the face of the globe with reference to other countries as to ensure to its inhabitants prosperity, importance, and even empire, if its resources were developed, which the few ignorant tribes which range over its face are utterly unable to unlock.

Such a people may be said to occupy, but not to possess or inherit the home which God has given them, because they have not the intelligence to know what the gift is, or the energy to turn it to account.

Meekness and intellectual enjoyment

If this be true as to the natural blessings which are on every side of us, in regard to the use which may be made of them for the purposes of our natural life and social or political well-being, it is surely true also of the world and condition in which God has placed us, the circumstances around us, the opportunities we have of improvement, instruction, and the practice of virtue, with regard to the higher ends of our being.

Men of the most cultivated intellect, and who study most industriously even the physical world in all its wonderful arrangement and harmony, may yet, as is shown by example every day, altogether miss the lesson which God has written therein for man to learn, and be deaf and blind to its eloquent witness to Himself, His goodness, power, and majesty.

The reason why they do not hear what is ringing in their ears and do not see what is held up before their eyes, is the want of meekness of intellect.

Meanwhile, men of simple humble minds read all these lessons without effort, and thus seeing God as He means them to see Him in the works of His hands, they inherit the earth with a possession of which others are deprived.

Meekness mini-series contents:

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

1. The Psalm and the Beatitude of the Meek

2. How the Meek will inherit the Earth, even in this life

From:
The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Further Reading:

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Father Coleridge Reader Mug

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

• The WM Review

• Twitter (The WM Review)

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Editor’s Notes

At the Feast of Pentecost, the Church first reads St Luke’s account from Acts of the Coming of the Holy Ghost – and then reads Our Lord’s words about peace and his departure from St John’s Gospel.

During Pentecost, we will provide Fr Coleridge’s commentary on the Gospel – but for now, here are his reflections from the late work Mother of the Church: Mary in the First Apostolic Age. In this more reflective book, Fr Coleridge focuses on Our Lady’s role at the start of the Church.

Following the sections, we are providing some bonus articles on topics relevant to this feast.

Subscribe now

Mary at the Day of Pentecost

Mother of the Church: Mary in the First Apostolic Age

Book I, Chapter III
Burns and Oates, 1886

Part I: How Pentecost confirmed Mary’s mission as Mother of the Church

Christ’s prayer ‘won’ the Holy Ghost for the Church—and made Our Lady the Mother of all Christians.

1. How Pentecost confirmed Mary’s mission as Mother of the Church

Part II: How St Peter’s Pentecost sermon revealed the Church’s mission

The fire of Pentecost revealed the Church’s universal mission—foretold in prophecy, aided by Mary’s prayer.

2. How St Peter’s Pentecost sermon revealed the Church’s mission

Part III: Mary and Converts: How Our Lady shaped the first Christians after Pentecost

The newly-baptised Christians clung to Mary as their living link to Christ—and she prayed them into holiness.

3. Mary and Converts: How Our Lady shaped the first Christians after Pentecost

BONUS ARTICLES

How is Pentecost a fulfilment of the Jewish feast Shavuot?

‘The Feast of Weeks’ or ‘Shavuot’ fell on the anniversary of God giving the Torah to Moses on Sinai, and celebrated the first-fruits of the harvest. The Christian Pentecost fulfils both aspects.

• How is Pentecost a fulfilment of the Jewish feast Shavuot?

“What is the New Covenant?” The Prophet Jeremiah and Cornelius à Lapide explain

Some Jewish authorities say there can be no New Covenant or New Testament, because the Old was already perfect. What did Jeremiah actually prophesy?

• “What is the New Covenant?” The Prophet Jeremiah and Cornelius à Lapide explain

'Open borders'—Leo XIV's Pentecost sermon (taking aim at JD Vance?)

What does it mean for Leo XIV to say ‘The Spirit opens borders’—and why did he repeat this phrase like a mantra in his Pentecost sermon?

• ‘Open borders’—Leo XIV’s Pentecost sermon (taking aim at JD Vance?)

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

• The WM Review

• Twitter (The WM Review)

• YouTube

• Telegram

Editor’s Notes

Continuing the mini-series on meekness with Fr Coleridge’s next chapter, our Jesuit priest explains the blessing which is attached to Our Lord’s beatitude.

In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…

• How our Lord rewards the meek with the very goods they renounce.

• That true meekness rests on faith, patience, and surrender to God’s providence.

• Why Christ quotes David’s Psalm to reveal the triumph of the meek.

He shows us that the meek do not seize the earth by force, but receive it from God as sons awaiting their inheritance.

For more information on this mini-series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

The Meek possessing the Land

The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Chapter XIII
St. Matt. v. 4; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.

Meekness mini-series contents:

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

1. The Psalm and the Beatitude of the Meek

Unexpectedness of our Lord’s blessings

The idea of meekness which is thus to be gained from considering its true foundation and exercise and character is certainly very different from that of the natural mildness and softness which are sometimes mistaken for it, but which differ from it altogether both in the root from which they spring and in the weakness which they exhibit under any severe pressure.

In the same way, the blessing which our Lord allots to the meek has at first sight that same character of unexpectedness and paradox which marks also the reward of the poor in spirit, and, as we shall see, the other rewards also which are to follow in the rest of the Beatitudes.

The poor in spirit are rewarded by that to which they seem especially to give up their claim, that is, by wealth, but it is the wealth of the Kingdom of God, not the riches of the world. In the same way, the meek appear especially to renounce the world as far as it is a thing to be possessed as a matter of right, for it is the characteristic of meekness to yield its right to others, not to strive or contend, even for what is lawful, to give way in everything, and so to be a prey to the violence and aggressiveness of others.

Wordly possessions, high position, honour, consideration, and the like, are the ordinary objects of ambition and competition, and their loss is resented with anger, pride, passion, and the desire of revenge. All these passions have no place in the conduct of the meek, whose hearts are subdued and kept down by the vivid faith with which they see their own nothingness, and that they have no right or claim to anything as their own. They therefore neither seek all these objects of earthly desire, nor consider them their own when they have them, nor resist when they are taken from them.

It seems therefore a strange thing that our Lord should allot to them just that very reward which they seem to have renounced, or, at least, to have no taste for, when He says, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess (inherit) the land’. The blessing which is here pronounced by our Lord has sometimes caused a difficulty, even to Catholic expositors, and, as is often the case, the very difficulty itself, when it is more clearly examined, yields its own fruit of instruction and doctrine.

The meek ‘inheriting the land’

It may be observed, in the first place, that there certainly seems to be a sort of antithesis intended in the expressions used by our Lord, as if the land which the meek are to inherit was put in contrast to the kingdom of heaven which is assigned to the poor in spirit, as well as to that surrender of all earthly considerations and yielding of their own interests which are characteristics of the meek.

