Of Two Means That Will Make the Practice of Mortification Easy and Sweet, Which Are the Grace of God and His Holy Love

IT remains to treat of some means to aid us in this practice of mortification, so necessary for us, means that will make it not only easy and bearable but sweet and pleasant. The first and chiefest means to this must be the grace of the Lord, whereby everything is made easy and light. The Apostle Paul was much vexed by a temptation and earnestly besought God to take it away. The Lord answered him: My grace is enough for thee (II Cor. xii. 9). By the grace of God he felt himself so strengthened as to say: I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me (Phil. iv. 13). Not I, but the grace of God with me (I Cor. xv. 10). The Lord does not leave us alone in this labor of mortification; He aids us to carry the burden. And on this account He calls His law a yoke, because two bear it. Christ conjoins Himself with us to bear it, and who will be frightened in such company and with such support? Let it not seem to you difficult, because the lesser half of it falls on ' you. For this reason He says that, though it is a yoke, it is sweet; and though it is a burden, it is light (Matt. xi. 30). For though, considering our nature and the smallness of our strength, it is heavy, and that is what is denoted by the name of yoke and burden, yet by the grace of God it is easy and sweet because the Lord Himself lightens it to us, as He promises by the Prophet Osee: J will be as one who lighteneth the yoke and removeth the halter from their jaws (Osee xi. 4). And by Isaias He says: The yoke shall rot for the power of the oil (x. 27). Mortification seems a heavy yoke and burden, but so great is the favor and grace of God, signified by the oil, that the yoke will rot and become soft till you find it no longer irksome, nor even feel it.

St. Bernard in his First Sermon on the Consecration of a Church says: ‘‘As in the consecration of a church this ceremony is observed of anointing the crosses on the walls with holy oil, so does our Lord with the souls of religious. By the spiritual unction of His grace He anoints and softens for them the crosses of penance and mortification. Many shun this holy exercise because they see the cross and not the unction. But you who have experienced it (he says to his religious) know right well that our cross is an anointed cross, and with this unction not only is it light and easy, but what appears to men in the world bitter and disagreeable becomes to us by the grace of God very sweet and pleasant to taste’—Ecce vero scitis quia crux nostra inuncta est, sed, ut ita dicam, amaritudo nostra dulcissima. So St. Augustine says that he had not understood this language of chastity; he thought there was no man in the world who observed it until he came to understand the power of grace, whereby we can well say what St. John said: And his commandments are not heavy (I John v. 3). The commandments of God and of the Gospel are not heavy and difficult, for the abundance of grace that the Lord gives to enable us to do what He commands makes them easy and Sweet. St. Gregory on that saying of Isaias: They that hope in the Lord shall change their strength (xl. 31), marks two sorts of strength—one of the just to suffer and mortify themselves much for God, the other of the wicked to suffer great labors for the world, for honor and wealth, and the gratification of their appetites and desires; and he says that those who trust in the grace of the Lord shall change this strength into that of the just.

The second thing that will render to us the practice of mortification sweet and easy is the love of God. There is nothing more efficacious, nothing that renders any labor more sweet and easy, than love. St. Augustine says: “He that loves labors not”—Qui amat non laborat. The labors of those who love are not burdens, but rather pleasures, as with sportsmen who fish, beat woods for game, and hunt. That labor is no burden to them; rather they take it for recreation, for the love and affection they have for it. What makes the mother not feel the continual labors she has in rearing her child but love? What makes the wife tend night and day her sick husband but love? What makes birds and beasts so solicitous for the rearing of their offspring, so as to be ready to fast that they may eat and labor that they may rest and defend them with so great courage, but love? What made the labors of seven, and then of fourteen, years in sun and frost seem light to Jacob for the winning of Rachel but love? They seemed to him but a few days for the excess of his great love (Gen. xxix. 20). On that saying of the spouse: My beloved is a little bundle of myrrh to me (Cant. i. 12); the glorious St. Bernard says: “She does not say, my beloved is a bundle of myrrh, but a little bundle, because all labor seems slight and light to her for the great love she bears her Beloved. Note also that she does not say absolutely, my beloved is a little bundle of myrrh, but with the addition, to me. To him who loves, the beloved becomes a little bundle. If He is to you a great and heavy bundle, it is because you love not, it is for want of love; so take that for a sign whether you have great or little love for God. It is not that the labors of virtue are great, but that our love is small, and therefore they become to us great. Love much, and not only will you not feel labor, but relish it; where there is love, there is no labor, but relish only.

A holy woman used to say that from the time that she had been called and wounded by the love of God, she had never more known what it was to suffer either within or without, either from the world or from the devil or from the flesh or from anything else, because pure love knows not what manner of thing pain and torment is. Thus love, besides surpassing all works of high degree and adding great perfection to them, gives at the same time great courage and fortitude to face any labor and mortification and makes everything easy, light, and savory. So St. Chrysostom explains the saying of the Apostle: Love is the fulfilment of the law (Rom. xiii. 10), as meaning not only that all the law and all the commandments are contained in this short word love, but also that this love makes the observance of all the law and all the commandments of God very easy.

This is well confirmed by the saying of the Wise Man: Love is strong as death (Cant. viii. 6). Among other explanations of these words the saints give two that make for our purpose. St. Gregory gives one that St. Augustine takes to be the better. Do you know, he says, the meaning of that saying, that love is strong as death? It means that, as death separates the soul from the body, so the love of God separates the soul from corporal and sensible things; and as death separates man from all commerce with the things of the world, so the love of God, when it takes possession of our spirit, strengthens it so as to remove it from commerce and conversation with the world and from the affection that it bears to the flesh and to all sensible things. This is the meaning of love’s being as strong as death; for as death kills the body, so the love of God kills and deadens in us affection to all corporal and sensible things; it makes a man die to the world and to all self-love and live to Christ our Lord alone, so as to be able to say with St. Paul: J live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. ii. 20).

Another excellent explanation is given by St. Augustine in these words: Rest in his strength. He says that the love of God is strong as death because death, when it comes, is irresistible; no medicine, no treatment avails against it; it boots not to be bishop, king, pope, or emperor; death lays all that low, nothing can stand before it, nothing of all the things there are on earth can turn it away, neither honors, nor riches, nor prosperity, nor adversity. Else let everyone see this for himself from the favor that the Lord has done him. With one little spark of His love that He gave you, nothing could stand in your way to make you quit the path of perfection and religious life which you took, neither parents, nor relations, nor all that there was in the world; but you spurned all that and made light of it in comparison with what you now enjoy. Let us, then, conceive a great love of God, and nothing will stand in our way, but rather we shall say with the Apostle: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? Sure I am that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor strength, nor height, nor depth, nor any creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God (Rom, viii. 35).