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BV 4501 .F2 1855 All for Jesus
Cheap and Uniform Gditioiis of
latlriT liiljcr's |lap.ular gtlj,oti0nrJ Mtoiis.
Witli tlic " Saiictioii and Corrections" of tlie Aullior,
AND WITH THE
APPROBATION OF THE MOST REV. ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE :
The unprecedented popularitj' of Father Faber's works, both in England and in this country, has induced the undersigned to issue cheap and uni- form editions, printed from new type, on fine paper, at such a price as will at once place them within the reach of all classes.
Each ivork is comprised in a mat volume of about 400 pages, cap Svo ; they are bound in the very best manner, in embossed cloth, and sold at the low price of oQ cents ; in cloth, gilt edges, 75 cents ; in cloth, gilt edges and sides, $1.
Just pu1>lisliedy
A NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION OF
ALL FOR TESTIS ; or, Tlie Easy Ways of Divine Love. By tlie Rev. F. W. Faber, D.D.
Recently publislied,
GROWTH IN HOLINESS; or, The Progress of the Spiritual Life. By the Rev. F. W. Faber, D.D.
THE BLESSED SACRAMENT; or, The Works and Ways of God. Companion to " Allfor Jesus." By the Eev. F. W. Faber, D.D.
The publishers have Hie pleasure to announce that these worJcs haxe met here vnth the same unprecedented sale that they did in England, where they ran through several large editions in a few months. They are, without exception, thi most popular Devotional Works published in the present century.
MURPHY & CO., PubUshers, 178 Market Street, Baltimore.
In presenting to the Catholics of America Cheap and Uniform Editions of Father Faber's Popular Devotional Works, the Publishers feel great pleasure in calling attenlion to the fol- lowing Cards from llie distinguished author, and to the Approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore :
F A T H E Pv F A B E R , to the CathoUcs of America.
" The Author is under great obligations to Messrs. Murphy & Co., of Baltimore, in being able to bring out his Books and present them to his Catholic Brethren in America, under their auspices, tlirough their well- known and careful press. The kind indulgence and favorable reception which " All for Jesus '' and ''Groivth in Holiness,'^ met with in America,, made it a matter of no slight consequence to the Author that he should- find publishers, whose name and standing would be a guarantee to liiin both against unauthorized alterations of his text and also against errors of the press, which are the more serious when the works in which they occur abound in theological expressions. Under these circumstances, and consid- ering the grave character of anything like inaccurate statement in matters of doctrine, the author trusts he maybe allowed to say that no editions of his Works but those issued 61/ M e s s r s. M u R p h Y & Co. have an-t) s auction from him, or are in any way submitted to his corrections and revision. F, W. FADER."
"The Oratory, London, June 21, 1855."
" My dear Messrs. Murphy & Co. — It would be a great satisfaction to me if you would make known, in any way which seems best to you, to my American readers, that the more I feel the kind reception which my works have met with in the United States, the more anxious I am that my readers should know that vou alone are authorized by me to PUBLISH MY WORKS, or receive from me any c orr e c ti 0 ns. The theological character of my works makes me very anxious that this should be known ; and, moreover, the expense to which you have gone so liber- ally, in order to ensure the advance sheets, demands the publication of this fact in justice to yourselves. Very truly, yours,
« The Oratory, London, July 19, 1855. F. VV. FABER.^'
^pprobatioit cf the ||Iost ^tcfe. gircljbislj0|j of Baltimore.
Having learned that the Rev. Frederick William Faber, D.D., has au- thorized Messrs. John Murphy & Co. to republish his works, I cordially ap- prove their republication, they being full of instruction and calculated to promote piety. His recent work, styled " The Blessed Sacrament, or the Works and Ways of Cod," is, I doubt not, highly suited for this purpose.
Given at Baltimore, this 4th day of June, 1855.
t FRANCIS PATRICK, Archbishop of Baltimore.
Murphy & Co., Publishers, 178 Market street, Baltimore.
■*■',
00, 23 1925
ALL FOR JE; "
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BY y
FREDERICK WILLIAM *^FABER,
Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip NeH.
IlaiJaj ayeipov, Aivetv ayiu)5, 'XixveTv dSoXcji,
HaiSoiv fjyfiTopa Xpiardv.
Clemens. Alex.
FIFTH AMERICAN EDITION.
Published with the Sanction and Corrections of the Author.
BALTIMORE: PUBLISHED BY JOHN MURPHY & CO.
178 MARKET STREET. PITTSBURG:— GEORGE QUIGLEY.
Sold by Catholic Booksellers generally.
1855.
y
JL ftv<) M3uo4) ii-idsA^ ' ' j|\lv l.o\) ^<uuj Lv) JiL)
©FRANCIS PATRICK,
^aUJinore, 20 January, 1854.
TO THE
Irtqitcuters of iln ©ratorg
or ST. PHILIP NERI,
IN KIXG WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS, LONDON.
My dear Friends and Benefactors,
I venture to dedicate this little Book to you, for more reasons tlian one. I would have it stand as a memorial of my gratitude for all the affectionate intercourse which you have permitted to exist between the sons of St. Philip and yourselves; an intercourse which has been bound up with the dearest, because the most sacred, interests of your lives. For four years and more you have made our cause your own, and have rejoiced in our successes, and been anxious in our anxieties, as if they had been yours ; while on our side, your griefs and cares, your sorrows and trials, you well know, have been taken upon our- selves, according to the poor measure of our love, and lightened, so far as heart can lighten heart in Christ.
Sacraments, and prayer, and the daily word of God, have formed the triple cord which has bound us together, until we have almost come to think and feel, to sorrow and rejoice, to hope and fear alike, in the one heavenly heart of our common father, St. Philip. We have all along known that this could be only for a season. Like the apostle of the GentHes at Rome, we were but as prisoners in a hired house, and our blessed Lord in His great Sacrament humbled, not beyond the depth of His condescension, but beyond the patience of our love. But the cir- cumstances of this immense city do not leave to Catholic communities full liberty to select their own abode or His. Many efforts were made for as much as two years to find a home for our saint near the field of his first labours ; and when, after repeated failure and inquiry, they seemed all but successful, they came to nought, we must believe, by the Will of God : and we have been borne away to another region of this peopled wilderness.
Thus there is another motive for my dedicating this little book to you. It is, so far as many of you are concerned, a leave-taking ; and I 1* 5
6 DEDICATION.
TTOuld have it, not merely a token of our mutual love, but also the odour of Christ and the virtue of His blessing. You will find in ita pages many things which have been said to you so often, that you have smiled at their repetition. You will read here the sweet thoughts and words aboiit Jesus and Mary, which we have stolen from the saints, and meditated on together. There is many a line will be as old to you as the burden of a favourite song, or the tune of an Oratory hymn. In after times, if these things are worth remembering, they will bring back to you the home-like, familiar aspect of the work-worn chapel, with its crowded altar, and its rampart of confessionals round about our Lord and His little Sion, with its gay shrine of our Immacu- late Mother, its pale-faced St. Philip with the Infant Saviour, and its life-like Crucifix, that was hardly ever without a kneeler at its feet. Words and expressions, anecdotes and texts, will one day have a value both to you and me, because of the remembrances they will awaken in our souls : and God perhaps may mercifully allow the heat and life of grace to linger about them, and touch us with unworldly love. I could say much more ; for gratitude has a faithful memory and a fluent tongue : yet more might seem but like self-praise, and to you who know us is not needed.
We have learned to love Jesus together. We have taught each other, helped each other. Every month that went by, every feast, novena, octave, triduo, with its lectures, prayers, and hymns, little by little quickened our love of our sweet Lord. So let us pray for each other now, that through all changes and all separations we may keep fast to Him ; and that what we have tried to be in the dear old Oratory, we may become, here and hereafter, more and more completely, — All for Jesus, who is Himself our All!
FRED. W. FABER,
Cong. Orat.
Feast of St. Anthony of Padua, i 1853. 5
JrtfHtc.
In offering this little treatise to the public, two things alone seen to call for explanation. 1. I speak continually of the Confraternity of the Precious Blood. This is because the work was intended as a sort of spiritual manual for the members, not because it is not equally suited for all devout Catholics. 2. While I trust to the charity of my readers to interpret me in all doubtful or obscure passages, as meaning only what approved writers mean, I would especially guard myself against one misapprehension. It may be said, "All these practices and devotions have to do with mere Affective Love, not Effective ;" and it may therefore be supposed that I would have people stop at the one without going on to the other. Of course, the perfection of love is to be effective, and effective love consists only in self-abnegation. There is no high sanctity short of this. But it is not the subject I am treat- ing of. I am not putting forward what is perfect, but what is easy. I am not trying to guide souls in high spu-ituality ; God forbid I should be so foolish or so vain ! As a son of St. Philip I have especially to do with the world, and with people living in the world and trying to be good there, and to sanctify themselves in ordinary vocations. It is to such I speak; and I am putting before them, not high things, but things which are at once attractive as devotions, and also tend to raise their fervour, to quicken their love, and to increase their sensible sweetness in practical religion and its duties. I want to make piety bright and happy to those who need such helps, as I do myself. I have not ventured to aim higher. If it causes one heart to love our dearest Lord a trifle more warmly, God will have blessed both the work and its writer far above their deservings.
St. Mary's, Sydenham STO, i St. Philip Neri's Day, 1853. J
fxdm k tilt Bmwli €hi\m.
A LAUGE edition of the book having sold off in about a month from its first publication, I hare taken considerable pains in preparing thia second edition, and I have endeavoured to guide myself in doing so by the valuable criticism with which I have been favoured. In thanking both friends and strangers for them, I wish most particularly to acknowledge my obligations to the Bishop of Birmingham for his great kindness to me in this respect. May I venture to use this opportunity to thank him for the same considerate kindness, I had better say indiilgence, on other occasions also, when he has turned from his mul- tifarious apostolic toils, to mingle with discerning criticism and wise suggestion such words of affectionate encouragement as he well knew a convert author might require, and whose full value to cheer him, as well as to keep him humble, a convert more than others would sensi- tively appreciate ? In again trusting my little work to the Catholics ol England and Ireland, I wish I could say how much I have been aEfected by the reception it has met with, not as if it reflected credit on myself, but because it has shown that the Name of Jesus could not be uttered without the echo coming, and that to speak of Him, however poorly, was to rouse, to soothe, and to win the heart; and it was more grateful to me than any praise, to feel that my subject was my success.
The Oratory, King Wiaiam Street, > Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, 1853. >
%Mt of Conttitts*
CHAPTER I. -
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
PAGB Jesus all for us— and all for love — His interests the object of the Confraternity of the Precious Blood— men's interests — the devil's interests — the interests of Jesus in 1. the Church triumphant—
2. the Church suffering — 3. the Church militant — the four chief ones— 1. the glory of His Father— 2. the fruit of His Passion —
3. the honour of His Mother — t. the esteem of grace — do not fol- low the same rule as the interests of the world— not to look for visible results — prayer the chief way of forwarding them ... 13
CHAPTER 11.
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
Service of love — sympathy with Jesus a mark of a saint — three in* stincts of saints — 1. eagerness for the glory of God — 2. touchi- ness about the interests of Jesus — 3. anxiety for the salvation of souls — story of St. Giacinta Mariscotti— example of the three in- stincts in a Spanish Jesuit — the six advantages of giving away our indulgences to the souls in purgatory 41
10 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
LOVE -ROUNDED BY SIN.
PAGB God our Father as -well as our Creator — this brings us to love of complacency — and so to love of condolence — sorrow for other men's sins — various revelations to the saints about this — special office of nuns — examples of the saints — methods of practising this sorrow — 1. meditation on God's glory — 2. St. Bernard's vray — 3. "way of Balthasar Alvarez and St. Alphonso — hovr the three in- stincts are satisfied in this devotion — St. Paphnutius and the piper — Lancisius on the Carnival — St. Gertrude's vision — the plaia English of the lives of most Catholics — God's homeless glory 69
CHAPTER IV.
INTERCESSORY PRAYER.
"What goes to the saving of a soul — what is involved in a soul being saved — the mystery of prayer — St. Gertrude's vision of the Ave Maria — the three instincts applied to the practice of intercessory prayer — for whom we should intercede — 1. for those in mortal sin — 2. for the lukewarm — 3. for the saints on earth — L for those in tribulation — 5. for our benefactors — 6. for those aiming at per- fection— 7. for the increase of the accidental glory of the blessed — 8. for the rich and noble — the time, place, and method of inter- cession—joy and freedom from vain-glory the fruits of interces- sory prayer, 110
CHAPTER V.
THE RICHES OF OUR POVERTY.
Our distress because we love God so little — ^the ways in which He helps us to love Him — more especially in the way of intercession — ^the riches He gives us to ofiFer to Him — 1 . the Sacred Humanity of Jesus — 2. the intercessory use of the Passion — various exam-
CONTENTS. 11
PAGE pies of the saints — 3. our B. Lady — nature of devotion to lier — devotion to her Seven Joys — 4. the angels — 5. all things that are er have been on earth— 6. God's own Perfections— fitness of this devotion for invalids 148
CHAPTER VI.
MINTING MONEY.
God the centre of every thing — so-called pillars of the Church — nature and grace — oblation of our actions in union with those of Christ — minting money — the spirit of oblation — 1. the oblation of our ordinary actions — methods and practices — difference be- tween canonized and uncanonized writers — St. Gertrude's oblar tions — 2. oblation of recreations — hints to valetudinarians — St. Charles' game of chess — Noe's ark — 3. oblation of solitude —
4. rising to God by common sights and sounds — examples and practices — Peter Faber's three methods of prayer — multiplicity of mental devotions — vocal prayer — dry devotion not solid —
5. ejaculatory prayer — Father Baker — how to say office — 6. obla- tion of sufferings— what it is to be allowed to please Go J— God begging glory of Ilis own creatures 181
CHAPTER VII.
THANKSGIVING.
Neglect of thanksgiving — spirit of the Eucharist — faults of good people — dry people ordinarily self righteoiis — fatherly providence — a spirit of thanksgiving the characteristic of the saints— devo- tion to the Eternal Word— practices— Jewish tradition from Philo — Heads of thanksgiving— 1. Common blessings— 2. personal blessings— 3. afflictions — 4. trifling blessings— 5. miscellaneous blessings — 6. For irrational creatures — 7. Blessings of our ene- mies— the French Apostolate of prayer — 8. For angels and saints — 9. for supernaturalness of the Church, and the gift of faith — St. Jane Frances de Chantal — 10. For mass — materials for thanks- giving after mass and communion — our own practice hitherto — spiritual benefits of thanksgiving— application of it to the three instincts 230
12 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
PRAISE AND DESIRE.
PAGE Science and grace — Tarry-at-Home travelling — what praise and de- sire are — Loves of Complacency and Benevolence — value of inte- rior acts — description of Gcod — meditation on the attributes of God — application of Praise and Desire to the three instincts— how we get at the love of complacency — Saints made up of six things — the HOLY JHDDLE CLASS of the Church — Examples — 1. From the Raccolta — 2. Lancisius' devotions to Jesus Risen — 3. St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi's preparation for Whitsuntide — 4. renewal of vows and heroic desires — regimental holiness — liberty of spirit — St. Gertrude, and the old Benedictine ascetics— the great won- der that God loves men — the greater that He lets men love Him — the greatest that they will not do so — the spirit of reparation — Mary the Christian's Benedicite — the praise of the Sacred Heart — God's praise of Himself 299
CHAPTER IX.
PtTRGATORT.
Thoughts on hell— Eosignoli— the world of sense and the world of spirit — communion of the saints — two views of purgatory — synopsis of the treatise of St. Catherine of Genoa— what the two views agree in — lessons learned, for our own good, and for the good of the Holy Souls— Pleas for this devotion— 1. All devotions centre in it— 2. It implies all the works of mercy— 3. An exercise of the three theological virtues — 4. Its effects upon the spiritual life — the ways of practising it — story of Marie Denise de Martig- nat — the sorrows of kind hearts — God's description of Himself as a poor invalid — the doctrinal character and fulness of their devo- tion—sweet song of the Sacred Heart 367
Letter to the Confraternity, 425
I^II f0r
%tB\lB.
CHAPTER I.
%\lt Interests 0f |esits,
ESUS belongs to us. He vouchsafes to put Himself at our disposal. He communicates to us every thing of His which we are capa- ble of receiving. He loves us with a love which no words can tell, nay, above all our thought and imagination ; and He condescends to desire, with a longing which is equally indescribable, that we should love Him, with a fervent and entire love. His merits may be called ours as well as His. His satisfactions are not so much His treasures as they are His sacraments are but so many ways which His love has designed to com- municate Him to our souls. Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesua. He is the beginning, middle, and end of every thing to us. He is our help in penance, our consolation
2 13
14 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
in grief, our support in trial. There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous, which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can ex- aggerate about many things ; but we can never exag- gerate our obligations to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that are to be said about Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done ; but then that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.
He has kept nothing back from us. There is not a faculty of His Human Soul which has not had to do with our salvation. There is not one limb of His Sacred Body which has not suffered for us. There is not one pain, one shame, one indignity, which He has not drained to its last dreg of bitterness on our behalf. There is not one drop of His most Precious Blood which He has not shed for us ; nor is there one beat- ing of His Sacred Heart which is not an act of love to us. We read wonderful things in the Lives of the Saints about their love of God, wonderful things which we dare not think of imitating. They practised fear- ful austerities, or they spent years in unbroken silence, or they were ever in ecstasies and raptures, or they were passionately in love with contempt and suffering, or they pined and wasted away in holy impatience for death, or they courted death, and expired in the long
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. 15
tortures of an excruciating martyrdom. Each one of these things separately fills us with wonder. Yet, put them all together, conceiye all the love of Peter, Paul, and John, of Joseph and of Magdalen, of all the apos- tles and martyrs, the confessors and virgins of the Church in all ages, thrown into one heart made, by miracle, strong enough to hold such love ; then add to it all the burning love which the nine choirs of multi- tudinous angels have for God, and crown it all with the amazing love of the Immaculate Heart of our dear Mother ; and still it comes not near to, nay, it is but a poor imita,tion of, the love which Jesus has for each one of us, however lowly and unworthy and sinful we may be ! We know our own unworthiness. "We hate ourselves for our own past sins. We are impatient with our own secret meanness, irritability, and wretch- edness. We are tired with our own badness and lit- tleness. Yet, for all that. He loves us with this unut- terable love, and is ready, if need be, as He revealed to one of His servants, to come down from heaven to be crucified over again for each one of us.
The wonder is not merely that He should love us so much, but that He should love us at all. Considering who He is, and what we are, have we any one single claim to His love, except the excess and, without Him, the hopelessness of our misery ? We have no claims upon Him, but those which He Himself in His com- passion has invented for us. What can be more un- lovely than we are, what more ungenerous, what more ungrateful ? And yet He loves us with this excess of love ! Oh, how is it we can ever turn ourselves away from this one idea ! How is it we can take an interest in any thing but this surpassing love of God for His
16 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
fallen creatures ! It is almost surprising how we can "bear to go through our ordinary duties, or how it is that, like men in love with created loves, we do not forget to cat and drink and sleep, feeling ourselves every hour of the day and night the object of the most profuse tenderness and the most unutterable abundance of the love of God, the Almighty, the All Wise, the All Holy, the All Beautiful, the Everlasting ! Oh most incredible of startling wonders ! Blessings are heaped upon us till we are almost out of breath with them. Graces are multiplied upon graces till they get beyond our power of reckoning. His compassions are new every morning. And then, after all, there is yet to come the recompense which eye has never seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived ! This is His side of the question.