It is almost as if our Lord had meant to say, if you are poor in spirit, you have already the kingdom of heaven, and if you are in addition meek you shall have the inheritance of the earth likewise. Again we must remember that the word which the Vulgate translates possidebunt, ‘shall possess,’ is, strictly speaking, to be rendered by the English word ‘inherit’—which implies that the meek shall receive the ‘land’ which is promised them not so much as a gift, or as an acquisition, or a conquest, but by right of inheritance from their Father to Whom it belongs.

The meek, then, are here declared to be those to whom the inheritance of the land shall fall.

Again it is important to remember that our Lord is here, and here alone in the whole chain of the Beatitudes, using the words of sacred Scripture and quoting one of the Psalms of David.

It is natural, therefore, to turn to the Psalm which is quoted for light to help us to understand our Lord’s meaning, as He could not but have intended to refer to the whole passage from which the words which He adopted were taken.

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The Psalm quoted by our Lord

The Psalm in which the passage quoted by our Lord occurs may be said to have for its burthen the exhortation to meekness and patience under trial, especially the trial of what seems the unjust exaltation and prosperity of the wicked. It is that which begins: Noli æmulari in malignantibus1—‘Chafe not thyself because of evil doers’—and the phrase ‘inherit the land’ is repeated over and over again like the few notes of music in a long piece which recall and embody the ‘motive’ of the whole.

It is a Psalm that may embody the thoughts with which David encouraged himself to that patient expectation for the promise which had been made him, which was one of his great merits. He left his cause to God when he was persecuted and banished, and would never avenge himself or lift up his hand against Saul, whom he had more than once in his power. God had promised him the kingdom, he had been anointed by Samuel, but he would do nothing to take it to himself, meekly leaving to God to bring about the fulfilment of His promises in His own time.

In the Psalm before us, whether or not it belong to this period of David’s life, the thought of the quiet practice of good by waiting on the Lord, and refraining from all indulgence of the indignation and anger, which are naturally roused by injustice and the prosperity of the wicked, occurs over and over again.

‘Trust in the Lord and do good, and dwell in the land, and thou shalt be fed with its riches.’

‘Cease from anger, and leave rage, have no emulation to do evil—for evil doers shall be cut off, but they that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the land.’

‘For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be, and thou shalt seek his place, and shalt not find it. But the meek shall inherit the land, and shalt delight in abundance of peace.’

‘The Lord knoweth the days of the undefiled, and their inheritance shall be for ever. They shall not be confounded in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be filled.’

‘Such as bless Him shall inherit the land, but such as curse Him shall perish.’

‘The unjust shall be punished, and the seed of the wicked shall perish. But the just shall inherit the land, and shall dwell therein for ever more.’

‘Expect the Lord, and keep His way, and He will exalt thee to inherit the land, when the sinners shall perish, thou shalt see. I have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus. And I passed by, and lo he was not, and I sought him, and his place was not found.’

We are thus able to gather up the general teaching of this beautiful Psalm, and to see how our Lord’s words may be understood as a promise that the meek shall have that blessing and protection from God’s Providence, which is so constantly mentioned in its successive verses.

Meekness mini-series contents:

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

1. The Psalm and the Beatitude of the Meek

From:
The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Further Reading:

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…

• How true meekness is forged not by weakness, but by long warfare against self.

• That some of the gentlest saints were naturally fiery, strong-willed, and difficult to govern – and yet they overcame it all

• Why meekness becomes the source of courage, obedience, firmness, and charity.

He shows us that Christian meekness is not softness of temperament, but a victorious mastery of self wrought by grace, discipline, and reverence for God.

For more information on this mini-series, see Part I.

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The Beatitude of Meekness

The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Chapter XII
St. Matt. v. 4; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.
(Read on All Saints)

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

Meek saints often naturally wanting in meekness

It has been the case with many of the saints of God who have been famous for the virtue which is ennobled in this Beatitude, that their natural dispositions have been strikingly contrary to the false or imperfect meekness of which we are speaking.

Instead of being naturally apathetic, they have been quick and fiery, more inclined to harshness than to gentleness, aggressive rather than yielding, men of strong will, independent character, decided judgment, to whom docility, obedience, submission, silence when thwarted or opposed, have been qualities of particular difficulty.

Yet these are the men in which the virtue of meekness has been so conspicuous, that persons who have not known their natural character have thought them apathetic and phlegmatic. Injuries and contumely seem to have no effect upon them.

But it is in truth the work of a special and long-cultivated grace which keeps them from breaking out into anger, or even from feeling its movements in their soul.

It has been the work of prayer and long self-discipline, fostered by consideration of the wonderful gentleness of God in dealing with His enemies, of the example of our Lord’s meekness in His Passion, and of the many benefits which imitation of Him in this respect secures for the soul, and by practice of the acts of this and the kindred virtues, with the powerful assistance of grace, that has made them so tranquil, serene, and unruffled, not only externally, but also in the very depths of their heart, and enabled them to go on still further than mere calm endurance, to speak sweetly and lovingly to those who insult them, to turn to them the other cheek, to do them kindnesses and pray for them, and to forget their conduct entirely, except so far as it is a reason for showing them a special charity.

Courage of the truly meek

These are the acts of true meekness, which is therefore the virtue of a manly, brave, and enduring character, requiring the greatest courage and self-control, and often rising to a height at which natural courage fails entirely, as, for instance, in the refusal of opportunities of revenge and in the gentle bearing of an insult at which the blood naturally boils. Heroic acts of this virtue under such trying circumstances have often been rewarded by God with great gifts of grace, high vocations, or splendid miracles.

It is far harder to bear shame and ridicule, and to disregard the false maxims of the world in obedience to the principles of the Gospel, than to endure great sufferings and pain, and to risk life itself in defence of what is considered honour.

Meekness and firmness

It is also to be remembered as to the virtue of meekness, that it is not only quite consistent with the most heroic firmness and constancy in what is good, but it is also an essential condition of true Christian firmness.

Those in whom force of character is merely a natural quality, are likely to be strong and even overbearing in matters which are of little importance, and yet to fail and yield deplorably when principles are at stake. On the other hand, Christian strength of character, so to call it, is founded upon the most absolute meekness and lowliness of heart, which yields in all that is not of importance out of reverence to God, and then, when the trial of principle comes, and some holy truth of faith or rule of the Church has to be maintained against clamour and obloquy and intimidation of every sort, it stands firm as a rock, out of the very same reverence to God which has been the cause of its gentleness on other points.

Thus the most heroic of God’s servants in the Old Testament, such as Moses and David, are noted in sacred Scripture for their remarkable meekness, and the great victories of the Christian martyrs, simple children, or women or men whose lives have never been ruffled by any storm of passion, have been the victories of meekness.

