Of Another Means to Advance in Virtue; Namely, Spiritual Exhortations and Conferences, and How to Profit by Them

AMONG other means which a religious order and our Society in particular provides to aid and animate its subjects to advance in virtue and perfection, spiritual conferences and exhortations, concerning which we have a rule, hold a chief place. Accordingly we shall say something of the way how to profit by them, which may serve to help all the world to profit by the sermons which they hear. In the first place, it will help much to this end not to go to exhortations by routine and for form’s sake, but with a sincere desire of profiting and getting good by them. Let us consider with what eager longings those Fathers of the Desert met for those spiritual collections and conferences which they held, and what good store of provision they took from thence back to their cells. With the like eagerness and desire should we go to exhortations, and then they will turn to our profit; as, when a man goes to dinner with a good appetite, it then appears that what he eats is likely to do him good. St. Chrysostom observes that, as hunger is a sign of the body’s being in good health, so a longing desire of being nourished with the word of God is a sign of a good and happy disposition of the soul. But if you do not hunger after the divine word nor find any relish in it, it is a bad sign, and shows that you are sick, since you have lost your appetite and your soul loathes this spiritual food. If for no other reason, the mere thought of hearing a little speech and discourse of God should be enough to make us go to these conferences with great relish and delight, for naturally a man is glad to hear another speak well of one he loves, as a father to hear of his son. If you loved God, you would delight to hear Him spoken of. So Christ our Redeemer says: He who is of God, heareth the Word of God, and the reason why ye desire not to hear it, is because ye are not of God (John viii. 47).

Secondly, if we intend to draw benefit from these discourses, we must not hear them in a spirit of curiosity, marking the good language, the graceful action and pronunciation, the quaint and new conceits of the preacher. It is this that with great reason we blame in secular persons, and this is why nowadays many profit so little by sermons. We should turn away our eyes from that and fix them on the substance of what is said. What should we say of a sick man whom the barber-surgeon comes to bleed, and he, instead of letting himself be bled, takes to admiring the instruments. “Oh, what a neat lancet!” “Oh, what a pretty razor!” “Oh, what an elegant sheath; where was it made?” Leave that alone, and let yourself be bled: that is your business; the rest is no affair of yours.

The like do they who neglect the substance of what is said, which is what they stand in need of, and occupy themselves with the words, the plan and artifice of the discourse. Such people may aptly be compared to a sieve or bolter, which retains only the chaff and bean and lets all the corn and meal pass through. The Second Book of Esdras says that, when Esdras read the law of God to the people of Israel, such was their emotion and so loud their lamentations and groans, comparing their doings and life with the law which they heard, that the Levites had to go about pacifying them and proclaiming silence, to enable the reader to continue. It is in this way that exhortations and sermons should be heard, with confusion and compunction of heart, considering how different we are from the standard they put before us and how far we are from the perfection there proposed.

In the third place, and by way of confirmation of what has gone before, all should understand that these exhortations are not for the saying of new and extraordinary things, but to bring to mind common and ordinary things, things that we have daily in hand, and to warm our hearts to them. We should go to them on this understanding; and thus casting aside all curiosity, we shall profit more by them. To this end our Father expressly orders that these discourses be given in our Society. ‘Let there be someone,” he says, ‘who every week, or at least every fortnight, shall deliver these and the like admonitions, lest by the weakness of our nature things be forgotten and their execution dropped.” By the way, Father Master Nadal notes here in his Observations on the Constitutions, that though the Constitution uses the disjunctive, “every week, or at least every fortnight,” nevertheless it is the universal custom of the Society that this is not put off for a fortnight, but is done every week. The Society has taken the better course, and no one could say this better than Nadal, since he had visited almost the whole Society and knew well the universal custom of the same. These discourses are to refresh the memory of what we know, because we easily forget what is good and need to have it told to us again and again. And even though we hold it in memory, yet we must have it cried out to us to quicken our will and desire, telling us of our obligation and profession and what we have come to religion for. True is that saying of St. Augustine: “The understanding flies before, but little or no movement of the heart follows’—Praevolat intellectus; sequitur tardus vel nullus affectus. Therefore it is necessary to say the same thing many times over, as did St. Paul to the Philippians: For the rest, brethren, rejoice in the Lord: to write to you the same thing is no trouble to me, and is necessary for you (Phil. iii. 1). The Apostle was in no want of things to say—he who had been raised to the third heaven could tell them things new and exquisite; but he felt himself obliged to say and repeat the same things that he had already said, because that was more necessary for them. And this should be the particular aim of him who gives these exhortations and of him who preaches sermons, not to say what promises to make him appear more learned and erudite—for that would be to preach of himself —hbut what promises best for the benefit of his hearers; and this is what the hearers also themselves should look for. Thus they will not wax weary of hearing common things that they know, for they will see that they do them not, or anyhow do them not with such perfection as they ought.

