Editor’s Notes

On the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, the Roman Liturgy returns to Holy Week – with words taken from the first Palm Sunday, and then from the following day.

At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, If you had known, in this your day, even you, the things that are for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a rampart about you, and surround you and shut you in on every side, and will dash you to the ground and your children within you, and will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you have not known the time of your visitation. And He entered the temple, and began to cast out those who were selling and buying in it, saying to them, It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of thieves. And He was teaching daily in the temple. (Luke 19:41–47)

St Luke’s account suggests that the Temple was cleansed immediately upon Our Lord’s arrival. However, St Mark’s account makes clear that it occurs on the following day – Our Lord having retreated to Bethany for the evening. In the interim between the two events recounted in the Gospel, Our Lord curses a fig tree; after the second event, the Apostles find it to have withered away. This may appear to be a very strange miracle, but Fr Coleridge explains why Our Lord acted in this way, and why he seems to “change the subject” after the event.

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The Procession of Palms

and

The Barren Fig-Tree

Passiontide, Part I, Chapters II and III

St. Matt. xxi. 14-17; St. Mark xi. 1-11; St. Luke xix. 29-44; St. John xii. 12-18 and St. Matt. xxi. 19–22; St. Mark xi. 13–26; St. Luke xix. 45–48.
Story of the Gospels, § 132 and § 134
Burns and Oates, London, 1889
Read on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part 0: Why Christ wept over Jerusalem in Holy Week

It was not too late for them to repent – nor is it too late for us.

0. Why Christ wept over Jerusalem in Holy Week

Part I: Cursing the fig tree: Jesus’ strangest miracle?

Why did Christ curse the fig tree if it wasn’t even fig season?

1. Cursing the fig tree: Jesus’ strangest miracle?

Part II: Christ’s cleansing of the Temple – and what happened next

After cursing the fig-tree, Jesus enters the Temple, casts out the traders, and begins His solemn teaching. And the key to it all is the fig-tree.

2. Christ’s cleansing of the Temple – and what happened next

Part III: How Christ explains the cursing of the fig-tree

After revealing the judgment on a fruitless faith, Our Lord explains that the miracle of the fig tree demonstrates to the power of true prayer.

3. How Christ explains the cursing of the fig-tree

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

On the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads the Parable of the Unjust Steward:

At that time, Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: There was a certain rich man who had a steward, who was reported to him as squandering his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear of you? Make an accounting of your stewardship, for you can be steward no longer.’

And the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do, seeing that my master is taking away the stewardship from me? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed. I know what I shall do, that when I am removed from my stewardship they may receive me into their houses.’ And he summoned each of his master’s debtors and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘A hundred jars of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bond and sit down at once and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bond and write eighty.’

And the master commended the unjust steward, in that he had acted prudently; for the children of this world, in relation to their own generation, are more prudent than the children of the light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves with the mammon of wickedness, so that when you fail they may receive you into the everlasting dwellings.

(Luke 16:1-9)

This is one of the most perplexing parables in the Gospel.

It occurs during Our Lord’s final journey towards Jerusalem and his Passion. It falls between Our Lord’s parables of the Prodigal Son and the Lost Sheep, and that of Lazarus and the Rich Man.

Focusing on the correct stewardship of temporal goods, Our Lord contrasts the “prudence” of worldly men with the negligence of those believing themselves aiming for spiritual goods. He reminds us that all we have is from God, and invites us to find ways to use these gifts in the interests of charity and eternal life.

After explaining the parable, Fr Coleridge addresses the effect which it had on the Pharisees, who “derided him” for it.

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The Unjust Steward

The Preaching of the Cross, Part II

Chapter X
St. Luke xvi. 1-13
Story of the Gospels, § 115
Burns and Oates, London, 1887
Read on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: The Unjust Steward: The most difficult parable of all?

Why on earth does Christ hold up a worldly trickster in this parable? His comparison calls us not to admire deceit, but to expose the spiritual laziness of ‘the children of light.’

1. The Unjust Steward: The most difficult parable of all?

Part II: How can money build eternal friendships?

The unjust steward was praised not for his dishonesty, but for his foresight. Christ urges us to use our passing possessions for eternal gain.

2. How can money build eternal friendships?

Part III: Trying to serve God and Mammon is impossible

Everything we have is held on trust from God. While that means that the goods of this world are not true riches, they will decide what we are fit to receive in eternity.

3. Trying to serve God and Mammon is impossible

Part IV: Why guilty consciences mock Christ and his Church

Despite their diversity of age, rank, and doctrine, all heretics and founders of false religions bear the same spiritual mark.

4. Why guilty consciences mock Christ and his Church

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

On the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads part of Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.

“At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father in heaven shall enter the kingdom of heaven.”

(Matt. 7:15-21)

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered early in Christ’s public ministry, after the first Passover and our Lord’s initial preaching and miracles.

It comes amidst Our Lord’s injunctions to have confidence in God, and to be cautious in judging others. We should note, however, that one cannot “beware of false prophets” without judging that someone is or is likely to be a false prophet.

Thus, the idea that one must assume the best of an evident false prophet, or await the intervention of authority before acting accordingly, is not correct.

Although it is a short Gospel passage, Fr Coleridge discusses it over three chapters. What follows is the serialisation of the first part – and some bonus articles.

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The False Prophets

The Sermon on the Mount (To the End of the Lord’s Prayer)

Chapter XV

St. Matt. vii. 15—20; Story of the Gospels, § 34
Burns and Oates, London, 1878
Read on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: Why did Christ warn of false teachers so early in His ministry?

Christ’s earliest warnings included calling his followers to beware of false prophets, both within and without the Church.

1. Why did Christ warn of false teachers so early in His ministry?

Part II: What is the ‘appetite for destruction’ that drives false prophets?

Christ predicts the malice of those priests who would betray Him then, and for centuries to come.

2. What is the ‘appetite for destruction’ that drives false prophets?

Part III: Why the Apostles and New Testament were so fierce in condemning heresy

Christ’s warnings about false prophets already began to be fulfilled in the New Testament itself.

3. Why the Apostles and New Testament were so fierce in condemning heresy

Part IV: What the founders of heresies and false religions have in common

Despite their diversity of age, rank, and doctrine, all heretics and founders of false religions bear the same spiritual mark.

4. What the founders of heresies and false religions have in common

Part V: ‘Wolves in sheep’s clothing’ – perfect description of heretical teachers

The foulest heretics always present themselves as angels of light, citing Scripture and mimicking the Church – but beneath the externals lies a hatred for truth and souls.

5. ‘Wolves in sheep’s clothing’ – perfect description of heretical teachers

BONUS ARTICLE: Good Shepherd Sunday

On the Second Sunday after Easter, Our Lord tells us how and why he is ‘the Shepherd and Bishop’ of our souls.

• Good Shepherd Sunday – Second Sunday after Easter

BONUS ARTICLE: Does charity require us to assume orthodoxy and good will?

The idea of a dogmatic ‘benefit of the doubt’ is contradicted by the Catholic authority.

• Does charity require us to assume orthodoxy and good will?

BONUS ARTICLE: ‘Anathematise those who teach new doctrines’ – St Robert Bellarmine

St Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, taught that laymen can discern true pastors from false by their contradiction of previous teaching, and that they should anathematise them.

• ‘Anathematise those who teach new doctrines’ – St Robert Bellarmine

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 Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads St Mark’s account of the feeding of the four thousand.

It takes place after healing the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter and the deaf-mute man in Decapolis; before Our Lord’s return to Galilee and the confrontation with the Pharisees over ritual purity.

Although some might assume that it is simply a retelling of the feeding of the five thousand, it is in fact the second multiplication of loaves. Nor can this be doubted: both St Matthew and St Mark recount it as the second such miracle.

If this were not so, many would assume that it must be otherwise. As Coleridge mentions at the end of the chapter, this incident is a standing warning against those who have “a false estimate of the accuracy of the Sacred Texts,” and who approach them without the docility necessary for Christians.

The two miracles of this kind are also a double rebuke to those who try to make “the real miracle” a mere sharing of food amongst the crowd.

We could also consider the following. St John makes clear that the feeding of is orientated principally towards the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. The feeding of the four thousand, however, is more about Christ’s love for mankind, and his determination not to leave them orphans – as Fr Coleridge makes clear.

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The Feeding of the Four Thousand

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV, Chapter VII

St. Matt. xv. 29—39; St. Mark viii. 1–10.
Story of the Gospels, § 32
Burns and Oates, London, 1885
Read on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: The feeding of the four thousand was a second, separate miracle

The second multiplication of loaves, given even to Gentiles, shows Our Lord was not afraid to deal with those whom corrupt religious authorities held to be “unclean.”

1. The feeding of the four thousand was a second, separate miracle

Part II: How did the second multiplication of the loaves flow from the first?

Christ repeats the miracle of the loaves to demonstrate his compassion—and to test the disciples’ readiness to expect new favours in light of past ones.

2. How did the second multiplication of the loaves flow from the first?

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, Fr Coleridge tells us...

• How grace fulfils the prophets’ promises and draws souls to Christ.

• That faith requires both outward preaching and inward light, freely embraced by the soul.

• Why only the Son can perfectly reveal the Father to mankind.

He shows us that divine grace is what enables faith to flourish.

This is the last part of Chapter X.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

10. What is necessary for faith?

What Isaias and Jeremias

Our Lord then confirms His assertion respecting the drawing of the Father by the words of one of the great prophets, who had foretold that, in the times of the Messias, the whole people, and all mankind, would be taught by God.

