PART II:
EXPLANATIONS AND EXHORTATIONS
Sixteen Exhortations of the Holy Cure of Ars
CHAPTER 1: On
Salvation
THE HAPPINESS
of man on earth, my children, is to be very good; those who are very good bless
the good God, they love Him, they glorify Him, and do all their works with joy
and love, because they know that we are in this world for no other end than to
serve and love the good God.
Look at bad
Christians; they do everything with trouble and disgust; and why, my children?
because they do not love the good God, because their soul is not pure, and
their hopes are no longer in Heaven, but on earth. Their heart is an impure
source which poisons all their actions, and prevents them from rising to God;
so they come to die without having thought of death, destitute of good works
for Heaven, and loaded with crimes for Hell:
this is the way they are lost forever, my children. People say it is too
much trouble to save one's soul; but, my children, is it not trouble to acquire
glory or fortune? Do you stay in bed when you have to go and plough, or mow, or
reap? No. Well, then, why should you be more idle when you have to lay up an
immense fortune which will never perish -- when you have to strive for eternal
glory?
See, my
children, if we really wish to be saved we must determine, once for all, to
labor in earnest for our salvation; our soul is like a garden in which the
weeds are ever ready to choke the good plants and flowers that have been sown
in it. If the gardener who has charge of this garden neglects it, if he is not
continually using the spade and the hoe, the flowers and plants will soon
disappear. Thus, my children, do the virtues with which God has been pleased to
adorn our soul disappear under our vices if we neglect to cultivate them. As a
vigilant gardener labours from morning till night to destroy the weeds in his
garden, and to ornament it with flowers, so let us labor every day to extirpate
the vices of our soul and to adorn it with virtues. See, my children, a
gardener never lets the weeds take root, because he knows that then he would
never be able to destroy them. Neither let us allow our vices to take root, or
we shall not be able to conquer them.
One day, an
anchorite being in a forest with a companion, showed him four cypresses to be
pulled up one after the other; the young man, who did not very well know why he
told him to do this, took hold of the first tree, which was quite small, and
pulled it up with one hand without trouble; the second, which was a little
bigger and had some roots, made him pull harder, but yet he pulled it up with
one hand; the third, being still bigger, offered so much resistance, that he
was obliged to take both hands and to use all his strength; the fourth, which
was grown into a tree, had such deep roots, that he exhausted himself in vain
efforts. The saint then said to him, "With a little vigilance and
mortification, we succeed in repressing our passions, and we triumph over them
when they are only springing up; but when they have taken deep root, nothing is
more difficult; the thing is even impossible without a miracle. "
Let us not
reckon on a miracle of Providence, my children; let us not put off till the end
of our life the care that we ought daily to take of our soul; let us labor
while there is yet time -later it will no longer be within our power; let us
lay our hands to the work; let us watch over ourselves; above all, let us pray
to the good God -with His assistance we shall always have power over our
passions. Man sins, my children; but if he has not in this first moment lost
the faith, he runs, he hastens, he flies, to seek a remedy for his ill; he
cannot soon enough find the tribunal of penance, where he can recover his
happiness. That is the way we should conduct ourselves if we were good
Christians. Yes, my children, we could not remain one moment under the empire
of the devil; we should be ashamed of being his slaves. A good Christian
watches continually, sword in hand, the devil can do nothing against him, for
he resists him like a warrior in full armour; he does not fear him, because he
has rejected from his heart all that is impure. Bad Christians are idle and
lazy, and stand hanging their heads; and you see how they give way at the first
assault: the devil does what he pleases
with them; he presents pleasures to them, he makes them taste pleasure, and
then, to drown the cries of their conscience, he whispers to them in a gentle
voice, "Thou wilt sin no more. " And when the occasion presents
itself, they fall again, and more easily than the first time. If they go to
confession he makes them ashamed, they speak only in half-words, they lower
their voice, they explain away their sins, and, what is more miserable, they
perhaps conceal some. The good Christian, on the contrary, groans and weeps
over his sins, and reaches the tribunal of Penance already half justified.
CHAPTER 2: On
Death
A DAY WILL
come, perhaps it is not far off, when we must bid adieu to life, adieu to the
world, adieu to our relations, adieu to our friends. When shall we return, my
children? Never. We appear upon this earth, we disappear, and we return no
more; our poor body, that we take such care of, goes away into dust, and our
soul, all trembling, goes to appear before the good God. When we quit this
world, where we shall appear no more, when our last breath of life escapes, and
we say our last adieu, we shall wish to have passed our life in solitude, in
the depths of a desert, far from the world and its pleasures. We have these
examples of repentance before our eyes every day, my children, and we remain
always the same. We pass our life gaily, without ever troubling ourselves about
eternity. By our indifference to the service of the good God, one would think
we were never going to die.
See, my
children, some people pass their whole life without thinking of death. It
comes, and behold! they have nothing; faith, hope, and love, all are already
dead within them. When death shall come upon us, of what use will
three-quarters of our life have been to us? With what are we occupied the greatest
part of our time? Are we thinking of the good God, of our salvation, of our
soul? O my children! what folly is the world! We come into it, we go out of it,
without knowing why. The good God places us in it to serve Him, to try if we
will love Him and be faithful to His law; and after this short moment of trial,
He promises us a recompense. Is it not just that He should reward the faithful
servant and punish the wicked one? Should the Trappist, who has passed his life
in lamenting and weeping over his sins, be treated the same as the bad
Christian, who has lived in abundance in the midst of all the enjoyments of
life? No; certainly not. We are on earth not to enjoy its pleasures, but to
labor for our salvation.
Let us prepare
ourselves for death; we have not a minute to lose: it will come upon us at the moment when we
least expect it; it will take us by surprise. Look at the saints, my children,
who were pure; they were always trembling, they pined away with fear; and we,
who so often offend the good God--we have no fears. Life is given us that we
may learn to die well, and we never think of it. We occupy ourselves with
everything else. The idea of it often occurs to us, and we always reject it; we
put it off to the last moment. O my children! this last moment, how much it is
to be feared! Yet the good God does not wish us to despair; He shows us the
good thief, touched with repentance, dying near Him on the cross; but he is the
only one; and then see, he dies near the good God. Can we hope to be near Him
at our last moment--we who have been far from Him all our life? What have we
done to deserve that favour? A great deal of evil, and no good.
There was once
a good Trappist Father, who was trembling all over at perceiving the approach
of death. Someone said to him, "Father, of what then are you afraid?"
"Of the judgment of God," he said. "Ah! if you dread the
judgment--you who have done so much penance, you who love God so much, who have
been so long preparing for death--what will become of me?" See, my
children, to die well we must live well; to live well, we must seriously
examine ourselves: every evening think
over what we have done during the day; at the end of each week review what we
have done during the week; at the end of each month review what we have done
during the month; at the end of the year, what we have done during the year. By
this means, my children, we cannot fail to correct ourselves, and to become
fervent Christians in a short time. Then, when death comes, we are quite ready;
we are happy to go to Heaven.