The same gentle submissiveness and pliancy of character runs through the whole generation of the saints, and lies at the foundation of their indomitable fortitude and irresistible courage.

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Meekness and obedience

It is the will of God that obedience should be the law of His Kingdom both in heaven and on earth, the law of the human society which He has ordained, as well as that of the supernatural system of which the members of the human society are members by grace. Obedience and subordination, the guidance of inferiors by superiors, who are in their turn illuminated from above, is the law of the heavenly hierarchies, as well as of the Church and men here below.

But obedience and authority equally require meekness in those on whom they are respectively imposed. The ruler, natural and supernatural, lay and ecclesiastic, religious or secular, the sovereign, the husband, the parent, the master in whatever society, spiritual, social, domestic, or voluntary, must rule in meekness and gentleness, as having in himself no claim to authority and so to obedience, but only as having received it as his commission from God for which he must give an account.

And on the other hand, the subject and inferior in all the various forms of society of which we have been speaking requires meekness, docility, control over his self-will and natural love of independence, readiness to put aside his own judgment and distrust his own forces and his own lights, in order that his obedience may have the blessing of God and become prosperous and fruitful.

This holds good in every department of the action of intelligent creatures, in the region of faith and speculation, in the spiritual life, as in intellectual pursuits, in the administration of the Church or of religious communities as well as in the government of the home or of the State. And thus meekness becomes the bond which knits together the whole of the various societies of which God is the author.

Pride, independence, self-will, self-confidence, are as destructive of peace and happiness and prosperity as uncontrolled anger or unrestrained lust.

Meekness and charity

It is plain that a virtue of this universal importance and operation can be no natural gift, and can be founded upon nothing short of that knowledge of God’s supreme dignity and that entire sacrifice of self-will before it to which it has been traced.

This is confirmed in a marvellous manner by what has been observed by some holy writers, that when St. Paul comes to describe charity itself he uses hardly any other colours than those which paint meekness:

‘Charity is patient, is kind, it envieth not, it doth not deal perversely, it is not puffed up, it is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.’1

Almost all these points on which the Apostle insists are characteristic of charity exercising itself in the acts of meekness.

It is meekness that gives patience under adversity, that is the parent of the kindliness and benignity which never repays an injury.

It is meekness that excludes envy at the happiness of another, and that secures against remorse of conscience, because it does no evil.

It is meekness that is not puffed up, because it acknowledges its own unworthiness of all honour, that seeks no pre-eminence because it has no ambition, and escapes the narrowing influence of cupidity, because it seeks not its own.

It is not provoked to anger, because it counts nothing as an injury, it is no prey to evil suspicions, because it thinketh no evil, it has no joy in the misfortunes of others, because it rejoiceth not in iniquity, it is free from delusion and error, because it rejoices in the truth.

It bears up bravely under trial and persecution, because it beareth all things, it hopeth all things from God, and so is safe against despair, it endureth all things, and so can never be broken down.

The Beatitude of Meekness

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

From:
The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Further Reading:

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

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Editor’s Notes

We begin a new mini-series on the beatitude of meekness.

Our Lord said, in the Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.”

The virtue of meekness – which St Thomas Aquinas treats as a part of the cardinal virtue of temperance – is commonly misunderstood in our day.

As Fr Coleridge explains, it is treated as softness or even insensibility in the face of evil suffered. But there is so much more to meekness than this. Much unnecessary conflict and unhappiness could be avoided by widespread meekness – and necessary conflict would be conducted in a more fruitful way.

In particular, online interactions are apt to inflame passions of anger in a way that is not virtuous – and perhaps we can begin to avoid this by understanding and cultivating this virtue within us.

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The Beatitude of Meekness

The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Chapter XII
St. Matt. v. 4; Story of the Gospels, § 31
Burns and Oates, London, 1876.
(Read on All Saints)

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

Meekness healing another concupiscence

In the first Beatitude our Lord may be said to have laid down a principle, which may rectify all false judgments and inordinate desires with regard to what men commonly consider the good things of this life.

The blessing which He has there pronounced falls upon the mortification and extinction of the great concupiscence which reaches forth to external goods, of which riches are the chief, because they are the means by which all others may be obtained. Our Lord does not simply bless the extinction of the concupiscence and nothing more, but the virtue which is founded upon faith and fostered by grace, which begins in the acknowledgment of the supreme dominion of God over all the things which can be the objects of desire, which makes them, as it were, all over to Him in affection and spirit, and so, emptying itself of all ownership in these fleeting goods, is fit to receive in abundance from His bountiful hands the true treasures of His kingdom.

There is another concupiscence or principle of selfishness in us, which is seated even nearer to the centre of our hearts than the love of riches, and that is the love of ourselves, our own honour, our rights, reputation, consideration, independence, self-will, and liberty. A man may be utterly poor as to the good things of the world, and yet full of pride, impatience, anger, ready to resent any slight as an injury, to assume an arrogant position in relation to others, and incapable of obedience either of mind or action.

Though poverty of spirit, as being so nearly akin to humility, is allied in consequence to that other offspring of humility which we call meekness, still it is not uncommon to find the concupiscence which is opposed to meekness raging furiously in those who have laid what might be the foundation of the Beatitudes in the practice of actual poverty.

As poverty of spirit is humility and truth, in reference to external goods, so meekness is humility and truth in reference to our own independence, honour, and all that touches them to wound them, or that can be sought for as a means of pampering them. Thus it is natural that the great Healer of our concupiscences should proceed from the remedy of avarice to the remedy of pride and anger, and that meekness should follow poverty of spirit in the chain of His Beatitudes.

Here again we shall find that He builds on faith and truth, that the virtue which He crowns consists in a due appreciation of the rights of God that it is in itself most blessed as purifying and perfecting the soul, making it capable of great gifts and favours from God, that it has a blessing for society and the Church as well as for the particular soul in which it dwells, and that it has a claim which may be called natural, according to the nature of the spiritual kingdom, to the special reward which is assigned to it by our Lord.

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Conquest of pride and independence

Meekness, as has already been said, is the virtue which keeps down all the inordinate impulses of self-love in the direction of pride, liberty, ambition, anger, impatience, resentment, envy, revenge, and the like.

In our present condition, in consequence of the miseries of life and the presence of selfish passions all around us, meekness has more frequently to manifest itself on what we may call its passive side, in patience, resignation, obedience, and gentleness under injury. But the sphere of the virtue of meekness is not confined to its influence in making the soul bear peaceably and religiously the many evils and burthens to which our condition is liable.

It also tames the desire and ambition of honour and consideration of every kind, being founded on the truth, which faith enforces upon the mind, of the utter absence of any claim or right on the part of any creature to esteem or deference of any sort as due to itself, and of the unapproachable and incommunicable right of God to all honour and rule of every kind and degree.