The prophecy is mainly one of the conversion of the Gentiles to the Church, and her consequent enlargement. And in the course of the prediction the words are found, ‘All thy children shall be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of thy children.’1 Our Lord says the prophets, and not only the prophet, for this kind of prediction is repeated in other places, as for instance in the great passage of Jeremias, in which the prediction of the virginal Conception is contained, ‘A woman shall compass a man.’

In the same chapter Jeremias goes on to speak of the new Covenant that God will make with His people:

‘Not according to the Covenant which I made with their fathers… But this shall be the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in those days, saith the Lord, I will give My law in their bowels, and I will write it in their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be My people, and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least of them even unto the greatest, saith the Lord.’2

He goes on:

‘Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me.’

It seems that the distinction between hearing and learning amounts to this, that some who hear will not learn, but that all who learn must first have heard. The learning is not without their own cooperation, and it generates faith in the soul. The hearing is the enlightenment offered to them by God. In truth, there are two kinds of hearing, the external hearing of the Word of God by the mouth of teachers and witnesses sent by Him, and the interior listening to the same Word which is the work of grace in the heart.

These two things make up that teaching of the Father, which our Lord here declares to be necessary. It is so necessary, that faith cannot be without it, and as this interior teaching of the Father was that which was wanting in these people in the synagogue of Capharnaum, our Lord insists on it as the one requisite.

What is necessary for faith

Thus for the generation of faith, which had not taken place in these listeners to our Lord, there are in truth more things than one necessary.

The outward preaching of the Word is necessary, and the attention and goodwill of the hearers themselves are necessary, and beyond these, the interior teaching of the Father by His grace, corresponding to the external Word, and aiding the human consent and readiness, is necessary.

So necessary is this, that, as has been said, our Lord speaks of this alone, in the same way, it may be said, as He speaks of the accomplishment of the will of the Father and not of His own will, as the one reason why He has come down from Heaven. Because the power of the Divine command laid upon Him for the salvation of mankind moved His human will so forcibly and overwhelmingly as to be the one great motive on which it acted, burning as was the Sacred Heart for the very same accomplishment of the salvation of mankind.

So in this process of the genesis of faith, which our Lord describes as coming to Him. Men come or come not by their own free will, that is, they do not come, if they do not come, because they do not choose to come. But if they come, they come willingly, yet their own willingness is not enough without the aid of God.

Our Lord might have reproached these people for their unwillingness to believe. But instead of reproaching them directly, He says they do not come, because they have not been willing to be assisted by God, and thus are both unable and unwilling, unable because unwilling, though their ability would depend on God not on themselves.

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St. Paul to the Thessalonians

The whole process is drawn out in the passage of St. Paul in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which he expresses his thankfulness to God for their faith, ‘because that when you had received of us the Word of the hearing of God, you received it, not as the word of man, but as it is indeed, the Word of God, Who worketh in you that have believed.’3

Here we have the external word of the preacher, for faith cometh by hearing, and the willing listening of the hearers, and beyond all these, the working of God in those who have believed. For it is Paul who plants, and Apollo who waters, but it is God that giveth the increase. It was this last element, the working of God in their hearts, which was wanting in these people to whom our Lord was delivering this great discourse, and therefore they were not able to receive the truths which He set before them, claiming their faith in His word as that of One Whom God had accredited to them by miracles and other evidences.

As to their inability, it was occasioned by the want of the teaching of God in their hearts, but this was so, not because God was not willing to teach them, but because their hearts were not fit to receive His teaching on account of their own obstinacy. The action of the Father had not taken place, but it had not been refused to them arbitrarily. It had been hindered by their own fault.

No man hath seen the Father

To make His teaching still more clear, and also, it seems, for the purpose of shutting out a possible misconception, our Lord adds the words which follow.

‘Not that any man had seen the Father, but He Who is of God, He hath seen the Father.’

It follows, therefore, that this teaching or drawing of the Father, which is necessary for the formation of faith, is a teaching which is not received in the ordinary way, as when a master has his disciples around him and they listen to his doctrine.

This is the way, more or less, in which the external teaching is carried on, of which St. Paul speaks in the passage just now quoted. The teaching of the Father is invisible and spiritual, it is addressed to the heart and soul, like all the other whispers of grace. It accompanies the external teaching, in the case of those who receive that external teaching in a simple and childlike spirit.

But our Lord’s words explain that it is interior only, and does not conflict with, or remove the necessity of, the external teaching of the messengers of God. And it was quite possible that these people to whom He was speaking on this occasion, so literal and unspiritual in their minds and hearts, might think that He was really speaking to them of the necessity of some sensible and tangible and external communication between those whom the Father was thus to teach and the Father Himself.

Necessity for this truth

It was necessary therefore to assert the great truth, that no man hath seen the Father, and that the only One Who has this right to speak in His Name and to state the truth concerning Him, as knowing Him, is the Son Himself Who is of God, that is, Who has from Him by generation the Divine Nature itself. It is the same doctrine which He had laid down to Nicodemus, when He found him hesitating and making difficulties about what He told him as from God:

‘No man hath ascended into Heaven, but He that descended from Heaven, the Son of Man Who is in Heaven.’4

And we find the same truth at the opening of this Gospel of St. John, whether in the words of the Evangelist himself, or in those of the blessed St. John Baptist:

‘No man hath seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’5

And there is the same teaching in St. Matthew, in the place where he records our Lord’s exultation of spirit on the rejection of the wise and prudent and the revelation of the Divine truth to little ones.

‘No one knoweth the Son but the Father, neither doth any one know the Father but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him.’6

And these words are a kind of commentary on the passage before us, for they show the Father leading people to the knowledge of the Incarnate Son, and the Son in turn revealing the Father to those whom He chooses so to enlighten, His choice being decided by their own fitness to receive light, and their readiness to correspond to it when received.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

10. What is necessary for faith?

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

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?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

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Father Coleridge Reader Mug

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Editor’s Notes

On the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads the following from Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount:

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Unless your justice exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘You shall not kill’; and that whoever shall kill shall be liable to judgment.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ shall be liable to the Sanhedrin; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’, shall be liable to the fire of Gehenna.

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift before the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother; and then come and offer your gift.

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered early in Christ’s public ministry, after the first Passover and our Lord’s initial preaching and miracles.

The section itself appears early in the Sermon, in the section which Coleridge titles “Evangelical Justice.” It begins with Our Lord’s comments about having come to fulfil the Law and the Prophets; following his treatment of the fifth commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”) and anger, he treats divorce, oaths, and other matters.

Our Lord shows that the demands of the Gospel radically exceed the teaching of the Pharisees and the Scribes—awakening an awareness in his listeners of their dependence on God, rather than themselves.

This is a difficult passage, and easily misunderstood. One reason for this is that the word anger refers both to a passion, and a sin.

We have addressed this matter in more detail below:

To summarise:

• The passion of anger is a good part of our nature. Like all the passions, the Fall has made anger difficult for reason to govern. Experiencing this passion is morally indifferent, and it may move us to an act of virtue or of sin, depending on the circumstances.

• The sin of anger is that which is not regulated by the order of reason. It may be a mortal or venial sin depending on the circumstances.

Losing sight of these distinctions has caused much confusion in our day, as have confused explanations of this particular Gospel passage.

The text from Fr Coleridge

Our Lord’s purpose in this passage was to present the scope of the Fifth Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”), rather than to present a thorough analysis of anger, or the passions in general.

The point is that the Fifth Commandment includes interior malice, and not that anger can never be justified.

This is why Fr Coleridge’s text focuses on the sin of anger. He does not address the concept of just or righteous anger; nor does he exclude it, or suggest that all forms or feelings of anger are sinful. His focus is on a deliberate “malice and evil intention” which is contrary to temperance, justice and charity.

It is also a salutary warning – because in some cases, what we feel to be justified anger may not really be so. Our Lord’s words may serve as a check on a wounded sense of self-love, and hold us back from seeking revenge or justice in a disproportionate way.

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The Gospel Law as to Anger

The Sermon on the Mount (To the End of the Lord’s Prayer)

Chapter V
St Matt. vi. 20-30
Story of the Gospels, § 32
Burns and Oates, London, 1878

Part I: What Christ teaches about contempt, anger, and judgement of others

Christ condemns not just murder, but the anger, contempt, and malice that lead to it—revealing that justice must begin in the heart.

1. What Christ teaches about contempt, anger, and judgement of others

Part II: What kind of anger deserves the fires of Hell?

Our Lord teaches that anger can be a grave sin against the order of charity he came to establish, and merit eternal punishment in Hell.

2. What kind of anger deserves the fires of Hell?

Part III: Does non-Catholic worship please God?

Our Lord teaches that no worship can be acceptable while we harbour malice in our hearts, or stand outside the unity of the Church.

3. Does non-Catholic worship please God?

Part IV: Reconciliation must be sought before the Day of Judgment

Christ warns us not to delay reconciliation with God or neighbour, lest we face divine justice on the last day.

4. Reconciliation must be sought before the Day of Judgment

Part V: How Christ refers to Purgatory in his warning about sinful anger

In his treatment of the Fifth Commandment, Christ’s image of prison implies not necesaarily Hell, but Purgatory—a warning that we must pay the price of rejecting grace.

5. How Christ refers to Purgatory in his warning about sinful anger

BONUS: Anger and revenge can be virtuous: St Thomas explains

Christ warns us not to delay reconciliation with God or neighbour, lest we face divine justice on the last day.

4. Anger and revenge can be virtuous: St Thomas explains

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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Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Fr Coleridge tells us...

• Why the Jews rejected Christ’s heavenly claims, despite the miracles and promises set before them.

• How faith requires the Father’s interior grace, corresponding to the outward witness of Christ’s works.

