Of the Particular Need in Which They Stand of This Virtue, Whose Profession It Is to Help On the Salvation of Their Neighbor

THE greater thou art, humble thyself the more, in all things, and thou shalt find grace before God (Ecclus. iii. 20). We who profess to gain souls to God hold the office of great men—to our confusion we may say it; the Lord has called us to a very exalted state, since our institute is to serve holy Church in very high and lofty ministries, such as those to which God chose the apostles; namely, the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments and of His own most Precious Blood: so that we can say with St. Paul: He hath given us the ministry of reconciliation (II Cor. v. 18). He calls the grace of preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments, whereby grace is imparted, “the ministry of reconciliation.” He hath committed to us the preaching of reconciliation: we are ambassadors of Christ. God has made us His ministers, His ambassadors, as it were His apostles, legates of the Sovereign Pontiff Jesus Christ. Our tongues are instruments of the Holy Ghost, God Himself exhorting by our mouth (II Cor. v. 19-20). Through us the Lord is pleased to speak to souls; through these tongues of flesh the Lord will move the hearts of men. Now for this we have greater need than other men of the virtue of humility, for two reasons. First, because the more sublime our institute and the higher our vocation, the greater is our danger and the stronger the assaults of pride and vanity. It is the higher mountains, says St. Jerome, that are the more wind-swept and buffeted by storms. We are engaged in very high ministrations and on that account are respected and esteemed by all the world; we are taken for saints and for new apostles on earth; it is understood that our business is all sanctity and the making of saints out of those with whom we deal. A good strong foundation of humility is necessary for so high a building not to crash down to the ground. Great strength and great stock of virtue is needed to bear the weight of honor and the occasions of sin that go with being honored; a hard thing it is to have honors showered on us as we walk without our heart’s being in any way affected, and not all men’s heads are strong enough to move in high places. Oh, how many have swooned and fallen from the high estate in which they once were, for want of this good grounding in humility! How many, who seemed eagles soaring aloft in the practice of virtues, through pride have been turned into bats! That monk was a worker of miracles, of whom it is written in the Life of St. Pacomius and St. Palemon that he walked on blazing embers without being burned; but on that same feat he prided himself and held others to scorn, and said of himself: “Which of you will do as much as that?” St. Palemon corrected him, seeing that it was pride; and in the end he came to fall miserably and make an evil end. Scripture and the lives of the saints are full of like examples.

On this account, then, we stand in special need of being well grounded in this virtue, since otherwise we would be in great danger of losing our heads with vanity and falling into the sin of pride, and that the greatest pride there is, which is spiritual pride. St. Bonaventure, illustrating this point, says that there are two sorts of pride, one of temporal things, which he calls fleshly pride, and the other of spiritual things, which he calls spiritual pride; and the latter he says is a greater pride and a worse sin than the former. And the reason is clear; for the proud man, as St. Bonaventure says, is a thief, committing theft inasmuch as he takes away another’s property against the will of the owner. The man exalts himself with the glory and honor that belongs to God, and which God will not give to any other, but reserves for Himself. My glory, I will not give to another, He says by Isaias (xlii. 8). That is what the proud man wishes to steal away from God, and exalt himself thereon, and attribute it to himself. Now when a man is proud of a happy disposition, of a nobility, of a healthy and well-formed body, a good understanding, letters, and other like abilities, he is a thief; but the theft is not so great, for while it is true that all these goods are of God, yet they are but the chaff and bran of His house; but he who is proud of spiritual gifts, of sanctity, of the fruit of gains in souls, is a great thief and robber of the honor of God—a robber of the first magnitude, who steals the richest and most precious jewels, jewels of the greatest value in the sight of God, Who sets such store by them that for them He gave His blood and life, and thought it a good bargain. So the blessed St. Francis lived in great fear of falling into this pride, and used to say to God: “Lord, if Thou givest me anything, take care of it Thyself; for I dare not undertake the charge, seeing that I am a great robber who make my own fortune with Thy goods.” Let us, then, also live in this fear. We have more reason to feel it, since we are not so humble as St. Francis. Let us not fall into so dangerous a pride; let us not make our own fortune with the goods of God that we handle and God has entrusted to us with much confidence; let us take no complacency in them, nor attribute anything to ourselves; let us return the whole to God.

