The Most Important Revolution Ever Witnessed

Conferences of the Rev. Père Lacordaire, p. 497-504

…when Moses, coming down from Sinai, bore to his people this commandment, “Thou shalt rest on the Sabbath-day, and keep it holy,”— it was an element of the fundamental principle of justice. Admire, even in considering only the human side of that prescription, what profound knowledge of our nature it supposes in the legislator, what a disinterested perception of the relation between the rich and the poor, the man who labours, and the man who causes others to labour. Was it not necessary to possess a very extraordinary sentiment of justice, a rare foresight, so that, from so distant a period, a law so strange in appearance might be established, but which the future has so explained and justified, that every society which ventures to despise it attacks the dignity, the intelligence, the liberty, the morality, and even the health of the people, and gives it over bound hand and foot to the cupidity of its masters, until it become a simple productive machine; lost, soul and body… This is what I call creating a fundamental principle of justice, a law which can never recede, which is forever sacred: and why sacred? Because it springs from a glance from the very seat of justice, from a flash of light descended from on high, where unchangeable and substantial order dwells in God, and from whence those gleams of equity which enlighten us, flow upon us more or less abundantly, and which, according to their distribution, form the destinies of societies.

Now, … which of the legislators of antiquity has founded a fundamental principle of justice in all its plenitude? Moses… as to all the others [Menou, Minos, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, etc.], it will be useless to seek in their works for anything sufficiently essential to have become the groundwork of law, the primordial and visible type of all established justice. The human race stood in need of this type; it did not receive it from them. …Nor have they… borne the character of immutability, without which the best legislation is powerless to protect those who live under its guardianship; for every changeable law is at the mercy of the strongest, whatever may be the form of government, whether the nation has at its head an unique chief or a body which deliberates; in the one and in the other case, the fate of all, or at least the fate of the minority, is without any protector, if there does not exist between the sovereign and his subjects an inviolable law, which covers the entire community… Jean Jaques Rousseau has said: “If the people will do harm to themselves, who has the right to hinder them?” I answer, Everybody; for everybody is interested in seeing that the people do not misuse their force and their unanimity, seeing that their unanimity invariably falls back finally upon some one, and that it is, in fact, only a form of oppression which is disguised by the very excess of its weight. It is against all that law is necessary, much more than against any one; for number has the inconvenience of joining to the material power the sanction of apparent justice. But law is only something against all when it is endowed with immutability, and, in virtue of that resemblance to God, offers an invincible resistance to the weaknesses of the community as well as to its powerful conspiracies. I say the weaknesses of the community, for it should fear them as much as its strength. It may be oppressed, as it may become the oppressor, and it requires to have within itself an element which, by its consistency, would discourage that secret tide of revolutions which time draws along after itself. All legislators have had an instinctive knowledge of this, and they have done all that they were able to do to give to their work the impress of immutability… Neither fundamental principle of justice, nor immutable nor universal justice; such… was the ancient law …

Jesus Christ found human society in that horrible state of powerlessness with regard to its fundamental principle, —which is justice; it will be in vain, out of hatred to him, to search in antiquity; no other law will be found there than that which I have just declared, and which you have all recognised. What has he made of that miserable society which would chill us with horror, if only one of its days could appear to us in all íts vigour? What has he made of it? He could have trampled it under his feet, and have thrown its unclean and tyrannical ruins to the winds: he has not done so. He might, at least, have despised it; and, contenting himself with founding by its side a pure and an equitable society for just men, have abandoned the ancient society to the opprobrium of the comparison, nor has he done this. He neither destroyed nor despised; he has created a community, and raised up the ancient by the new; he has given to human society that which none of its legislators, even the most famous among them, had given to it: an universal law, an immutable law, a fundamental principle of justice. This is the spectacle which we are about to contemplate. Jesus Christ comes into the world; he is born like all other men, —in a community; he is born under a particular code of laws; he is born in a country which has its history, its founder, its conquests, its celebrity; he is born like a man who was looked for by a great people. And what is the first thing which he does whilst declaring himself to be the heir of the promises and the hopes of that people? Does he say, I am a Jew? I am come to enlarge my nation, and to extend it even to the extremities of the world, farther even than David and Solomon, — our fathers? No, he does not say a word like this, he says simply, I am the Son of man. And perhaps you are not surprised at it; perhaps it appears natural to you that at each page of the Gospel, Jesus Christ affects to call him- self the Son of man, whilst he but rarely assumes the title of Son of God. However, this is not a thing of such small importance as you may suppose; and that single expression, the Son of man, —contains an entire revolution, the most important which had been ever witnessed. Before Jesus Christ, men said, I am a Greek, a Roman, a Jew; when menaced or interrogated, they answered proudly Civis Romanus sum ego [I am a Roman citizen]. Each sheltered himself under his country and city; Jesus Christ invoked only one title, that of the Son of man, and thereby he announced a new era, the era in which humanity commenced, and in which, after the name of God, nothing can be greater than the name of man, nothing more effectual for obtaining help, honour, and brotherly love. Every word of the Son of man, every one of his acts, bears the impress of that spirit; and those words and acts together form the Gospel, which is the new and universal law. As soon as the Gospel was in the world, Jesus Christ sends his apostles to bear it to the human race: “Go,” said he, “and preach the Gospel to every creature.”(1) Propagation, communion, universality, became the watchwords of every movement, and there, where before was heard only the sound of egotism, is heard only the quick march of charity. Where are the Greeks? Where are the Romans? Where is the community? Where are the Hellenic and Quirital laws? Saint Paul can no longer retain in his breast the song of triumphant humanity: “There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”(2) O men, who dwell under the four winds of heaven, men who think you are of different races and have different rights, you know not what you say; you are not here below by thousands and by millions, you are not even two, you are but one. Therefore man is not alone, nor humanity; but man and humanity are united. Whoever touches man touches humanity; and whoever touches humanity, touches God who has made it, who is its father and protector.

(1) St. Mark, ch. 16, v. 15.
(2) Epistle to the Galatians, ch. 3, v. 28.