Alas ! for our dearest Lord ! Up to this day, what have we done for Him ? And see what he has done for us ; and the end of His doing it all was to gain our love ! We look upon a crucifix, and it hardly moves us. We hear of His bitter Passion, but our eyes are dry, and our hearts indifferent. We kneel down to pray, but we can hardly keep our thoughts fixed upon Him for a quarter of an hour together. We go into His own most holy presence, and we hardly bend the knee before the Tabernacle, lest it should spoil our clothes. We see others sin, and what matter is it to us that Jesus is offended, so long as it is not we who are risking our souls by offending him? Oh, these are strange signs of love I Surely Jesus cannot be much to us, if this is the way we feel about Him. Yet so it is. We go our own way, and do our own will. The great thing is to please ourselves, and to
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. 17
make things easy to us. Life must be taught to run smooth. As to penance, it must be kept at arm's length. We must have bodily comforts and -worldly conveniences, and our spiritual life must be nothing but a sufficiency of those invrard consolations, without which our souls give us pain, because they are not at rest. If we worship God, it is for self; if we do good to others, it is self we are seeking, even in our charity. Poor Jesus Christ ! as St. Alphonso used to say, poor Jesus Christ ! Who thinks of Him ? who weds His interests ?
Yet this is the very object of our Confraternity of the Precious Blood — to look after the interests of Jesus, and to forward them in every way we can. There is hardly any worldly object of importance which has not got some association to defend its rights and to forward its interests ; why should not the in- terests of Jesus have one also ? Science has its meet- ings, and its corresponding societies. Men band to- gether in order to gain the victory for some favourite political opinions. They make companies for railways and for steam-packets and for coal-mines. Why should not we open an office to transact the affiiirs of Jesus, to protect His rights, and advance His interests ? Now remember ! this is just the business of the Con- fraternity of the Precious Blood. When we join it, we must leave self at the door. There is no self in it. It is all for Jesus. It is the office of the interests of Jesus.
Now, let us try to get an idea of the interests of
Jesus ; else, how shall we be able to do any thing to
advance them ? Men cannot work in the dark ; they
must know what they are about. You know what it
2*
18 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
is to have an interest. If you look over the world, you will see that everybody has some interest at heart, and is working hard for it. There are almost as many interests in the world as there are men. Every one you meet in the streets is going after something. You see it in his face, his quick eye, and his rapid walk. Either it is political, or literary, or mercantile, or scientific, or fashionable, or simply ambitious, or dis- honest. Still, whatever it is, every man has wedded the interest of his choice, and is doing his duty to it. He works hard for it all day; he goes to bed with the thought of it, and he wakes with it in the morning. Even on Sunday, it is rather his hand that is resting, than his head or his heart: they are full of his interest. Look what men will do, singly, or banded, to put down slavery, or to get free trade, or to compete for a large order, or to carry the mails, or to make new railroads. It is plain men have interests enough in the world, that they love them dearly, and work for them man- fully. Oh that it were all for God, the good, the mer- ciful, the eternal God !
The devil also has his interests in the world. He has been allowed to set up a kingdom in opposition to God, and, like all sovereigns, he has a multitude of interests. Thus he has agents everywhere, active, diligent, unseen spirits, swarming in the streets of the cities, to push on his interests. They canvass the labourers in the field. They see what they can do with the monk in his cloister and the hermit in his cell. Even in the churches, during Mass or Bene- diction, they are hard at work, plying their unholy trade. Our fellow-men also, by thousands, let them- selves out to him as agents ; nay, numbers work in hia
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. ]9
interests for nothing ; and, what is more shocking still, many do his work, and almost fancy it is God's work they are doing, it looks so good and blameless in their eyes. How many Catholics oppose good things, or criticise good persons ; yet they would never consent to be the deviFs agents, if they really knew what they were about. These interests of the devil are very va- rious. To cause mortal sin, to persuade to venial sin, to hinder grace, to prevent contrition, to keep back from sacraments, to promote lukewarmness, to bring holy people and bishops and religious orders into dis- repute, and to stand in the way of vocations, to spread gossip, to distract people at prayer, to make men fall in love with the frivolities and fashions of the world, to get men to spend money on comforts, furniture, jewels, nicknacks, parrots, old china, fine dress, instead of on the poor of Jesus Christ, to induce Catholics to worship great people and put their trust in princes, and fawn upon political parties in power, to make them full of criticism of each other, and quick as chil- dren to take scandal, to diminish devotion to our Blessed Lady, and to make people fancy divine love is an enthusiasm and an indiscretion : these are the chief interests of the devil. It is amazing with what energy he works at them, and with what consummate craft and dreadful ability he advances them in the world. It would be a thing to admire, if it did not make us afraid for our own souls, and if all things which are against God were not simply abominable, and to be hated. The dark enemy of the Creator is mysteriously allowed a marvellous share of success in that creation which the All Holy once looked down upon, and blessed in His unspeakable complacency. Men's in-
20 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
terests put the interests of Jesus on one side, partly as troublesome, more often as insignificant. The devil's interests are directly opposed to those of Jesus, and where they are successful, either debase them, or kill them altogether.
Now, let us look at the interests of Jesus. Let us take a view of the whole Church, which is Ilis Spouse. Look first into heaven, the Church triumphant. It is the interest of Jesus that the glory of the most Holy Trinity should be increased in every possible manner, and at every hour of night and day ; and this glory, which is called God's accidental glory, is increased by every good work, word, and thought, every correspond- ence to grace, every resistance to temptation, every act of worship, every sacrament rightly administered or humbly received, every act of homage and love to Mary, every invocation of the saints, every bead of the Rosary, every sign of the Cross, every drop of holy water, every pain patiently endured, every harsh judg- ment meekly borne, every good wish, though it end only with the wishing, and never sees fulfilment — pro- vided there be a devout intention along with all these things, and they are done in union with the merits of our sweet Lord. Every hour, at least so we trust, a new soul lands in heaven from Purgatory or from earth, and begins its eternity of rapture and of praise. Each soul that swells the throng of worshippers, each silent voice added to the angelic choirs, is an increase to the glory of God ; and so it is the interest of Jesus to make these arrivals more frequent, and that they should bring more merits and higher degrees of love with them when they come. Even in heaven the Confraternity has work to do, and power to do it.
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. 21
Heaven is one of our offices, and there is much busi- ness to be despatched in its beautiful courts, business for the interests of Jesus, business which He has at heart, and, therefore, which it behooves us to have in hand.
Next, look at that vast kingdom of Purgatory, with its empress-mother, Mary. All those countless throngs of souls are the dear and faithful spouses of Jesus. Yet in what a strange abandonment of supernatural suffering has His love left them ! He longs for their deliverance ; He yearns for them to be transferred from that land, perpetually overclouded with pain, to the bright sunshine of their heavenly home. Yet He has tied His own hands, or nearly so. He gives them no more grace; He allows them no more time for pe- nance; He prevents them from meriting; nay, some have thought they could not pray. How then stands the case with the souls in the suffering Church? Why, it is a thing to be meditated on when we have said it — they depend almost more on earth than they do on heaven, almost more on us than on Him ; so He has willed it on whom all depend, and without whom there is no dependence. It is clear then that Jesus has His interests there. He wants His captives re- leased. Those whom he has redeemed He now bids us redeem, us whom, if there be life at all in us, He has already Himself redeemed. Every satisfaction offered up to God for these suffering souls, every obla- tion of the Precious Blood to the Eternal Father, every Mass heard, every communion received, every volun- tary penance undergone : the scourge, the hair-shirt, the prickly chain, every indulgence gained, every jubi- lee whose conditions we have fulfilled, every De Pro-
22 THE INTERESTS OP JESUS.
fundls whispered, every little alms doled out to the poor who are poorer than ourselves, and, if they be offered for the intention of these dear prisoners, the interests of Jesus are hourly forwarded in Mary's kingdom of Purgatory. This is another office of the Confraternity, and there is no fear of overworking the glorious secretary of that wide realm, the blessed Michael, Mary's subject. See how men work at the pumps on ship-board when they are fighting for^ their lives with an ugly leak. Oh that we had the charity so to work, with the sweet instrumentality of indul- gence, for the holy souls in Purgatory ! The infinite satisfactions of Jesus are at our command, and Mary's sorrows, and the Martyr's pangs, and the Confessor's weary perseverance in well-doing. Jesus will not help Himself here ; because He loves to see us help- ing Him, and because He thinks our love will rejoice that He still leaves us something we can do for Him. There have been saints who have devoted their whole lives to this one work, mining in Purgatory: and to those who reflect in faith, it does not seem, after all, so strange. It is a foolish comparison, simply because it is so much below the mark, but on all principles of reckoning, it is a much less work to have won the bat- tle of Waterloo, or to have invented the steam-engine, than to have freed one soul from Purgatory; and I should be slow to think there was a single member of the Confraternity who had not done more than that already.
Now look at the Church militant on earth. The interests of Jesus are rich and plentiful enough here. There are things to be done, and things to be left undone. Hearts to be persuaded, and hearts to be
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS 23
dissuaded. There is so much to do, the puzzle is where to begin, and what to do first. Men who do not love Jesus are to be made to love Him, and men who love Him to love Him a great deal more. Each of us might take one department, and we should find more work to be done in it than we can get through in our best of times. There are so many people in their agony, and dying every minute, all over the world. Oh, in what danger the very dearest interests of Jesus are at their dying beds ! Satan is hard at work ; temptations thicker than flakes in a snow-storm ; and whoso wins this battle, Jesus or the devil, is so far conqueror for ever ; for there is no fighting it over again. There are Catholics who have not been near the sacraments for years, and there are saints whose half-century of merits and heroic love is positively in peril of being lost ; they only want one thing, and let them sufi'er ever so much they cannot merit it, and that is, final perseverance. There are heretics who never suspected they were in heresy, and heretics in bad faith, who have told falsehoods about the Church, and have run down the Mother of God. There are Jews descended from those who crucified our Lord, and there are Mohammedans who are the masters of Jeru- salem. There are Hottentots who worship loathsome images, and there are American Indians who have no higher thought than to hunt for all eternity, their merits proportioned to the number of their murders. There are men whom the unthawing snows whiten, and men whom the fierce heats of the south scorch, on the mountain tops, in the deep valleys, in the city and in the wilderness, on the land and on the sea, in tho dungeon and in the palace ; all dying, many a minute,
24 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
in the most frightful unpreparedness that can be con- ceived ; and Jesus died for every one of them, as exclusively as if there had been nobody else to die for, and He is ready this moment to come down and die for each one again, if it were needed. Go all through His long Passion, mark His steps, His tears, Hia drops of blood ; count the thorns, the blows, the spit- tings, the falls; fathom the interior depths of the shame and shrinking, the torture and the sickness of His Sacred Heart ; and it was all for that poor Indian, dying far away this hour beneath the shadow of the Andes ; and if he dies and is not saved, it will have been in vain. This is but one department of the interests of Jesus, men in their last agony ; and St. Camillus was raised up to found an Order expressly for them. What might I not say of souls in mortal sin, of heretics and infidels, of criminals in prison, of persons under calumny, of others in scruples or tempta- tions ? I should never have done if I described all the interests of Jesus upon earth.
As, however, I have mentioned the dying, and the dangers of the death-bed, as the object of a special devotion, it will not be out of place to remind you that Pius VII. attached indulgences to the recital of three Paters and Aves for the dying, in honour of the Agony of Jesus, which will be found in the Raccolta. Many saints and holy persons have had this special devotion for souls in their agony. In the life of one of the first mothers of the Visitation we read that, as she was watching before the Blessed Sacrament during the night of Holy Thursday, 1644, she saw a vision of our Lord in His agony, and with this vision there was given her a light and an efficacious grace to pray for the
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. 25
intentions of persons in their agony. "Alas!" she said, " the agonies of poor creatures are strange hours," and, in truth, that moment, decisive of eternity, is the only important affair we have to transact. From the hour she received this admirable grace, she often seemed to hear the sighs of dying persons ; and the effect this had upon her was so great, that ever after- ward she said, night and morning, the prayers of the Church for those in their agony. She often meditated on the words which our Lord said of Himself a little before His death, " The prince of this world is come, and finds nothing in Me," as if all life was to be so directed as to enable us to make these words in some measure our own when we come to die. Of the same religious we are told, in another place, that when the Bishop of Geneva came, on St. Jerome's day, to conse- crate the Church of the order at Annecy, and the superioress wished one of the six chapels to be dedi- cated to St. Joseph, this good sister begged her to let it be dedicated to St. Joseph dying in the arms of Jesus and Mary. "Ah ! my good mother !" she cried, " God has made known to me that, by this devotion to St. Joseph Dying, His goodness wills to give many graces to persons in their agony, and that, as St. Joseph did not go to heaven at once, Jesus not having yet opened it, but that he descended to the limbus of the fathers, it is a most efficacious devotion for the agonizing, and for the souls in purgatory, to offer to God the resignation of the great St. Joseph in dying and leaving Jesus and Mary, and to honour the holy patience of his tranquil expectation, till the dawn of Easter, when the Risen Jesus set him free." So much for thig devotion ; but, I repeat, I should never have 3
26 THE INTERESTS OP JESUS.
done if I described all the interests of Jesus upon earth.
There is not a public-house or a gin-palace, not a threatre or a casino, not a ball-room or a concert, not a public meeting or a parliament, not a shop or a wharf, not a fair, a race-course, or a market, not a carriage or a ship, not a school or a church, where His interests are not in danger at all hours, and where He is not calling on us to help Him. This is the fighting part of the Church ; no wonder there is so much to do, and so little time to do it in. There is not a thing which has not two sides, and one side belongs to Jesus, and the other side is against Him. The devil has other interests besides sheer sin. He can fight against Jesus with low views almost as successfully as with mortal sins. The slow poison of souls sometimes does his work better than the quick. See, then, the multiplicity, the ubi- quity, the urgency, of the interests of Jesus ; and it is to meet all this that we are members of the Confra- ternity.
Yet although it is impossible to go through all the interests of Jesus on earth with any thing like minute- ness, it is necessary to have somewhat more of a clear and definite view about them ; in order that we may understand our office and work as members of the Confraternity. If we study the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as He has revealed it to us in the Gospel, in the history of the Church, in the lives of His saints, and as we have found it ourselves in prayer, we shall see that the multitudinous and manifold interests of our most dear Lord may be gathered up into four classes ; and a short sketch of these classes will put us in possession of that clear view of our work which we are seeking
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. Zi
after. The first interests of Jesus are, of course, in our own souls. The kingdom of heaven is within us. Yet, all important as it is, the question of our own holiness is not, at least directly, the one we are con- cerned with just at present. "Without personal holi- ness we shall do nothing ; but this is not the time or place to speak of that. The four great interests of Jesus to which I am now alluding are, 1, The glory of His Father, 2, The fruit of His Passion, 3, The honour of His Mother, and 4, The esteem of grace. Let me say a word on each of these.
1. The glory of His Father. "When we study our Blessed Lord as He is represented to us in the Gospels, nothing, if we may venture to use such an expression, seems so like a ruling passion in Him as His longing for His Father's glory. From the time when at the age of twelve He left Mary, and stayed behind in Jeru- salem, to His very last word upon the Cross, this devo- tion to the glory of God comes up at every turn. As it is said of Him on one occasion that the zeal for God's house ate Him up, so may we say that He was eaten up continually with hungering and thirsting after His Father's glory. It was as if God's glory had been lost upon the earth, and He was come to seek it and to find it, and how was His Sacred Heart straitened until He did find it ! Thus was He our example ! for this end does He give us grace, that we may glorify our Father who is in Heaven. Now, who can look into the world, and not see how God's glory is lost upon the earth ? It is the interest of Jesus that we should seek and find it. Apart from clear acts of great and grievous sin, how is God forgotten, clean forgotten, by the greatest part of mankind ! They live as if there were no God.
28 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
It is not as if they openly rebelled against Him. They pass Him over and ignore Him. He is an inconveni- ence in His own world, an impertinence in His own creation. So He has been quietly set on one side, as if He were an idol out of fashion, and in the way. Men of science and politicians have agreed on this, and men of business and wealth think it altogether the most decent thing, to be silent about God ; for it is difficult to speak of Him, or have a view of Him, without allowing too much to Him. Here is a desperate, if it were not for grace we should say altogether desperate, obstacle to the interests of Jesus, this great huge impe- netrable mass of forgetfulness of God, of ignoring of God. Oh, how it turns our hearts sick, and makes us long for death ; for what can we do in so hopeless an affair as this ? Yet we must try. A string of beads and a blessed medal ! There is no saying what they cannot do ! And a single Mass, is its power far short of infinite ?
Then unfortunately there are a great many religious people who by no means give God's glory its fitting place ; many, called spiritual, who give Him but the second best of every thing. They want light to know God's glory when they see it. They want discernment to detect the world and the devil under the show of reason and moderation, whereby they would defraud Him of his glory. They want bravery to set the world's opinion at defiance, and consistency to make their lives all of a piece with their religion. Good souls ! they are the very pestilence of the Church, and yet they never for one moment suspect it ; and it is very much for the interests of Jesus that they should see themselves, and other things as well, in their true
THE INTERESTS Or JESUS. 29
light. So here also we have some work to do, to praj that all good men, and men trying to be good, should be able to see what is for God's glory and what is not. Oh, what ground we lose every day for the want of this discernment !
Then, there are religious orders, set apart with the blessing of the Church, each in its own particular way, to work out this glory of God. There are bishops and priests, all supposed to be toiling with a single aim and an exclusive perfection for this one thing. There are guilds and confraternities without number, and is not this their end ? Calamities have to be endured, dangers faced, scandals exposed, the Church has to knock under to the world to-day, and to rough-ride it to-morrow ; and Jesus has interests in all these things ; and it is our work to help Him. Half-a-dozen men, going about God's world, seeking nothing but God's glory, — they would remove mountains. This was pro- mised to faith ; wJiy should not we be the men to do it ?
2. The fruit of His Passion. This is the second great interest of Jesus. Every sin we can prevent, no matter how venial, is a great thing for the interests of Jesus. We can see how gre&,t a thing it is, if we remember that if we could shut hell for ever, save all the souls that are in it, empty purgatory, and make all the men and women on earth persevering saints, equal to St. Peter and St. Paul, by telling one little, and such a little ! lie, we might not do So on any account ; for God's glory would suffer more by that little lie, than it would gain by all the rest. What a work then will it be for the interests of Jesus to prevent one mortal sin ! Yet how easy ! If every night, before we go to sleep, we begged our dear Lady to offer up to God the Precious Blood of 3*
30 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
her dear Son for grace to hinder one mortal sin, some- where in the world, during that night, and then re- newed the same offering in the morning for the hours of daylight, surely such an offering, and by such hands, could not fail to win the grace desired ; and then each one of us might probably hinder seven hundred and thirty mortal sins every year ; and if a thousand of us made these offerings, and persevered in them for twenty years, why, it would give none of us any trouble, and to say nothing of the merit we should gain, here would be more than fourteen million mortal sins prevented; and if all the members of the Confraternity did it, you would have to multiply it again by ten. Ah ! at this rate the interests of Jesus would prosper, and how hap- py, how immensely happy should we be !