Not without great mystery did Christ our Redeemer, when He appeared to His disciples on the day of His glorious Ascension, first reprove them for their incredulity and hardness of heart (Mark xvi. 14), and afterwards command them to go and preach the Gospel all over the world and give them power to work many great miracles. Thereby He gave us to understand that whoever is to be elevated to great things must first be humbled and abased in himself and know his own weaknesses and miseries; to the end that, though he afterwards soar above the heavens and work miracles, he may remain rooted in knowledge of himself and taken up with his own lowliness. Theodoret notes to this effect how, when God meant to choose Moses for captain and head of His people and work through him so many marvels and signs as He intended to work, His will was first of all that that hand which was to divide the waters of the Red Sea, and do so many other marvelous thing, Moses was to place within his bosom and draw out full of leprosy (Exod. iv. 6).

The second reason why we stand in particular need of humility is to produce fruit by the ministries which we exercise. Thus humility is not only necessary for ourselves and for our own spiritual profit, that we may not get vain and proud and so lose ourselves, but also to gain over our neighbors and produce fruit in their souls. One of the chiefest and most effectual means to this is humility, whereby we distrust ourselves and put no reliance on our own abilities, industry, and prudence, but put all our confidence in God, and to Him we refer and attribute all, according to that saying of the Wise Man: Put confidence in God with thy whole heart, and rely not on thine own prudence (Prov. iii. 5). The reason of this, as we shall say presently more at large, is because when, having no confidence in ourselves but putting all our confidence in God, we attribute all to Him and give Him charge of all, we thereby greatly oblige Him to take the matter up. Lord, do Thy business: the conversion of souls is Thy business and not ours; what good are we for that? But when we go about the matter full of confidence in our own expedients and our own reasons, we make ourselves partners in the business, attributing much to ourselves, and all that we take away from God. It is like the two scales in a balance; when the one goes up, the other goes down; whatever we attribute to ourselves, we take away from God, and endeavor to exalt ourselves with the glory and honor which is properly His; and so He permits all our doings to come to nothing. Would to God that sometimes this be not the reason why we do not produce so much fruit in our neighbor!

We read of our blessed Father Ignatius that by the talks on Christian doctrine that he held in Rome, plain utterances with unpolished and incorrect words, as he was only imperfectly acquainted with Italian, he did so much good to souls that, when the discourse was over, the hearers went, with hearts smitten with grief, sighing and sobbing to the feet of their confessor, hardly able to speak for their tears and sobs. That was because he did not put his strength in words, but in the Spirit—not in rhetoric of human wisdom, but in the manifestation of the Spirit and power of God, as St. Paul says (I Cor. ii. 4). He had no confidence in himself and put all his confidence in God, and so God gave such force and spirit to those unpolished and incorrect words that he seemed to pour them out like a torrent, as it were, of flames kindling the hearts of the hearers. I do not know but that God’s not producing such fruit nowadays is because we rest much on our own prudence and are greatly buoyed up with confidence in our own methods of urging considerations, our literary style and reasonings, our highly polished and elegant diction, and so we find great relish and satisfaction in ourselves. But I will bring it about, says God, that just when you have said the finest things and elaborated the best body of argument, and are very well satisfied and proud of yourself and think that you have really done something, you shall then do less than ever, and that word shall be accomplished in you which was spoken by the Prophet Osee: Give them, O Lord, what wilt thou give them? Give them barren wombs without children, and dry breasts without milk (ix. 14) : I will bring it about that you shall have nothing more than a name— Father Mombo Bombo the Great Preacher—the name alone shall remain to you, and you shall have no spiritual children. I will give you dry breasts, that children may not hold on to you, nor what you say take any hold on them. This is what he deserves who seeks to make his fortune out of the property of God and to attribute to himself what belongs to His Divine Majesty.

I am not saying that you are to go into the pulpit without having right well studied and well looked up the matter of your sermon. But that is not enough; it must also have been right well wept over and commended to God; and after you have broken your head with study and reflection you must say: We are useless servants, what we were bound to do we have done (Luke xvii. 10). What canI do? At most make a little noise with my words, like a musket without ball, but as for its going home to the heart, Thou, O Lord, must give that: The King’s heart is in the hands of the Lord: wherever he wishes, he will incline it (Prov. xxi. 1). Thou, O Lord, art He Who must pierce and move hearts; what good are we for that? What proportion is there in our words and in any human motives at our command, with an end so high and supernatural as the conversion of souls? None. Why, then, are we so proud and satisfied with ourselves when it seems that some good is being done and our efforts are crowned with success, as if we had accomplished anything? Shall the axe, says God, glory, or the saw, against him that worketh with it, saying: It is I that have cut, I that have sawn the timber? It is as though the stuff were to exalt itself and grow saucy because they raise it, whereas it is but a piece of wood that can do nothing for itself unless they take it in hand (Isaias x. 15). In this relation, then, we stand to God in respect of the spiritual and supernatural end of the conversion of souls. We are as pieces of wood, inasmuch as we cannot stir nor guide our own movements if God does not guide them. And so we must attribute all to Him, and we have nothing of our own to glory in.

