Work

1.

“Christ lives in me” was the life motto of the Apostle of the Gentiles.1

In the power of this consciousness he worked more than any other, bore hardships on land and sea, “in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked,”2 bearing the Word of Christ “before Gentiles and kings.”3

In the power of his union with Christ, he snatched up an ancient world that was sinking into death and raised it to the Sunday of Christ. His world-renewing work and nothing else is the proof of his bold word: “Christ lives in me.”

“You yourselves are our letter...written not on tablets of stone but on tablets of living hearts.”4

Converted and sanctified Christians, the world renewed by him in Christ--that is the unique, unmistakable evidence that Paul carried the Lord in his heart; this is the statistic of the Eucharistic movement that dominated his fiery heart; it is the decree of the Eucharistic Congress, applauded by a thousand voices in his soul:

Lofty, passionate work as the only sure indication of a true Eucharistic movement;Selfless, arduous world at every post;Bold, fearless work, even when it appears contrary to “reputation” or “good old habit”;Zealous, tireless word until the end, even when “the enjoyment of well-earned glory” seems more deserved;Work ever looking forward, even when one is already hailed in every paper as “the master of our age.”

2.

There is a principle in the life of grace, a crushing weight for the sluggish, uplifting for the tireless: the more grace we receive, the more work we must accomplish.

God does not give his grace as a sweet indulgence or a bed of roses: a firebrand is he, blazing in heart and hands, until in the smithy of the human

1 Gal 2:202 2 Cor 11:273 Acts 9:154 2 Cor 3:2,3

will the holy deed of work is hammered out, a sword of St. Michael, that flashed and smote in the battles of Heaven.

This holds true for individual grace.

But in Holy Communion the fullness of Grace made flesh goes up into the human heart: man receives the giver of grace himself. It follows with an inexorable logic: the work of this man must now become the work of Christ.

The work of Christ: not merely a pious aspect, high-flown thoughts, well-polished intentions—work.

The work of Christ: not a dainty little chore; not work such as even the pagan in whom Christ does not live could perform; work that is worthy of a son of God who lives in you—Christ-work.

So Christ lives in you:

Not an ordinary man, a shrunken, work-shy man-child—No, Christ, “in whom all things were made.”5

And Christ lives in you:Not a fading memory hovering about your soul—No, a life of electrifying work, flaming zeal for the Kingdom of God,The greatest Life of all lives in you.

3.

How often does he live in you?Once a year?

Because it is true that in holy Communion Christ comes into our soul (that is an eternal truth);--Because it is true that we are in an age of frequent, even daily Communion (and experience has taught us this):How many people must be full of the Lord!How must the working power of Catholics surpass the mass of non-Catholics, who only catch scraps from the table!—

How all troubles must disappear from Catholic families!How gloriously the great Catholic organizations must flourish!How brotherly love must shine serene in Catholic shops!How the peoples of the earth must be amazed at the heaven-storming work-zeal of the Lord’s youth!How the face of the earth must renew itself in the sunlight of the Savior!

Does this happen?

4.

5 Col 1:16

We would like to address ourselves alone in the quiet of our room:

Tell me, soul, how do you reckon your Eucharistic statistics?:your work on your self,your selfless cooperation in the great tasks of the Church?Does the number of your Holy Communions measure up to the tally of your glorious works, glorious as only a Christian who receives Christ into his soul so often can make them?

Caritas Christi urget nos.6

Every Holy Communion is a flaming torch pricking you on to a fitting work. Woe to thee, if the divine fire sputters out!Woe to thee, if it must be put to use so shamefully to sear you out of your inertia!Then are you like a prison for our Lord, which he will burst open the tomb in the Garden of Nicodemus!

Let Christ live in you, live for an untiring labor, a readiness for work that shies away from no task!

Whether Christ renews the whole world depends on you. For he wanders no more on Earth, as once he did in Galilee, in his visible Person.Now the Lord goes teaching and healing around the world through the work of the souls who receive him.That is why the life of these souls must be a life of Christ, and their work a work of Christ. This life and this work alone are to be the measure of your Eucharistic movement and the only authentic entrance card to the Eucharistic World Congress.

This truly Eucharistic World Congress is the cheerful cooperation of the Catholics of every land, unrestrained by the prejudice and petty conceits of the nation, in the universal tasks of the universal Church.

6 “The love of Christ compels us.” 2 Cor 5:14

Interior Work

1.

