God’s Bridge Builder

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here. That you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My immaculate mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel intercede for me.

If the modern mind were to be asked what thing in the world it would like most like to discover, it would most probably answer the missing link. Every now and then we hear of its discovery, but it’s only a rumor. The most regular feature of the missing link is that it’s missing.

There’s nothing wrong in seeking the missing link, but it can seem to be an absurd emphasis on the wrong thing. Why should we be so concerned about the link which binds us to the beast and so little concerned about the link which binds us to God?

Why should the deep secrets of man’s being be sought in the slime of the earth rather than in the rarefied atmosphere of the Kingdom of Heaven? Even though the link were found, it would only tell us the source of that lower part of our nature which we have in common with beasts. But it would tell us nothing about the higher part which we have in common with God.

A thing is to be judged not by that which is lowest in its makeup, but by that which is highest and noblest. It is a far more profitable quest not to seek the link imprisoned in the dust which binds us to an animal, but rather the link suspended from Heaven which binds us unto God.

A link or bond there must be between God and man. Man is sinful, God is holy. And there’s nothing common between the two. Man is finite, God is infinite. And there’s nothing common between the two. Man is human, God is divine. And there’s nothing common between the two.

By my own power, I am not able to touch the ceiling of my room, but the link of a ladder would effect a union between the two. In like manner, if there were ever to be a real communion between Heaven and Earth, between God and man, there would have to be a link between the two.

Those who seek the missing link between man and the animal say that the link must have something common to both. In like manner, we who seek the link between God and man say that the link must be both human and divine.

Where to seek that link? In a cave? Yes. The world is right in seeking the cave man. But it is seeking him in the wrong cave. If we are to find the prototype of man, we must seek it not in the cave of Moulin, but in the cave of Bethlehem. And the name of that cave man is not Pithecanthropus, but Christ.

The light shining in his eyes is not the light of a beast coming to the dawn of reason, but the light of a God coming to the darkness of men. The animals in the cave are not wild beasts shrieking at one who came from them, but the ox and the ass bowing down to one who came to them. The companions in the cave are not wild creatures with lifted clubs as a sign of war, but Joseph and Mary with folded hands as a symbol of peace.

In a word, Christ is the link between the finite and the infinite, between God and man. Because finite in his human nature, infinite in his divine, and one in the unity of his person. Missing, because men have lost him. Pontiff, because the bridge builder between Earth and Heaven, for such is the meaning of pontiff. Mediator, because the high ambassador of God amongst men.

All these names are only other ways of saying that which we forget, that the life of Christ above all else, the life of a priest. What is a priest? A priest is an intermediary, a link between God and man. His mission is to do two things. To bring God to man by the infusion of divine life, and to bring man to God by redeeming man from sin.

This Our Lord declared was the double purpose of his coming into the world. “I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

The first purpose of the priesthood of Christ is to bring God to man, or divine life to human life. We have no right to say there is no higher life than ours, anymore than the worm has a right to say there is no higher life than its life.

The very fact that man is never satisfied with his mere earthly life is a proof of something beyond. Like a giant imprisoned bird, his wings beat uneasily against the gilded cage of space and time. He has always sought to be more than he is. That is why he has ideals. That is why he hopes. That is why the Roman emperors called themselves gods. That is why man, when he forgets the true God, adores himself as God.

But man can never acquire this higher life by his own power, any more than he could change a stone into a serpent. If he is to be possessed of a higher life, it must be given to him from above. If the animal is to live the higher life of man, it must surrender its lower existence and be reborn in man, who comes down to it, takes it up as food.

If man is to live the higher life of God, he must die to his lower life of the flesh and be reborn to the higher life of the spirit who comes down to him with that divine life. This is the message Our Lord gave the carnal-minded Nicodemus, who hearing it said, “How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he can’t go into his mother’s womb and be born a second time?” (John 3:4).

Our Lord replied that he meant not a fleshy birth, but the spiritual regeneration of water and the Holy Ghost, through which man is reborn as a child of God. And yet how few there are who want to live it.

The sweet complaint of Our Lord at the beginning of his public life is true to our own day. We are told in Saint John, “And you don’t want to come to me that you may have life. I have come in my Father’s name, yet you do not receive me” (John 5:40, 43).

The result is that while the body of modern man is fed, his soul is left to starve. Starve it will until the great inspiration of life ceases to be economics or the science of earthly goods, and begins to be theology or the science of the life of God.

The second function of the priestly life of Christ consisted not only in linking the life of God to man, but also in reconciling man to God by redeeming him from sin.

Many of the emasculated lives of Christ today picture him merely as a moral reformer, a teacher of humanitarian ethics, or a sentimental lover of birds and beasts. Our Lord is primarily none of these. He is first and foremost a redeemer in that he breaks with all reformers and preachers who ever lived. If you take any of them, Buddha, Plato, Confucius, Socrates, Lao Tzu, why do they come into the world? Each and every one of them came into this world to live.

But why did Christ come into this world? He came into the world to die. It was the supreme business which engaged him from the day of his birth. “The Son of Man,” he said of himself, “came to seek out and save what was lost” (Luke 19:10).

Socrates, on the other hand, came into the world to teach. Hence the greatest tragedy of his life was the cup of hemlock juice which interrupted his teaching. Death was his greatest stumbling block, the one supreme obstacle and annoyance which spoiled his conversations about truth.

But the cross was not to Christ what the hemlock juice was to Socrates. It was not the interruption of his life. It was the very beginning. His teaching was not stopped by his death, it was his death that proved his teaching true.

