That We Must Beware of the Other Extreme, Which Would Be Withdrawing from All Intercourse with Our Neighbor under Pretense of Attending to Ourselves

SOMEONE may say: “If there is so much danger in dealing with neighbors, I have no mind to run such risks, but I will retire as far as I can, and busy myself solely with my own advancement and salvation, seeing that I am more bound to look to myself than to others, and it is not right to put myself in danger of perdition to save other people.” This is the other extreme into which it is possible to fall, withdrawing from the royal road of our institute. To this also we have an answer in the holy Gospel, in the parable of the talents. The holy evangelists (Matt. xxv. 14; Luke xix. 15) relate how a lord divided his goods among his servants: to one he gave ten talents; to another, two; and to another, one. The first and second made good use of their talents, and gained with them as much again, and for this they were highly praised and rewarded. But he who had received one talent buried it and hid it away under ground; and when the master came to ask an account, he answered: “I knew that thou wert an austere man, driving bargains to the utmost, and seeking to reap and gather even what thou hast not scattered and sown; and so I have hidden the talent that thou gavest me down in the earth; here it is entire as thou gavest it me.” The lord says to him: “Wicked and slothful servant, out of thine own mouth I condemn thee (Luke xix. 22). Knowing that it is my way to gather and reap wher> I have not scattered or sown, why didst thou not trade with my money, to return me the capital sum with interest? Take away from him the talent and give it to him that hath ten talents, who with the five that I gave him hath gained other five, for thus shall he be rewarded and promoted. And as for this useless and unprofitable servant, cast him into the outer darkness, where shall be naught but weeping and gnashing of teeth.” St. Augustine explains this parable to our purpose. He says that Christ our Redeemer proposed it to warn and instruct those who for feebleness and sloth have no mind to take up the office of dispensers in the Church of God, saying that they do not want to give an account to God of other people’s sins. Let them take warning, he says, from this example; for we read of no other cause of the condemnation of this servant than his not having traded or made anything out of the talent he had received; for he had not lost it, nor invested it badly; but had kept it well, hiding it under the earth that it might not be stolen.

St. Ambrose says: “Let us look to it that God call us not to account for an idle silence” —Videamus ne reddamus rationem pro otioso silentio. For there is a profitable silence, as was that of Susanna, who did more by her silence than she could have done by speaking; she was silent with men, and spoke to God (Dan. xiii. 35). There is another silence that is idle, and that is bad—Hst enim et negotiosum silentium, et est silentium otiosum. As we have to give an account to God for idle words, so also for this idle silence, which consists in this, that, when we might and ought to aid and advance our neighbor by our words, we fail to do so. Of us particularly God must ask an account of this, since He has entrusted this talent to us and given us this office and ministry of assisting others; and thus He will ask of us an account not only of our own spiritual progress, as He will of those who have no other object in life, but also of how we have busied ourselves in helping and winning over our neighbor; and if He finds that we have hidden the talent and buried it under the earth, He will drive us away from His presence and chastise us, as was done to that wicked and idle servant. Thus we must have a care of both services, and not quit the one for the other. We must take example herein from Christ our Redeemer, of Whom it is said in the Gospel that on the night of His Passion He rose from prayer and went to visit His disciples, and from them He went straight back to prayer. So we should go out from prayer to labor for the help of our neighbor, and straightway return to the retirement of prayer.

St. Bernard treats this matter well on those words of the Bridegroom to the bride: Arise, make haste, my beloved one, my fair one, and come (Cant. ii. 10). To what? He says, doubtless to the saving of souls. But how is this? Is it not the same Bridegroom, Who a little before in the same chapter so earnestly forbade our waking His bride? J adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the mountain goats and the hinds of the fields, not to awake or rouse my beloved from sleep until she herself wishes it (Cant. ii. 7). How does He thereupon command, not only that she should rise, but that she should rise in haste? Does He in one moment, and as it were simultaneously, forbid them to awaken His bride, and then bid her rise and do so in haste? What means this so sudden change of will and purpose on the part of the Bridegroom? Think you, says St. Bernard, that it was fickleness on the part of the Bridegroom, and that what He wished one moment He wished otherwise in that next? Not so, but He would commend to us these necessary alterations that we have to make, from the sleep and repose of prayer and contemplation to the labor of action necessary for the help of our neighbor. For the love of God cannot stand idle; it is a fire, and claims forthwith to kindle and inflame all around it with that same love. And for this reason the bride must not only quit the repose of contemplation and rise from prayer, but she is to rise in haste, to let us see the great and vehement desire she should have to help her neighbor. And therefore, says St. Bernard, scarcely has she tasted a little repose on the bosom of her Beloved, when He at once awakens her, and bids her go about other things more profitable. And I say “more profitable,” because in the eyes of God helping others along with ourselves is more profitable and more highly to be prized than devoting ourselves solely to our own advancement and recollection.

