The Moral Universe

A Preface to Christian Living

Archbishop Fulton J Sheen

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839743405
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In this book Archbishop Sheen reflects on Christian Ethics and provides guidance on how to improve one's life.
Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) was one of the best-loved prelates of twentieth century Catholicism. A prolific writer and orator, a distinguished scholar and teacher, an influential master of the media, Bishop Sheen was one of the most effective communicators of our time. His scores of books have offered inspiration, profound thought, and penetrating analysis of Christian faith and life.

XV—THE HYMN OF THE CONQUERED

The moral universe means that only those who, like our Blessed Lord, go down to defeat in the Good Friday of time, will ever enjoy the Triumph of the Easter Sunday of eternity. The battle cry of Christians on the field of moral warfare is therefore the Hymn of the Conquered.

THE time is sunset—that dread day when at high noon the sun hid its light at the passing of Light. The holy Body which was purpled with blood from the precious wardrobe of His side, was now at death, laid in a stranger’s grave, as at birth it was cradled in a stranger’s cave. The rocks, which but a few hours before were shattered by the dripping of His red blood, now have gained a seeming victory by sealing in death the One who said that from rocks He could raise up children to Abraham.

In the last rays of that setting sun, which, like a Eucharistic Host, was tabernacled in the flaming monstrance of the west, picture three men, a Hebrew, a Roman, and a Greek, passing before the grave of the One who went down to defeat and stumbling upon the crude board nailed above the cross that very afternoon. Each dimly read in his own language the inscription “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” The variety of languages, symbols of a variety of nationalities, provokes them to discuss what seems to them an important problem; namely, what will be the most civilizing world influence in fifty years?

The Hebrew says the most civilizing world influence in fifty years will be the temple of Jerusalem, from which will radiate under the inspiration of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the religion which will conquer the hearts of the gentile nations, and make of the Holy City the Mecca of the world. The Roman, contends that within fifty years, the most potent social factor will be the city of Rome, destined to be eternal because founded by Romulus and Remus, who in their infancy were nourished by something non-human, namely a wolf which gave them their extraordinary force and their might. Finally, the Greek, disagreeing with both, argues that in the specified time, the most important world influence will be the wisdom of the Grecian philosophers and their unknown god to whom a statue, made by human hands, was erected in the market place of the great Athens.

Not one of the three gave a thought to the Man who went down to the defeat of the cross on that Good Friday afternoon. For the Hebrew with his love for religion, and the Roman with his love for law, and the Greek with his love for philosophy, there was not the faintest suggestion that He who called Himself the Way of religion, the Truth of law, and the Light of philosophy, and who was now imprisoned by rock-ribbed earth, would ever again stir the hearts and minds and souls of men. They could not agree upon what would most influence the world in the next generation, but they were all agreed that He whose blood dried upon the cross that afternoon would never influence it.

And yet, ere the sun had risen on that third day, in that springtime when all dead things were coming to life, He who laid down His life, took it up again and walked into the garden in the glory of the new Easter morning. Ere yet the fishermen disciples had gone back to their nets and their boats about the Sea of Galilee, He who had announced His own birth to a Virgin, now told a penitent harlot to tell Peter that the sign of Jonas had been fulfilled. Long before nature could heal hideous scars on hands and feet and side, nature herself was to have the only serious wound she ever received, namely, the empty tomb, as He was seen walking on the day of triumph with five wounds gleaming as five great suns, as an eternal proof that love is stronger than death.