• What Our Lord’s gentle reply reveals, directing unbelievers to seek the grace they lacked.

He shows us that God’s grace alone enables souls to recognise and embrace Christ by faith.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

Murmuring of the Jews

‘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?’

All our Lord’s words about faith, and the giving of the Father, and the life everlasting, and the raising up at the last day, were lost on them.

They went back to the difficulty created by their own dulness and incredulity, the difficulty founded on His human nature and apparently common origin. The sublime doctrines contained in the few last sentences of our Lord were all nothing to them.

They seem to have caught at His words about the Living Bread, and to have understood Him to say that it was He that came down from Heaven, as indeed the same meaning is conveyed by His words that He is the Bread of Life and that He came down from Heaven not to do His own will, but that of His Father. What He might mean by the Bread of Life, they did not ask, nor whether the wonderful miracles which He had wrought did not give Him a right to their faith, even if He seemed to claim some dignity or power which they did not understand.

Thus all the evidences of His Divine Mission and character are set aside, and they fix on the evidence, as they think, that He is a mere man like themselves, and that therefore He could not have come down from Heaven. He is to them Jesus the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother they know. He is not even John the Baptist risen from the dead, or the prophet that should come into the world, or Elias, who had been caught up into Heaven, and so might have come down again, He is only the Son of the carpenter of Nazareth.

So unreasonable are men when they are determined to make objections to supernatural truths. They shut their eyes to the evidences which reason ought to force them to admit, and they take no account of sublime doctrines, however full of promise and beneficence to themselves. When He had spoken to them of the Bread of Life, they had cried out, ‘Lord, give us always this Bread,’ and now that He has told them of the will of the Father, and of all the blessings which He is bound by that will to procure for them and impart to them, it might be expected that they would say, Lord, let Thy Father give us to Thee, Lord, let us have this everlasting life, Lord, raise us also up at the last day!

But they say nothing of the kind, for they are blinded by their grovelling prejudices that in Jesus the Son of Joseph there can be nothing great or wonderful, however inexplicable may be His miracles, however unearthly the power of His words.

Answer of our Lord

‘Jesus therefore answered and said to them, 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.’

The murmuring among themselves could only be rightly founded on the supposition that He had said something impossible or wrong, in claiming to have come down from Heaven.

But the truth was that He had not claimed anything at all for which His miracles might not have prepared them, and which they ought not to have been ready to receive on His word, if they had made due use of the evidences which had been accumulated in His support by the Providence of the Father, Who was also ready to supply that which was necessary to make the evidences take hold of them and produce in them the required faith, namely, to give them His Divine interior grace corresponding to the external witness of the miracles and the other proofs of His Mission.

Their not receiving the truth which He had asserted concerning Himself, did not depend on the weakness of the proof or on the impossibility of the thing to be proved, but on the absence in their minds and hearts of the grace requisite for faith.

If this was the thing wanting, then the proper remedy for their difficulty was not to murmur against Him Who had said the truth, but to seek to repair in themselves the deficiencies which prevented them from closing with the truth which He asserted. This could only be done by the working of the Father, and therefore the proper means for them to take would have been the earnest supplication to the Father to have mercy on them, and to enlighten them.

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Addressed to their present needs

Thus our Lord’s words most perfectly answer to the present needs of their souls.

He might have reproached them with their dulness, with their unreasonable obstinacy, with the moral faults, the worldliness, and the like, which fastened their hearts to the ground, as it were, and prevented in them the formation of the first elements of faith. But He does not reproach them or rebuke them, except indirectly. He only points out to them the way by which they might even yet be brought to a better mind.

‘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.’

He speaks of God as the Father Who has sent Him, as if to imply that it belongs to God, when He sends a prophet or a messenger into the world, also to act on the souls of those to whom the messenger is sent. The doctrine and the messenger may both be Divine, and yet there is still the work of grace to be done in the hearts of men, without which the good seed will have been cast abroad in vain.

And it cannot be thought of God, that He would ever send external means of grace, without also being ready to give the interior graces corresponding thereto to those in need of them. But, when the Father has thus drawn men to His own envoy, that will take place which He has already said would follow, namely, that the Son Whom they see and believe in, will execute His commission for which He was sent, and raise them up at the last day.

And so, though they might think of Him only as the Son of Joseph, His word would certainly be verified, and He would raise men up at the last day as He had said, and this would be in itself a sufficient proof that He was the Bread of Life which came down from Heaven.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

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?

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:

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Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Fr Coleridge tells us...

• Why Christ rejoiced in the eternal glory awaiting all whom the Father gives him – even though they cannot yet fully appreciate it themselves

• How the Blessed Eucharist communicates Christ’s own life, and prepares souls for resurrection

• What it is that reveals Christ’s boundless love, given continually as the Bread of Life.

He shows us that Our Lord delights in leading his faithful into everlasting union with himself.

For more on this series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

Our Lord’s work in souls

Another thought which is contained in these words of our Lord is that of the character of the work which He is to accomplish in them. It is no light or transitory work. He describes it in very few words.

First it is that He will not cast them out.

Then it is that they shall not be lost, but raised up at the last day.

Then this is somewhat expanded, where He says that the will of the Father is that they should have life everlasting, and that He should raise them up at the last day.

These words convey little in comparison to us. They represent great realities and great acts of our Lord, which are different, indeed, in His mind and in truth, from what they are in our poor conceptions.

It is a great thing not to be cast out, not to be without a share in the great work which our Lord came on earth to do, from which, nevertheless, very many who were intended by Him to profit by it are excluded for faults of their own, which compel Him to say to them that He never knew them, and even in this life to leave them outside His Kingdom.

It is a great thing to have life everlasting, even only in expectation and promise, to have a right and title to it, of which nothing but ourselves can deprive us.

It is a great thing to be raised up by our Lord at the last day, not by that universal and common resurrection which will be the lot of the whole human race, in consequence of the Incarnation, but by that glorious resurrection which is to be the condition and the beginning of the true eternal glories of the saints in light.

The glories and delights of the body, the glories and delights of the soul, the unfading crowns, the ineffable bliss in the companionship of the blessed angels and saints, and the inconceivable and yet not unsupportable rapture of the Beatific Vision—these are words and little more to us. But to our Lord they were the realities on which His Sacred Heart continually dwelt, and which inundated Him with joy when He reflected on how many millions of souls most dear to Him He was to confer them, as the consequence of the Resurrection which was to be His own work.

He mentions them here, because they were the truths which it was fit should now be set forth to this dull-hearted multitude, but they were nevertheless the source to Himself of joy inextinguishable and unutterable.

Raising up as part of Himself

And there is something still unmentioned in the words before us, implied though not fully expressed in the truth that He is to raise up the blessed at the last day.

He will raise them up as His own members, as parts of Himself, as united to Himself with a tie so close and so inseparable, that it will be closer even than that sacramental union with Him in Holy Communion which is now a foretaste of Heaven, and which has so much mysterious connection with the resurrection and the future life of glory.

It will not only be His work, as the creation was His work, but it will be a raising them to a participation of His own life. He will live in them, and they in Him, He will enjoy in them the vision of ineffable bliss, He will see God in them, and partake in them of the unalterable peace and tranquil possession of all goods of body and soul which will be their lot for ever. Every glory and every joy will be His work, and it will come back to His own Heart as a fresh joy and glory of His own.

Our Lord’s intelligence, then, of these wonderful boons which He was to bestow throughout all eternity on those whom the Father gives Him, must have been a distinct element on the prospect to which His Sacred Heart was now occupying itself.

He is the principle of life

And there is yet one more subject of importance, contained in these words, or rather contained in what we know to be, as it were, wrapped up in these words.

It is not our Lord’s design, in this part at least of His discourse, to explain fully how it is, by what means, or by what actions of His own, this great effect is to be produced of imparting eternal life and raising up the faithful at the last day. He has laid down the principle from which all this result is to flow down.

He has said that He is the Bread of Life that came down from Heaven. He is the principle, therefore, of everlasting life in His Incarnation and Sacred Humanity. When He speaks of the Bread of Life, He hints at the truth and at the particular manner in which He will impart that life of which He speaks, and plant, as it were, in the human body the seeds of the future resurrection which it is to owe to Him at the last day.

For if Life is to be conveyed as from Bread, it must be by the way in which bread supports natural life.

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How he is the Bread of Life

Life might be imparted as light, as by rays from the sun, or it might be given as the air which is breathed, and the like. But in that case He would not have called Himself the Bread of Life.

We know from the miracle to which this discourse is attached, as well as from the continual direction given to it by our Lord, by the successive truths which He adds to what has been given before, and most of all from the plain and unmistakeable language in the later sections of the discourse itself, that our Lord had in His mind from the very beginning the marvel of the Blessed Eucharist.

After a time, as it were, He restrains Himself no longer, and He forces on them, little prepared as they were, the truth concerning this great miracle of love. And when, as it were, He lets His words flow on without check, we see that He connects the reception of His Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament with these two fruits, resurrection at the last day, and everlasting life. It is right therefore to say that the earlier passage includes also the thought of the manner, in which the results of His love to those whom the Father has given Him are to be brought about, by means of this Heavenly Food.

This will have to be explained a little later on, when we come to the words in which this truth is more directly enunciated. In the meantime we may remind ourselves that here also is a head of ineffable consolation to the Sacred Heart. Not only are these great results to be produced by Him, not only are they to be to Himself the cause of such wonderful joy. But they are also to come about in consequence of a continual excess of love on His part to which there is no parallel, even the giving His own Flesh and Blood to those whom He loves so much to be their food.

He said Himself that there was no greater love, than to give His Life for His friends. But if anything could be greater than the love shown by dying for them, it must surely be that love which makes Himself not only once their Victim, but day after day, securing to them eternal life.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

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?

