Second creation of the Holy Spirit: Our Lord Jesus Christ
Excerpt from “Treatise of the Holy Spirit” by Mgr Gaume:
A Virgin-Mother is the first creation of the Holy Spirit, in the New Testament: a God-Man is the second. The order of Redemption demanded that this be so. Of a guilty woman and man. Satan had formed the City of Evil; by one of these harmonious contrasts, so frequent in the works of infinite wisdom, of a perfectly just woman and man, the Holy Spirit will form the City of good. We know the new Eve, it remains to study the new Adam.
Divinizing man is God's eternal thought. Satanizing man is the eternal thought of hell. To divinize is to unite; to satanize is to divide: on these two opposite poles the moral world balances. To deify man, the creative Word resolved to hypostatically unite human nature. Man-God, he will become the principle of divinized generations. But who will give him this human nature which he does not have, and which he needs? who will do it Man-God? to the Holy Spirit is reserved this masterpiece. Without doubt, he does not create divinity, but he creates humanity and unites it in a personal union with the uncreated Word.
He created it not from his substance, which is monstrously absurd, but by his power. He created him from the purest, holiest flesh, from a virgin without any stain of sin, neither actual nor original (S. Ambr., De Spir. sancto, lib. II, c. v; Rupert ., De Spirit.
He created it by repeating the miracle of the creation of the first Adam. From a virgin and inanimate earth, God formed the first leader of the human race. From the virginal flesh of a living virgin, the Holy Spirit forms the second. From Adam a virgin, God formed the virgin Eve: why could not the Holy Spirit have formed a virgin man from a virgin woman? “Mary,” says Saint Cyril, “returns the favor to humanity. Eve was born of Adam alone: the Word will be born of Mary alone (Catech., XII). »
The fairest of the children of men is formed. For thirty years he lived, ignored by the world, under the wing of his mother and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The time for his public mission has come. Descended from heaven to reunite man with God, his first duty is to preach penance; because penance is only the return of man to God. In order to authorize his lessons, he begins by proclaiming himself the great penitent of the world. On the banks of the Jordan, John the Baptist enlists the multitudes under the banner of penitence. Jesus goes there, and, in the eyes of all the assembled sinners, he receives the baptism of John. Here the Holy Spirit reappears. In the mysterious form of a dove, he descends on the Man-God. Principle of his natural life, guide of his hidden life, he will be the inspiration of his public life (S. Aug., De Trinit., lib. XV, c.xxvi).
Why is He who will be a luminous cloud in Tabor, tongues of fire in the Upper Room, a dove in the Jordan? In the works of infinite wisdom, all is wisdom. Also, this question exercised the highest Christian minds of the East and the West. “The dove is chosen,” says Saint Chrysostom, “as the symbol of the reconciliation of man with God, and of the universal restoration that the Holy Spirit would bring about through Jesus Christ. It places the New Testament alongside the Old: the figure is replaced by reality. The first dove, with its olive branch, announces to Noah the cessation of the flood of water; the second, based on the great victim of the world, announces the imminent end of the flood of iniquities (In Gen.t ix, 12). »
In the dove of the Jordan, Saint Bernard sees the infinite sweetness of the Redeemer. He is designated by the two sweetest beings in creation: the lamb and the dove. John the Baptist calls him the Lamb of God, Agnus Dei. Now, to indicate the Lamb of God, nothing was better suited than the dove. What the lamb is among the quadrupeds, the dove is among the birds: of both, sovereign is innocence, sovereign is gentleness, sovereign is simplicity. What is more foreign to all malice than the lamb and the dove (Serm. I of Epiphan.)? In this double symbol, the mission of the Man-God and the entire spirit of Christianity are revealed.
According to Rupert, the dove indicates the divinity of the Word made flesh. “Why,” he said, “a dove and not a tongue of fire? The flame or other Symbol could designate a partial infusion of the Holy Spirit, but not the fullness of His gifts. Now, in Jesus Christ dwells bodily all the fullness of the divinity (Col. II, 9). The entire dove, the dove without mutilation, resting on him, showed that no grace of the septiform Spirit was lacking in the incarnate Word; that he was indeed the Father of adoption, the Head of all the children of God, and the great Pontiff of time and eternity (De Spirit. sancto, lib. I, c. xx). »
Saint Thomas finds in the dove the seven qualities which make it the perfect symbol of the Holy Spirit, descended on the Baptized One of the Jordan. “The dove,” he said, “lives on the current of waters. There, as in a mirror, she sees the image of the hawk hovering in the air, and she places herself in safety: gift of Wisdom. She shows an admirable instinct for choosing between all the best grains of wheat: a gift of Science. She feeds the young of other birds: gift of Advice. She does not tear with her beak: gift of Intelligence. She has no gall: gift of Piety. She makes her nest in the cracks of rocks: gift of Strength. She moans instead of singing: gift of Fear (III p., q. 39, art. 6, corp).»
