What an Efficacious Means This Zeal Is for Helping and Improving Our Neighbor

i fabs zeal is a grand and very effectual means of helping our neighbor. In the first place, because it is a fire, as we have said. As fire is very active, and works to convert all things into itself, actually doing so if the material be disposed thereto, and if not, proceeding so to dispose it;

so, if this fire and zeal of love of God is burning in our hearts, we shall thereupon communicate it to others, and set them on fire with love of God, and convert them into ourselves, making them be as we are, as St. Paul said: I would have you all be as I am (Acts xxvi. 29) ; and while they are not, we shall dispose them to be so. Charity stands not idle, since it is a fire that never rests, but is always crackling. “Charity is ever at work on great things,” says St. Gregory; “if it is not working such things, either it will not be at all, or anyhow it will not be great charity.”

In the second place, this zeal is a main means of helping our neighbor, inasmuch as the outcome of it is a great application to our ministries, and a constant desire and seeking of occupation in aid of our neighbor, so that there is no need to bring us up to the mark by force—a thing that we should be ashamed to require, as we should always be found standing in readiness and desiring to do far more than we get a chance of doing. This goes for much, since it is clear that we do twice as much work when we go at it with great zest. This zeal, then, is of great consequence, that we may look alive, and not be as dead men.

In the third place, there springs from this zeal the seeking of means to help our neighbor, and the finding of them, too, since good will is a great inventor and finder of means to gain its end. St. Bonaventure says there is no fear of him who has this zeal not finding what to do in aid of his neighbor, or not finding the means of doing it. If he finds nothing to do in the house, he will go and seek it outside; if he does not find it where he sought it, he will go to the hospital or the prison, where he will be sure to find it. Workers who have this zeal will always find something to do. Therefore Scripture calls them sometimes hunters. I will send them many hunters to follow the game in the glens and warrens; and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and every hillside, and from the caverns of the rocks, says God by Jeremy (xvi. 16). At other times it calls them fishers, for the fisherman does not wait for the fish to come to his hand, but goes to seek them, and plies them with divers manners of gins and dainty bait. Now since the devil is so diligent in the ruin of souls, it is only right that we should he the like to save them.

In the fourth place, where this zeal is, everything becomes easy, all difficulties are overcome, no labor stands in the way. St. Denis the Areopagite seems to attribute to this zeal the way that Christ our Redeemer bore with such constancy and fortitude the labors and sufferings of His Passion. He says that the indignation which He conceived against sin helped Him in this conflict, and quotes to this effect the text of the Prophet Isaias: I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the nations there is not a man with me: I have trodden them down in my fury, and trampled on them in my anger; and my very indignation hath aided me to come out victorious (Isaias lxili. 3,5). It was the indignation and anger that He conceived against sin, he says, that aided Him.

In the fifth place, from this zeal there springs also fervent prayer, which does not let go of God until it has carried its purpose; as we read of many saints who interposed as mediators between God and His people, and ceased not and rested not until they had appeased God by prayer. Of our blessed Father Ignatius it is recounted in his Life that there was a man in Paris carrying on an intrigue with a woman with whom he was desperately in love. As Ignatius could find no way of stopping this, he set himself to wait for him one day outside the city; and, knowing that he must pass close by a pond or pool of water on his way to the place whither his blind and foul passion was carrying him, Ignatius went into the icy-cold water up to his shoulders; and when he saw him passing by, he cried out to him aloud: ‘Go, misguided lad, go and enjoy your filthy gratification. Do you not see the anger of God ready to strike you? Are you not afraid of hell, open-mouthed to devour you? of the scourge that awaits you, soon to come down in full force upon you? Go, for here I will be suffering and doing penance for you, until God in His mercy abates the just punishment that He has prepared for you.” The man stood still, dumbfounded at such an example of charity; and, smitten by the hand of God with shame and amazement, he turned back and gave up the shameful and dangerous attachment that held him captive.