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)

• YouTube

• Telegram

Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:

• Why the Father gives souls to Christ through the gift of faith.

• How eternal life is already possessed by promise before the resurrection of the body.

• What Christ’s perfect obedience to the Father’s will reveals about the movements of his Sacred Heart.

For more on this series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

Seeing and believing

Our Lord goes on, in the next sentence, to explain still further what He has said about the will of the Father. He varies the expressions which He has used, in order thereby to make His meaning more plain and more full.

He repeats the words, ‘This is the will of My Father Who sent Me,’ but instead of the words, ‘All that He hath given me,’ He uses others, ‘That every one who seeth the Son and believeth in Him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise him up at the last day.’

From this we gather that it is the same thing to be given by the Father to our Lord, as to see the Son in His Incarnation and to believe on Him. And it is the same thing to have life everlasting, and not to be lost, or not to be cast out. He goes on in the following part of the discourse to insist on this still further, but what He now says is worthy of all our consideration.

Those who are given to Him by the Father, are those whom the Father guides by His Providence and by His grace to the sight of Jesus Christ, and to belief in Him. They do not believe what they see, but they believe what they do not see, and therefore He means that, seeing the Son in His human nature and form, like other men, they nevertheless believe Him to be, not what they see, but what they do not see, the Eternal Son of God, God of God.

Those who have this faith both see the Son, and believe in Him, as the Son of God in human flesh. And this is the giving of them to Him by the Father, because this true faith can only be in those to whom it is given by the Father, and it is given to them by the Father that they may go to the Son and may give themselves to Him by their faith.

Everlasting life

To this faith life everlasting is promised.

Faith is the condition of life everlasting, which cannot be forfeited unless the life of those who have the faith is in contradiction to their faith. And then, as it seems, to avoid a possible mistake which might arise in their minds, as if those who had this faith were so to have life everlasting as never to die, our Lord adds that He will raise up at the last day him who has this faith.

The life everlasting will then be given to him in possession, having been his before in promise and in right. But he will first pass through the stage of death, which is appointed to all men by a law which is not cancelled, even as to those who have the right to life everlasting.

Devotion to the Father’s will

There are occasions in the course of some of the discourses of our Lord when He seems almost to be soliloquizing, rather than addressing Himself to the audience before Him, although we know well that this was not the case.

What He said He meant them to hear, and He ordered His words with perfect wisdom and prudence for their benefit, and for our benefit for whom the words are recorded.

Yet sometimes He seems to open to us the thoughts and feelings of His Sacred Heart, as if in that also there was an immense boon for us. The passage on which we are now engaged is one of those in which we may find many revelations, so to say, of the thoughts and feelings and motives of the Sacred Humanity.

There are four great topics of thought suggested by it. In the first place we may note His devotion to the will of His Father. We have already said a few words on this. The will of His Father did not constrain Him, as if there could be any opposition between His own will and the Divine will. But it added to His choices and actions and purposes an immense weight of power, of intensity, of strength, of constancy, and above all, perhaps, of joy.

Every choice which He made in obedience to the will of the Father was an act of the intensest love for His Father, an act which so conformed His will to that of His Father as to make it, even His human will, Divine and god-like. That most perfect pliancy and docility which characterized His human will in its correspondence to the Divine will, gave it a beauty and a strength and a might and a purity and a joyousness, which have nothing like them, even in the most perfect choices of the angels and the saints.

It added a fresh lustre to the works which He accomplished for the salvation of men, glorious as they were in themselves.

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Providence of the Father

Another thought with regard to these choices of our Lord, in obedience to the will of His Father, is found in the words in which He speaks of those who come to Him by faith as being given to Him by His Father.

Under this expression are contained two great thoughts.

In the first place, it contains the thought of all that has been done by the Father in His Providence to bring about the coming of these souls to our Lord. Thus, for instance, when St. Peter, in the name of the Apostles, made his great profession of faith at Cæsarea Philippi, our Lord spoke of his blessedness because flesh and blood had not revealed to him the truth which he confessed, but His own Father Who is in Heaven.

The history of each of the souls of that Apostolic company, in whose name the confession was made, was a history of the most beautiful and delicate and powerful dealings with that soul on the part of the Eternal Father of our Lord, the object of which dealings was the gradual training of that soul in the faith which at last it attained in fulness, when the time came for the confession. Thus our Lord could dwell on the whole of this most marvellous and beautiful process, in each case, and this would be the subject of immense rejoicing and satisfaction to His Sacred Heart.

The Giver and the gift

This is the first thought. But there is something more, as has been said, in this expression, because it implies a personal action of the Father in giving the souls to our Lord, as well as in preparing them for Him.

In all gifts which pass between those who intensely love, the thought of the Giver is the principal element—it adds a preciousness to what is most precious, if so it be, and it gives a priceless value even to what is not in itself valuable. The reason is that the gift represents the giver, and it represents the immense love with which the giver gives it, and this is in itself an appeal and a provocation, so to say, to reciprocate love on the part of him who receives it.

And these souls are not simply presented to our Lord, as jewels are given by a friend to his friend, they are sent, or brought, or given, to our Lord, in order that with regard to them He may do His great work of salvation, and accomplish in them the commission which He received from His Father Who sent Him into the world.

Thus these souls are given to our Lord as the objects of His special love, and of His special beneficence. They are given to Him as if the Father had done His part, and now asked His Son to do His. They are given Him as the materials, so to say, out of which He is to make His Kingdom, and win His victory. He is to pour out on them the treasures of His love, He is to triumph in them, they are to be the trophies of His conquests.

That is to be accomplished in them of which our Lord speaks to His Father in His prayer, ‘That they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.’ He sees in each of them the gift of His Father, and not the gift alone, but the Giver and the love with which they are given, and the joy and triumph which are to be His because of the perfect accomplishment of His work in them.

This is a separate joy from that which consists in doing with regard to them exactly and fully the will of the Father.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

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?

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)

• YouTube

• Telegram

Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:

• How fulfilling the Father’s will was the reason Our Lord came down from heaven

• Why the Sacred Heart desires the salvation of every soul entrusted to Him.

• What it means that Christ counts no labour too great to preserve souls from being lost.

He shows us that the Incarnation is the perfect fulfilment of the Father’s saving will, and that Christ watches over every faithful soul with more love and vigilance than they could have for themselves.

For more on this series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

Devotion of the Sacred Heart

Our Lord repeats three times over the mention of the will of the Father Who sent Him.

First, He says that He is come down from Heaven not to do His own will but the will of Him that sent Him. Then He adds that this is the will of the Father Who hath sent Him, ‘That of all that He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.’

Then in the third place He says that ‘this is the will of the Father Who hath sent Him, that every one who seeth the Son and believeth in Him, may have life everlasting, and I will raise Him up at the last day.’

The intelligence of the whole passage, therefore, depends on our grasping the meaning of these three consecutive sentences, in which the same truth is set forth in an ever increasing degree of plainness and clearness.

When our Lord says that He has come down from Heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him, He speaks of course of His Incarnation, in which He is present on earth, being the Son of God Who is in Heaven. The object, then, of His presence on earth in the Incarnation, is, in the first place, to do the will of His Father Who has sent Him.

Here He speaks of His human will, because as God He has the same identical will with His Father. The will of God, which is thus declared to be the first and principal cause of all that our Lord does in the Incarnation, is the Divine will of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

When our Lord says that He is come not to do His own will but that of His Father, He does not mean that His own human will is, or can be, contrary to that of His Father. He means that the will of His Father is the rule of His life and of all that He does, and that His human will is perfect in its devotion to the Divine will, and performs whatever that Divine will desires, with all its intensity and energy and joy and resolution.

The Sacred Heart wills the salvation of men with a power and a devotion of which no one but Himself is capable. And yet He wills it, notwithstanding His love for man, because the Father’s will is that He should will it, and accomplish it. For He loves us because His Father wills that He should love us, and because His Father so loves us as to give Him to us to be our Saviour.

Thus the contrast, if there is a contrast, is not between the freedom of one who is not sent by another and the obedience of one who is sent by another. It is between the power of the Divine will in imparting force and intensity to the human will of our Lord, by the manifestation of its own desire, and the love which our Lord might conceivably have had for us if He had not been sent by the Father for that purpose for which He was sent.

How then is it possible for Him to cast out any one whom the Father gives Him, when He is come on purpose to do the will of His Father?

He sees in the persons of those who are given to Him, the expression of the very will to accomplish which He has come down from Heaven.

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Raising up at the last day

The next sentence carries on a little further the explanation of what it is not to cast out any one whom the Father may give Him.

‘This is the will of the Father Who sent Me, that of all that He hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.’

Not to cast out, then, is the same thing as not to lose, but to raise it up at the last day. We have other words of our Lord which seem to explain to us what He may mean by losing what is given to Him. He said in His prayer to His Father, before going to the Garden of Gethsemani, ‘Those whom Thou hast given to Me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scriptures may be fulfilled.’1

And again, in the account of the scene in the garden at the apprehension of our Lord, St. John says, after telling us how our Lord had enjoined on His captors to let the Apostles go their way, ‘that the word might be fulfilled which He said, of those whom Thou gavest me I have not lost any one.’2

Thus Judas was already lost when our Lord made His prayer, though that was before the accomplishment of the betrayal, and the Apostles might have been lost, if our Lord had not provided for their safety by shielding them from the temptations they might have been exposed to, if they had been taken prisoners with Him.

But our Lord must here speak of the loss which is final and irrevocable, when the soul is separated from Him altogether, and beyond remedy, by dying in sin.