CHAPTER 3: On the
Last Judgment
OUR CATECHISM
tells us, my children, that all men will undergo a particular judgment on the
day of their death. No sooner shall we have breathed our last sigh than our
soul, without leaving the place where it has expired, will be presented before
the tribunal of God. Wherever we may die, God is there to exercise His justice.
The good God, my children, has measured out our years, and of those years that
He has resolved to leave us on this earth, He has marked out one which shall be
our last; one day which we shall not see succeeded by other days; one hour
after which there will be for us no more time. What distance is there between
that moment and this -the space of an instant. Life, my children, is a smoke, a
light vapour; it disappears more quickly than a bird that darts through the
air, or a ship that sails on the sea, and leaves no trace of its course!
When shall we
die? Alas! will it be in a year, in a month? Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps today!
May not that happen to us which happens to so many others? It may be that at a
moment when you are thinking of nothing but amusing yourself, you may be
summoned to the judgment of God, like the impious Baltassar. What will then be
the astonishment of that soul entering on its eternity? Surprised, bewildered,
separated thenceforth from its relations and friends, and, as it were,
surrounded with Divine light, it will find in its Creator no longer a merciful
Father, but an inflexible Judge. Imagine to yourselves, my children, a soul at
its departure from this life. It is going to appear before the tribunal of its
Judge, alone with God; there is Heaven on one side, Hell on the other. What
object presents itself before it? The picture of its whole life! All its
thoughts, all its words, all its actions, are examined.
This
examination will be terrible, my children, because nothing is hidden from God.
His infinite wisdom knows our most inmost thoughts; it penetrates to the bottom
of our hearts, and lays open their innermost folds. In vain sinners avoid the
light of day that they may sin more freely; they spare themselves a little sham
in the eyes of men, but it will be of no advantage to them at the day of
judgment; God will make light the darkness under cover of which they thought to
sin with impunity. The Holy Ghost, my children, says that we shall be examined
on our words, our thoughts, our actions; we shall be examined even on the good
we ought to have done, and have not done, on the sins of others of which we
have been the cause. Alas! so many thoughts to which we abandon ourselves -- to
which the mind gives itself up; how many in one day! in a week! in a month! in
a year! How many in the whole course of our life! Not one of this infinite number
will escape the knowledge of our Judge.
The proud man
must give an account of all his thoughts of presumption, of vanity, of
ambition; the impure of all his evil thoughts, and of the criminal desires with
which he has fed his imagination. Those young people who are incessantly
occupied with their dress, who are seeking to please, to distinguish
themselves, to attract attention and praise, and who dare not make themselves
known in the tribunal of Penance, will they be able still to hide themselves at
the day of the judgment of God? No, no! They will appear there such as they
have been during their life, before Him who makes known all that is most secret
in the heart of man.
We shall give
an account, my children, of our oaths, of our imprecations, of our curses. God
hears our slanders, our calumnies, our free conversations, our worldly and
licentious songs; He hears also the discourse of the impious. This is not all,
my children; God will also examine our actions. He will bring to light all our
unfaithfulness in His service, our forgetfulness of His Commandments, our
transgression of His law, the profanation of His churches, the attachment to
the world, the ill-regulated love of pleasure and of the perishable goods of
earth. All, my children, will be unveiled; those thefts, that injustice, that
usury, that intemperance, that anger, those disputes, that tyranny, that
revenge, those criminal liberties, those abominations that cannot be named
without blushes....
CHAPTER 4: On Sin
Sin is a
thought, a word, an action, contrary to the law of God.
BY SIN, my
children, we rebel against the good God, we despise His justice, we tread under
foot His blessings. From being children of God, we become the executioner and
assassin of our soul, the offspring of Hell, the horror of Heaven, the murderer
of Jesus Christ, the capital enemy of the good God. O my children! if we
thought of this, if we reflected on the injury which sin offers to the good
God, we should hold it in abhorrence, we should be unable to commit it; but we
never think of it, we like to live at our ease, we slumber in sin. If the good
God sends us remorse, we quickly stifle it, by thinking that we have done no
harm to anybody, that God is good, and that He did not place us on the earth to
make us suffer.
Indeed, my
children, the good God did not place us on the earth to suffer and endure, but
to work out our salvation. See, He wills that we should work today and
tomorrow; and after that, an eternity of joy, of happiness, awaits us in
Heaven. . . . 0 my children! how ungrateful we are! The good God calls us to
Himself; He wishes to make us happy forever, and we are deaf to His word, we
will not share His happiness; He enjoins us to love Him, and we give our heart
to the devil. . . . The good God commands all nature as its Master; He makes
the winds and the storms obey Him; the angels tremble at His adorable
will: man alone dares to resist Him.
See, God forbids us that action, that criminal pleasure, that revenge, that
injustice; no matter, we are bent upon satisfying ourselves; we had rather
renounce the happiness of Heaven, than deprive ourselves of a moment's
pleasure, or give up a sinful habit, or change our life. What are we, then,
that we dare thus to resist God? Dust and ashes, which He could annihilate with
a single look. . . .
By sin, my
children, we despise the good God. We renew His Death and Passion; we do as
much evil as all the Jews together did, in fastening Him to the Cross.
Therefore, my children, if we were to ask those who work without necessity on
Sunday: "What are you doing
there?" and they were to answer truly, they would say, "We are
crucifying the good God. " Ask the idle, the gluttonous, the immodest,
what they do every day. If they answer you according to what they are really
doing, they will say, "We are crucifying the good God. " O my
children! it is very ungrateful to offend a God who has never done us any harm;
but is it not the height of ingratitude-to offend a God who has done us nothing
but good?
It is He who
created us, who watches over us. He holds us in His hands; if He chose, He
could cast us into the nothingness out of which He took us. He has given us His
Son, to redeem us from the slavery of the devil; He Himself gave Him up to
death that He might restore us to life; He has adopted us as His children, and
ceases not to lavish His graces upon us. Notwithstanding all this, what use do
we make of our mind, of our memory, of our health, of those limbs which He gave
us to serve Him with? We employ them, perhaps, in committing crimes.
The good God,
my children, has given us eyes to enlighten us, to see Heaven, and we use them
to look at criminal and dangerous objects; He has given us a tongue to praise
Him, and to express our thoughts, and we make it an instrument of iniquity--we
swear, we blaspheme, we speak ill of our neighbour, we slander him; we abuse
the supernatural graces, we stifle the salutary remorse by which God would
convert us. . . . we reject the inspirations of our good guardian angel. We
despise good thoughts, we neglect prayer and the Sacraments. What account do we
make even of the Word of God? Do we not listen to it with disgust? How
miserable we are! How much we are to be pitied! We employ the time that the good
God has given us for our salvation, in losing our souls. We make war upon Him
with the means He has given us to serve Him; we turn His own gifts against Him!