Let us see all these qualities of the divine dove shine in the incarnate Word. He dwells on the banks of the rivers of the Scriptures, of which he possesses full understanding. There he sees all the past, present and future tricks of the enemy, as well as the means of escaping them: gift of Wisdom. From the immense treasure of divine oracles, he chooses with marvelous aptness the weapons of precision against each temptation in particular, the sentences best suited to the circumstances of places, times and people. We see this by his responses to the demon of the desert, and to the doctors of the temple. We see this by this profound knowledge of the Scriptures which astonished his happy listeners: a gift of Science.
He feeds the foreigners, that is to say the Gentiles, replacing the ungrateful Jews. He enlightens them, admits them to his alliance and fills them with his graces: gift of Counsel. He is far from imitating the heretic Arius, the heretic Pelagius, the heretic Luther: birds of prey with hooked beaks, who, attacking the Scriptures, tear them apart with the interpretations of private meaning; and the scraps they take away are used as rags to hide their lies, deceive the weak and destroy souls. He, the student of the dove, understands Scripture in its true sense; he admits it entirely, and from each text he brings forth a ray of light, which shows in his person the redeeming Word of the human race: gift of Intelligence.
He has no gall. The infinite meekness of his soul becomes transparent in the parables of the Samaritan, the lost sheep and the prodigal son. He himself, practicing his doctrine, does not return evil for evil, nor insult for insult. What did I say ? what had never been seen, what man would never have dreamed of: he prays for his executioners: a gift of Piety. He makes his nest in the unshakable rock of trust in God, and that of his young in the wounds of his adorable body: double asylum inaccessible to the serpent. His enemies want to throw him from the top of a mountain: he passes quietly through their midst. Descended into the abysses of the tomb, he emerges full of life. Everywhere, in his path, he scares away demons, heals the sick and ends up chaining Satan, the Prince of this world: gift of Strength.
His life is a long sigh. He walks humbly to death; he experiences all the horrors of it, asks on his knees to be delivered from it; receives the help of an angel, and, finally, on the cross, prays and cries while giving up his soul to his Father: a gift of fear (Rupert, ubi supra, c. xxi).
However, the new Adam, baptized and confirmed, is initiated into his great mission as conqueror, and dressed in his impenetrable armor. With confidence, he can march into battle. The Holy Spirit, who animates him, pushes him into the desert (this is the desert of Arabia Petraea, beyond the Dead Sea, not far from the places where John baptized).
The demon awaits him there: David and Goliath are present. Lucifer uses all his tricks to defeat, or at least to get to know this mysterious character whose austerity astonishes him and whose holiness worries him. From the uselessness of his attacks, he understands that he has found his master. This first victory of the man God, prelude to all the others, shakes the walls of the City of Evil to their very foundations. Soon, through ever wider breaches, Satan's captives will be able to escape and come to live in the City of Good. From this moment, Christianity advances, paganism retreats: the history of modern times begins.
The victorious work that he inaugurated in the desert, the new Adam comes to continue in inhabited places. Always under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he travels through the countryside, towns and cities. “The Spirit of the Lord,” he himself said, “is upon me. He has consecrated me by his anointing to evangelize the poor; to heal the brokenhearted; to announce to the captives their deliverance, and to the blind the recovery of sight; to relieve the oppressed and to preach the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of righteousness (Luke, iv, 14, 20). »
Further, summarizing his entire mission in two words, he says: “The Son of Man has come to destroy the works of the devil (I Joan., III, 8). »
The work of the devil is the City of Evil, with its institutions, its laws, its cities, its armies, its emperors, its philosophers, its gods, its superstitions, its errors, its hatreds, its slavery, its intellectual and moral ignominies: Formidable city, of which Rome, mistress of the world, was then the capital.
