Continuation of the Subject of the Previous Chapter

BESIDES what has been said, this renovation is also a thanksgiving for benefits received, according to the practice that we have described of the holy Abbot Arsenius. We keep feasts and festivals every year in thanksgiving and in memory and acknowledgment of a favor and benefits so great as that which the Lord has done us in drawing us out of the world and bringing us to religion— the beginning of all our good and a great mark of our predestination. As the Church every year keeps the feast day of the dedication of a material temple, so it is just that we should keep the feast of the dedication of our soul, which is the living temple of God. And since the best manner of returning thanks is by deeds, this renovation will be a very great and pleasing thanksgiving to God if it is done as it ought to be done, by taking care to renew and fortify ourselves more in our vows, and keep them more perfectly henceforth. This, as St. Gregory observes, is what the Apostle St. Paul says: Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind (Eph. iv. 23). And this is what our Father asks of us, a spiritual renovation, not merely an outward one done with the lips. When a picture is. very old and faded, so that one can no longer see the outlines and figures, you restore it by putting on fresh colors and shades, whereby it becomes as pleasing and beautiful as when it was first completed. So we get old and worn out, our virtue fades away, because this corruptible body, our perverse and evilly-inclined nature, carries us off, seeking to make us fall in with its ways and follow its likings and desires. The body with its corruption weighs down the soul (Wisdom ix. 15). There is need for us to go back upon ourselves at times, and endeavor to renew and restore ourselves in our good purposes and aspirations. If we would have the hues of virtue not to fade in us, says St. Gregory, it is quite necessary every day to reckon that we are beginning afresh. Remember the resolution, fervor, and vigor with which you started this undertaking the day that you entered religion, and go to work now with that same intrepidity, energy, and keenness. This it is to renew ourselves, and this will be a very good thanksgiving for the benefit received, and highly pleasing to God.

Cassian recounts a brief and compendious exhortation which Abbot Pinutius addressed to a novice whom he was receiving in presence of the other religious, which each one may apply to himself, and it will greatly help him to attain the end of this renovation: “Take care never to take back anything of what you have renounced and cast off.” You have offered and given yourself wholly to God and flung off all worldly things; beware of ever again taking up that which you have now renounced. You have renounced your property by the vow of poverty. Do not go back upon that by fixing your affections here in religion on little things and childish trifles; for it will profit you little to have given up great things if here you get a passion for small ones. You have renounced your will and judgment by the vow of obedience; see that you do not take it up again, but rather say with the spouse in the Canticles: I have stripped me of my coat, how shall I put it on? (Cant. v. 3). I have stripped and denuded myself of my own will and my own judgment; God grant that it may never come back to be mine again. You have renounced and flung away the enjoyments, comforts, and amusements of the world and of the flesh; take care that they find no entrance into your soul in future. You have given up and scorned the vanity and pride and good opinion of the world; see that such things never come again to revive and rise from the dead in you, when you see yourself a senior, when you see yourself a priest, when you see yourself a doctor or preacher. Make it a matter of great account never again to rebuild or re-erect what you have thrown down and destroyed, for, as the Apostle says: If what I have cast down I again build up, I make myself a prevaricator (Gal. ii. 18) ; for that would be to prevaricate and go back after having put your hand to the plough (Luke ix. 62). Persevere to the end in the poverty and abandonment of all things which you have offered and promised to God, and in the humility and patience in which you persevered so many days, begging with many tears that they would receive you into religion.

St. Bernard, St. Basil, and St. Bonaventure add another reason. See that you are not your own, but all that you are and all that you have is God’s, since you have already offered it and wholly made it over to His Majesty by the vows that you have taken. Wherefore beware of once again seizing upon and taking back what you have already given away and offered, for that would be theft, theft being “laying hands on what is another’s against the will of the owner’—contrectatio rei alienae invito domino. Have we not said above that he who enters religion gives to God the tree along with the fruit? Now, if you give to another a tree to transplant into his garden, and afterwards take the fruit, that would be theft. But that is what a religious does who does his own will and not that of obedience; nay, it would even be, they say, a sacrilege, for it would be stealing a thing that has been offered and dedicated to God; and such theft would be a sacrilege, a thing that God greatly abhors. I am the Lord who love justice, and hate rapine in a holocaust (Isaias lxi. 8). But who would dare to steal from a holocaust that is wholly God’s and already offered and dedicated to His Majesty? St. Bernard says that there is no worse sacrilege: “No crime of sacrilege is worse than this of resuming the dominion of the will that you had offered to God by vow; for the greater the thing offered, the graver the theft of taking it back?” Let us add here what is added in the law of holocausts. So much did God insist on the holocaust’s being wholly offered to Him and burned and consumed in His honor, that He gave command that, after it had been offered and burned, they should once more offer and burn the ashes, in order that, if there had remained any piece of fat, or any particle of bone, or any fragment of rib, it should be all finally consumed and reduced to ashes in honor of God. Even to the very embers thou shalt cause it to be consumed (Levit. vi. 11).