Let us cast our eyes, my children, upon Jesus fastened to the Cross. and let us
say to ourselves, "This is what it has cost my Saviour to repair the
injury my sins have done to God. "
A God coming
down to the earth to be the victim of our sins! A God suffering, a God dying, a
God enduring every torment, because He has put on the semblance of sin, and has
chosen to bear the weight of our iniquities! Ah, my children! at the sight of
that Cross, let us conceive once for all the malice of sin, and the abhorrence
in which we should hold it. . . . Let us enter into ourselves, and see what we
ought to do to repair our past sins; let us implore the clemency of the good
God, and let us all together say to Him, from the bottom of our heart, "O
Lord, who art here crucified for us, have mercy upon us! Thou comest down from
Heaven to cure souls of sin; cure us, we beseech Thee; cause our souls to be
purified by approaching the tribunal of penance; yes, O God! make us look upon
sin as the greatest of all evils, and by our zeal in avoiding it, and in
repairing those we have had the misfortune to commit, let us one day attain to
the happiness of the saints. "
CHAPTER 5: On
Temptations
WE ARE all
inclined to sin, my children; we are idle, greedy, sensual, given to the
pleasures of the flesh. We want to know everything, to learn everything, to see
everything; we must watch over our mind, over our heart, and over our senses,
for these are the gates by which the devil penetrates. See, he prowls round us
incessantly; his only occupation in this world is to seek companions for
himself. All our life he will lay snares for us, he will try to make us yield
to temptations; we must, on our side, do all we can to defeat and resist him.
We can do nothing by ourselves, my children; but we can do everything with the
help of the good God; let us pray Him to deliver us from this enemy of our
salvation, or to give strength to fight against him. With the Name of Jesus we
shall overthrow the demons; we shall put them to flight. With this Name, if
they sometimes dare to attack us, our battles will be victories, and our victories
will be crowns for Heaven, all brilliant with precious stones.
See, my
children, the good God refuses nothing to those who pray to Him from the bottom
of their heart. St. Teresa, being one day in prayer, and desiring to see the
good God, Jesus Christ showed to the eyes of her soul His Divine hands; then,
another day, when she was again in prayer, He showed her His face. Lastly, some
days after, He showed her the whole of His Sacred Humanity. The good God who
granted the desire of St. Teresa will also grant our prayers. If we ask of Him
the grace to resist temptations, He will grant it to us; for He wishes to save
us all, He shed His Blood for us all, He died for us all, He is waiting for us
all in Heaven. We are two or three hundred here: shall we all be saved, shall we all go to
Heaven? Alas! my children, we know nothing about it; but I tremble when I see
so many souls lost in these days.
See, they fall
into Hell as the leaves fall from the trees at the approach of winter. We shall
fall like the rest, my children, if we do not avoid temptations, if, when we
cannot avoid them, we do not fight generously, with the help of the good
God--if we do not invoke His Name during the strife, like St. Antony in the
desert.
This saint
having retired into an old sepulchre, the devil came to attack him; he tried at
first to terrify him with a horrible noise; he even beat him so cruelly that he
left him half dead and covered with wounds. "Well," said St. Antony,
"here I am, ready to fight again; no, thou shalt not be able to separate
me from Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God. " The spirits of darkness
redoubled their efforts, and uttered frightful cries. St. Antony remained
unmoved, because he put all his confidence in God. After the example of this
saint, my children, let us be always ready for the combat; let us put our
confidence in God; let us fast and pray; and the devil will not be able to
separate us from Jesus Christ, either in this world or the next.
CHAPTER 6: On
Pride
Pride is an untrue
opinion of ourselves, an untrue idea of what we are not.
THE PROUD MAN
is always disparaging himself, that people may praise him the more. The more
the proud man lowers himself, the more he seeks to raise his miserable
nothingness. He relates what he has done, and what he has not done; he feeds
his imagination with what has been said in praise of him, and seeks by all
possible means for more; he is never satisfied with praise See, my children, if
you only show some little displeasure against a man given up to self-love, he
gets angry, and accuses you of ignorance or injustice towards him. . . . My
children, we are in reality only what we are in the eyes of God, and nothing
more. Is it not quite clear and evident that we are nothing, that we can do
nothing, that we are very miserable? Can we lose sight of our sins, and cease
to humble ourselves?
If we were to
consider well what we are, humility would be easy to us, and the demon of pride
would no longer have any room in our heart. See, our days are like grass--like
the grass which now flourishes in the meadows, and will presently be withered;
like an ear of corn which is fresh only for a moment, and is parched by the
sun. In fact, my children, today we are full of life, full of health; and tomorrow,
death will perhaps come to reap us and mow us down, as you reap your corn and
mow your meadows. . . . Whatever appears vigorous, whatever shines, whatever is
beautiful, is of short duration. . . . The glory of this world, youth, honours,
riches, all pass away quickly, as quickly as the flower of grass, as the flower
of the field. . . . Let us reflect that so we shall one day be reduced to dust;
that we shall be thrown into the fire like dry grass, if we do not fear the
good God.
Good
Christians know this very well, my children; therefore they do not occupy
themselves with their body; they despise the affairs of this world; they
consider only their soul and how to unite it to God. Can we be proud in the
face of the examples of lowliness, of humiliations, that Our Lord has given us,
and is still giving us every day? Jesus Christ came upon earth, became
incarnate, was born poor, lived in poverty, died on a gibbet, between two
thieves. . . . He instituted an admirable Sacrament, in which He communicates
Himself to us under the Eucharistic veil; and in this Sacrament He undergoes
the most extraordinary humiliations. Residing continually in our tabernacles,
He is deserted, misunderstood by ungrateful men; and yet He continues to love
us, to serve us in the Sacrament of the Altar.
O my children!
what an example of humiliation does the good Jesus give us! Behold Him on the
Cross to which our sins have fastened Him; behold Him: He calls us, and says to us, "Come to
Me, and learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart. " How well the
saints understood this invitation, my children! Therefore, they all sought
humiliations and sufferings. After their example, then, let us not be afraid of
being humbled and despised. St. John of God, at the beginning of his
conversion, counterfeited madness, ran about the streets, and was followed by
the populace, who threw stones at him; he always came in covered with mud and
with blood. He was shut up as a madman; the most violent remedies were employed
to cure him of his pretended illness; and he bore it all in the spirit of
penance, and in expiation of his past sins. The good God, my children, does not
require of us extraordinary things. He wills that we should be gentle, humble,
and modest; then we shall always be pleasing to Him; we shall be like little
children; and He will grant us the grace to come to Him and to enjoy the
happiness of the saints.
CHAPTER 7: On
Avarice
Avarice is an
inordinate love of the goods of this world.