Fourthly, it will be of very great profit that whatever is said in exhortations be received by each one as particularly addressed to himself and not as a thing said for the benefit of others. Let us not act herein as worldly persons ordinarily do when they hear a sermon. A great teacher used to say: “All you who hear me are like carvers, for all the business of the carver is to cut up for others and take nothing for himself. So you, when you hear me, say: ‘Oh, what a good point for Dick! Oh, how that will come home to Harry! Oh, if that neighbor of mine were here, how it would meet his case!’ and you keep nothing for yourselves. I want guests, not carvers of the word of God.” Hvery wise word that the prudent man shall hear, says Ecclesiasticus (xxi. 18), he will approve and take to himself; but the vicious and vain is displeased with it, and throweth it over his shoulders. Let us, then, be wise and let everyone take what is said as said for him, as if it were said for him alone and he alone were being spoken to and no other. Possibly, what seems to come home well to another will come home better to yourself; we often see the mote in our neighbor’s eye and see not the beam in our own (Matt. vii. 3). This especially because, though at present you feel not that the point touches you, you should store it up for afterwards, when you will find the need of it, and that perhaps very soon. Thus you should always take what is said as said for you alone.

In the fifth place, better to clear up what we have said, it is highly proper that all should understand and always take for granted that, when a thing is mentioned or reprehended in these addresses, it is not as implying that the mischief is already in the house, but simply that it may never come to be there. Preventive and preservative medicine is much better than what is given for the cure of a malady already broken out. And this is what we do in these exhortations, according to the counsel of the Wise Man: Apply the medicine before the illness (Ecclus. xviii. 20). We apply the medicine and the remedy before the sickness comes, exhorting to what is good and censuring what is evil, that no one may come to fall into what he knows already for a thing evil and dangerous. Thus it would be a great fault to form such a judgment as: “‘This is said for our friend John,” and still more to utter it. The speaker does not intend to note any one in particular—for that would not be prudent nor profitable, but would rather do harm. So to pass such a judgment would be to condemn the giver of the exhortation of doing a thing that would be very ill done.

But, although this circumspection and care should be observed on the part of him who preaches or gives the conference, yet on the part of the listener it will be very well for everyone to take what is said as said for himself and for himself alone. Not that he should understand that it was the speaker’s purpose to point to him and mark. him out, for that would be wrong, as we have said, but that everyone in the audience should begin listening with his hand on his breast; and, comparing his actions and life with what he hears, should say: “Truly all this is addressed to me; I stand in great need of it; God has put it into his mouth for my benefit;” for from this much fruit will be gained. From the conversation that Christ our Redeemer held with the Samaritan woman the holy Gospel says that she went away crying out and saying: Come and see a man who hath told me all that hath befallen me (John iv. 29). When the preacher speaks to his audience and tells them what passes in their souls, then the sermon and conference is a good one, and it is that which satisfies them and does them good.

