Of the Excellence of This Enterprise of Saving Souls, and of Its Great Merit and Value

4 abe enterprise of saving souls is so high and exalted that for it the Son of God came down from heaven and became man; for it He chose His apostles, making them, of fishers of fish, fishers of men. There is no office higher than this, says St. Denis the Areopagite: “The highest and most divine ministry and office there is, is to help and co-operate with God to the salvation of souls’—Omnium divinorum divinissimum est cooperari Deo in salutem animarum. St. Chrysostom says: “There is nothing more pleasing to God, nothing that He takes more to heart, than the salvation of souls.” So the Apostle cries out with loud cries: Who wisheth all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (I Tim. ii. 4). And the Prophet Ezechiel: Js the death of the sinner my will, saith the Lord God, and not rather that he be converted from his ways, and live? (xviii. 23). The Lord wishes all to be saved. He who helps to forward this purpose does the sublimest thing, and the thing most pleasing to God, of all the things that man can do in this life. St. Chrysostom says: “Though you give all your substance to the poor, and that substance be more than the riches of King Solomon and the treasures of Croesus, it is a greater thing to convert one single soul than to do all that.” St. Gregory says it is a greater thing to convert a sinner by preaching and prayer than to raise a dead man to life; it is a greater thing, and a thing more regarded by God, than the creation of heaven and earth. Otherwise, look at the cost of it. It cost God nothing but to say the word to create heaven and earth. He spoke, and all was made: he commanded, and all things were created (Psalm cxlviii. 5). But that other cost Him more than words; it cost Him His lifeblood. The Apostle St. John declares to us how precious a work it is before God to be employed in saving souls; or, rather, Christ Himself declares it in these words, speaking in His own person: Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life for men, to take it up again in resurrection, that they also may rise and live forever with Me (John x. 17). The saints here make this reflection, that He did not say, as He might have said: “Therefore doth my Father love Me, because in the beginning He created all things for Me;” but He says that His Father loves Him because He lays down His life for the salvation of souls, to give us to understand how acceptable and agreeable to God that work is. In this same line of reasoning St. Thomas explains what Christ Himself said a little before: As my Father knoweth me, so I know my Father; and therefore I lay down my life for my sheep (John x. 15). St. Thomas says that Christ does not merely mean to say: “I know my Father with full knowledge as He knows Me”—for that He had already said, as appears in the eleventh chapter of St. Matthew (xi. 27): No one knoweth the Son but the Father, and no one knoweth the Father but the Son—but as, if you asked a good son on earth the reason of what he was doing, he might answer: “I know my father and am aware, as they say, of his likings and wishes,” so Christ our Redeemer had said a little before that, like a good shepherd, He would die for His sheep; and then as though they asked Him: ‘Why, Lord, do you offer so precious a life as Yours for a thing of such little value and price?” He answers: I know my Father (John x. 15). It is as though He would say: “TI know very well the will of my Father and the love that He has for those sheep; and therefore with hearty good will I give my life for them, for I know that such is His pleasure.” That is what should make us also busy ourselves with hearty good will over the salvation of souls, knowing that that is to the liking and satisfaction of God, and that His Divine Majesty greatly loves our being so occupied.

St. Chrysostom also reflects to this effect on what Christ our Redeemer said to St. Peter when, having asked him three times if he loved Him, all three times He went on to say: “If you love Me, feed My lambs and My sheep” (John xxi. 15-17). That was equivalent to saying: “I want you to exercise and show the love that you bear Me, by helping Me in this work of saving the souls whom I have redeemed with My blood.”

The high excellence of this work and the extreme satisfaction which it gives to God, may also be seen in Christ Himself first and foremost, since for this act of giving His life for men the Apostle St. Paul says that the eternal Father has raised, glorified, and exalted Him above all things. He gave him a name that is above every name, a name at which every knee should bow in heaven, on earth, and in hell (Phil. ii. 9-10). The Prophet David says the same: Because he drank of the torrent, he hath lifted up his head (Psalm cix. 7). And the Prophet Isaias: If he shall lay down his life for sinners, he shall see sons and descendants that shall endure for long ages (Isaias liii. 16). Because He laid down His life for sinners and suffered so much for them, therefore has the eternal Father so highly exalted and glorified Him.