So, again, every time we get any one to go to confes- sion who stands in need of it, even though it be only to confess venial sins, we increase the fruit of our beloved Redeemer's Passion. Every act of contrition we per- suade men to make, or by prayer obtain them the grace to make, increases the blessed fruit. Every ad- ditional strictness or trifling penance, of which we are the promoters, answers the same good end : and so do all our efforts to advance frequent communion. When we get people to join in devotions to our Lord's Pas- sion, or to read about it, and meditate upon it, we are forwarding the interests of Jesus. Some one said, if my memory does not fail me, it was Albertus Magnus, that one tear shed over the sufferings of our dear Lord w^s worth more than a year's fast on bread and water; what then if we get others to weep with us in our ten- derness for the Passi-on of Jesus ! What a great deal a little prayer will do ! Sweet Jesus ! why are we so
THE INTERESTS OP JESXJS. 31
hard and cold ? Oh, kindle in us the sweet fire which Thou earnest to kindle on the earth !
3. The honour of His Mother. This is another chief interest of Jesus, and the whole history of the Church shows how near it lies to His Sacred Heart. It was the love of her that specially drew Him down from heaven, and it was she who merited the time of the In- carnation. She was the chosen one of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, the elected daughter of the Father, the predestinated Mother of the Son, and the chosen Spouse of the Holy Ghost. The right doctrine of Jesus has in all ages been wrapped up with the true devotion to Mary ; and the Mother can be wounded only through the Son. Thus Mary is the heritage of humble and obedient Catholics. As devotion to her increases, so does holiness increase. The saints are moulded on the love of her. Sin has no greater enemy than Mary, for the thought of her is a charm against it, and the devils tremble at her name. No one can love the Son, but the love of the Mother grows in Him also ; no one can love the Mother, without his heart melting with tender- ness toward the Son. Thus has Jesus put her in the front of His Church, that she should be the token of all good, and the stumbling-block of His enemies. What wonder then that His interests are deeply con- cerned with her honour. Every heretical blasphemy against her dignity, for which you make reparation by an act of love, or an act of thanksgiving for her Imma- culate Conception and her Perpetual Virginity, gives you an opportunity of advancing the interests of Jesus. Every thing you can do to spread devotion to her, and especially to make Catholics feel more tenderly toward her, is a distinct work for Jesus, and one which He will
32 THE INTERESTS OP JESUS.
most lovingly repay. To get people to go to commu- nion on her feasts, to be enrolled in her Confraterni- ties, to have a picture of her, to gain indulgences for the souls in purgatory that in lifetime were most de- voted to her, to pray for the speedy definition of her Immaculate Conception, to say one-third of the Rosary every day, — everybody has an opportunity of doing one or the other of these things, and they are all for the in- terests of Jesus. Ah ! there is one devotion I -will mention ! I wish we were all inspired with it. We should do well then for the interests of Jesus, and our dear Lord would get such abundance of new love all the world over ! It is, — to have more confidence in our Blessed Mother's prayers, more undoubting trust, more bold petition, more real faith in her. There would be more love for Mary, if there were more faith in Mary. But we are in an heretical country ; and it is hard to live among the icebergs, and not be cold. 0 Jesus ! ani- mate our confidence in Mary, not only that we may work more for Thy sweet interests, but that we may work in the way Thou wouldst have us work, letting no creature be dearer to us than the one who was dearer to Thee than all other creatures put together !
4. The esteem of grace. This is another of the chief interests of Jesus. The world would be quite a diifer- ent place if men only valued grace at its proper value. What is there in the world worth any thing except grace? Oh, how childishly we let ourselves be run away with by all manner of follies, which have nothing to do with the interests of Jesus. How stupid it is of us ! What time we waste ! What harm we do ! What good we leave undone ! And how sweetly patient Jesus is with us all through it ! If people esteemed
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. 33
grace rightly, every one of the other interests of Jesus would go right. When they go wrong, it is just for the want of this esteem. Graces keep coming ; merits keep multiplying; almost as fast as the blessed beat- ings of the Sacred Heart. Meanwhile, all the time that Heart is yearning over us with enraptured love, we are saying, I am not obliged to do this ; I need not forego this pleasure ; I must keep down religious enthusiasm. God help us ! I wish we could get a peep of any enthusiasm there is to keep down ! Poor Jesus Christ ! Poor Jesus Christ ! And all this is for want of a true esteem of grace. Better die than forfeit one increase of grace ; do we all believe this ? No ! but we say we believe it. If the funds were to fall to fifty to-morrow, it would be of less consequence than that a sick Irishman in an obscure court should by im- patience forfeit one degree of grace. To receive (this is what theologians tell us) all the natural gifts and ornaments of St. Michael, his power, strength, wisdom, beauty, and all the rest, would be nothing compared with one additional degree of grace, such as we get a score of if we resist an angry feeling for a quarter of an hour ; for grace is a participation of the Divine Nature. Oh, do we carry this out in our own lives, while we are going to persuade others to carry it out ? Fix upon any evil or calamity of the Church you please, and I am ready to show you it would never have taken place, if her children had had a true esteem of grace ; and moreover, that it would be set right by to-morrow morning, if they all took up with a true esteem of grace. To gain the whole world will be no profit to a man if he sufi'er detriment, any detriment, to his im- mortal soul. Go and persuade people of this; show
34 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
them what store they should set by grace, and how one grace brings another along with it, and how all these tilings are merits, and how all merits turn to glories, glories which are eternal in the heavens. Ah ! you will indeed forward our dear Lord's interests if you do this : you will forward them far more than you have any idea of. Only pray that men may have a truer estee^i of grace, and you will be a secret apostle of Jesus. All graces are in Him ; Ho is the fountain and the fulness of them all ; He longs to pour them out over dear souls, souls that He died for; and they will not let Him; because they must esteem the graces they have, in order to gain new ones. Go and help Jesus. Why should a single soul be lost, for which He died ? I say, why should one be lost ? It is a horrible thing to think of a lost soul, most horrible. And why should they be lost? why? There is Precious Blood to be had for the asking ; and what it gives is grace. But men do not care about grace. St. Paul spent his whole life teaching people about grace, and praying for grace for them, and that they might use grace rightly when they had got it. "When the Fountain of all grace is spring- ing up like a living well of joy in the heart after Com- munion, ask Him to open all men's eyes to the beauty of His grace, and so will you cause His grace to mul- tiply, and with the multiplication of grace His interests to prosper ; for thus stands the case with our dear Lord, that the more He gives away, the richer He becomes. Dear King of souls ! how is it we can think of any thing but Him ? To think that we should be allowed to take His interests in hand : it is amazing ! I wonder it does net send us into an ecstasy. But we do not know our own privileges ; and why not ? Because we
i THE INTERESTS OP JESUS. 35
do not study our dearest Lord enough. "Why not begin in time -what we shall be delighted to do for all eternity? Study Jesus. Heaven is only heaven, because Jesus is there ; and I do not understand why earth has not become heaven already, since Jesus is on earth also. Ah ! it is, alas ! because we have the wretched power to offend Him left us. Take that away, and there is heaven at once, or purgatory, which is the porch of Heaven. Will the day really come when we can sin no more, no more wound the Heart of Jesus ? 0 blessed Lord ! let the sun rise soon that is not to set till that dear privilege is ours. Why fret and question if it is to be heaven at once, or purgatory first? what matter? The great thing is not to be able, for we should be sure to do it if we were able, ever to offend our dearest Lord and Love again.
These are the interests of Jesus, to forward which is the great work of our Confraternity. Or rather, these are samples and specimens of those interests. It may seem strange that our Blessed Lord should make use of such poor and vile instruments as we are for so great a work ; but it is the same Lord who called simple fishermen from mending their nets, to be His apostles, and to convert the world. True it is we have sins enough of our own to look after, that we have imper- fections enough to turn away the Heart of our heavenly Spouse from us, and that there is no place in the whole world that we know of, where the interests of Jesus are in so much danger as they are in our own souls. Yet even we must be apostles ; wo unto us if we are not apostles ! We must be serving the souls of others, even while we have so much to do for our own. The Gospel is a law of love, and the Christian life is a life
36 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
of prayer. As the apostle tells us, we must make intercession for all sorts of men. Indeed, we shall never prosper with the work in our own souls, if we do not strive to advance the interests of Jesus in the souls of others. Many persons complain that they make no way in religion, and that they do not get on with the mortification of their evil passions, their sinful infirmi- ties, and their tiresome self-love. They are just where they were a year ago, and that is disheartening. This often comes to pass, because they are selfish, because they only care to stand by themselves. They do not think they hare any thing to do with the souls of others, or with the interests of Jesus, or with interces- sory prayer ; and so they keep on a low level, because they do nothing to merit higher graces. The Confra- ternity expects other things of us, and teaches us very difi'erently.
But it is important to remember that the interests of Jesus do not follow the same rule as the interests of the world. If we were not to remember this, we should soon be disheartened at the little good we seem to be doing. The interests of Jesus are for the most part invisible interests. We must take the power of prayer on faith. AYe shall never know till the last day all the answers there have been to our prayers, nor how they have told upon the Church for hundreds and hundreds of years. Look, for example, at St. Stephen's prayer, when he was stoned to death. It obtained the conver- sion of St. Paul, who was holding the clothes of Ste- phen's murderers. Only think of all St. Paul has done, and continues to do daily, and will go on doing till the end of the world ; and all he does St. Stephen does also, for it is all St. Stephen's prayer. So, perhaps,
THE INTERESTS OF JESUS. 37
somebody asks the prayers of the Confraternity that obstacles to his vocation to the religious life or the ecclesiastical state may be removed, and it is granted some Friday evening to our prayers. He becomes a priest : he saves hundreds of souls ; these souls save others, some by becoming priests themselves, some by becoming nuns, some by becoming holy fathers and mothers in the world ; and so the prayer goes on spreading and spreading, and may very likely be found actually at work in the dead of that night when all the earth will be awakened to see our Lord coming in the east.
Thus you must not look too much to visible fruits and to public results. What the world calls misfor- tunes often turn out to be the good fortune of Jesus. For instance, a man is suffering a great injustice be- cause he happens to be a Catholic. You pray for him. The injustice goes on ; the Protestants outwardly have the best of it, and are as cruel and triumphant-as ever. You fancy your prayer has not been answered. There could not be a greater mistake. Jesus wants to make that man a saint. It is better for him to be the help- less victim of that injustice. Meanwhile, because of your prayers, Jesus has granted him additional grace, which he has corresponded to. So that, actually, for your Pater and Ave he will be higher in heaven to all eternity than he would have been. There will be a gem sparkling in his crown that would not else have been there ; you will see it and admire it in heaven, and you will know it was your Pater and Ave that put it there. So it is with the Pope, and the Church, and religious orders, and in fact every thing that has to do with Jesus. His interests do not follow the rules of the 4
38 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
world, l3ut the rules of grace. We must measure them by different measures, and not use the measures of the world. Our measures, weights, and coinage must all be of the sanctuary. Jesus was never so triumphant as when He let Himself be nailed to the Cross ; yet the silly world thought it had it all its own way then, and had carried the day completely. It is of import- ance that you should bear this in mind. It is of faith that God always answers right prayers, and in a way and to a degree beyond our most enthusiastic expectar tions ; but He does not yet let us see how. We must take it on faith. We are quite sure that in the long run we shall not be disappointed.
We must still say a few words on the way in which it belongs to us to advance the interests of Jesus. There are many ways of doing this: good example, preaching, writing books, lending good books, arguing gently with people and persuading them, using your influence where you have any, and exercising your authority, as parents, and teachers, and masters. All these ways are good ; and if we truly love Jesus, we shall never neglect any one of them, according as oppor- tunity presents, and in keeping with the modest pro- priety of our condition and place in life. Members of the Confraternity may and should use these means as they can. But the way, the real way, of the Confra- ternity is one way, and only one. It is prayer.
People pray very little now-a-days. Indeed it is sad to see how little faith men put in prayer. They think they are to do every thing by their own clever- ness, or by bustle, fidget, and activity. They think the same things which made England a great proud rountry will suit the interests of Jesus, and advance
THE INTERESTS OP JESIJS. 39
His kingdom upon earth. Every thing in these days goes by sight, not by faith. If Catholics undertake any thing, and little seems to come of it, they are cast down, and think it has come to nought. A mission is given, one soul is saved, or one sin prevented ; it was a fortnight's work, and it cost ten pounds one way or another, AVhat a failure ! Yet to hinder that one sin from soiling His Father's glory, Jesus is ready to come down and be crucified again ! If we cannot publish figures, and show great results, as if we were so many Protestant members of a Bible Society, who have sent out, say a million bibles to China, and need not add the fact of the Chinese ladies of a whole province having made them into slippers, if we cannot satisfy the world, or what is called the English public, that we are doing a great work even in its discerning eyes, we all set to work to criticise each other, and sin ; we have public meetings, and sin ; we gossip, and sin ; we form angry committees, and sin ; we break up the work, and sin ; and then everybody writes a letter to the newspapers, and, as likely as not, sins again ; and after that we go on as before. We have tried to do a good work ; and because we tried on natural principles, it has ended in a number of additional sins. All this is for want of prayer, and for want of faith in the power of prayer. So remember — the Confraternity knows nothing of any way but prayer. We may be sure, that, in an unbelieving age and country, simple-hearted prayer will have great power with God, and an especial reward. They who remembered Sion, when others were forgetting her, were wonderfully remembered by the Lord : so let us pray in a nation that is forgetting prayer, and is trusting in itself, and leaning on an arm
40 THE INTERESTS OF JESUS.
of flesh, and God will be with us as He has never been before, and the interests of Jesus will prosper on the earth. Oh the interests of Jesus ! Would to God they burned at our hearts all the day long ! Life is short, and we have much to do, but prayer is mighty, and love stronger than death, and so let us all set to work, with singing and with joy, angels and men, sinners and saints, for the interests, the dear interests, the sole interests, of Jesus !
CHAPTKR II-
Spiptte toitl] Itsws,
^jn'-'*^*'^^^^^vS^HEN Jacob in his exile dwelt with '^^•^^^^^'^^ Laban, he fell in love with Rachel, Laban's daughter, and he said to her father, "I will serve thee seven years for Rachel, thy youngest daughter •" and the Holy Scripture adds, " So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed but a few days, for the greatness of his love." Now, do we not often find life long, and our days to pass heavily ? Is not perseverance a weary thing, and does not duty many a time turn out irksome and uninteresting? There is such a thing as wishing life over because of a holy impatience whereby we desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. Sin, and the power of sinning, and the chance of sin- ning, become intolerable to us, and we pine to be with God, as one pines for his absent love. But this is not what I mean. Life, and especially our spiritual life, often drags on heavily for very different reasons. It is weary work to be always fighting with our evil passions, and disheartening work to make so little way. Temptations tease us, and scruples worry us ; 4* 41
42 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
and to be dead, buried, and safe in purgatory, seems the limit to our peevish ambition. And why is this ? Because we do not serve Jesus for love. If we did, it would be with us as it was with Jacob. Years would seem but days, for the greatness of our love. Now let us see if it is, after all, so impossible for us to serve our dear Lord out of love.
We have laid it down as a rule, that the business of our Confraternity is to further the interests of Jesus, and that the especial way to further them is by prayer. Now, the very fact that we have chosen prayer as our especial way shows us something more. It is possible to serve God, and so to do something for the interests of Jesus, in a stiff, dry, awkward way ; just as we can do another a favour ungracefully, and as if it was an annoj^ance, only we cannot very well help ourselves. But it is not possible to serve God by prayer, or to advance the interests of Jesus by prayer, in this dry and unaffectionate way. Prayer with no heart in it is not prayer at all ; it is either irreverence or distrac- tion. Thus, you see, the Confraternity binds us in a sort of way to serve Jesus out of love ; and as we are very fond of our Confraternity, and wish it to prosper, this is another reason why we should see whether we cannot serve Jesus out of love. Oh, if only one of you could be persuaded to do this, what joy would there be in heaven, what delight to Mary, what consolation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus ! One more soul in the world that is serving Him for love ! Dear Lord ! it is worth a thousand years of penance to obtain for him this consolation ! The coloured sunsets and the starry heavens, the beautiful mountains and the shining seas, the fragrant woods and the painted flowers, they are
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 43
not half so beautiful as a soul that is serving Jesus out of love, in the vrear and tear of common, unpoetic life.
Every one would wish to be a Saint . This surely i3 true. They would wish to love God as much as the Saints did, and to have always that abounding and overflowing joy which the Saints always had, and to go straight to heaven without any delay in purgatory, and to be high up in heaven because of their exceeding love. We may kuow that we are very far indeed from being Saints, and we may fear there is very little chance of our ever becoming Saints. We may have no heart for their great austerities and bodily mortifi- cations, no courage for their valiant detachment from the world, no supernatural appetite for crosses and suf- ferings such as they had. Still, for all this, who would not wish to be a Saint, if he could ?
Now I am not going to bring before you any very hard duties, much less any severe austerities. I do not want to drive you beyond your grace ; but I wish you to observe this. Look at all the Saints in all ages, no matter what their history may be, or their lot in life. You will find, when you compare them one with another, that it was not their austerities that made them Saints. They difi'erTery much from one another; yet after all they are very like. Some have worked miracles all their lives long, like St. Joseph of Cuper- tino, the Franciscan ; and some hardly worked any at all, as was the case with St. Yincent of Paul ; and as to St. John the Baptist, of whom our Lord said such marvellous things, he never worked a single miracle. Some Saints have practised dreadful austerities, like St. Rose of Lima ; others have contented themselves
44 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
•with taking God's -will as it came in their way, and mortified their wills ; this was the case with St. Francis of Sales. But whether they did miracles or not, whether they practised bodily penances in excess or not, still they have a peculiar character of their own. They have certain tastes and inclinations, by which we could always know them if we met them. And the delightful thing is, that their chief peculiarities as Saints lie close to our own doors ; and we can make them our own without wonderful miracles or frighten ing penances.
I do not mean to say we can easily be equal to the Saints. No ! no ! but what I say is, that the ways in which they loved God and served the interests of Jesus, and the tastes which made them so dear to the Sacred Heart, are quite easily in our power, if we choose to adopt them. Nay, they will be ours at once, if we are only fervent members of the Confraternity. In a word, while the Saints differ in almost every thing else, there are three things in which they all agree ; and these are, 1. Eagerness for the glory of God ;
2. Touchiness about the interests of Jesus ; and
3. Anxiety for the salvation of souls.
But, before I say something about each of these three things, I must prevent your misunderstanding me. I should not wish any thing I have said to make any one of you despair of being Saints before you die. How- ever little the chance may be, I should not like to have hindered a Saint ; it would be any thing but advancing the dear interests of Jesus, which is the sole object of this little treatise. So you must let me tell you some- thing of one of the Saints, St. Giacinta Mariscotti, who was canonized by Pius VII. in 1807. She was an
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 45
Italian lady, and her distinguishing characteristic as a girl was a great love of fine clothes and gay orna- ments. Her father and mother sent her to a convent to be educated; but all the time she was there she would occupy herself with nothing but the foolish frivolities of the world. All her girlhood passed away in dissipation. Then she wanted to get married, and because her sister made a good match, and she none, she was filled with spite and envy. Her temper was completely soured, and she became so disagreeable that people could not bear to go near her.