Sixthly, it is necessary that we should understand the word of God to be the food and sustenance of the soul; and so we should always contrive to gather something from conferences and sermons to keep and preserve in our heart, to strengthen and sustain us for subsequent action. On these words of Christ: The good soil on which the seed falls are they who with a good heart and good disposition hear and receive the word of God, and bear fruit of good works in patience, St. Gregory says that, as it is a grave and dangerous infirmity for a man not to retain in his stomach the bodily food which he eats, but cast it up at once, so is it not to retain in one’s heart the word of God that one hears, but it comes in at one ear and goes out at the other. The prophet says: IJ have hidden away, O Lord, and guarded thy words in my heart, not to sin (Psalm cxviii. 11), to resist temptations, to rouse myself to virtue and perfection. How often does it happen that one is under temptation and in some danger, and one remembers some text of Holy Scripture or some other good thing that one has heard and thereupon one is strengthened and animated and feels much benefit! With three texts of Holy Scripture Christ our Redeemer overcame and routed the three temptations with which the devil assailed Him (Matt. iv. 4, 7, 10).

From what has been said it will be seen how reprehensible they are who go to conferences and sermons for form’s sake, or are there sleeping, or distracted and thinking of other things, which comes to the same as sleeping. The holy Gospel says: The devil cometh and taketh the word out of their heart, that they may not be saved (Luke viii. 12) or profit thereby. These are the birds of prey that devour the grain that it may not spring up. Possibly that word which you lost when you were asleep or distracted was a means to your improvement; and the devil, for the envy that he bears to your good, contrives in all the ways that he can that it may not take root in your heart. St. Augustine says that the word of God is like a fishhook, that takes when it is taken. As when the fish takes the hook it is caught and held thereby, so when you take and receive the word of God, you are taken and held by it. That is why the devil labors so much to draw off your attention, that you may not apprehend what is said, that you may not be held by it, and that it may not gain any hold on your heart. Let us, then, make it our endeavor to go to conferences and sermons with due dispositions and so to hear the word of God that it may take hold on our heart and bear fruit. The Apostle St. James says: Be ye not hearers only of the word of God, but doers. Do not deceive yourselves by thinking that you fulfil all you ought by listening, for he that heareth the word of God and doth it not is like a man who looketh at his own face in a looking-glass, and presently goeth away and forgetteth his form and figure (James i, 22-23). They alone shall be justified who put things into execution; for, as St. Paul says, it is not the hearers of the law that shall be accounted just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified (Rom. ii. 13).

In the “Spiritual Meadow,” which was composed by John Eviratus, or according to others, by St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and was approved in the Second Council of Nicaea, [and Theodoret has the story in his “Religious History,” which see] it is related that one day a holy man named Eusebius was sitting with another named Amianus, reading a book of the Gospels. Amianus read and the other explained as he went on. Now it happened that some laborers were working on the land in a field. Eusebius was distracted by looking at them, and did not attend to the reading. Then Amianus, having a doubt about a passage he was reading, asked Eusebius to explain it. Eusebius, as he had not been attending, asked him to read it again. Amianus saw he had been distracted and reproved him, saying: “No wonder you did not notice, as you should have done, the words of the Gospel; you were amusing yourself, watching those laborers.” When Eusebius heard this reproof, he was so ashamed of himself that he gave command to his eyes that at no time should they find satisfaction in looking at any sight, not even at the stars of heaven. Thence he took a narrow path homewards and shut himself up in a hut and never went out of it again for all the rest of his life. In this strait prison he lived for forty years and more, until he died. And that necessity as well as reason might compel him to keep quiet, he bound himself by the loins with a girdle of iron, and with another heavier cincture about his neck. ‘To these cinctures of iron he fastened a chain, and the chain he fastened to the ground, so that he was forced to remain bent and could not go freely, nor look on any sight, not even on the stars of heaven. In this way the servant of God punished himself for one inadvertence and distraction that happened at the exposition of the word of God—to our confusion who make so little account of the many distractions that we have.