St. Gregory on those words of the Apostle: He that converteth a sinner from his evil ways and errors, shall deliver his own soul from death, and cover the multitude of his sins (James v. 20), says: “If to deliver a man from bodily death, who though he die not today has to die tomorrow, deserves a great reward and recompense, what reward and recompense must he deserve who has delivered a soul from everlasting death, and is the cause of her living in glory forever, a glory which she can never lose!” Thus Holy Writ is not content with saying that they who preach Christ and teach men the way of their salvation shall attain to life everlasting—They who make me known to others shall gain eternal life (Ecclus. xxiv. 31)—but adds:

They shall shine as stars for all eternity (Dan. xii. 3) ; they shall be there in heaven like a moon and like a sun. Therefore God says by the Prophet Jeremy (xv. 19): If thou separatest what is precious from what is vile, if thou removest the souls whom I value so much from the vileness and baseness of sin, thow shalt be as my mouth. It is a common way of speaking, when one greatly cherishes another, to say: “I cherish him as my eyes and as my life.” In that way, then, does God cherish him who goes about converting souls and drawing them out of sin. A soul is a most precious thing before God; therefore does He set so much store on help rendered to souls. It is written of St. Catherine of Siena in her Life that, when she saw a preacher pass along the street, she would go out of her house and kiss with great devotion the ground that the preacher had trodden on. Being asked why she did that, she replied that God had given her to know the beauty of souls in grace, and therefore she held them to be so happy who are engaged in this business of preaching that she could not refrain from putting her mouth where they had put their feet, and kissing the ground they trod on.

To this high dignity, then, the Lord has raised us. For this He has called and drawn us to the Society; this is our end and institute, to be fellow workers with God in the highest and divinest of works, which is the salvation of souls: We are God’s fellow workers, says St. Paul (I Cor. iii. 9). Let men hold us to.be ministers of Christ and dispensers of the mysteries of God (I Cor. iv. 1). An apostolic office, an office for which God Himself came down from heaven and gave His lifeblood, an office for which we are called sons of God! Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God (Matt. v. 9). On this text St. Jerome, Theophylact, and others say that these peacemakers are not only they who are at peace within themselves, having gained the victory over their passions, and again they who make peace and effect reconciliations between their neighbors, but also they who make peace and reconciliations between God and men, converting sinners by their teaching and bringing them back into grace with God. Blessed, then, are these peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God, since such was the office of the Son of God, making peace through the blood of his cross between what is on earth and what is in heaven (Col. i. 20); for the Son of God came down from heaven to earth to reconcile men with God, to make peace and friendship between God and men. Therefore the angels sang at His birth: Glory be to God in the heavens, and on earth peace to men of good will (Luke ii. 14).

The lessons we should thence learn for our own spiritual advancement are: first, a great affection for our ministries and devotion to them, as being so exalted, so pleasing to God, and so profitable to our neighbor; secondly, a great sense of shame at God’s having called us, being what we are, to a rank so high and lofty; and whereas I am not in a position to give a good account of myself alone, God has over and above entrusted to me and put in my hands the salvation and perfection of others. It is a wonderful good piece of advice that that apostolic man, our Father Francis Xavier gave, like a veteran and experienced soldier, in a letter he wrote to the fathers and brothers of Portugal. He says to them: “I advise you, my brothers, never to touch upon the office and ministry that you hold, nor upon the good opinion and esteem that the world has of you, except to turn it to your confusion, according to that saying of the prophet: When they exalted me, then I humbled myself more, and went about in greater shame and fear (Psalm Ixxxvii. 16).” The higher the office to which God has called you, the more you ought to humble yourself.

An ancient father, very distinguished for learning and virtue [Father Jerome Nadal] used to say that, when he considered the high purpose and end of the Society and looked at himself, he felt so ashamed, seeing how insufficient and unworthy he was, that not only he felt no pride in seeing himself called to so exalted a function, but on the contrary it was an occasion to him of greater shame and humiliation. In this way the high state we are in will do us no harm, nor the opinion of our holiness that the world entertains, nor the honor done us on that account. The third lesson that we have to learn is to apply ourselves in good earnest to our own spiritual advancement, for to deal with our neighbor and make a better man of him, a great foundation of virtue is necessary, as we shall say afterwards.