YES, MY
CHILDREN, it is an ill-regulated love, a fatal love, which makes us forget the
good God, prayer, the Sacraments, that we may love the goods of this
world--gold and silver and lands. The avaricious man is like a pig, which seeks
its food in the mud, without caring where it comes from. Stooping towards the
earth, he thinks of nothing but the earth; he no longer looks towards Heaven,
his happiness is no longer there. The avaricious man does no good till after
his death. See, how greedily he gathers up wealth, how anxiously he keeps it,
how afflicted he is if he loses it. In the midst of riches, he does not enjoy
them; he is, as it were, plunged in a river, and is dying of thirst; lying on a
heap of corn, he is dying of hunger; he has everything, my children, and dares not
touch anything; his gold is a sacred thing to him, he makes it his divinity, he
adores it. . . .
O my children!
how many there are in these days who are idolators! how many there are who
think more of making a fortune than of serving the good God! They steal, they
defraud, they go to law with their neighbour; they do not even respect the laws
of God. They work on Sundays and holydays:
nothing comes amiss to their greedy and rapacious hands. Good
Christians, my children, do not think of their body, which must end in
corruption; they think only of their soul, which is immortal. While they are on
the earth, they occupy themselves with their soul alone. So you see how
assiduous they are at the Offices of the Church, with what fervour they pray
before the good God, how they sanctify the Sunday, how recollected they are at
holy Mass, how happy they are! The days, the months, the years are nothing to
them; they pass them in loving the good God, with their eyes fixed on their
eternity. . . .
Seeing us so
indifferent to our salvation, and so occupied in gathering up a little mud,
would not anyone say that we were never to die? Indeed, my children, we are
like people who, during the summer, should make an ample provision of gourds,
of melons, for a long journey; after the winter, what would remain of it?
Nothing. In the same way, my children, what remains to the avaricious man of
all his wealth when death comes upon him unawares? A poor covering, a few
planks, and the despair of not being able to carry his gold away with him.
Misers generally die in this sort of despair, and pay eternally to the devil
for their insatiable thirst for riches. Misers, my children are sometimes
punished even in this world.
Once St.
Hilarion, followed by a great number of his disciples, going to visit the
monasteries under his rule, came to the abode of an avaricious solitary. On
their approach, they found watchers in all parts of the vineyard, who threw
stones and clods of earth at them to prevent their touching the grapes. This
miser was well punished, for he gathered that year much fewer grapes than
usual, and his wine turned into vinegar. Another solitary, named Sabbas, begged
him, on the contrary, to come into his vineyard, and eat the fruit. St.
Hilarion blessed it, and sent in to it his religious, to the number of three
thousand, who all satisfied their hunger; and twenty days after, the vineyard
yielded three hundred measures of wine, instead of the usual quantity of ten.
Let us follow the example of Sabbas, and be disinterested; the good God will
bless us, and after having blessed us in this world, He will also reward us in
the other.
CHAPTER 8: On Lust
the love of
the pleasures that are contrary to purity.
NO SINS, my
children, ruin and destroy a soul so quickly as this shameful sin; it snatches
us out of the hands of the good God and hurls us like a stone into an abyss of
mire and corruption. Once plunged in this mire, we cannot get out, we make a
deeper hole in it every day, we sink lower and lower. Then we lose the faith,
we laugh at the truths of religion, we no longer see Heaven, we do not fear
Hell. O my children! how much are they to be pitied who give way to this
passion! How wretched they are! Their soul, which was so beautiful, which attracted
the eyes of the good God, over which He leant as one leans over a perfumed
rose, has become like a rotten carcass, of which the pestilential door rises
even to His throne. . . .
See, my
children! Jesus Christ endured patiently, among His Apostles, men who were
proud, ambitious, greedy--even one who betrayed Him; but He could not bear the
least stain of impurity in any of them; it is of all vices that which He has
most in abhorrence: "My Spirit does
not dwell in you," the Lord says, "if you are nothing but flesh and
corruption. " God gives up the impure to all the wicked inclinations of
his heart. He lets him wallow, like the vile swine, in the mire, and does not
even let him smell its offensive exhalations. . . . The immodest man is odious
to everyone, and is not aware of it. God has set the mark of ignominy on his
forehead, and he is not ashamed; he has a face of brass and a heart of bronze;
it is in vain you talk to him of honour, of virtue; he is full of arrogance and
pride. The eternal truths, death, judgment, Paradise, Hell-nothing terrifies
him, nothing can move him. So, my children, of all sins, that of impurity is
the most difficult to eradicate. Other sins forge for us chains of iron, but
this one makes them of bull's hide, which can be neither broken nor rent; it is
a fire, a furnace, which consumes even to the most advanced old age. See those
two infamous old men who attempted the purity of the chaste Susannah; they had
kept the fire of their youth even till they were decrepit. When the body is
worn out with debauchery, when they can no longer satisfy their passions, they
supply the place of it, oh, sham! by infamous desires and memories.
With one foot
in the grave, they still speak the language of passion, till their last breath;
they die as they have lived, impenitent; for what penance can be done by the
impure, what sacrifice can be imposed on himself at his death, who during his
life has always given way to his passions? Can one at the last moment expect a
good confession, a good Communion, from him who has concealed one of these
shameful sins, perhaps, from his earliest youth--who has heaped sacrilege on
sacrilege? Will the tongue, which has been silent up to this day, be unloosed
at the last moment? No, no, my children; God has abandoned him; many sheets of
lead already weigh upon him; he will add another, and it will be the last . . .
CHAPTER 9: On Envy
Envy is a
sadness which we feel on account of the good that happens to our neighbour.
ENVY, my
children, follows pride; whoever is envious is proud. See, envy comes to us
from Hell; the devils having sinned through pride, sinned also through envy,
envying our glory, our happiness. Why do we envy the happiness and the goods of
others? Because we are proud; we should like to be the sole possessors of
talents, riches, of the esteem and love of all the world! We hate our equals,
because they are our equals; our inferiors, from the fear that they may equal
us; our superiors, because they are above us. In the same way, my children,
that the devil after his fall felt, and still feels, extreme anger at seeing us
the heirs of the glory of the good God, so the envious man feels sadness at
seeing the spiritual and temporal prosperity of his neighbour.
We walk, my
children, in the footsteps of the devil; like him, we are vexed at good, and
rejoice at evil. If our neighbour loses anything, if his affairs go wrong, if
he is humbled, if he is unfortunate, we are joyful. . . we triumph! The devil,
too, is full of joy and triumph when we fall, when he can make us fall as low
as himself. What does he gain by it? Nothing. Shall we be richer, because our
neighbour is poorer? Shall we be greater, because he is less? Shall we be
happier, because he is more unhappy? O my children! how much we are to be
pitied for being like this! St. Cyprian said that other evils had limits, but
that envy had none. In fact, my children, the envious man invents all sorts of
wickedness; he has recourse to evil speaking, to calumny, to cunning, in order
to blacken his neighbour; he repeats what he knows, and what he does not know
he invents, he exaggerates. . . .