Thus meekness, like poverty of spirit, is a virtue not of earth only and of this mortal life, but of heaven and of eternity, though in the next world there will be no trials to patience, nothing that can provoke to anger, or arouse envy or resentment.

Yet, as there is poverty of spirit, utter detachment from all ownership, and as there is humility, in heaven, so also is there meekness; and the virtue as it is practised here, and as it is pronounced by our Lord to be blessed, regulates and keeps in place all the movements of the irascible part of the soul, whether they are excited by the desire of honour and esteem or ruffled by the denial of these when they seem to our self-love to be due.

Natural meekness

It appears from this that the virtue of meekness, of which our Lord speaks, is no mere softness, or gentleness, or want of spirit, or insensibility.

It is ordinary with the Christian virtues that there should be certain natural qualities, which exist in a greater or less degree in men of various characters, and which resemble the respective virtues and may be made their foundation, but which are very far from being identical with them.

Thus, in the present case, there is in some men a sort of sluggishness and apathy of constitution which nothing can rouse, or there is a natural gentleness and mildness which seems to take nothing amiss, or, again, there is a timidity of character which shrinks from conflict and resistance, and so yields everything to an aggressor.

But these only resemble Christian meekness, and are not the same as that virtue. They are not founded upon faith and grace, nor do they recognize in the dignity of God the adequate motive for their acts.

They are often, indeed, partial and inconsistent. They fail when there is a severe trial of patience, they give way to certain persons and not to others, and under certain circumstances, and not under others. They have not been gained or matured by self-discipline, they are not rooted in self-conquest.

The Beatitude of Meekness

1. Meekness: What it is, and what it isn’t

2. All our actions must be gilded with meekness: here’s why

From:
The Preaching of the Beatitudes

Further Reading:

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Father Coleridge Reader Mug

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

• The WM Review

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Editor’s Notes

The following reflections from Fr Coleridge are on the Gospel reading for the Sunday after the Ascension, preceding Pentecost.

In that reading, Our Lord moves from discussing love within the Church to the hatred of the world, showing how internal charity and external suffering are inseparably linked. He prepares the Apostles for post-Ascension trials, assuring them that fidelity to Him will bring persecution – but also union with His own divine life and mission.

As with several Sundays in Eastertide, this reading is taken from Christ’s final discourse at the Last Supper, just before His Passion. It is immediately preceded by the parable of the vine and branches (John 15:1–10).

Mentioned without endorsement: It is interesting to see that the popular television series The Chosen adopted a similar framework for its fifth season. Each episode of Season 5 begins with part of the Last Supper discourses, but they appear in reverse order. This is more or less what occurs in the Roman Liturgy from the Third Sunday of Easter:

• Third Sunday after Easter: John 16.16-22

• Fourth Sunday after Easter: John 16.5-14

• Fifth Sunday after Easter: John 16:23-30

• Sunday after Ascension: John 15:26-27, 16.1-4

• Pentecost: John 14:23-31

As a further side note, the depiction of the Last Supper ends with the singing of part of Psalm 117 (the last of the “Hallel Psalms”) – to the melody of the Paschal Sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes. This melody, in a mournful tone, also runs throughout the depiction of the Agony in the Garden.

To the Paschal Victim,
Christians, offer your thankful praises!

A Lamb redeemeth the sheep,
The innocent Christ, to the Father
Reconcileth sinners.

Death and life have duelled
In that combat stupendous:
The Prince of Life who died, living reigns.

Whatever one makes of The Chosen, this musical choice – recalling the words of the Sequence – does indeed provide an interesting perspective on the Passion as a triumph rather than a defeat.

Persecution

The Gospel text read on this Sunday, and Fr Coleridge’s discussion, points towards an important topic: the way in which persecution serves as a kind of indication of which is the true Church.

The WM Review recently published an article on this in response to Senator Ted Cruz’s endorsement of an essay attacking Catholic traditionalists. This consisted mainly in an extract from Louis Cardinal Billot’s treatise on the Church, which itself included an extended text from Joseph de Maistre. It appears in Billot’s discussion of the note of holiness; in it, he contrasts the opposition which the true Church experiences from manifestly wicked men, and the way such men treat all other religious bodies. As an example, he writes:

“[I]f the Catholic Church were from below and not from above – if by her principles and her efficacious influence she did not oppose the perversity of the world in all things – then surely the world would love and cherish what was its own, or at the very least would leave her in peace.

“But now, since they perceive and hold it as established that the Catholic Church is the most steadfast bulwark among men of the divine law, and that once it were destroyed nothing further would remain that could impede the absolute dominion of what they call ‘human rights’ and of unbridled licence – for this reason they assault her alone with all their forces; for this reason, “They say: ‘Raze it, raze it, even to its foundation’

“Yet by this very fact, they stand as witnesses to her holiness – witnesses beyond all exception.”

• The enemies of the Church and the note of holiness – Cardinal Billot

Billot is not alone in making such observations. The theologian Fr E. Sylvester Berry calls persecution itself “a quasi-mark of the Church during the period of preparation prior to the coming of Antichrist.”1 In support of this striking idea, he cites the words under examination in this chapter:

“If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you... But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I have spoken to you: No servant is greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also… But all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake. […]

“They will expel you from the synagogues. Yes, the hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering worship to God. And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.”2

On these words, Berry comments:

“As Christ was hated, despised, calumniated, and persecuted in His natural body, so also shall He be in His mystical body, the Church. Therefore a Church that is not thus despised and persecuted, can scarcely be the one which Christ had in mind when He uttered the words quoted above.

“It is always consoling to realize that those who calumniate the Church and stir up persecution against her, are fulfilling the prophecies of Christ and thus they unwittingly prove her divine character. Thus does ‘He that dwelleth in heaven laugh at them; and the Lord deride them.’”3

The theologian Van Noort makes a similar point when considering the mark of holiness as a means of identifying the true Church:

1. Christ prophesied that His Church would be hated by the world; hated precisely because, under the life-giving impulse of the Holy Spirit, it would not belong to this world […]

Now it is a strange as well as a notorious fact that of all the Christian societies none experiences this hatred of the world so strongly as the Catholic Church. Something further, it is the only Church which is continuously attacked by that amorphous multitude which rises age after age under the leadership of evil men. By their very persecutions, then, the children of this world identify that Church which is vivified by the Spirit of Christ.4

In a footnote at the end of that section, he cites the same text from de Maistre as Billot:

On this point J. de Maistre comments aptly: “No enemy of the faith is ever deceived. They all strike in vain because they are battling against God; but they all know where to strike.”5

Frs Spirago and Clarke (the author of an obituary for Fr Coleridge) also write, in their The Catechism Explained, “the true Church is that one which is most persecuted by the world,” and explain:

Christ often spoke to His disciples of these persecutions: “The servant is not greater than his Master. If they have persecuted Me they will also persecute you” (John xv. 20).