Christ is the eternal archetype of the interior and exterior world.

All the loveliness of the universe, the majesty of the mountains, the charming simplicity of the green valleys, the bright concert of bird song in the young spring woods, the crack of thunder and the lightning of night storms, the stilly solitude of the mountain hermitage and the confused hustle and bustle of the factory town:--

All so many images of his unity.

All the beauty of man’s interior life, the bell-bright laughter of a child, the stormy impulses of youth, the earnest zeal of manhood, the generous sacrifice of a wife, the gentle repose of age;The anxious, probing meditations of the scholar and the laborer’s rough grappling with the forces of nature;The merchant’s cool calculation along with the heart-wrenching intuitions of the artist:––

All so many images of his unity.

This one Christ,Eternal ideal unity of the interior and exterior worlds,7

Unites himself with the soul of man.What can his purpose be, if not: through the work of this human world to drawn the inner world and outer world ever closer to himself, to assimilate it to him, to make it one with him!8

2.

This is in fact the object of the Eucharistic Savior’s work:

Man’s soul must form its interior world according to his Image, so that it may renew the outer world in Him; all the outer work of culture must be rooted in the interior work of holiness, and all interior work toward holiness must radiate outward into the practical work of genuine culture, which in turn culminates in the sanctification of all humanity.

7 Augustine: Cuius sapientia simpliciter multiplex and uniformiter multiformis (City of God 1.12, ch. 18) et omnes unum in ea (On the Trinity 1.6, ch. 11)8 Augustine (On the Trinity 1.4, ch. 7): Quia ab uno . . . Deo . . . evanueramus in multa, discissi per multa et inhaerentes in multis: oportebat . . . ut iustificaremur in uno iusto facti unum . . . per Mediatorem Deo reconciliati haereamus uni, fruamur uno, permaneamus unum.

The root of this work-unity is the interior work of holiness. Every exterior work—be it ever so lofty and sublime—is soulless without the holiness of the worker: “sounding brass.”9 The profit it brings the world remains mired in the realm of matter: the world becomes corporally richer, but spiritually poorer.

The work of unsanctified hands is like a corpse; for it no longer has a soul.

But for the world of living men, only life has worth.

The content of this life of holiness is assimilation to the Eucharistic Savior. Because he is the “eternal life,” his replication is the authentic life of exterior work: the authentic interior work.

Two things are contained here:

Christ as the eternal Ideal Unity of all the efforts of the interior world, demands that each individual craft himself in the image of this Unity;Christ as the omnipotent God working from his profound concealment in the Eucharist wills that the mighty power of works conformed to his Image be united with the greatest humility.

3.

Interior Unity.

Man’s sinful condition is manifest in his spineless capitulation to every sort of temptation. As soon as he is carried away by the images of his own senses, he becomes the play-thing of his inclinations. There is no more unity or governing principle in him. His is not governed by his will, but by the multiplicity of his sense impressions and the passions.

But Christ is eternal Unity.

In his personality as the Gospels portray Him, meekness is united with terrible wrath, simplicity of speech with a chasmic profundity of thought, a cheerful soul with a stern spirit of penitence.All his interior motions are balanced against one another in an imperturbable unity.

In this way he is “ the reflection of the Father,” in whom the multiplicity of creation has its unitive source, its unitive power, and its unitive end.

Therefore Christ, living Eucharistically in the human soul, can work for no other object than this one thing alone, that a kingly order of unity should reign inexorably over its life.

This order of unity is the holy will of God.9 1 Cor 13:1

The neophyte must submit to it by keeping the Ten Commandments and the laws of the Church, the true Christian through obedience in the face of all worldly and spiritual authority, and the saint through cheerful readiness to face the most bitter way of the Cross.

“Obedient unto death, even unto death on a cross.”10 With these words the Apostle of the Gentiles puts his finger on the deepest nature of Christ and of the Christian disciple.

Fiat voluntas tua, that is the human soul’s everlasting rock of unity, onto which, as he goes cheerfully into the harsh struggle, he attaches the entirety of his emotions and affections, and blossoms into one stem and one flower head.

Fiat voluntas tua, this is a motto to live by, clear to the humblest initiate, unplumbably deep for the young advancing in holiness, and eternally inexhaustible for its greatest masters.

The sign of a truly “Eucharistic” soul will be its ever-ready obedience.