Only the all-powerful king of the City of Good can succeed in such an enterprise. It is only through miracles of dazzling brilliance and victorious authenticity that the fortresses of Satan, built on prestige and protected by oracles in possession of the universal faith, can fall (see our pamphlet: CREED). The Spirit of miracles therefore communicates entirely to the incarnate Word. Through the mouth of Isaiah, He Himself had predicted: “And on him will rest the Spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom and understanding; spirit of advice and strength; spirit of knowledge and piety. And the spirit of the fear of the Lord will fill him (Is.y xi, 2). »
In turn, the incarnate Word brings all the glory of success to the Holy Spirit. If he baptizes; if he casts out demons, if he teaches the truth, if he gives power to forgive sins: in other words, if, with one hand, he overthrows the City of Evil; and, on the other, builds the City of good, it is in the name, by the power, and as lieutenant of the Holy Spirit (Matt., III, s; XIII, 18, etc., etc.).
The very virtues which shine in him and which delight people with admiration, he takes the honor of owing to the Holy Spirit and of being himself the living fulfillment of the words of Isaiah: “Here is my servant, I chose him. He is my beloved. In him I have placed all my complacency. I will place my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim righteousness to the nations. He will not dispute; and no one will hear his voice in the public places. He will not break a half-broken reed. He will not quench the still smoking fuse until he has ensured the triumph of justice, and the nations will hope in him (Is., XLI, 1, 6; Matth, iv, 1; XII, 18 , 28). » The solemn hour arrives when he must win his last victory and save the world with his divine blood. New Isaac, victim of the human race, it is the Holy Spirit, new Abraham, who leads him to Calvary and who immolates him. He dies ; and the Holy Spirit takes him alive from the tomb (Hebr., IX, 14; Rom., VIII, 11).
Should we defend the rights of the Holy Spirit? he seems to forget his own. He himself pronounced this sentence: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever says it against the Holy Spirit, forgiveness will not be granted to him, neither in this world nor in the next (Matt., VII, 32). » Has the time come to make room for him in souls? He does not hesitate to separate himself from everything he holds most dear in the world, for fear that his presence will be an obstacle to the absolute reign of the divine Spirit. “It is useful to you that I go,” he said to his apostles; because if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit will not come into you (Joan., xvi, 7). »
Is this the great mission that must be entrusted to them? He explains to them its nature and extent, he gives them the investiture; but he warns them that the heroic strength they need to accomplish it will be communicated to them by the Holy Spirit (Luke, xxiv, 46, 49). Finally, continuing to fade before the divine Paraclete, the Master who came down from heaven declares to them in formal terms that, despite the three years spent at his school, their education is not finished. To the Holy Spirit is reserved the glory of completing it, teaching them everything they need to know (Joan., xvi, 12, 13).
Such were the teachings and acts of the God-Man with regard to the Holy Spirit. Never have heaven and earth heard, and never will they hear anything so eloquent, on the majesty of the Holy Spirit and on the necessity of his influence, whether to regenerate man or to maintain him in his state of regeneration.
The second creation of the Holy Spirit is, like the first, an indescribable masterpiece. The Son of Mary rises to such a height that he surpasses anything the world has ever seen. An ineffable mixture of grace and majesty, gentleness and strength, simplicity and dignity, firmness and condescension, calm and activity, he speaks, and no man has ever spoken like him. He commands, and everything obeys. With a word, he calms the storms; on the other, he chases away the sellers from the temple, or the demons from the bodies of the possessed. He teaches, as having his own authority, which no one shares with him. His preferences are for the small, the poor and the oppressed.
In his footsteps, he sows miracles, and all his miracles are benefits. Whatever the repentant crime, he forgives it with motherly kindness. Such is the holiness of his life that he challenges his most bitter enemies to find in him the shadow of a fault. He remains silent when he is accused; he blesses when he is insulted. Unjustly condemned by enemies, eager for his death, he suspends their blows, thwarts their plots, and only lets the storm break out on the day and in the manner that he himself has appointed, proving his divinity more invincibly by his death than by his life.
But the goal of the Holy Spirit is not only to make the incarnate Word an exceptional creation, worthy of the admiration of heaven and earth. Above all, he wants to realize in himself the man par excellence, such as he existed from all eternity in divine thought, and such as he was to appear one day to deify all men: a marvelous operation which, welding together the lower creation to the higher creation, human nature to divine nature, had to bring everything back to unity. Now, this deification of man is the last word of the works of God, the final goal of the City of Good (Corn, a Lap., in Agg,t II, 8).