None to be lost

And yet His watchful Heart may see this loss in a soul at the moment when it shuts its ears to grace, as Judas had hardened his heart before his final perdition.

The loss of a soul is often decided practically by a step which is not the last in the process of perdition. Our Lord speaks of that which is in truth the immense loss and misery of the soul itself, as if it was in a certain sense His own loss, a kind of failure of His own, and so a diminution of His glory and blessedness and triumph throughout all eternity.

And, on the other hand, He speaks of the avoidance of this loss and defeat, as if it were His own victory and His own great happiness, as if it were a great glory to Himself to raise up one more in the last day.

When He says, ‘Not one of them is lost’ except Judas, it is like One Who speaks of the greatest treasures that could have been committed to Him, and the words of the Evangelist about His disciples not being lost, on account of His watchful care over them in protecting them from danger and temptation, seem to show us how constantly this thought is in the Sacred Heart of our Lord, that He must preserve those whom His Father has given Him with the utmost care and forethought.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

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

In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:

• Why many who saw Christ’s miracles still refused to believe in Him

• What role the Father’s grace plays in leading souls to faith in Christ

• How faith is not produced by miracles alone, but by a reponse to grace and the guidance of God.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

Effects of the Bread from Heaven

Our Lord says that He is Himself the Bread of Life. He does not say that they must eat or drink Him, for that would have been too rapid an advance on His former statements, but He speaks of the effects of food, or of the want of food, in connection with Himself.

‘He that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he that believeth in Me shall not thirst.’

Here then He speaks as having a claim and right to be believed, a right founded on the miracles which He had wrought. To come to Him and to believe in Him are not different effects, any more than to hunger no more or to thirst no more are different effects.

The meaning is the same as if He had said, He that cometh and believeth on Me shall not hunger or thirst. To come to Him is more than to believe in Him, in one sense, and in another to come to Him is the fruit of believing in Him, for it implies union with Him, submission to Him, obedience to Him, the placing in His hands our will, and making Him the guide of our life. In this sense to believe comes before coming to Him, and in a general sense therefore it may be said that the words may be understood of faith in our Lord.

But they are qualified and made precise in their meaning, by the former words of which they are the explanation, in which He declares Himself to be the Bread of Life that came down from Heaven, and by the use of the images of hunger and thirst.

There is therefore included the latent though the necessary sense of the food of the soul, by means of which there is to be no more hunger and no more thirst. That is, it is signified that our Lord will not only give to those who come to Him and believe in Him the Bread of Life, but that He is Himself the Bread of Life of which He had said such wonderful things.

Why they did not believe

Having claimed their faith as His due, our Lord goes on at once to point out how it is that they have not believed Him. They were asking for fresh miracles, and He had already, over and over again, won their faith as His right by the miracles which they had seen.

The true cause of their unbelief He now points out in a manner which might strike their souls with awe and compunction, for it implied that they had been neglectful and disobedient to the teaching of His Father. They had spoken of the evidence of miracles as that which they required, and it was right, in a certain sense, that faith should be rested on the manifestation of the presence of God with Him Who claimed their faith.

But there was something else requisite, without which even the evidence of miracles would be addressed to them in vain. What was this other thing which was requisite, without which faith could not be formed in their hearts? It was the grace of God working in their hearts, without which evidences are in vain.

Men are always inclined to take the grace of God for granted, as it were. It is true that God does not deny His grace to those who use with faithfulness what they have already. But there is a state of the heart and mind which shuts out the grace of God, and when this state exists, the most powerful miracles and evidences, of whatever kind, fail to produce conviction, or at least to produce faith.

This state especially prevails in those who have already trifled with their opportunities, been deaf to the calls of grace, turned away from evidences, shut their eyes to the light which was offered them. These men seem to have a kind of obstinacy about them, for they imply that they insist on His giving them just that particular kind of proof which they demand, that is, a repetition of the miracle of the manna.

So the Chief Priests taunted our Lord, when He hung on the Cross, saying that if the King of Israel would come down from thence, they would believe. Thus these men deserved the reproach which is addressed to them by our Lord. For they had had evidence enough, and yet He could see that they would not believe Him, now that the time had come for Him to claim their faith in this great point of His teaching.

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Those given by the Father

‘But I said 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 that sent Me.’

When and where our Lord had said to them in so many words, that they had seen Him and had not believed, is nowhere mentioned in the Gospel history. It is the characteristic of such histories now and then to refer to things and sayings which have not been mentioned, because they relate the words as of our Lord, in which this reference is made, although the things referred to have taken place without being recorded.

But it is not difficult to find the place where our Lord had said this in substance. He had said it in substance in the answer which He gave to the question of the disciples about His teaching in parables, when He had found a reason for this comparatively obscure and difficult way of teaching, in the dulness and hardness of the hearts of the people to whom He has been preaching, saying that ‘seeing they had seen and had not perceived, and hearing they had heard and had not understood.’1

This was their general characteristic, and even the disciples were not altogether free from this dulness and slowness of comprehension. In the case of the priests at Jerusalem, He had said, in the discourse delivered to them after the miracle at the Probatic Pool, that they could not believe, because they sought honour one from another.2 This moral defect prevented them from believing, and if that was the case with them, the case with others was similar to theirs.

And now He speaks of this action of Divine grace, which works in those who do not place any obstacle in the way of the formation of faith in their hearts, as the working or drawing of the Father, as His giving the soul to Himself, as His leading the soul to Himself.

He speaks of it generally, and so gently, without applying His words directly to them, leaving the application to be made by themselves, and He speaks also affirmatively rather than negatively, partly perhaps for the same reason of tenderness and gentleness, partly also that He may take the opportunity of dwelling, in His own Sacred Heart, on the happy and consoling side of the matter, instead of on the side of disappointment and failure.

Not to be cast out

‘All that the Father giveth to Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me, I will not cast out. For I came down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.’

If those who believe in Him come to Him and are not cast out by Him, and if the dull-hearted listeners to the discourse in the synagogue of Capharnaum did not believe in Him, then the words imply that they were not among those given to Him by the Father, not among those whom He would receive and not cast out. But this He does not say again, having once said that they did not believe.

His words range over the whole world, Gentile as well as Israelite, and represent to Him the millions of believers whom He will make partakers of His bounties, and for whose sake He will be willing to forego, perhaps, many whom His natural feelings might have led Him to choose first, those of His own nation, His brethren according to the flesh.

Many of those who are to come in this way to Him, by the gift of the Father, are now considered outcasts, for they do not belong to the commonwealth of Israel. But to Him they will not be outcasts, because they are given Him by His Father, and because it is His Father’s will that they should be partakers of His treasures. He seems to appeal from the dulness and incredulity of His immediate hearers, to the multitudes who would not be incredulous, and at the same time He warns those hearers most terribly of the danger of not listening to the guidance and teaching of the Father.

Not to listen to that guidance and teaching is the same thing as not being given by the Father to our Lord, and, in consequence, as being outcasts from the blessings which He has come down from Heaven to impart.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the 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?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

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Editor’s Notes

The following commentary pertains to the Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Luke 5.1-11), read at Mass on the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. It takes place near the beginning of Christ’s public life – and although many modern productions present it as the first encounter of Christ with St Peter and the others, the latter had already received a preliminary calling (with their formal election as the Twelve coming later).

It takes place after the healing of St Peter’s mother-in-law, and is followed in St Luke’s Gospel by the cleansing of the leper and the calling of Levi / St Matthew.

The miracle inaugurates a new stage in the disciples’ formation. It reveals Christ’s power over nature and souls, and marks the transformation of Peter and his companions from fishermen to “fishers of men.” It shows how obedience, even when human judgement hesitates, leads to spiritual fruitfulness.

But the significance of the miracle is not limited to the four Apostles mentioned. It is a parable of the Church’s mission: the net of the Gospel gathers souls of every kind. It reassures the Church in her trials: grace, rather than human strength, is what secures her success.

Although St Peter says to Our Lord, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,” the Roman Liturgy preempts him by opening the Mass with the Introit taken from Psalm 26:

Introit: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? The Lord is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid? My enemies that trouble me, themselves stumble and fall. V Though an army encamp against me, my heart will not fear.

Though weak and unworthy, we are upheld by grace – and as the enemies of truth stumble and fall, the net of Christ still gathers souls.

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The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

The Training of the Apostles, Part I

Chapter II
St. Luke v. 1—11, Story of the Gospels, § 37
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
(Read at Holy Mass on the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost)

Part I: How Christ turned Simon Peter’s trade into a parable of Christian ministry

Before Simon Peter could become a fisher of men, Christ let him labour all night in vain – only to reward his obedience with more than he could manage.

1. How Christ turned Simon Peter’s trade into a parable of Christian ministry

Part II: Why are zeal and effort not enough in apostolic work?

Christ’s command to “launch out into the deep” taught the Apostles—and the Church—that success in saving souls does not on human strength.

2. Why are zeal and effort not enough in apostolic work?

Part III: What do St Peter’s bursting nets reveal about dangers to the Church?

The ‘broken nets’ of the miracle show us much about the life of the Church.

3. What do St Peter’s bursting nets reveal about dangers to the Church?

Part IV: St Peter is always at the centre of Christ’s ‘lake miracles’

The miraculous draught was just the first of several ‘lake miracles,’ each of which offers symbolic meaning for the life of the Church.

4. St Peter is always at the centre of Christ’s ‘lake miracles’

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:

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Editor’s Notes

In response to Our Lord’s assertion, discussed in the previous part, that the crowd should put their faith in him as a result of the multiplication of the loaves, they begin quibbling about how the miracle differed from that of the manna in the desert, and Moses’ conduct after the miracle.