Her father foolishly, or worse than foolishly, wished her to become a nun : and although she felt no voca- tion at all, she thought she might as well do that as any thing else ; and so she entered a convent of the third order of St. Francis in Viterbo. Neither her taste nor her character changed ; the convent seems to have been as lax as lax could be, and she did just what she pleased. Good St. Alphonso used to say that it was easier for a soul to be saved in the gayeties of the world, than in a relaxed religious order ; and few men have had such experience of those matters as he.
The first thing our Saint did was, out of her own money, to build a grand room for herself. She fur- nished it in first-rate style, and decorated it, her biographer says, quite sumptuously. She neglected the rule ; and such parts of it as she chose to keep, she kept, as may be supposed, in a very lukewarm and unsatisfactory way. She became more and more eaten up with vanity, and thought of nothing but herself all the day long. Queer training for a saint! In this way she lived nearly ten years. God then sent her a severe illness. She called for the Franciscan monk,
46 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
who was the confessor of the convent ; but when he beheld the magnificent furniture of her room he re- fused to hear her confession, and told her paradise was never meant for such as she was. " What," she cried, " and shall I not be saved V He told her the only chance was to beg pardon of God, to repair the scandal she had given, and to begin a new life. She burst into tears, and descending to the refectory, where all the nuns were assembled at the time, she prostrated herself before them, and begged forgiveness for the scandal she had given.
Yet for all this, no great change, or at least, no he- roic change, took place. She did not give up her fine things to the superioress ; but she gradually, quite gradually, improved in her way of life. Again and again it was necessary for God to send her illnesses, that she might at length give herself wholly up to grace ; and at last, remorse of conscience succeeded in its work by gentle pertinacity, sank deeper and deeper, till it lost itself in love, and she became a Saint.
Now this is a consoling history. We are too apt to think that Saints are people who have been extraordi- nary from their cradle upward, who, by special grace, have never lost their baptismal innocence, and have hardly felt the rebellion of evil passions, and certainly have not known the worst of all struggles, the fight with old sinful habits. Or if this be not the case, then we think of them as persons in whose behalf God has interfered in an extraordinary way, as in the conver- sion of St. Paul, and of St. Ignatius. And so we think it is out of all question our becoming Saints. But this story of St. Giacinta gives us quite a different view ; years of lukewarmness, venial sin, and unworthy vani-
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 47
ty are succeeded by a half-and-half conversion, fol- lowed up by some other little conversions afterward, just as it may have been "with so many of us.
See how this history illustrates an excellent and con- soling remark of Father Baker's. (Sancta Sophia, i. 175.) "However, as for souls that for external re- spects have embraced a religious life, let them not, therefore, in a desperate humour, conclude that no good can come to them by it so unworthily under- taken ; but rather hope that, by a special providence of God, they were even against their own intentions and wills brought into a course of life, to which if, however, afterward they will duly correspond, it will prove an infinite blessing unto them. -Tor such oft- times have proved great saints, after that God gave them light to see their perverse intentions, and grace to rectify them: by which means they, beginning in the fiesh, have ended in the spirit" In religious houses, or in the ecclesiastical state, or even in a devout life in the world, how many of us may take heart from these words, and this example, to make a fresh begin- ning, even though we may have begun and begun a score of times already ! All we want now is the like- ness of St. Giacinta's later years.
And how shall we reach to Giacinta's later years quietly and easily? AYhy, by cultivating the three characteristics of the saints mentioned before, eager- ness for the glory of God, touchiness about the inte- rests of Jesus, and anxiety for the salvation of souls ; for in these three things sympathy with Jesus consists, and sympathy is at once the fruit and food of love, and love is sanctity, and a saint is simply one who loves
48 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
Jesus above the common run of pious men, and has had unusual gifts given him in return.
1. Eagerness for the glory of God. It is the first and fundamental truth of religion, that we are here in the world for no other end than to glorify God by the salvation of our souls. This is our single purpose, our one work: all else is beside the mark. All other crea- tures either help us or hinder us in this one work, and must be dealt with accordingly. From this first prin- ciple, and by the two precepts of lore of God and love of our neighbour, we reach the duty of seeking the glory of God in the salvation of our neighbour's soul as well as of our own. Now, it is plain that if we love God we shall' be eager for His glory, and the more we love Him the more eager we shall be. What we have set our hearts upon we are sure to follow out hotly and perseveringly. When, then, a man comes to love God devoutly, he becomes what we call a man of one idea. He looks at every thing in one point of view. He con- siders trades and professions as so many necessary evils, as distracting him from his one work. He is seeking everywhere and in every thing the glory of God. It is his last thought at night, his first on waking. If he obtains any power, authority, or influ- ence, his first impulse is, How shall I use this to the glory of God ? If a calamity befalls him, this is the first c|uestion he asks of himself. If a sum of money is left him, this is the first idea it suggests to his mind. He interests himself about the Church and the poor, about education and crime, because these matters are full to overflowing of God's glory. For instance, a man of the world looks at the immense system of rail- ways and steam navigation, which now covers the
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 49
earth as with a net. He calculates its probable effect on 'governments, popular rights, science, literature, commerce, civilization. The problem fascinates him. The man of God looks on the same thing, and thinks how it will forward missionary enterprise, how it will bring Catholics together, how it will facilitate commu- nication with the Holy See, which is the freedom of the Church, and how in these, and many like ways, God will have glory out of it all. When a man's mind is engrossed in politics, whether in the govern- ment or in the opposition, every thing that happens comes before him simply with reference to his one ab- sorbing interest. The state of the crops, the chance of a bad harvest, our foreign relations, internal discon- tent, strikes of workmen, papal bulls — his view of them is, how will they affect the political party with which I am acting? So it is with the man who loves God. His one view of every thing, however unlikely, has to do with the glory of God. I do not mean to say that he is always thinking of it with an actual and present intention. That would be almost impos- sible, almost beyond the condition of man. But I mean that it is his most frequent thought, and that he recurs to it ever and again, as a man does to something he loves affectionately, and desires intensely.
Now this is not very hard. There is no austerity in it. We can begin it quietly, take it easily at first, and then let it grow upon us, just as habits will grow. We might make a little prayer to God every morning for love to seek His glory, and for light to find it all day long. We might renew our intention twice a day to seek His glory. We might ask it in communion, and at the end of our rosaries, and in our examen of
5
50 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
conscience. If we often forget it, never mind; it will come by use; and God Himself will begin to help us wonderfully, when we have persevered for a few months in the practice. But not before, remember; for this is His way, to wait awhile, and see if we perse- vere, though He is really helping us all the time, or else we never could persevere ; only He will help us in another way later on. This is not hard; yet it would bring us up many miles nearer the saints, and oh what interests of Jesus would it not advance, by the time a year was gone round !
2. Touchiness about the interests of Jesus. I use this word purposely, because it so exactly expresses my meaning, and I do not know any other word which expresses it so well. We know perfectly what it is to be touchy about our own interests, or the interests of those who are near and dear to us. We fire up at the hint or suspicion of an attack. We are always on the look out with a watchful jealousy, as if everybody we met had a design upon us. We are quick to complain, and quick to discern. Sometimes, if we do not take care, we judge others censoriously, or we lose our temper and speak rudely. Now apply all this to the interests of Jesus, and you will get a very fair idea of what it is to be a saint. Yet even good people do not understand it, and condemn it as extravagance and indiscretion ; simply because they do not know what it is to serve God with a service of love, A man who is thus touchy about the interests of Jesus, hears of some scandal, and it makes him perfectly miserable. He broods over it, day and night; he talks querulously about it ; it takes the sunshine out of his life for the time being. His friends cannot conceive why he should
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 51
make so much of it, or take it so to heart. It is no affair of his, and there is no blame attaching to him in the matter. They are ready to accuse him of affec- tation ; but they do not see that all his love is for Jesus, and that it is positive pain to him that his dear Lord's interests should be injured. They could fret for a month over being vexatiously entangled in a spiteful and unjust lawsuit; but what is that to the least hin- derance thrown in the way of the interests of Jesus ? Surely a man who does not see this can hardly be a Christian.
Another way in which this touchiness aboiat the interests of Jesus is shown, is in the delicate perception and keen abomination of heresy and false doctrine. The purity of the true faith is one of the very dearest interests of Jesus ; and, consequently, one who truly loves his Lord and Master is pained beyond the power of words by the expression of false doctrine, especially among Catholics. Opinions about our Lord's ignorance, or in depreciation of His grace, or in derogation of His Mother's honour, or lowering the sacraments, or dis- honouring ever so little the prerogatives of His Vicar upon earth — these things, merely in passing conversa- tion, sting him so that he feels even bodily suffering from them. Unreflecting people are almost scandalized at this ; yet if they heard the honour or chastity of their mother or sister called in question with coarse or wanton rudeness, there is hardly any violence short of bloodshed which would not be thought warrantable and creditable. Yet what is my mother's honour to the dignity of Jesus, or my sister's good name to the least tittle of our Blessed Lady's majesty? and is there not to me more of the mother's love, and of the sister^s
52 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
affection, in the See of Peter, than in all my flesli-and- "blood relations put together ? I should not be iDOund to die, to seal with my blood my conviction of my mother's honour ; but I should be a wretch if I shrank from dying for the lawful honour of the Holy See. Thus you will not find a single saint who has not cherished this pain of love in his heart of hearts, this inability to endure the sound of heresy or false doctrine ; and where this is not, then, as sure as the sun is in the heavens, the love of Jesus is but poor and weak in the heart of man.
The same touchiness may be shown, as occasion requires, about all the interests of Jesus mentioned in the last chapter. One remark, however, must be made. It will often happen when a man's love of our Lord is beyond the formed habits of virtue he may have at the moment, that he is indiscreet, or impatient, or rude, or bitter. He suspects where there is no ground for suspicion, and he does not bear with the slowness or coldness of others, as he would do if the habit of charity were more perfectly formed in him. This often brings discredit on devotion ; for there are no persons judged with more unfeeling rigour than those who make profession of a devout life. But they must have their faults and imperfections ; they must have the less lovely stages of the spiritual life to pass through ; and it must be their consolation that many a time when men blame them, Jesus does not : and the very imperfections of their young love are dear to Him, while the sage criticism and pompous moderation of their censors are hateful in His eyes.
Now, it would not be hard to cultivate this touchi- ness about the interests of Jesus ; and yet it is one of
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 53
the chief instincts of the saints. Is it not worth while trying? Can there be a pleasure in life so great as lov- ing Jesus and serving Him for love ? We may begin to-day : there is no hardship in it ; no sudden or vio- lent change which we need to make in our lives ; we have only got to think a little more about love, and to ask for more love, and then we are fairly on the road. With- out any tie or obligation, the Confraternity enables us to start at once.
3. Anxiety for the salvation of souls. This is the third and last instinct of the saints which puts us in sympathy with Jesus. The world and the material in- terests of the world are all against us. They carry us away. What we see is so much more impressive than what we believe. Yet Jesus came into the world for the saving of souls ; He died for them ; He shed His Precious Blood for them. In proportion as souls are saved His interests prosper ; in proportion as they are lost, His interests as the Saviour of souls are injured. The soul is the only thing worth caring for. Only think what it is to be lost, lost eternally ! Who can fathom the horror of it? AYho can rightly picture to himself the utterness of the ruin, the breadth of the wretched- ness, the unendurableness of the torture, the helpless wildness of the despair ? Yet St. Theresa saw the souls of men flocking daily through the doors of hell, like the showers of dry leaves which the wind drives about in autumn. And Jesus hung His three hours upon the Cross for every one of those lost souls ! And they might all have been now gleaming bright and beautiful in the courts of heaven ! And they loved us, perhaps, and we loved them, and there was much to love in them ! Generous, kind, unselfish, they once were ; but
54 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
they loved the Trorld, and were ruled by their own pas- sions, and, though they hardly thought of it, they cru- cified our Lord afresh. And now they are lost — lost eternally !
"What wonder His servants should yearn for those over whom Jesus yearned himself ! Thus it is they are always alert about missions, schools, religious orders, retreats, indulgences, and jubilees. They are full of plans, or, if not of plans, at least of prayers. They care for little else but souls. They sacrifice all for souls. No matter what rebuffs they meet with, what disap- pointments they find, or into what mistakes they fall at first. They are all for souls. They begin afresh every day to plan and plot for souls. They are not cast down because they do not see clearly there will be mo- ney or men to go on with all the good works they plan ; but their consolation is, that all work for souls is com- plete work by itself, and for as long as it lasts ; because all dispensing of grace and of the Precious Blood is a desirable and blessed thing in itself. Hence, the Church, the mother of souls, encourages the temporary stimulants of retreats, missions, and jubilees ; because all these things are complete by themselves and for the time. While some talk and take views, and criticise, and despond, and weaken the hands and hearts of others, those who love Jesus work on in simplicity, not thinking of the morrow.
"Volumes might be written about this passion for souls. It must come where there is a true love of Je- sus. It is not the rule for Peter only, but for all who love. "When thou art converted, confirm thy brethren, and, Lovest thou Me more than these ? Feed my sheep. And have not we, each of us, many little ways by
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 55
which we can help in the saving of souls ? And in in- tercession, at least, is not the whole Church open to tho genial and immense influence of our prayers, as much as it is to the Pope himself?
The saints, then, are made up chiefly of these three things : — Eagerness for the glory of God, — touchiness about the interests of Jesus, — and anxiety for the sal- vation of souls. These three things make a most beautiful and angelic character, and go further than any thing else to assure us of our predestination. They are the three things which the Confraternity helps to form in us. Yet we have seen how easy they are, if only we will learn to love Jesus, and to serve Him for love. There is neither sex, nor age, nor station which is not equally convenient for the practice of these three things. And what a difference it would make in the world if a few people would take them up seriously and carry them out quietly in daily life and in daily prayer.
When a man dies in England, his friends often say of him, in praise of his diligence, energy, and concen- tration : Well, he lived simply to carry through that important line of railway ; or — his only object was to extort from the government a more scientific education for the people ; or — he devoted himself to the cause of Free-trade ; or — he was a martyr to his exertions in behalf of Protection. It was his one idea ; it grew with his growth ; he could think of nothing else ; he spared neither time nor expense to advance ever so little his favourite cause, and the interest which he had wedded; it was his monomania. He did his work in his day, and he did it well, because he was heart and soul in it; and the world is in debt to him for it. Now, why should it not be said of us : — Well, he is gone ; he was a man
56 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
of one idea ; he cared for nothing but that God's king- dom should come, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He was eaten up with this ; waking or sleeping, it was always upon him ; nothing daunted him ; he spared neither time nor expense for his hobby ; and when neither time nor money were at his disposal, he besieged heaven with prayers. He took no interest in any thing else ; it was meat, and drink to him, audit quite mastered him ; and now he is gone. Yes ! he is gone ; but whereas the other man left behind him his railway and his cheap bread, our friend has taken all his love, and pains, and prayers, away with him to the judgment-seat of Jesus ; and what they have done for him there eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor man's heart conceived.
Now, do think of these three things, these easy in- stincts of the saints, this serving Jesus out of love. Would you like to see how they work in a good man's heart, even in very little matters ? There was an old Spanish Jesuit, who could not for the life of him make up his mind whether it was better to gain an indul- gence for the soul in purgatory that was most neglected and forgotten, or for the soul that was nearest to its re- lease and entrance into glory. There was apuzzle ; both were sweet acts of charity, but which was the sweetest ? which would Jesus most approve? He was such a kind-hearted man, that good father, that he inclined very much to the poor, neglected soul, just because it was so neglected ; it went to his heart to pass over that forgotten soul. But at last he decided in favour of the other ; and now see the reasons. Although it seems the greater mercy to offer it for the other soul, because it is most in want, seeing that it is in greater misery;
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 57
notwithstanding, charity is a greater virtue than mercy, and it is a greater act of charity to offer the indulgence for the soul that was most just and loved God most, looking simply to the greater glory of the Divine Ma- jesty as the Creator of that soul ; for it is nearest to its entry into heaven, where it will at once begin to glorify God immensely by its praises and its bliss. Here was eagerness for the glory of God. Again, the soul is not properly the full conquest of Jesus till it is safely landed in heaven, and our dear Redeemer presents it to the Eternal Father as a trophy of His Sacred Pas- sion ; and was it not better to keep the poor, neglected soul waiting in purgatory than to keep Jesus waiting in heaven ? and besides, all this sadness about passing over the forgotten soul, would it not make Jesus smile and something would be done for that poor soul ? Here was touchiness about the interests of Jesus. And fur- thermore, thought our good old Jesuit, the sooner this soul, that is so near heaven, gets into heaven, the sooner will it begin to gain all manner of graces from God for my soul, and for the souls of sinners upon earth. Here was anxiety for the salvation of souls. And so away went the indulgence to the soul that was nearest its release, not without a very fervent sigh, and a very wistful look to Mary, and a comfortable suspicion that Jesus would do something extra for the poor forgotten soul.
The decision of the good father seems to have high authority; for among the revelations made to Sister Francesca of the Blessed Sacrament, a Spanish The- resian nun, it was told her that immense numbers of souls issued from purgatory on the evening of All Souls' Day ; and that they were mostly those who were
58 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS;
near to glory, among -whom God distributed the suf- frages of the Universal Church on that day.* Yet, on the other hand, we know that St. Vincent of Paul's special devotion was to the most destitute soul.f But then destitute souls were his line; he was their pro- perty and possession.
The Jesuit had been carefully taught that he was to have a reason for every thing he did. I do not say you are bound to be so particular ; but anyhow, it shows how our three things can insinuate themselves into a pious mind, and influence its minutest actions and most secret devotions. And this is the simple object of this treatise. I want to collect for you from the lives of the saints and the works of spiritual writers a number of easy and interesting practices, which will help you to form these three things in your souls, so as to be advancing the interests of our dear Lord every hour of your lives, and yet all the while, in the pleasantest manner possible, becoming something like saints your- selves.
You can take your choice of these practices. None of them are of any obligation. All is free. You are not even bound to choose, if you choose at all, the highest, best, and most perfect : for it is quite possible such would not be best for you. Take what is most to your taste ; there is no need to turn your devotions into mortifications. This is one of the uncatholic no- tions converts should take pains to drive out of their heads. It sounds fine, but it works ill, and it ends in carelessness and lax ways. I want to beguile you into
* Vit. 171.
fPeint parses Ecrits, p. 258.
SYiMPATHY WITH JESUS. 59
serving Jesus out of love, and so I want you to enjoy yourselves and follow your bent in your devotions.
Before concluding this chapter, I am so anxious to get your minds full of the principles I have been lay- ing down, that I will finish by illustrating them in a question familiar to you all. Some people, you know, give all their indulgences to the souls in purgatory ; others keep them all to themselves ; and one party has no right to interfere with the other. What business has any one to say we are not free to do Avhat the Church says we are free to do ? Nevertheless, I am going to take a side in this matter for the moment ; it will throw great light on the three things I am advo- cating ; and I shall keep strictly to what theologians and spiritual writers have said.
