The Miracles of our Lord, as illustrating the XVI.--OUR LORD'S LAST MIRACLE ON THE LAKE. St. John xxi. 1—19. I. THE last recorded miracle of our Lord was worked after His Resurrection, during that part of the forty days which He spent with His disciples in Galilee. The narrative is given to us by St. John alone, who was himself present, with six other Apostles, his own brother St. James, St. Peter, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew or Nathanael, and two others who are not named, but who may be conjectured to have been St. Andrew and St. Philip.* It is not necessary to repeat the story of the fishing of the Apostles during the night-when, as on the former occasion of which we have had to speak, they caught nothing— of our Lord's appearance in the early dawn on the shore, bidding them cast the net on the right side of the boat, then of the marvellous draught of fishes which was immediately inclosed in the net, of St. John's discerning our Lord, of St. Peter's leaping into the water to go to Him, and of the meal which was awaiting them when they landed. The points on which we may fasten in this great miracle, and in the conversation which followed on it, are the following-the action of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, in drawing the net to land himself, containing a certain recorded number of large fishes, "one hundred and * The four Apostles not included in this list would thus be St. Matthew, who was not a fisherman, and the three who were near relations or connections of our Lord, St. Simon, St. Jude, and St. James the Less. These might probably be with our Lady and the holy women at the time. But it is needless to say, that this is pure conjecture. fifty and three," and the commission which was afterwards so solemnly given to him by our Lord, and repeated thrice, in which, after asking him thrice whether he loved Him, our Lord bade him, "Feed my lambs," "Feed my sheep." It is generally considered by Catholic commentators on Scripture and by the theologians of the Church that our Lord on this occasion conferred on St. Peter, for himself and for his successors, the authority and commission to rule the Catholic Church which He had before promised to him, when he made his great confession of faith in the Divinity of his Master. Then He had said, "Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. and I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth it shall be bound also in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth it shall be loosed also in Heaven." "'* Now He says, " Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these? . . . Feed My lambs. Feed My lambs. Feed My lambs. Feed My sheep." 2. It is on this great commission, promised in the first of these passages and conferred in the second, that the vital Catholic doctrine of the prerogatives of St. Peter mainly rests for its Scripture proof, though there are also other texts and incidents in the life of our Lord on which it is based, and though the whole argument from Scripture embraces also the commentary on the acts and sayings of our Lord which is furnished by the history of the Acts of the Apostles and by the Epistles. It is of course not to our present purpose to draw out the whole argument, as we can only have to deal with that part of the power which has been conferred on St. Peter and on his successors which has immediate relation to the subject of Purgatory. That part, however, of St. Peter's power is very important indeed to us, and it may very fitly be made the subject of this our last chapter on the miracles. The power conferred on St. Peter, with regard to this subject, may be connected *St. Matt. xvi. 18, 19; St. John xxi. 15-17. immediately with the words of St. Matthew which have been quoted in the last paragraph. St. Peter, in the passage of St. John's Gospel before us, is practically ordered by our Lord to use his power in all charity for the benefit of the flock committed to him. That is one meaning at least of the touching question thrice put to him by our Lord, "Lovest thou Me?" It is as if He had said, "If you love Me, and as you love Me, feed My lambs, feed My sheep." But the power which is thus to be exercised according to the instinct and measure of his love to our Blessed Lord is, as has been said, that which was promised before in the words which St. Matthew has recorded. That power then consists, first, of opening the Kingdom of Heaven, for such is the meaning of the power of the keys; and, secondly, it consists in the power of binding and loosing. By this, for the purpose with which we are now concerned, is meant the power of either opening Heaven or not, and of laying down the conditions on which the power of the keys is exercised, in any particular case or under any particular circumstances. 3. It is plain that the power thus conferred on St. Peter of opening the gates of Heaven must mean the power of removing all the impediments which, in any particular case, shut the gates of Heaven and prevent this or that soul, or certain classes of souls, from entering there. Now, it has already been said that there are two impediments to entrance to Heaven, original sin unremoved, and actual mortal sin unrepented and uncancelled as to its guilt. Either of these two impediments, while it exists, is enough absolutely to bar the gates of Heaven. The first of these impediments is removed by our Lord Himself, and the application of what He has thus done to particular souls takes place in Holy Baptism. The second impediment, that created by actual sin, is removed by the power of the keys. But this impediment, which is caused by actual sin, is twofold, and consists in the guilt of the sin, and in the punishment due to it. If the guilt is not removed, the soul can never enter Heaven, and, even when the guilt is removed, the soul cannot enter Heaven until the punishment has been removed also. The guilt of sin, then, is removed by the power of the keys in the Sacrament of Penance, according to those words of our Lord, "Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted." The impediment of the punishment is also removed by the power of the keys, in the concession of Indulgences, according to those other words, "Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in Heaven." And it must be said that any idea of the power of the keys which leaves out this remission of the pain due to sin as well as of the guilt of sin itself— when due dispositions exist, and under all due conditions, according to the laws of the Kingdom of our Lord-is absolutely defective and inadequate. It has been said above that any idea of our Lord's Mission as the Redeemer of the world which leaves out His Mission with regard to Purgatory is defective and inadequate. It represents Him, practically, as not being He Who was to come, and it implies, practically, that we must "look for another." In just the same way, the power of the keys would not be what it ought to be, it would not answer to the largeness and fulness and universality of our Lord's commission to St. Peter, if it did not include, in some way or other, the power of loosing the bonds of pain as well as the power of loosing the bonds of guilt. Our Lord, as the people in Decapolis said, hath done "all things well," not only some things ;"* and the power which He has left behind in the hands of St. Peter and his Successors to be exercised in charity must extend to all the needs of human souls waiting at the gates of Heaven. But it would not so extend, unless it had some provision for the removal of the impediment of pain, as well as for the removal of the impediment of guilt. 4. The provision of which we speak is exactly that which Catholics know as the power of Indulgences. An * St. Mark vii. 37. Indulgence is a remission of the pain due to sins, of which the guilt has already been forgiven. This remission is made by the same power which imposes this or that work of penance as an accompaniment of absolution, that is, the power of the keys of which we have just now spoken. By this power the "treasury," as it is said, of the Church is opened, and the merits of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints are applied in satisfaction to the souls to which the Indulgence is granted, by the authority of the Chief Pastor of the Church, the Successor of St. Peter, and, to a certain extent, of the Bishops.* The doctrine of the Church on this point if summed up in the decree of the Council of Trent (Session 25), which declares that the power of Indulgences has been granted by Christ to the Church, and that they are useful and salutary to the faithful. It would not fall within the scope of the present work to argue the point as to the doctrine of Indulgences against those who deny it. It is enough to say that it is, in principle, contained in the famous passage of St. Paul about the incestuous Corinthian, whose penance had been forgiven him by the Church,† and that there are traces of the practice in the earliest times, though it is undeniable that the great use of Indulgences, and particularly of the very large Indulgences which have been granted in the late centuries of the Church, is a development which has grown with the decay of penitential rigour and, in fact, with that great increase of human infirmity which characterizes modern times. The comparative ease with which Indulgences may now be gained is a great blessing to the faithful of our times-a great blessing to those who avail themselves of it largely and diligently, while it may turn out to be a cause of severe self-reproach to those who * Benedict the Thirteenth, Triges. II. Serm. 24, teaches that Archbishops in their Provinces and Bishops in their dioceses may grant Indulgences of a year on the dedication of a church, and of forty days at other times. But he adds that they have greater powers in the private tribunal of penance, in regard to their own subjects. + 2 Cor. ii. 5—11. |