How Necessary It Is for This End First to Ground Ourselves Right Weill in Virtue

Se two things that we have said, our own improvement and the help and improvement of our neighbor, make one and the same end in the Society; they are so conjoined and interlaced together that the one is adapted to the other, helps it, and is necessary for it. So we see that the Society uses different means for the improvement of her members from those that are used by other religious orders in which the help of their neighbor is no part of their institute. Our blessed Father Ignatius used to say that, if he had looked only to God and our private spiritual advancement, he would have prescribed certain things in the Society which he omitted to prescribe, for the regard he had for our neighbor for the love of God Himself. He added that, if he looked to himself alone, he would go through the streets naked, tarred with feathers and covered with mud, to make sport of the world and for the world to make sport of him. But the great desire that he had of helping his neighbor repressed in him this impulse of humility, and made him carry himself with the authority and decency which his office and person required, and omit those extraordinary mortifications. And if he followed his natural taste and inclinations, and the spiritual profit which he drew from the ecclesiastical chant, he says that he would have established choir in the Society; but he omitted to establish it because, he said, the Lord had taught him that He wished to make use of us in other ministries and different exercises.

Since the Society aims not only at its own improvement, but also at that of its neighbor, it gives us the necessary means for our own personal progress after such a manner that they shall also dispose and fit us to help and improve our neighbors. It also wishes that our ministerial duties in aid of our neighbor should be helps to our own advancement in perfection, and that we should understand that our own growth in virtue consists in doing them well. Thus the ministrations that we exercise on behalf of our neighbor we should take as means to our own spiritual progress; and the grace and aid which our Lord gives us for our spiritual growth and improvement is with a view to our neighbor, that so we may better aid and advance him; and if we were not to work at that we should deserve that the fountain and stream of the gifts of God should dry up, because for this it flows and this is the grace of our vocation.

Joseph’s being raised up and seated on the throne of Egypt, and having given him the gifts which were given, was not for his private dignity and advancement, but for the good and advancement of his brethren and people. It was for the saving of you that God sent me before you (Gen. xlv. 5). So also in our case God has called us to this state, and in it gives us such blessings, for the good and profit of our brethren; therefore Christ compares us to a light and to a city, since all the coming forth of light is for others.

But let us speak of each of these two parts by itself, although always with reference to the other. As for the first, it is certain that, for a man to be able to do much for the help and improvement of his neighbor, he must first be greatly helped and improved himself. So the Apostle puts in the first place, as the foundation of the rest, Attend to thyself (I Tim. iv. 16). The first thing to be done is for each one to look to himself, and apply himself in earnest to his spiritual advancement. God our Lord orders spiritual things and the operations of grace according to the operations of nature. The Divine Wisdom reacheth from end to end strongly, and disposeth all things sweetly (Wisdom viii. 1) ; and to show that He is the author both of the one and of the other, God wills that in the operations of grace there should be observed the same order as in the operations of nature, wherein, as philosophers say, like begets like.

Besides general causes, as the sun and the heavenly spheres, we see that for the production of natural things there is required as a further cause an immediate agent of the same species, that so a thing may have the form which it has to transmit to other subjects. Fire produces fire; light, light. It is the same with spiritual things. To put into others the form of humility, patience, charity, and the other virtues, God requires the immediate cause which He uses as an instrument—a preacher or a confessor—to be humble, patient, and charitable.

Moreover, as we see in the course of nature that a plant, say, a lettuce, does not produce seed while it is small, but only when it is grown to maturity—then does it begin to shed its seed, to multiply itself in others—so in the things of the spirit and of grace God requires a man first to be well advanced and grown in virtue into a perfect man before begetting spiritual sons to God and being able to say: In Christ Jesus through the gospel I have begotten you (I Cor. iv. 15). For this reason the first thing the Society takes in hand is to attend to ourselves and to our own spiritual advancement; it would have its subject well grounded in this first of all. To this end there is such a long probation in the Society; two years of novitiate to begin with, before starting the studies; and when these are over, she puts her men once more into the furnace and the mold, keeping them another whole year in probation, that in case study and speculation have dried up and cooled any of their spirit and devotion, they may refit themselves once more, now that they are on the point of entering upon their ministry to their neighbor, and not treat of matters of the spirit without themselves having the spirit. And even after that it seems that we are never to cease being novices; our profession is put off for so many years that one may say our whole life is spent in novitiate and probation before the Society gives a man his grade as a formed workman in its service. Much is to be entrusted to him, and so he must be much proved and tried first for all he is worth; he is to be put to high things, dealing with others to make them not only good, but perfect, and so it is necessary that he himself be perfect.

Hence it will be seen how great is the mistake of those to whom these probations appear long, and who even fancy that their time is lost in them, and would like to see themselves already preaching and dealing with their neighbor. The moment they get a little devotion in meditation, or one or two good thoughts, they would fain be in the pulpit. The holy Abbot Ephrem lamented this, and says that this is not the spirit of God, but the spirit of pride and vanity. You have come, he says, into religion to be taught and instructed, and scarcely have you commenced to learn when you want to teach others. You can hardly put two syllables together, and you want to be a schoolmaster. You cannot yet bear a reproof or take an admonition given you, and you want to be rebuking others and dealing out to them counsel and advice. Antequam doceatur, docere appetit; priusquam discat, iura legesque ferre ambit; antequam syllabas iungere noverit, philosophatur,; priusquam corripi sustineat, corripit.

