CHAPTER XIV. Answer to the objection based on the sayings : " Me ye have not always " (Matt. xxvi. 11, etc.), and "I will be with you always until the end of the world " (Matt, xxviii. 20).

[The difference may be explained by the fact that these statements were made at different times, and between them a change took place in the speaker Himself. It was before the Passion that He said they would not have Him always, seeing He was about to die. But after the Passion, He had overcome death and the laws of the body, and made man to be God.¹⁵⁰ So, speaking |77 as God, He tells them His power is not circumscribed by time and space, but is present always and everywhere. After the Passion He passed through everything and sealed it as His own, heaven and earth and things under the earth.

This was true in the Passion also, as well as after it, as the following considerations will show: ---  

During the Passion itself, of course it was as God that He took the thief to His own Paradise, and thus showed that He was not circumscribed. How altogether vile are those¹⁵¹ who twist His words into a mere promise for the future, by punctuating, "Verily I say unto thee to-day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise." For this is to circumscribe Him at the time of His death. But if it was He who rent the earth, darkened the sun, and brought up the dead, why could He not take the thief to Paradise?

Again, if the earthly sun shines everywhere, why not the Heavenly ? So, when on the cross He was also everywhere, in Paradise, and in the Father. Even man passes the limits of space when he is in his dreams; can we suppose less of Christ when on the cross ? Otherwise what were the use of the cross ? The faithful got their requests and were healed during the ministry. Was there no guarantee to the faithful thief at the moment which was the very climax and sum of all Redemption?

The explanation of those scoundrels is quite untenable. They say He had power as God, but not yet as man, to take the thief to Paradise. Is such a distinction possible? Can you ask whether the faithful thief believed on Him as Divine or as only human? Such division is impossible, even in a man's faith. He is the same Lord, under many names; it matters not by which He is invoked, as Christ, or Jesus, or the Only begotten ¹⁵² of God; the effect of them all is identical. |78

Just as the smell of some herbal medicine would fill a  whole house when placed in one part of it, so, as the healing medicine of Christ's body hung upon the cross, the odour of His Godhead spread through the whole house of the wide world.

Returning to the words of the objection, we conclude that after the Resurrection Jesus is circumscribed by nothing. In whatever part of the world the faithful may cry, He is there before they call Him. No separation of His Body is possible; it cannot be " unloosed," like the "latchet" the Baptist spoke of. Hence we assert that Christ both led the thief to Paradise, was present with the Apostles, and is not separated from the faithful until the end of the world.

But before the Passion, He could truthfully say, "Me ye have not always," because of the bodily separation which was about to come through His death.¹⁵³

On the occasion when Christ spoke as above about the poor, the desire that the ointment should be for the poor, and not for the anointing of Him who for us became poor, originated with Judas, who valued the earthly ointment at three hundred pieces of silver, but in his madness sold the heavenly Ointment, which was emptied on the earth, at only thirty. But Judas must not occupy the stage; he must give way to matters more important. Pray produce another objection, as this argument is most useful to us.]