He who brings Christ into himself, must draw near to the same food as He, and the food of Christ is:

“to do the will of him who sent me.”11

4.

Supreme power united with supreme humility.

The peculiarity of the Eucharistic Christ is expressed well in this division of work.

As he traveled throughout Palestine, it is true that “power went out from him and he healed all.”12 But the power was carefully ordered as he entirely resigned his Godhead to the cross: it is there he worked the Redemption.

Divinity and humanity are concealed in the Eucharist; here is power at its apex: for millions and millions of men he makes the fruits of Redemption effective in conversion and sanctification. Where Christ works most secretly, he also works most mightily.

This must also become a feature of the “Eucharistic” soul. In its life the Eucharistic Christ must radiate outward;This demands the heights of its power and the depths of its humility.

10 Phil 2:811 Jn 4:3412 Lk. 6:19

The heights of its power:It is no sign of the true Christ to place our hands quietly in our lap and leave all the work up to God;Boldly intervening, valiantly pressing forward, ceaselessly struggling onward—This is the Eucharistic personality; for him there is no fear, no hesitation, no standing still, no resting satisfied;“more, always more”, this is his fiery watchword; precisely because the will of God is the foundation of the soul, its power is inexhaustible and its struggle is tireless;for as God is endless, so is his will endless, endless in width and depth and height.

The depths of its humility:Just as the eternal God works all things in the world and yet remains unseen, so the Eucharistic Christ governs and fructifies the spiritual life of all humanity, but is seen by no one;The “Eucharistic” soul’s distinctive “I” must perish in its work. It is not the Christian’s object to make a name for himself through his work. He is like the seed corn that dies pushing up the sprout: the work lives, the worker dies.

Christ gave life to the world by his death, but he also wants to pass it on: through the death of his disciples. It is not the number of Christians who should be reckoned, but rather Christian works;Not the number of Eucharistic souls, but the number of Eucharistic works.

Exterior Work

1.

From the seclusion of Nazareth the Lord went out and crowds of the people surged about him on his way, and sat listening at his feet.

From the scornful desertion of Golgotha the Crucified One goes out to the whole world, and mankind kneels in supplication before him and follows his instruction.

So the Eucharistic Savior desires to leave the mid-night stillness of the Tabernacle through the oblation of the exterior works of sanctified souls. In these souls he has built for himself a Nazareth of devout prayer life and a Golgotha of constant self-abandonment;Now through them burns the Zelus domus tuae commedit me of the Cleansing of the Temple.13 The Temple build inside the soul demands a greater Temple to be built upon the heaving waves of the world.

Eucharistic interior work impels toward Eucharistic exterior work.

Soul and world bear the deep imprint of God’s features and God’s countenance.

But it is like a fresco, hidden under the gray wall paint. Only the hammer stroke of holy work cracks open the outer layer and reveals the golden luster of the image beneath.

Christ unites himself with the soul so that he may make his countenance shine forth in it anew.

Then through the work of the soul that has been renewed in him, he wills the bright rays of his features to shine forth from the depths of the world.

Christ wants the world,The whole world, without division, fully developed.As the whole world sprang from his creating hands, As the whole world drank his blood and was healed;So the whole world must be chiseled into one sole image of his nature through the work of souls united with Him.

2.

Eucharistic exterior work is universal in its deepest nature:Spatially and temporally all-embracing.

Spatially universal:

13 Jh 2:17

As the everlasting God lives and works in the world’s most despicable petty thief, as everything in the world lives in his Life and works in his Work;as the Eucharistic Christ calls on the most contemptible, grotesque, and outlandish soul in order to flesh out his countenance in her:

So for Eucharistic exterior work there is no circumstance or field of work that could be unwonted, unholy, meaningless, or unprofitable.Only one thing is unwonted: not to see Christ in everyone.Only one thing is unholy: not to do everything for Christ. Only that work that does not have Christ as its beginning, its content, and its end is meaningless and unprofitable.

Nothing in the world, no domain of human work is a foe to Christ. The foe of Christ is any soul that is not prepared to chisel his face into every work-stone in the universe.