“In the beginning,” says the learned Doctor Sepp, “man and through him nature, of which he was both the head and the representative, were intimately united with God. This union lasted until sin, by detaching man from his Creator, made him lose at the same time the power he had received over nature. But God, to repair his work altered by sin, approached the creature again through the incarnation.
“It consists in the fact that divinity having united with humanity, in the person of Jesus Christ, he became the center of history. This intimate union, once accomplished in the center, is communicated by a continual effusion to all points of the circumference, and what happened once in the life of Jesus Christ, reproduces and develops ceaselessly in the life of humanity (Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, vol. I, introduction, 17, 18). »
Following the beautiful thought of Clement of Alexandria, the whole drama of history was accomplished, as a prelude in the life of Jesus Christ. The Word, who was incarnated once in the womb of Mary, must be incarnate every day, both in humanity and in each man in particular. Every day too, the birth of the Word is reproduced in history and in this spiritual rebirth, which is constantly brought about by the sacraments in which he has deposited his grace.
It follows that Our Lord Jesus Christ is not only the greatest figure, but also the only personality in history. Instead of being nothing or little, it is everything: Omnia in omnibus. Instead of being a myth or a forger, as stupid blasphemers have dared to say, he is the reality to which the entire ancient world ends; the home from which everyone new leaves. It is to the point that if Our Lord Jesus Christ, born in the stable of Bethlehem and died on the cross of Calvary, is not the man par excellence, the Man-God, truly God, truly man , and principle of universal deification, false from one end to the other are all ancient traditions and aspirations, false all modern beliefs; and the life of the human race is a madness, without lucid intervals, begun six thousand years ago, to last, to the great despair of unbelief, as long as a human chest breathes on the globe.
Indeed, if there is one indisputable point in history, it is that nations, even the most crudely idolatrous, have never lost the memory of the primitive fall, nor the hope of a restoration. . This double dogma has its formula in the sacrifice, constantly offered in all parts of the earth. A divine character, Savior and regenerator of the universe, is the obvious object of all their aspirations.
The Jew sees him in Noah, in Abraham, in Moses, in Samson, in twenty others who photograph him. In vain, the Spirit of evil strives to alter among the Gentiles the traditional type of the Desired of the nations. It may obscure some features, but the substance remains. We even see that at the coming of the Messiah, the whole world was more than ever waiting for a deliverer. We say the whole world, in order to express all the parts of which it is composed: heaven, earth and hell. Each in his own way had to proclaim the universal Restorer, and, following the expression of Saint Paul, bend the knee before his adorable person.
Barely was he born when all the celestial militia came to prostrate themselves around his cradle, and announced the accomplishment of the most desired of mysteries, the reconciliation of man with God, glory in heaven and peace on earth. . The voice of the stars is joined to the voice of the angels. We are not talking about the star that leads the wise men to Bethlehem, we are talking about the entire planetary system. The most learned astronomical calculations establish that the stars predicted the coming of the incarnate Word; that the sabbatical year, a year of forgiveness and renewal, was calculated on their revolutions, and that the stars renewed their course, each time the earth was renewed in penitence.
The learned German doctors, Sepp and Schuberr, showed that all the peoples of antiquity knew this language of the stars and the great event that they announced. “But all these particular harmonies tended towards a more general and higher harmony in the movement of Uranus, the highest and most distant of the planets. In the year of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Uranus, whose rotation time around the sun embraces that of all the other planets, completed its fiftieth revolution. Now we can rightly regard the year of Uranus as the only real and complete year of the planetary system, since it is then that all the stars, even the most distant, begin their course again.
" Well ! it was precisely at this time, when the entire planetary system united, celebrated its first year of reparation and reconciliation, that all the prophecies were fulfilled, that the angels of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth sang, mingling their voices with the harmonious concerts of the spheres: Glory in the heights, to God, and on earth peace to men of good will. This time coincided with the end of the week of the sabbatical year, in which, according to an ancient prediction, God was to strengthen his alliance with his people.
“In summary, in this great clock of the universe, whose primitive purpose is to mark time, the cogs and springs had been, from the beginning, so arranged by the Creator himself, that they all related to each other. at the GREAT HOUR, WHERE God was to bring to light the eternally planned day of forgiveness and renewal of the universe. In the great proportions of its general order, as well as in the arrangement of its interior harmonies, the firmament therefore announced Him by whom and for whom the star sky was made (Schuberr, Symbolic of dreams; Sepp., Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, vol. II, 387 et seq.). » Thus at the hour of his Incarnation the angels and the stars bowed their knees before him and recognized him as their author: Omne genu flectatur coelestium.
