Continuation of the Subject of the Previous Chapter

THE glorious Bernard sums up the great benefits of religious life very well in these few words: “In religion,”

he says, “a man lives purer, falls seldomer, and when he does fall rises quicker, walks more cautiously, is visited by grace more frequently, rests more securely, dies more confidently, has a shorter purgatory, and a more abundant reward in heaven”—Vivit purius, cadit rarius, surgit velocius, incedit cautius, irroratur frequentius, quiescit securius moritur fiducius, purgatur citius, praemiatur copiosius. In another place, speaking of the high dignity of religious, he says: “Your vocation is very high, it rises above the heavens, it equals the angels, it is like to angelic purity, for you not only profess all sanctity, but the perfection of all sanctity. It is for others to aim at serving God, but’ for you to aim at being ever in union with God.” And a little lower down he says: “I do not know by what name I can more worthily address you, as heavenly men or earthly angels; for, though you live on earth, your conversation is in heaven (Phil. iii. 20) ; you are not of the world (John xv. 19), but fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God (Eph. ii. 19); you are like those blessed spirits that are sent to guard and defend us, who so occupy themselves in those ministrations about us as never to lose sight of God.” Such is the life of the religious, who, though he lives on earth, has his heart in heaven; all his thought and conversation is of spiritual things and God, so that he can say with St. Paul, Christ is my life (Phil. i. 21). As outside there in the world, when a man is much given to hunting and has a great taste for it, we say that hunting is his life; and when a man is much given to the vice of gluttony, we say that his life is eating and drinking, so the Apostle says, Christ is my life, because he was wholly dedicated and offered to the service of Christ. So is likewise the religious.

The glorious St. Bernard applies to religious these words: Our bed is strewn with flowers (Cant. i. 15). As there is no place where men take their ease more pleasantly than in bed, so he says that in the Church the bed on which ease is found is religion, for in it one is free from the cares of the world and the solicitude of temporal things and things necessary for human life. We have good experience of the favor that God has done us in this matter; for in the Society our superiors are most particularly charged to provide us with all things necessary for food and clothing, for study, for traveling, as well in time of sickness as in time of health. Thus we need not recur to our parents or relations; we leave them and we forget them, except to commend them to God. Whether we have any or have them not, whether they be rich or poor, the Society and its superiors are our father and mother; and with more than a father and mother’s affection they take care to provide for all our temporal needs, so that we can afford to forget and disregard them, and attend solely to the end for which we came into religion, which is to labor for our own spiritual advancement and that of our neighbor. Clement of Alexandria says that it was for this purpose that God placed man in the earthly Paradise with possession and lordship of all things, that, having nothing to desire on earth, he might transfer all his desire to heaven. Now this is the idea of the Society. She engages herself to give us all that we need, to the end that, having no care of anything on earth, all our care and desire may be transferred to heaven.