Grace is such a great thing that we ought to try to increase it in all possible ways ; and there are few ways in which we can increase it more rapidly than by turning satisfaction into merit. This is done b}'- gain- ing indulgences for the souls in purgatory. By this devotion we acquire great spiritual treasures, and it is acceptable to God while it is profitable to ourselves. Let us run through some of the fruits of this devotion, so as to animate ourselves to be more liberal toward these daughters of God and spouses of the Holy Ghost, to assist them with prayers, and with the satisfaction of our good works, ofiering it all for them without fear- ing that we shall thereby lose any of it. In truth he will gain immensely who shall not reserve to himself any part of his satisfaction, or any of his indulgences, but shall ofi'er them all for the holy spouses of our dear Redeemer who are detained in those terrible pains.
The first fruit is the great increase of our merits by
60 SY3IPATHY WITH JESUS.
this ; for, of th,e three things -which the good works of the just include, merit, impetration, and satisfaction, the greatest of all is merit ; for by it we become more acceptable to God, and more His friends, receiving greater grace, and so acquiring a new title to greater glory. Doubtless, then, if a man could turn all the satisfaction of his good works into so much fresh merit, over and above the merit there was there before, he would be a gainer by it, and for this reason : — the glory of the blessed is without comparison a greater good than the pains of purgatory are an evil ; and so the right to greater glory is a better thing than the right to loss pain. He, then, who offers the satisfac- tion of his good works and his indulgences for the soul in purgatory, does just this: — he converts his satisfac- tion into merit. In this charity is an heroic act of great virtue, by which he will acquire eternal life by means of that satisfaction turned into merits which is no help at all as simple satisfaction toward eternal life. As satisfaction, it would not have helped him one iota to that, but he makes it do so by turning it into merit, and at the same time helping others. Now this deserves reflection ; for, besides the fact that glory is a greater good than purgatory is an evil, we must remember that the increase of glory is a thing which is eternal, whereas the lightening of purgatory is only temporal, for purgatory itself is merel}^ temporal ; so that the distance between the increase of glory and the lightening of purgatory is as good as infinite. And yet to enjoy eternal goods, even in the very lowest degree, would be cheaply purchased by the endurance of the greatest temporal evils. We must add to this, that v/e ought in all things to do that which is most
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. Gl
pleasing in the sight of God, not seeking our own in- terest or convenience, but His greater good pleasure. To please God is a better thing than to avoid suffer- ing ; yet a man who keeps his satisfaction and indul- gences to himself, does so from a desire of avoiding suffering ; whereas, he who offers them all for the souls in purgatory thereby makes himself dearer to God, by a refinement of love in this heroic exercise of mercy and charity, which he was not bound to, but does out of the sweet freedom of his own will.
The suffering of the holy souls is without any gain or profit to themselves, whereby they can increase their merits, and so long as they are detained in purgatory, so long is the heavenly Jerusalem deprived of her citi- zens, and the Church upon earth of new protectors and advocates with God. Hence^xjomes another fruit of this devotion. The soul that we release from purgatory is laid under a particular obligation to us, both because of the singular benefit it receives from entering all the sooner into glory, and also because of the tremendous sufferings from which it is delivered. Thus it is bound to obtain for its benefactors perpetual graces and blessings from God. The blessed know that the good they have received is infinite, and being most grateful, they strive to show gratitude proportionate to the greatness of their enjoyment. Thus he who gives his indulgences to the holy souls will have so many agents in the court of heaven to look after his eternal inte- rests ; and it is a greater good for a man to secure his salvation in this life through the graces obtained for him by this multitude of heavenly protectors, than to avoid the risk of being somewhat longer in purgatory, because he has given away his satisfaction and indul-
6
62" SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
gences. But we gain more than the friendship of the souls we deliver ; we gain the love of their guardian angels, and of the saints to whom those souls Avere specially devoted ; and we become also more dear to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, because of His pleasure at the release of His dear spouse and her entry into His celestial joy.
But there is a third fruit of this devotion which is very much to our purpose. It is a great thing to have some one in heaven who shall love, praise, and glorify God on our behalf. He who loves God fervently and tenderly can never rest without doing all he can that the infinite Majesty of God should be exalted and glo- rified. Yet with all the miseries and sins of this life, we cannot magnify and adore that most dear Majesty, as the blessed can in heaven. Oh, then, the joy and consolation to think that others, whom we have re- leased from purgatory, are doing this great work for us in heaven, and that, while we are still here, they have begun their praise already ! Surely there can be no soul that has been fortunate enough to reach pur- gatory, which is not holier than ours, and more fitted to glorify God. And if so, then have we ourselves already put one in heaven who shall give God greater glory than we should do if we were there ourselves. While we are eating, drinking, sleeping, toiling, here on earth, — there in heaven, — refreshing thought ! most solid consolation ! — is the unsleeping soul, or, please God, the many unsleeping souls, whom we have hastened thither, worshipping and exalting the beau- tiful Majesty of the Most High, unspeakably, inces- santly.
This is not all : there is a fourth trait of this gene-
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 63
rous devotion. "\Ye not only gain invaluable treasures for ourselves, but for others also ; for -we cause great joy in the Church, both militant and triumphant. Great is the feast in heaven as the number of its citizens is increased ; for if there is joy there over one sinner who does penance, and yet he can return to his sin again, what must the joy be over that new citizen who can sin no more ? Its guardian angel, too, rejoices, and receives a thousand congratulations from the celestial spirits at the successful issue of his guardian- ship. There is joy also among the Saints to whom the soul was specially devoted, and among his relatives and friends, and in the choir to which he is aggre- gated. Our Lady, too, rejoices at the success of her multiplied intercessions ; while Jesus reaps the har- vest of His Precious Blood with love and with re- joicing. The Holy Ghost vouchsafes to joy over the triumph of His gifts and countless inspirations ; and the Eternal Father, in the perfection of His chosen creature, whom he has borne with so long and so com- passionately. Neither is the Church Militant less in- terested in this joy. She has gained a new advocate. The relatives, friends, family, community, country, of that soul have especial reason to rejoice. Xay, all the predestinated, and, indeed, all nature, have cause of joy that another creature has entered into the joy of its Creator.
But there is a fifth fruit of this devotion. Love brooks no delay. Shall a treasure that can do won- ders for the glory of God and the interests of Jesus stand idle, it may be, for years ? At present we may be in no want of our satisfactions and our indulgences. And if they go into the treasury of the Church, who
64 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
knoAYS how many years may elapse before they are used, even if De Lugo's theory be true, that all the satisfac- tions of the Saints will certainly be used before the day of judgment?* Shall not this talent then be used for God at once, by at once releasing souls from purgatory, •who may begin, perhaps this very night, their sweet sacrifice of everlasting praise ?
Nay, last of all, what we are giving away comes back to VIS most abundantly, and this is the sixth fruit of this devotion. First of all, in this very act of such great charity and generosity, there is satisfaction for our sins ; for if alms given to relieve bodily wants satisfy above most other good works, what will not spiritual alms do ? Secondly, he who loses any thing for the glory of God receives at last a hundred-fold ; and He will either give us such grace as that we shall need little purgatory, or He will inspire others to pray for us when we are there, so that, if we had kept our indulgences to ourselves, we might have been long in those fires ; whereas if God sets many to gain indul- gences for us, we shall enter much sooner into glory. It is an axiom that no one loses who loses for God. And when we are in purgatory, the blessed, who by our means went sooner into heaven, will look upon us as their benefactors, and on our release as a debt of justice. Nay, it is not they only who will acknowledge the debt, but our dear Lord also.
Thus to give all our satisfactions and indulgences to the souls in purgatory is so far from being contrary to
* The doctrine of this passage, as it stood in the first edition, was based on a doubtful passage of Nieremberg, " Avarizia Santa," cap. 27. It has now been corrected by the doctrine of De Lugo, De Sac. Poenit. DL'jp. 26, sec. 2, n. 24.
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 65
the right order of charity, that it is our best interest to do so. It is a devotion quite teeming with God's glory, and the manifold interests of Jesus, and the love of souls ; and it embraces at once the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. Let us bless God that He has in His mysterious libe- rality allowed us this inestimable favour of doing what we will with our satisfactions and indulgences ; so that, being our own, and at our free disposal, we may rejoice our hearts in thus employing them to His greater glory and sweeter praise.
See how far some have gone, whose praise is in all the Churches. Father Ferdinand de Monroy, a most apostolic man, at the hour of death, made in writing a donation and transfer to the souls in purgatory of all the masses that should be said for him after he was dead, of all the penances offered up for him, and all the indulgences gained for him. He might well make the donation, for little need of such things had one who loved God so tenderly, and had wedded the in- terests of Jesus so utterly, as this very action shows he must have done. " Love is strong as death : many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods drown it ; if a man should give all the substance of his house for love, he shall despise it as nothing.'^*
Now you see exactly what it is I want of you. You must serve Jesus in some way or other ; else you would not save your soul. You are absolutely de- pendent upon Him. You cannot do without His faith, His life. His death. His Blood, His Church, His Sacra- ments. You cannot take a step toward heaven, but
* Cant. viii. 6, 7.
66 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
by Him. Nothing that you think, or do, or say, is ■worth any thing until His worth has touched it. De- pendence cannot be conceived more utter and absolute, nor more incessant and indispensable, than is your dependence upon him. Thus in some -way or other you must serve Jesus. The question is whether it is not best to serve Him out of love. But has your reli- gion been a service of love hitherto ? Or have you doled out your duties to Him, as a poor man pays a debt to a rich creditor, looking him in the face between each shilling to see if he really intends to forget his poverty, and take the full amount of his debt? Has not the problem been to find out the least which you must do to gain heaven ? Weighing commandments, clipping precepts, interpreting rules, begging dispensa- tions— is not this the kind of thing you have called your religion, your worship of an Incarnate God, be- side Himself with love, and hanging bleeding on a Cross ?
Now, I maintain to serve Jesus out of love is so much easier than all this. Nothing is easy, which we are not happy while we are doing. Have you been happy in your religion ? Far from it ! It has been a simple burden to you. If it had not been for heaven and hell, you would have made short work of it long since. But heaven and hell are facts : there they are ; and there is no help for us. As, then, we must be religious, I am for a happy religion. I see no use in an unhappy one, if God gives me my choice. But He has done more than that. He wishes me to be happy in my religion. Nay, He wishes my religion to be the happiness and sunshine of my life. Now a happy religion means a religion of love. Every thing comes
SYMPATHY WITH JESUS. 67
easy to love. Thus, I am dependent for my happiness on no one but Jesus. My religion makes me happy all the day long. If serving Jesus out of love were some prodigiously difficult thing, like the contempla- tion of the saints, or their austerities, then it would be another matter. But the fact is, it is nothing of the kind. To serve God because you are afraid of going to hell, and wish to go to heaven, is a great blessing, and a supernatural work ; but it is very diffi- cult. Whereas, to serve God because you love Him is so easy that it is hard to account for so many men in the world neglecting to do it. Stupid souls, so miracu- lously blind !
And what is a further blessing is, that what makes you happy makes our dearest Lord happy also : and the thought of this again makes us so happy, that we can hardly contain ourselves, and then that again makes Him happier still. And thus religion gets sweeter and sweeter. Life is one long joy, because the "Will of God is always being done in it, and the glory of God always being got from it. You become identi- fied with the interests of Jesus ; you wed them as if they were your own, as indeed they are. His spirit steals into you, and sets up a little throne in your heart, and crowns itself, and then most sweetly pro- claims itself king. It gained the crown by a dear con- spiracy: you never suspected what divine love was about all the while. But so it is. God's glory becomes dear to you ; you get quite touchy about our Lord, for He is become the apple of your eye ; and you are drawn to save souls, because it is what He is always doing, and so you get an instinct and a taste for it yourself. And so it all goes on ; and so you live ; yet not you,
68 SYMPATHY WITH JESUS.
but Christ lives in you ; and so you die. You never suspect you are a saint, or any thing approaching one. Your life is hid with Christ in God, and hid from no one more than from yourself. You a saint indeed ! Your humility would either laugh, or be frightened at the bare thought. But, oh the depth of the mercies of Jesus ! What will be your surprise at His judgment- seat, to hear the sweet sentence, to see the bright crown ! AVhy, you will almost argue against your own salvation! Our Lord makes the elect do so in the Gospel: Lord, when saw we Thee hungry, and fed Thee ? When saw we Thee thirsty, and gave Thee drink ? They cannot make it out. In all their love for Jesus, they never dreamed it was so great a thing as this. Ah ! only serve Jesus out of love ! You can- not beat God in the strife of love ! Only serve Jesus out of love, — and while your eyes are yet unclosed, before the whiteness of death is. yet settled on your face, or those around you sure that that last gentle breathing was indeed your last. Oh what an un- speakable surprise will you have had at the judgment- seat of your dearest Love, while the songs of heaven are breaking on your ears, and the glory of God is dawning on your eyes, to fade away no more for ever !
CHAPTER III.
fflljj mflwntjeii 1)1 Sitt.
T is said of one of the first fathers of the Oratory, the companion of St. Philip, that he used to prefer those writers on grace who made most of God's sovereignty and least of man's free-will. This re- mark reveals to us his whole cha- racier. It is not so much an ex- pression of his being a faithful disci- ple of St. Thomas in the particular theo- logical question alluded to, as a dis- closure of his peculiar spiritual life, and the bent of his devotion. He had a ruling passion which was more to him than the intrinsic merits of the controversy. He had got a habit of taking God's side in every thing, and of always looking at things from God's point of view. And this is ex- actly what I am venturing to recommend to you.
A false doctrine is odious, because it is untrue ; it is odious also because it gives scandal, or backens devo- tion, or injures souls. On all these grounds good men hate it. But those who love God with a very tender
70 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
and delicate love do not think of it so much in these respects, as because God's honour is wounded by it. God's honour is their first thought. They range them- selves at once on God's side. So again, a good man is overwhelmed by an unjust persecution or a cruel ca- lumny. These men are not without the most tender sympathy and the most generous self-sacrifice for the sufi'erer. But their first thought, their strongest thought, their abiding thought, is the wound inflicted on God's honour by tlie persecution of His servant, and of the sin almost necessarily committed by the per- secutors. So in cases of spiritual destitution, or of great public sins, or of important political changes, or of local calamities, or of Catholic triumphs, or of getting souls out of purgatory, these men by an instantaneous instinct feel and find where God's glory is touched, and are at once so absorbed in it, that they often seem unafi'ectionate or ungenerous, or*incordialin sorrowing and rejoicing with others ; though it is not really so in their hearts.
Kovf, this taking God's side on every occasion may easily be formed in us as a habit, by time, prayer, and quiet assiduity in devotion ; and surely it is a con- siderable help to us in loving and serving God. It is a great thing gradually to grow in the convictioji that there is no real sorrow in the world but sin ; that we have no real enemy but sin ; and that warfare with sin, in others as well as in ourselves, in prayer as well as in action, is just the one work we have to do, and is just the one work which is worth doing. And it is this conviction which comes of our always taking God's side, and which when it has once come causes us to persevere all the more steadfastly in taking that side. As crea-
LOVE AVOUNDED BY SIN. 71
tures, we are in our proper place when we are taking the side of our Creator, defending His interests, pro- tecting His majesty, advancing His glory. There is happiness in the darkest lot, peace in the wildest trouble, when we are thus engaged.
But God is not our Creator only ; He is our Father also. Oh that we all felt the importance of this ! The man who serves God as his Creator, is a very different character from the man who serves Him as his Father. We do not serve God out of love, because we have not a loving idea of God. We are dry, cold, grudging, with Him, because we will persist in looking at Him only as our Lawgiver, or Master, or Sovereign, or Judge. Far more persons would try to go on to per- fection, far more would persevere in it, there would be a far less wide gulf between saints and common Catho- lics, if only we were all agreed to serve God as our Father, and to look upon Him as our Father. It is astonishing what an amount of jealous and unkindly feeling there is even among good people toward God, His sovereignty and His majesty. It is at the root of all the unhappiness and want of comfort in religious duties. It brings with it all sorts of temptations against the faith, and starts all manner of scruples in the mind, which hamper the tenderness of devotion, and freeze the gay spirit of loving mortification. Why, it is the very sunshine of life to believe and feel at every turn that God is our Father, and is acting to us out of a Father's love and in a Father's way !
See what pains God has been pleased to take to pre- vent this unkindly view of Him on the part of His children. He has committed all judgment to the Son. It is our dear Lord, as man, who is to judge us at the
72 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
last. Our very last appeal is to His sacred Human Heart. When God invites His rebellious people to return to Him, by the mouth of Jeremias, He sums up all their sins, and then pleads so compassionately, rather for Himself than with them ;* *' Therefore, at the least, from this time call to me, Thou art my Father." The apostle sums up the whole work of the Gospel in this very thing, that we have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father ; and when our Lord teaches us to pray, it is by the name of Father that He bids us call on God. Nay, He has provided one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, that of Piety, for the express purpose of enabling us to exercise, even in an heroic degree, a really filial tender- ness toward God. This gift is defined to be an habitual disposition which the Holy Ghost infuses into the soul to excite in us a filial afiection toward God, and St. Thomas tells us,t that works done to God as our Father, are more meritorious than works done to Him as our Creator, because the motive is more excellent. Of what importance saintly men considered this sweet filial feeling toward God, is shown very remarkably by an observation which Cardinal Bellar- mine made when he visited France. He said he was struck with the devout piety of the French, in this sense of the word piety, and that the people seemed to him in consequence better Catholics than the Italians. So at least he is quoted by Lallemant.
St. Paul, not content with the passage already cited from the Epistle to the Romans, J repeats almost the same words to the Galatians.^ He speaks as if, under
*Jer. iii. 4. t2.2dae.q.l21. jTiu.l5. gCap.ir.
LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN. 73
the old dispensation, God had not, so to say, succeeded in persuading the Jews to look upon Him as their Father, and that, therefore, " when the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, saying, Abba, Father. Therefore, now he is not a servant, but a son." Yet even in the Old Testament, who does not remember the pathetic language of Israel? *' Thou art our Father, and Abraham has not known us, and Israel hath been ignorant of us ; Thou, 0 Lord, art our Father, our Eedeemer; from everlasting is Thy Name."*
Lancisius, in his Treatise on the Presence of God,f gives a number of acts of love, addressing God as "My most holy Lord and dearest Father," and at the end he puts into the mouth of an objector this question, " Why in these interior acts of love do you add the name of Father?" He replies that it is for four reasons. First, because it is desirable that such acts of love should be elicited from the soul, not merely by the affections of humility and religion implied in the title of Lord, but by an affectionate filial feeling toward Him. Secondly, because of the greater merit thus acquired, according to the doctrine of St. Thomas quoted above. " It is more excellent," says the an- gelic doctor, " to worship God as our Father, than to worship Him as our Creator and Lord." And St. LeoJ says, " Great is the sacrament of this privilege, and
* Isaias Ixiii. 16. f ii. 66. J Serm. ri. de Xativ.