In the power of the in-dwelling and in-working Christ, the Christian is a nimble worker or craftsman who deftly progresses in refining his work and improving his skill;he is a clever merchant who never rests until he has found the most profitable trade route; an intrepid and tireless researcher who shrinks from no challenging line of research for the sake of eternal Truth, who is the sun of all earthly verities—not one who clings to the shiny surface of things and trumpets mighty phrases with an easy complacence, but eternally discontent with his reach into ever more fathomless depths excavated with blooded hands, untroubled by the head-wagging and criticism of the superficial mob; The artist, sprinkling everywhere life and love, and straining to shed the lantern of eternal Light upon every subject, be it ever so loathsome, who points out new paths for his time, a lonely prophet praying and bleeding along with his age;he is a leader of his people, full of noble thoughts but also the most thankless menial labor, full of love for his people and yet a sober judge of his own limits and weaknesses.

3.

Temporally universal:As every stage of humanity’s development, every epoch is a new Revelation of God’s grandeur;As every age reflects a new feature of Christ’s countenance:14

Christ today, yesterday, and forever,So Eucharistic exterior work, that is the exterior work of the Christian, knows no [artificial] distinction of times.

It neither flees from the present into an idealized past, nor loses itself in the fantastical Fata Morgana of a “coming age,” wasting precious years of work.

14 Heb 13:8

It is not fettered by the notions and working methods of an age narrowly circumscribed. It knows that no time is ideally good, and no time excessively bad, that no time is wholly a progress and that no time is wholly a decline. It rejoices with the hearts of its contemporaries, extending its able hands to help them, and cheerfully as a bell-stroke its chisel blow resounds, carving out a fresh image of Christ from precious marble.

Therefore it is fully aware of the hardships and confusions of its age; but precisely for this reason that its work is so important, precisely for this reason it strives so tirelessly: because the most exquisite portrait emerges from the most obstinate marble.

Out of the night of Chaos springs the light of creation’s first morning,And out of the night of Good Friday’s afternoon shines the Sun of Redemption.

So the Christian actually rejoices in the weaknesses and failings of his age, for he can bring them new Light.

So the Christian living in and through Christ stands glorious as a Titan, exulting over every earthly thing and every earthly time, because he can quarry eternal life out of their tenebrous abyss.

Only to him in whom Christ lives and works has it been given to climb the highest peaks and descend into the profoundest abyss.Only he, in the fullness of this power and work, can glimpse the grandeur of Him who has created the wonders of the universe out his superabundant riches.

4.

But in the might of its time-embracing, world-spanning universality, Eucharistic exterior work quietly takes its place in a little corner of the world’s great fabric.

The whole superabundance of its universality banishes itself to the quietest menial tasks, indifferent to the larger world: it is organized.

Precisely because it is ready to work in any conditions, with any means and at any time, it is possible for it to find that small task where it can work strong and steady as a part of the whole.

Just as the everlasting God does not continually intervene in the great work of his creation, but rather shrouds himself, as it were, in its laws;Just as Christ, when he sojourned upon the Earth, was content with little Palestine and left the wider world to his Apostles and their followers;Just as the Eucharistic Christ only leaves the stillness of the Tabernacle to change places for the even more secretive hearts of men:

So it is the final and most profound characteristic of Eucharistic exterior work to subordinate itself to the whole, untroubled even thought conscious that its particular post is nothing other than a freely accepted live burial upon which the larger whole lives. Christ, who accomplished the mightiest work in the world, died and dies daily in the Sacrifice of the Mass, from which the world lives.

And that is why the work of his closest followers, the Apostles, consists in a perishing:

“For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death . . . like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things.”15

Thus organized work entails for the most noble personality an unremitting self-forgetfulness to the point of wholesale self-annihilation.

Over the glorious summit of their universal work, there rises the height of the Cross of Golgotha.

Sooner or later—they must mount it.

Over the sacrifice of the cross of Golgotha, out of the bloody river of persecuted Christians, there towers the highest and widest organization in the world, the Church, whose flourishing is always increased by the bloody sacrifice of bodies and by the un-bloody but more severe burned offering of souls.

5.

The universal work of the totality of souls is only possible through the little labors of the individual soul, brought to completion in the spirit of universality.

But she must quite often remain with Christ in Nazareth and perform the quiet work of a carpenter in oblivion and contempt.

It is [sometimes] vouchsafed to her to strike out with Christ into the crowd, to rejoice in its spiritualized life, to work miracles of glorious work,

Nevertheless Golgotha’s cross waits for it, remote but inexorable, and death is nothing but the highest of her exterior works.

15 1 Cor 4:9–13.

The Working Community

1.