But while all this quibbling and demanding of further signs and earthly benefits reflects poorly on the crowd, Our Lord’s responses do begin to draw them towards the desire he wishes to instil in them.

But would it be enough?

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

The people naming the manna

It is remarkable that it is our Lord Who introduces the subject of the food which endureth to life everlasting, without naming the manna.

The people fly at once to the reference, and seem to have in their minds some indistinct notion that the miracle of the loaves implied a kind of claim to the same power which had been exerted in the feeding of the people by the manna.

At the same time they seem to have thought that the feeding of the five thousand, which occurred only once, was not so great a sign as that of the manna, which lasted for forty years, and also that the logical inference from the miracle of the manna was not so much as that which our Lord claimed from them, in consequence of the miracle of the loaves.

Moses did not require the people to believe in him in the same sense as our Lord, Who spoke in a way which demanded not simply faith in His word as a messenger from God, but faith in His Person as the Messias and the promised Son of God. And indeed it was true that the simple performance of the miracle by a Prophet proved only that God was with him.

They forgot that the presence of Divine Power with the worker of miracles, whether in God Himself or Moses, was quite enough to secure faith to whatever the worker of the miracle might teach on the part of God, for the reason already mentioned, that God cannot cooperate with falsehood.

Moreover, there were circumstances about the way in which our Lord wrought His miracles which could not be found in those of any of the prophets. He worked them as the Master of Nature, and they worked them by means of prayer, at the command of God and as His ministers.

The true Bread from Heaven

‘Then Jesus said to them, Amen, 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 words about Moses may be understood in two ways. They may be taken as meaning that the bread which Moses gave was not truly bread from Heaven, especially in comparison with the true Bread from Heaven which His Father was giving in the carrying out the counsel of the Incarnation.

Or it may mean that it was not Moses that gave the bread, such as it was, which is called bread from Heaven, but God the Father, Who is now giving the true Bread from Heaven.

Both senses may be combined, as if the words meant, it was not Moses that gave to them what was given, but My Father, nor was it the true Bread, for He is now giving you the true Bread, which has those qualities of giving life which were wanting in the manna.

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Inferiority of the manna

And then our Lord goes on to tell them in what consisted the inferiority of the manna, as compared with the true Bread from Heaven.

The manna was not, as they supposed, taking literally the figurative and prophetic words of the Psalms, the Bread of Angels, as if the Angels were fed upon it in the way in which men feed on common bread. It was the Bread of Angels, because it was a prophecy and a type of the true Bread, by which, in the Holy Eucharist, men are to be fed on the same Divinity, the communication of which to them is the life and the food of the blessed Angels.

It was the Bread of Heaven figuratively also, for the same reason, but it came in truth from the air above the earth, where it was formed by the hands of Angels, and it fell on the ground, as hailstones or flakes of snow fall on the ground.

But from that true Heaven, in which the blessed Angels enjoy for ever the presence and the sight of God, and are thereby sustained in life everlasting, the manna did not come any more than the hail or the snow. The heathen had their legends about the food of the gods, the nectar and ambrosium, and these people may have taken the words of the Psalm in this carnal sense.

The true Bread from Heaven is that of which the manna was a type, and which is promised to you in the miracle of the loaves. It is in truth Bread from Heaven, for It is He that is always in Heaven, the true Heaven where God dwells. It does not fall from Heaven, nor is It sent down from Heaven, but It comes down of Itself, It is He that comes down into this lower world in the Incarnation of the Son of God.

And It gives life to the world, to the whole world in a certain sense, not only to those who receive It, because the Incarnation is virtually the life of the whole human race, and it is even the redemption, as St. Paul tells us, of the material universe itself. The whole race of men will rise at the last day by virtue of the Incarnation. And the life which this Bread gives is eternal and undying, not as He says presently, like the life which was prolonged from day to day by means of the manna.

‘Lord, give us this bread’

‘They said therefore unto Him, Lord, give us always this Bread.’

They did not understand what they were asking for, for their minds were still full of the thought of the manna, or of the loaves which had been multiplied, and their words remind us of the words of the poor Samaritan woman, as has been said. As she asked that she might not thirst nor go to the well to draw, so they thought of the boon which might keep them in perpetual life without more ado, whether by its reception once for all, or by its continual supply.

This last sense is more in accordance with the words which they use, for they say give us always this Bread, go on giving it us always. They had a kind of faith, but not a perfect faith, and their notions concerning the Bread of Life had not yet risen above the bread which supports the bodily existence day after day.

Our Lord had taken a step in advance of His former declaration of His words about the Bread of Life, which came down from Heaven, and giveth life to the world, and now He makes this declaration still more explicit, by saying that He is Himself the Bread of which He speaks.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the 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?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

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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 the previous part, Fr Coleridge discussed what it meant for Our Lord to be “sealed by God the Father”. In this part, he expands on this in relation to faith.

Our Lord works miraculous signs which authenticate his mission – showing God’s “seal” – and which give him a right to have his teaching believed on his own authority.

This belief or faith – the assent of the intellect, moved by the will, under the influence of grace – is the fundamental work which God expects of us (and which is only possible with his grace, which he freely gives).

But it is precisely his authority to demand such faith that the crowd begin questioning.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

The miracle was a seal

The fundamental meaning of the expression [“sealed by God”] is that which has been mentioned in the first place, namely, that the Son of Man is sealed by God with the seal of the Divinity united to His Sacred Humanity.

This Divine union makes Him the Author and Fountain of life, and therefore able to impart it, in what measure it may please Him, and in what manner it may please Him, according to the capacity of those to whom He may choose to impart it.

But the words imply also, not only that the Son of Man can give food that endureth unto everlasting life, but also that He is willing and desirous to do this, if only those for whom He intends so great a blessing do their part, labouring, not for the meat that perisheth, but for this Divine Food.

The proof of His willingness and desire to do this had lately been given to them in the miracle of the loaves, which again may thus be considered as a ‘sealing’ on the part of God the Father of the Son of Man, because it had been an exercise of miraculous power, one of the signs which God had given to Him to work, whereby His mission was authenticated, His compassion and His benevolence displayed, and a solid foundation furnished to them for their faith in His word.

He was now about to make an appeal to their faith in setting before them the doctrine in which was to be conveyed the promise of the food which endureth unto life everlasting. In this sense a seal was set by God not simply to the power of our Lord, and to the truth of His Divine Person, but also to His commission to teach, and to feed the people in the way He speaks of, to His willingness to do so, while at the same time the hearts of the people were prepared for this great boon.

The work of God

These words of our Lord, then, set before the multitude two things—one, that there is a Meat that endureth unto everlasting life, and the other, that there were certain works to be done by means of which this Food might be obtained from the Son of Man. The work by which it is to be obtained is one thing, and the food itself another.

‘They say unto Him, What shall we do that we may work the work of God?’

They call this work the work of God, in the same sense in which our Lord has told them to work for the Meat which endureth unto everlasting life. It has already been said that the word is the same in both places in the original. Thus the work of God of which they speak is not the work which God alone can do, but the work which He desires on our part, in order to the Divine work which He will Himself perform in giving us, if we correspond to His favours, the food of eternal life.

And this is here called a work and a labour, because faith is an act of the will directing the intelligence, an act which implies exertion, good will, resolution in the overcoming of difficulties, consisting in the slowness of the mind and the coldness of the heart towards God, His laws and His truth. It is a work which any low passion may impede, and which, as a matter of history, the greater mass of mankind accomplish with difficulty.

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Faith in Him Who is sent

This is clear also from the answer of our Lord.

‘Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him Whom He hath sent.’

Faith is indeed the work and the gift of God, but it requires the cooperation of the human will and intelligence, and it is this part in the formation of faith of which our Lord speaks to them as the work of God which they can do.

This was the one great and pressing need of their souls at that time, that by prayer and reflection, and a careful guard of their conscience, an acting up to the light which they had, and an earnest search for more, they should render themselves fit for that further teaching which He had in store for them.

If they had been faithful, He would even have raised them to far higher knowledge of God than they as yet possessed, and which He was yearning to impart to them.

Their case was that of thousands of others in all times of the Church, with whom God has been dealing in His merciful Providence in the way of illumination and elevation, who reach a certain point in the path along which He would lead them, and are thus brought up to a critical moment in their spiritual life, when they are to make a choice between docility of mind, which may cost them something, and the rejection of greater light, which will involve their losing what they have already gained.

Request for a sign

Simple as is the answer of these people, it still shows that they were in danger of making the worst of the two choices presented to them. For they begin at once to cavil at His authority, whereas it was on that very authority alone that they ought to have received what He was going to propose to them.

They do not say, as St. Peter, that He had the words of eternal life, to whom should they go, how could they hesitate as to this work of God which He required of them? They do not say, like the poor father of the lunatic boy after the Transfiguration, Lord, we believe, help Thou our unbelief.

Their answer is only too like that captious demand for a sign from Heaven, which our Lord had already refused to listen to when it was made by His enemies. They asked for what they already had. For our Lord was continually insisting that the miracles which He wrought were the sufficient grounds for faith in His word.

‘They said therefore to Him, What sign therefore showest Thou, that we may see and believe Thee? What dost Thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, “He gave them bread from Heaven to eat.”’

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the 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?

Subscribe now

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Editor’s Notes

As previously mentioned, Our Lord worked this miracle in order to elevate them to seeking the more perfect “bread” which he was to give the world – himself.

And there are other examples of miracles in Scripture which show us the response he expects from us: the abandonment of our own, old way of living, and adherence to him.

But this is not the response which he received from the crowd. While the people wanted to be fed like the Israelites in the desert, they resembled more the grumbling and murmuring of that people at the time.

