Do willingly what lies in thee,According to the best of thy ability
And the best of thy understanding. - À Kempis
Do willingly what lies in thee,
According to the best of thy ability
And the best of thy understanding. - À Kempis
Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! . . . I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour. - Wordsworth
The longer on this earth we live,
And weigh the various qualities of men,
The more we feel the high, stern-featured paauly
Of plain devotedness to duty,
Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise,
But finding amplest recompense
In work done squarely and unwasted days. - Lowell
The word "Sacrament" has rather an interesting history. In early Roman Law, it denoted a pledge which the loser of a suit forfeited to religious purposes; later it signified the oath which bound the legionary to his standard; then, after having undergone other changes, it came in Christian times to mean the solemn rites and mysteries of the New Dispensation. To the influence of scholastic theology is due a further and at first sight arbitrary narrowing of the word; for modern Catholic usage restricts the application of it to those seven institutions by means of which the Church conveys to the believer the seven great and peculiar graces that Christ entrusted to her keeping. This group, indeed, as the noblest and most efficacious of all systems of external rites, does with good reason appropriate a name which etymology and the older custom would extend to everything that symbolizes and imparts the blessing of God to the soul of man. Meanwhile, a relic of the more ancient usage is still discoverable in the title applied to "The Sacramentals" - a class of objects and actions recognized by the Church as beneficent to all who use them reverently. It is with an eye to this older and less definite sense of the term that we venture to speak of duty as a sacrament.
By "duty" is here meant all that conscience commands - the whole content of the moral imperative pronounced in the soul of any human being. Man may differ from man in his notion; of what he is bound to do or to endure; and, in fact, each conscience must include some matters which are personal and distinctive, some obligations arising out of the particular circumstances in which the individual lot is cast. But to all, the inner voice speaks with the same imperiousness; each one must do its bidding or suffer its condemnation. At present, let us be reminded that this imperiousness is an echo of the supreme authority of God; and that His sanction is placed upon whatever conscience may dictate.
Persons speak sometimes - especially, it may be, in these latter days - as if duty were separable from God; as if the significance and the authority of conscience could be discovered within the limits of the visible human order; as if no necessary relation existed between the admonitions of the inner voice and an eternal law transcending time and space; in a word, as if one might do all one's duty without ever taking account of the Creator. This is denying what we here affirm - the sacramental character of duty.
Duty is a sacrament, because it is an expression of the will of God and a means of entering into communion with Him. Under a visible shell and envelope, it bears a holy significance and secret power; it is a channel of heavenly grace; it is the meeting-place and marriage-chamber of the human will and the divine. Not because it is in harmony with man's nature, not because it ensures comfort or progress or culture or physical salvation to the race: for none of these reasons does the bidding of conscience attain its supreme and sacrosanct dignity, but rather because it is the medium of God's message to man and of man's response to God.
Not only is the foregoing interpretation of duty true; it is also effective in the order of practical conduct, as no other interpretation has ever been. The moral systems which eliminate God make fair promises; but in actual accomplishment they have never surpassed, never even equalled, Christianity. In the face of history, to predict that the world will grow better when once it has succeeded in emancipating itself from the old idea of an overruling God is rash, to say the least. All that has been done up to the present - be it little or great - has been done by, or with the help of, Christianity; whereas the achievements of independent morality exist only, in promise - and a promise which is without either bond or guarantee.
Although the conception of duty as independent of God might, with reason, be called an irreligious conception, it unfortunately receives some sanction from the speech and action of persons who are popularly understood to be religious. At times they set the claims of religion over against the claims of duty, as if the former were clothed with a higher dignity and under the shadow of a diviner sanction. This results in a lowering of religion in the opinion of men who are shocked at hearing that the good-pleasure of God can be divorced from the fulfillment of human obligations, or that life has a divine interest apart from the perfecting of human souls. To these men religion, when contrasted with ethics, wears an inhuman, it not an unholy, aspect; and they would substitute a more practical system for this fanciful transcendentalism. They make a strong attack upon the Church in the name of the neglected moral interest; and they regard it as a telling. objection if a Christian prefers orthodoxy to virtue, if religious "practice" and moral achievement are not in direct proportion among individuals or among communities, or if "piety" and indifference to natural virtues go hand in hand.
