We are deeply indebted to our Chaplain Fr Stephen Morrison, O Praem, for this exposition on the devotion to Blessed Adrain Fortescue, which forms a sequel to last year's sermon on this holy feast, which may be read HERE.
Dear Fathers, Dear Confreres, Dear Faithful,
We celebrate the feast of the patron of the Grand Priory of England, fifty years after he was first chosen as such, with grateful hearts. We are grateful for so many graces received through his intercession, and for the inspiration his witness has given over the years to so many who would take up the Cross of the Order of Malta, calling on him to pray – as we have done countless times – that we may “forget ourselves and love God more.” The line which strikes me most in our prayer to Bd Adrian, however, and upon which I wish to speak this evening, is the last phrase: “Pray also that like you I may risk all for Christ and His Holy Catholic Church.”
Risk all.
Perhaps we have to forget ourselves, if we are to risk all for God; we can hardly think of ourselves risking anything, that is, letting go of our grip on material possessions in order to dare to walk behind Christ in holy poverty and obedience, if we remain too self-obsessed; and of course the Lord Himself told us so: he told us that unless we convert, deny ourselves, take up our Cross, and follow Him, we cannot be His disciples at all. What do we think we are risking, when we become His disciples? We literally put our lives on the line. And that’s what the martyrs did, so perhaps expressing it in terms of a “holy gamble,” an exciting “risk,” is a kindness to our sometimes cowardly hearts – we might not think ourselves as being “up to” shedding our blood for God, but all of us are up for a bit of a gamble, surely…? Well, there are certainly those too hesitant to attempt anything, but the Christian (hopefully) is familiar with the idea of “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” But the venture is not merely a worldly exertion. A Christian ethic of hard work, taken to its extreme, becomes a kind of Pelagianism (salvation through pulling up your boot straps), which is definitely a heresy, and a kind of Puritanism, which isn’t even a fun heresy. No, we don’t take the idea to its extreme, but we know that the only guarantee of not succeeding at anything is not to try at all. But what is our “risk assessment” of the Faith like? Do we always feel “up” to the gamble of the Christian life? Do we realise that we have “nothing to lose”, from a heavenly perspective, if we are in a state of grace, when we follow Christ? Or do we see the attachments of this world, and a cosy existence, as something very much to lose, something we would rather not lose? ‘Salvation through armchairs’ has hardly been a hallmark of the Catholic tradition, even though followers of this heresy seem to abound, even among the clergy. But so does a paralysing materialism. And yet, “what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?” Losing one’s soul is the biggest tragedy that could befall a man – far worse than losing one’s life. Adrian Fortescue understood that well enough. “Whoever loses his life for my sake, will save it for the eternal life,” said Life Himself when He came into this world. A lesser tragedy, but still tragic, would be to do little or nothing with the life we have been given – to bury our talents in the sand rather than invest them, risk it all, and dare to give it a go. The martyrs knew that this particular venture leads to gain – real gain, the truest gain – Eternal Life: the only thing worth gaining.
We’re all familiar with the idea of “double or quits.” Even the TV game shows employ a jeopardy principle where a winner can either take home the £10,000 or gamble it on winning a far greater sum, but face the possibility of walking home afterwards with nothing. But this is a worldly calculation. The Martyr, Bd Adrian, “risked all” for Christ and His Catholic Church. He might, in the literal sense, have thought twice about it. Even St Thomas More had second thoughts. But ultimately, both men realised that they had to lay their lives, their earthly lives, on the line, in order to win the eternal life of Heaven, because they knew that they wouldn’t be walking away with nothing. “Quits” wasn’t an option, so “Double” was a “dead cert”. Such was asked of them – and such is asked of each of us. They were emboldened to make such a decision – we must be confident that we can be emboldened too. Before we examine how we might become better gamblers who bet on such favourable Divine Odds with unwavering hope and unquestioning faith, let us see that, conversely, God has already taken something of a gamble on us. He “risked it all” for us.
