The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales Part 7

Permit me to add to these excellent words a reminder which ought not, I think, to be unprofitable to you. Some imagine that it is enough to observe the law of G.o.d in order to save our souls, obeying the command of our Lord: _Do this_, that is to say, the law, _and you shall live_,[3] without attempting to determine the motive which impels them to observe the law.

Now the truth is that some observe the law of G.o.d from a servile spirit, and only for fear of losing their souls. Others chiefly from a mercenary spirit for the sake of the reward promised to those who keep it, and, as our Blessed Father says very happily: "Many keep the Commandments as medicines are taken, rather that they may escape eternal death than that they may live so as to please our Saviour." One of his favourite sayings was: "It is better to fear G.o.d from love than to love Him from fear."

He says also: "There are people who, however pleasant a medicament may be, feel a repugnance when required to take it, simply from the fact of its being medicine. So also there are souls which conceive an absolute antipathy to anything they are commanded to do, only because they are so commanded." As soon, however, as the love of G.o.d is shed forth in the heart by the Holy Spirit, then the burden of the law becomes sweet, and its yoke light, because of the extreme desire of that heart to please G.o.d by the observance of His precepts. "There is no labour," he goes on to say, "where love is, or if there be any, it is a labour of love. Labour mingled with love is a certain _bitter-sweet_, more pleasant to the palate than that which is merely sweet. Thus then does heavenly love conform us to the will of G.o.d and make us carefully observe His commandments, this being the will of His Divine Majesty, Whom we desire to please. So that this complacency with its sweet and amiable violence antic.i.p.ates the necessity of obeying which the law imposes upon us, converting that necessity into the virtue of love, and every difficulty into delight."[4]

[Footnote 1: Tim. i. 9.]

[Footnote 2: Book viii. c. 1.]

[Footnote 3: Luke x. 28.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. _Treatise on the Love of G.o.d_. Book viii. c. 5.]

UPON DESIRES.

To desire to love G.o.d is to love to desire G.o.d, and consequently to love Him: for love is the root of all desires.

St. Paul says: _The charity of G.o.d presses us_.[1] And how does it press us if not by urging us to desire G.o.d. This longing for G.o.d is as a spur to the heart, causing it to leap forward on its way to G.o.d. The desire of glory incites the soldier to run all risks, and he desires glory because he loves it for its own sake, and deems it a blessing more precious than life itself.

A sick man has not always an appet.i.te for food, however much he may wish for it as a sign of returning health. Nor can he by wis.h.i.+ng for it obtain it, because the animal powers of our nature do not always obey the rational faculties.

Love and desire, however, being the offspring of one and the same faculty, whoever desires, loves, and whoever desires from the motive of charity is able to love from the same motive. But how, you ask, shall we know whether or not we have this true desire for the love of G.o.d, and having it, whether it proceeds from the motions of grace or from nature?

It is rather difficult, my dear sisters, to give reasons for principles which are themselves their own reason. If you ask me why the fire is hot you must not take it amiss if I simply answer because it is not cold.

But you wish to know what we have to do in order to obtain this most desirable desire to love G.o.d. Our Blessed Father tells us that we must renounce all useless, or less necessary desires, because the soul wastes her power when she spreads herself out in over many desires, like the river which when divided by the army of a Persian King into many channels lost itself altogether. "This," he said, "is why the Saints used to retire into solitary places, so that being freed from earthly cares they might with more fervour give themselves up wholly and entirely to divine love. This is why the spouse in the Canticles is represented with one eye closed, and all the power of vision concentrated in the other, thus enabling her to gaze more intently into the very depths of the heart of her Beloved, piercing it with love.

"This is why she even winds all her tresses into one single braid, using it as a chain to bind and hold captive the heart of her Bridegroom, making Him her slave by love! Souls which sincerely desire to love G.o.d, close their understanding to all worldly things, so as to employ it the more fully in meditating upon things Divine.

"All the aspirations of our nature have to be summed up in the one single intention of loving G.o.d, and Him alone: for to desire anything otherwise than for G.o.d is to desire G.o.d the less."[2]

[Footnote 1: 2 Cor. v. 14.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. _Treatise on the Love of G.o.d_. Book xii. 3.]

HOW CHARITY EXCELS BOTH FAITH AND HOPE.

Not only did Blessed Francis consider it intolerable that moral virtues should be held to be comparable to Charity, but he was even unwilling that Faith and Hope, excellent, supernatural, and divinely infused though they be, should be reckoned to be of value without Charity, or even when compared with it. In this he only echoed the thought and words of the great Apostle St. Paul, who in his first Epistle to the Corinthians writes: _Faith, Hope, and Charity_ are three precious gifts, _but the greatest of these is Charity_.

