Of the Great Blessings That There Are in Religion, and the Gratitude That We Owe to God for Having Called Us to It

GOD is faithful, by whom ye are called to the society of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (I Cor. i. 9). One of the things that God enjoined upon the children of Israel when He led them out of the captivity of Egypt, was that they should remember the day on which so great a favor had been done them. And He enforced this injunction by ordering that every year they should celebrate a Passover to last eight days, with great solemnity, eating therein with great ceremonies a lamb in memory of that which was slain when they were delivered from captivity. If God ordered this in memory of the bodily deliverance, of which they did not make good use after they had received it, what will it be reasonable for us to do in memory of the day on which His almighty and loving hand drew us out of the captivity which our soul was in, and set us on the way of the Land of Promise, not of earth, but of heaven? So we read of the holy Abbot Arsenius that every year he celebrated the day on which the Lord had done him so great a favor as this drawing him out of the world. And the festive celebration that he made was to receive Communion that day, to give alms to three poor men, to eat some cooked vegetable, and to keep open house in his cell for all the monks to come in.

The blessed St. Augustine explains to this purpose what Moses said to Pharaoh when he wished the children of Israel to sacrifice to God in Egypt, and not go beyond its bounds to offer sacrifice. Moses said: “That cannot be, for we should have to sacrifice to the Lord our God the abominations of the Egyptians (Exod. viii. 26)—the cow, the calf, the lamb, which the Egyptians adore as gods; and it would be an abomination to them if they saw us killing and cutting the throats of the creatures they adore, and they would eschew us as blasphemers. We must needs go out of Egypt and come into the desert, to be able to sacrifice these things to God with impunity.” So we have to sacrifice and offer to God our Lord what men of the world abhor and abominate—poverty, mortification of the flesh, obedience and subjection, being put down and despised, denying and breaking our own will. We could not sacrifice and offer these things to God in the world, which would hiss us and banish us and not suffer us to live, for people of the world abominate that sort of thing, and make game of the poor and lowly and humble. We will go a three days’ journey into the desert and there sacrifice to our God (Exod. viii. 27). God of His infinite goodness and mercy has done us this favor of drawing us out of Egypt and bringing us into the desert of religion, where we are able with these three vows to offer and sacrifice to our God all these things with impunity, for here it is a great honor and great glory to do so, and he who distinguishes himself and is most eminent herein is most regarded and esteemed.

For the better understanding of the obligation under which we lie of paying our acknowledgments and thanks to the Lord for this favor and benefit, we will briefly set down here some of the good and excellent things by which the saints declare its greatness. The glorious St. Jerome on that passage of the Hightieth Psalm: When the people went out of the land of Egypt, they heard a language which they knew not: the Lord delivered his men from their burdens (Psalm lxxx. 6-7), enlarges on the great favor that God has done us in drawing us out of Egypt, that is, the world; he sets before us the captivity and servitude of Pharaoh in which we were, and the liberty of the sons of God to which we have been called. God has drawn us out, he says, and delivered us from a heavy yoke and burden. We were servants and slaves of Pharaoh there in the world; and God’s strong and mighty hand has drawn us out of that servitude and subjection. When we were in Egypt, there in the world, we were building the cities of Pharaoh: all our work was to make bricks and be busy on constructions of clay and mud; all our time was taken up and all our care and diligence in looking for straw, straw that the wind carries away, straw to make bricks. We had no wheat; it was all straw. We had not that heavenly bread which comes from above. What a heavy load we had to carry uphill! What cares, what labors we had, all to get enough to eat, or at most to get some honorable office! And to uphold and carry that on, what difficulties there were, what applications to make to men in power, what formalities to observe, what compliments to pay, what laws of society to observe!—the stringency of which they alone understand who come under them. Truly it is a yoke of iron and heaviness that people of the world have to bear, struggling uphill. But God has taken off from our shoulders the heavy yoke of the laws and obligations and codes of the world. Divertit ab oneribus dorsum eius—“He hath taken the weight off his back” (Psalm Ixxx. 7); and instead of this yoke of iron, He has put upon us a burden that is very light, and a yoke that is very sweet (Matt. xi. 30). God has brought us to a state where all our occupation is to be to love Him and serve Him.