Through the
envy of the devil, death entered into the world; and also through envy we kill
our neighbour; by dint of malice, of falsehood, we make him lose his
reputation, his place. . . . Good Christians, my children, do not do so; they
envy no one; they love their neighbour; they rejoice at the good that happens
to him, and they weep with him if any misfortune comes upon him. How happy should
we be if we were good Christians. Ah! my children, let us, then, be good
Christians and we shall no more envy the good fortune of our neighbour; we
shall never speak evil of him; we shall enjoy a sweet peace; our soul will be
calm; we shall find paradise on earth.
CHAPTER 10: On
Gluttony
Gluttony is an
inordinate love of eating and drinking.
WE ARE
GLUTTONOUS, my children, when we take food in excess, more than is required for
the support of our poor body; when we drink beyond what is necessary, so as
even to lose our senses and our reason. . . . Oh, how shameful is this vice!
How it degrades us! See, it puts us below the brutes: the animals never drink more than to satisfy
their thirst: they content themselves
with eating enough; and we, when we have satisfied our appetite, when our body
can bear no more, we still have recourse to all sorts of little delicacies; we
take wine and liquors to repletion! Is it not pitiful? We can no longer keep
upon our legs; we fall, we roll into the ditch and into the mud, we become the
laughing stock of everyone, even the sport of little children. . . .
If death were
to surprise us in this state, my children, we should not have time to recollect
ourselves; we should fall in that state into the hands of the good God. What a
misfortune, my children! How would our soul be surprised! How would it be
astonished! We should shudder with horror at seeing the lost who are in Hell. .
. . Do not let us be led by our appetite; we shall ruin our health, we shall
lose our soul. . . . See, my children, intemperance and debauchery are the
support of doctors; that lets them live, and gives them a great deal of
practice. . . . We hear every day, such a one was drunk, and falling down he
broke his leg; another, passing a river on a plank, fell into the water and was
drowned. . . . Intemperance and drunkenness are the companions of the wicked
rich man. . . . A moment of pleasure in this world will cost us very dear in
the other. There they will be tormented by a raging hunger and a devouring
thirst; they will not even have a drop of water to refresh themselves; their
tongue and their body will be consumed by the flames for a whole eternity. . .
.
O my children!
we do not think about it; and yet that will not fail to happen to some amongst
us, perhaps even before the end of the year! St. Paul said that those who give
themselves to excess in eating and drinking shall not possess the kingdom of
God. Let us reflect on these words! Look at the saints: they pass their life in penance, and we would
pass ours in the midst of enjoyments and pleasures. St. Elizabeth, Queen of
Portugal, fasted all Advent, and also from St. John Baptist's day to the
Assumption. Soon after, she began another Lent, which lasted till the feast of
St. Michael. She lived upon bread and water only on Fridays and Saturdays, and
on the vigils of the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and of the Apostles. They say
that St. Bernard drank oil for wine. St. Isidore never ate without shedding
tears! If we were good Christians, we should do as the saints have done.
We should gain
a great deal for Heaven at our meals; we should deprive ourselves of many
little things which, without being hurtful to our body, would be very pleasing
to the good God; but we choose rather to satisfy our taste than to please God;
we drown, we stifle our soul in wine and food. My children, God will not say to
us at the Day of Judgment, "Give Me an account of thy body"; but,
"Give Me an account of thy soul; what hast thou done with it?" . . .
What shall we answer Him? Do we take as much care of our soul as of our body? O
my children! let us no longer live for the pleasure of eating; let us live as
the saints have done; let us mortify ourselves as they were mortified. The saints
never indulged themselves in the pleasures of good cheer. Their pleasure was to
feed on Jesus Christ! Let us follow their footsteps on this earth, and we shall
gain the crown which they have in Heaven.
CHAPTER 11: On
Anger
Anger is an
emotion of the soul, which leads us violently to repel whatever hurts or
displeases us.
THIS EMOTION,
my children, comes from the devil: it
shows that we are in his hands; that he is the master of our heart; that he
holds all the strings of it, and makes us dance as he pleases. See, a person
who puts himself in a passion is like a puppet; he knows neither what he says,
nor what he does; the devil guides him entirely. He strikes right and left; his
hair stands up like the bristles of a hedgehog; his eyes start out of his
head--he is a scorpion, a furious lion. . . . Why do we, my children, put
ourselves into such a state? Is it not pitiable? It is, mind, because we do not
love the good God. Our heart is given up to the demon of pride, who is angry
when he thinks himself despised; to the demon of avarice, who is irritated when
he suffers any loss; I to the demon of luxury, who is indignant when his
pleasures are interfered with. . . . How unhappy we are, my children, thus to
be the sport of demons? They do whatever they please with us; they suggest to
us evil-speaking, calumny, hatred, vengeance:
they even drive us so far as to put our neighbour to death. See, Cain
killed his brother Abel out of jealousy; Saul wished to take away the life of
David; Theodosius caused the massacre of the inhabitants of Thessalonica, to
revenge a personal affront. . . . If we do not put our neighbour to death, we
are angry with him, we curse him, we give him to the devil, we wish for his
death, we wish for our own. In our fury, we blaspheme the holy Name of God, we
accuse His Providence. . . . What fury, what impiety! And what is still more
deplorable, my children, we are carried to these excesses for a trifle, for a
word, for the least injustice! Where is our faith! Where is our reason? We say
in excuse that it is anger that makes us swear; but one sin cannot excuse
another sin. The good God equally condemns anger, and the excesses that are its
consequences. . . . How we sadden our guardian angel! He is always there at our
side to send us good thoughts, and he sees us do nothing but evil. . . . If we
did like St. Remigius, we should never be angry. See, this saint, being
questioned by a Father of the desert how he managed to be always in an even
temper, replied, "I often consider that my guardian angel is always by my
side, who assists me in all my needs, who tells me what I ought to do and what
I ought to say, and who writes down, after each of my actions, the way in which
I have done it. "
Philip II,
King of Spain, having passed several hours of the night in writing a long
letter to the Pope, gave it to his secretary to fold up and seal. He, being
half asleep, made a mistake; when he meant to put sand on the letter, he took
the ink bottle and covered all the paper with ink. While he was ashamed and
inconsolable, the king said, quite calmly, "No very great harm is done;
there is another sheet of paper"; and he took it, and employed the rest of
the night in writing a second letter, without showing the least displeasure with
his secretary.
CHAPTER 12: On
Sloth
Sloth is a
kind of cowardice and disgust, which makes us neglect and omit our duties,
rather than do violence to ourselves.
ALAS, MY
CHILDREN, how many slothful people there are on this earth: how many are cowardly, how many are indolent
in the service of the good God! We neglect, we omit our duties of piety, just
as easily as we should take a glass of wine. We will not do violence to
ourselves; we will not put ourselves to any inconvenience. Everything wearies,
everything disgusts the slothful man. Prayer, the holy Sacrifice of the Mass,
which do so much good to pious souls, are a torture to him. He is weary and
dissatisfied in church, at the foot of the altar, in the presence of the good
God. At first he feels only dislike and indifference towards everything that is
commanded by religion. Soon after, you can no longer speak to him either of
Confession or Communion; he has no time to think of those things.