Faith, it is true, is love, "a love of the mind for the beautiful in the divine Mysteries," as our Blessed Father says in his _Treatise on the Love of G.o.d_,[1] but "the motions of love which forerun the act of faith required from our justification are either not love properly speaking, or but a beginning and imperfect love," which inclines the soul to acquiesce in the truths proposed for its acceptance.

Hope, too, is love, "a love for the useful in the goods which are promised in the other life."[2] "It goes, indeed, to G.o.d but it returns to us; its sight is turned upon the divine goodness, yet with some respect to our own profit."

"In Hope love is imperfect because it does not tend to G.o.d's infinite goodness as being such in itself, but only because it is so to us.... In real truth no one is able by virtue of this love either to keep G.o.d's commandments or obtain life everlasting, because it is a love that yields more affection than effect when it is not accompanied by Charity."[3]

But the perfect love of G.o.d, which is only to be found in Charity, is a disinterested love, which loves the sovereign goodness of G.o.d in Himself and for His sake only, without any aim except that He may be that which He is, eternally loved, glorified, and adored, because He deserves to be so, as St. Thomas says. And it is in the fact that it attains more perfectly its final end that its pre-eminence consists. This is very clearly shown by Blessed Francis in the same Treatise where he tells us that Eternal life or Salvation is shown to Faith, and is prepared for Hope, but is given only to Charity. Faith points out the way to the land of promise as a pillar of cloud and of fire, that is, light and dark; Hope feeds us with its manna of sweetness, but Charity actually introduces us into it, like the Ark of the Covenant, which leads us dry-shod through the Jordan, that is, through the judgment, and which shall remain amidst the people in the heavenly land promised to the true Israelites, where neither the pillar of Faith serves as a guide, nor the manna of Hope is needed as food.[4]

That which an ancient writer said of poverty, that it was a great good, yet very little known as such, can be said with far more reason of Charity.

It is a hidden treasure, a pearl shut up in its sh.e.l.l, and of which few know the value. The heretics of the present day profess themselves content with a dead Faith, to which they attribute all their justice and their salvation. There are also catholics who appear to limit themselves to that interested love which is in Hope, and who serve G.o.d as mercenaries, more for their own interest than for His. There are few who love G.o.d as He ought to be loved, that is to say, with the disinterested love of Charity. Yet, without this wedding garment, without this oil which fed the lamps of the wise Virgins, there is no admittance to the Marriage of the Lamb.

It is here that we may sing with the Psalmist: _The Lord hath looked down from Heaven upon the children of men to see if there be any that understand and seek G.o.d_, that is, to know how He wishes to be served. _They are all gone aside, they are become unprofitable together: there is none that doeth good, no, not one_.[5] This means that there is not one who doth good in spirit and in truth. Yet, what is serving Him in spirit and in truth but resolving to honour and obey Him, for the love of Himself, without admixture of private self-interest?

But whoever has learnt to serve G.o.d after the pattern of those His beloved ones, who wors.h.i.+p Him in spirit and in truth, in burning Faith and Hope, animated by Charity, may be said to be of the number of the holy nation, the royal Priesthood, the chosen people, and to have entered into the sanctuary of true and Christian holiness, of which our Blessed Father speaks thus: "In the sanctuary was kept the ark of the covenant, and near it the tables of the law, manna in a golden vessel, and Aaron's rod, which in one night bore flowers and fruit. And in the highest point of the soul are found: 1. The light of Faith, figured by the manna hidden in its vessel, by which we recognize the truth of the mysteries we do not understand. 2. The utility of Hope, represented by Aaron's flowering and fruitful rod, by which we acquiesce in the promises of the goods which we see not. 3. The sweetness of holy Charity, represented by G.o.d's commandments, the keeping of which it includes, by which we acquiesce in the union of our spirit with G.o.d's, though yet are hardly, if at all, conscious of this our happiness."[6]

[Footnote 1: Book ii. 13.]

[Footnote 2: Book i. c. 5.]

[Footnote 3: Book ii. 17.]

[Footnote 4: Book i. 6.]

[Footnote 5: Psalm xiii. 2, 3.]

[Footnote 6: Book i. 12.]

SOME THOUGHTS OF BLESSED FRANCIS ON THE Pa.s.sION.

Our Blessed Father considered that no thought is of such avail to urge us forward towards the perfection of divine love as the consideration of the Pa.s.sion and Death of the Son of G.o.d. This he called the sweetest, and yet the most constraining of all motives of piety.