The Apostle St. Paul says of those who are there in the world in the married state: He that is married is solicitous about the things of the world, how to please his wife, and his heart is divided (I Cor. vii. 32). Married folk are embarrassed with many cares; they have to meet liabilities for things of the world, for their property and family. The husband has to try and please his wife, and the wife her husband; they are taken up here and there and divided, and cannot give themselves wholly to God. But he who liveth without wife is solicitous for the things of the Lord, how to please God. The unmarried woman and the virgin hath her mind on the things of the Lord, how to come to be holy in body and soul (I Cor. vii. 33-34). He who is in the state of chastity devotes all his care how to please the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But if St. Paul says of him who is in the state of chastity there in the world that all his care has to be how to please the Lord and how to be holy in body and in spirit, what shall it be with religious, whom God has discharged and released from all the cares of the world, even from those necessary for their own support, that we may devote all our care to the matter of pleasing God more and being holier every day!

St. Augustine says that this is signified by the sacrifice that Abraham offered to God, which was a cow, a she-goat, a sheep, and further a turtle-dove and a pigeon; the land animals he divided into two halves, but the birds he did not divide, but offered them whole (Gen. xv. 10). By land animals, he says, are signified carnal men and men of the world, who are divided and split up into many parts; but by the turtle-doves and the pigeon, who are tame birds and do no harm to anyone, are signified spiritual and perfect men, whether they be solitaries and live apart from human society—and these are signified by the turtle-dove—or whether they deal and converse with men—and these are signified by the pigeon; these are not cut in twain or divided, but employ their whole selves in serving God entirely.

This, then, is the favor that the Lord has done to religious, that we offer ourselves to God wholly and entirely in a sacrifice and holocaust; we have no need to divide or portion ourselves out in other cares, but think solely how we may daily please God more and more. For this we make the vow of chastity, that, as the Apostle St. Paul says, having no companion to please nor family to govern, all our occupation and care may be every day to become better and more perfect. For this we make the vow of poverty, whereby we give up all worldly riches, and the desire and care and anxiety that they carry with them, which are the thorns of which Christ our Lord speaks in the holy Gospel (Luke viii. 7, 14), that prick and disturb. St. Ambrose says they are called riches because they divide the heart— divitiae, quod mentem dividunt. For this we have the vow of obedience, whereby we abandon ourselves and our own will and judgment, so that now we have no occasion to make plans or have any solicitude for what is to become of us, seeing that our superior, to whom we give ourselves over as holding the place of God, has taken upon himself this solicitude, so that we may be solicitous only for what touches our spiritual progress.

St. Jerome on that word of the psalmist: Bless and praise the Lord, all ye his servants, who are in his house and dwell in his courts (Psalm ecxxxiii. 1-2), says that, as on earth a temporal lord has many servants who do him service, but makes a difference between them, inasmuch as he keeps some in his house, who are always with him, and others who are always in the country; so God our Lord makes a difference among His servants, some waiting always in His house and in His presence, and others at work in the country. Religious, he says, are the servants who dwell within the Lord’s house, and wait ever in His presence and treat with Him every day; they are on the house-staff; but seculars out there in the world are as villagers and farm-servants. And he carries the comparison further. When the servants in the country, the farm-laborers and villagers, have any business with their master and any request they wish to gain of him, they take for intercessors and mediators the servants who enjoy his familiarity and are ever in waiting upon him and see him and speak to him every day. So worldly people, when they are in any necessity and wish to gain some favor of God, address themselves to religious, that they may commend the matter to God and offer prayer for that necessity, as being the Lord’s close favorites, by whose mediation He is likely to grant them their request. Moreover, as it is the servants in the country who labor and plough and dig in order that others may enjoy the produce, being in the palace with their lord, so are worldly persons to religious. They labor and toil and bring in the fruit of their labors, and guard it with much care and solicitude, that religious may eat the same at their ease and leisure. St. Gregory says that the same is given us to understand in the lives of those two brothers, Jacob and Esau, of whom Holy Scripture says: Hsau was a man skilled in hunting, and a cultivator of land; but Jacob was a simple man, dwelling in tents, or as another version has it, at home (Gen. xxv. 27). By Esau, who went a-hunting and was a farmer, he says are to be understood worldly people, who are occupied and distracted with the exterior things of the world; and by Jacob, a simple man who lived at home, spiritual men and religious, who are always recollected and within themselves, taken up with what concerns their souls, and are the cherished favorites of God, as was Jacob of his mother Rebecca. Let us, then, consider here the great favor that the Lord has done us, Who has privileged us so highly above those of the world that they are like country folk and villagers, while we are like courtiers on the staff of His house. We may well say what the Queen of Saba said when she saw the order and goodly array of the servants of King Solomon: Blessed are thy subjects, and happy thy servants, who stand before thee at all times and hear thy wisdom (III Kings x. 8). Happy and blessed are religious, who are in the house of God and converse frequently with Him and enjoy His wisdom!

