Chapter 9. The Gift of Piety

THE Prophet Isaias, in foretelling that the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost should rest upon the Messias or the Christ, or the Anointed, said, 'There shall come up a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall spring up from his root,' — that is, He shall be both Strength and Beauty. Out. of charity spring both filial fear and filial piety.

Now piety is a certain perfection of charity. All piety is charity, but not all charity is piety. Charity in its lower de grees may exist where there is little piety; but where piety is, there charity cannot be little.

There is both natural piety and supernatural piety, and they are inseparable.

1. The piety of the order of nature \s the love of parents for their offspring. Even the dumb creatures without reason have a fostering care of their young, and their young have an instinctive drawing to their parents. In man this is a higher, nobler, more generous, and more tender affection.

2. But in the order of grace this natural piety is elevated to charity. The love of parents for their offspring is not only a tender care for their earthly welfare, but for their eternal bliss. It comprehends body and soul. There is also in their off spring a return of love, so that piety is both parental and filial.

Now this exists in its perfection in the love of the Father to His Incarnate Son, and in the love of the Sacred Heart towards His Heavenly Father. In like manner it exists between Jesus, the perfect Son, and Mary, the perfect Mother.

Piety, then, in its fullest sense, is charity with worship, thanksgiving, and praise; with reverence and loving obedience towards God,1 and also towards all creatures in measure and in kind. It is the tenderness of charity with compassion and pity. It » 8. Thomas, Sum. Theol. 2. 2, q. 121.

was divinely perfect in the Incarnate Son,, both towards His Father in heaven and towards all mankind and all the creatures-of God.

Such being the nature of piety, we will see what are its objects and effects.

1. The first object of piety is the Ever-blessed Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In our childhood we be gin with the love of the Father. The love of children is our first piety. The Lord's Prayer is our first prayer. This ex pands, as we grow in explicit piety, to the love and adoration of the Incarnate Son and of the Holy Ghost, in love, fidelity, docility, as children, brethren, disciples.

Piety towards our Divine Saviour is threefold. (1) First, to His Person at the right hand of God, in the glory of His kingdom; to His Sacred Heart of infinite tenderness; to His five Sacred Wounds; to His most Precious Blood j (2) and secondly^ to His supernatural Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, in all the ways of worship: in the Holy Mass, in Holy Communion, in the silence of the tahernacle; and (3) in His mystical Body, which is the Church, in which He, as the Head, by influence Vhich from Him descends into all His members, as the holy Council of Trent says, is ever with us. By His Church He ever reigns and teaches, and by His Vicar He perpetuates His authority and His pastoral care. In the mystical Body, the gift of piety adores the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier, the Spirit of truth, the Bond of its unity, the Source of its infallibility. There is here another object of piety, which is the Word of God. The unwritten science of God, the queen of all sciences, first in the hierarchy of all truth, the di vine tradition of theology, surrounds and interprets the written Word of God. The piety of the Church cherishes the Holy Scriptures as the greatest gift next after ttie Sacrament of the Altar. S. Paulinus of Nola in his church had two tabernacles; in the one was the Sacramental Presence of the Word Incarnate, in the other the Writ ten Word, inspired by the Holy Ghost. The Saints have ever loved it. To them, as to the Psalmist of old, every word of God was sweeter than the honey and the honeycomb. S. Charles read it bareheaded and upon his knees. S. Edmund of Canter bury kissed the pages before he began to read, and again when he closed the book. Such is the first object of the gift of piety. 2. The next object of piety stands all alone, unapproachable by any other creature; infinitely below God because He alone is the uncreated; immensely above all other creatures because she is the Mother of God. Next after God in our love is Mary. Being the Mother of Jesus, our Brother, she is our Mother too. ' No man/ as S. Bernard says, ' can have God for his Father who has not Mary for His Mother.' God is our Father through the incarnation of His Son. Mary is our Mother by the same divine consanguinity. The spirit of adoption, by which we cry, * Abba, Father,' teaches us to say, 10 clemens, Opia, Odulcis Virgo Maria,9 — c 0 merciful and loving and sweet Virgin Mary.' — 'Monstra te esse matrem' — ' Show us a mother's love; and as thouhast all power by thy prayers over the Heart of thy Divine Son, show us also a mother's care.' Next after God she is the highest object of the gift of piety; and that for many reasons. (1) For the sake of her Divine Son. She is His Mother, the object of His perfect filial love. His example is our law. He loved her above all creatures, and we can not be like Him if we do not love her too. To be unlike Him is to be unworthy of Him. (2) We love her also for her own sake. a. First because of her three sanctifications which make her the holiest of all creatures; holier than the Seraphim, and holy next after God. She is in her charity nearest to the charity of God, and therefore an object of love next after Him. b. We love her also for her divine maternity, for the singular and unequalled glory which God put upon her when the Holy Ghost came upon her, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her. c. And we love her lastly for her Motherhood to us. She is truly our Mother in the consanguinity of the Incarnation, and we are her sons. (3) We love her for our own sake, "because of her power with God, and of her maternal piety towards us all. As the worship we pay her is infinitely less than the divine worship which is due to God only, but immensely greater than the worship we pay to all the Saints, — for the Saints are innumerable, but the Mother of God is one, — and as the throne on which she sits is lower by infinite space than the throne of God, but higher by an immensity than all the thrones in the heavenly court, so the gift of piety offers to her continually a love and adoration which is beyond all that we pay or is due to all the Saints.

3. Nevertheless they are not robbed of their honour; for next after her the Saints in light are the objects of our piety. We rejoice in their bliss and in their patronage, and in the succession of their glad festi vals, which all the year round are ever beginning, never ending. So far piety is without pity; for the Blessed and the Saints, in answer to our piety, pity and pray for us. 4. But piety has a wider range. It be comes a loving intercession for the holy souls, for those known to us and dear, for the unknown who are suffering their expiation, and for the desolate who have none to love them or to remember them before God. 5, Still further, piety takes into its charity all the disciples of Jesus, the in nocent and the penitent, the preachers of His Person and of His Passion, the priests who stand at His altars, and all who suffer for His Name — the persecuted, the poor, and all the friends of God. And this is the original sense of piety, the natural love of kindred and of friends. For. S. Thomas says that the object of the gift of piety is our parents and our country. Of our pa rents no more words are needed. To our country, call it mother country or fatherland, there is always a filial relation, and the duties of children binding us to it. All the charities of life are bound up with it. All the affections of home are sheltered in it. The very name of commonwealth suggests and even expresses the unity of lot and sympathy in which all share, if not in equal measure, nevertheless by vital participation. A filial, loving, faithful, dutiful loyalty to our people and country is called patriotism, a name debased by faction, but in itself a duty of the natural order, elevated by the gift of piety to a virtue which may be heroic in Christiana and Catholics so long as they are obedient to the law of God.

Little need be said as to what destroys the gift of piety or as to what unfolds and strengthens it.

1. It is destroyed by many things, chiefly by incredulity and by immorality. (1) First, by incredulity. There was less piety in Thomas when he said, ' Non credam,' — * I will not believe;' and in the Athenians,

H who set up an altar to * the unknown god.' How should they worship what they did not love; and how should they love what they did not know? What piety can there be in a sceptic, whose love is conditional? 4 1 adore Thee if Thou dost exist; I love Thee if Thou are not a figment of the brain.' This levity of mind extinguishes piety even more surely than the gross faults of rude natures. It is more insolent in its recklessness, more contemptuous in its impertinence to the Maker of all things. (2) As for immorality, no words are needed. Piety springs up with holy fear, and holy fear abhors sin. When any soul is dark ened by the sins which grieve the purity, truth, and charity of the Holy Ghost, His gifts languish and cease to act, and die.

2. The gift of piety is promoted by persistent care and by Christian education. On pastors and on parents rests the duty of cherishing it. Parents have the first responsibility, because they are the guar dians of nurture, and they train their children in infancy when the grace of baptism and the seven gifts are yet fresh in them. But how many who were holy in their infancy grow up without piety1? How many a vocation to the priesthood is lost because neither father nor mother foster it in childhood? Sometimes they even cross and destroy the work of the Sanctifier; sometimes blindly, sometimes with their eyes open.

Love of the truth, mental prayer, and fidelity to grace will cherish and confirm the operations of piety. If we obey them they will be strengthened, and the spirit of piety will be more and more infused. It will make the service of God sweet to us. ' Blessed is he whom Thou choosest and takest unto Thee. He shall dwell in Thy courts.'2 ' One thing I have asked of tho Lord, this will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; that I may see the delight of the Lord, and may visit His temple, * Ps. Ixiv. 5.

for He hath hidden me in His tabernacle; in the day of evils He hath protected me in the secret place of His tabernacle.'3

Jesus, my Kinsman, my Brother, my Friend, my Saviour, my Redeemer, my Teacher, my Master, my Lord, and my God: give me a loving heart, filial towards God and Thy blessed Mother; fra ternal towards Thee and all mankind, especially to the household of faith: docile to Thy Church and to Thy word: kindly to all the works of the Sanctifier.

Jesus, have mercy on me.

Holy Mary, pray for me.