Now any divorcing of religion and natural obligations - in so far as it does actually exist - must be traceable to the failure to appreciate duty as a sacrament. That which we face in the concrete, that which we touch and see and deliberate about - the action, or submission, or course of conduct, prescribed by the inner voice - should be to every Christian the shell and envelope of the divine will. It is not an ultimate, but a medium; it finds its significance, as it finds its sufficient sanction, in its power to affect the relation of the soul to God. Like every sacrament, duty presents most prominently an outward and visible element; and by the superficial observer this alone may be noticed. But, like every sacrament, it has a more precious element hidden within; and to train the spirit in the discernment and use of this inward, divine element, is one of the highest functions of religion. In the discharge of this function the Christian Church must retain a certain preeminence or be without a sufficient reason for existing. The true Christian is bound to be more, not less, dutiful than other men. It would be a fatal concession to admit that outside the fold a higher standard or a more exact observance of natural virtue may generally obtain. Grace lends itself to nature for the perfecting of natural powers; and the system of Christian sacraments is arranged with a view to the sharpening and the strengthening of every moral faculty native to the soul of man. That any other conception of the relation between the supernatural and the natural should prevail, would be a great misfortune.
It would be equally unfortunate if Christians were to offend primary ethical instincts by investing the external requirements of religion with such dignity as to overshadow and obscure the inner divine realities: were they to exalt positive precepts above the indispensable dictates of the natural law; were they to magnify the need of explicitly knowing the full truth and, by contrast, to minimize the need of doing the full right. Now, although these distortions of Christian teaching are not openly proclaimed by us, nor even perhaps consciously implied, they do suggest themselves to the mind of the critical observer who observes us putting charity below conformity and expediency above the truth; who sees church-goers attending service from motives of vanity, curiosity, or fear, worshippers hurrying through prayers with a mechanical habit of body and an inattentive drift of mind, and communicants approaching sacraments under the pressure of human respect, national custom, or mercenary desire. To the critic it looks as if, according to Christian standards, the husk is more valued than the kernel, as if mental processes are made more precious than the action of the will, and the interests of the organization distinguished from the interests of God.
It is a scandal if such exaggerations ever take place; yet they will not seem so strange, when we recall that, to some extent, misunderstanding and abuse occur with regard to all sacramental institutions - with regard to the physical humanity in which God appeared among men, since the Magdalen's demonstrative affection for it had to be checked by an admonition from Christ Himself; with regard to the visible Church, whose temporal prosperity has sometimes been ranked as an object of more pressing importance than the fulfillment of Christ's own commands; with regard to the whole external system of worship, since the Most High God, in subordinating Himself to human service, often encounters a vain superstition which attends less to His presence than to the worthless and senseless things created by His hands. These instances indicate how readily man abuses the gracious dispensation by which creatures are converted into channels of the grace of God. In the measure that we grow quick to discern the divine significance of all duty, however, we shall be the less likely to limit our interest to the outward aspect of any religious observance, and we shall be the better able to appreciate at their true value the divine elements which lie hid within.
The habit of frequenting the sacrament of duty is not only an effective way of attaining to God, but the only way. Religion is true and actual only when it avails to strengthen the soul in the performance of its duties, to urge it toward keener watchfulness and mightier effort. Divorced from duty, religion becomes the merest phantom, a sham, a worthless fiction. We speak of certain religious obligations as necessary, in the sense that the law of God imposes them; of others again as necessary, in the sense that no one who willfully neglects them can ever attain to heaven. In a higher and more exclusive sense we may speak of the fulfillment of duty as a prerequisite for admission to the presence of God. Fidelity to duty without formal religion, we might conceive of; religion without duty, never. The performance of duty includes, of course, the fulfillment of supernatural, as well as of human, obligations: prayer, public worship, ecclesiastical obedience, the established means of grace, must be made use of in the measure that our light and our opportunities allow. The failure to consider these as grave obligations of the conscience makes the error of the indifferentist. But an error less worthy of being condoned is that of contemning commonplace duties, as if lack of fidelity in regard of them might be compensated for by intense application to supernatural activities. That the supernatural elements of life should loom large is right and just; but there is an essential defect in the conception which exalts them at the expense of the natural. A deep meaning underlies those old stories which come down to us from the very oldest records of organized striving after perfection, and which show the just man winning God's favor by relinquishing the enjoyment of special divine favors for the sake of fulfilling the commonplace duties of his daily rule.
We prove that we have grown in the spiritual order, when we develop a keener appreciation of the hitherto neglected opportunities of grace in our everyday routine. The young enthusiasm of inexperience would drive us abroad in search of some chance tide of destiny, some sudden windfall; but as we grow in wisdom we are less attracted by the prospect of adventure, and we aim rather to reap the harvest of our fields at home. With the years that go by we meet ever new evidence that perfection lies for us in enduring the unpleasant pressure and meeting the exacting demands of our homely lot. Gradually our powers of vision are enlarged; each of us learns, as in another order humanity at large has learned, the worth of the infinitely little:
"The old way's altered somewhat since,
And the world wears another aspect now:
Somebody turns our spyglass round, or else
Puts a new lens in it: grass, worm, fly grow big:
We find great things are made of little things,
And little things go lessening, till at last
Comes God behind them."
Is it too much to say that the longer one lives and the better acquainted one becomes with the various achievements, trials, and disappointments of men and women, the more thoroughly is one convinced that by no other means than by the appreciation of duty as a sacrament can the soul attain to lasting happiness and imperturbable peace? We encounter people who are hopelessly entangled in the toils of poverty, or disgrace, or unrequited service, or unanswered affection; we meet them struggling wearily along under a sense of wasted years and undeveloped opportunities; we see them tortured by fears of the future, by loss of loved ones, by physical pain, by never-ending temptation; and as our experience widens and our discernment becomes more penetrating, we clearly perceive that to each one the sense of duty may be made the vehicle of eternal and divine goods, that it alone can be relied upon to save the great mass of humanity from the pitfalls of pessimism and despair. This sense saves men, because it makes clear the worth of unsuccessful striving and tells the enduring. triumph which shall be the issue of every blameless defeat. Gradually it unfolds the momentous truth that ethical values are the only realities in the life of the soul, and brings home the conviction that all else is going to matter comparatively little if to its own sense of duty the conscience shall remain unshakenly loyal. Under the inspiration of such a conviction discouragement, hardness, and unfaith are obvious impossibilities. Enthusiasm, perhaps, will not be given us; money and the fruit it bears, comfort, luxury, leisure, we may never have; in no earthly shrine of fame will posterity read the names of us who are born to die obscure. But of the peace which surpasses understanding we shall possess abundant measure; grace will be poured forth in the land where we abide; souls will conquer the temptation of selfishness by the aid of our example; and the great designs of the God who made us will be realized in our lives. Few who ponder these truths will turn aside to seek the rewards of selfishness and infidelity. The mind which meditates on the rewards of duty will learn to see beauty, holiness, and eternal worth in lives of patient suffering and honest toil, to rank vocations noble in proportion to the selflessness for which they call, to discern the possibilities of divine perfection in the monotonous round of a man's daily duties, and to regard the soul's everlasting struggle with temptation as the true building up of the kingdom of God. To be charitable, sympathetic, helpful, forgiving towards our neighbor; to be tender and generous with wife, or husband, or sister, or brother; to be just and truthful and ungrasping in our business relations; to be conscientious in the discharge of our whole responsibility as citizens: these are among the high ideals which the cultivating of a finer sense of duty will help us to make our own.
