Of the First Means of Doing Good to Our Neighbor, Which Is a Good and Holy Life

WE will now mention some general means of doing good to our neighbor, means which our Father sets down in the Seventh Part of the Constitutions, leaving out other particular means, proper to priests, of which he speaks in the Fourth Part. And though what we shall say will be in view of the spiritual profit of our neighbor, nevertheless they will be things appertaining also to our own spiritual advancement. For, as we said at the beginning, these two things are so united in the Society that what is a means for helping our neighbor is also a means for our own advancement; and what is a means for our own advancement is also a means for the better helping of our neighbor. Thus what we shall say will be an instruction that may be of great service to all men generally. The first means that our Father lays down there to profit our neighbor is a good and exemplary life. He writes: “The first thing that will help will be a good example of all propriety and Christian virtue, that by good works even more than by good words they may edify those with whom they deal.” A good and holy life, being oneself under control and discipline to begin with, is the principal and most efficacious means of doing much good to our neighbor. As the better a tree is growing itself, the more fruitful it is for its owners, so the further a preacher or confessor is advanced himself in perfection, the more useful he will be to others.

The importance and necessity of this means is shown by this consideration in the first place, that it is certain that the example of a good life goes further to persuade men than any amount of words and sermons. So Christ our Redeemer began to teach the way of salvation by deeds first, and then by words. Jesus began to do and to teach, says the Evangelist St. Luke (Acts i. 1). He began by working for thirty years, to teach afterwards for only three. And the glorious Baptist, says St. Jerome, on this account chose the desert, there to preach Christ. J am the voice of one crying in the desert (John i. 23). The holy doctor asks how the Baptist comes to choose the desert to preach in, since that seems rather a place not to be seen or heard by anybody than to preach. He answers: The preacher and herald of Christ chose the desert that men, seeing the new life in the preacher, might begin to admire and be moved to penance, to give up their vices and seek to imitate the preacher. He knew well that example was a more effectual means to move hearers and produce fruit in them than exclamations and words. So it is said in the Gospel: He was a burning and shining light (John v. 35). Burning with love of God, he shone forth with great splendor on his neighbors by the example of his so wonderful life.

It is a trite saying of Seneca: “The way by lessons and precepts is a long way, but that by example is short and effectual, because men believe more what they see than what they hear”—Longum est iter per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla. St. Bernard gives another reason for this. Example is so effectual to move others because they are thereby persuaded that what is told them is feasible, seeing him who tells it them practise it and put it in execution, and that is a great encouragement to them to put it in practice. St. Augustine says that so great is the infirmity and weakness of man, that it is difficult for him to do good unless he first sees the example of it in others; and on that account he says that it is very important for a teacher and preacher of the Gospel to be a good man, to give a pattern for those who hear him to imitate. So St. Paul bade people imitate him as he imitated Christ. Brethren, be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (I Cor. iv. 16).

Add to this that, when it is seen that a preacher and teacher conforms his life to his doctrine, that makes people believe that what he says comes from his heart, and so it has force and efficacy to move and persuade; but when it is not so, all his preaching goes for little or nothing. St. Basil says, and St. Chrysostom, that such a one is no true preacher or teacher, but a pretender and impostor. He is like, they say, to an actor in a comedy; he plays the part of a king, or a knight, or a rich man, and he is no king, nor knight, nor rich man; so is he who preaches only in words. You give a good presentation of humility, but you are not humble; a good presentation of contempt of the world and worldly honor, but you have not despised the world entirely nor its honors; you are a player in a farce and a comedian, not a Gospel preacher. St. Basil well likens these people to painters who paint very well the beauty of a man on a piece of linen or canvas, while they are themselves very ugly; so, he says, are preachers who, proud people themselves, know very well how to depict humility and say elegant things about it. Impatient people know how to give a good picture of patience; chatterers and woolgatherers are able to say beautiful things about silence and recollection. St. Augustine compares them to milestones, that show the traveler the way he is going, while themselves remain where they are. Such also he says were the scribes and Pharisees, who directed the Magi to Bethlehem, not going there themselves.