God makes great account of our not relying on our own abilities and human means and attributing nothing to ourselves, but attributing all to Him and giving Him the glory of all. For this reason, St. Paul says, Christ our Redeemer did not choose learned men for the preaching of the Gospel and the conversion of the world, nor eloquent men, but poor fishermen, uneducated and without letters. God hath chosen the ignorant and uneducated to confound the wise ones of the world; he hath chosen the poor and the weak to confound the strong and powerful; he hath chosen the lowly and abject of the world, and what appeared as nothing in it, to put to rout kings and emperors and all the great ones of earth (I Cor. i. 27). Do you know why? St. Paul tells you: That man may not glory in the sight of God, nor have any occasion to attribute anything to himself, but that he who glorieth should glory in the Lord (I Cor. i. 29- 31; Jerem. ix. 23-24). If the preachers of the Gospel had been very rich and powerful, and with a mighty host and armed forces had traversed the world to preach the Gospel, the conversion might have been attributed to the power and force of arms. If God had chosen to this end great doctors and even great rhetoricians of the world, who by their learning and eloquence had convinced the philosophers, the conversion might have been attributed to their eloquence and the subtlety of their arguments, and to that extent the credit and reputation of the power of Christ would have been diminished. But it was not done in that way. As St. Paul says: God willed not that it should be done by wisdom and eloquence of words, not to lessen our esteem of the power and efficacy of the cross and passion of Christ (I Cor.i.17). St. Augustine says: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, wishing to bend and bow down the necks of the proud, did not seek fishermen through orators, but through poor fishermen He overthrew and won over orators and emperors. Cyprian was a great orator, but before him Peter was a fisherman, that through him the orator might believe and be converted, and not the orator only, but even the emperor’”—WNon quaesivit per oratorem piscatorem, sed e piscatore lucratus est imperatorem. Magnus Cyprianus orator, sed prius Petrus piscator, per quem postea crederet non solum orator sed et imperator.

Holy Scripture is full of instances in which God chose weak instruments and intermediaries to do great things, to teach us that truth and fix it firm in our hearts, that we have nothing to glory in, nothing to attribute to ourselves, but should refer it all to God. That is the moral pointed to us by that signal victory of Judith, one weak woman against an army of more than a hundred and forty thousand men. That is the moral pointed to us by a poor shepherd David, a youth without arms, with his sling overthrowing the giant Goliath. That all the world may know, says the text, that there is a God in Israel, and all may understand that he needeth not sword nor lance to conquer, but his is the battle and his the victory (I Kings xvii. 46).

Such also was the mystery of Gedeon, who had assembled thirty-two thousand men against the Madianites, who were more than one hundred and thirty thousand. God said to him: There is much people with thee, nor shall Madian be delivered into their hands (Judges vii. 2). See what a reasoning that was of God: “Thou canst not conquer, because thou art many.” If He had said: “Thou canst not conquer, because they are many, and you few,” it looks as if He would have had something to go upon. You are mistaken, you do not understand; that would have been a piece of human reasoning, but quite different is the reasoning of God. “You cannot be victorious, because you are too many.” And why not? That Israel may not glory against me and say, By the strength of my own arm I have wrought my own deliverance, and pride itself on the victory, thinking that by its own resources it had gained the day. God’s plan was that only three hundred men should remain with Gedeon, and with these He bade him give battle to the enemy, and with these He gave him the victory. And even for that it was not necessary to put on armor or lay hand to sword. By the mere sounding of the trumpets which they held in one hand, and the noise of the breaking pitchers and the brightness of the lighted lamps which they held in the other, God struck such terror and confusion into the enemy that they fell foul of one another and slew one another in flight, thinking that the whole world was upon them. Now you shall not say that it was by your own strength that you were victorious. That is what God intends.

