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Chapter I: Some General Principles

EVERY man's one great object in life is to reach the end God had in view in calling him out of nothingness. To learn the pathway thither, to discern the obstacles which can either arrest or turn aside, to obtain light as to the repugnances and opposing forces within our very selves, is a study the most reasonable, the most wise and the most necessary that can be undertaken.

The secrets of the spiritual life are not reserved exclusively for a few chosen souls, as people too often believe, nor for those only who make religion their speciality. All men are created by God; all are called to save their souls; all are regenerated by the same means, as St. Paul says: "One body and one Spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all; who is above all, and through all, and in us all."1 Finally, all will be made blessed for eternity by the same immediate vision of God.

Therefore all must go through a certain preparation. There are indeed differences of degree, according to God's measure of grace to each soul, but the end is the same for all: "Until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ.”2

Now it is a fact that already, in our mere apprenticeship and preparation for our future life, the very same law fully holds, which is the law of eternity. The only concern of this life is to press on, through the shadows of faith, towards some experience of—some initiation into—that which will be eternal life in its full bloom.

All God’s designs over us in this world are intended to bring about our supernatural perfection. Our faith is to become so clear-sighted and developed as to bring us to the very portals of the face to face vision of God; our hope is to give us sure certainty of gaining it; and our charity, in its strength and ardour, is to be here below the very same that we shall have in eternity.

All men, whether Christians or not, seek for happiness; but it is in their notion of what happiness is that they differ, as is shown by the means they adopt and by their manner of acting.

This is not surprising; but that many Christians should unwittingly drink in pagan ideas, and should mistake the conditions of happiness, going in search of it outside God and obedience to God, and wearying themselves on this fool’s errand, is indeed amazing.

Happiness cannot be found without goodness; it would be deeply immoral were it possible for the full grown man to be happy with any true happiness, either here or in the next world, without being virtuous. Happiness comes from the possession of a good; such as the good is, such will the happiness be that flows from it. There is perfect equation between the cause and the effect. All gross enjoyment, all false and empty pleasure implies both a clinging to some created thing and a real forsaking of true good and of real happiness.

To seek happiness without seeking it in the true good is an illusion. These principles, so simple because so evident, are brought before us in the events of daily life. In vain will a nation multiply means of enjoyment, bring comfort and ease within the reach of all; if its moral standard is low, the sources of true happiness will ever remain closed to it; men will give themselves up to despair, to a state of melancholy pessimism, and even to disgust of life itself. Such is the terrible logic of facts, such is God's revenge, when men despise His law, which is the rule of true good and the way to happiness. "Thy word," says the psalmist, "is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my paths."3

Reason and experience suffice to prove the truth of what we have said; but our Christian teaching above all bears witness to it. In the Old Law God encouraged the observance of the commandments by promising rewards; in the New Law of perfection, our Lord points to the beatitudes as the recompense of heroic virtue, the delicious fruit of goodness; He makes use of a divine paradox to rectify our mistaken notions, showing that the very trials of our earthly pilgrimage are the condition and pledge of new happiness: "Blessed are they that mourn; blessed are they that suffer persecution";4 and this blessedness is promised to the poor and persecuted even now without delay. These souls aimed at a more excellent good, hence the happiness resulting from it defies in some sort the sorrows of our exile and triumphs over poor nature; hence our Lord concludes: "Rejoice and be glad.";5 For there is a happiness beyond that which comes from the enjoyment of visible things; no good less than God will satisfy us, neither will any happiness less than the fulfilment of God's promise to pour His own eternal joy into our souls, "Enter into the joy of thy Lord."6 As this happiness is the effect of no created cause, it does not depend upon the events of this world; it stands high above them all, and remains unchanged amidst the ever varying accidents of life. Although it can be only imperfect, since we are not yet in full possession of our sovereign Good, and we must still walk by faith, yet nothing external can diminish it; the weakness of our own will alone can risk its continuance.