The Eucharist yields its fruit in work, and work acts through the Eucharist. The secret at the heart of both works, however, is the community.

At the communion rail millions of Christians receive the one undivided Christ: integer accipitur,16

The collective Christianity of the universe,17 truly united in a living Being: Corpus Christi.

“One bread, one body.”18

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”1920

But this one Body must also perform the work of living. Just as the union of His single members with Christ yields its fruit in work (interior and exterior), so too the union of the whole collection of members with Christ has an expression in work: the community of work[ers; working communion].

The Eucharistic union of the individual soul blossoms in the corporate Eucharistic union of the totality of souls. Logically, the Eucharistic work of the individual soul matures in the height and breadth and depth of the Eucharistic communion of all working souls.

At the communion rail a Christian receives his Christ first of all, and in the power of his Christ he performs his own work. But this Christ is the same as the Christ of all Christianity.

To receive him thus means: to be grafted anew onto the Body of Christ.

To work in his power means: to be a co-working member of this one Body.

This co-working occurs of course through the work of the individual, just as co-union with Christ is achieved through an individual union.

But the spirit, the means, and the end of this individual work must be understood through the one Spirit, the one Means, and the one End of the one Body of Christ.

16 Thomas Aquinas [Lauda Sion]17 1 Cor 12:2718 1 Cor 10:1719 1 Cor 12:1220 Augustine, De Trin 1.4, c. 9: Caput et corpus unus est Christus

“ For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body . . . and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”21

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”22

“But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”23

2.

The community of work [working communion] is a constant struggle of reconciliation between two opposites.

The unity of the cooperation must be preserved along with the peculiarities of the individual work.

And genuine unity must spring precisely out of these individual peculiarities, because Christ, the Soul of the united Body, is the savior of the world precisely by being the savior of the individual soul.

Christ, living in individual men, working through their individual work, bursts through the personal and national confines of this particular life and expands its narrow limits to a world-wide width: angustiamini in visceribus vestris . . . dilatamini et vos. 24

Be wide!

The universal savior of a universal work stretches the narrow individual soul into the dimensions of a world soul and its individual work into world-work.

Through this widening of the individual soul and its work springs the growing Union of the one Body, which as the “body of Christ” grows up into the image of Christ, but not into a frame of Christ, which is the aim of the limited individual soul’s work, but rather into a complete image of Christ: “to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”25

3.

Unselfish Reverence Before the Great Personality.

The working communion is the unity of many.

21 1 Cor 12:1322 1 Cor 12:26.23 Eph 4: 15–16.24 2 Cor 6:12–13. 25 Eph 4:13

This means also that this multitude cannot sink down into a fantastical egalitarianism. “The body does not consist of one member but of many . . . If all were a single member, where would the body be?”26

Only from the recognition of the particular essence and the particular work of each individual member can the unity of the many spring.

“If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?”27

“Varieties of gifts . . . varieties of services . . . varieties of activities.”28

“Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?”29

The community of work demands a selfless recognition of the superior, independent paths taken by the transformative powers of great souls.

A community in which a particular tradition of mediocrity stifled all fresh initiative would be the opposite of a “Body of Christ.” The disputes that emerge from the disagreement between the independent spirit and the mediocre majority are not meant to suppress or eliminate him, but by means of the mediocre majority’s formation, to foster his selfless understanding and humble submission.

Indeed, this is only the natural law of gravity, that the majority stubbornly incline to resist the new trailblazer. It is our natural disgust for the tireless reformer and the natural wish of the Everyman to enjoy his acquisitions in peace.

It is the natural incapacity or reluctance to look outside the boundaries of one’s own life and narrow sphere of self-interest onto the height and breadth of the whole.

The man of the majority looks indignantly at the invader of his cozy repose, and his natural dispositions are only satisfied when he has stoned him to death.

But woe to the Body of Christ if this happens to its Every-members!

It is the blessing of the Church that shakes up and incites an ever more independent, high-aiming spirit in the stagnating lives of her everyday children.

And this is the severe and relentless demand of the Eucharistic working communion upon the majority of everyday Christians, to bend themselves fearfully before the restless outward striving of those who pave the way for

26 1 Cor 12:14,1927 1 Cor 12:1728 1 Cor 12:4, 5, 629 1 Cor 12:29

new ages through the rotten detritus of the old, to offer them a ready helping hand in humble service, and to wage ruthless war against their natural inclinations deeply seated in everyone’s heart.