God created man in His own image. When man fell, God came to His rescue. As a pure, spiritual being, God had created other spirits – the angels in their vast array of species and number – to dwell with Him in Light and serve Him alone. When some of them fell, in Lucifer’s rebellion, God did not come to their rescue. When man fell in disobedience, however, God descended to earth, took flesh of the Virgin Mary, and became man – to save His fallen beloved sons and daughters. (The angels must have adored this mystery with amazement and joy). But even before that, His creation of humanity, placed in a material world of space and time, was a venture, on God’s part, since it required a response on man’s part; Adam and Eve had souls as well as bodies – they were most akin to God in their souls – and they had intelligence, reason, and Free Will. But this was a risk. Would they use these powers to serve God, or would they not? Would they love Him back, or not? When man took the foolish bet of following the serpent rather than obeying God, man lost spectacularly. Paradise Lost is the result of that catastrophic, ultimate failure of judgement. But it didn’t stop there. Man got a gambling addiction, constantly betting on sin, a certain and horrific loss, spiralling out of control in the direction of certain death. But God was not going to lose His bet. It was double or quits – And God chose to stick with His creatures, and try again. It was not literally a game of chance for God, of course – I’m not suggesting the betting analogy works perfectly – as God knows, from all time, both the result of our folly and the result of His Saving Grace. And He accepted the painful – to Him – reality that He might (and would) incur some losses, through the stupidity of persistent sinners who did not love Him and would refuse ever to do so. But, still He came to save us. Although our cooperation – or not – in His purposes neither lessens nor increases His glory, nor hinders His purposes themselves, which are Omnipotent and Wise beyond our imagining, He nonetheless gives us the opportunity, in Christ, to carry out with Him the saving work of redemption, the buying-back of the Human Race. That redemption, by which Christ the Son won souls back for His God and Father, is the work of the Cross. It is the work in which the martyrs gladly and bravely took part, and it is a work which is also demanded of us today. It’s so sad that souls do not believe in God, when He has proven so spectacularly that He believes in them. Why should He have done so? He did not have to. He knew that some people would ignore Him, and some adore Him. But He did not lose his bet. Double or Quits - which was it? He lost nothing, strictly speaking – the Lamb was slain in the mind of God before the creation of the cosmos. But God embraced a loss in order to gain: He emptied Himself in the Incarnation, and lowered Himself in the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ, who humbled Himself, even to accepting death on the Cross. And the result? God raised Him high, and raised up fallen humanity with Him. In the Resurrection of Our Saviour, humanity reaches a level beyond the stars… In the Ascension, humanity is raised up to the Heavens, and enthroned at the Right Side of God. We have access to the life of the Trinity in a way that Adam and Eve could not ever have imagined. Sinners, we can merit to attain forgiveness; Lost souls can be found, and carried home in the arms of the Good Shepherd; those whose intellects and wills are languishing in the gutter on Tuesday can be floating in the clouds on Wednesday, if they go to confession; human beings who in justice would be condemned to destruction and oblivion, can be redeemed, snatched out of the hands of the devil, and in mercy, see their chains cut loose and their souls soar upwards to the Trinity through absolution. Because of the incarnation, this exaltation of humanity to the point of apotheosis does add to the glory of the Trinity – because God the Son took on our human flesh and is the pioneer of our salvation – and the Son has been glorified. In the Son, now we, with the angels, can join the Heavenly Host and shine brighter than the firmament. Such a destiny is ours – if we accept it, if we forget ourselves, accept the Cross, and love God more. If only we would!
Pascal’s famous “wager” presents this “bet” in an interesting, but ultimately unsatisfactory way. According to Pascal, I might as well believe in God, because if he doesn’t exist, I haven’t lost anything, and if he does, I’ve gained something. It’s clearly not enough to make someone believe and embrace the gift of Faith, and it’s not a great insurance policy either for life, or for death, since without faith and hope, the wager is a pretty empty one. But nowadays, even that calculation – which some might have once thought sensible – is ignored by huge swathes of humanity who are quite simply indifferent to God. Why do so few, these days, risk all for Christ and His Church? Why do the betting shops and websites have such an abundance of customers, for a wager that is usually lost, while Christ goes begging for souls in a world that ignores Him with total apathy? Why do so many walk past Him, when He is offering a gamble that will only win our eternal beatitude? In the Blessed Sacrament, and in the martyrdom of Blessed Adrian, Christ answers that question. The reason is simple: because Christianity is difficult. It requires great love, great sacrifice. Sure, the Scriptures tell us that following the commandments is “not difficult” – but only for those who LOVE. It is an “easy yoke” and a “light burden” for those who love. And Our Lord warned us that “love in most men will grow cold.” Even Pascal, in his more devout moments, was aware of this. People would risk more for Christ and His Church if they loved more. But that’s not easy. To quote Chesterton: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” God is not a pessimist, though. He is not like an overly zealous and harsh examiner, smugly confident that most candidates sitting the paper will fail the test. He does not wait in the Blessed Sacrament saying “I bet they won’t come to visit me.” Rather, He says the opposite. His presence there says, “They will come and visit me. I will feed them. They shall be my people, and I shall be their God. I shall dwell with them, I shall love them, and they shall love me.” People may ignore Him, but we, we shall adore Him. People may walk by and not care, but we, we shall stop, genuflect, and show that we do care. People may never return love for such Love shown to them, but we, by His divine aid, will always return to give thanks, and pay a homage of love on our knees for the God who has gambled so lavishly on our salvation that He will see a return for such an incalculably great investment. It’s an investment that requires the same total offering from us too. And so, our Holy Communions should embolden us to risk everything for Christ, who gave us everything of Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. “How can I live, unless to prove / some love for such unmeasured love?” asks St Alphonsus in the famous hymn ‘O Bread of Heaven.’ If we loved without measure too, then we too would “risk all” for Christ.
Precisely at a time when this country had turned its back on the Tabernacles and embraced the folly of Protestantism, the martyrs stood up and laid down their lives in imitation of their Eucharistic Lord. Adrian Fortescue and his companion martyrs show us the way – we need to risk everything for Christ, without any thought for ourselves in a worldly sense, but with every thought for ourselves – and others – in the heavenly sense of salvation. What gave the martyrs boldness in their battle of risk was the certainty of Heaven. No other bet carries with it odds like that – a certain win, if we love God more. Blessed Adrian could say, with St Alphonsus, “For how can He deny me Heaven, / Who here on earth, Himself hath given?!” We can dare to say the same. So we should. So we shall.
Dear confreres, especially those under the patronage of Bd Adrian in the Grand Priory of England: Place your bets! Faites vos jeux! Risk it all! The Altar is not the Roulette table, after all. Lay your life there with confidence. ‘Everything ventured’ means that everything, and more than everything, will be gained.
Blessed Adrian Fortescue, pray for me, that I may forget myself, and love God more, and so, like you, risk all for Christ and His Holy Catholic Church. Amen.
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