While bringing forward these Christian truths, which seem more than ever necessary and opportune in the present day, God forbid that we should seem to lose sight of another great law—the law of reparation and expiation. Sorrow and suffering must ever be the authentic process of the rehabilitation of our sinful nature. The saints will ever be irresistibly drawn to fill up what is wanting in the Passion of our Redeemer; but like their divine Master, and Mary the Queen of martyrs, they will experience ineffable happiness in "suffering in their flesh for the body of Christ, which is the Church."7 And just as our Lord, when forsaken by His Father, was straitened with anguish even unto death, yet all the while there was in His soul a fountain of joy flowing from His sacrifice itself and the perfection of His holocaust, so God's true servants, in partaking of our Lord's chalice, become inebriated at once with joy and with grief.

But it is useless and even dangerous, as all illusions are, to seek suffering for suffering's sake. This is a tendency much to be regretted in our sickly age, among people otherwise very good. Never has suffering been more extolled and sought after, yet valour is by no means a characteristic of our times. It is a sign of weakness, and a covering for all sorts of imperfections. Under this fair exterior, much cowardice and hysteria lie hidden. Duty-doing is made to give way to suffering, whereas every kind of suffering is not either necessarily holy or conducive to holiness. Instead of glorying in such suffering better far would it be to get rid of it as quickly as possible, for it breeds sadness, while at the same time it puffs the soul up by fostering presumption, vain boasting of virtue and of special designs in its regard on the part of God.

Nothing is absolutely good but God and His will. Suffering has but a relative and borrowed goodness; it is a means, not an end. There will be no suffering in heaven; here in this world it serves to enkindle our love, but it is by no means indispensable. Merit does not lie in suffering, though suffering is often an occasion of merit. Suffering must be united with love, otherwise its place is in those dark regions where the spirit of evil dwells.

Our principal aim, therefore, in this world must be to seek the sovereign Good; our principal occupation to tend towards it, if we would cooperate with God's designs in our regard. He created us to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him, to do His blessed will, and thus to enter into eternal life—that is into eternal beatitude. When we fulfil this programme, we give God that accidental glory which He intended to draw from the creation of man.

One thing, however, is required both as the condition and the means for bringing about our restoration; without it, man can attain only a philosophical and human perfection, quite inadequate to the supernatural being whereunto he has been raised. This essential is prayer. As in eternity man is fixed in the possession of the sovereign Good and established in perfection by the face to face vision of God, so, in the course of his life on earth, he will habitually tend towards that sovereign Good; he will be super naturally impelled to reach it by prayer. The intensity of his prayer, the attitude of his soul towards God, will be the measure of its advance towards the sovereign Good. We may not choose our own ways of reaching supernatural perfection. To pray or not to pray is no matter of choice; on the contrary, there is nothing more important than prayer, as we learn from many expressions in the writings of the saints—expressions which, at first sight, might seem to be mere pious exaggerations, whereas they are strictly true.

There can be no doubt that the choice of such or such a method of prayer is of secondary importance; but man cannot neglect to exercise his faith and to strive with perseverance after union with God, without real detriment to his soul. Neither can he seriously aim at perfection without taking some means of knowing the divine Type according to which he is to be reformed. "Look, and make according to the pattern that was shown thee in the mount."8 Likewise, in the 44th Psalm, it is written: "Hearken, O daughter, and see."9 Faith does indeed come first of all by hearing; but afterwards it enables us to see truth by a special light of its own which penetrates the intellect and the will. In this world our intercourse with God cannot be a matter of form; our hearts must really turn to Him, urged on by our understanding; we must find once more the secret of that familiar converse with God which Adam enjoyed in Paradise.

In view of this it is important to observe how much more effectually the study of dogmatic theology transforms the soul than does the study of moral theology. Eminent missioners have observed this in the case of their pagan converts. The study of dogma raises the soul to higher regions, and shows it the divine Exemplar of the true, the good and the beautiful. Hence souls cannot be too strongly urged to learn to know God in order to reform themselves, and not to rest satisfied with what is commonly known as "the faith of the rustic." In an age like ours, when men are striving to learn everything, to know everything, to search into everything that can possibly be known, shall the queen and mistress of all sciences, the science which throws light upon all others, be alone neglected? How shall Christians put aside the only study that is useful for the real advancement of their souls, and cultivate exclusively the knowledge of the things which lie round about them? The knowledge of God is necessary both for our intellectual and for our moral progress. There are certain weaknesses and falls which this knowledge does away with altogether; the soul rights itself, when once it knows the God from whom the moral law emanates, and who teaches it by the voice of conscience and by the Church.

