Why mortification is necessary for anyone working for God
Christ recalls his Sermon on the Mount to urge the Apostles towards interior mortification, seasoned with charity and prudence, lest ambition corrupt their mission and endanger souls.
Christ recalls his Sermon on the Mount to urge the Apostles towards interior mortification, seasoned with charity and prudence, lest ambition corrupt their mission and endanger souls.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Christ warns Apostles that their sacred mission demands continual mortification and vigilance.
That charity and prudence must season apostolic labours, lest ambition corrupt their souls and scandalise others.
Why his gentle yet firm exhortation recalls earlier teaching on salt, linking mortification to peace and fidelity.
He shows us that authentic apostolic service requires self-denial, interior charity, and unity, not rivalry.
For more context on this chapter, see Part I.
The Greater in the Kingdom
The Preaching of the Cross, Part I
Chapter VII
St. Matt. xviii. 1–14; St. Mark ix. 32–49; St. Luke ix. 46-8; Story of the Gospels, § 86-7
Burns and Oates, London, 1886.
Passage in the Sermon on the Mount
It may perhaps be thought that the words used by our Lord, which are quoted from the Sermon on the Mount, as has been said, and especially those which are here added to the quotation about the hand and the eye, namely, the thrice-repeated description of the worm that does not die, and the fire that is not extinguished, taken from the Prophet Isaias,1 seem to point to some more gross and general dangers than those which might beset the Apostles and their successors in the sacred ministry for the benefit of souls.
Still, we must remember that those who have received the commission of the Apostles are bound, at the risk of salvation itself, to labour in that work, as St. Paul says, ‘Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel,’ and, moreover, that indifference to the dangers of the peculiar calling which God has given them may lead such men directly, and with no long interval of declension, to the very same sins which beset the commonest of mankind, and are the most universal causes of ruin.
And it is at least evident that the practical doctrine which is here laid down is the necessity of the most watchful mortification of self for those who have the commission of which our Lord seems certainly to be speaking, if it is to be discharged without hurting others. This seems to be the lesson of the concluding words, which have in them no small difficulty on any other supposition.
‘For every one shall be salted with fire, and every victim shall be salted with salt.’
Our Lord seems to mean that something of the fire of mortification is necessary for every one, and that the fire of mortification is a happy exchange for the unquenchable fire of Hell, of which He has made mention. Even the sacrifices offered to God required salt to make them acceptable, and as it were savoury, in the eyes of Him to Whom they were offered.
The salting with fire must signify the practice of continual self-restraint, which may in certain cases and emergencies lead to the cutting off of the hand or the foot, or the plucking out of the eye. And the sacrifice thus prepared, the service thus offered to God, required the salt of discretion, prudence, and charity, to season it and make it acceptable.
The need of charity and prudence
It is this exquisite charity and prudence which might perhaps have been wanting in the prohibition to the exorciser of which St. John had told our Lord, as in the proposal of which we hear at a later time, made by the same Apostle and his brother St. James, to call down fire from Heaven to destroy the city of the Samaritans which had refused them hospitality on their way to Jerusalem.2
It would be the want of this which might lead in many cases to the scandal of little ones. It would certainly altogether evaporate in men who were actuated by ambition, jealousies, rivalries, and the like. Their souls could not be the homes of any of the more delicate and sensitive spiritual graces.
The slightest admixture of selfishness degrades the soul, makes it gross, heavy, dull, hard, like a leaden and frozen soil, in which no flowers thrive. Thus it is that our Lord is so anxious at the very first manifestation of such feelings to root them out at once from the hearts of the Apostles.
‘Salt is good’—summary of the discourse
‘Salt is good, but if the salt become unsavoury, wherewith will you season it?’
He seems again to go back to the words which He had used in the Sermon on the Mount, thus reminding the Apostles of what He had then said to them. He does not repeat, however, the latter part of the sentence, ‘It is then good for nothing, but to be cast down and trodden upon by men.’
Our Blessed Lord speaks here with very great gentleness and forbearance, though it would indeed have been true, that if they had given way to this rising spirit of ambition the former words might have been most applicable to them. He only says, ‘Have salt in you, and have peace among you.’ The salt of discretion and charity is to be in their own hearts, and then the result will be that there will be mutual harmony and peace in the whole community.
Thus the summing up of this short discourse, as it is given us by St. Mark, sufficiently connects the beginning of the conversation with its close, showing that our Lord had in His mind the same object all through.
That object was to turn their thoughts away from all foolish and disturbing curiosity concerning the relative eminence of the various members of the Apostolic company in point of rank, to the serious intelligence and consideration of the wonderful greatness of the work which they all and each had to do, the singleness of purpose, the self-abasement and self-sacrifice which it required, and the immense dangers by which it might be beset, both to their own souls, in the first instance, and then, in consequence, to the souls of those for whom they were to labour with all the devotion of which He speaks presently in the words about the love of the shepherd for the sheep which had been lost.
To bring home to them more completely these truths, He had already spoken of the reception even of one little child as the reception of Himself and of His Heavenly Father, and on the other hand, He had brought in, three times over, the terrible words of the Prophet about the undying worm of conscience and the interminable fires of Hell.
It seems, however, that He was not even yet fully understood by them, for the question of which they had been afraid to tell Him, as having been raised among themselves, was almost immediately afterwards put to Him by them in so many words.
They probably did not understand the exquisite and deep teaching He had been imparting to them, and thought that they might naturally speculate, as they had been speculating, and that He would answer them in a word. St. Matthew relates to us the question and our Lord’s answer, which, as will be seen, is in many respects, a repetition of what He had already said, with the addition of certain most precious words which had not found a place in the former discourse.
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Isais lxvi. 24.
St Luke ix. 54.