One thing this shows us is that Our Lord is treated as a New Moses in spite of themselves, even by those who fail to accept him.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

The meat that perisheth

‘Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting, which the Son of Man will give you.’

If their desire had been listened to, they would gladly have gone on day after day, receiving the bountiful provision which had once been granted them by God. But this was not the true benefit which He intended them to receive from the miracle which they had witnessed.

When He says, ‘Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which endureth,’ He does not mean them to take no care for their temporal sustenance, according to the disposition of Providence, by which men are born to labour in this world, and by which the means of daily sustenance are necessarily the first natural object of the majority of mankind. It is He that has made the effect of earthly food only temporary, in order that we may again and again feel the same needs, and by them be driven to that labour of providing for ourselves and our families which is the common lot of us all.

But He means that this is not to be the chief object of our industry, for the sustenance of the soul is a higher thing than that of the body, and temporal things must so be cared for that we may at the same time be acquiring eternal goods.

Spiritualizing effect of miracles – the spouses of Cana

Now the intention of God in granting the miracle was not to provide for the temporal sustenance of the multitude, but first to use their necessities to draw out the compassion of our Lord, and then to use this miracle of compassion to draw their hearts to faith in Him, so that they might receive the Bread of Life which was foreshadowed and represented by the loaves which had been multiplied.

After such a miracle their hearts should have flown to higher things, and not lingered over the temporal benefits which they had received.

An old tradition tells us that the bridegroom and bride at the marriage in Cana came, after the miracle of the water changed into wine in their favour, to throw themselves at our Lord’s feet, to offer themselves as His disciples, and that from that moment they resolved, in gratitude for the manifestation of His power, to live in continence as brother and sister.

This old tradition represents the elevating and purifying effect which our Lord’s miracles were meant to have on those in whose favour they were wrought. Thus we read that after the miraculous fishing by the Apostles, at the word of our Lord, they left all, and followed Him.1 There may have been something of the same kind in the effect on the mind of the man out of whom the legion of devils was cast, when he begged our Lord to let him remain in His company.2

These are instances in which temporal blessings, miraculously received, served to raise the mind to higher things, and to nerve the will to loftier and holier attempts in God’s service. Such is the effect ordinarily intended by God when such benefits are bestowed.

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The Gift of the Son of Man

Our Lord’s words show that He at once perceived the deficiency in their aims and desires, their failure to correspond to the designs of God, a failure which might easily render them incapable of the further boon He had to bestow.

His own Heart was dwelling on that Heavenly Food which He was preparing for the world, which had been prefigured in the manna given to their fathers, as well as in the loaves and fishes which had been made the subject of the last miracle. No doubt He was disappointed to find their minds so ill-prepared for the revelation and promise concerning this Heavenly Bread of which the miracle had been as it were the first note.

It is as if He had said:

‘The Son of Man has better food for you than that which you have now received on the mountain-side across the lake. It is not meat that perisheth, which has to be continually renewed, day after day, which, after all, can only support this temporal and passing life. It is Bread that abides in Its effects throughout all eternity, long after It has ceased to be administered to you day after day in the Church which I am to found.’

The words ‘which the Son of Man will give you,’ imply that they did well to come to Him, if they had come for the right purpose, and in search of the right kind of food.

It was quite true that He had drawn them to Himself by the gift of temporal food. But they need not go to any one but Him for the true and living Bread which was to endure to everlasting life.

‘Sealed’ by the Father

The reason why He will give this food is, that God the Father has sealed Him, that is, as it appears, that God the Father has conferred on Him His own Godhead, because He has united to the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ the Divine Person of His own Son, and therefore ‘sealed’ it with His Divinity.

From this it follows that Jesus Christ is God and Man, and therefore most perfectly the giver of the Food of eternal life. The order of the words in the Greek is, ‘for Him hath the Father sealed, God,’ as if to express more forcibly that the sealing consists in the Divine union of God and Man in the Person of our Lord, as if it had been said, for Him hath His Father sealed with the Divine Nature.

There can be no participation or imparting of life everlasting, but by some communication with God, Who is alone Life, and the Author of life. And He Who is Life in Himself must be alone able to impart life to others, in whatever way or measure it seems good to Him. But the miracle of the loaves was, in the intention of our Lord, a promise and a pledge that He would feed man in the most perfect and lasting way, and this can only be by the strengthening of the weak and failing human nature by some Divine food, which would give eternal life.

As the healing of the diseases of the body was a promise and a prophecy of the healing of the diseases of the soul, so the refection of the body by the miraculous bread was a promise that God not only could furnish food unto eternal life, but that in His own time and way He would do so.

This then is the Bread that it is worth while to work for, to aim at, to seek, to pray for, and the Person from Whom it was to be sought was He Who had wrought the material miracle, and Who, being sealed with the seal of the Divinity, must have the power of feeding unto eternal life, while His compassion for their bodily wants showed His willingness so to do. This willingness is now solemnly professed and declared by our Lord in the words before us.

All these considerations are included in the words of our Lord about His own ‘sealing’ by God the Father.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the 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?

Subscribe now

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Editor’s Notes

We now begin Chapter X, the following section on Our Lord’s ‘Bread of Life Discourse’. His purpose in working the previous miracle – the multiplication of the loaves – was pointed to the teaching he was about to give.

But the miracle impressed them because it was not just the relieving of extreme miseries and demonic possession, but supplying the ordinary wants of life. Rather than turning to the heavenly grace he was offering, and to which the miracle pointed, the crowd wanted to return to the existence Israel had had in the desert, being fed by God without having to work.

This is what Our Lord was facing in teaching the sublime doctrine of his Body and Blood.

In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:

• Why Christ reproved those who followed him for material benefit rather than spiritual

• How his discourse is structured step by step around the reactions of the crowd

• What the miracles of loaves and wine show about the Blessed Eucharist.

He shows us that Christ leads men from earthly motives to divine truth through miracles and doctrine.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

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

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

Stages of the discourse

The last chapter has set before us a number of general considerations concerning the great discourse of our Lord on which we are engaged.

We may now proceed, in the light of these general truths, to trace, one by one, the various stages into which the discourse naturally divides itself. These stages are marked out for us, partly by what we are told of the people who formed the audience in the synagogue of Capharnaum, partly by our Lord’s own precise and dogmatic assertions, first of one great truth and then of another.

These assertions disclose to us, as they go on, more and more clearly the doctrine on which it was now His purpose to insist as a matter of faith. They only stop short of a complete exposition of the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament as it has ever been taught in the Catholic Church, because, as has been said, the time for the institution of that Adorable Sacrament had not yet come, and thus the final explanation of the promise that He would give His Flesh and Blood to us to eat and to drink could not be given, as it was to be given at the time of that institution.

Nor could our Lord as yet speak of His Sacrifice on the Cross.

Miracle at Cana

There had been a kind of anticipation of one great feature in these mysteries, in the earliest of our Lord’s miracles, in which water had been changed into wine.

That miracle was, in the counsels of God, a distinct prophecy of the marvel of Transubstantiation. It was a prophecy which made it easy for the Apostles to receive our Lord’s words at the Last Supper with implicit faith, and it sheds great light on the doctrine of the Church, by showing us the true meaning of the Divine words of consecration.

But this was still to come. So far, then, the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist was unfinished without it. It had been the same with the doctrine concerning the power of the keys in absolution. This had been prefigured in a miracle, then it had been asserted in so many words by our Lord, then it was made the subject of a promise to the Apostles, but it was not finally complete until our Lord, after the Resurrection, gave them the power of absolution, with the gift of the Holy Ghost for that purpose.

We begin now with the opening passage by which the present discourse is introduced.

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Question to our Lord

The people, who had followed our Lord from the other side of the lake, began naturally by asking Him how He came at Capharnaum, not having sailed in the boat with the Apostles. But if our Lord gave them any satisfaction as to this, it is not recorded by the Evangelist. The account in St. John proceeds at once to the point of the direct instruction given by our Lord.

The first thing He says to them is by way of reproach, reading their hearts, and seeing there the imperfect and earthly motive which brought them after Him.

‘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.’

It was not that the miracle had not impressed them, but because what had most impressed them and most influenced them was the fact that they had been fed, whether miraculously or not. If the miracle had been something else, such as the stilling of the storm, or the casting out of devils, it would not have brought them to Him.

They had a selfish purpose in their following Him, and this selfish purpose was earthly, and material also. The object of God’s Providence in ordaining the evidence of miracles, in the case of our Lord and of the Church after Him, was indeed, secondarily, the relief of human miseries, hunger, and thirst, and sickness, and suffering, and the like. But this was a purpose subordinate to the great object, of drawing to our Lord, and to those who were to speak in His name after Him, the faith of the people, who might, by means of that faith, be led on to their own salvation.

The object of these people was to profit, if so it might be, again and again, by the miracles of the mercy of God, without making any progress in faith, or being more inclined than before to listen to the teaching of which the miracles were the Divine authentication.

Anticipations raised by the miracle

It is easy to understand that the miracle of the loaves must have raised hopes and anticipations in the minds of the people altogether new.

Up to this time they had had nothing of the kind done for them, although there is some resemblance to this in the other miracle which has reference to the Blessed Eucharist, that of the water turned to wine. In each of these miracles our Lord had gone beyond the relief of disease, infirmity, the deliverance from devils, and the like. He had stretched His miraculous compassion into the region of ordinary wants, not of the most pressing kind.

Those who were relieved by the other miracles were saved from pain, from positive disease, from the incapacities and infirmities and miseries which are the effects of the paralysis of natural powers, which reduce the sufferers to a state of something less than full life, to what is the beginning and the anticipation of death. But to supply food, bread and wine, and the like, by means of miraculous power, is to change the whole conditions of human life, as it is ordinarily arranged by the dispositions of Providence.