Hence we may infer how blind they are who think that they have done much for God in leaving the world and entering religion, and apparently would fain charge God with this, as though they had done something great for Him. You are quite out; it is you who have received a very great favor and benefit from God in His having drawn you out of the world and chosen you for His house in a state so high. You are the debtor, bound to gratitude and fresh service for such a great benefit. If the king were to call any knight to his court to give him a high office, the knight would not think that he was doing anything much in leaving his house and land, or that the king was much obliged to him and greatly in his debt. Rather he would take it that the king was doing him a great favor in deigning to make use of him and naming him to that post; and he would put down to his account that favor atop of the other favors that the king had done him, as an incitement to fresh gratitude and service. That is how we should behave. It is not we that have chosen God, but God that has chosen us (John xv. 16), and has done us this signal favor without merit of ours.

What didst Thou see in us, O Lord, that Thou chosest us rather than our brethren who were there around us? What was there in us that could please Thee? Something Thou didst see, since Thou hast chosen us. Something God saw that pleased Him, since He chose us. But someone will say: “Take care what you are saying, since theologians teach that there is no cause on our side for the predestination of God.” The blessed St. Augustine explains this very well by a comparison. A wood carver passing by a mountain sees there the lopped trunk of a tree; he sets his eyes on it and stops. Is he pleased with it? He has a mind to make something of it, for he has not set eyes on it and been pleased with it to leave it there as it is, a rough, shapeless log; there in his artistic conception he sees what that log is to be. Oh, he says, what a beautiful figure shall be made of that trunk! That is what he loved, that is what pleased him—not what it was then, for it was but a log uncouth and unsightly, but the fair and perfect figure that he was minded to make of it. So, he says, God has loved us, wicked and sinful creatures as we were, not inasmuch as we were sinners, not as we lay, dry logs, unsightly and unprofitable; but the Sovereign Artificer looked upon this lopped trunk by the mountain sides, and thought of what He was to make of that trunk. That is what pleased Him, that is what satisfied Him—not what you were then, for you were but a dry log, shapeless and unsightly, but what He meant to make of you. The Sovereign Artificer, Who made heaven and earth, meant to make of this trunk a highly-wrought and finished figure. Those whom he foresaw, he also predestined to be made conformable to the image of his Son (Rom. viii. 29), an image like unto God Himself. That is what pleased Him, that is what gave Him satisfaction; for that He has cast eyes on you, for that He chose you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and I have put you to go, and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain (John xv. 16). See how like He has wished to make you to His only-begotten Son! He has chosen you for the same office for which His Son came into the world, to gain souls to God.