“They will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues . . . you shall be hated by all men for My name’s sake” (Matt. x. 17-22).

“Yea, the hour cometh that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God” (John xvi. 2).

“Because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John xv. 19).

Never in the history of the Catholic Church has it been free from persecution. Whatever be the differences between the sects they unite against the Church. The apostles, especially St. Paul, were objects of hate to the Jews (Acts xiii. 50; xvii. 8), and St. John (166 A.D.) testifies that their hatred of the Christians had not died out in his day.

The present day is not wanting in examples in the sufferings inflicted on religious communities, in the interference of the secular governments in things spiritual, in the opposition made to processions and meetings and other devout practices.

Can any Church be the true Church which does not oppose the spirit of the world?6

Over the last 2,000 years, those who have become Catholics have found themselves on the outside of the established religious systems of their nations, and in an analogous situation to the Apostles and early Christians.

Even today, Catholics who believe and worship as their forefathers can find themselves on the outside of the self-styled “Conciliar/Synodal Church,” and treated in some of the ways described by Our Lord and Coleridge. Few are as opposed to those who adhere to the religion of our grandparents as the partisans of this new Conciliar/Synodal Church.

Coleridge also presents a picture similar to that faced in the early 2020s by those who were not prepared to undergo certain “medical treatments,” which many jurisdictions were considering making mandatory in order to access what he called “ordinary necessaries of life.”

The WM Review has also published a number of reflections on persecution:

Preparation for Tyranny

• Part I: Becoming Strong by Rejecting False Hope

• Part II: Conquering False Hope

• Part III: What about our Families?

Other Articles

• Suffering under persecution – the example of the English Martyrs

• Persecution, a chastisement in which the Devil is allowed temporary success (Fr Coleridge)

• The Japanese “Hidden Christians” and the persecution of the Church

Let us proceed to Fr Coleridge’s reflections.

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Hatred of the World

Passiontide, Part III

Chapter III
St. John xv. 11-27.
Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1892

Part I: Why does ‘the world’ hate Christ and his Church?

The hatred of the world is not a failure of the Church’s mission – but the seal of her fidelity.

1. Why does ‘the world’ hate Christ and his Church?

Part II: Why is persecution a mark of the true disciple of Christ?

Christ tells His Apostles to expect hatred, not as a curse, but as a mark of union with Him.

2. Why is persecution a mark of the true disciple of Christ?

Part III: Why did Christ say his people ‘hated both me and my Father’?

Christ declared that his people rejected both His words and His works, and so had no excuse – but what did he really mean by saying they ‘hated my Father’?

3. Why did Christ say his people ‘hated both me and my Father’?

Part IV: Why did Christ’s people hate him ‘without cause’?

Referring to the psalm, Christ says ‘They hated me without cause’ – a hatred born not of reason, but of shame.

4. Why did Christ’s people hate him ‘without cause’?

Part V: Why does Christ say the Holy Ghost ‘shall bear testimony of Me’?

Christ answered hatred not with vengeance, but by sending the Spirit of Truth – so that the Apostles could bear witness to His divine mission.

5. Why does Christ say the Holy Ghost ‘shall bear testimony of Me’?

Part VI: Persecution and Catholics as a religious minority

Our Lord’s warning that his followers would be ‘put out of the synagogues’ has extensive application even to us today.

6. Persecution and Catholics as a religious minority

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

On the Feast of the Ascension, the Church reads St Mark’s account at the Gospel, and St Luke’s account in the Acts of the Apostles in the Epistle.

Father Coleridge’s account of the Resurrection draws on both of these, as well as those of the other Gospels.

He points out that the Gospel accounts are silent about certain aspects of the Ascension narratives, and tentatively supplements them with certain private revelations that have been given to the mystics.

Just as the triumphant entry of Palm Sunday led to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, Christ’s Ascension was his triumphant entry into Heaven, leading to the Descent of Pentecost. Fr Coleridge argues that the Ascension was a moment of joy, as it was Christ’s triumphant entry into Heaven.

It is often suggested that, after the Ascension, the Apostles locked themselves in the Cenacle “for fear of the Jews” – and that this fear continued until the coming of the Holy Ghost nine days later. However, this may be something of a conflation with what happened after the Passion. The Acts of the Apostles does not indicate terror: rather, they retreated to the Cenacle to pray, as they had been told to do so. Further, in his Gospel account, St Luke states that “they adoring went back into Jerusalem with great joy.”

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The Ascension

The Passage of Our Lord to the Father

Chapter XVII

St. Luke xxiv. 50-53; St. Mark xvi. 19, 20; St. John xx. 30, 31; xxi. 25.
Story of the Gospels, § 181
Burns and Oates, London, 1892

Part I: Who was at the Ascension of Christ?

Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Ascension and visible departure left no sorrow—only joy, courage, and a mission to proclaim Him.

1. Who was at the Ascension of Christ?

Part II: What the Ascension teaches about prophecy and false religious expectations

Christ did not restore Israel’s kingdom—he founded the Church and sent the Apostles to suffer. He turned their hopes from political triumph to the conquest of souls.

2. What the Ascension teaches about prophecy and false religious expectations

Part III: Why is Christ’s Ascension still hidden in mystery?

Sacred Scripture offers only glimpses of the Ascension—leaving us to consider whether Christ ascended alone, or bore with him the redeemed souls that had risen after his death.

3. Why is Christ’s Ascension still hidden in mystery?

Part IV: Why Our Lady remained after Christ’s Ascension

Did Our Lady ascend with Christ, and return in obedience and love for the infant Church?

4. Why Our Lady remained after Christ’s Ascension

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

On the Fifth Sunday after Easter, the Church returns to John 16 – which she had been reading on the Third Sunday.

This part of John 16 focuses particularly on Our Lord’s instructions about prayer and confidence. Our Lord wishes his Apostles to understand that his Passion changes the nature of prayer, such that we now approach God in the name of the Incarnate Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity and the Head of the Mystical Body, the Church.

In this, the Church is more than just the Synagogue continued – although she certainly is its fulfilment. But she is a fundamentally new reality, unlike anything that came before or that could follow.

He presents this wonderful truth in order to inspire his Apostles to persevere amidst the persecutions and trials which await the Church Militant while she lives and works in the world. This shall be the case until the Last Day, at which point (as St Augustine wrote):

“There shall be one Christ, loving Himself.”1

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Parting Words

Passiontide, Part III, Chapter VI

Chapter VI
St. John xvi. 16-33, Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1886

Part I: What is the difference between prayer before and after the Cross?

After the Crucifixion, prayer in Christ’s Name drew power from his Sacrifice—filling the Apostles with unshakable joy.