4.

The Selfless Sacrifice of the Great Personality.

Respect for the superior personality finds its corresponding completion in the unstinting self-offering that these individualities must carry out.

It is practically impossible for the Everyman to overcome his limitations, his distaste for what is new, his natural inclinations. The masses’ crucifige in Pilate’s Praetorium is their resounding salute to anyone who out of sacred spiritual obligation does not follow the paths of everyone else.

Greater spiritual endowments without greater capacity of giving is like a death.

But this greater capacity to give must flow into a greater love for the persecuting majority.

“For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law, though I myself am not under the law so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law though . . . under Christ’s law so that I might win those outside the law.  To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”30

This is the spirit of Christ for those elect souls, that on the heights of their spiritual vision they dig a well of endless capacity for sacrifice and death, a constant Gethsemane and Golgotha, and that they enlarge themselves to an extent of boundless love and goodness for their uncomprehending and envious persecutors.

Only from the height of the cross may they climb the mountains of a new age, only with their heart’s blood may they stimulate the seed of a new world to maturity.

Only in the power of the cross could reach out an arm of kindly understanding to mankind.

To be a leader means to die by loving and to love by dying.

In the letter to the Galatians the Apostle of the Gentiles had laid bare the secret of his restless onward struggle. It is the secret of all leadership:

30 1 Cor 9:19–22.

He is crucified with Christ.31

5.

But not merely to be crucified with Christ, not merely to die with Christ—

To be buried with Christ.

Not very seldom, the foolishness and envy of the Everyday turns back in idolatrous admiration upon the once hated. They are thrilled at his subject, but don’t want it for themselves because they have grasped its truth and grandeur, but rather they want the “personality” that the thing so “brilliantly,” so “regally” represents.

And it is not long before the unity of work becomes, of course very comfortably, a unity of idolatry. The former workshop takes on the smell of incense and resounds with hymns of praise.

And the adorable hero?

Once a rugged and solitary worker, finds himself irresistibly attracted by this Paradise. Might he not also like to let the ardent crowd lead him by the hand? But then it is out with his work. Then the death of the hero will be manifest in the death of his work, or it will become a mummified conceptual shell to which the Hero’s holy smoke is now continually offered—and the community of work has become a death cult.

Therefore, the leader must be lost entirely in his followers, the worker in his work.

He must point the fawning crowds toward their own proper work, for which he is ultimately unnecessary.

The most beautiful tribute in his obituary must not be: “He is an irreplaceable loss,” which is ultimately only an indictment, but rather: “He lives on in his work.”

Long before he is buried in body, he must be buried in spirit, offering himself as a piece in the foundation of his lofty construction.

His true life begins only with this death: non vivificatur, nisi prius moriatur.32

To him it has been given to work side by side with Christ in his most sublime activity, and thereby to work in the most Christian manner possible.

31 Gal 2:1932 1 Cor 15:36

Then this activity is the burial of divinity in creche and cross, in the Eucharist of Godhead and Humanity together, and also of the whole Christ under the burial shroud of visible forms, and then in the tomb of his human body.

6.

Growing up into Christ.

The social duty of the everyday soul and of the leader soul are united in Him.

His life, revived in their lives through frequent Holy Communion, is for both the definitive and unifying Redemption.

Christ, living in the everyday soul, draws it gradually out of the self-seeking narrowness of its “I,” expands before it the world-wide land of his riches, and opens to them a decisive recognition of the objectivity of man and people that brings them to fulfillment.

Christ, living in the leader soul, leads it ever deeper into the depths of a perfect self-abandonment, expands dark nights of austerity before it and demands an ever mightier love from the well-springs of its sufferings. It must smite the water of life from rocks of opposition, the blaze of its charity must be darkened by the heavenly night of its life.

Christ peers into every human soul and discerns the ideal image of its essence, and in all humanity the unifying image of its multiplicity.

Christ, who is the uncreated content of every human work, and the unity in the multiplicity of the work of all mankind:

Christ is the beginning, the way, and the goal of all work.

His life flooding into the soul is the impetus and power of all work.

His life, radiating from the work life of man and mankind, is the aim of all work.

His life, living differently in every soul, is the eternal unitive content of all human diversity, the eternal unitive end of the whole working communion.

Man and mankind begin in Christ, up toward Christ they work, and into Christ they finally merge:

“I am the first and the last.”33

33 Rev. 1:17