And when I asked him how he could possibly mention gentleness and constraint or violence in the same breath, he answered, "I can do so in the sense in which the Apostle says that the Charity of G.o.d presses us, constrains us, impels us, draws us, for such is the meaning of the word _Urget_.[1] In the same sense as that in which the Holy Ghost in the Canticle of Canticles tells us that _Love is as strong as death and fierce as h.e.l.l_."

"We cannot deny," he added, "that love is the very essence of sweetness, and the sweetener of all bitterness, yet see how it is compared to what is most irresistible, namely, death and h.e.l.l. The reason of this is that as there is nothing so strong as the sweetness of love, so also there is nothing more sweet and more lovable than its strength. Oil and honey are each smooth and sweet, but when boiling nothing is to be compared with the heat they give out.

"The bee when not interfered with is the most harmless of insects; irritated its sting is the sharpest of all.

"Jesus Crucified is the Lion of the tribe of Judah--He is the answer to Samson's riddle, for in His wounds is found the honeycomb of the strongest charity, and from this strength proceeds the sweetness of our greatest consolation. And certainly since our Lord's dying for us, as all Scripture testifies, is the climax of his love, it ought also to be the strongest of all our motives for loving Him.

"This it is which made St. Bernard exclaim: 'Oh, my Lord, I entreat Thee to grant that my whole heart may be so absorbed and, as it were, consumed in the burning strength and honeyed sweetness of Thy crucified love, that I may die for the love of Thy love, O Redeemer of my soul, as Thou hast deigned to die for the love of my love.'

"It is this excess of love, which on the hill of Calvary drained the last drop of life-blood from the Sacred Heart of the Lover of our Souls; it is of this love that Moses and Elias spoke on Mount Thabor amid the glory of the Transfiguration.

"They spoke of it to teach us that even in the glory of Heaven, of which the Transfiguration was only a glimpse, after the vision of the goodness of G.o.d contemplated and loved in itself, and for itself, there will be no more powerful incentive towards the love of our Divine Saviour than the remembrance of His Death and Pa.s.sion.

"We have a signal testimony to this truth in the Apocalypse, where the Saints and Angels chant these words before the throne of Him that liveth for ever and ever: _Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction from every creature which is in Heaven, and on the earth._"[2]

[Footnote 1: 2 Cor. v. 14.]

[Footnote 2: Apoc. v. 12, 18.]

UPON THE VANITY OF HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY.

I was speaking on one occasion of the writings of Seneca and of Plutarch, praising them highly and saying that they had been my delight when young, our Blessed Father replied: "After having tasted the manna of the Fathers and Theologians, this is to hanker for the leeks and garlic of Egypt." When I rejoined that these above mentioned writers furnished me with all that I could desire for instruction in morals, and that Seneca seemed to me more like a christian author than a pagan, he said: "There I differ from you entirely. I consider that no spirit is more absolutely opposed to the spirit of christianity than that of Seneca, and no more dangerous reading for a soul aiming at true piety can be found than his works."

Being much surprised at this opinion, and asking for an explanation, he went on to say: "This opposition between the two spirits comes from the fact that Seneca would have us look for perfection within ourselves, whereas we must seek it outside ourselves, in G.o.d, that is to say, in the grace which G.o.d pours into our souls through the Holy Ghost. _Not I, but the grace of G.o.d with me_.[1] By this grace we are what we are. The spirit of Seneca inflates the soul and puffs it up with pride, that of Christianity rejects the knowledge which puffs up in order to embrace the charity which edifies. In short, there is the same difference between the spirit of Seneca and the christian spirit that there is between virtues acquired by us, which are, therefore, dead, and virtues that are infused by G.o.d, which are, therefore, living. Indeed, how could this philosopher, being dest.i.tute of the true Faith, possess charity? And yet well we know that without charity all acquired virtues are unable to save us."

[Footnote 1: 1 Cor. xv. 10.]

UPON THE PURE LOVE OF OUR NEIGHBOUR.

Our Blessed Father, in his Twelfth Conference, teaches how to love one's neighbour, for whom his own love was so pure and so unfeigned.

"We must look upon all the souls of men as resting in the Heart of our Saviour. Alas! they who regard their fellow-men in any other way run the risk of not loving them with purity, constancy, or impartiality. But beholding them in that divine resting place, who can do otherwise than love them, bear with them, and be patient with their imperfections? Who dare call them irritating or troublesome? Yes, my daughters, your neighbour is there in the Heart of the Saviour, and there so beloved and lovable that the Divine Lover dies for love of him."