Sermon IX. The Good Shepherd

In dedicating this Sermon to your Eminence, I do not seek to give to it either worth or importance, which even your name could not do. But to whom can I better inscribe it than to you, the father and founder of the Oblates of St. Charles in the diocese of Westminster? It was your command alone that constrained me to attempt a work which I know to have been for more than twenty years in your intention. Your name obtained for it, in the outset, a rescript of the Holy See, imparting the apostolical bene diction; your counsel has directed it; and your authority guided all its course.

The Feast of St. Charles has never passed without your presence, except last year, when from your bed of sickness you wrote to us your words of encouragement and support. And this year, after twelve months, as I too well know, of perilous and protracted suffering, you came again among us to share and to complete the joy of our Festival.

As a record of our gratitude for all these tokens of your affection, 1 pray you to accept from me, in the name of all, this imperfect expression of our filial attachment.

I have the honour to be,

My Lord Cardinal, Your Eminence s obedient servant,

H. E. MANNING.

ST. MART OP THE AKGBLS, BAYSWATER, November 14, 1860.

u The Good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep. -

St. John, x, 11.

God has promised by the prophet Daniel that " they who are learned shall shine as the brightness of the o firmament; and they who instruct many to justice, as the stars for all eternity."* We have seen the fulfil ment of this prophecy in the glory of His heavenly court. In the Festival of All Saints we beheld this firmament in all its brightness, spread before our eyes; the whole Hierarchy of His elect now in the beatific vision has seemed to encompass us in its multitude and splendour. And yet where all are glorious, some shine with a softer beauty, or burn with an intenser radiance; some are luminous with a fuller orb of power, or reign among the companies of Heaven with a more majestic light of glory. If, then, a special bliss be the inheritance of those who have instructed many to justice, what shall be the array of the great pastor of souls whom we commemorate to-day?

It is, indeed, a custom on such davs as this to invite some stranger to speak of our patrons. It is thought¹ to be more graceful that another should praise them, lest the partiality of sons should overrate the greatness of their fathers, and claim for them too high a dignity among the Saints of God. Forgive me if I depart from this custom to-day; for it ought not to seem unfitting that they should speak of their patrons, who ought, by experience, best to know their power with God.

In other years this Festival has fallen on the days of work and worldly toil, so that none but those who have command of time have been able to be here. But this year it falls upon our day of rest; all, even to the least and the busiest, may share in our rejoicing. It is a gathering of our own flock; and I speak therefore to our own people. There can surely then be no unfitness on a domestic festival like this, that I should speak to you of the glorious and powerful protector under whose guidance and patronage we labour among you. To one thing I shall certainly not be tempted; I mean, to extol St. Charles by comparisons or by contrasts with other Saints. Such a course would be doubly ungraceful in us: for one special perfection of his great spirit was the love he bore to all the Saints of the Church, and to all their works for God.

Nevertheless, in order to discern the peculiar and special character of St. Charles, I may be permitted to distinguish that which is singular both in him and in them; and by ascertaining the difference, to appreciate his perfect and individual perfection. Now it has seemed to me that of the three great saints whom God raised up at one time, and knit together in a singular mutual love, St. Ignatius, St. Philip, and St. Charles, each had a province of his own; and all three worked then, and work on still, with their several gifts, to one and the same end. In St. Ignatius we see the intellect, illuminated by sanctity, applied to the theology of the Church, and through its theology, to its action upon the world. In St. Philip, the heart, enlarged and in flamed by the Holy Ghost, kindling the fire of devotion in pastor and people. But in St. Charles we see the will that which governs both heart and intellect raised and inspired with a supernatural energy, and endowed with a dominion over himself and over the whole Church of God. His whole life was calmness and impetuosity, irresistible force and perpetual tranquillity; with the power of the intellect always in energy, and the affections of the heart always in expansion, he went onward with a perseverance which never gave back, or turned aside. The two chief cha racteristics of his perfection were comprehensiveness and intensity: a comprehensiveness which took in the whole activity of the Church; an intensity which urged his powers, both natural and supernatural, to their highest pitch, and there kept them unrelaxed at their fullest extent of force. For this reason it is difficult to characterise him. by any particular work or enterprise, for all seemed to fall in turn within his sphere. St. Charles may be said to be emphatically the saint of the Holy See, of the universal Episcopate, of the Priesthood, and of the whole Church. Now it would not be in place to-day to dwell upon his relation either to the Holy See or to the Hierarchy of the Church. In speaking to you, I more naturally turn to contemplate St. Charles as the saint of the laity; and, though he may be thought rather the saint of pastors, I hope to show that in his character there are special examples to the whole flock. My purpose, then, will be to view him as the good shepherd as the image of the Son of God in the life of pastoral care, properly so called; distinct, that is, from the life of perfection, as we see it in St. Philip, and from the apostolic life, as we see it in St. Francis Xavier; the toilsome pastor s life, in charge with a special flock, spending and being spent for his sheep inauniformand persevering fidelity to the hour of death. In this I hope to show that his example and character are full of minute and intimate instruction for all the faithful. In doing so I shall not attempt to draw out his history, or to narrate his life; forasmuch as it is full of detail so minute, that it would be impossible now to draw even its outline. All that I can venture to attempt is, in some way to appreciate his character and its admonitions to us.