1. What is the difference between prayer before and after the Cross?

Part II: How does the power of the Apostles’ prayer continue in the Church?

The Apostles were the first to pray with the full power of Christ’s Sacrifice. Catholics should call on their powerful intercession.

2. How does the power of the Apostles’ prayer continue in the Church?

Part III: How Christ’s plain words before the Cross reveal his love for the Apostles

Christ waited to speak plainly to his Apostles—so their faith would grow freely. His words revealed not only who he was, but how deeply he loved them.

3. How Christ’s plain words before the Cross reveal his love for the Apostles

Part IV: Why Christ says ‘Have confidence, I have overcome the world’

When Christ tells the Apostles, ‘Have confidence, I have overcome the world,’ He speaks not of future victory but of a battle already won.

4. Why Christ says ‘Have confidence, I have overcome the world’

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

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Subscribe to The WM Review

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Editor’s Notes

This Gospel passage is read on the Fourth Sunday after Easter. They are taken from Christ’s final words to the Apostles in the Cenacle, on the night of Maundy Thursday, immediately before leaving for Gethsemane. Intriguingly, this passage precedes the passage read on the previous Sunday.

In this text, Christ unveils the coming role of the Holy Ghost, who will perfect the Apostles’ understanding, glorify the Son, and lead the Church into all truth after his Ascension.

He teaches that revelation is given gradually, with divine reverence for human weakness, and that the Holy Ghost will inwardly illuminate what the Apostles could not yet bear – deepening their knowledge, recalling his words, and guiding the Church into the full mystery of redemption.

This text grounds Catholic doctrine on the divine origin of tradition, the unity of revelation, and the Holy Ghost’s role in glorifying Christ across the ages.

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The Holy Ghost and Our Lord

Passiontide, Part III,

Chapter V
St. John xvi. 12-15, Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1886

Part I: Why did Christ leave things unsaid before the Ascension?

Christ told the Apostles they were not yet ready for the whole truth—and promised the Holy Ghost would guide them step by step into it.

1. Why did Christ leave things unsaid before the Ascension?

Part II: How does the Holy Ghost lead the Church into all truth?

Christ sometimes expressed his revelation to the Apostles in seed form, leaving the Holy Ghost to bring them to a full understanding.

2. How does the Holy Ghost lead the Church into all truth?

Part III: Does the gift of prophecy still exist in the Church?

Prophecy isn’t dead. It lives on in the Church—just not how most think.

3. Does the gift of prophecy still exist in the Church?

Part IV: How the Holy Ghost makes us grow into the ‘fulness of Christ’

The Church’s goal is have us know, love and serve God. The Holy Ghost alone makes that possible.

4. How the Holy Ghost makes us grow into the ‘fulness of Christ’

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

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Editor’s Notes

In the this part, we present Fr Coleridge’s account of St John’s Gospel on the Resurrection. We have previously published Fr Coleridge’s harmonisation of the Gospels’ account of the Resurrection narratives:

1. How to avoid being disappointed by the Gospels’ accounts of the Resurrection

2. Getting the Resurrection appearances in order

3. How and why Our Lord appeared after the Resurrection

4. The Risen Christ’s appearances before the Ascension

The WM Review also published a synthesis of these accounts, based on Fr Coleridge’s work, in one continuous text:

• The Resurrection synthesised into a single narrative

In this mini-series, Fr Coleridge provides further explanation of why each Gospel treats of these matters in their particular ways – and the role of these accounts in the life of the Church.

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The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord in the Four Gospels

The Life of our Life, Vol. II

Chapter XI
St. Matt. xxvii. 35–44; St. Mark xv. 24–32; St. Luke xxiii. 34–43; St. John xix. 13–27; Story of the Gospels, § 170.
Burns and Oates, London, 1876

1. What St Matthew and St Mark convey in their Resurrection accounts

2. What St Luke conveys in his Resurrection account

3. What St John conveys in his Resurrection account

St John’s additions

In the last place we turn to St. John, and we find the same main divisions of the short story, which is all that belongs to the sphere of the Gospel records as to the Resurrection and the forty days.

The single figure among the women who are commissioned to break the great tidings to the Apostles is, in this Gospel, Mary Magdalene. Whether her first visit to the sepulchre, ‘while it was yet dark,’ was in company with the other women who are mentioned by St. Luke or not, she alone is named by St. John. On seeing the stone taken away from the door, she runs at once and tells Peter and John: ‘They have taken away our Lord from the monument, and we know not where they have laid Him!’

Then Peter and John run to the sepulchre, the latter reaching it, the former entering it, first. St. John ‘believes,’ and with St. Peter retires again. Mary remains outside weeping, and our Lord appears to her, as has been related above. He bids her go and tell His brethren of His Ascension—the next great mystery to be accomplished in the unfolding of the counsels of God.

St. John then passes to the second head of the history. He relates the same appearance to the ten Apostles which St. Luke has spoken of, but he passes quickly over that part of the scene which St. Luke has described so particularly, and goes on to what we may consider as belonging to the third head, that is, the charges or instructions or commissions given to the Apostles. He mentions that our Lord breathed on them, and gave them the Holy Ghost and the power to forgive sins.

Thus St. Matthew has mentioned the charge to teach and baptize, giving the form of the sacrament in our Lord’s own words, and he has added the promise made at the same time of our Lord’s perpetual presence with the Church. St. Mark has mentioned the promise of the signs which are to authenticate their mission. St. Luke speaks of their commission as witnesses, of their preaching, and of the fulfilment of the Scriptures, and St. John has added the gift of the Holy Ghost, the solemn mission, ‘as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you,’ and the power of absolution.

St. John mentions in the next place the absence of Thomas, his incredulity, and our Lord’s condescension in convincing him. The other great manifestation which he has inserted belongs to both the latter heads of the history. For he not only gives the account of the manifestation which took place on the shore of the sea of Tiberias, but he has connected with this the great mystery of the appointment of St. Peter to the office of Shepherd over the flock of Christ.

This last scene is a sort of supplement to his Gospel, which seems to terminate after the other manifestation first spoken of, with the declaration that our Lord did many other signs in the sight of His disciples, and that these are written in order that Christians may believe that He is the Christ. Then, as it seems, the other section is added, containing, as has been said, the commission given to St. Peter, as well as what our Lord said about the ‘death by which he should glorify God,’ and also as to St. John himself, in answer to the question put to Him by St. Peter.

And the last words of His which St. John records are the injunction to the Chief of the Apostles, ‘Follow thou Me!’

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The Ascension

The only Evangelists who mention the Ascension of our Lord are St. Mark and St. Luke, the first without describing it, and the other in a very few words. But St. Luke has filled in the picture of the Ascension by the details which he has added at the beginning of the Acts, where he also directly connects the two works together in the introductive words addressed to Theophilus. There is therefore no need to continue our comparison of the various accounts which we possess as to the subject-matter of this book further than the Ascension.

