Twenty-fifth point. His hope

Her answer on the twenty-fifth point was :

When conversing with our Blessed Founder I plainly saw that God had bestowed on him a tender, unfailing, and appreciative love for those good things which are promised to us in the life to come; and which I know he hoped for with a humble confidence in the mercy of God, and in the Sacred Passion of Our Lord. His hopes were always tending towards eternal bliss. I think that this fact is established by more than a hundred passages to be found in his letters.

" Oh ! " he cries, " how happy a thing it is to live piously in this mortal life, but how happy it will be to live gloriously in heaven ! "

He frankly confessed that, looking at his own wretchedness, he deserved nothing but hell, but that, considering the infinite merits of the Passion of his Saviour and the greatness of His mercy, he hoped, with humble confidence, to possess in heaven those infinite joys which are prepared for the children of God. " Ah ! " he cried, " shall we not one day be all together in heaven ? I hope so, and I rejoice in the thought."

On another occasion he said to me : " My soul is always growing more and more closely united to God, or at least it seems to me that

86 Saint Sane ff. tie (JHjantaFs depositions every day it burns more and more fervently with the love of things eternal and of holy charity."

Amid the afflictions of this life, he would often say : " We must take courage, we shall soon go up above; yes, we must hope most firmly that we shall live for ever. What would Our Lord do with His gift of eternal life if He did not bestow it upon poor, miserable little souls like ours ? "

He said one day to a great Prelate, Monseigneur the Bishop of Belley, who repeated it afterwards to us in a sermon, that we must die between two pillows, as it were; one the humble con fession, that we deserve nothing but hell; the other that of a perfect trust in the mercy of God, which will give us paradise.

I remember that once, when I was very dangerously ill and not expected to recover, our Blessed Founder came to me to console me and to assist me in mylast journey, and he told me to lay my head down at the foot of the Cross, and there remain motionless, to receive, as a little lizard in the rock might receive, the drops of the most Precious Blood flowing down from that Cross, and to do this with perfect trust in the mercy of Our Lord.

" I wish," said our Blessed Founder to me on another occasion, " that I could but tell you the feeling which I had to-day at Holy Communion; the sweetness of my hope — nay, rather, of my certainty — that my heart will be one day wholly swallowed up in the love of the Heart of Jesus."

Again, he wrote thus : " It seems to me that my soul is somewhat more firmly established in the hope which it has always had, of being one day able to enjoy all that the Death and Resur rection of Our Lord has purchased for it. During the days of Holy Week and ever since, He has made me see more clearly, not indeed sensibly, but with certainty and intellectual consolation, and all in the highest point of the mind, His sacred precepts, and evangelical maxims, more clearly I repeat, and more sweetly than ever before; * and I cannot wonder sufficiently that, having always had so high an esteem for these maxims and for the doctrines of the Cross, I have yet taken so little care about practising them. And, were I to return to the world with my present feelings, I do not believe that all the wisdom of the flesh and of the children of this generation could ever shake me in my firm conviction that its wisdom is a vain imagination and utter folly."

Again he says : " Look at the passing away of our dear friends from this world; surely it is a sight sweet to look upon, since they go from us to people heaven and to enhance the glory of our King. One day — a day known only to God — we shall go to them; meanwhile let us diligently learn the songs of divine love, so that we may sing them perfectly all through a blessed eternity."

• Cf. Wilberforce's Introduction to Blosius' Book of Spiritual Instruction, p. xxxixz.

88 Saint Sane J. tie CMjantar* Impositions

Again, our Blessed Founder exclaims : " Oh my God ! what consolation I feel in the certainty that we shall be one day eternally united in the will to serve and praise God ! May His Divine Providence lead us by whatever way seems best to Him, only I hope — nay, I am sure — that we shall come at last to that one goal, that we shall reach at last the haven. Thanks be to God ! I have this confidence. Let us be happy in this service, happy and joyous without excess or levity, secure without presumption."

On one occasion, when he was crossing the Lake of Geneva in a little light boat, he ex pressed his delight at having nothing but a thin plank between him and death, excepting the care of Divine Providence. " My soul is ever at home in its trust in Divine Providence. Thou, my God, didst teach me that lesson from my earliest years, and from that time to this I have declared and will declare Thy praises."

In the year, in which he died, our Blessed Founder wrote thus : " I am going to make a review of my conscience * so as to be able to begin my life afresh as Our Lord desires me to do; that, as these perishable years pass one by one away, I may prepare for the eternal years, always looking to the Cross of rny Saviour with sighs and unutterable longings. It seems to me that my soul strains more and more after the purity of the service of God, and after eternity.

• As to St. Francis' understanding of the phrase review of conscience, see his Spiritual Conferences, p. 86, new edition [Ed.].

Oh my God ! how happy should I be, if one day, after Holy Communion, I should find my own wretched heart gone from my breast, and the Heart of my Saviour in its place."

All these things he either said or wrote to me, while instructing and encouraging me to press forward ardently towards eternity, and to a more whole-hearted service of Our Lord, and from these proofs which I have brought forward, it can easily be gathered, how great was his Hope. And this is true, &c.