7
74 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
this gift exceeds all gifts, that God should call mau son, and that man should call God Father/' Thirdly, "because the remembrance that God is our Father excites confidence in us ; and it is on this account, says TertuUian, St. Cyprian, and St. Chrysostom, that the Lord's prayer begins, Our Father; for, to quote St. Thomas* again, "confidence is chiefly excited in us by considering God's love toward us, whereby He wishes us good things, and on which account we call Him Father." Fourthly, " we call Him Father," says St. Augustine, " that by the kind name of Father we may win His favour, and by that appellation move Him to grant what we are asking."
There is a very beautiful passage in the revelations of St. Gertrude,! showing how acceptable with God are titles of reverent yet familiar endearment. Our Lord told her that as often as any one says to God, my Love or my Sweetest, or, my best Beloved, and the like, with a devout intention, he receives a pledge of his salvation, in virtue of which, if he perseveres, he shall receive in heaven a special privilege of the same sort as the special grace which St. John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple, had on earth.
Now, if we fully feel that God is our Father, if our daily way of thinking of God, and of approaching Him, is as our most dear Father, it must soon come to pass that there will be nothing on earth half so dear to us as His majesty and honour. We should feel as if it belonged to us, and was really our own, and we should take up any oSence against it as warmly as we should now take up an injustice toward ourselves. But it is
* 2. 2dae q. 83. f 1. 3. c. 9.
LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN. 75
sin which offends Him ; and therefore it would be sin which we should feel to be our one enemy, our only care, our single misery on earth, whether it were in ourselves or in others. Yes ; other men's sins would cease to be matters of indifference to us, because they are offences against the Majesty of God. We should fully enter into that constant cry of St. Philip, — Only let there be no sin ! only let there be no sin !
When we are full of this view of God, not a day goes by without our detecting something fatherly in Him which we never .observed before. Prayer changes, and sacraments accomplish greater things than hereto- fore. Every thing about us alters by degrees. Duties grow into privileges ; penances brighten up into plea- sures ; pains soften the heart with a delicious humility, and sorrows are heavenly presences. Work becomes rest, and weariness of limb and brain almost touches on the sweet languor of contemplation. It is as if earth were making itself into heaven; and at the com- monest sights and sounds something tingles in our hearts as if God were just on the point of speaking or appearing. What another thing is life when we have found out our Father ; and if we work, it is beneath His eye, and if we play, it is in the light and encourage- ment of His smile. Earth's sunshine is heaven's radi- ance, and the stars of night as if the beginnings of the Beatific Vision ; so soft, so sweet, so gentle, so repose- ful, so almost infinite have all things become, because we have found our Father in our God.
AVhen we love God, we rejoice that He is God, that He is so good and perfect as He is. We call this feel- ing the love of complacency. We transfer His joy to ourselves; we rejoice in it as if it were our own,
76 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
simply because we love Him. Jacob would not believe in Joseph's glory, but* seeing him, he fell upon his neck, and embracing him, he said. Now shall I die with joy, because I have seen thy face, and leave thee alive. But this is not the only office of love. If it makes us happy because the Object of our love is happy, by transferring His happiness into our hearts, and so making his interests our own, the same love will equally make us sorrowful, because the Object of our love is wronged and oppressed, by transferring His injury to ourselves, and placing His wrongs in our hearts, as if they were rather ours than His. What I mean is this, that to sorrow over the sins of others is no far-fetched devotion, or subtle refinement of reli- gious feeling ; but that it follows inevitably upon the love of God. Where there is no such sorrow for sin, either in ourselves or others, there is no love of God ; and in proportion to the amount of love will the degree of sorrow be. What was it that made our Blessed Lady's dolours more intolerable than all the tortures of the martyrs, but that her love exceeded all the martyrs' love ? Thus, if God is wronged and outraged, we take the wrong into our hearts, and it wounds us by means of the love we have for Him.
Nay, as sympathy and compassion are feelings more easily excited in us than those of complacency, it seems as if God wished to cultivate what theologians call the love of condolence, even more than of complacency. This is one reason why devotion to the Passion is the great popular devotion of the whole Church. It may also be a reason why our Lord was pleased to suffer so
* Gen. xlYi.
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much more than He need have done, and with so many unnecessary touching circumstances, that to condole with Him in His Passion might be all the easier, and so He might have more of our poor love. Neither does it require any rare amount of love to feel this sa- cred compassion. The women of Jerusalem were no saints, yet they wept over Him in the way of the Cross. JoVs friends were the meanest-hearted of men, yet even compassion mastered their pompous dryness and unamiable pedantry. What we want of all things is our hearts softening, and sorrow softens them sooner and more effectually than joy.
I have no hope we shall get any further loves into our heart, if we do not first domesticate this love of condolence there. We do not find such great fault with a man who does not joy in another's joy, as we do with him who grieves not with another's grief. Sym- pathy belongs to our position in the world, and there is hope for the most sinful heart, if it only keeps its quick and affectionate sympathies. Out of all evil comes good ; and so from sin and the Passion of our dear Lord, as from two perennial fountains, flows this blessed love of condolence in our hearts. And see what this love can do ! Mary's compassion is said, in a certain sense, to have co-operated with our Blessed Lord's Passion in the saving of the world. How many instances we have on record of God showing mercy to sinners, just because they kept up some tri- fling tender memory of His loving Passion ! We must grieve with Him now, if we would rejoice with Him hereafter. I wish you would reflect on this. I do not think you keep it in mind as you ought, or appreciate its value. St. Francis of Sales says, that the ardent 7*
78 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
desire of our Saviour to enter our souls by this dolor- ous love is inexplicable. Here then, is a svreet way of loving Him, a sweet vs^ay of giving Him greater glory. You vrill not refuse Him when it is so easy. I am sure you love Him. I am sure you wish to love Him more. I will not believe that it is not so. Dear Lord ! who can help loving Him ? Is there such a thing as a heart that does not love Him ? But it is not our business now to go in search of such strange things, or to see if such dreadful wonders exist upon the earth. We love Him ; blessed be His grace for that! There was his old Passion eighteen hundred years ago ; there is His daily passion now, and His nightly agony, because sin abounds. Cruel sin! cruel sinners! But He shall take refuge with us; only listen at your hearts, and hear what He says. Is it not clear ?- Open to Me, My sister, My love, My dove, My undefiled; for My head is full of dew, and My locks of the drops of the nights !
But you may say, sorrowing for other men's sins is all very well for saints ; we know the saints have done so ; but it is a thing rather to be admired than imi- tated ; it is above us ; it would be an injudicious prac- tice in us ; we do not half sorrow for our own sins yet ; we must not go so quick ; we must learn a little more of that first. Alas ! do not make such an objection as this. Let me take you on your own ground. You have not, you say, half enough sorrow for your own sins. There is nothing you regret so much as this, no- thing which seems to you more uncomfortable and un- promising in your spiritual life. But why have you
* Cant. V. 2.
LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN. 79
not more sorro-tv ? Because you look more at sin as it affects the interests of your own soul than as it affects the interests of God. I do not mean to say you are not to look at it in that way — God forbid. You must do the one, but you must not leave the other undone. Now, if you look at sin simply as it regards your own reward and punishment, it is clear you will never get an adequate hatred of sin ; for your punishment is far from being the chief evil of sin. Its chief evil is its outrage of the majesty of God ; and if you could see it in this light, you would have a much keener sorrow for your own sins than you have. But, then, in order to see it in this light, you must learn to look with an eye of sorrow on the sins of others ; for there you have no interests of your own, there you are contemplating sim- ply the injured glory of our Heavenly Father. And thus, in order to sorrow more deeply and more effectu- ally for your own sins, you must mourn for God's dear sake over the sins of others. And this is the practice which I wish now to recommend to you as embodying the spirit of the Confraternity: — sorrowing for the sins of others, and making reparation to God's injured glory for them.
I say this practice embodies the spirit of the Confra- ternity, because the reasons for grieving over other men's sins are the same reasons given before for belong- ing to the Confraternity. We sorrow for other men's sins, because God's glory is injured by them, because the fruit of our dear Lord's Passion is spoiled or wasted, and because souls are damaged and lost thereby. You see the same three things come over and over again ; and you must not be weary of my repeating them so often. But, when I use the word sorrow, you must not
^0 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
misunderstand me ; I am not putting before you any thing melancholy, or disagreeable. Far from it. The Borrow I speak of is one of the greatest pleasures in life, enough to lighten a heavy heart, rather than to depress a light one. Hear how the Eternal Father vouchsafed to explain this to His beloved daughter, St. Catherine of Siena. After speaking to her* of the five kinds of tears men shed, he speaksf of a state of the soul at once blessed and yet sorrowing. "It is blessed, indeed, from its sensible union with Me, wherein it tastes the Divine Love. Its sorrow arises from its view of the ofi*ences which are committed against Me, who am the Eternal Goodness, whom it beholds and tastes in its knowledge of itself and of Me. Neither does this hin- der its state of union with Me ; for the tears which it sheds are of great sweetness, proceeding from its know- ledge of itself in its love of its neighbour. For it finds the plaintiveness of love in My mercy, and the sorrow of love in the miseries of its neighbours. So it weeps with those that weep, and joys with those that joy ; for the soul rejoices when My servants pay honour and glory to My name." And again,J " This unajffliding pain, arising from my being ofiended, and from the misfortunes of its neighbours, is founded on a most real charity, and fattens the soul. Nay, a man rejoices and exults in this pain, because it is a most convincing proof that I am in his soul by a very special grace."
Thus it has been that the Saints who have received the most eminent gift of tears, have also been inundated above others with spiritual joy. The old biographer of St. John Climacus tells us, that words cannot express
* Dial. 88. t Cap. 89. J Cap. 95.
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the ravishing effects which his gift of tears produced in his soul ; and the Saint himself, in the seventh step of his Ladder of Perfection, says, that *' they who have received the gift of tears spend every day of their lives as a spiritual feast." Truly there is no bitterness in the tears of those who love ; and what can there be but peace and joy in tears which are a gift of Him who is the love and jubilee, as St. Augustine calls Him, of the Father and the Son ?
But I shall make myself more clear by giving you instances of this sorrow for all sins against the glory of God, from the saints themselves ; and you will thus see how sweet and easy the practice is. God made the following revelation to the same St. Catherine.'^ "I am greatly pleased, my dearest daughter, with this desire of enduring every pain and toil, even till death, for the salvation of souls. For the more a man endures, the more he shows his love of Me ; and loving Me, he knows more of My truth ; and the more he knows of Me, the more he feels the pain and intolerable grief of all sin against Me. You asked to take the punishment of other people's faults upon yourself, and you did not perceive that in asking that, you were all the while asking love, light, and knowledge of the truth ; for, as I have already said, the greater love is, the greater is the pain ; so, as love grows, sorrow will also grow." St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi went into a rapture one day when she was meditating on the words of the Gos- pel: " There came forth blood and water." " She saw," says her confessor, " a great multitude of souls in the side of Jesus, shining like gems on a royal crown ; and
♦Dial. c. 6.
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she said : ' So our souls, beautified by Blood, become the crown of the Word, because of the manifestation of the Word which they make before the rest of creation ; and He glories in this, as a king glories in his royal crown/ She saw the souls who entered into this lov- ing cavern of the Wounded Side, expressing two affec- tions. First, they transformed themselves into blood by love, and then into water by sorrow. * But God takes more pleasure in a soul which, in this life at least, transforms itself by sorrow, than in one that transforms itself by love ; though I know, 0 Word ! that the sor- row which a soul feels at seeing Thee offended can only arise from the love it bears to Thee, which in itself is more perfect than sorrow. Yet by the way of sorrow the soul is better exercised in the love of its neighbour, because thereby the zeal for his salvation masters it in a more lively manner. There is another reason, too, why in this life the exercise of sorrow pleases God more than the exercise of love, because the former is a sort of martyrdom, by which souls resemble Him hanging on the Cross, and their sorrow is compassion for His great pains, and as it were tears of love for His Pas- sion. And when this sorrow rises to the point of afflic- tion, it cleanses the soul from its sins. Love is cer- tainly more delectable ; but, as we are in this world to be cleansed, it is rather the time for sorrowing and suffering for the love of our God ; and so it is that God takes more complacency in sorrow than in love.' " On another occasion, after communion, our Lord told the same saint to mourn like a turtle-dove, and to compas- sionate Him because he was so little known and loved by His creatures.
Indeed this is the very of&ce which nuns have to fill
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in the Church of God. There are none of them, no matter how they may be occupied -with education or other external work, who have not this burden laid upon them by the mere fact of their religious profes- sion. A number of pious and amiable ladies living together in peace and harmony, going through the daily routine of spiritual exercises prescribed by the letter of their rule, and engaged in the education of youth, without any recognition of a supernatural end, or any practical feeling that they are pledged to Jesus more than others are, — these are not nuns, however picturesque their habit may seem, and however re- spectable the individuals may be. It is pleasant, in- deed, that ladies should have such a retreat from the world, where so much frivolity and temptation are kept at arm's length. But such retreats are not convents. Convents are quite other sort of places ; and a lady retired from the world does not become simply on that account a mystical spouse of Jesus Christ. There is necessarily, by the vow of poverty, if by nothing else, an expiatory character in nuns. They have to mourn as turtle-doves. It is not they who are so much shel- tered from the world, as Jesus, who is sheltered by them from the wicked world, in the cloister of their hearts. Their spirit must be one of loving sorrow, of sweet reparation, of holy languishing over the wrongs of their heavenly Spouse. They have wedded His interests, and must grieve and be glad with him. He has given them His glory to nurse. The world is their cross, and they must carry it. They may not be in- different to its sins ; they are set apart to mourn over them. Never, where this spirit is wanting, will be found the royal heart of mortification the blessed
84 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
heights of mental prayer, the awe-inspiring yot glad- dening and refreshing atmosphere of the really super- natural life. Neither time, nor country, nor occupa- tion, can dispense the spouses of Jesus Christ from their office of turtle-doves of the Sacred Heart. They must realize in a constant spirit of reparation and ob- lation, the sentiments Avhich were habitual to the Blessed Paul of the Cross. He lamented and deplored, with bitter tears, the ingratitude of men who cor- responded so coldly to the unbounded goodness of God, and he would repeat : " What ! a God made man 1 A God crucified I A God dead ! A God hidden under the sacramental species I Who? A God?" And then he would be fur some time silent in a sort of ecstatic stupor, and then again would exclaim, " Oh burning charity ! Oh passionate love ! Who ? And for whom ? Oh ungrateful creatures ! How is it that you love not God? I would that it were possible to -set all the world on fire with love. Ah for a little strength to go out into the open fields preaching my dear crucified Jesus, our good Father dying upon the cross for us sinners V
If this be true of nuns, then it is so important that it should be always foremost in their thoughts. If they have an expiatory character, it must obviously be the chief thing about them. The success of their school must be a very secondary affair, and so also must be the number of their novices, and the archi- tecture of their convents, and their exemptions from episcopal rule. Now, when nuns set to work and praise themselves under cover of praising their Jiohj community, or their hohj rule, or their hohj founder, when they are full of pity for people living in the
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"world, eloquent on dangers and snares from -wliich they are delivered, and loud in self-gratulution on the grace of their vocations, I cannot avoid, perhaps in a spirit of contradiction, arguing thus : — These good nuns must take a low view of what Jesus requires of His spouses, or they would be more frightened about their own short-comings ; I suspect our Lord does not fare over well in that community, and that the interior life of it is sadly shallow. Self-praise is apt to be the besetting sin of nuns ; and they should sometimes remind themselves that a publican in the world needs less pity than a Pharisee in the cloister. An occasional week's meditation on the awful and adorable purity of God would accomplish this end with especial bene- diction. If a good soul were to see all at once what it has pledged itself to in the way both of perfection and of suffering by religious profession, perhaps without a miracle it could not endure the vision, and live. Ah ! the lively, spiritual prattle about convent joys and convent privileges must come either from a very young novice, or a sadly inexperienced nun. It is never heard in those delightful houses where all breathes of the supernatural, of abasement, of tranquillity, of God, where the very air rebukes proud thoughts, and from which we carry away a precious disesteem of self without the conceited bitterness of self-reproach.
Still more remarkable is the proof of the power over the Sacred Heart of this practice of sorrowing for the sins of others, which we find in the life of St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi. It is full of the most encourag- ing sweetness and soothing consolation for ourselves, for, in our measure and degree, how easy it is for us to follow her footsteps, though far behind, in this holy
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practice ! When she was a little girl, only eight years old, she heard one person abuse another in such a way as to commit a sin thereby. She was so shocked by this offence to God, that she could not sleep all tlie night after, for weeping over the outrage committed against the majesty of God. Sixteen years elapsed, and the saint probably had forgotten all about it; when God, in a revelation, told her that in conse- quence of that act of sorrow for another's sin, there was prepared for her a special glory, which He repre- sented to her under the figure of a glorious flame- coloured garment. He who forgetteth not the cup of cold water, can still less forget these interior acts of loving sorrow or of sorrowing love. What a treasure is here for us, if our love would only be wakeful and watch for the opportunities !
St. Bonaventure says of St. Francis, that he filled the groves with his meanings, and everywhere shed tears and beat his breast, as he murmured in his talk with God, or at times called out with clamorous cries, begging mercy for sin. " Nay," says the seraphic Doctor, "when he saw souls, redeemed with the Pre- cious Blood of Jesus Christ, polluted by any stain of sin, he wept over them with such tenderness of com- passion, that it seemed as though, motherlike, he was every day bringing them to the birth in Christ. The glory of God, the interests of Jesus, the love of souls, so run and blend into one with the blessed patriarch of Assisi, that the three motives do duty for each other. He begins with one, and ends with another ; for, in good truth, of them it may most reverently be said, " And these three are one."
St. Lawrence Justinian, the patriarch of Venice,
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says,* " He cannot help sorrowing for other people's sins, who sorrows truly for his own. A healthy limb on the body, that helps not the others when they are sick, occupies its place in vain. These members, like- wise, of the Church, who see their brethren's sin and do not weep over it, or compassionate the ruin of their souls, are useless members. When our Redeemer wept over the city that was to perish, He considered it the more to be deplored as it knew not itself its deplorable condition. As many, therefore, as are set on fire by the torch of love, weep over other men's sins as if they were their own. Yet no one worthily deplores the sins of others, who by voluntary falls neglects his own. "VVe must at least cease to sin wilfully if we desire to mourn over the falls of others." St. Augustine says, j " We mourn over the sins of others, we suJBfer violence, "we are tormented in our minds." St. Chrysostom says, that Moses was raised above the people because he habitually deplored the sins of others. " He," says the same holy Doctor, " who sorrows for other men's sins, has the tenderness of an apostle, and is an imita- tor of that blessed one, who said, * Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is offended, and I burn not V " "Who," says St. Austin,t "is not angry when he sees men renouncing the world, not in deeds but in words ? who is not angry when he sees the brethren plotting against each other, and breaking faith with each other, faith which has been pledged in the sacra- ments of God ? Who can count up all the evils where- by men provoke the Body of Christ, which liveth in- wardly in the Spirit of Christ, and which groans like
* Fascic. Amor. cap. 14. f Serm. 44. t In Psalm xxx.
