288 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



and man, for in His ascension and glorious reign in Heaven 

 He has forever raised manhood up until it touches the hem 

 of divinity. As the God-Man, as the Word made Flesh, He 

 may be approached, both as God and man, exactly as if He 

 walked the earth to-day. As the priest repeats at the altar, 

 as he lifts his hands daily in commencing the great sacrifice 

 of the Mass : 



"O God, who hast wonderfully framed man's exalted na- 

 ture and still more wonderfully restored it, grant us to be^ 

 come partakers of His Godhead who hath vouchsafed to be- 

 come partaker of our manhood : through Our Lord Jesus 

 Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in unity 

 with the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end." 



If, therefore, we pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or to the 

 saints, it is only because of and through the Incarnation of 

 Our Lord Jesus Christ. We worship Him, we acknowledge 

 Him, we confess Him to be God. our Saviour and Redeemer ; 

 but we love Him, approach Him and cling tenderly to Him 

 as man — as our brother — and we fervently ask all His near- 

 est and dearest as men to unite with our petitions, to assist 

 us with their prayers, to have the whole triumphant Church 

 in Heaven with the greatest of mankind at their head ring 

 with a triumphant human unison in accord with our petitions 

 here below. It is the humanity of Jesus Christ that we ac- 

 knowledge and glorify when we ask all created saved hu- 

 manity to join with us in our petitions to Him. 



The Incarnation, then, is the centre and kernel of the Catho- 

 lic faith ; all else is a consequence and corollary of it. The 

 passion and death of Our Lord is His drinking the bitter wine 

 of humanity to the very dregs ; it is the continuation and con- 

 summation of His becoming man for our salvation. He took 

 upon Himself the sins of the world as the last experience in 

 taking upon Himself the flesh and soul of humanity, and He 

 so identified Himself with our human life from the cradle 

 to the grave, from the wedding feast of Cana to that ghastly 

 climb up Calvary's hill with death at its summit. He is ours 

 from a human standpoint, as well as from a divine one, inex- 

 tricably and inseparably mingled together forever as God and 

 man, to be loved and approached from either side. 



The Church never forgets for a moment the sacrifice upon 

 Calvary. Not an instant of prayer is she without its remem- 