The same homage is paid to him by the inhabitants of the earth. Instructed from the origin of their nation by the prophecy of Jacob, which marked the coming of the great liberator, at the moment when the scepter, taken from the house of Judah, would be carried by a foreigner, the Jews are awaiting its next arrival. Their ears are open to all the impostors who, calling themselves the Messiah, promise to free them from the yoke of the nations: they attach themselves to them with hitherto unexampled ease (Acts, v, 36, 37, etc. ). History attests that the principal motive for the senseless war which they then waged against the Romans was an oracle from the Scriptures, announcing that there would arise at that time, in their country, a man who would extend his dominion over all the earth (Joseph, De bell. judaico, lib. VI, c. v, n, 4).
This expectation of the soon arrival of the Messiah was not particular to the Jews; all the nations of the world shared it. It had to be this way; without this, how could the prophets, beginning with Jacob and ending with Haggai, have called the Messiah, the Waiting of the nations, the Desired of all the nations (Gen., XLIX, 10; Agg., II) ?
The Gentiles owed this knowledge of the future Redeemer, both to primitive tradition and to the commerce of the Jews, spread for several centuries in the different countries of the earth and in Rome itself. Far from being in small numbers, ignored and without influence, in this capital of the world, they were very numerous. They held important positions, and such was their union that they exercised a marked influence on public assemblies. “You know,” said Cicero to the Roman magistrates, pleading for Flaccus, “how considerable the multitude of Jews is, how united they are, how much influence they have in our assemblies. I speak quietly, only loud enough for the judges to hear me.Because there is no shortage of people who incite them against me and against the best citizens (Pro Flacco, n. 28). »
Obviously the religion of such a people, at least in its fundamental dogmas, could not be ignored by the Romans: reason insinuates this and twenty historical testimonies confirm it (see the excellent articles in the Annales de phil. chrét., years 1862-1863, 1864). For example, Herod was the guest and special friend of Asinius Pollio, to whose son Virgil's fourth eclogue applies, in the literal sense. The Jew, Nicholas of Damascus, a skillful man, to whom Herod entrusted the care of his affairs, was in the good graces of Augustus. Macrobius reports that Augustus even knew the law by which Jews were forbidden to eat pork. However, we know that the expectation of the Messiah was the basis of the Mosaic religion.
As the advent of the Desired of the nations approaches, a brighter light spreads throughout the world: it looks like the first rays of Jacob's star. She will appear; and Virgil, interpreter of the Sibyl of Cumae, sings to the court of Augustus of the imminent arrival of the Son of God, who, descending from heaven, will erase the crimes of the world, kill the Serpent and bring back the golden age on the earth.
The most serious historians join the orators and priests of Rome. “All the East,” writes Suetonius, “resounded with an ancient and constant tradition, which the destinies had determined that at that time Judea would give masters to the universe (In Vespas., n. 4). » Tacitus is no less formal. “We were,” he says, “generally convinced that the ancient books of the priests announced that at that time the East would prevail, and that from Judea the masters of the world would emerge (Hist., lib. V, n. 3). »
This keen expectation of the Messiah was found among all peoples, however disfigured the primitive religion was among them. A Chinese tradition, as old as Confucius, announces that the Righteous One will appear in the West. According to the second Zoroaster, contemporary of Darius, son of Hystaspes, and reformer of the religion of the Persians: one day there will arise a man, conqueror of the demon, doctor of the truth, restorer of justice on earth and prince of peace. A spotless Virgin will give birth to him. The appearance of the Saint will be signaled by a star, whose miraculous march will lead his worshipers to the place of his birth (Schmidt, Redemption of the Human Race, p. 66-174).
