Vigils Reading – 6th Day in the Octave

THE SANCTIFICATION OF HUMANITY

From “Faith and Theology” by Fr Marie-Dominique Chenu

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I am afraid that sometimes we think of the Gospel as being operative only

on a pious plane far removed from earthly conditions, on the assumption that

the evangelical message would be uncomfortable in the midst of mundane

things. And so we hesitate to use the leaven in life’s ordinary bread lest its purity

be contaminated.

If that is our attitude then we do not really believe in the Gospel at all. We

do not believe that it is for our humanity that God became flesh! We do not

believe that the divine life can be lived by a person of flesh and bone… But this is

a basic misunderstanding of the plan of Christ, for Christ saves humanity, not by

placing us in a heaven apart, but by becoming one of us. In other words,

salvation is not to be found in the denial of human nature, since God himself

took on human nature in order to save humankind.

The plan according to which divine life was given to us through the

incarnation can be stated in this way: God, in becoming a man, submitted to all

the earthly conditions of human existence; if any of those conditions had been

omitted, if any exceptions had been made, God would not have fully assumed

human nature. The sanctification of humanity follows the same law. It is not an

exterior sanctification accomplished by pious intentions; it is a profound

permeation of the depth of our being and of our deepest aspirations by a sap

which flows through the channel of our cares, our labors, our institutions. This

is the incarnation. And if anyone wants an example of grace functioning at the

human level let us consider human love — the encounter of spirit and flesh.

Here, at least, one would expect the divine life to remain reserved and detached

in its own pure isolation. But look what Christ has done! He made marriage a

sacrament, so that its functioning and its needs belong to the divine life.

In divine as in human life we have no use for a love that excludes the

burden of the body and what it involves, for such would be a false love without

roots in earth and consequently without fruit in heaven. When God wills that

fraternal love should find a place in our ordinary daily life he also wills that the

material bases of that life be included in the concerns of love — though, in fact,

we have made these material bases the sources of conflict and war. For even God

must respect the laws of love.