Fifty years passed, and what happened? Within that time the army of Titus struck the Temple of Jerusalem and left not a stone on stone, while over the empty tomb all the nations of the earth saw a new spiritual edifice arise, whose cornerstone was that which the builders rejected. Within fifty years, Rome discovered the real reason for its immortality; it was not because Romulus and Remus, nourished by the wolf, had come to dwell there, but because the spiritual Romulus and Remus, Peter and Paul, nourished on the Bread descended from heaven, came there to preach the eternal love of the risen Christ. Within fifty years, the dominant spiritual force in Greece was not the unknown god made by human hands, but the God whom St. Paul announced to the Areopagites when, stretching forth his hands he said: “I found an altar on which was written ‘To the Unknown God.’ What, therefore, you worship without knowing it, I therefore preach to you, God, who made the world and all things therein...for in Him we live and move and are.” Fifty years passed and Jerusalem would have been forgotten had not Jesus died there; Rome would have perished had not a fisherman died there; Athens would have been forgotten had not the risen Christ been preached there. Fifty years passed and the three cultures in which He was crucified now sang His name in praise; the cross which was the instrument of shame became the badge of honor, as Calvary was renewed on Christian altars in the language of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

The world was wrong and Christ was right. He who had the power to lay down His life had the power to take it up again; He who willed to be born, willed to die; and He who knew how to die knew also how to be reborn, and to give to this poor tiny planet of ours an honor and a glory which flaming suns and jealous planets do not share—the glory of one forsaken grave.

The great lesson of Easter Day is that a Victor may be judged from a double point of view; that of the world, and that of God. From the world’s point of view, Christ failed on Good Friday; from God’s point of view Christ had won. Those who put Him to death gave Him the very chance He required; those who closed the door of the sepulchre gave Him the very door which He desired to fling open; their seeming triumph led to His greatest victory. Christmas told the story that Divinity is always where the world least expects to find it, for no one expected to see Divinity wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Easter repeats that Divinity is always where the world least expects to find it, for no one in the world expected that a defeated man would be a Victor, that the rejected cornerstone would be the head of the building; that the dead would walk and that He who was ignored in a tomb should be our Resurrection and our Life—and so on Easter Day, I sing not the song of the Victors but of those who go down to defeat:

“I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fall in the Battle of Life,

The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife;

Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim

Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wear the chaplet of fame,

But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart,

Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part,

Whose youth bore no flower in its branches, whose hopes burned in ashes away,

From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood at the dying of day

With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, unheeded, alone,

With death swooping down o’er their failure, and all but their faith overthrown.

While the voice of the world shouts its chorus—its paean for those who have won

While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high to the breeze and the sun

Glad banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying feet

Thronging after the laurel crowned victors, I stand on the field of defeat,

In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, and dying, and there

Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain-knotted brows, breathe a prayer,

Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, “They only the victory win,

Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the demon that tempts from within;

Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the world holds on high;

Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight, if need be, to die.”

Speak, History! Who are Life’s victors? Unroll thy long annals and say,

Are they these whom the world called the victors, who won the success of a day?

The martyrs or Nero? The Spartans, who fell at Thermopylae’s tryst?

Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socrates? Pilate or Christ?”

Unroll the scrolls of time and see how the lesson of that first Easter is repeated as each new Easter tells the story of the Great Captain, who found His way out of the grave and revealed that lasting victory must always mean defeat in the eyes of the world. At least a dozen times in her life of twenty centuries, the world in the first flush of its momentary triumph sealed the tomb of the Church, set her watch and left her as a dead, breathless, and defeated thing, only to see her rising from the grave and walking in the victory of her new Easter morn.

In the first few centurie...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Table of Contents
• DEDICATION
• I-THE HOMELESS AT HOME
• II-THE INTERIOR SINAI
• III-THE EMERGENCE OF MORALS
• IV-THE PENALTY OF NEGLECT
• V-DYING TO LIVE
• VI-ROSES IN GOD’S GARDEN
• VII-THE BOND UNTIL DEATH
• VIII-THE CORDS OF ADAM
• IX-THE FRUIT OF LOVE
• X-THE DEATH OF LIFE
• XI-THE GREAT ASSIZE
• XII-PURIFYING FLAMES
• XIII-THE FACT OF HELL
• XIV-THE PARADOX OF SALVATION
• XV-THE HYMN OF THE CONQUERED