St. Gregory, in his “Pastoral Cure,” treats this subject excellently, illustrating it by familiar comparisons. It is necessary, he says, to admonish these folk to observe and and consider that nestlings, trying to fly before their wings grow, instead of going up, fall down; and secondly to observe and consider that, if fresh and new-built walls are loaded immediately, the whole building will fall, and they who so proceed, instead of raising buildings, will prepare ruins. The walls must dry and the building set, before it is fit to bear the weight that is to be laid upon it. Thirdly, he says, they must likewise observe and consider that women who are brought to bed before their time, and before the babe in the womb is quite formed, do not fill with their issue the houses of the living, but the tombs of the dead. A great foundation of virtue and mortification is needed to deal with our neighbor; without that, there will be more danger than profit. They will infect us with their evil communications sooner than our goodness shall impress them. Hence it is, says St. Gregory, that Christ Himself, though He was the Wisdom of the eternal Father, and wisdom was His as perfectly in the instant of His conception as afterwards, would not begin preaching till He was thirty years old; and then the first thing He did was to retire into the desert, fasting and practising other corporal austerities, and being tempted by the devil, to give us an example of the great preparation and perfection that are required for so high a ministry, although He had no need of these previous preparations Himself. And he there brings in very well what is said of Him in the holy Gospel, that, when at the age of twelve years He stayed behind in Jerusalem, they found him in the Temple seated in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions (Luke ii. 46). Observe, he says, and ponder attentively how, when Jesus Christ was twelve years old, His parents found Him in the Temple, seated in the midst of the doctors, not teaching, but listening and asking questions, this to teach us that he who is yet a child and imperfect in virtue should not dare to teach, nor take on himself before his time an office so high, since He Himself at that age would not teach, but only listen and ask questions, although it was He Who gave wisdom and knowledge to those doctors, being true God as He was. Hence also it was, says St. Gregory, that, when He had commanded His apostles and disciples to go and preach the Gospel all over the world, though He could have given them at once the virtue and perfection necessary for so doing, He did not give it, nor would He have them preach in the weak and imperfect state in which they were, but said to them: Do ye tarry in the city, until ye are endowed with virtue from on high (Luke xxiv. 49). Stay in the city until the Holy Spirit comes upon you. All that goes to teach us the necessity there is of being well grounded in virtue, humility, and mortification, to be able to go out and deal with our neighbors with profit to them and without injury to ourselves.

The glorious St. Bernard cites to this purpose the text of Canticles (viii. 8): Our sister is small, and hath not yet breasts: she has not yet milk to be able to rear children.

He takes these words to refer to the Church before the coming of the Holy Ghost; and says that then the Church was small, and had not breasts nor milk to be able to rear children, until the Holy Ghost came, Who filled the apostles and disciples with His gifts and graces and gave them abundant milk. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to utter the great things of God (Acts ii. 4-11). Then, filled with the Holy Ghost, they spoke wonders, and converted people in thousands. If, then, you wish to produce fruit in souls and rear spiritual children for God, you must have your breasts very full and well stored with good milk, the one breast with much virtue, the other with right-down good and sound doctrine.

St. Jerome on that text of Ecclesiastes (xi. 3): If the clouds be full, they will pour rain upon the earth, says that preachers are clouds, since as clouds are charged with water wherewith they moisten the earth, so preachers are they who are charged with the water of Gospel teaching, and with that they moisten the dry hearts of men. Quoting Isaias (v. 6): I will bid the clouds not to rain upon it, he says that this is the punishment that God threatens men for their sins, to hold up the rain of His word, and not send preachers at all or permit the preachers to be such as will not preach profitably. And this is one of the greatest punishments that God can inflict on His people. But when these clouds are quite full of rain from heaven, they will be able to rain and shed their water over the earth, and say: Let the earth hear the words of my mouth, let my doctrine gather like rain, let my speech pour out as dew, as rain upon the grass (Deut. xxxii. 2). Then they will be able to fertilize the earth, to soften and move men’s hearts to compunction, that they may yield fruit of good works; for if clouds have no water in them, what shall become of them? Do you know what? What the holy Apostle Jude says in his canonical epistle. They are as clouds without water, that are carried round by the winds (Jude i. 12). As clouds without water, light and airy, and having no weight nor substance in them, are easily carried away by the wind in one direction or another, so if you are not full and replenished with virtue, humility, and mortification, the wind of vanity and reputation and the other passions and cupidities of the world will carry you away like a cloud without water and without weight, and your quality of cloud, charged with high ministries and duties, will serve only to make you more vain, the sport of all the winds that blow.

Speaking of rich people, St. Augustine says: “It is hard for a rich man not to be proud; there is nothing that riches so readily create and engender as pride. All things breed their own maggot, which gnaws and wastes them. Cloth breeds and engenders its moth, timber its wood louse, wheat its weevil. The maggot of the apple tree is different from that of the pear, and that of the wheat from that of the bean; so riches engender another maggot, very different from these and worse than them all, and that is pride.” The rich men of the world, seeing the extent of their property and riches and the esteem that men have of them and the account that they make of them, are in all the greater danger of pride on that account. How much greater must be the danger of those who play the part of clouds, soaring over the earth, watering it and giving it blessing; respected by all for the lofty and high ministries which they hold, honored and esteemed by all the world, great and small, with all possible honor and reverence? St. Chrysostom says that greater reverence is due to priests than to kings and princes, and even to our own earthly parents, since they make us live in the world, but priests and spiritual fathers make us live to God. There is no greater honor, no higher estimation, than a reputation for sanctity. To others we pay exterior honor while often at heart we have no respect for them at all, but these we honor as saints. Bow down thy soul to a priest, and to a magnate bow down thy head, says the Wise Man (Ecclus. iv. 7). A strong foundation of humility is necessary to bear the weight of all this honor; pride and vainglory is the maggot which destroys and ruins good works; and in the highest and most distinguished there is greater danger of this maggot’s being engendered. So this is the first danger that St. Chrysostom reckons in the priestly state, and he says that it is a reef more formidable than any that poets imagine.