As to this, St. Mark’s few words are characteristic, for he mentions our Lord sitting at the right hand of God, while St. Luke, on the other hand, mentions in his Gospel how our Lord parted from His beloved flock in the act of blessing them. These two sentences express very beautifully the dominant tones in the two several Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke, and the same may be said of the concluding words in the other two Gospels.

The brevity and apparent want of connection which characterize the accounts of the Resurrection and of the period after it are not therefore to be set down to any want of care or consideration on the part of the holy writers. They have given so little in writing, because after the Resurrection the Life of our Lord in the Flesh passes, as it were, into His Life in the Church.

With her, as St. Matthew states, He remains all days, even unto the consummation of the world,—her, as St. Mark tells us, He ever assists with the power of One sitting at the right hand of the Majesty on high,—she, as St. Luke informs us, is clothed with power by the mission of the Holy Ghost,—and, according to the words of St. John, has been placed by our Lord Himself under the pastoral care of St. Peter and his successors.

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The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord in the Four Gospels

1. What St Matthew and St Mark convey in their Resurrection accounts

2. What St Luke conveys in his Resurrection account

3. What St John conveys in his Resurrection account

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

• The WM Review

• Twitter (The WM Review)

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Editor’s Notes

In the this part, we present Fr Coleridge’s account of St Luke’s Gospel on the Resurrection. The fact that some of these points have been overlooked has led to confusion over how the four Gospels can be reconciled – but this confusion is totally dispelled by Fr Coleridge.

We have previously published Fr Coleridge’s harmonisation of the Gospels’ account of the Resurrection narratives:

1. How to avoid being disappointed by the Gospels’ accounts of the Resurrection

2. Getting the Resurrection appearances in order

3. How and why Our Lord appeared after the Resurrection

4. The Risen Christ’s appearances before the Ascension

The WM Review also published a synthesis of these accounts, based on Fr Coleridge’s work, in one continuous text:

• The Resurrection synthesised into a single narrative

In this mini-series, Fr Coleridge provides further explanation of why each Gospel treats of these matters in their particular ways – and the role of these accounts in the life of the Church.

Subscribe now

The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord in the Four Gospels

The Life of our Life, Vol. II

Chapter XI
St. Matt. xxvii. 35–44; St. Mark xv. 24–32; St. Luke xxiii. 34–43; St. John xix. 13–27; Story of the Gospels, § 170.
Burns and Oates, London, 1876

1. What St Matthew and St Mark convey in their Resurrection accounts

2. What St Luke conveys in his Resurrection account

St Luke supplementary

St. Luke, in the history of the Resurrection, plays the same part as in the rest of the Gospel narrative.

That is, his narrative is complete in itself, he as far as possible prefers to give new incidents which resemble those which have been already given by the Evangelists who have preceded him, rather than to relate exactly what the others have related, he supplements what requires supplement, and while he writes throughout as an historian he gives a colour and character of his own to the whole story which make it as individual as the tone of a voice or the expression of a countenance.

His parallelism rather than identity with St. Matthew and St. Mark begins from the last touches which he gives to his account of the entombment of our Lord. For he mentions the women who had followed our Lord from Galilee as watching the burial, and their going home that evening, and before the Sabbath had begun, preparing their spices and unguents. This is enough to tell us, in St. Luke’s modest way, that he is speaking of a party of women different from that which had been mentioned by St. Matthew and St. Mark.

Then he carries on the history of these same women. They came to the sepulchre deep in the twilight—evidently therefore before the others, who, as St. Mark tells us, did not arrive until the sun had risen. Here again we have one of St. Luke’s notes of difference. They find the stone rolled away, go in, and the Body is not there. Two angels, instead of one, appear to them, and ask them why they seek the living among the dead, and remind them of the words of our Lord as to His Passion and Resurrection, while He was in Galilee.

No charge is given to them to tell the Apostles, but they go and tell these things to the eleven and the other disciples. Their words appear to them as idle wanderings, and are not believed. This is St. Luke’s contribution to the first part, as we have called it, of the three into which the Gospel narrative of the Resurrection may be divided. He sums up by naming the women who ‘told these things to the Apostles,’ but this catalogue is not to be considered as including those only who belonged to the party of which St. Luke has himself spoken.

It is an enumeration of all the women who at different times brought messages to the Apostles—Mary Magdalene, the first, Joanna and her companions, the second, and Mary mother of James and the others with her, the third. As the Apostles were the witnesses to the world, so these women were to the Apostles, the witnesses whose word they ought to have believed at once.

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The latter parts of the history in his Gospel

St. Luke’s further account hangs together without any break. He mentions first, in a few words, the visit of Peter to the tomb. Then he gives at full length the story of the travellers to Emmaus, and how our Lord made Himself known to them in the ‘breaking of bread.’

The account which Cleophas and his companion gave our Lord of the state of their knowledge as to the incidents of the day before they left Jerusalem exactly coincides with that which one would give who had heard the account of the women whom St. Luke has already mentioned, for he speaks of their having been to the sepulchre before light, of the vision of angels, that is, more than one, and he makes no mention of an order to go to Galilee. The message to go into Galilee was not sent by them.

The other fact he mentions is the visit of ‘some of ours,’ that is, Peter and John, to the tomb. We cannot doubt that the visit thus paid by St. Peter prepared his mind, at all events, for the fulness of faith which was afterwards rewarded by our Lord’s appearance to him, of which the travellers are informed when they return to Jerusalem.

St. Luke then proceeds to what we have called the second element in the history. He says nothing of those appearances of our Lord to His Apostles of which St. Matthew and St. Mark have spoken, but he adds the entirely new incident of His appearance to them on the very evening of Easter Day, when He entered while the doors were shut, showed them His hands and feet, bade them feel Him, and even ate something with them.

Then St. Luke passes at once, without any mention again of Galilee, to the charge or instruction which our Lord gave to the Apostles—as it seems, at a time subsequent to that of the first apparition to them on Easter Day, at which our Lord conferred on them the Holy Ghost and the power of absolution, of which this Evangelist makes no mention. St. Luke’s instruction relates to the fulfilment of the Scriptures, to the gift of intelligence given to them at this time, to their duty as witnesses, and the command to remain in Jerusalem until the coming of the Holy Ghost.

He then, as has been said, briefly mentions the Ascension, and the time they spent in retirement, ‘being always in the Temple praising and blessing God.’