Until our time, heresy and even unbelief have recognized and respected this unanimous agreement of the East and the West. "Immemorial traditions," says the English scholar Maurice, "derived from the patriarchs and spread throughout the East, concerning the fall of man and the promise of a future mediator, had taught the entire pagan world to wait, towards the time of the coming of Jesus Christ,the appearance of an illustrious and sacred character (Id. ubi supra). »
The impious Volney uses the same language: “The sacred and mythological traditions of times prior to the ruin of Jerusalem had spread throughout Asia a dogma perfectly analogous to that of the Jews on the Messiah. There was only talk of a great Mediator, of a Final Judge, of a future Savior, who, king, God, conqueror and legislator, was to bring back the golden age to the earth, to deliver it from empire of evil, and restore to men the reign of good, peace and happiness (Ruines, c. xx, n. 13). »
Such was the universality and vivacity of this belief that, following a tradition of the Jews, recorded in the Talmud and in several other ancient works, a large number of Gentiles went to Jerusalem around the time of the birth of Jesus. Christ, in order to see the Savior of the world, when he came to redeem the house of Jacob (Talmud., c. xi).
In summary, two facts are certain like the existence of the sun.
First fact: until the coming of the incarnate Word, all the peoples of the earth waited for a liberator.
Second fact: since the coming of Our Lord, this general expectation has ceased.
What can we conclude from this? Or that the human race, taught by the traditions of its cradle, and by the oracles of the prophets, was mistaken in expecting a liberator and in recognizing Our Lord Jesus Christ as such; or that Our Lord Jesus Christ is truly the Desired of the nations: there is no middle. Thus the earth bows its knee before him and recognizes him as its redeemer; Omne genu ftectatur terrestrium.
Hell itself could not remain a stranger to the coming of the Messiah. For him it was a question of life and death. How many times in the Gospel we see unclean spirits not only giving in to Jesus' orders, but also proclaiming him the Son of God! However repeated it was, this individual tribute was not enough. Before the eternal Word, the living Word, descended to earth to instruct the world, the demonic Word, Satan and his oracles had to remain silent. It was even necessary, by a fair return, that their last accents were a solemn proclamation of the divinity and the coming to the. earth, of Him who reduced them to silence.
On this subject, Plutarch, in his book The Fall of the Oracles, relates a marvelous story. It is a dialogue between several Roman philosophers, one of whom expresses himself in the following way: “A serious man and incapable of lying, Epithersus, father of the rhetorician Aemilianus, whom some of you have heard, and who was my compatriot and my grammar master, related that he made a trip to Italy, on a ship which had on board goods of commerce and many passengers.
“One evening, as they were near the Echinades Islands (today Curzolari, Paros and Antiparos), the wind stopped, and the vessel was pushed into the vicinity of Parée Island. Most of the passengers were still awake, and many were drinking after supper, when a voice was suddenly heard from this island, as if someone were calling for Thamus. This was the name of the pilot who was Egyptian, but whose name very few passengers knew. Everyone was plunged into astonishment, and the pilot did not respond to this voice, although she had called him twice. However, he responded to a third call, and the voice then cried out to him: When you pass near Palodes, announce to this place that the great Pan is dead.
“All the passengers did not know what to think, and wondered if it was prudent to carry out the order which had just been given, or if it was not better to no longer concern themselves with this matter. But Thamus declared that if the wind blew he would pass by Palodes without saying anything; but if, on the contrary, the weather was calm, he would say what he had heard. Now, when they were near Palodes, as the weather was calm and the sea quiet, Thamus, placing himself at the stern of the vessel, and turning towards the land, cried out as he had heard: The great Pan is dead (Pan, universal; great pan, great universal, God of gods).
“He had barely uttered these words when a great multitude was heard heaving an immense sigh. As there were many passengers on the ship, this event soon became known in Rome, where it became the subject of all conversations, so much so that the Emperor Tiberius summoned Thamus to his side. This affair even produced such an impression on his mind that he had very exact research carried out in relation to this Pan, whose death had been announced (C. XIII). »
History does not say what was the result of the imperial research; but, according to the analogy of the facts, tradition conjectures it with foundation. They resulted in noting the death of the one whom the centurion of Calvary had proclaimed the Son of God. “The voices in question,” writes Doctor Sepp, “were mysterious voices of nature, which the infernal powers used to communicate to men this news, an object of terror for them. The death of the Son of God was announced throughout the earth by strange phenomena (Catech. of perseverance, t. III. 155 et seq. 8th edition.). Paganism felt the repercussions of this great event, even in its most intimate depths, its oracles.