Nor is this the first time that this has happened to the bride in her dealings with her Beloved; the same has happened at other times before. She would wish to be ever rejoicing in the delight and repose of contemplation and the embraces and sweet kisses of her Beloved; and so she entreats, saying: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth (Cant. i. 1); and He answers that her breasts are better than wine, giving her to understand that she ought to have children, and bestow her care and attention on them. Remember that you are a father and have children, and that you have to give them milk and rear them, and that you must often leave your repose and quiet to give them sustenance and remedy. We have a figure of this in Jacob, of whom Holy Writ says (Gen. xxix. 23) that, when he thought to enjoy the embraces and kisses of Rachel, who was barren, they gave him Lia, who was blear-eyed but fruitful. So now, when the bride desires the kiss and sweet embraces of her Bridegroom, they commend to her the duty of a mother and of rearing children. Thy breasts are better than wine (Cant. i. 1). For better than the sweetness of the wine of contemplation, and more pleasing to God at the time, is the fruit of preaching and converse with our neighbor and gaining souls to God. Though Lia is not so fair as Rachel, she is more fruitful, and her fertility supplies and quite makes up for the lack of the beauty of Rachel.

Though the contemplative life is more perfect than the active, yet when to the contemplative life there is joined this active life of teaching and helping our neighbor and gaining souls to God, that is more perfect than the contemplative life alone. So St. Chrysostom explains the saying of St. Paul to the Romans: I could wish to be anathema myself from Christ on behalf of my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh (Rom. ix. 3). So great was the zeal that he had for the salvation of souls, that he desired to be removed for some periods from the most sweet conversations and company of Christ, and cease to indulge in his acts of love, to apply himself to the profit of his neighbor; and that was in a way making himself anathema from Christ for their sake. And all the doctors acknowledge this to have been a supreme act of charity.

Thus what seems a loss is not a loss, but a great gain. We must persuade ourselves that we shall lose nothing of our own spiritual profit by attending to the profit of our neighbor; rather we shall gain and profit more, and grow in virtue and perfection. By way of illustration and confirmation of this, Clement of Alexandria brings up sundry good comparisons. Wells, says he, bring up better and purer water the more you draw from them; and, contrariwise, when you draw nothing from them, the water gets stagnant and bad. A knife is kept bright by use for cutting; and left unused, it thereupon goes moldy and rusty. Fire loses nothing by burning and setting alight other things, but rather gains and spreads the more. In human sciences we see that he who teaches others learns much by teaching, and in that way men grow very learned. So also it is with this spiritual and divine wisdom; especially since the word of God is a sharp, two-edged sword (Heb. iv. 12) by which he who cuts others cuts also himself. The lesson I give to others is necessary also for me; my conscience thereupon stings me with the thought: “How is it that you don’t do yourself what you tell others to do? Woe to them who preach and do not practise!” Seeing in confession the falls of other people is a warning to me to walk in fear and caution, begging God to hold me in His hand and give me grace not to let me fall in that way. Helping this and that person to die makes us keep the hour of death present before us, and try to be ever prepared for it. Visiting prisons and hospitals, making up quarrels and effecting reconciliations, gives us a better knowledge of the miseries of this world and a higher esteem of the favor that the Lord has done us in calling us to religion. In a word, all our ministrations not only are not occasions to make us worse, but rather rouse us from slumber, and invite and incite us more to virtue and perfection.