O my children!
how miserable we are in losing, in this way, the time that we might so usefully
employ in gaining Heaven, in preparing ourselves for eternity! How many moments
are lost in doing nothing, or in doing wrong, in listening to the suggestions
of the devil, in obeying him! Does not that make us tremble? If one of the lost
had only a day or an hour to spend for his salvation, to what profit would he
turn it! What haste he would make to save his soul, to reconcile himself with
the good God! And we, my children, who have days and years to think of our
salvation, to save our souls--we remain there with our arms crossed, like that
man spoken of in the Gospel. We neglect, we lose our souls. When death shall
come, what shall we have to present to Our Lord? Ah! my children, hear how the
good God threatens the idle: "Every
tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and shall be cast
into the fire. " "Take that unprofitable servant, and cast him out
into the exterior darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
"
Idleness is
the mother of all vices. Look at the idle; they think of nothing but eating,
drinking, and sleeping. They are no longer men, but stupid beasts, giving up to
all their passions; they drag themselves through the mire like very swine. They
are filthy, both within and without. They feed their soul only upon impure
thoughts and desires. They never open their mouth but to slander their
neighbour, or to speak immodest words. Their eyes, their ears, are open only to
criminal objects. . . . O my children! that we may resist idleness, let us
imitate the saints. Let us watch continually over ourselves; like them, let us
be very zealous in fulfilling all our duties; let the devil never find us doing
nothing, lest we should yield to temptation. Let us prepare ourselves for a
good death, for eternity. Let us not lose our time in lukewarmness, in
negligence, in our habitual infidelities. Death is advancing: tomorrow we must, perhaps, quit our
relations, our friends. Let us make haste to merit the reward promised in Paradise
to the faithful servant in the Gospel!
CHAPTER 13: On
Grace
CAN WE, of our
own strength, avoid sin, and practice virtue? No, my children, we can do
nothing without the grace of God: that
is an article of faith; Jesus Christ Himself taught it to us. See, the Church
thinks, and all the saints have thought with her, that grace is absolutely
necessary to us, and that without it we can neither believe, nor hope, nor
love, nor do penance for our sins. St. Paul, whose piety was not counterfeit,
assures us, on his part, that we cannot of ourselves even pronounce the name of
Jesus in a manner that can gain merit for Heaven. As the earth can produce
nothing unless it is fertilised by the sun, so we can do no good without the
grace of the good God. Grace, my children, is a supernatural assistance which
leads us to good; for example, there is a sinner who goes into a church and
hears an instruction: the preacher
speaks of Hell, of the severity of the judgments of God; he feels himself
interiorly urged to be converted; this interior impulse is what is called
grace. See, my children, it is the good God taking that sinner by the hand, and
wishing to teach him to walk. We are like little children: we do not know how to walk on the road to
Heaven; we stagger, we fall, unless the hand of the good God is always ready to
support us. O my children! how good is the good God! If we would think of all
that He has done, of all that He still does every day for us, we should not be
able to offend Him--we should love Him with all our heart; but we do not think
of it, that is the reason. . . . The angels sin, and are cast into Hell. Man
sins, and God promises him a Deliverer. What have we done to deserve this
favour? What have we done to deserve to be born in the Catholic religion, while
so many souls are every day lost in other religions? What have we done to
deserve to be baptised, while so many little children in France, as well as in
China and America, die without Baptism? What have we done to deserve the pardon
of all the sins that we commit after the age of reason, while so many are
deprived of the Sacrament of Penance?
O my children!
St. Augustine says, and it is very true, that God seeks in us what deserves
that He should abandon us, and finds it; and that He seeks what would make us
worthy of His gifts, and finds nothing, because, in fact, there is nothing in
us--we are nothing but ashes and sin. All our merit, my children, consists in
cooperating with grace. See, my children, a beautiful flower has no beauty nor
brilliancy without the sun; for during the night it is all withered and
drooping. When the sun rises in the morning, it suddenly revives and expands.
It is the same with our soul, in regard to Jesus Christ, the true Sun of
justice; it has no interior beauty but through sanctifying grace. In order to
receive this grace, my children, our soul must turn to the good God by a
sincere conversion: we must open our
hearts to Him by an act of faith and love. As the sun alone cannot make a
flower expand if it is already dead, so the grace of the good God cannot bring
us back to life if we will not abandon sin.
God speaks to
us, without ceasing, by His good inspirations; He sends us good thoughts, good
desires. In youth, in old age, in all the misfortunes of life, He exhorts us to
receive His grace, and what use do we make of His warnings? At this moment,
even, are we cooperating rightly with grace? Are we not shutting the door of
our heart against it? Consider that the good God will one day call you to
account for what you have heard today; woe to you, if you stifle the cry that
is rising from the depths of your conscience! We are in prosperity, we live in
the midst of pleasures, all puffed up with pride; our heart is of ice towards
the good God. It is a ball of copper, which the waters of grace cannot
penetrate; it is a tree which receives the gentle dew, and bears no more fruit.
. . . Let us be on our guard, my children; let us take care not to be
unfaithful to grace. The good God leaves us free to choose life or death; if we
choose death, we shall be cast into the fire, and we must burn forever with the
devils. Let us ask pardon of God for having hitherto abused the graces He has
given us, and let us humbly pray Him to grant us more.
CHAPTER 14: On
Prayer
OUR CATECHISM
teaches us, my children, that prayer is an elevation, an application of our
mind and of our heart to God, to make known to Him our wants and to ask for His
assistance. We do not see the good God, my children, but He sees us, He hears
us, He wills that we should raise towards Him what is most noble in us--our
mind and our heart. When we pray with attention, with humility of mind and of
heart, we quit the earth, we rise to Heaven, we penetrate into the Bosom of
God, we go and converse with the angels and the saints. It was by prayer that
the saints reached Heaven: and by prayer
we too shall reach it. Yes, my children, prayer is the source of all graces,
the mother of all virtues, the efficacious and universal way by which God wills
that we should come to Him. He says to us:
"Ask, and you shall receive. " None but God could make such
promises and keep them. See, the good God does not say to us, "Ask such
and such a thing, and I will grant it;" but He says in general: "If you ask the Father anything in My
name, He will give it you. " O my children! ought not this promise to fill
us with confidence, and to make us pray fervently all the days of our poor
life? Ought we not to be ashamed of our idleness, of our indifference to prayer,
when our Divine Saviour, the Dispenser of all graces, has given us such
touching examples of it? For | you know that the Gospel tells us He prayed
often, I and even passed the night in prayer? Are we as just, as holy, as this
Divine Saviour? Have we no graces to ask for? Let us enter into ourselves; let
us consider. Do not the continual needs of our | soul and of our body warn us
to have recourse to Him who alone can supply them? How many enemies to
vanquish--the devil, the world, and ourselves. How many bad habits to overcome,
how many passions to subdue, how many sins to efface! In so frightful and
painful a situation, what remains to us, my children? The armour of the |
saints: prayer, that necessary virtue,
indispensable to good as well as to bad Christians. . . .