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the grain upon the threshing-floor? Scarcely do vre see those who thus groan, who are thus angry (with the sins of others,) for hardly do we see any grain when the threshing-floor is swept. It was because he saw none who were thus angered, that he says, ' The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me ;' and again, when he saw many sinning, he said, ' A fainting hath taken hold of me, because of the wicked who forsake Thy law ;' and again, * I saw the fools, and I wasted away.' "
In a similar strain, Lancisius quotes St. Ohromatius of Aquileia, whom St. Jerome calls most holy and most learned. "Do you wish to know what the pious grief of saints is like ? Hear what is said of the prophet Samuel, who mourned for King Saul, even to the day of his death. Jeremias, also, when he bewailed the sins of the people, says, ' My eyes have poured out floods of water over the contrition of my people.' And again : ' Who will give water to my head, and a foun- tain of tears to my eyes V Daniel, also, was affected with sorrow and heaviness for the sins of the people, as he himself testifies, saying, *In those days I, Daniel, mourned the days of three weeks. I ate no desirable bread, and neither flesh nor wine entered into my mouth, neither was I anointed with ointment.' The Apostle mourned with a like sorrow over some of the Corinthians, saying, * Lest when I come God humble me among you, and I mourn many of them that have sinned before, and have not done penance.' This is the kind of grief which the Lord recompenses with the consolation of perpetual joy, as Isaias says,* ' That He
* ixi. 3.
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will appoint to the mourners of Sion a crown for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for the spirit of grief/ "*
Now, have we thought sufficiently of this ? We live in a land where we see God offended every day and every hour. ^Ye see souls perishing for want of faith : we hear blasphemies on all sides: "truths are dimi- nished among the children of men." Does all this grieve us ? Have we felt it as personal calamity ? Or have we shut ourselves selfishly up in our own hearts, thanking God, with an unamiable gratitude, that we at least have the true faith and the living sacraments, and looking on all the rest as a doomed multitude, who are no concern to us one way or another ? If you have no tie to the souls of all these, and indeed you have, for Christ shed His Precious Blood for them as well as you, at least you have a tie to the glory of God ; and can you feel that you really love God, in your own sense of the word love, if you do not keenly feel His dishonour? But it is not to uplDraid you that I write — God forbid ! for, see how warmly you have corre- sponded all along to the spirit of our Confraternity ; it is rather to explain to you and urge upon you the practices which will cultivate that sweet spirit more and more. Hear, then, what God said to St. Catherine of Siena :t "It is with reason that you. My elect, are in bitter grief of heart because of the offences I am continually receiving from men, and out of compassion for their culpable ignorance, by which they gravely sin against Me, to fhe damage, nay, to the condemna- tion of their own souls. This I gratefully accept from
* Ap. Lancis. ii. 22. f Dial. c. 28.
8*
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you, and it is My wish that you should act so." See also what was the experience of the B. Angela of Foligno in this matter. Before her death, she made a sort of devout will, in which she bequeathed certain admonitions to her spiritual children, and this is one : *' I tell you that my soul has received more from God when I mourned for the sins of others, than when I grieved for my own. The world makes light of what I say, that a man can deplore his neighbour's sins as much as his own, yea, more than his own, because it Beams to be contrary to nature ; but the charity which does so is not of this world."
When St. Ignatius was living in the house of John Pascal, at Barcelona, and was spending the night in prayer, he was seen raised to some height above the ground, and the whole room illuminated with the brightness which proceeded from his face, while he kept repeating over and over again these words : " 0 my Lord, my heart, my beloved ! Oh, if men did but know Thee, they would never sin V Thus it is said of Father Peter Faber, the companion of St. Ignatius, that he had an abiding sadness of mind because he was touched to the quick by the sight of men sinning. As St. Augustine says :* *' This is the persecution which all suffer who desire to live piously in Christ, according to the true and "biting sentence of the apostle. For what persecutes the life of the good more sharply than the life of the wicked, not because it forces the good to imitate what displeases them, but because it compels them to grieve over the life they behold? For, in the sight of a pious man, an evil liver, though
Epist. 141.
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he does not oblige him to consent to his sin, yet tor- tures him vrith the sight and sorrow of it/' Thus it is said of the B. Clare of Montefalco, in her life, that when she heard of any one in mortal sin, she turned at once to the crucifix, and weeping inconsolably, and sighing from the bottom of her heart, she said, " Ah, then, and is all lost, so fjir as this soul is con- cerned, which my Lord suflfercd for it V^ And then, unable to bear the thought, she prostrated herself upon the ground, and prayed for the conversion of the sinner.
Oh that there were such a^ heart in us that we could make these dispositions our own ! Oh that we felt sin to be indeed the one solitary evil of the world ! Oh that the hunger and thirst after the glory of our most dear Lord were consuming us all the day long ! Yet how soon these feelings come, if only we set ourselves in earnest to seek them, and to ask them of God. What does He want but to be loved — loved always, loved everywhere ; and how, then, if we ask this love of Him, can He refuse it to us ? Why not turn all our prayers into one, and pray early and late for more love of God ? But you may say. In what ways are we to practise this sorrow for the sins of others ?
1. We should strive in our meditations to see how God ought to be served and glorified by His creatures. We should put before ourselves His infinite perfections and attributes, His beauty and loveliness in Himself. We should picture to ourselves the perfect obedience with which His will is done in Heaven, and try to unite ourselves with the interior dispositions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and all the hierarchies and choirs of angels.
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We should count up the benefits and "blessings which in His infinite love He has bestowed upon His crea- tures, and especially in the four great wonders of mercy, Creation, the Incarnation, the Holy Eucharist, and the Beatific Vision. Then, when we have worked this well into our minds, we shall see what sin really is, how terrible it is to ofiend so great a majesty, how base beyond words to tell to wound so unutterable a love. We shall then hardly be able to leave the house and follow our worldly occupations, without finding food for this sorrow over sin. At every step almost we shall be called upon to make acts of reparation to the injured glory of God. The amount of the world's forgetfulness of God will strike us every day as more and more astonishing. So far from getting used to it, the more the beauty and the tenderness of God's ma- jesty grow into us, the more will the hatefulness of sin come upon us with all the startling force of novelty. The sort of common consent by which men ignore God, His rights. His claims, and His interests, will seem to us almost more hideous than overt acts of sin. Life will become a burden, the world feel as a strange and unhomelike place, and a blessed weariness will come over us, which will find no repose but upon the sweet and satisfying thought of God.
2. Another method of practising this sorrow for sin is the one suggested by St. Bernard to Pope Eugenius :* " Lift up the eyes of your reflection, and behold the nations. Are they not rather dry for the fire than white for the harvest ? How much is there that looks like fruit, which yet, on nearer inspection, is but
* De Consid. ii. 6.
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briers ? Nay, not even briers, but old and knotted trees, bearing only such mast and acorns as the swine can eat." Take the map of the world; look first at Asia, where our Lord was born and suffered. Look at Turkey, Persia, Tartary, China, Japan, and the vast continent of India: how few Christians are to be found in the whole extent ! Fearful systems of idola- try, the foul creed of Mohammed, communities bear- ■ing the name of Christ, yet in truth denying it in ) heresy and schism, — these exercise an almost unlimited sway over those beautiful regions, and only here and there is there one to be found who calls on the saving Name of Jesus, and worships His Precious Blood. Yet there was man created, and Eden planted ; there was the home of the chosen people ; there the Son of God taught and suffered ; there the apostles preached, and Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, and Chrysostom upheld the faith, and trampled upon heresy. As to Japan and China, their very soil is soaked with the blood of our dear Lord's martyrs. Yet how scanty the harvest of His glory.
Look along the Mediterranean shores of Africa, where once above four hundred bishops had their thrones, and then into the vast regions of the Moors, the Hottentots, and Caffres ! On how many leagues of country the sun shines where none call on Jesus, or know of His blessed Cross ! America is better, and so also is Australia ; for thanks to the Spaniards and the Irish, there is the knowledge of the Gospel there. Yet how many tribes are still unconverted, and how many millions of here- tics bear the Christian name in vain ! Look, too, how heresy has eaten into the fair fields of Europe ! Kussia, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Scotland, England, are
^4 LOVE WOUNDED BY SIN.
all more or less its prey, and multitudes are daily passing into perdition within the sound of the true Gospel, and withing reach of the holy sacraments ! This was the picture that St. Lawrence Justinian looked upon when he wrote his treatise on the Complaint of Christian Perfection. This was the picture God Himself beheld when He complained so bitterly to St. Catherine of Siena that priests and prelates cared not for His glory, and in their idleness and self-seeking trod His dear interests under foot. Oh what a field is there here for acts of love ! Think of the day when the compassionate Creator looked over His own beauti- ful creation, virgin and undefiled, and blessed it be- cause it was all so good. Think of the day when, to bring back that primal benediction, nay, to give it a new and better benediction, Jesus hung upon the Cross on Calvary. And this is the result! — this is the sinner's recompense to God ! As our thoughts wander on, and our eyes rest on the coloured provinces of Mo- hammedans, heathens, and heretics, do we not feel drawn to offer to God all the acts of adoration which the angels have made this day in heaven, in reparation for the glory these poor outcasts have not given Him ? Another while we resort to the merits of Jesus Himself, to the heroic virtues of His ever-blessed Mother, to the apostles, martyrs, virgins, doctors, confessors, that we may supply with loving intention the praise that should arise to the Divine Majesty from all these tribes and nations.
3. Another practice is suggested by F. Balthazar Alvarez, St. Theresa's confessor. It is to journey over the world in spirit, and visit the many churches and tabernacles where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved,
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and so few come in to visit the Love of our souls. "The streets," says he, "are full, but the churches are empty. Crowds are eagerly intent on their own interests, and so few come to commune with Jesus about His!" St. Alphonso, also, with his usual thoughtful sweetness, suggests to us how many churches there are where Jesus is obliged to dwell in filth, disorder, and neglect, and where from week's end to week's end no one comes to visit Him. With what childlike acts of love, ever varying, yet ever tender, may we not pour out our hearts before Him in all these deserted sanctuaries! Can we not muse on Jesus thus abandoned till our hearts grow hot, and the tears come into our eyes ; and oh how acceptable to Him is this little offering of heart- felt sorrow ! He loves to be remembered, as all lovers do ; and nothing is little in His sight which is done for the love of Him, for His love transmutes and magnifies it all.
I do not say that you should faint at the bare name of sin, as saints have done : such things require a special grace and great heights of love. But some little you can do in reparation and in sorrow for the sins of the world, and out of that little, be it ever so little, God will have great glory, and we shall comfort one another's hearts.
Yet, as I said before, we must not forget to sorrow for our own sins also, and to sorrow for them chiefly as offences against a God so infinitely good and loving. *' If we grieve and sorrow for our sins," says St. Chry- sostom, "we lessen the magnitude of our sin; what was great we make small, nay, oftentimes we do away with it altogether." And St. Basil, commenting on those words, " Thou has turned my weeping into joy,"
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says, " It is not every one into whose soul God infusea joy, but into his who has deplored his sin with vehement grief, and with assiduous lamentation, as if he wept for himself dead ; for such weeping turns to joy at last." " We ought to bear our sins in mind," says St. Chry-; sostom again, " for not only do we extinguish them by so doing, but we become gentler and more indulgent toward others, and we serve God with greater tender- ness, having from that memory of our sins a better insight into His inestimable goodness." Scripture tells us, "Be not without fear of a forgiven sin;"* and, indeed, such a fear will be the best security against another fall. Some saints tell us that if we knew by divine revelation that our sins were forgiven, we should still sorrow for them, as David did when such a revelation was vouchsafed him, and St. Paul, who was confirmed in grace ; for such a sorrow is continually feeding our love of God. St. Udo mentions a most interesting thing in his life of St. Gerard, who used to feel after his conversion the greatest compunction for the most trifling defects, just as St. Jerome tells us of St. Paula. Now God made known to St. Gerard that the grave sins of his past life were remitted to him, because of this holy sorrow for venial faults committed since his conversion. Yet in this sorrow we must not be excessive ; we must consider our sins more in the general than in the particular, and, above all, as was revealed to St. Catherine, it should be rather a recol- lection of the Precious Blood, and a pondering of the Divine Mercy, than a dry study of our sins, according to the advice of St. Bernard : " I advise you, my friends,
* Ecclus. T. 5.
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occasionally to draw back from the annoying and anxious scrutiny of your ways, and to go out upon the wider and serener paths of the Divine benefits. Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it should not be continual. We should interpolate it with the more joyous thought of God's compassion. "We must mingle honey with our wormwood, or else its bitterness will not be healthy.''
Life is but a very little while, compared with eter- nity ; and throughout eternity we shall be infinitely happy, and yet have but one occupation — to give glory to God. We shall literally have nothing else to do. And this single task will contain in itself such trea- sures of bliss, that there will be nothing left that we can desire. Why not begin this work on earth ? Why not try even noAV to fall in love with that dear glory of God which will be our joy and worship in the life to come ? The character of God's goodness is to be com- municative. He is always communicating Himself to His creatures, in nature, in grace, in glory. AVe must copy this example. There is such a thing as a selfish goodness, thinking only about our own selves and our own souls. Indeed, this does seem a great matter, when we see so many thousands round about us who hardly realize that they have souls at all. Yet it is dangerous to dwell exclusively on this. And who can have the Precious Blood, and know what it is, and feel what it does, and yet not long to pass it on to other souls ? I would we could always do all things for the sole glory of God ; but this can hardly be. Yet we ray all do, without efibrt, much more than we have 'lone, if we will only try to sorrow over sin, over the 9
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sins of the whole world, because our Blessed Lord God is so deeply offended by them.
Neither is this devotion without immense blessings to our own souls. What hinders us most, when we have once set to work to serve God in good earnest, is not so much sin as worldliness and self-love. Now see how both these miseries, which so hang about us, keep us down, and adulterate all the good we do ; see how both of them are kept in check by this devotion. The characteristic of the world is that it ignores sin. Things are right or wrong as it pleases, and according to its own canons ; but as to a secret stain upon the im- mortal soul because the invisible God is offended, this it will not hear of for a moment. It is reckoned a doctrine to unman people, an idle bugbear, a priestly superstition. A man who sees every thing as sin or not sin, who seeks everywhere the secret glory of the hidden Creator, who follows unearthly standards, and uses unearthly weights and measures, who strives to do the commonest actions from supernatural motives, and who can love what he does not see, until he loses the power of loving, or at least of loving vehemently, what he does see, can hardly be possessed either by the spirit of worldliness or of self-love. His life is a pro- test against the world, and also against himself. Yet this is only a description of what a man would soon become who took up this devotion. He who looks long and lovingly on God will soon cease to see any loveliness in himself; and thus this practice would deliver him from the two greatest enemies he has in the spiritual life.
We should find also that this devotion would give us great power with God. Answers to prayers would
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begin to come more thickl}' upon us than before. Our words would have a weight beyond themselveij, or beyond our talents, reasoning, or eloquence. What is worth any thing which God has not blessed ? Spiritual power is the only real power ; and it follows different rules from other power. "When St. Vincent of Paul founded his Congregation of the mission, Father Con- dren, the superior of the French Oratory, and one of the most spiritual men of his day, said to him, " Ah ! my father! I recognise that this is the work of God, and that the spirit of Jesus is upon it, and that it will succeed, for all the men are of low birth, and none of them of learning. This is the sort of weapon to which God gives power.'' See on what unworldly principles his judgment was formed. St. Philip made out that all power was in detachment from the world ; and the work of St. Ignatius may be summed up in one word, that he proved this to the world — this very thing, that detachment is its master. So do you take up this devotion to God's offended glory, and you will see by many a sensible proof that God is with you in other more abundant and more effectual ways than he has been heretofore.
And, lastly, if you wish to press on toward the prize of Christian perfection, and to become a saint, listen to this story, listen to what happens to a man who has done no more than this, hindered two mortal sins from being consummated in outward acts. St. Paphnutius had dwelt in the desert for many a long year, and by weary penances had toiled for his sanctification. At last a strange thought came into his mind, and he ven- tured to express it in prayer to God. He desired to know to whom on the earth he was equal in sanctity.
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He asked it in simplicity and true humility, and God vouchsafed to speak to him. He told him he was now equal to a certain piper in an Egyptian village that He named. At once the saint set forth to seek him. When he came to the village he asked for the piper, and was told he was piping in the tavern for the amusement of those who were drinking there. Strange ! thought St. Paphnutius. However, he sought the piper out, led him aside, and spoke to him of his spiritual state. What good works had he done ? Good works ! rejoined the piper ; I know of nothing good that I have ever done ; but once, when I was a robber, I saved from violence a virgin consecrated to God ; and once, also, I gave money to a poor woman, who, out of poverty, was offering herself to sin. And then Paphnutius under- stood how God had given to that piper graces equal to his own, because for his Maker's glory he had in his rough robber-days hindered two mortal sins.
But we cannot better illustrate how this sorrow for other men's sins may be effective, as well as affective, that is, may be expressed in deeds as well as feelings, than by giving the practices recommended by a spiritual writer* for the days of the carnival. He entitles them, Devotions which are often performed by souls loving God, on the days of the Carnival, and at other times when worldly men usually sin against God more than usual.
1. To abstain at that season with more than com- mon care from some particular fault which ordinarily besets us.
* Lands. De Praes. Dei, 81.
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2. To increase our time of prayer by adding at least half an hour to it.
3. To read longer than usual, say for an hour, some spiritual book, not one Tvhich will feed curiosity, but one which will excite pious affections toward God, such as the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Imitation of Christ, and the Lives of the Saints.
4. To afflict our bodies with some new penance, or to prolong some customary penance beyond its usual time.
5. To visit the Blessed Sacrament more frequently on these days ; and when we have finished our usual devotions, to excite in ourselves a feeling of compassion for our offended God, just as we visit our friends to console them and show our love to them in times of sorrow ; also to shed tears, or at least to weep in our hearts, for the sins of this season, especially for the sins of those who either by reason of their condition, or of the many benefits they have received from God, ought the more scrupulously to abstain from offending Him.
6. Every time the clock strikes, to make a brief but affectionate act of sorrow for the sins of the season : this may be done in any way, walking, or at meals, &c.
7. At least three times in the day, with a most pro- found genuflexion, and with great feeling, to adore the Divine Majesty toward the four quarters of the world, in which God is at this time being so grievously offend- ed, desiring in some sort of way to compensate by this loving adoration, for the sins which are then being com- mitted in those regions, grieving for them, and asking for their remission and for the conversion of sinners, and for that end offering up the Precious Blood and merits of Jesus Christ, which are most dear to God and
9*
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most profitable to sinners. It was thus St. Mary Mag- dalene of Pazzi obtained the conversion of many sinners. ' 8. To do our ordinary good works on these days more perfectly, diligently, and fervently, especially those which relate to the immediate worship of God. For, as at these seasons worldly men and the servants of the devil are more diligent and fervent in offending God, it is but right that souls loving God should be at least in the same proportion more diligent and fervent in well-doing and in divine worship.
9. To make an additional communion in order to ap- pease God, and to worship Ilim by our loving repara- tion.
10. As God is especially offended on these days by excesses in eating and drinking, to mortify our appe- tite somewhat more than usual either in quantity or quality.
11. As God is also especially offended at such times by immodest conversations, to agree with some pious friend to meet and spend a short time daily in spiritual conference, simply to give pleasure and consolation to our good God.