Now if in temporal and human things, in which the means that we take do bear some proportion to the end, and our strength some proportion to the victory, God would not have us attribute anything to ourselves, but would have the victory in battle and the good success of our business all put down to Him; if even in the work of nature neither he that plants nor he that waters goes for anything—it is not the gardener who makes the plants grow and the trees bear fruit, but God—what shall it be in spiritual and supernatural things regarding the conversion of souls and their advancement and increase in virtue, where our applications, powers, and attentions fall so far short that there is no proportion between them and so high anend! So says the Apostle St. Paul: Neither he who planteth is anything, or he who watereth, but God alone is he who can give the increase and spiritual fruit (I Cor. iii. 7). God alone can strike terror and alarm into the hearts of men. God alone can make men abhor their sins and abandon their evil life; all we can do is to make a little noise with the trumpet of the Gospel. And if we break the pitchers of our bodies by mortification, that so our light may shine before men by an exemplary life, it will be no little thing for us to have done that much; with that, God will give the victory.

Let us draw from this two lessons that will be a great help to us to carry on our ministrations with much consolation and profit, as well our own as that of our neighbor. The first is what has been said, that we should distrust ourselves and put our whole confidence in God, and attribute to Him all the fruit and good success of our efforts: “Let us not be proud, but own ourselves useless, that so we may be useful and profitable.” And St. Ambrose says: If you wish to do much good to your neighbor, observe the instruction which the Apostle St. Peter teaches us: Let him who speaketh account that God putteth the words in his mouth; let him who worketh account that God it is that worketh in his place, and give him the glory and honor of all (I Pet. iv. 11). Let us not attribute to ourselves anything; let us pride ourselves on nothing, nor take vain satisfaction anywhere.

The second lesson that we have to learn is not to be discouraged or lose heart in view of our feebleness and misery. We stand in great need of this lesson also; since, seeing himself called to so high and supernatural an end as is the conversion of souls, the drawing of them out of sins, heresies, and misbeliefs, who that casts his eyes upon himself can help being filled with dismay! Good Lord, where is there a disproportion so great! “I am not the man for this enterprise, seeing that I am the most necessitous and most miserable of all.” Oh, how mistaken you are! Rather on this very account you are the man for this enterprise. Moses could not bring himself to believe that he was to do so great a work as to lead the people of Israel out of the captivity of Egypt, and excused himself before God, Who wished to send him to it. Who am I to go and speak to the King, and make him allow the people of Israel to go out of Egypt? Send, O Lord, him whom thou art to send (Exod. iii. 11; iv. 13), J am not the man to do it, seeing that I am slow of speech. That is what I wanted, says God, for it is not thou who art to doit. J will be with thee, and I will teach thee what to say. The same happened to the Prophet Jeremy. God wished to send him to preach to the nations, and he began to excuse himself. Ah, ah, ah, Lord, seest thou not that I cannot speak to the point, seeing that I am but a child (Jerem. i. 6). How canst thou wish to send me on such a great errand? Even on that very account that thou reckonest correctly, it is the very thing that God is seeking. On the other hand, if thou wert possessed of great abilities, perhaps God would not choose thee for the work, because thou wouldst take pride therein, and attribute the doing of it to thyself. It is God’s way to choose humble folk, people who attribute nothing to themselves, and by them He wishes to do great things.

The holy Gospels relate that, when the apostles came from preaching, Christ our Redeemer, seeing the fruit they had gathered and the great wonders they had done, rejoiced in the Holy Ghost and began to glorify and give thanks to His eternal Father. I give thee thanks, Eternal Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent of the world, and hast revealed them to little ones, and by them hast willed to do so many marvels and miracles: blessed and praised be thou, O Lord, forever, for so it hath pleased thee (Luke x. 21). Oh, how blessed are the little ones! Blessed are the humble, they who attribute nothing to themselves: for these are they whom God raises up; these are they by whom He works wonders; them He takes for instruments to work great things, great conversions and great fruit of souls. Therefore let none be discouraged, let none lose heart. Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you the kingdom (Luke xii. 32). Be not alarmed nor discouraged, thou least Society of Jesus, for it has pleased your heavenly Father to lay open to you the souls and hearts of men. “I will be with you,” said Christ our Redeemer to our Father Ignatius on his way to Rome. Ego vobis Romae propitius ero. “I will aid you, I will be in your company.” From this miracle and marvelous apparition there has been given to our order this name, the appellation of “Society of Jesus,” that we may understand that we are not called to the Society and Order of Ignatius, but to the Society of Jesus, and make sure that Jesus will ever be at hand to help us as He promised our Father, and that we have Him for Leader and Captain, caudillo y capitan, and so should not grow faint or disheartened over this so great enterprise of the help of souls to which God has called us.