Within the
reach of the ignorant as well as the learned, enjoined to the simple and to the
enlightened, it is the virtue of all mankind; it is the science of all the
faithful! Everyone on the earth who has a heart, everyone who has the use of
reason ought to love and pray to God; to have recourse to Him when He is
irritated; to thank Him when He confers favours; to humble themselves when He
strikes.
See, my
children, we are poor people who have been taught to beg spiritually, and we do
not beg. We are sick people, to whom a cure has been Promised, and we do not
ask for it. The good God does not require of us fine prayers, but prayers which
come from the bottom of our heart.
St. Ignatius
was once travelling with several of his companions; they each carried on their
shoulders a little bag, containing what was most necessary for them on the
journey. A good Christian, seeing that they were fatigued, was interiorly
excited to relieve them; he asked them as a favour to let him help them to
carry their burdens. They yielded to his entreaties. When they had arrived at
the inn, this man who had followed them, seeing that the Fathers knelt down at
a little distance from each other to pray, knelt down also. When the Fathers
rose again, they were astonished to see that this man had remained prostrate
all the time they were praying: they
expressed to him their surprise, and asked him what he had been doing. His
answer edified them very much, for he said:
"I did nothing but say, Those who pray so devoutly are saints: I am their beast of burden: O Lord! I have the intention of doing what
they do: I say to Thee whatever they say.
" These were afterwards his ordinary words, and he arrived by means of
this at a sublime degree of prayer. Thus, my children, you see that there is no
one who cannot pray--and pray at all times, and in all places; by night or by
day; amid the most severe labours, or in repose; in the country, at home, in
travelling. The good God is everywhere ready to hear your prayers, provided you
address them to Him with faith and humility.
CHAPTER 15: On the
Love of God
"If you
love Me, keep My Commandments."
NOTHING IS so
common among Christians as to say, "O my God; I love Thee," and
nothing more rare, perhaps, than the love of the good God. Satisfied with
making outward acts I of love, in which our poor heart often has no share, we
think we have fulfilled the whole of the precept. An error, an illusion; for
see, my children, St. John says that we must not love the good God in word, but
in deed. Our Lord Jesus Christ also says, "If anyone love Me he will keep
My Word: ' If we judge by this rule,
there are very few Christians who truly love God, since there are so few who
keep His Commandments. Yet nothing is more essential than the love of God. It
is the first of all virtues, a virtue so necessary, that without it we shall
never get to Heaven; and it is in order to love God that we are on the earth.
Even if the good God did not command it, this feeling is so natural to us, that
our heart should be drawn to it of its own accord.
But the
misfortune is that we lavish our love upon objects unworthy of it, and refuse
it to Him alone who deserves to be infinitely loved. Thus, my children, one
person will love riches, another will love pleasures; and both will offer to
the good God nothing but the languishing remains of a heart worn out in the
service of the world. From thence comes insufficient love, divided love, which
is for that very reason unworthy of the good God; for He alone, being
infinitely above all created good, deserves that we should love Him above all
things: more than our possessions,
because they are earthly; more than our friends, because they are mortal; more
than our life, because it is perishable; more than ourselves, because we belong
to Him. Our love, my children, if it is true, must be without limit, and must
influence our conduct....
If the Saviour
of the world, addressing Himself to each one of us separately, were now to ask
us the same question that He formerly asked St. Peter: "Simon, son of John, lovest thou
Me?" could we answer with as much confidence as that great Apostle,
"Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee"? Domine, tu scis quia amo
te. We have perhaps pronounced these words without taking in their meaning and
extent; for, my children, to love the good God is not merely to say with the
mouth, "O my God! I love Thee!" Oh, no! where is the sinner who does
not sometimes use this language?
To love the
good God is not only to feel from time to time some emotions of tenderness
towards God; this sensible devotion is not always in our own power. To love the
good God is not to be faithful in fulfilling part of our duties and to neglect
the rest. The good God will have no division:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with
thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength:
' This shows the strength of the Commandment to love God. To love God
with our whole heart is to prefer Him to everything, so as to be ready to lose
all our possessions, our honour, our life, rather than offend this good Master.
To love God with our whole heart is to love nothing that is incompatible with
the love of God; it is to love nothing that can share our heart with the good
God: it is to renounce all our passions,
all our ill-regulated desires. Is it thus, my children, that we love the good
God?
To love the
good God with our whole mind is to make the sacrifice to Him of our knowledge
and our reason, and to believe all that He has taught. To love the good God
with our whole mind is to think of Him often, and to make it our principal
study to know Him well. To love the good God with our whole strength is to
employ our possessions, our health, and our talents, in serving Him and glorifying
Him. It is to refer all our actions to Him, as our last end. Once more, is it
thus that we love the good God? Judging by this invariable rule, how few
Christians truly love God!
Do those bad
Christians love the good God, who are the slaves of their passions? Do those
worldly persons love the good God, who seek only to gratify their body and to
please the world? Is God loved by the miser, who sacrifices Him for a vile
gain? Is He loved by that voluptuary, who abandons himself to vices the most
opposite to divine love? Is He loved by that man who thinks of nothing but wine
and good cheer? Is He loved by that other man, who cherishes an aversion to his
neighbour, and will not forgive him? Is He loved by that young girl, who loves
nothing but pleasures, and thinks of nothing but indulgence and vanity? No, no,
my children, none of these persons love the good God; for we must love Him with
a love of preference, with an active love!
If we had
rather offend the good God than deprive ourselves of a passing satisfaction,
than renounce those guilty meetings, those shameful passions, we do not love
the good God with a love of preference, since we love our pleasures, our
passions, better than the good God Himself. Let us go down into our own souls;
let us question our hearts, my children, and see if we do not love some
creature more than the good God. We are permitted to love our relations, our
possessions, our health, our reputation; but this love must be subordinate to
the love we should have for God, so that we may be ready to make the sacrifice
of it if He should require it....
Can you
suppose that you are in these dispositions--you who look upon mortal sin as a
trifle, who keep it quietly on your conscience for months, for years, though
you know that you are in a state most displeasing to the good God? Can you
suppose that you love the good God? Can you suppose that you love the good
God--you who make no efforts to correct yourselves; you who will deprive
yourselves of nothing; you who offend the Creator every time that you find
opportunity? Yes, my children, what the miser loves with his whole heart is
money; what the drunkard loves with his whole heart is wine; what the libertine
loves with his whole heart is the object of his passion. You, young girls, you
who had rather offend God than give up your finery and your vanities, you say
that you love God; say rather that you love yourselves.
No, no, my
children; it is not thus that the good God is to be loved, for we must love Him
not only with a love of preference, but also with an active love.