12. As men are especially guilty at such times of sinful idleness, to take more than common care about the spending of our time, so that apart from innocent and proper recreation, no part of it should pass in idle- ness and inutility, but rather to be more industrious than usual.
13. Those who are under any vows should on these days renew them with fresh acts of love to God, a de- votion suggested to us by our Lord's fixing the Thurs- day before Quinquagesima for espousing St. Catherine of Siena.
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In England the place of the Carnival would be of course supplied by the days following the three feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. There are none whose work lies among souls who do not know by painful experience the horrors of these three seasons among us ; and it is so difficult to speak strongly against cheap excursions, railway-trips, and such like miseries, that no remedy seems left but prayer and re- paration. To pray for rain on such days sounds ill- natured, yet it may hinder multitudes of sins. Many a ruin of modesty and innocence dates from a cheap trip, and many a soul has been shipwrecked on the harmless river between London Bridge and Rosherville.
There are three very beautiful revelations by which God has been pleased to make known how acceptable to His Divine Majesty is this reparation at the Carnival. One is to the Blessed Henry Suso, the Dominican ; the other two to St. Gertrude. I will quote one of these last, as embodying the spirit which I am anxious this trea- tise should convey. It is from the fourth book of her Insinuations of Divine Piety.
At the time of the Carnival, the Lord Jesus appeared to her sitting upon the throne of His Glory, and St. John the Evangelist was sitting at our Lord's feet, writing. The saint asked him what he was writing. Our Lord answered for him. I am having every one of the devotions your congregation offered to Me yes- terday, and all those they are going to offer these next two days, carefully noted down in this paper. And when I, to whom the Father has committed all judg- ment, shall faithfully render to every one after his death, "good" measure for all the labours of his pious works, and shall add moreover the measure " pressed
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down" of My most salutary Passion and Death, where- by all man's merit is marvellously ennobled, I will take them with this paper to the Father, that He also, out of the omnipotence of His paternal kindness, may superadd to them His measure " shaken together and running over," for these benefits kindly done to Me in this persecution by which worldly men on these days harass Me. For, as none are equal to Me in faithful- ness, much less can I omit to recompense My benefac- tors, seeing that even King David, who all his life through never omitted to heap kindnesses on his bene- factors, yet, when he came to die, and committed his kingdom to Solomon, said to him, " Thou shalt sho# favour to the sons of Berzellai, the Galaadite, and they shall eat at thy table, for they came to meet me when I fled from the face of thy brother Absalom." A kind- ness shown to men in the time of adversity is more ac- ceptable than in the time of prosperity ; so I the more gratefully accept this fidelity which is shown to Me when the world is especially persecuting Me with sin. The Blessed John, sitting and writing, seemed some- times to dip his pen into an inkhorn which he held in his hand, and out of it to write black letters, and some- times he dipped it into the loving Wound of the Side of Jesus, which stood open before him, and out of that he wrote red letters. Again, he touched up the red letters, partly with black and partly with gold. And the saint understood that by the black letters were indicated those works which the religious did from custom, as the fast which they commonly begin on this Monday. By the red letters were expressed those works which were done in memory of the Passion of Jesus Christ, with a special intention for the emenda«
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tion of the Church. As to the red letters partly blackened and partly gilded, she understood that by those partly blackened were meant works done in memory of our Lord's Passion, to obtain for ourselves the grace of God, and other gifts concerning our own salvation. Those works, on the contrary, which were done purely for the glory of God, in union with Christ's Passion, and for the salvation of all men, renouncing all merit, reward, and favour, simply to give praise and show love to God, were expressed by the red letters, partially gilded. For although the foregoing works obtain from God a copious remuneration, those which are done purely for the love of God's praise are of much greater merit and dignity, and confer upon a man an infinitely greater augmentation of eternal bliss.
She then perceived that after every two paragraphs there was a vacant place, and she asked our Lord what that denoted. He replied : *' As it is your custom to serve Me at this season with devout desires and prayers in memory of My Passion, I have first the thoughts and then the words, by which you serve Me, carefully written down, every one of them. The vacant place means this, that the works which you do, you are not accustomed to do, like the thoughts and words, in memory of my Passion.^' The saint rejoined : " And how, 0 most loving God ! can we laudably do this V Our Lord replied: "By keeping all fasts, vigils, and other regular observances in union with my Passion. And whensoever you refrain yourself in seeing, hear- ing, speaking, and the like, always offer it to Me in union with that love whereby I refrained all My senses in My Passion. With one glance I could have terrified all My adversaries, with one word I could have con-
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victed of falsehood all who contradicted Me ; yet was I like a sheep led to the slaughter, with My head humbly bowed down, and My eyes fixed upon the ground ; and before my judge I open not My mouth for so much as one word of excuse from the false charges laid against Me." The saint answers : " Teach me, 0 best of teachers, at least one thing which I may do especially in memory of Thy Passion." Our Lord replied : "Take, then, this practice, to pray with your arms extended, thus expressing the form of My Passion to God the Father, for the emendation of the Universal Church, in union with that love wherewith I stretched out My hands upon the Cross." And she said : " And as this is not a common devotion, should I seek out secret places to practise it in ?" And our Lord answered : " This custom of seeking out secret places pleases Me well, and is a fresh adornment to the work, as the gem adorns the necklace. Yet," He added, "if any one should bring this devotion of praying with extended arms into common use, he need fear no contradiction, and he will pay Me the same honour as one pays a king who solemnly enthrones him."
What is it, then, for which I am pleading ? Only for this : that you should not altogether cut your- selves off from the glory of God, as if it was no con- cern of yours, and that you and He were not in part- nership ! This is really all. God is going to give you His glory for your own in heaven to all eternity. Surely you cannot altogether disclaim connection with it now : surely its interests very much concern you ; its success must be your success, and its failure your failure too. You cannot stand aloof from the cause of Jesus on earth, and even keep up a sort of armed neutrality
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with God, when you desire as soon as ever you die, without so much as tasting the sharpness of purgatory, to be locked in His closest embrace of unutterable love for evermore. Yet this is the plain English of the lives of most Catholics. And can any thing be more unreasonable, more ungenerous, more mean ! And you wonder we have not converted England ! Verily we do not look like a people who have come to kindle a fire upon the earth, nor to be pining because it is not kindled. Ah, Jesus ! these are Thy worst wounds. I think lightly of the ruddy scars of Thy hands and feet, of the bruised knee and the galled shoulder, of the thousand-wounded head and the wide-open heart. But these wounds ! — the wounds of coldness, neglect, un- praying selfishness ! — the wounds of the few that were once fervid and now are tepid, of the multitudes that never were fervent, and so cannot even claim the odious honours of tepidity ! — the wounds wherewith Thou wert wounded in the house of Thy friends ! — these are the wounds to be wiped with our tears, and softened with the oil of our afi'ectionate compassion. Blessed Lord ! I can hardly believe Thou art what I know Thou art, when I see Thy people wound Thee thus ! And my own wretched heart ! It., too, lets me into sad secrets about man's capability of coldness, and his infinity of ingratitude. Alas ! the concluding chapters of the four Gospels, — they read like a bitter jest upon the faithful! And then, we live as if we would petulantly say, "Well, we cannot help it. If Jesus chose to do and to be all tliis, it is his own afiair : we only wanted absolution ; we only wanted a machine to be saved by — a locomotive into heaven — the cheapest and roughest that would do the work, and land us at the terminus. You devout
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people in reality stand in the way of religion. It may be hard for us to define enthusiasm ; but you surely are enthusiasts. "What we mean is, you are all heart and no head. Mere heat will not do instead of talent. Earnestness is not theology. There are other things to be done in life besides going to mass and confession. How can we have confidence in people who let them- selves be run away with by religious fervour? AH this incarnation of a God, this romance of a Gospel, these unnecessary sufi'erings, this prodigal bloodshed- ding, this exuberance of humiliations, this service of love, this condolence of amorous sorrow ; to say the truth, it is irksome to us ; we are not at home in it at all ; the thing might have been done otherwise ; it was a matter of debtor and creditor ; every one is not a poet ; every one cannot take to the romantic. Really there must be a mistake in the matter. God is very good, and His love is very well in its way. Of course He loves us, and of course we love Him. But really, by a little practical common sense, and a few whole- some reasonable precepts, and a strictly conscientious discharge of our relative duties, might we not put this tremendous mythology of Christian love, with all pos- sible respect, a little on one side, and go to heaven by a plain, beaten, sober, moderate path, more accordant to our character as men, and to our dignity as British subjects? If 'the Anglo-Saxon race really fell in Adam,' why obviously we must take the consequences. Still, let the mistake be repaired in that quiet, orderly way, and with that proper exhibition of sound sense which are so dear to Englishmen."
Well ! if it must be so, I can only think of those
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bold words of St. Mary jMagdalene of Pazzi : *' 0 Jesus ! Thou hast made a fool of Thyself through love/^
0 poor desolate glory of God ! Thou art a foundling upon the earth ! No one will claim thee, or acknow- ledge kindred with thee, or give thee a home. Cold as the world is, and pitiless the pelting of incessant sin, thou liest crying at our doors, and men heed thee not. Poor homeless glory ! earth was meant for thee once as much as heaven, but there have been robbers abroad, and it is no safe travelling for thee along our roads now. But there are some few of us still who have pledged ourselves to Heaven, that from this hour we will take thee to our own homes, as John took Mary ; " henceforth our substance is thy substance, and all that we have is thine."
10
CHAPTER IV.
^wUxttnaxu |nipr.
^ET us see what goes to the saving of a soul, and what is involved in its being saved. In the first place, it was absolutely necessary that God should become man, in order that that soul should be saved, ac cording to the dispensation of God. It was absolutely necessary that Jesus shduld be born, teach, act, pray, merit, satisfy, sufier, bleed, die, for the saving of that single soul. It was necessary that there should be a Catholic church, faith, sacraments, saints, the Pope, and the sacrifice of the Mass, that one soul. It was necessary that there should be a supernatural substance or quality, a marvellous participation of the Divine Nature, called sanctifying grace, and that on this should be accumulated loving acts and impulses of the Divine Will, in the shape of manifijld actual graces, preventing, accompanying, following, and efiicacious,. else that soul cannot be saved. Martyrs must die, doctors must write. Popes and councils must
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expose and condemn heresy, missionaries travel, priests "be ordained, for the safety of that single soul. When all these preparations are completed, and by an act of merciful omnipotence that soul is created out of nothing, then there must be a guardian angel appointed over it; all through its life Jesus must be occupied about it ; Mary must have a great deal to do with it ; all the angels and saints must pray and interest them- selves about it. To every good thought, pious word, and devout action, and, of course, they soon come to be innumerable, a participation of the Divine nature, grace must concur. Unseen evil spirits have to be ■warded off from it, and foiled in their attempts upon it. Hourly temptations have to cause more or less emotion among its advocates in heaven. Every at- tribute of God vouchsafes to legislate for its advantage, so that it plays upon them all like one who fingers the keys of a musical instrument. The Precious Blood has to be communicated to it through extraordinary sacraments, which are full of mystery, and were in- vented both as to form and matter by our Lord Him- self. All sorts of things, water, oil, candles, ashes, beads, medals, scapulars, have to be filled with a strange undefinable power by ecclesiastical benedic- tions in its behalf. The Body, Soul, and Divinity of the Incarnate Word have to be communicated to it over and over again till it becomes quite a common occurrence, though each time it is in reality a more stupendous action than the creation of the world. It can speak up to heaven, and be heard and obeyed there. It can spend the satisfactions of Jesus as if they were its own, and can undo bolts and bars in purga- tory, and choose by its own determinate will whom it
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-will liberate and -whom it will pass over. And all the time it is so near to God, and its heart is a place so sacred and so privileged, that none but God Himself can communicate grace to it, not even the angels, nor the Mother of God herself, blessed throughout all ages. All this goes to the salvation of a soul. To be saved it has to be God's child, God's brother, and to partici- pate in God's nature. Now see what is involved in its being saved. Look at that soul yonder that has just been judged ; Jesus has this instant spoken ; the sound of His sweet words has hardly died aAvay ; they that mourn have scarcely yet closed the eyes of the deserted body. Yet the judgment has come and gone ; all is over ; it was swift but merciful ; more than merciful ; there is no word to say what it was. It must be imagined. One day, please God ! we shall experience it. That soul must be very strong to bear what it is feeling now. God must support it, or it will fall back into nothingness. Life is over. How short it has all been. Death is done with. How easy was its passing sharpness. How little the trials look, how puny the sorrows, how childish the afflictions ! And now some- thing has happened to it, which is to be for evermore. Jesus has said it. There can be no doubt about it. "What is that something ? Eye has not seen, nor ear heard. It sees God. There is stretched before it an illimitable eternity. Darkness has melted from before it. Weakness has fallen off from it. Time has vanished, that cramped it so. There is no ignorance. It sees God. Its understanding is inundated with unspeakable delights ; it is strengthened by unima- ginable glory ; it abounds in that Vision to which earthly science is an illiterate stupidity. The will is
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flooded with love ; excessive happiness thrills through every affection. As a sponge is filled with the sea, so it is filled with light, beauty, bliss, ravishment, im- mortality, God. These are foolish words, lighter than feathers, weaker than water. They are not a shadow of what it feels. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, heart has not conceived. There it is on the threshold of it all ; the same soul that but a moment ago was sobbing in pain, feeble as afl. unmanly child. There can be no mistake about it.
But not only so. , There is not the slightest risk of its being forfeited. All is sure. All is its own, its very own, inalienable, and for ever. Sin can never come nigh it. Imperfection cannot breathe upon it. It knows no change, though its variety is infinite. It knows no inequality, though its joys are multitudinous and its delights innumerable. It is crowned king, and for ever. And the empire of all this magnificence, how cheaply has it been purchased ! Those transient toils and cares of life, which grace turned into contentments, and love to real pleasures! And now, here is this come, the light of glory, and the beauty of the Ever- lasting Vision I It would appear but a dream ; only that the marvellous calm of the soul tells of the power and the depth of its new life. Its ability to bear its own consciousness is the gage of its freshness and its immortality. And all this is involved in the saving of a soul! How wonderful is the world if we remember liow many of its inhabitants die every moment of the day and night ; and there is probably never a moment in which there is not some soul in this predicament, just judged, its sentence favourable, and its eyes opened on the incommunicable beauty and goodness
10*
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of God. 0 dull and weary, weary and dull ! This is all we can say, when we turn our thoughts back to our own petty cares, teasing temptations, vexatious self-love, annoying littleness, ungenerous shabbiness with God ! He has gone, is judged, it is well with him ! Oh how well ! And we still here. Our great risk yet to be run ! 0 dull and weary, weary and dull!
Yet a few minutes ago,. and that soul was not secure. There was a desperate contest going on, a pitched bat- tle between heaven and hell, and heaven seemed at a disadvantage. The sufferer was patient enough to merit any thing that could be merited. But God put the last gift, the ultimate grace, final perseverance, be- yond the reach of merit; and so seemed almost to throw the victory into the hands of the enemy. It was a terrific moment. All was at stake. All that had gone to the saving of that soul, from eternity up to that hour, was on the point of being lost and frustrated for ever; it is lost, it is frustrated, and for ever, almost every minute, perhaps quite every minute, all the world over. All, too, that was to be involved in the saving of that soul just then ran the risk of never being at- tained. Can risk, even in idea, go beyond this risk? And Jesus stood by, watching the turnings of the bat- tle, how it would go. The beatings of His Sacred Heart might have been heard in the silence of the moment. He had suspended His own sweet and easy law, where- by, because of His merits, we can merit also. Although He Himself had merited for us the gift of final perse- verance, and whosoever receives that grace receives it for the sole merits of our Lord, yet it seemed as if He had given that moment up to the sheer sovereignty of
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the Divine Majesty. It was thrown, so it appeared, on the great, overpowering, limitless might of the mercy of the Undivided Trinity. One law alone is left unfet- tered. It is on purpose. The law of prayer, interces- sory prayer. You are of kith and kin to that dying man, or you are his enemy; you are his priest, or his nurse, or his benefactor ; you are his neighbour, or you are a thousand miles away; you know him well, or you never heard of his existence, or dreamed of his agony. It matters not. The victory has been left to you. The matter is in your hands. His soul hangs on your prayers. Jesus has decreed that you, not He, (if I may say so untrue a thing,) are to save that soul. You are to put the crown on all that has gone to his sal- vation. You are to put the crown on all that is involved in his salvation. You may never know it, or at least not till you are judged yourself. Yet, in the communion of saints, and in the unity of Jesus, you are to be the saviour of that uncertain soul, the victor of that unsettled strife ! But what is prayer? The mystery of prayer ? We have need to ask the question if it involves so great a responsibility, and can do so great a work, and if it be in truth a precept that we must pray for others as well as fer ourselves. There are many things which go to make up a true account of prayer. First, we must con- sider who we are who pray. None could have a more ignoble origin. "We were created out of nothing, and we came into the world with the guilt and shame of sin already on our souls, and the burden of a hideous pe- nalty which eternal lamentation never could remit. To this our original disgrace we have added all manner of guilt and shame, of treason and rebellion, of irrita- bility and disrespect, of our own. There are no words
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•which would exaggerate our malice, no description which would convey a fair idea of our helpless igno- rance. Every thing about us was little to begin with, and we have made it immeasurably less. It is hard to conceive ourselves worse than we are ; so much so that it is necessary to make it a duty to be patient and for- bearing with ourselves quite as much as with others. Then, next we must consider who it is to whom we pray. The infinitely blessed Majesty of God, than which nothing can be conceived more good, more holy, more pure, more august, more adorable, more compas- sionate, more incomprehensible, or more unutterable. The very thought of God takes away our breath. He is Three living Persons. AVe live, and move, and breathe in Him. He can do what He wills with us. He is no further bound to us than He has graciously and piteously chosen to bind Himself. He knows every thing without our telling Him or asking Him. Yet it is to Him we pray. Next, let us think where it is we pray. Whether it be a consecrated place or not. It is in God Himself. We are in the midst of Him, as fishes are in the sea. His immensity is our temple. His ear lies close upon our lips. It touches them. We do not feel it ; if we did we should die. It is always lis- tening. Thoughts speak to it as loudly as words ; suf- ferings even louder than words. His ear is never taken away. We sigh into it even while we sleep and dream.
Next, let us ask, whence comes the value of our prayers ? They are fleeting words ; fugitive petitions. There is nought in us to give ground for a hearing, ex- cept the very excess of our unworthiness, and, there- fore, the extremity of our need. Else, why should our
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prayers be in the Creatoi-'s ear more, than the roaring of a lion, or the querulous complaining of the plover, or the cry of the suffering beast run down by the hunt- ers ? Their value comes principally from this — that God Himself has vouchsafed to become a man, has lain out upon the inclement mountains, and spent the night in prayer. He mixes us up with Himself; makes our cause His, His interests ours, and we become one with Him. So by a mysterious communion the work of His prayers runs into our prayers, the wealth of His en- riches the poverty of ours, the infinity of His touches, raises, and magnifies the wretchedness of ours. So that when we pray, it is not we who pray, but He who prays. We speak into our Heavenly Father's ear, and it is not our voice, but the voice of Jesus, like His Mother's voice, that God vouchsafes to hear. Or rather, the Eternal vouchsafes to be like Isaa