The same saint has a good discourse to this effect on the first verse of Psalm 136: On the rivers of Babylon, hard by we sat and wept when we remembered Sion. He says the rivers of Babylon are the things of this world, frail and perishable, which run and pass away so quick. But there is this difference between the citizens of Babylon and the citizens of Jerusalem, that the former are in the midst of the river of Babylon, plunged in the things of the world, in great storms and dangers; but those who have a mind to be citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, seeing and considering the dangers of this river of Babylon, its winds and storms, its waves and fluctuations, its ebbs and flows, get out of it and have no mind to face those dangers, but seat themselves on its banks like the children of Israel. These are religious men who have fled from the dangers of the world, and are seated on the river banks, but weeping and lamenting. What are we weeping and lamenting for? In the first place, he says, we are lamenting our exile, seeing the waves and storms of this river of Babylon; and then remembering that heavenly Sion, our native city, we cannot cease weeping and sighing. O holy Sion, where there are no changes, nor reverses, nor dangers, but all remains forever firm, established in perpetual being! Who has flung us into the midst of these difficulties? How are we driven out and exiled from our country, from the society of our friends and from our Creator! When shall we see ourselves delivered from these dangers, when wiil this exile cease, when shall we be secure, when shall we see ourselves there at home?

Secondly, says the saint, we bewail those whom the current of this river carries away. There are our brothers in the midst of this river of Babylon, of the stormy sea of this world; waves and tempests carry them away, throw them on crags and rocks, and never cease till they plunge them in the deep. Every day we see them drowned in thousands, as St. Bridget says, who saw in spirit souls falling down like flakes of snow into hell. Who would not weep for so great a loss! What heart so hard as not to break with grief and compassion at the loss of so many souls!

In the third place, we are seated on the bank of this river of Babylon for the aid and benefit of our brethren, to succor and give a hand to them in danger, to see if we can fish out and save anyone who is in the way of being drowned. That is our proper business: I will make you fishers of men (Matt. iv. 19). God has stationed us for this purpose on this river bank of the Society to fish for souls, that from this point of vantage we may give a hand to those who are in danger of drowning. But here we have to consider two things. On the one hand there is the great favor that the Lord has done us, in marking us out and preferring us so much above those in the world that they are in the ring and we upon the platform, they are in the current of that river of Babylon in danger of perishing and drowning every moment, while God has set us upon the bank to do them good and lend them a hand to their rescue. On the other hand we must look to ourselves, and reflect that they who have to lend a hand to rescue and help those that are drowning in rivers, must themselves be very accomplished swimmers; otherwise they are likely to be drowned themselves. With the fury of death the drowning man seizes hold of his rescuer, and so they both go to the bottom. Great skill is required in the art of saving souls, and much virtue and perfection must he have who would rescue others from dangers without falling into the like himself.

It is related of the blessed St. Anselm that one day he was wrapt in ecstacy, and saw a river with a full volume of water and a strong rushing current, into which were poured all the filth and dirt and foulness of the whole round of the earth to such an excessive degree that you could not imagine anything in the world more noisome, filthy, and disgusting, or more insupportable than the waters that went down by that river. They were of such a furious nature that they carried away hopelessly all that they met, men and women, rich and poor, drowning them in their depths and plunging them in every moment, and with the same rapidity drawing them out, lifting them up and forthwith plunging them in again, without allowing them to rest for an instant. The glorious Anselm wondered at so extraordinary a spectacle, and asked what subsistence these people had and how they lived, for after all they were alive. He was answered that these wretched creatures fed on the. very garbage in which they were plunged and drank of the same, and with all that they lived quite content. The vision was interpreted to him, and he was told: That torrent of a river is the world, in which blind men are carried headlong, wallowing in their riches and honors and their fleshly and filthy pleasures. So wretched is their condition that, though they cannot set foot in the midst of so much filth, nevertheless they live contented, and reckon and hold themselves for happy and fortunate people. The saint was then lifted up to an enclosure or garden of ample and spacious dimensions. The walls, covered with plates of bright silver, shone with wondrous luster. In the midst was a meadow or lawn, and the grass in it was no ordinary or common grass, but was made of the finest gold, yet fresh and soft to such a degree that pleasantly and without difficulty it received anyone who seated himself thereon, and with him bent down and bowed even to the ground; nor did it remain withered or injured for that bowing down, but when he who was on it rose up, it once more stood up of itself as it was before. The air was balmy and fresh; and, in short, everything was so pleasant and agreeable that it really seemed a paradise, and to leave nothing to desire in point of happiness. The saint was told that this was the religious state, portrayed to the life.