“Behold the Man” – Fr Albert Maria Weiss OP on the astonishing person of Christ
“Only a genuine person can still inflame people after millennia.”
Photo by Alem Sánchez
Editors’ Notes
“A peculiar characteristic of holiness is that it becomes easier to imitate and a more general ideal the purer and higher it presents itself.
“Of the saints, whose perfection has so many gradations, it can be claimed that they do not deserve imitation in all respects, nor do they make it possible.
“But in the King of Saints, we have a tangible, imitable, and valid prototype for all people, for all times, for all circumstances.”
Fr. Albert Maria Weiss, O.P., was a German theologian born in 1844. He dedicated his life to the defense of the Catholic faith. He was a staunch enemy of liberalism in the political sphere, once coining the phrase “Liberalism is Anti-Ultramontanism”, and of modernism and false reformism in the Church. He is reported to have been influential in the drafting of the encyclical “Pascendi”.
Over the course of his life he published a five-part comprehensive apologia for Christianity. After three consecutive illnesses, each of which brought him close to death, he published his last apologetic work Jesus Christ – The Perennial Apologia of Christianity. The following excerpt from the first chapter has been translated by a friend of The WM Review.
Let’s remember, as we read, that the man described in this extract is he whose coming we mark in Advent and Christmas, whose salvation we call for in Septuagesima, to whose sufferings we unite ourselves in Lent and Passiontide, and whose triumph we celebrate in Eastertide and beyond – and is truly God himself.
Knowing, loving and serving this God-Man is the entire of our lives here in this world. Let’s allow Fr Albert Maria Weiss to teach us how we can do this.
“Ecce Homo”
from
Jesus Christ – The Perennial Apologia of Christianity
Translated by a friend of The WM Review
Christ stands close to all sexes, all nations, all classes, and levels of education throughout all times.
No one except Him has shown Himself immune to the destructive influence of the greatest of all powers, time. Even those great men who have retained value in history do not necessarily preserve influence and moving power for all times. The works they have created do not withstand time for long. The greater they have become, the more rapid is often their decline.
Pericles has outlived his work. Alexander could foresee the decay of his empire himself. Michelangelo introduced the germ of decline into art through his own greatness. While the ideas of great thinkers remain valid forever, they are perfected by others, rendering them obsolete. Newton follows Euclid, Kepler follows Copernicus, and others will follow them, weakening their influence on later times.
Napoleon’s observations
This consideration led Napoleon to recognize the most striking proof of Christ’s greatness in the fact that Time – this great destroyer to which nothing resists – could not limit the reign of charity established by Christ.
‘I have,’ he says in the serious reflections of his last days, ‘instilled a strong charity in many, so that they joyfully went to their deaths for me. God forbid, however, that I compare the enthusiasm of soldiers with Christian charity. They are as different as their causes.
‘With me, my personal presence, the personal electricity of my gaze, my voice, a word from my was necessary, then I ignited the fire in hearts. I do possess this secret of special power that raises the spirit, but I could not impart it to anyone; none of my generals received it from me or spied it out.
‘Therefore, I do not possess the secret to immortalize my name and my charity in hearts and to work wonders therein without the aid of matter. Now that I am chained to this rock, who fights, who conquers realms for my? Does anyone still think of my? Who has remained faithful to me?
‘How many years did Caesar’s rule last? How long did the enthusiasm for Alexander endure? Could they understand how a dead man, with a loyal and wholly devoted army, could make conquests? Could they imagine a mere shadow with soldiers without pay, without hope for this world, yet instilling steadfastness and patience in them in all hardships? No, if in life I could not warm those selfish hearts that I led to victory so many times, how could I, now frozen in death, maintain or reignite their zeal?’
Other men of history
Certainly, no shadowy, no merely imaginary, only a living, only a genuine person can still inflame people after millennia, just as through the words from His own mouth, just as through the overwhelming power of His awe-inspiring presence.
Alexander, Clovis, Theodosius, and Charlemagne, all descended to the grave with the conviction that their work was succumbing to dissolution because among the great minds of their surroundings, among their children, they found none to whom they could impart their insight and energy.