Thus to be faithful despite every trial, and to rise triumphantly beyond the reach of enticing pleasure and menacing pain, implies, of course, perfection; and to this result will the sacrament of duty unfailingly conduct its recipient. Something of the peace of the contemplative soul will be given the man who is in constant communion with God through the medium of suffering bravely borne and deeds nobly done; and many who might never rise so high through the routine of the cloister will be brought wonderfully near to God by the discharge of the humble duties of a secular life. One strong act of the will is worth many lofty thoughts; the former rather than the latter is of universal obligation. After all it is the saint not the theologian who knows God best and embraces him most closely; for in this life God is, as has been said, an object of the will more than of the intellect.
He that keeps the commandments is the true lover, Christ tells us. So we cannot help believing that there must be many children of His adoption who have not learned to recognize His features or to invoke His Name. In the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the naked, and many a commonplace deed of duty, they have ministered to Him unawares. Thus, by the free choice of their wills, they have been bound and indentured to His service and become the bondsmen of a Master whom they do not formally own. Theologians unfold the implications of the human sense of right and wrong, and show that the man who is trying to do right is implicitly recognizing and obeying God. Very little power of analysis is needed to perceive that faith and hope and love are necessarily involved in the conduct of those who follow the natural light of conscience to the very limit of its leadings. Of the many, therefore, who at different times and in diverse ways have gone. forth to die as martyrs to duty - sometimes even with unconscious blasphemy upon their lips - not one has been displeasing to the Most Holy, granted that he was not sinning and had not sinned against the inner light. But this same comfortable teaching, - which makes for the peace of the honest-hearted, strikes fatally at the soul which is sluggish, or cowardly, or consumed by selfishness in any of its many other forms. Even though such a craven be numbered among the children of the promise, he shall hardly be the equal of those who lay down possessions and life as a sacrifice to the Unknown God; for the command of the great Father and Lover of men, spoken to all the race, is obeyed unto merit, even though the heavenly voice be mistaken for the promptings of mere human instinct. Hence we believe that right conduct will be rewarded with the ultimate gift of faith, in so far as faith is necessary for the entering of the kingdom of heaven. For the doer of the word is justified more than the hearer. As reverence is shown less by profession than by obedience; as patriotism is measured better by a man's willingness to die than by his eloquence; so, too, the struggle undertaken to fulfill duty and to resist temptation is the surest test of love, and the keeping of the commandments is the firmest bond between the soul and its Maker.
No one will deny that perfect loyalty to conscience makes stern demands upon us, that it constitutes a high ideal. Yet there is consolation in the thought that we are never bound to impossibilities, that duty is, so to say, automatically regulated: when it becomes impossible it ceases to be duty. We are never held responsible except for the issues which we can control. Knowledge, ability, and freedom must be ours, or no shortcoming can be charged against us; and meanwhile every new difficulty of a task inevitably heightens its moral value.
It is needlessly, therefore, that we are troubled by the phantom of duties we are unable to perform. The will to do right can effectually cast out all such fear. Perfect peace is the privilege of every soul that is determined not to be driven off the course of duty by the turbulence of any passion, nor to be frightened away by the darkness of any trial.
To the development of a finer sense of duty, then, and to the training of the will in the habit of obeying conscience perfectly, much time and energy must be devoted by all who seek peace upon earth or enduring success in eternity. The lesson is easy to learn. It could not be simpler or more evidently true. It leaves unanswered no problem which man is called upon to solve. Nothing can take its place. School carefully, therefore, your vision and your will; and when there occurs a struggle in the choosing between what is painful and what is wrong, set your will resolutely to the receiving of the sacrament of duty.
- text taken from The Sacrament of Duty by Father Joseph McSorley, C.S.P.