St. Augustine explains to our purpose that text of Genesis (ii. 15) : God took Adam and put him in the earthly paradise to work and keep it. Let us see, says the saint, what it is that the Holy Ghost means by this. Can it be that God would have Adam exercise there a husbandman’s office, and dig and cultivate and work the land? It is not to be believed, he says, that before his sin God should oblige and condemn him to this labor. Although some exercise by way of amusement and recreation, such as amongst us many owners are wont to take in their gardens and orchards, was not inconsistent with that state of innocence, yet to have it put upon him by way of forced labor and necessity did not suit that state, nor was there any need of it, since the land of itself yielded crops without that labor. And besides, what is the meaning of saying that God put Adam in Paradise to keep it? From whom was he to keep it, since there were not at that time any enemies or other races of men that he could possibly fear? And as for beasts and animals, there was just as little reason for his keeping it against them, since before sin animals did no harm to man or his possessions. And if he had to fear them, one man alone could hardly keep such a large piece of ground as Paradise was, and drive off such a multitude of living creatures as there were there. He would have had to fence it in with a fence so extensive that the serpent could not have got in; and, before making such a fence, he would have had to drive out the serpents and other beasts that were inside. The meaning cannot be that God put man in Paradise to keep it bodily, or to dig and plough it. What, then, is meant by the phrase, to work and keep it? Do you know what? says the saint. God put man in that Paradise to do the work of precepts and commandments that God had given him, and by doing that work to keep it for himself, and not lose it, as he did lose it, by not doing the work. Now to apply this to our purpose. Why do you suppose God has put you in this paradise of religion, paradise as the saints call it with much reason? Do you know why? That you may work out and fulfil the precepts and commandments of God, and the counsels of His Gospel that we have in our rules; and that by doing that work you may keep and preserve this paradise for yourself, and not lose it, as others have lost it because they would not keep it.

St. Augustine gives another explanation of these words. He very well observes that Scripture does not say wt custodiret paradisum, but ut custodiret illum, where illum may represent not it (paradise), but him (the man himself). And this sense pleases the saint better. God put man in Paradise, not that man might work at and cultivate Paradise, nor keep it, but that God might work and keep man himself there. As it is said that man works the land, not making it to be land, but making it fertile and fruitful by his labor and cultivation; so with greater reason God, Who created man out of nothing, may be said to work on man when by that work He makes him just, holy, and perfect. Thus, then, God placed man in the earthly Paradise to work on him there and perfect him, until He should translate him from the earthly to the heavenly paradise, bringing him to the state of everlasting bliss. In the same way do not you suppose that God has placed you in this paradise of religion for you to work on it and keep it—it has another and better gardener, and a better keeper and defender—but for Him to work on you, to make of you a mortified man, to make of you a spiritual man, to make of you a holy and perfect man, and so to keep you till He translates you from this earthly to the heavenly paradise.

With these and the like reasons and considerations we should help ourselves to answer to this great favor and gather the fruit of this renovation. If there is put before you the hardship of religious life, remember the great reward and recompense to be given you for it, for it hath a great reward, as the Apostle says (Heb. x. 35). The blessed St. Francis used often to say, thereby to exhort and encourage his religious: “We have promised great things, but greater things are promised us.” Let us keep our promises, and sigh after what is promised. And when the friars make their profession, offering and making promise of their vows to God, the superior says: “I, too, promise thee life everlasting.” I, then, also promise you on the part of God life everlasting, if you keep what you have promised; and that with a bond under the hand of Christ Himself, Who says in the holy Gospel: And thou shalt have treasure in heaven (Matt. xix. 21). Thou shalt have a treasure; thou shalt be great and glorious in the kingdom of God.

Bruun’ NINETEENTH TREATISE tems