The knowledge of doctrinal truth is the root of prayer, hence its great importance; it is likewise the safeguard against many illusions of the imagination, the corrective of pious dreaming and of false mysticism. It is absolute presumption to expect to obtain, by immediate light from God, that knowledge which we can and ought to acquire for ourselves as part of our work in this world. We must not voluntarily rest satisfied with vague notions about the truths into which our baptism has initiated us, otherwise we should be guilty of culpable idleness. God may perhaps be waiting for this labour in the sweat of our brow, before filling up by His grace the measure of knowledge needful for the complete development of the spiritual life within us. For there are two forms of infused knowledge; the one teaches that of which we are altogether ignorant, and the other widens and makes fruitful the knowledge which the mind has already acquired by study. To conclude, God so truly takes pleasure in beholding our efforts to arrive at the knowledge of Himself, that we find Him raising all the canonized saints to a high degree of it by the one or by the other of these ways.

If it sometimes happen that extensive knowledge of theology does not bring with it, as a consequence, sanctifying union with God, we must beware of looking upon this knowledge as a snare and an obstacle, which God forbid. The cause of this strange anomaly can be easily assigned; for this happy result can never be brought about by mere keenness of wit, nor by curiosity, nor by that scholastic eagerness which in theology seeks for nothing but subtleties, strict definitions and superficial flashes of truth.

Too often we find souls clinging to set forms, and unwilling to enter the regions of true supernatural prayer. There, God will have the soul empty itself of all images and created forms, that He may unite it to Himself by a mystic knowledge higher than the soul—that is higher than its own natural way of acting. But this is God's work; no efforts of human industry can bring it about. We must not, however, argue from this against the importance of a solid study of the revealed truths which are the objects of our faith.

The "sublime ignorance" spoken of by theologians has nothing in common with ordinary ignorance; the former disdains one kind of knowledge for a higher, whereas the latter cannot disdain what it does not possess. The truth will always remain that, as long as God Himself does not directly intervene to instruct us, one of our principal duties will be to study those truths which He has deigned to reveal to us, and without knowledge of which we cannot enjoy intimacy with Him. "If you continue in My word, you shall be My disciples indeed; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."10

Our freedom then will come from truth, truth known and lived, which will set to rights all our imperfections, retrieve all our losses and correct all our vices, as the Church teaches in her prayer: "O God, who by the means of this venerable Sacrament hast made us partakers of the one supreme Divinity, grant, we beseech Thee, that as we know Thy truth so we may accompany it by a worthy life.”11 Mental prayer, which brings the soul into direct contact with God, is the means whereby we shall become perfectly assimilated to that divine principle which is to restore us and qualify us to enter into the eternal mansions.

The Crucifixion, flanked with St. Benedict (Right) and St. Scholastica (Left).

Footnotes

  1. Unum corpus et unus Spiritus, sicut vocati estis in una spe vocationis vestræ. Unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma. Unus Deus et Pater omnium, qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis. (Eph., iv, 4-6). ↩

  2. Donec occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei et agnitionis Filii Dei, in virum perfectum, in mensuram ætatis plenitudinis Christi (Eph. iv, 13). ↩

  3. Lucerna pedibus meis verbum tuum, et lumen semitis meis (Ps. cxviii, 105). ↩

  4. Beati qui lugent .... beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter justitiam (Matth. v, 5-10). ↩

  5. Gaudete et exsultate (Matth. v, 12). ↩

  6. Intra in gaudium Domini tui (Matth. xxv, 21). ↩

  7. Col., I, 24. ↩

  8. Inspice, et fac secundum exemplar quod tibi in monte monstratum est (Exod. xxv, 40). ↩

  9. Audi filia, et vide (Ps. xliv, 11). ↩

  10. Si vos manseritis in sermone meo, vere discipuli mei eritis, et cognoscetis veritatem, et veritas liberabit vos (Joann. viii, 31, 32). ↩

  11. Deus, qui nos per hujus sacrificii veneranda commercia, unius summæ divinitatis participes efficis: præsta quæsumus; ut sicut tuam cognoscimus veritatem, sic eam dignis moribus assequamur (Secreta Dom. XVIII post Pent.). ↩

Chapter 2 of 24