“Just as a sign, appearing in heaven, had announced to Eastern Sabaism the birth of the Savior; thus the death of the one who had descended into hell is announced, in the West, by the oracles of hell, to the worshipers of demons, even in Rome, their capital. And just as when the Magi arrived, Herod gathered together the wise men of the Jews to question them about the birth of the Messiah; so Tiberius here consults the wise men of his people on the news of his death. This event is all the more remarkable because, a short time later, Pilate's report on the death of Jesus arrived in Rome at the emperor's palace (Sepp, vol. I, 145, 146). »
According to Tertullian, this report contained, in abbreviation, the life, the miracles, the passion, the death of Our Lord. “Pilate,” said the great Christian apologist in his conscience, “wrote all this concerning Christ to Tiberius, then emperor. From that moment, the emperors would have believed in Jesus Christ, if the Caesars had not been the slaves of the century, or if Christians could have been Caesars. In any case, when Tiberius had learned from Palestine the facts which proved the divinity of Christ, he proposed to the senate to place him in the rank of gods, and he himself gave him his vote. The Senate, not approving him, rejected his request. The emperor persisted in his sentiment, and threatened with his wrath those who accused the Christians (Apol., v, and Pamelii note 57 and 58). »
Thus, letting go of their prey, proclaiming their divinity, becoming silent, announcing their death, deserting, never to return there, their temples and their sacred groves: such are the acts by which the demons bow their knee before the incarnate Word and the recognize for their winner: Omne genu flectatur infernorum.
Since the passage on earth of the son of Mary, all the centuries have continued to bow the knee before him. His divine personality is the basis of their history, the very reason for their existence and their name. When was the fall of Greco-Roman paganism, the appearance in human language of the great name Christian, the birth of the most powerful nation on earth, the Catholic nation, the overthrow of Caesarian tyranny, the abolition of slavery? When did divorce, polygamy, the oppression of women, the legal murder of children, and human sacrifices disappear from Western soil? Address all these questions to the people who make up the elite of humanity: with a unanimous voice, they will name Jesus Christ, his doctrine and his era.
If you go through, one after the other, all the elements of modern civilization, you will not find a single one which does not presuppose faith in the incarnation, that is to say in life; to miracles, to divinity, to death, to resurrection, to the complete history of Our Lord. And modern Renans dare to say that we have never seen miracles; in particular that the resurrection of a dead person is an impossible fact or at least without example!
Pygmies of doubt, they do not see that they themselves are a living affirmation of this miracle! They do not see that they cannot name the year of their birth, of the birth or death of their father, the year of the events which they relate, which they admit or which they oppose, without affirming the miracle whose existence they foolishly affect to deny! Powerless deniers, you lie to yourselves; but only to you. Despite your denials, it remains clear as day that the entire religious, political, social and domestic history of the modern world starts from the resurrection of a dead person; and that European civilization, like your intellectual life, has a tomb as its pedestal. If therefore Jesus Christ is not resurrected, everything is false, and the human race is mad. But if mankind is crazy, prove that you are not.
Thus, awaited and desired, believed and adored, the God-man, the Word incarnate, the second creation of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, is the center to which everything leads, the hearth from which all fart, the fundamental fact on which rests the edifice of reason and history, which is itself in its course only the development of this divine fact. “Christianity therefore possesses all the characteristics of a central revelation, unity, universality, simplicity and such fertility that eighteen centuries of meditation and research have not been able to exhaust it, and that the science, as it digs deeper into this abyss, discovers new depths. This is what gives Christianity the stamp of divinity, and to its demonstrations that of perfection (Sepp, introd., 24). »
The Incarnation being what it is in the plan of Providence, the king of the City of Evil could not fail, as we have said, to make the last efforts to prevent the belief of this dogma, destructive of his empire. Also, the counterfeits that he had multiplied to disorient the faith of the human race in the divine motherhood of the Virgin of virgins, he uses them with distressing skill, to make impossible the faith of nations in the divinity of his son.
Instructed from the beginning of the world of the incarnation of the Word, he takes counsel and says: Lest this God-man be recognized as the only true God, son of an ever-virgin virgin, emblematic oracle of the truth, liberator and savior of men, let us invent a multitude of gods between whom we will share its different traits: visible gods, born of goddesses and demigods; wise, powerful and good gods who will deliver oracles, who will protect men, who will deliver them from their enemies, who will make themselves listened to by wise people, feared by people, served by emperors; old gods, new gods and in such great number that, despite the sky, we will be masters of the earth (see D'Argentan, Grandeurs of the Holy Virgin, c. XXIV, §2, 431).