Christ, however, departed from this world with the awareness that He had instilled His own spirit into the poorest fishermen of Galilee to such an extent that they were capable of converting the unbelievers, sanctifying the sinners, transforming the world, and bringing to completion that for which He had laid the foundation.
He understood the mystery of transforming those who were the weakest and most foolish in the eyes of the world so that they could captivate the wisdom and power of the world. He carried within himself the confidence that even in the latest times, the thought of Him would awaken apostles who would joyfully embrace death for His word.
He stated with certainty that those who believe in Him would accomplish greater things in the future than He Himself had worked in his earthly life. He knew that millennia would not weaken His influence, and so it has truly happened.
Intrinsically linked to his person
That, however, is all the more miraculous because the mystery of His influence is precisely linked to His person.
When a poet moves spirits after millennia, we understand that: it is not his person, but his words that constitute his significance. When we concern ourselves with his life, with his fate, it is only because his verses inspire us to share in his experiences. Likewise, we celebrate the words of thinkers, the creations of artists, the deeds of heroes. The decisive thing for us is their words and their works; their person is not intertwined with them.
With Christ alone, our spirit, our love, clings to the person itself. With Him alone, the word and the work are nothing without His person, and His own person is His teaching. With Him, His life is the teaching. All others had to and must teach: Not who says something, but what one says, that you should take to heart. Otherwise, our words would lose their power. Not who does something is significant, but only his lasting work. Only He could say: Learn from Me. Only He was allowed to promise: Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
Therefore, without Him, His teaching is nothing; without Him, His work is nothing. How many know His foundation, possess His truth, and yet it is as if dead to them. Understandable also: the unfortunate have His word, but they do not have Him.
Having Christ
But whoever finds Him has found life, even if he were incapable of reading a word from Him.
If today we lose the Gospel and all books, that matters little as long as we have His life. Without His person, His teaching is nothing, and the Bible is an incomprehensible book.
But if we have Him, we have His word and even more than this. He is His word because He is the Word. He is more than His teaching because He is life. In Him, the lost have found the way, the blind have found light, the despairing have found comfort, and the dead have found life. Through Him, fishermen and public sinners have become wise and holy, the small and the weak have become giants.
But as many as have pursued Him and imitated Him with fervent perseverance, love, which, better than the best artist, understands how to capture the image of the beloved, has never been able to reach Him. The most perfect admit most readily that they stand infinitely beneath Him.
Thus, He stands before us in a greatness that no other human has reached, and yet so near, so attainable that we cannot place Him on the same level as any of the great men in history.
Casting others into shadow
Among all His characteristics, this is the most striking: that, when viewed from a distance, He casts all the great ones into shadows, and that He lowers Himself more to us than all of them when we set out to imitate Him. In both respects, He immeasurably surpasses all the so-called great men.
The world is too generous with the praise of a great man. A great man should, like Saul at least, tower shoulder-length above all the people. Only to the one who concludes an era, only to the one who initiates a new one, who creates new paths, new ways of thinking, only to the one who draws a people, a powerful, influential school after him, only to the one who impresses some of his own superiority on a larger or smaller circle, can this name be earnestly assigned.
However, there are few of such, and even among them, some have so much evil, even demonic aspects, that we are again forced to erase them from the list of great men. The rest all bear weaknesses and errors, just like we do, only often to a greater extent than they surpass us.
Imitation
Christ already outshines all these so-called great men through His personal virtues and the lack of all weaknesses so much that it would be a derogation to put Him on the same level as them.
But what if we wanted to hold them up as ideals for imitation? Then we would be even more on the wrong path. With most, the appearance they spread around them vanishes as soon as one follows them, just like the will-o’-the-wisp under the trees. What remains of them is at most for admiration, not for imitation.
Understandably, since what often constitutes their greatness has come to them without them being able to give an account of it themselves. How can an Alexander, to whom his staggering fortune almost fell into his lap without his active involvement, be a role model for us? No, a person whose only misfortune was his boundless luck is not an example for us to emulate.