As a matter of history, the Israelites in the desert were raised above the common conditions of human existence. They had no need to labour, to sow or reap, to toil or spin, for their ‘garments were not worn out, neither were the shoes of their feet consumed by age.’1

The tradition of this marvellous existence lingered among the people, and they seem to have thought that the last miracle of our Lord was a kind of beginning of its restoration. Thus they had said that He was of a truth the Prophet Who was to come into the world, the Prophet Whom Moses had promised, like himself. What might not be hoped, even in the display of temporal and material power, from such a Prophet?

Our Lord goes on to reprove these earthly and worldly motives, and to raise their souls to something higher, according to the intention of God in granting them this miraculous evidence.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

Previous Chapter:

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the 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?

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 piece, Father Coleridge tells us:

• Why the crowd’s lack of faith helped draw out Christ’s fuller teaching

• How the Father leads souls to believe the words of the Son

• What the Blessed Sacrament demands from every Catholic who adores it.

He shows us that the Eucharist is the mystery of faith, received through the Father’s grace and the Son’s authority.

For more on this series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

The Discourse in the Synagogue

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter X
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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

Copious teaching about faith

It may seem as if there had been no great need for the preservation of so much of our Lord’s teaching on this occasion, which had direct reference to the dulness of faith in that particular crowd of hearers to whom the discourse was addressed.

But it must be remembered that it is the way of God to bring good out of evil. Here, in an especial manner, He made the hesitation and doubt and dulness, and even the far worse qualities of malice and hostility, which are to be found, some among the friends, some among the enemies of our Lord, serve to the greater elucidation and illustration of the truths which He had to teach, or which were involved in His actions.

Thus we have been greatly the gainers by the hesitation of St. Thomas, by the rivalries among the Apostles, by the questions which they so often put to Him, even when He had to reprove them for their dulness of faith, and the like. In the case before us it has been an immense gain to the Church that our Lord should have spoken so plainly and so strongly about the necessity of faith, and about the manner in which faith is produced in the soul, with especial reference to the great doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament.

For that marvel of Divine love requires the constant daily exercise of Christian faith, in a manner of which it may be said that it is hardly found with regard to other Christian mysteries, and that we all have constant need of the teaching of the Father and of the active lively faith in the words of the Son, quite as much as these crowds had need of the same graces, to enable them to understand this discourse in the synagogue at Capharnaum and to accept its truths.

The Blessed Sacrament is, in a manner and to a degree of its own, the mystery of faith, as it is called in the Canon of the Mass. It is in the world, age after age, the ‘sign which shall be contradicted,’ of which holy Simeon spoke to our Blessed Lady. And we ourselves should have the greatest need of this part of the teaching of this discourse, even if the audience to whom it was addressed had not been so poorly furnished with faith. Thus these remarks of our Lord are as practical to us as they were to the crowd assembled in the synagogue.

Frequent mention of the Father

There is yet another general remark to be made, before we enter on the detailed consideration of the discourse. This remark relates to the very frequent mention of the Father, and to the large part assigned by our Lord in the passages before us to the decree, the will, the action of the Father. It is nothing wonderful to find our Lord so constantly speaking of His Father, when we know that His Sacred Heart was occupied with the thought and love of Him with an intense and unbroken attention.

This attention shows itself almost every time that we have any recorded words of our Lord to comment on, and we may consider that, even if the Divine truths which He was uttering did not require it, the affections of His Heart would have brought the name of His Father perpetually to His lips. But no such loving exaggeration, so to say, of the work and office of His Father was possible with our Lord. Still it requires to be noted, how the will and operation of the Father are continually meeting us in the discourse.

In the first place, it is the ‘sealing’ of the Son of Man by God the Father that is the cause of His giving to men the Food that does not perish, but endureth unto life everlasting. Then it is said that the work which God desires of the people is that they may believe in Him Whom He hath sent. Then it is said that it is the Father Who gives the true Bread from Heaven, which cometh down from God and giveth life to the world.

Then our Lord says that they do not believe in Him, but that He will not cast out any one who comes to Him, Who is given to Him by His Father. He came down from Heaven, not to do His own will, but His Father’s, and the will of His Father is that of those whom He has given to Him He should lose nothing, but raise it up at the last day. And then this is explained further, the will of the Father is that every one who seeth the Son and believeth in Him may have life everlasting, and that the Son will raise Him up at the last day.

Then when they murmur at the thought of His having come down from Heaven, He tells them that no one can come to Him, except the Father Who hath sent Him should draw him, and that such persons He will raise up at the last day. Then comes a distinct instruction as to the action of the Father. No one can come to Him, except the Father Who has sent Him, draw him. Then this is confirmed from prophecy. Then He says that every one that hath heard of the Father, and learned, comes to Him, and this again is explained, to avoid the danger of misconception.

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Doctrine of the Eucharist set forth by our Lord

It is also very remarkable that this language is entirely changed when the doctrine is proposed which is to be accepted on faith from our Lord.

When He comes to speak of the distinct doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament, He does not say that this is the direct teaching of the Father. The teaching of the Father is the whole process which brings men to our Lord, Whom He has sent. But when they come to Him, it is His office, and the office of the Church after Him, to impart the distinctly Christian doctrines, such as that before us.

So the whole of the doctrine about the Bread of Life, the Flesh of our Lord which He will give for the life of the world, the necessity of eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of the Son of Man, the everlasting life and the raising up at the last day of those who do so, their abiding in our Lord and His abiding in them, is set forth by our Lord as His own teaching. This is the doctrine for which the faith of the multitudes, as of all Christians after them, is required.

The foundation of this faith is the teaching of the Father leading them to our Lord as the Messenger Whom the Father has sent. But it is for the Messenger to deliver the special truths entrusted to Him. The only reference to the Father, therefore, in the latter part of the discourse, is that contained in the illustration, which is also a dogmatic truth:

‘As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me.’

The chain of statements concerning the Father contained in this discourse might be considered and meditated upon, apart from the particular doctrine which is the primary object of the discourse, the doctrine of the Bread from Heaven, which becomes definite and precise as the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament.

Every one of these Divine words is in its proper place, and there is nothing omitted which it was our Lord’s purpose then to set forth, as there is certainly nothing superfluous.

This is the end of the first chapter in this series. The next deals with the faith Our Lord asks to be placed in himself during this discourse; the chapter following this deals with the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist as presented in this discourse. Both these chapters are quite long, and so will be spread across several parts.

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

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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the 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?

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)

• YouTube

• Telegram

Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Father Coleridge tells us:

• Why Our Lord rebuked those who sought earthly bread instead of faith

• How the miracle of the loaves prepared men for the Holy Eucharist

• What the crowd’s dullness teaches us about receiving difficult doctrine.

He shows us that faith must rise above earthly motives to receive the mysteries of God.

For more on this series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

The Discourse in the Synagogue

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter X
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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

Defective temper of the audience

The discourse begins with the question of the people to our Lord, how He came to Capharnaum.

Our Lord, as has been said, does not answer this, but He begins at once to blame them for the motives which have led them to Him, motives of temporal comfort and support, rather than the high and ready faith which the miracle ought to have awakened in them.

Thus we have at once a kind of antagonism between our Lord and His audience, an antagonism which is at work all through the discourse, and to which He more than once alluded. He wished to raise their hearts and minds to a gift very far transcending that miraculous food which they had received. In the instruction which He wished to impart to them concerning this food, great faith was needed, and this great faith ought to have been generated in them by the miracle.

On the other hand, the effect of the miracle on them had been much more to make them desire and hope for a continuance of such temporal benefits and nothing more, than to make them desirous of the instruction He had to give, and the marvellous promise He was to make. Nor was their faith as yet high enough for them to receive this promise.

Dulness of the people

The antagonism of which we have here an instance is not that which our Lord had to deal with in the case of the Scribes and Pharisees in Jerusalem. In that case there is a decided hostility and captiousness almost from the very first.

In the case of this multitude, our Lord has to struggle against dulness, deadness, pettiness of mind, the grovelling thought that cannot soar, the limited intelligence that cannot penetrate, the cold heart that cannot take in the wonderful goodness and power of God. This multitude represents the poverty of the intelligence of man, left almost to himself, in his present state of exile, rather than the malice of which the human heart is capable when Satan gets a footing in it and rouses it into enmity to the truth.

Even without the influence of the cunning enemies of God, the world stands staring and gaping, as it were, at the marvels of Divine love, and has neither eye nor heart for them. Our Lord deals with them with infinite patience and gentleness, though He speaks as if He were surprised at their dulness.

Our Lord reproves this dulness at the very outset of His discourse, and He says many things as He proceeds which show how much it is in His mind as the great impediment with which He has to contend. But for this, we may suppose, He would simply have proposed to their faith, enlightened and kindled by the miracle which they had witnessed, the doctrine which this passage contains concerning the Blessed Eucharist.

And it might have been expected that they would not at once understand it, especially as He said nothing on this occasion concerning the manner in which He was to make them feast on His own Body and Blood in the great Sacrament of His Love. This truth would have been to them as so many of the things which our Lord spoke of to His Apostles—hidden and incomprehensible until the time came for the Holy Ghost to illuminate their understandings concerning our Lord’s words, but not the less full of light and doctrine when that time did come.

But, as a matter of history, we can trace this dulness working in their minds all through, and notice our Lord’s constant reference to it as He goes on.

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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

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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 X
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

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

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.

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.

We’re trying to keep something precious alive.

If you’ve benefited, consider joining us as a subscriber. It makes a real difference.

Read more