The Unpalatable Remedies of God

In an age where "relevance" is a hot concept in the practice of ministry, and the Church is often scrambling to find "new and innovative" ways to "make the gospel relevant" in people's lives, I found this passage from Canon W.C.E. Newbolt's addresses to ordination candidates refreshing. It is worth quoting at length.

"Yet, again, the minister of God comes from a world of sanctifying love. It is all-important to remember this. We are not making experiments; we are not dealing with unknown cases; we are not patching up wounds which we do not understand, with a treatment which we do not appreciate. He Who knew what was in man left us, for our help and cure, the Catholic Church--old remedies, slow and painful, but effectual [emphasis mine]. Would that we were more faithful in the use of them! Original sin, with its taint and malignity, does need Holy Baptism. Actual sin is forgiven and its chain snapped off by Absolution. The weakness of our nature, too feeble to stand alone, is braced and supported by Confirmation. There is growth and sustaining power in Holy Communion. Do we, as ministers of God, know how to use these things? Have we tried their edge? There is no liberality in substituting untried remedies of human invention which happen to be in the fashion, for the tried remedies of God which happen to be unpalatable. We must not be ashamed to tell Naaman to go and wash seven times in the river Jordan, if he will be cleansed from his leprosy; nor desist for his rage, nor give in because he threatens to go elsewhere. [This is the good part....]We must not be ashamed to proclaim that we hope to subdue the vice and overthrow the ramparts of sin in our towns, simply by walking around it with the sevenfold procession of grace. [Wow!] No, there is no liberality in distracting a poor sufferer by ill-considered advice, or evenly balanced advocacy of opposing remedies. We shall not cure a man who lies desperately ill by telling him that allopathists, homeopathists, herbalists, faith-healers, and all quacks, are either equally good or equally useless; but we shall feel it necessary to diagnose his case, and act carefully and with the utmost accuracy of treatment. Much more, when we are dealing with a man's soul we feel it must not be trifled with or treated inconsiderately. If we come from the God of sanctifying love, we feel that we come from a God Who has given His Son to die for us, and to rise again for our justification.

-W.C.E. Newbolt, in The Heart of a Priest, ed. by J.H.L. Morrell



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