The Cleansing Jesus Brings

The Cleansing Jesus Brings

No one will deny that avarice, a passion for ­material enjoyment, vanity, and a desire of personal success were widely prevalent even at the time when the power of the Church was at its highest…. But it is only our right to remember that in a Catholic community materialism has never been recognized as an ideal—and people who pursued such ideals were in any case intellectually honest enough not to compose delightful theories which might excuse their greed; they had the redeeming impudence necessary for admitting: I am like this because I wish to be like this, and that’s an end of it. The ideal continued to be the person who can dispense with this world as far as possible—and let us not forget that for every religious order which broke down under the weight of its wealth, a new one sprang up and grasped the ancient banner….

Catholicism fought against Manichaeism and the heresy of the Albigenses since these systems taught that matter is evil in itself, the work not of God, but of the devil—but it has fought, and must go on fighting to the end of time, to keep materialism in its place, under the dominion of the spirit. Saint Francis speaks of his sister the earth, as though she were a sweet baby sister whom he caresses on his way to his work. But it is a new thing…that in our day it is held to be meritorious to acquire a steadily growing fortune, a worthy object of human effort to make a name for oneself which will live for centuries (might not Saint Francis have thought this a curious ambition for an immortal soul!) and success is held to be a thing which ought to inspire respect….

[We must] humbly acknowledge we can do nothing that is good and lasting unless we pray for Christ’s Spirit and try to allow it scope to work within us—without offering resistance when it attacks that in us which is our own and which we love egoistically, and without wishing to reserve any room or closet within us and put a notice on the door: No admittance for Christ….

Finally—let us remember that Christ has promised his Church that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We believe that the Church of Christ will subsist on earth as long as human life stirs on this globe.

Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset († 1949) was a Norwegian novelist, laywoman, convert to Catholicism, and winner of the 1928 Nobel Prize for Literature. Her most famous work is the trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter. [From Stages on the Road, Arthur G. Chater, Tr. © 2012, Elizabeth Scalia, Ava Maria Press, Inc., PO Box 428, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556.