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The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord in the Four Gospels

1. What St Matthew and St Mark convey in their Resurrection accounts

2. What St Luke conveys in his Resurrection account

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

• The WM Review

• Twitter (The WM Review)

• YouTube

• Telegram

Editor’s Notes

We have previously published Fr Coleridge’s harmonisation of the Gospels’ account of the Resurrection narratives:

1. How to avoid being disappointed by the Gospels’ accounts of the Resurrection

2. Getting the Resurrection appearances in order

3. How and why Our Lord appeared after the Resurrection

4. The Risen Christ’s appearances before the Ascension

The WM Review also published a synthesis of these accounts, based on Fr Coleridge’s work, in one continuous text:

• The Resurrection synthesised into a single narrative

In the chapter following this treatment, Fr Coleridge provides further explanation of why each Gospel treats of these matters in their particular ways – and the role of these accounts in the life of the Church.

In the first part of this new mini-series, we present Fr Coleridge’s account of Ss Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels.

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The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord in the Four Gospels

The Life of our Life, Vol. II

Chapter XI
St. Matt. xxvii. 35–44; St. Mark xv. 24–32; St. Luke xxiii. 34–43; St. John xix. 13–27; Story of the Gospels, § 170.
Burns and Oates, London, 1876

1. What St Matthew and St Mark convey in their Resurrection accounts

Brevity of the Evangelists

Something has already been said as to the disappointing character of the Gospel records of the Resurrection of our Lord and of all that followed upon it—disappointing, that is, unless they are viewed in the true light. It would seem as if the Evangelists, at least the earlier two of them, had almost thought their work was over when they had finished the account of our Lord’s death and barely mentioned His Resurrection.

The last named mystery was the dogmatic foundation of all the hope of the Christian hereafter and of all his spiritual life here. The details seem dwarfed in the importance of the central truth. They speak of it as a truth which was so familiar to those to whom they addressed themselves as to dispense them from distinguishing times and places and circumstances.

So it is with people who talk or write about some great and all absorbing event of which they have been witnesses, and with which those to whom they speak or write are perfectly conversant. It is not difficult to harmonize the accounts of the several Evangelists, as has been shown in the preceding chapter.

The only difficulty comes from the abruptness and brevity of the writers on whom we depend, and the immense difference between ourselves and those for whom they at first wrote. This difficulty naturally decreases in proportion as the writers recede in point of time from the great event of which they are speaking. There is no abruptness of transition in the narrative of St. John, and less in that of St. Luke than in those of St. Matthew and St. Mark.

St Matthew and St Mark

St. Matthew and St. Mark may very well be taken together. St. Mark is here, as in many parts of his Gospel, a silent commentator and explainer of St. Matthew. The account in each may be divided into three very simple heads, and as we find the same order followed, more or less, even by the latest Evangelists, we may fairly consider that it is founded on the nature of the subject-matter.

First there is an account of the women going to the sepulchre, and receiving the message from the angel, that our Lord was not there, and that the disciples are to see Him in Galilee. Then there is the appearance of our Lord Himself to the eleven Apostles. Thirdly, there is a charge or commission given by our Lord concerning their future work in the world.

That is, the simplest elements of the Gospel statement as to the Resurrection come to these three: how the Apostles were first informed by others of the truth, how they knew it themselves, and the commission which their Risen Master gave them. Around these central and simple elements each Evangelist has grouped some other facts of his own, but these form, as it were, the skeleton of the Gospel narratives.

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St Matthew’s account

St. Matthew and St. Mark name the same women in their respective accounts, except that St. Mark adds Salome to Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James. Each of these Evangelists mentions them as watching the burial of our Lord on Friday. St. Matthew adds that on Saturday, towards the close of the day, the two Maries came to visit the sepulchre. St. Mark adds that on the evening of Saturday, after the Sabbath was over, they bought their spices and ointments for the pious work which they contemplated performing on the morrow.

But St. Matthew then leaves them. He passes abruptly from the Saturday night to the Sunday morning, and from the women preparing their spices to the sepulchre of our Lord and the guards around it, of whom he had just before been speaking. He mentions the earthquake after our Lord’s Resurrection, the angel rolling away the stone and sitting on it, and the terror of the guards.

All this of course took place before the women approached the sepulchre in the morning, though on account of his great abruptness and conciseness St. Matthew, if he were a modern writer, might be thought to lead us to understand that the women were present, unless he showed either by word or by a division in his work, that he was passing to a new subject.

He then tells us what the angel said to the women, whom he does not name, and who therefore must be supposed to be the same as those whom he has named before, or at least to have been a company including some of them. He makes no mention of their approach, or of their entering the sepulchre, but he tells us how they went out of it, and ran to tell the Apostles, and were met on their way by our Lord, Who sent them with the same message to the Apostles as that which they had received from the angel.

Then he tells us of the guard going into the city, and of the bribe given them by the Chief Priests. This is the first part of the history as he relates it, that is, this is what he tells us of the way in which the news of the Resurrection was sent to the Apostles. The second part consists of the apparition of our Lord to the eleven on the mountain in Galilee which He had appointed, which seems to have been the apparition to five hundred brethren and more of which St. Paul speaks.

St. Matthew then proceeds to the third part of the history, as to which he mentions the charge to go and teach all nations, baptizing them and instructing them in all that our Lord has commanded, and His promise to be with them all days even unto the consummation of the world.

St Mark’s account

St. Mark’s account must be considered as an independent narrative, which also silently comments on and explains St. Matthew.

As to the first part of the whole, he adds the name of Salome to that of the two Maries, when he speaks of the women who prepared ointments overnight. We may understand this, not as obliging us to think that all the three whom he mentions are the subjects of his narrative as it proceeds, but rather as intimating that what he there relates happened to some of them.

He omits all mention of the earthquake and the guard. He distinguishes, moreover, very carefully the time of the approach of the women to the sepulchre: it was very early, but the sun had risen. This makes it clear that the visit was comparatively late.

He mentions, in his picturesque love of details, the conversation of the holy women about rolling away the stone. He tells us they entered in and saw the angel, ‘a young man,’ sitting on the right, the side on which the slab of the Holy Sepulchre is. He mentions the message given to the women to carry to the Apostles, and then leaves them, saying that they fled from the sepulchre in trembling and fear, and told no one as they went.

Then he omits the appearance of our Lord to them, and, as if to restore her to her rights, he says that the first to whom our Lord appeared was Mary Magdalene, ‘early on the Sunday.’ It is clear that he substitutes this appearance to Mary Magdalene alone for that which St. Matthew has mentioned to the women together, among whom she may or may not have been—but, taking the whole evidence together, it may seem most likely that she was not.

St. Mark then mentions very shortly the appearance of our Lord to the two travellers to Emmaus, though he does not name the place. This is the first part of his narrative. The second consists of the visit of our Lord to the eleven while at meat when He upbraided them for their incredulity; and the third part is the charge to go and preach the Gospel to the whole creation, and the promise of miraculous signs by which the charge was accompanied.

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The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord in the Four Gospels

1. What St Matthew and St Mark convey in their Resurrection accounts

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