Men like Goethe, who effortlessly achieved what their rivals could not achieve with all their toil, lucky children, pursued by success, crushed by praise, cannot be considered role models even by their most enthusiastic admirers.
And even those who were at least masters of their fate, Cyrus, Augustus, Charlemagne, Innocent III, they too have mostly only reaped what others had sown: they were too favoured by luck to be ideals for us.
Christ, on the other hand, as if there were nothing in Him but what is in all humans, began small, grew slowly, and in constant struggle, created His greatness as a human Himself – not through the ordinary means of humans, but on truly human paths, i.e., paths accessible to all humans.
Not through grand victories, but through seemingly constant defeat, not through superhuman feats, but through the humblest practice of virtue, through unwavering endurance, through the folly of the offensive cross, through His death, He became the conqueror. His weakness was His strength. Weaker than all, He surpassed them all.
He surpasses and stands alone
Thus, we cannot associate Christ with any class of people.
We know great men. They are indeed the subject of our admiration, but every attempt at imitation becomes a caricature. Therefore, they are not ideals for us.
We also have whole men. Among the saints, we find them in abundance, sometimes even among those who have not been canonised. But since each of them unfolds their perfection only in a narrowly defined area, it is limited for us to imitate them even in that.
Very few of these whole men became great, and even fewer of the great were whole men. Those who were both great and whole men, thus complete humans, are the rarest.
Christ is not like the great men of history, to the extent that they deserve this name. He is not even a complete man in the narrow sense like others. Towering above peoples and times, beyond every age and sex, He can only be called a complete human, but in a much broader sense than the few who deserve this name.
Although flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, He alone is the perfect image of humanity, the only one to whom we cannot attribute any human weakness, the only one who exhibits in the highest degree all that we attain from humanity in perfection—the true, the complete human, as He best calls Himself, the Son of Man.
And strangely enough! Great men remain inimitable. Yet, He, greater than them all, He alone is imitable. He is the true, the only ideal for all who want to become complete, true humans. As great and sublime as He is, He is easily imitable for everyone, and imitable not only in individual aspects but in all facets of His character. This is because He alone is the True, the complete human without any weakness, without any deficiency.
Therefore, whoever bears human nature within themselves must look up to Christ as their highest role model. Not only the Christian venerates in Him the image of supernatural holiness. Anyone who wants to attain the true perfection of human nature must mould themselves after Him. And not only the virtues that Christian faith urges us to uphold are realized in Him in the highest degree and presented for imitation, but also all the perfections that we are already obligated to practice as humans.
Thus, Christ is the culmination of the supernatural order but also the highest ideal for natural life.
Both the true natural perfection and the highest supernatural holiness, we achieve only through Him, whom the representative of ancient humanity presents to the whole world with the words: ‘Ecce homo.’
O man! From the beginning, you exhaust your strength in the endeavour to elevate yourself to true humanity. Behold the man! Mould yourself in His image, and you will attain humanity. For millennia, you have lacked happiness and peace because God, without whom you cannot live, seemed to flee your paths since you fled Him.
See here the man! Follow Him, and be assured: once you have become a complete human after Him, you will find God in Him and thus your last end.
Further Reading
Sacrifice and triumph – How does Christ’s passion reconcile us to God?
Book Review: “Christ in His Mysteries” by Dom Columba Marmion
Rally Around the Sacred Heart in the War Against God – Abbé Anizan, 1911
Why We Should Love the Sacred Heart, Part I – by Fr Croiset SJ
Why We Should Love the Sacred Heart, Part II – by Fr Croiset SJ
Why We Should Love the Sacred Heart, Part III – by Fr Croiset SJ
The Royal Road of the Holy Cross – The Imitation of Christ
Loving Jesus Above All Things – The Imitation of Christ
HELP KEEP THE WM REVIEW ONLINE!
As we expand The WM Review we would like to keep providing our articles free for everyone. If you have benefitted from our content please do consider supporting us financially.
A small monthly donation, or a one-time donation, helps ensure we can keep writing and sharing at no cost to readers. Thank you!
Monthly Gifts
Single Gifts
Subscribe to stay in touch:
Follow on Twitter and Telegram: