Chapter IX. The Signs of the Sacred Heart

If our heart reprehend us not, then we have confidence towards God. Dearly beloved, if our heart reprehend us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. 1 S. JOHN iii. 20, 21.

We have already seen in what conformity consists. S. Paul, writing to the Romans, says, 'Be not conformed to this world, but be ye reformed in the newness of your minds;' that is to say, ' Put off the world, for they that love the world are at enmity with God: be reformed, made over again, recreated, become new creatures.' Our reformation is nothing less than a new creation; and conformity consists,' as we have seen, chiefly in humility, which lays the axe to the root of our pride; and in charity, which quenches our natural anger; and in forgetfulness of self, which is the direct contrary to the passion that governs most men — the love of self. We have also considered the means whereby this transformation into conformity is to be effected; and we saw, as you will remember, that these means consist in a steady and constant fidelity to our baptismal grace; secondly, if we depart from it, in good confession; thirdly, in avoiding the occasions of sin; fourthly, in a true knowledge of ourselves; and lastly, in a habit and spirit of prayer.

We come now to our third subject, namely, to the signs or the marks whereby we may know whether this transformation is being wrought in us or not. It is very necessary that we should know what are the certain explicit marks of this change, because we are all of us in danger of self-deception. There is not, perhaps, one of us who does not think of himself more than he deserves before God; there is not one of us who is not in danger of self-love, and self-love paints for itself all manner of pleasant pictures: and what we paint we believe ourselves to be. We set before our minds, by a sort of intellectual simulation— that is, by a creative imagination of our own, out of the lives of Saints and out of our own desires — a vision of what we wish to be, and then sometimes we straightway think that we have attained it. We have need to stand in awe of ourselves; and when S. John said, ' If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things,' he means to tell us that there is a higher judge more discerning, more just than we are, who is always searching us. We, in our partiality, are continually absolving ourselves when we do not deserve absolution, and continually commending ourselves when we deserve blame. * If our heart reprehend us not, then we have confidence/ and only then; and yet God sees what we do not; for we know that Satan can change himself into an angel of light, and he can even deceive us into believing that we are invested with a multitude of graces which we do not possess; that we have beautiful and luminous characters to which we bear no likeness. Many a tree has exuberant foliage and spreads its branches heavy with leaves, but there is not a fruit to be found upon it; you all remember the barren fig-tree. Therefore we have need to fix upon some certain test by which to examine ourselves. S. John by the word ' heart ' means our conscience; for our conscience is made up of our intellect judging of right and wrong, and our moral sense approving or condemning: it is therefore a united intellectual and moral act. The intellect sitting as a moral judge is the conscience; and the conscience is the heart, because it passes sentence, a moral sentence following upon the judgment of the intellect; both act as one tribunal with a concurrent jurisdiction: and therefore here the word ' heart ' signifies emphatically the conscience, but it means also the whole soul. If our soul condemn us not by our inward spiritual consciousness, then we have confidence towards God.

Now, first of all, it is clear that whosoever knowingly commits any deliberate sin has the mark of deformity upon him. If we had the deliberate choice offered to us of committing a mortal sin against God or of dying on the spot, we ought, without a moment's doubt, to choose rather to die than to sin mortally; for to die is only the death of the body, but mortal sin is the death of the soul. Any man who has not reached that point certainly has no mark whatsoever of conformity to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He has the first great mark of conformity to Satan. Next, if the choice were offered to us of committing deliberately even a venial sin, we ought to suffer any pain or any loss in this world rather than commit it. We can have but little hatred of sin, but little love of God, and but little sense of gratitude if we would not readily choose to suffer anything rather than deliberately to sin against God, even though it be only by a venial sin. S. John says in this same epistle, ' Whosoever is born of God committeth not sin, for His seed abideth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.'1 When he says ' he cannot sin/ * IS. Johniii. 9.

he does not mean that it is a physical impossibility, that his free will has not the power; but it means that his moral being is so changed, so renewed, so conformed to the will of God, that to sin would violate his own new nature. It would be an outrage to his own will; it would violate his own higher and better self if he were to commit an act contrary to the will of God, with whose will his own is identified. We will now go on to the marks by which to judge ourselves.

It is clear that the signs we are to look for are not external signs, but internal altogether.

1. And the first sign is denial of self. Lest I should seem to use language which sounds too large, I will not say mortification of self, but I will say self-denial. Every man acknowledges — every one who leads the simplest, I was going to say the lowest, life that deserves to be called Christian — acknowledges the duty of self-denial. S. Paul so draws our Lord's character — ' Christ did not please Himself.'2 And this is the first sign of our being transformed into the likeness of the Sacred Heart. If a man were to work miracles, that would not suffice; for, as our Lord has said, Many shall come in that day, and say, Lord, Lord, in Thy name we have cast out devils, and

2 Rom. xv. 3.

done many mighty works; and He will say, Depart from Me; I never knew you. And if a man were to do all manner of splendid works and succeed in vast enterprises which the world counts to be for the glory of God, it is not enough; for we know the fate of those who go round about land and sea to make one proselyte, and when he is made he is twofold more the child of hell than themselves.3 Neither, again, are long prayers a certain evidence, for the Pharisees made prayers longer than yours: nor, again, knowledge, nor alms-giving, because S. Paul says that all these things, and even martyrdom itself, without the love of God, are nothing. Neither, finally, are mortifications, such as fastings, disciplines, watchings, and the like; all these are also nothing before God, unless there be a true inward denial of self — a mortification of the intellect and heart and will. You remember the vision of S. Antony. The tempter came to him and said, ' Antony, you fast a great deal, but I never eat; you watch, but I never sleep; you mortify the body, but I have no body to mortify: but you do one thing I cannot — I cannot obey.' Therefore the denial of our own will is the first sure test. Now men may be classed in three ways, and no one can escape this classification: either they 3 S. Matt, xxiii. 15.

are self-pleasers, or they are men-pleasers, or they are pleasers of God. In one of these three every man will find himself. As for being self-pleasers, it means this: that we have our own will as our motive, and our own liking as our law. As for being men-pleasers, it is only another form of pleasing ourselves. It is for interest, or for pleasure, or for gain, or for honour, or for some other personal purpose that we seek to please men. But to be pleasers of God simply means that we take the example of our Divine Lord as our model. * Christ did not please Himself;' that is to say, every act of His life was done for a higher, purer, nobler motive, and, whether it pleased self or not, was His last thought. All things high and pure and noble pleased the Sacred Heart, but it was not for that cause that He did these things. If I were to give examples, the subject of self-denial would be inexhaustible. You have the opportunity in your daily life of denying your own will. All the] day long you have opportunities without number: first of all, denying yourselves for the sake of others; giving up your own will to theirs; preferring them before yourselves; giving them the first place, serving them, and asking nothing in return; exacting nothing for what costs you most; doing it in silence, and never speaking of what you have done. If you will do these things for human friends, you will promptly deny yourselves whenever you see anything that you can do, even if it be at some cost to yourselves, for the honour and the glory of God. There is no mistake about this test. In itself it is unpalatable to nature; and no man goes against his own will for the sake of pleasing himself. He has a higher motive — the love of the Sacred Heart and desire of conformity to his Master.

2. Secondly, another sign in which we cannot be mistaken is charity towards others. The whole perfection of man in time and in eternity is made up of charity to God and to our neighbour. Eternal bliss by union with God is charity. Now by charity I do not mean giving alms, and I do not mean giving bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and the like; all that is a part of the law of nature; mere humanity prompts it and demands it.

The charity of the spiritual order is a divine character. Let us take it in examples. First, there is charity towards the sins of others. If we see anything which our heart would condemn in ourselves, before we condemn others let us think what perhaps may have been their childhood, their education, their opportunities, their privations; let us think also what may have been their temptations, how things which in us would be sins, in them perhaps, from want of light, may be hardly faults. Once more: we must charitably judge of their intentions, of what they mean, knowing that the will and the deed are the same. Let us also charitably consider their follies, and not burst out like a flame, as we often do, at the foolish conduct of others. The Sacred Heart bears with our follies, and they are many. Let us be charitable also to their falls, remembering that we stand by the help of God, and by that alone. ' By the grace of God I am that which I am.' In the sight of God we may be more guilty than they. When our Divine Lord was upon earth, He was surrounded all the day long by sinners — sinners on every side, sinners of every kind, sinners in every degree; and yet He bore with them with a sweetness, a patience, and a gentleness which were never exhausted, never ruffled. He was even reproached for His lenity, as if He were indifferent to sin. He was called ' the friend of sinners;' as if He loved their society. ' This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them;' as if He sought them by His own choice. But He 'pleased not Himself.' Nor did He suffer among sinners only. In the midst of His disciples, of those who came to Him as His friends, what follies, what faults, what contentions, what jealousies, what wearisome misunderstandings; and yet He bore them all. He was surrounded by His chosen Apostles, whom He had selected to be nearest to Himself, and whom He destined to be most like Himself; and yet what contentions, what rivalries, what ambitions, what self-seeking, what indignation against each other, what misconceptions of His words, what slowness to believe; yet how He bore with all their imperfections. We never hear a word of sharp reproof out of His mouth, never a word of hasty condemnation. This is the patient love of the Sacred Heart; and unless we are somewhat like it in this, be it ever so little, the work of transformation cannot be far advanced in us.

3. And then, thirdly, there is only one person in the world to whom we may be severe. There is one who deserves it, and we may vent all our severity on that person, and that person is our own self. A sure token of a charitable heart will be that a man is gentle to everybody, but unsparing to himself; that is to say, he will remember that there is nobody whom he knows to have committed more sins than he knows of himself. Why, I ask you, did S. Paul say that he was 'the chief of sinners'? He was not using exaggeration, neither was he speaking rhetorically. He did not mean to deceive anybody; he meant what he said; and what, then, did he mean? He meant this: ' I know my own consciousness from my childhood to this day; and the history of my past is upon me as far and as fully as my memory reaches, and that knowledge is next to the knowledge that God has of me. I know therefore there is no one that I know as I know myself, and no man knows me as I know myself; and though I may see other men commit many sins, yet I never see any man commit so many as I can numher in myself when I go hack to the beginning of my life and look over my boyhood, youth, and manhood, running clown to the present moment. I can see sins of commission, sins of omission, venial sins, alas, perhaps mortal too. I see there a long reckoning which I can number and count up, and I cannot number or count up the same amount of sins in any other man. And, next, I know nobody who has received so many graces of the Holy Spirit as God in His goodness has bestowed upon me. I was struck down on the way to Damascus when I was bent on persecuting the disciples of Jesus; I was converted in the midst of my sins, by a miracle of grace, by a vision of my Divine Saviour, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; and I know nobody that has ever had a grace so great nor a conversion so miraculous. And if, after such a miracle of grace as that, I am what I am, and what I know myself to be, certainly I know of no one more sinful, no one who has received such tokens of God's love, and who has done so little in return.' If you remember how many are the gifts and the graces of the Holy Spirit which you have received ever since your baptism, — how abundantly and how generously God has dealt with you; how He has shown you the light of His Truth, and has drawn you by the attraction of His Love, and has striven to bring you to Himself; and how often you have resisted, how often you have gone out of the way, how often you have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear; how often you have taken your hand from the plough, how often you have turned back again; with what languid and lingering steps you have returned, and how little heart you had to go back to God — what little use you have made of all those graces — if you cast up this great account, and set on one side the mercies of God to you, and on the other the abuse of His gifts and the little profit and advancement you have made, I think there is not one of us that will not say, ' I see a great many sinners round about me; I see a great many who have done more glaring and open sins than I have; but I must confess that, though there is many a man who may have committed more grievous material sins than I have, yet I know of no sins which have been committed with the formal sinfulness that I know in myself. And, therefore, I can say with truth, " sinners of whom I am chief.": This is what the Apostle meant, and this is what every one of us must also say. Well, then, if we so know ourselves, we shall most assuredly be severe to nobody else. The parable of the Pharisee and the publican teaches us that lesson. The Pharisee did not know himself, and he stood by himself in the temple, and looked upon the poor publican afar off. The Pharisee went boldly into the temple; the poor publican standing at a distance would not so much as lift up his eyes; and the Pharisee said, ' God, I thank Thee that I arn not as other men are, nor even as this publican. I give tithes of all that I possess, I fast twice in the week;' and so on. And the other beat upon his breast and said, ' God, be m'erciful to me a sinner.' And of the two, which went down to his house justified; that is, forgiven, absolved, and at peace with God? Once more. You will remember when our Divine Saviour sat at the table of Simon the Pharisee. Simon was a just man. There is no reason to believe that this Pharisee was oilier than a man who lived in the fear of God and literally kept His commandments; but he was a man whose charity was small and whose severity was great, and both were expressed. His charity was for himself, and his severity was for his neighbour. In this case his severity fell upon the Son of God, and he said, ' This man, if He were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that touches Him;' and he condemned Him in his heart. Let this be a warning. If we have charity to others, the severity will be upon ourselves; we shall never spare our own faults. We shall remember the words, ' Judge not, that ye be not judged;' and 'Why say to your neighbour, Let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, and seest not the beam that is in thine own eye?' and ' He shall have judgment without mercy who has shown no mercy; for mercy shall rejoice against judgment.'

4. Another test is a mistrust of ourselves. There is no more dangerous fault than trust in self, when any one thinks he may do whatsoever he will, go wherever he likes, see whatever he chooses, lay down the law for himself, have no fear of temptation, and no care to avoid the occasions of sin. Such a man says, 'I can trust myself. I know where I go, I know what I do; I can take care of myself, or God will take care of me;' forgetting that we say every day of our lives, * Lead us not into tempation; but deliver us from evil;' that is to say, 'We will take care, as far as we can, not to go into the temptation; but do Thou, Lord, watch over us and keep us from all evil.' No man can hope that he will he kept hy a divine protection if he does not watch over himself. All this is self-trust. Now what is self-mistrust? It is a great fear of our own will, and a great trust in God alone. It is the consciousness that without Him we can do nothing; that without God we cannot stand; that without God we should do all evil. We ought to remember what we were when we were born into this world — spiritually dead; and after we had received the grace of Baptism, what we made ourselves again. Each one who will remember his own history, and will then ask himself, ' What am I now?' will answer, ' I am at best only half transformed into the image of my Saviour, and I am therefore still half deformed in the sight of God — half conformed and half deformed, a mixture of good and evil. As I am half conformed I see myself, and I desire to do right; and as I am half deformed, I am blind and very weak, and therefore what should I be at this moment if God had not kept me from ruining myself?' S. Philip used to say, ' Keep Thy hand upon me, put Thy hand upon my head; for if Thou shouldst let me go, I should do Thee all manner of harm.' Our only trust is in the keeping of God, in that influx of the power of God by which we live and move and are; and in the support of the grace of God, by which alone we can do good and can avoid evil for a moment. Therefore the Apostle says, ' Let him that thinketh himself to stand take heed lest he fall.'4 Wheresoever there is this mistrust of self, there will always be found, as I said before, great charity to others, and a very great care and love for the souls of sinners, with a great desire to work for our Divine Lord in their salvation.

5. And lastly — for I will give only one more test — where there is a conformity to the Sacred Heart of our Lord, there will be a spirit of praise. The spirit of praise and the spirit of prayer ought to go together. But nothing is more certain than that we pray very often and that we praise but very seldom. We pray because we know our wants — hunger and thirst and sorrow and trouble will drive us to pray; and when we have received the answers to our prayers, we go our way without thanking the Giver. And yet the whole of our eternity will be made up of praise, for there there will be no more prayer; and if we do not begin to learn the spirit of praise in this world, how shall we praise God in eternity? If we are not now in harmony with the praise which goes up before the Throne, how can we be meet for 4 l Cor. x. 12.

the inheritance of the Kingdom of God? Are we even in harmony with the servants of God upon earth — I will not say with the Apostles and with the Saints of the Christian law, hut with the servants of God under the old law? Take the Book of Psalms: what is it from beginning to end but one continual voice of praise to God for His goodness? And in what does praise consist? It consists in acts of love and contemplation, of joy and thanksgiving. How often do we make these acts in our devotions? And have we not matter enough for them? For instance: for the multitude of our graces, for our very existence, for our prolonged existence after our many sins, for the image of God that is in us, for the continued power of knowing and of loving Him. We were made to be the children of God, and He has bowed down, as it were, to take up our manhood that He might make us the friends of God; and yet we do not praise Him. We have to thank Him for our redemption, for the Most Precious Blood that was shed for us, for the coming and the infusion of the Holy Ghost, for the perpetual inspirations of grace, for the whole tissue and chain of our spiritual and supernatural life. We have also to thank Him for our salvation, one by one personally; that is, for the redemption applied to ourselves.

The most potent medicine which infallibly heals will heal nobody unless it be applied. If the Precious Blood be not applied to us, we shall not be cleansed; but it has been applied to us, without our seeking, in our Baptism. It has been renewed to us in our absolutions; it has been sprinkled upon us all the day long when we have made acts of true contrition. For all these things we owe Him continual praise. Can we be conscious of our own sinfulness, of our unprofitableness, of our un worthiness, of our nothingness before Him, and that we are yet His children and heirs of His Kingdom: and that He assists and preserves us from year to year and from day to day, so that we can say, ' By the grace of God I am that which I am,' and still be silent and without a word of praise? Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum.

Here, then, are five signs; and if we can find them, at least in their beginnings, 'our heart will not reprehend us, and we may have confidence with God.' Let us search for them in our hearts. The first is self-denial, the second is charity to others, the third is severity to ourselves, the fourth is self-mistrust, and the fifth is the spirit of praise. Where these are there is at least a faint outline of our Divine Master.

And now I will only add two plain counsels, and the first is this: Take nothing lower than the Heart of our Divine Lord as the measure and the rule of your own. Do not take any lower standard. Do not take the examples of men. Do not take maxims or motives of your own imagining. Set hefore you the Sacred Heart in its full and divine perfection. The Word of God took that Sacred Heart in order that we might know God; that He might come within the sphere of our intelligence, within the reach of our hearts, and unite our will to His will. Therefore let us first of all see whether our intelligence, our reason, our intellect be conformed to the intelligence of Jesus Christ. His intelligence was, like our own, a human and finite intelligence. He had also an infinite intelligence; therefore He said, ' I am the Truth.' And how are we to know this truth? He has revealed it. And where is that revelation? In the holy faith. Any man who knows only a part of that revelation, that is, only a fragment, or any number of fragments of that revelation, has not his reason nor his intelligence conformed to the reason and intelligence of Jesus Christ. He is narrowed in some part. But when his whole understanding and reason are illuminated by the knowledge of faith, then he is conformed to the intelligence of Jesus Christ; the whole outline, and I will say the whole circle, of his reason is full of light. We must, then, be perfect in the light of Catholic faith. Next as to our affections. The Sacred Heart is the most perfect Kingdom of God the Father. It is the sanctuary in which God the Son perpetually dwells, and it is also the most perfect work of the Holy Ghost. All the affections and all those pro-passions, as they are called — because the Church never speaks of passions when it speaks of the Sacred Heart — all the emotions, all those sensitive movements of our nature which were in Him, were all in perfect tranquillity, in perfect order, and in perfect unity. Therefore until our sensitive will, with all its affections and emotions, is subject to our superior will, which is our reason and our conscience, and until both the sensitive and the superior will in us are subject to the will of God, we shall not be conformed to the Sacred Heart of our Lord. And, once more, His will is the law of ours; and unless our will be conformed to our lot in life; unless we accept it as coming from the will of God; unless our will accepts our state in life, and does not chafe against it, because God in His providence has ordained it for us — I will even go further, and say, unless we accept our state in grace as God has given it to us — we shall not be conformed to Him. Many people are all day long complaining and chafing that they fall into faults. True, indeed, they do; and why? They are impatient to be Saints for their own glory, or to he masters of themselves for their own consolation, or to be perfectly sanctified with all speed, that they may be delivered from the trouble of mortifying themselves; and God in His wisdom measures out to them the grace which He sees to be sufficient for them if they are faithful; and by leaving them long in that warfare He humbles them, by teaching them to know themselves; and He makes the very sins which they once loved to be their chastisement, and to scourge them for those very faults. He turns their faults into a purgatory upon earth, and by suffering from them they are purified, and make their expiation. Until we have come to say even in this what our Lord said in the garden, ' Not my will but Thine be done,' we are not conformed to the Sacred Heart. When we can say it, then we may hope that our affections and our intelligence and our will are growing towards His likeness.

And the other counsel is this: Do not be cast down if, when you look into yourselves, you find your heart to be so deformed, so unlike to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Anybody who really knows himself will find in his own heart what we read in the beginning,

' a great deep,' and * darkness on the face of the deep' — that is, a disorder and a confusion — but over all the Spirit of God moves ' upon the face of the waters.' There is much in ourselves that we have never fathomed. The darkness hides much from ourselves. And the more we know ourselves the more at first we must be cast down and troubled, so as even to be altogether out of heart if we did not know that the more we are humbled before God the more safe we are, and the more surely His Presence is in us. If we find in ourselves all manner of windings and doubles, and that the heart is deceitful above all things, who shows all this to us? who teaches us these truths? It is the Spirit of God moving over our inward life, and by His light revealing us to our own selves. Therefore, when we come to see these things, we have no reason to be cast down; it is the evidence and the certain proof that God is working in us of His own good will. And the way in which He works is this. When the Holy Spirit of God comes into the heart of a man, He enlightens him to know himself, but the Spirit of God is invisible; while He is showing ourselves to our own conscience He hides Himself. And when He casts His light upon us, He shows to us, not the things that are pleasing to us, but the things that are displeasing to Him; not those things which will please our love of self, but those things which will displease and humble us. He does not show the conformity, if we have any, to the Sacred Heart, but the manifold deformities which are displeasing in God's sight.

But perhaps you will say, ' How can I ever be conformed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus?' You can never transform yourselves into His likeness; but there is One who can; there is One who will transform you by His creating power. If you go to Him that made you, He can make all things new. Old things will pass away. If you say, ' Create in me a clean heart' — that is, ' Put forth Thine almighty power to make me once more as Thou didst make me in the beginning' — He will renew His own work. ' If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature.' His work is not by halves, nor upon the surface, nor left imperfect, like something which is just refitted for the time, or made up again like new cloth on an old garment. It is a new creation, made over again — ' a new creation, in which old things are passed away and all things are become new.' ' He that sitteth upon the Throne said, Behold, I make all things new.' The Precious Blood will cleanse away all sin; though it be red as scarlet, it shall be as white as snow; though it be like crimson, it shall be as wool; the almighty power of the Holy Ghost will purify all things as * by the spirit of burning.' He will re-create all things and make them over again. As the springing of the harvest or the putting out of the leaf in the forest is a new creation upon the stock of the old by the almighty power of God, so. in body and soul and spirit you will be made new once more.

Therefore, to make what I have said very practical, and to bring it nearer home, I will say this: Follow out and pursue your little faults. If you will correct your little faults, I was going to say your great ones will correct themselves; for (he that is faithful in that which is least is faithful in that which is greater.' Be watchful against spiritual sins, faults of omission, sins of the tongue, and thoughts against charity. And secondly, Fulfil your little duties, and your greater ones will take heed for themselves. A man that fulfils the lesser duties of charity, of humility, of piety, of fidelity, will have a conscience that grows more and more delicate; and a delicate conscience will take care of the great commandments of God. Then your ' heart will not reprehend you,' ' and God, who is greater than your heart,' will keep you in the multitude of peace. Your many infirmities will be absolved in the Precious Blood of His Son, and if your ' heart reprehend' you ' not, then have you confidence towards God;' and as S. John goes on in this place to say, * Whatsoever we ask of Him we shall receive, because we keep His commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in His sight.'5

5 1 S. John iii. 23.

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