St. Jerome on those words of the Wise Man: The sluggard buries his hand in his bosom, and thinks it too much trouble to raise it to his mouth (Prov. xxvi. 15), says that hiding of one’s hands below one’s arms, and not caring for laziness to raise hand to mouth, is the way of a preacher who does not do what he says, nor fit his deeds to his words. St. Gregory Nazianzen says that he who preaches and does not act accordingly, draws souls with one hand and drives them away with the other; does with one hand and undoes with the other. These are the scribes and Pharisees whom Christ rebukes in the Gospel. Woe to them who say and do not! They neither move nor do any good with their words. But he that doth what he preacheth, he shall be great in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. v. 19). These are the evangelical and apostolic preachers, and they who produce much fruit in souls by the good example of their lives. As holiness is a thing supernatural and divine, all men pay holy people a measure of veneration and respect more than human. They see and hear them, not as men, but as angels; they take what they say as coming from heaven, and so it moves and makes an impression on their heart. Therefore St. Paul requires of God’s workers that they be beyond reproach (I Tim. iii. 2), not to be put to shame (II Tim. ii. 15), an example to the faithful in charity, chastity, and the other virtues (I Tim. iv. 12), that so their teaching may have force and efficacy to excite others and draw them over to themselves. This, then, is the chief means to aid our neighbor, a good and holy life: first, for example’s sake; secondly, because, for God to take us for inStruments to work much good in our neighbor, it is very important that we be well advanced in virtue and mortification.

In the Tenth Part of our Constitutions our Father treats of the preservation and increase of the Society and the means to aid us to the spiritual end for which it was instituted, which is the salvation of souls; and he says that the means which unite the instrument with God and dispose it better to be guided by His divine hand, which are goodness and virtue, are more efficacious than other means which merely enable it to get on with men, such as learning and other natural and human gifts; so we must lean principally upon the former. He writes: ‘Let all give themselves to solid and perfect virtues and spiritual things, and reckon them of more account than learning and other natural and human gifts; for these interior qualities it is that must give effect to the exterior in view of the end proposed to us.” And the reason of this is clear. For if the business had a human end and belonged to the natural order, human means and human prudence were necessary to make sure of it; but the end we aim at is supernatural and divine—to move hearts, to convert souls, and draw them out of sin. It is not in our competence to engender sanctity in souls; that belongs to Him Who said at the beginning of the world: Let there be light, and there was light (Gen. i. 3). Our learning, our prudence, our diligence and industry, and all the natural and human means that we can employ are out of all proportion with this end. God it is Who enlightens hearts and speaks words of life; all the efficacy of the instrument to produce fruit in souls springs from God. Thus those means which better conjoin and unite us with God will make us better and more effectual instruments for the conversion of souls. The more conjoined and united we are with God, the better shall we be able to receive in ourselves the influences of His graces and heavenly gifts, and communicate them to others.

St. Denis the Areopagite, speaking of the holiness and perfection that priests and ministers of the Gospel should have, through whom God is pleased to impart His gifts and His blood, says that they must first be holy in themselves to make others holy; they must be perfect to make others perfect; they must have so much light and knowledge of God as to be able to enlighten and illuminate others—sacri et sacrantes, perfecti et perficientes, illuminati et iluminantes. They must be so kindled and inflamed with the fire of love of God as to make others catch fire, and kindle and inflame them with the same love; for, as St. Gregory says: “He who is not on fire himself, will never set fire to others’—Qui non ardet, non incendit. That holy friar, Thomas of Villanova, Archbishop of Valentia, used often to repeat these words: “How can burning words issue from a cold breast?” Then will your words set your neighbor on fire with the love of God, when they come forth from a heart burning and inflamed with the love of God. Then will you set the world on fire with the fire that the Son of God came to cast on the earth: I came to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be enkindled? (Luke xii. 49). Then will one word go for more than a hundred.

Plato said a thing in which he said more than he knew; that, as the loadstone has this virtue, that by touching iron it impregnates it with the attractive virtue which itself has, so that the iron which has touched the loadstone also attracts other iron to itself in the same way that the loadstone itself does, so men touched by God have the virtue of attracting others to God. St. Augustine, as he tells us (“De Civitate Dei,” xxiv. 4), was greatly struck with this property of the loadstone when he put it to the test. He saw how an iron ring, on touching a loadstone, drew and fastened to itself another ring, and that another, and that other another, till they made a chain of them in the air wonderfully interwoven. Now, if our words are not as the words of men touched by God, how shall they draw others to God? If you are not on fire with the love of God, how are you to inflame others? Even in the secular schools rhetoricians say that, to stir others, you yourself must be stirred to your innermost heart; no way is more effectual than that. How can I move another to tears when my own eyes are dry? How can I move him to grief if he sees that I show no grief nor emotion myself? How move him to indignation if he sees that I am not at all indignant? In the same way, then, how shall you move others to contempt of the world when you have not succeeded in really contemning it yourself? How can you give them a liking for mortification when you yourself have no taste for it, or make others humble when you are not humble? It is only fire that burns, only water that wets, nor can anything give to another thing the color which it has not itself. How can you fasten and impress upon others what you have not yourself? You will be like the discharges of firearms and artillery without ball, that fill the air with thunder-sound and rumbling, but do not knock down walls nor kill the enemy. Such are preachers who have nothing in them but words; it all goes in thunder and noise, as one beating the air (I Cor. ix. 26), as St. Paul says. Their cries beat the air, but they upset nobody, nor strike home to hearts, because there is no ball, no substance, in them. They have none of that virtue and spirit which give force and efficacy to all the rest.