From this infernal council came the innumerable counterfeits of the great Liberator, the hope of the human race. Travel through the history of the pagan world, ancient and modern, everywhere you will find the disfigured type of the Messiah, man-God and regenerator of all things. The Indian offers it to you in Chrishna, incarnation of Vischnou, who directs the march of the stars in the firmament, and who is born among the shepherds. Here he is in Buddha who, under various names, is at the same time the God of China, Tibet and Siam. He is born of a royal virgin, who does not lose her virginity by giving birth to him. Worried about his birth, the king of the country puts to death all the children born at the same time as him. But Buddha, saved by the shepherds, lives like them in the desert, until the age of thirty. It is then that he begins his mission, teaches men, delivers them from evil spirits, performs miracles, gathers disciples, leaves them his doctrine and ascends to heaven. Let us see it in the Feridun of the Persians, conqueror of Zohac, on whose shoulders were born two serpents, which must be fed every day with the brains of two men.
“Heirs of primitive traditions, all peoples knew that evil had entered the world through a serpent; they knew that the ancient dragon must one day be defeated, and that a god, born of a woman, must crush its head. Also, we find among all the peoples of antiquity the reflection of this divine tradition in a particular myth, the nuances of which vary according to time and place, but the basis of which remains the same.
“Apollo fights against Python; Horus, against Typhon, whose very name means serpent; Ormuzd against Ahriman, the great serpent who presents the woman with the fruit, the enjoyment of which made her criminal towards God; Ghrishna against the dragon Caliya-Naza, and broke his head. Thor among the Germans, Odin among the peoples of the North, are victorious over the great serpent which surrounds the earth like a belt. Among the Thibetians, it is Durga who fights against the snake. All these traits scattered in the mythologies of different peoples, Greco-Roman paganism had brought together in Heracles or Hercules (D'Argentan, Grandeurs of the Holy Virgin, 25-27). »
This demigod, savior of men, exterminator of monsters, is the son of Jupiter and a mortal woman. Barely born, he kills two snakes sent to devour him. When he grows up, he retires to a solitary place, sees himself exposed to temptation and decides for virtue. Endowed with extraordinary physical strength, he devotes himself to the good of men, travels the earth, punishes injustice, destroys evil animals, procures freedom for the oppressed, suffocates the Nemean lion, kills the Lernaean hydra, delivers Hesione, descends into hell and snatches the guardian Cerberus. These exploits and other no less brilliant ones make up the twelve labors of Hercules, a sacred number which represents the universality of the benefits for which the human race is indebted to the heroic demi-god Hercules finally succumbs in his fight for humanity; but from the midst of the flames of his pyre raised on the summit of Mount Oeta, he ascends to the celestial abode.
Let us add that Hercules was the principal object of the mysteries of Greece, in which his birth, his actions, and his death were continually celebrated. Let us also add that, under one name or another, Hercules is found among all the peoples of the East and the West: Candaule in Lydia, Bel in Syria, Som in Egypt, Melkart in Tyre, Rama in India, Ogmios in Gaul. How can we not see, in this universal Hercules, the disfigured type of the Desired of all nations, who goes through his career as a liberator and who offers his life to atone for the sins of the world (Satan had popularized in Egypt another counterfeit of the reconciling God. Each year, a solemn spectacle was offered to the people, based on the life of Osiris. The sun God is born in the form of a child, a star announces his birth: the God grows up and is forced to flee; pursued by ferocious animals; finally succumbing to persecution, he dies. Then begins a solemn mourning; the sun god, formerly deprived of life, rises again, and his resurrection is celebrated. See also Plutarch. ) ?
Thus, the struggle, the characters and the hero of the struggle are found throughout the earth. Deep in the traditions of different peoples, we discover the more or less altered type of the Messiah, his work and his life: the annunciation, the birth of a virgin, the persecution of Herod, the victorious struggle against the serpent , death, resurrection, deliverance of humankind and ascension into heaven. If all these myths were not based on a common truth; if they were only the fruit of the imagination of peoples, how can we explain such an agreement between all the nations of the universe, and what would have been its goal? If Lucifer and humanity had not been informed, one very clearly, the other confusedly, that the Redeemer would one day appear in these guises, where would they have gotten them?
But the historical reality which served as the basis for all these myths, where do we find it, if not in the person of the incarnate Word who changed the face of the world, at the cost of his labors and his blood? If the entire universe, we say again, after having been wrong for four thousand years in its hopes, has been wrong for two thousand years in its faith, what is true for the human spirit?
