Of Three Other Means That Will Enable Us to Advance in Virtue

A very good means to advance much is given by St. Basil and by the saints generally. It is that we should fix our eyes on the best members of the community, those whose virtue shines forth more conspicuously, and set about imitating them. The same counsel was given by the blessed Abbot St. Anthony; he said that the religious should go about like the busy bee, gathering from all flowers to make his honey—modesty from one, silence from another, patience from a third, from another obedience, from another indifference and resignation; in each one we should study that in which he shines most in order to imitate him. So we read that he did and thereby he became such a great saint. This is one of the chief blessings that we enjoy in religion, and therefore St. Jerome recommended community life rather than solitude, to the end that from one member you may learn humility, from another patience; this one will teach you to keep silence, the other, meekness. A philosopher named Chaerilas, a leading man of much distinction among the Lacedemonians, being asked what commonwealth he took to be the best in the world, said: “That wherein the citizens live together without any quarrels or seditions, and vie with one another who shall be most virtuous.” This boon, among others, our Lord has given us in religion. May it please His Divine Majesty that it may always be so! There in the world, in almost all states, all men’s contentions and rivalries turn on property and points of honor; scarcely will you find a man who has any emulation for virtue: but here, by the bounty and mercy of God, all the study of religious is in what touches on the renunciation of self, and how to grow more in virtue and perfection; and all their contentions and rivalries are on being every one of them more virtuous, more humble and obedient, and this without noise, without divisions, without detractions, but with a holy emulation and envy. It is no small favor and benefit, but a very great one, that the Lord has drawn us to religion, where virtue is favored and esteemed, where the professor or the preacher is not made more of for being a great professor or a great preacher but for being more humble and mortified; where the aim of all is to advance in virtue, and all by their example animate us to make progress. Let us, then, profit by so good an opening for practising this means.

Hence we can derive the second motive, which is the obligation we are under of giving good example to our brethren, “that considering one another all grow in devotion and praise of God our Lord,” as our holy Father says. Or rather Christ Himself says so in the Gospel: Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, who is in heaven (Matt. v. 16). Everyone well knows what force good example has to move others. A good religious in a house does more by his good example than any number of conferences and sermons can do, for men are more apt to believe what they see with their eyes than what they hear with their ears. They are persuaded that the thing is practicable which they see another put into act, and thereby are mightily moved and animated to do the like. This is that flapping of the wings of those holy living creatures which Ezechiel beheld (Ezech. iii. 13) ; when by your example you touch the heart of your brother and move him to compunction and devotion and desire of perfection.

St. Bernard avows that, at his entry into religion, the very sight of some spiritual and edifying religious—nay, even the very remembrance of them when they were absent or dead—brought him so great joy and comfort and filled his soul with such sweetness and devotion that oftentimes tears of joy came into his eyes. So says Holy Scripture in praise of King Josias: The memory of Josias is as a box of sweet perfumes (Ecclus. xlix. 1), comforting and strengthening and raising up the disheartened. Such we ought to endeavor to become, according to the words of the Apostle: We are the good odor of Christ (II Cor. ii. 15). We should be like a box of perfumes that freely communicates its sweetness, and comforts and animates all that come near. This should be a great motive to us to give ourselves earnestly to virtue and avoid giving any occasion of disedification to our brethren. For, as an exemplary religious is a great help and enough to edify and raise the tone of a whole house, so a religious who is not what he should be does a deal of harm, harm enough to disedify a whole community and draw them his way, the more so as example is more powerful for evil than for good, owing to our evil inclination to the one rather than to the other.

Almighty God commanded in Deuteronomy that, when the people of Israel were ready to join battle with their enemies, the captains should cause it to be proclaimed throughout the whole army: Let the cowardly and faint-hearted return home—and let the reason assigned be noted, as it makes for our purpose—lest they make cowards of the rest, and infect them with their fear (Deut. xx. 8). That is what a tepid and lax religious does in religion by his bad example; he makes cowards of the rest where there is question of making an effort and embracing things of perfection: sloth and tepidity are catching. That is how St. Eusebius of Emesa comes to say: “Those who have made up their minds to live in community are either diligent, to the great profit of the community, or negligent, to the great injury and peril of the same.”

We may add a third means and motive to those we have already mentioned; it is the obligation we have of giving good example, not only to our brethren with whom we daily converse, but also to all the world, lest the whole order come to lose its good reputation by reason of the scandal given by some particular member; for men of the world often judge of all religious by the behavior of one, as if his fault were a sort of original sin, a taint of nature in them all, or were a sample of goods held in common stock. Thus people at once say: “Those of the Society also break rules, or do this or that,” for one only whom they see breaking the rule and taking some liberty. Therefore everyone is bound to have an eye to edification, that by this means the reputation of the whole order may be preserved and increased. This obligation is more urgent upon us because we are still at our commencements, and all eyes are turned tous. We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men (I Cor. iv. 9) ; and although they have no reason to impute the fault of one man to a whole order, yet, after all, it is certain that the whole body consists of individuals, and consequently the growth or decay of that body depends upon the good or ill conduct of each individual. Let everyone, therefore, stand firm in his post like a good soldier. Let him take care lest a battalion so strong and well formed come to be broken through his fault; let not relaxation enter into the order through you.

It will be a good reflection for everyone to make account that religion, his mother, says to him those words in which the mother of the Maccabees spoke to her youngest son, encouraging him to suffer and to die for the observance of the law: My son, have pity on me, who bore thee nine months in my womb, gave thee milk for three years, reared and bred thee to thy present age (II Mace. vii. 27). “My son, I have borne you, not nine months, but nine years, and twenty years, and thirty years and more; I have given you milk for three years of probation and reared you in virtue and letters at so much cost to myself, till I set you in this state in which you now are. What I ask you in return for all this is to have compassion on me; let me not lose my honor in you, nor bring sorrow in my old age. Turn not against me, nor against yourself, the arms wherewith I have armed you for your own good and profit and that of your neighbor; let not what should have been an occasion and means of your being more thankful and more humble and mortified become an occasion of your being more vain, unrestrained, and unmortified.”