Add to this the great mercies that the Lord shows to such as work for their neighbors. If to them who do corporal works of mercy He has promised so much, as we read in Holy Writ (Matt. xxv. 35-40), what shall it be for those who do spiritual works of mercy, which are as much greater as the soul is more than the body! St. Chrysostom says that to those that saying of the Gospel right well applies: Give and it shall be given unto you (Luke vi. 38). And that is what the Wise Man says: The soul that gives blessing shall grow fat; and he that inebriateth shall be inebriated (Prov. xi. 25). The soul that doth good to her neighbor shall thrive; and he that replenishes others and inebriates them spiritually with desire and love of the things of heaven, shall in his turn be replenished and inebriated by God with His divine consolations. Some liken them to the almoners of princes, to whom they give much to distribute; and if they give away much, they give them much. But this comparison does not go on all fours; for if the almoner be faithful, he has nothing left on his hands, and himself grows no richer for giving to others; but they who help their neighbor by spiritual ministrations are themselves enriched by giving to others and enriching them. So that is a better comparison of others, who say that they are like the nurses that suckle the children of kings, whom the king maintains and supports by meats from his royal table; and they with what they have over support and suckle the infants. In this way they are nourished whose occupation it is to suckle the children of the King of Heaven. He sends them food from His divine and royal table, so ample and abundant that, when they are themselves quite sated and enriched, they may be able out of their abundance to share it with their spiritual children. All which St. Peter Chrysologus admirably expresses in these words: “In the way that kings feed the nurses of their children with delicate food that they may suckle them with the purest of milk, so the sovereign King of Heaven is wont to do with the ministers of His word. Notwithstanding that they may not deserve it, yet in view of the sustenance that they have to give to His Majesty’s children, He feeds and nourishes them with the viands of His heavenly table, to make their milk richer and the nourishment they impart more delicious.”

We in the Society particularly must always go on this presupposition, since in the Society God has made our waiting upon and helping our neighbor a means to our own spiritual advancement, that being our institute and vocation. So it is said expressly in the bull of Julius II, where, after the sovereign pontiff has laid down the end of our institute and ministries, he goes on to say: “Let him take care to have before his eyes all the days of his life God in the first place, and after that his vocation and institute, which is a way to God.” Thus, as the spiritual progress of sundry religious orders of monks depends on careful assistance at their choir duties, a regular observance of enclosure, and fasts and austerities proper to their vocation, so our progress and perfection depend on doing well our ministrations to our neighbor, for it is to that we are called, as they are to that other end. Thus we may say to our neighbor what St. Paul says: You are our joy, our glory, and crown (Phil. iv. 1; I Thess. ii. 20). St. Ambrose says on that passage: “It is clear that the improvement and perfection of his disciples is the joy and perfection of the master.” So we must understand that this is our merit, our spiritual improvement and perfection.

Thus, though recollection and a great affection for prayer is an excellent thing in the Society, yet any prayer and recollection that withdraws us from our ministries to our neighbor is a temptation in the Society. If you were out there in the world, or in another religious order whose business was other than this, it might be a movement of the good spirit and perfection to withdraw to make more meditation and attend to yourself alone. But here in the Society it is not a movement of the good spirit, but a temptation and delusion of the devil, who transfigures himself into an angel of light and, under color of your spiritual progress and taking no risks, is seeking to remove you from your institute. The prayer of the Society should be in conformity with our vocation, that we may be better heartened to help our neighbor, that we may say with holy Job: When I go to sleep, I will say: When shall I rise? and once more I will wait for the evening (Job vii. 4). Our occupation, then, at meditation should be to dispose and prepare ourselves better to fulfil our ministries; and our prayer will be all the better, the better prepared for that we come out of it. The more you grow in the love of God, the more inflamed should you become with desire to gain souls to God, and seeking and trying to get others to love and serve Him along with yourself.

It is related of a religious of the Order of St. Francis, a great servant of God, that, having labored many years in the conversion of the Indians, he desired to recollect himself a little, to prepare for death with more diligence and care. So he returned to Spain, and withdrew from all dealing with his neighbor. It is said that every time he put himself in prayer he seemed to see a vision of Christ crucified, Who with loving complaint and rebuke said to him: “Why hast thou left me on this cross, and gone to seek thine own quiet and repose?” Admonished and much moved by this vision, he returned to the harvest which he had left, where he worked for many more years.