A talent for preaching does not consist in phrases and tricks of rhetoric, nor in saying things highly sublime and subtle. Not such was the preaching of the Preacher of the Gentiles, that vessel chosen of God to carry His name all over the world, as he says to the men of Corinth: When I, brethren, came to your city, I did not come preaching Christ with elegance of words or profound learning; for I reckoned myself not to know anything among you but Jesus Christ, and him crucified (I Cor. ii. 1-2). And further on he says: My words and my preaching did not rest on persuasions of human wisdom, but on the manifestation of the spirit and of truth, that your faith may not be founded on human wisdom, but on the power of God (I Cor. ii. 4-5). In the “Ecclesiastical History in Three Parts” it is related, to the great praise and credit of the ancient Fathers, that they taught by holy instructions and wise counsels, away from all affectations and flowers of rhetoric, and, as prudent physicians, applied remedies suitable to the infirmities of the conscience of their hearers. Such should be our sermons and spiritual discourses. We do not go there to preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ, as the Apostle St. Paul says (II Cor. iv. 5). You may take it for a certainty that preachers who make a parade of great learning and eloquence and perfect mastery of their mother tongue, will do very little good; first, for the reason we have already mentioned, that the judicious portion of the audience understand very well that he who preaches in this style is a man who enjoys the sound of his own voice, is fond of talking and cutting figures, and is more anxious to pose as a good speaker than desirous of profiting them; secondly, because this very elegance makes the fruit fall off, and the greater the elegance, the less the effect. That saying of rhetoricians is true, which Quintilian quotes: “The gist and meaning of a speech falls to the ground, where the phrases are too much praised”—Jacet sensus in oratione in qua verba laudantur. That is to say, men drop their attention to things, when words are elegant to excess; the words steal away the hearers’ attention from the meaning, and they look away from what is said to them for looking at how it is said to them. Now, if even teachers of rhetoric censure this and hold it for a great fault in an orator, how much more is it to be censured in a preacher of the Gospel, who has to attend only to the advancement and salvation of souls! To each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for a useful purpose (I Cor. xii: 7)—the good of souls; and on this the preacher should ever keep his eyes.

St. Jerome says: “The mark of a good sermon is not the applause of the hearers, nor their going out saying, ‘Never did man speak thus (John vii. 46) ; didn’t you see what fine things he brought in and how well he said them?’ but the compunction and tears of the hearers and their change of life; let that be your praise.” Lacrimae auditorum laudes tuae sint. In this consists the talent for preaching—in God’s taking a man for His instrument to move the hearts of the hearers, so that through hearing his words their illusions fall away, and they come to take account of the evil life they have led, and repent and return with all their heart to God. Father Master Avila used to say: “Preaching does not consist in your being an hour up there reasoning about God, but in your hearer’s coming turned into a devil, and going away turned into an angel.” In that lies the talent of a preacher. Another great servant of God used to say that, when the hearers go away from a sermon with their heads down, without speaking or looking at one another, then the sermon has been good and profitable, for that is a sign that each one is carrying away a message for himself.

In the Life of our Father Francis Borgia it is told that, when he preached in Biscay, the greater part of the people could not catch what he said, for their being very numerous and unable to get near the pulpit, as also because they did not understand the speech of Castille; but it was marvelous to see the attention which they all paid and the tears they shed. When they were asked why they cried over the sermon, seeing they could not understand it, they answered that they cried at the sight of the holy duke, and also because they felt within their souls such utterances and inspirations of God as signified and gave them to understand what the preacher was preaching to them from the pulpit. At another time, in Portugal, the cardinal infant, who was afterwards king of Portugal, wanted Father Francis to preach, and he said he was tired, having come in from a journey. “I do not ask him to preach,” said the cardinal, “but only to mount the pulpit, and let them see the man who has left all he had for God.” That is what preaches, that is what makes fruit in souls more than words—example and holiness of life. That is what we should secure, and on that principally insist, that God may take us for instruments for the conversion of souls—confessors as well as preachers, and all the rest of us who have to deal with our neighbor.