Buddha came into the world to preach the philosophy of renunciation. He was a philosopher and only a philosopher. His supreme business in life was solely and uniquely to explain defeat in a certain sense, fatalism. Death spoiled his preachments about renunciation.

But death to Christ was not what death was to Buddha. Both preached renunciation, but death was the end of Buddha’s preaching about renunciation. To Christ, it was the renunciation. Death was the end for Buddha. For Christ, it was only the beginning.

Our Lord did not walk the earth forever telling people about platitudes about truth. He was not just explaining truth, defeat, resignation, sacrifice. Everyone else did this. The goal he was seeking was death.

From the beginning to the end, only one vision was before his eyes. He was going to die. Not die because he could not help it, but die because he willed it. Death was not an incident in his career. It was not an accident in his plan. It was the one business he had to do.

All during his redeeming life, he looked forward to his redeeming death. He anticipated his blood shedding on Calvary by his circumcision at eight days of age. At the beginning of his public ministry, his presence inspired John to cry out to his disciples at the Jordan, “Behold the Lamb of God!” (John 1:29).

He answered to the confession of his divinity by Peter at Caesarea Philippi that he would have to suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be put to death and rise after three days (cf. Mark 8:31).

The leaden-weighted days caused him to cry out in beautiful impatience, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how apprehensive I am until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50).

To the member of the Sanhedrin who sought a sign, he foretold his death on the cross. He answered, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life” (John 3:14–15).

To the Pharisees who were as sheep without a shepherd, he spoke, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. And I lay down my life for my sheep. No one takes it from me. On the contrary, I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This is the command I received from my Father” (John 10:11, 14–18).

To all men of all times who would forget that he came as our redeemer and savior, he speaks the most tender words that were ever caught up on this sinful earth. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not die, but will have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16–17).

And why did death play such an important role in the divine plan? How did death bring man to God? Death brought man to God by blotting out the debt of sin.

Man was a sinner. He could no more restore himself to the favor of God than a man who owes a million dollars can pay it with a cent. Or a soldier who is mortally wounded can bind up his own wounds.

Our Lord willed to pay the debt of man by suffering for man. For death voluntarily undergone is the supreme proof of love. “Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

How could satisfaction be made? Save by one who has intrinsic worth, by tendering some worthy offering from a boundless love to a perfect justice? How was a real reconciliation between God and man possible unless the reconciler has the capacity for mediating?

Unless he could represent God to man, no less truly than man to God. In other words, he had to be a priest. A link between God and man, because true God and true man.

Being man, he could freely suffer and freely die. But being God, his suffering would have an infinite value. Sacrifice from the beginning of time has been through the shedding of blood, for sin in a certain sense is in the blood.

Our Lord therefore as man resolved to pour it out, even to the last drop, to express at one and the same time God’s hatred of sin and God’s love of man.

Only the righteous can adequately pay for injustice. Only the perfect can discount the crimes of the brute. Only the rich can cancel the debts of great debtors. Only a God in his infinite goodness can expiate the sins which man has committed against him. Only Christ can redeem.

But when he takes the cross, the wants of the body are forgotten in the wants of love. Why the darkened heavens? Why the rent veil in the temple? Why the shattered rocks? Why do the dead come from their graves and walk in the city of the living? Why did the sun hide its face?

If nature could have been given a tongue, she would have answered that her Lord was crucified. That her convulsive homage before the cross of Christ is as nothing compared to a moral miracle of which only the sensible symptoms are a promise of pardon to a repentant sinner at his right.

Not when Christ raised the dead. Not when he rebuked the seas and the winds. Not when he shone in his glory on Tabor. But when he was crucified, pierced with nails, insulted, spat upon, reproached, and reviled.

Only then did he show his power to change the heart of a thief. He drew to himself a soul that once was harder than the rocks, and in an embrace of love promised, “Amen, I say to you, this day you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

That promise was the revelation of the depth and height of his redemptive power, a flash of the eternal lightning of the Godhead, illumining the true meaning of his humiliation as man.

He who was upright like a priest and prostrate as a victim, is Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The day the Holy Spirit poured out the ointment of divinity on his human nature in the sanctuary of the Virgin womb was the day of his ordination.

His teaching in Galilee and Judea was his seminary. What is a seminary but a place where a seed is sown? The surrender of his will in constant obedience to the will of his Father was the offertory.

The mount of Calvary where he performed the last and solemn act of his priesthood was the cathedral. The cross suspended between Heaven and Earth in reconciliation of both was his altar.

The crimson poured out from the precious wardrobe of his side was the royal vestment of sacrifice. The sun turning to red at the horrors it saw was the sanctuary lamp. The body which he gave as bread was the host. The blood which he poured out like water was the priceless wine.

The separation of both by the crucifixion and the act of his will was the consecration. And his last words commending his soul to the hands of his Heavenly Father was the Ite, missa est. Go in peace. Mass is ended.

Would that our civilization would cease turning over the dust of the primeval jungles in search of the link that binds us to the beast, and begin to kneel before the uplifted cross on the rocks of Calvary in search of the link that binds us to God.

Would that the world cease regarding Our Lord only as a teacher and began to adore him as a priest, who brings God to man by the divine life and man to God by the gift of divine pardon.

Would that men stop building their bridges across the chasm of time to bind themselves to earth, and begin building their bridges across the abyss of eternity to bind themselves to God.

Then the crucifix would once more come into its own, and some broken heart would kneel before the crucifix even for a minute to learn the sweetest of all sweet messages. That regardless of how sinful he is, he must be worth something, since the God-man died on a cross for love of him.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW