Fraternal Charity Part 4

_To check uncharitable conversation in others_

WHEN you see charity wounded by an equal call him to order.

If to say or do anything scandalous is the first sin forbidden by charity, not to stop, when you can, him who speaks or acts badly ought to be considered the second.

When the discourse degenerates, represent Jesus Christ entering suddenly into the midst of the company, and saying, as He did formerly to the disciples of Emmaus: "What discourse hold you among yourselves, and why are you sad?" Recall also these words of the Psalmist: "You have preferred to say evil rather than good, and to relate vices rather than virtues. O deceitful, inconsiderate, and rash tongue! Dost thou think thou wilt remain unpunished? No; G.o.d will punish thee in everlasting flames." After having thus fortified ourselves against uncharitable conversation, we ought to try and put a stop to it.

St. John Climacus tells us to address the following words to those who calumniate in our presence: "For mercy's sake cease such conversation! How would you wish me to stone my brethren--me, whose faults are greater and more numerous?"

A holy religious replied to an uncharitable person: "We have to render infinite thanks to G.o.d if we are not such as those of whom you speak. Alas! what would become of us without Him?"

The philosopher Zeno, hearing a man relate a number of misdeeds about Antisthenes, said to him: "Ah! Has he never done anything good? Has he never done anything for which he merits praise?" "I don't know," he replied. Then said Zeno, "How is that? You have sufficient perception to remark, and sufficient memory to remember, this long list of faults, and you have had no eyes to see his many good qualities and virtuous actions."

St. John Chrysostom says: "To the calumniator I wish you to say the following: If you can praise your neighbours, my ears are open to receive your perfume. If you can only blacken them, my ears are closed, as I do not wish them to be the receptacle of your filthy words. What matters it to me to hear that such a one is wicked, and has done some detestable act? Friend, think of the account that must be rendered to the Sovereign Judge. What excuse can we give, and what mercy will we deserve--we who have been so keen-sighted to the faults of others, and so blind to our own? You would consider it very rude for a person to look into your private room; but I say it is far worse to pry into another's private life and to expose it.

The calumniator should remember that, besides the fault he commits and the wrong he does to his neighbours, he exposes himself, by a just punishment of G.o.d, to be the victim of calumny himself.

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NINTH PRESERVATIVE

_How to check uncharitable conversation in superiors, etc._

WHEN we see charity wounded by persons worthy of respect, keep silent, in order to show your regret, or relate something to the advantage of the absent. If necessary, withdraw.

It is related in the life of Sister Margaret, of the Blessed Sacrament of the Carmelite Order, that when a discourse against charity took place in the house she saw a smoke arise of such suffocating odour that she nearly fainted, and fled immediately to her Divine Master for pardon.

St. Jerome, writing to Nepotian on this subject, says: "Some object that they cannot warn the speaker of his fault without failing in the respect due to him. This excuse is vain, because their eagerness to listen increases his itch for speaking. No one wishes to relate calumnies and murmurs to ears closed with disgust. Is there anyone so foolish as to shoot arrows against a stone wall?" Let your strict silence be a significant and salutary lesson for the detractor. "Have no commerce with those who bite,"

said Solomon, because perdition is on the eve of overtaking them; and who can tell the disaster and ruin with which the rash detractor and equally blamable listener are threatened?

If it be true, according to the testimony of a religious who was visitor of the houses of his Order, that the virtue against which one can most easily commit a grievous sin in religion is charity; and, according to St. Francis de Sales, sins of the tongue number three-fourths of all sins committed; cannot it be said with equal truth that to refuse to listen to detractors is with one blow to prevent the sin and safeguard charity?

In many cases one can adroitly make known the good qualities and virtues which more than counterbalance the defects related by the defamer. To act thus is to spread about the good odour of Christ.

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TENTH PRESERVATIVE

_Be cautious after hearing uncharitable conversation_

AFTER having heard uncharitable words, observe the following precautions given by the Saints:

1. Repeat nothing.

2. Believe all the good you hear, but believe only the bad you see. Malice does the contrary. It demands proofs for good reports, but believes bad reports on the slightest grounds. Out of every thousand reports one can scarcely be found accurate in all its details. When, as a rule of prudence, Superiors are told to believe only half of what they hear, to consider the other half, and still suspect the remaining part, what rule should be prescribed for inferiors?

When the act is evidently blameworthy, suppose a good intention, or at least one not so bad as apparent, leaving to G.o.d what He reserves to Himself the judgment of the heart; or consider it as the result of surprise, inadvertence, human frailty, or the violence of the temptation. Never come to hasty conclusions-- _e.g._, "He is incorrigible; as he is, so will he always be."

Expect everything from grace, efforts, and time.

3. Efface as much as possible the bad impression produced on the mind, because calumny always produces such.

The recital of something bad about a fellow-religious based on probabilities has sufficed to tarnish a reputation which ample apologies cannot fully repair. The detractor's evil reports are believed on account of the audacity with which he relates them, but when he wants to relate something good he will not be believed on oath. We know by experience that evil reports spread with compound interest, while good ones are retailed at discount.

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ELEVENTH PRESERVATIVE

_Not to judge or suspect rashly_

EXPEL every doubt, every thought, likely to diminish esteem. They amuse themselves with a most dangerous game who always gather up vague thoughts of the past, rumours without foundation, conjectures in which pa.s.sion has the greatest share, and thus form in their minds characters of their brethren--adding always, never subtracting--and by dint of the high idea they have of their own ability conclude that all their judgments are true, and thus become fixed in their bad habit. St. Bernard, comparing them to painters, warns them that it is the devil who furnishes the materials, and even the evil conceptions, necessary to depict such bad impressions of their brethren. We read in the "Life of St.

Francis" that our Lord Himself called in a distinct voice a certain young man to his Order. "O Lord," replied the young man, "when I am once entered, what must I do to please You?" Pay particular attention to our Lord's answer: "Lead thou a life in common with the rest. Avoid particular friends.h.i.+ps. Take no notice of the defects of others, and form no unfavourable judgments about them." What matter for consideration in these admirable words!

Thomas a Kempis says: "Turn thy eyes back upon thyself, and see thou judge not the doing of others. In judging others a man labours in vain, often errs, and easily sins; but in judging and looking into himself he always labours with fruit. We frequently judge of a thing according to the inclination of our hearts, because self-love easily alters in us a true judgment."

Rodriguez tells us to turn on ourselves the sinister questions, etc., we are tempted to refer to others _e.g._: "It is I who am deceived. It is through jealousy that I condemn my brethren. It is through malice that I find so much to blame in them. Finally, the fault is mine, not theirs."

Even when reports more or less true might depreciate in your eyes some of the community, may they not have, besides their faults, some great but hidden virtues, and by these be ent.i.tled to a more merciful judgment? St. Augustine says beautifully: "If you cast your eye over a field where the corn has been trampled, you only perceive the straw, not the grain. Lift up the straw, and you will see plenty of golden sheaves full of grain." The simile is very applicable to a poor religious beaten down by foul tongues. We blame the defects of our brethren, and perhaps we have the same, or others more shameful still. We usurp the right of judgment, which G.o.d reserves to Himself, and forget that He will punish us by leaving us to our own irregular pa.s.sions. Ah! is it not already a very great misfortune to have these contemptuous, slanderous, distrustful thoughts, and many other sins, the result of malicious suspicions and rash judgments, rooted in the soul?

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MEANS TO SUPPORT THE EVIL THOUGHTS AND TONGUES OF OTHERS

WHAT must be done in those painful moments when, being the victim of a painful calumny, the object of suspicion, the b.u.t.t of domestic persecution, we are tempted to believe that charity is banished from the community, and so to banish it from our own heart? Recall the words of St. John of the Cross. "Imagine," says he, "that your brethren are so many sculptors armed with mallets and chisels, and that you have been placed before them as a block of marble destined in the mind of G.o.d to become a statue representing the Man of Sorrows, Jesus crucified." Consider a hasty word said to you as a thorn in the head; a mockery as a spit in the face; an unkind act as a nail in the hand; a hatred which takes the place of friends.h.i.+p as a lance in the side; all that which hurts, contradicts, or humiliates us as the blows, stripes, the gall and vinegar, the crown of thorns and the cross. The work proceeds always, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Let us not complain. We will one day thank these workmen, who, without intending it, give to our soul the most beautiful, the most glorious, and the n.o.blest traits. We ourselves are sculptors as well as statues, and we will find that, on our part, we have materially helped to form in them the same traits.

"If all were perfect," says the "Imitation," "what, then, should we have to suffer from others for G.o.d's sake?"

It is not forbidden us to seek consolation. But from whom? Is it from those discontented spirits whose ears are like public sewers, the receptacle of every filth and dirt? They increase our pain by pouring the poison of their own discontent instead of the oil of the Good Samaritan. They will take our disease and give us theirs, and, like Samson's foxes, spread destruction around by repeating what we said to them. May G.o.d preserve us from this misfortune! If we cannot carry our burden alone, and if we find it no relief to lay our griefs in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us go to him whom the rule appoints to be our friend and consoler, our confidant and director, and who, as St. Augustine relates of St. Monica, after having listened to us with patience, charity, and compa.s.sion, after having at first appeared to share our sentiments, will sweeten and explain all with prudence, will lift up and encourage our oppressed heart, and by his counsel and prayers will restore us to peace and charity.

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SECOND MEANS TO BEAR WITH OTHERS

RECALL the words of our Lord to Blessed Margaret Mary: "With the intention of perfecting thee by patience I will increase thy sensibility and repugnance, so that thou wilt find occasions of humiliation and suffering even in the smallest and most indifferent things."

What would be considered, when we were in the world, as the p.r.i.c.k of a needle, we look upon in religion as the blow of a sword. What we looked upon in our own house as light as a feather, becomes in community life as heavy as a rock. An insignificant word becomes an outrage, and a little matter which formerly would escape our notice now upsets us, and even deprives us of sleep and appet.i.te.

Is not this increase of sensibility and repugnance found in the religious state only to form in us the image of our crucified Lord? If Christ alone has suffered interiorly more than all the Saints and Martyrs together, was it not because of this extreme repugnance of His soul, which multiplied to infinity for Him the bitterness of the affronts and the rigour of His torments?

Religious may expect for a certainty that, like their Divine Master, there are reserved for them moments of complete abandonment, those agonies intended for the souls of the elect, in which Nature seems on the point of succ.u.mbing. No consolation from their families, which they have quitted; nor from their companions, who are busy in their various employments; nor from their Superiors, who do not understand the excess of their grief, and whose words by Divine permission produce no effect.

The solemn moment of agony with our Divine Saviour was that in which, abandoned, betrayed, and denied by His Apostles, and perceiving in His Father only an irritated face, He exclaimed, "My G.o.d! My G.o.d! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Such will be for religious the last touch which will complete in them the resemblance of Jesus crucified, provided they will render themselves worthy of it.