"Love," says St. Augustine, "cannot remain without the constant
action of the soul: Non potest vacare
amor in anima amantis. Yes," says this great saint, "seek for a love
that does not manifest itself in works, and you will find none: ' What! could it be, O my God, that Thy love
alone should be barren, and that the Divine fire, which ought to enkindle the
whole world, should be without activity and without strength?
When you love
a person, you show him the more or less affection according as the ardour of
your love for him is more or less great. See, my children, what the saints were
like, who were all filled with the love of the good God: nothing cost them too much; they joyfully
made the greatest sacrifices; they distributed their goods to the poor,
rendered services to their enemies, led a hard and penitential life; tore
themselves from the pleasures of the world, from the conveniences of life, to
bury themselves alive in solitude; they hastened to torments and to death, as
people hasten to a feast. Such were the effects which the love of the good God
produced in the saints; such ought it to produce in us. But, my children, we
are not penetrated with the love of God; we do not love the good God. Can
anyone say, indeed, that he loves the good God, who is so easily frightened,
and who is repulsed by the least difficulty? Alas! what would have become of us
if Jesus Christ had loved us only as we love Him? But, no. Triumphing over the
agonies of the Cross, the bitterness of death, the shame of the most
ignominious tortures, nothing costs Him too dear when He has to prove that He
loves us. That is our only model. If our love is active, it will manifest
itself by the works which are the effects of love, because the love of the good
God is not only a love of preference, but a pious affection, a love of
obedience, which makes us practice His Commandments; an active love, which
makes us fulfil all the duties of a good Christian. Such is the love, my children,
which God requires from us, to which He has so many titles, which He has
purchased by so many benefits heaped upon us by His death for us upon the
Cross. What happiness, my children, to love the good God! There is no joy, no
happiness, no peace, in the heart of those who do not love the good God on
earth. We desire Heaven, we aspire to it; but, that we may be sure to attain to
it, let us begin to love the good God here below, in order to be able to love
Him, to possess Him eternally in His holy Paradise.
CHAPTER 16: On
Paradise
"Blessed,
O Lord, are those who dwell in Thy house:
they shall praise Thee for ever and ever."
To DWELL in
the house of the good God, to enjoy the presence of the good God, to be happy
with the happiness of the good God--oh, what happiness, my children! Who can
understand all the joy and consolation with which the saints are inebriated in
Paradise? St. Paul, who was taken up into the third heaven, tells us that there
are things above which he cannot reveal to us, and which we cannot
comprehend.... Indeed, my children, we can never form a true idea of Heaven
till we shall be there. It is a hidden treasure, an abundance of secret
sweetness, a plenitude of joy, which may be felt, but which our poor tongue
cannot explain. What can we imagine greater? The good God Himself will be our
recompense: Ego merces tua magna
nimis--I am thy reward exceeding great. O God! the happiness Thou promisest us
is such that the eyes of man cannot see it, his ears cannot hear it, nor his
heart conceive it.
Yes, my
children, the happiness of Heaven is incomprehensible; it is the last effort of
the good God, who wishes to reward us. God, being admirable in all His works,
will be so too when He recompenses the good Christians who have made all their
happiness consist in the possession of Heaven. This possession contains all
good, and excludes all evil; sin being far from Heaven, all the pains and
miseries which are the consequences of sin are also banished from it. No more
death! The good God will be in us the Principle of everlasting life. No more
sickness, no more sadness, no more pains, no more grief. You who are afflicted,
rejoice! Your fears and your weeping will not extend beyond the grave. . . .
The good God will Himself wipe away your tears! Rejoice, O you whom the world
persecutes! your sorrows will soon be over, and for a moment of tribulation,
you will have in Heaven an immense weight of glory. Rejoice! for you possess
all good things in one-the source of all good, the good God Himself.
Can anyone be
unhappy when he is with the good God; when he is happy with the happiness of
the good God, of the good God Himself; when he sees the good God as he sees
himself? As St. Paul says, my children, we shall see God face to face, because
then there will be no veil between Him and us. We shall possess Him without
uneasiness, for we shall no longer fear to lose Him. We shall love Him with an
uninterrupted and undivided love, because He alone will occupy our whole heart.
We shall enjoy Him without weariness, because we shall discover in Him ever new
perfections; and in proportion as we penetrate into that immense abyss of
wisdom, of goodness, of mercy, of justice, of grandeur, and of holiness, we
shall plunge ourselves in it with fresh eagerness. If an interior consolation,
if a grace from the good God, gives us so much pleasure in this world that it
diminishes our troubles, that it helps us to bear our crosses, that it gives to
so many martyrs strength to suffer the most cruel torments --what will be the
happiness of Heaven, where consolations and delights are given, not drop by
drop, but by torrents!
Let us
represent to ourselves, my children, an everlasting day always new, a day
always serene, always calm; the most delicious, the most perfect society. What
joy, what happiness, if we could possess on earth, only for a few minutes, the
angels, the Blessed Virgin, Jesus Christi In Heaven we shall eternally see, not
only the Blessed Virgin and Jesus Christ, we shall see the good God Himself! We
shall see Him no longer through the darkness of faith, but in the light of day,
in all His Majesty! What happiness thus to see the good God! The angels have
contemplated Him since the beginning of the world, and they are not satiated;
it would be the greatest misfortune to them to be deprived of Him for a single
moment. The possession of Heaven, my children, can never weary us; we possess
the good God, the Author of all perfections. See, the more we possess God, the
more He pleases; the more we know Him, the more attractions and charms we find
in the knowledge of Him. We shall always see Him and shall always desire to see
Him; we shall always taste the pleasure there is in enjoying the good God, and
we shall never be satiated with it. The blessed will be enveloped in the Divine
Immensity, they will revel in delights and be all surrounded with them, and, as
it were, inebriated. Such is the happiness which the good God destines for us.
We can all, my
children, acquire this happiness. The good God wills the salvation of the whole
world; He has merited Heaven for us by His death, and by the effusion of all
His Blood. What a happiness to be able to say, "Jesus Christ died for me;
He has opened Heaven for me; it is my inheritance. . . . Jesus has prepared a
place for me; it only depends on me to go and occupy it. Vado vobis parare
locum--I go to prepare a place for you. The good God has given us faith, and
with this virtue we can attain to eternal life. For, though the good God wills
the salvation of all men, He particularly wills that of the Christians who
believe in Him: Qui credit, habeat vitam
aeternam--He that believeth hath life everlasting. Let us, then, thank the good
God, my children; let us rejoice--our names are written in Heaven, like those
of the Apostles. Yes, they are written in the Book of Life: if we choose, they will be there forever,
since we have the means of reaching Heaven.
The happiness
of Heaven, my children, is easy to acquire; the good God has furnished us with
so many means of doing it! See, there is not a single creature which does not
furnish us with the means of attaining to the good God; if any of them become
an obstacle, it is only by our abuse of them. The goods and the miseries of
this life, even the chastisements made use of by the good God to punish our
infidelities, serve to our salvation. The good God, as