As to his life and time, it is enough to say that St. Charles was born in the year 1538, just at the moment when Henry VIII began to separate England from the unity of the Church of God; and that he entered upon his active life in 1563, when the persecutions of Elizabeth were in their first outbreak. From that time till 1585, a period of two-and-twenty years, he ran his course with an energy of self-sacrifice which consumed his young life as a holocaust of zeal. Zelus domus tuce comedit me. He gave his life for his sheep. My purpose then, as I have said, will be only to trace the outline of this most masculine and majestic character; and to touch on one or two of its marking features, which may serve more directly as examples to ourselves.

The first mark which strikes us in the character of St. Charles is the greatness of his mission and of his aims. It was a wonderful providence which, in such an age of inveterate disorder, raised up a youth to renew the face of the Church.² The heresies and schisms of the Protestant Reformation had run a course of nearly fifty years, and had become rooted and obstinate by long success, when St. Charles entered upon his active life. At an age when other men are still among their books and studies, he began to wield an almost unbounded power. At the age of twenty-two he was created Cardinal, and by the side of his uncle Pius IV controlled the administration of the Holy See.

In this office his first care was the direction of the great Council of Trent. St. Charles may be said to be its very life. His will was its support; he urged forward its sessions; and directed its deliberations by stated and continual correspondence from Rome. So minute and prompt were his communications with the Council, that its couriers were admitted to him at all hours of the day or night. His firmness sustained it to the end, and carried it to its conclusion. This great work accomplished, he entered upon another still more arduous the execution of its decrees. As Cardinal Archbishop he reformed the great Church of Milan its clergy, religious, and people; so that next after Rome, Milan has ever been the light and model of the Church. The reformation of St. Charles appears divinely appointed to contrast with and to condemn the human reformations which even then were at work in England and elsewhere. Just at the time when in Germany and in England the innovations which have dissolved all faith, and issued in heresies, and schisms, in rationalism, and apostasy from the Christian name, were accomplishing, St. Charles laid the foundations of a reform, which, resting upon the principles of Divine faith and order, have continued in perfect unity and unchanging solidity to this day.

The great Council of Trent had laid down the basis of the ecclesiastical reformation of the Church in these later ages; and in executing its decrees St. Charles became the legislator for the Church of future o-enerao o tions. Vast as his work was in its own day, its greatness was but the prelude of that which was to come. As in the publication of the Profession of Faith, called the Creed of Pius IV, and in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, he had brought within the intellicence of the faithful at large its dogmatic decrees: so

^j d? c_5 7 by twenty years of ecclesiastical legislation, in a line of seven Provincial Councils and of eleven Diocesan Synods, he treated of every duty, function, and obligation of the sacerdotal life, and of all that belongs to the order of the Church, the administration of holy Sacraments, and the discipline of the faithful. The two volumes of the Acts of the Church of Milan, if not all from the pen of St. Charles, are the product of his mind. They may be called a commentary on the Council of Trent, and an amplification and development of its decrees. They treat of every thing, from the office of the Episcopate to the minutest detail of the Church. They have become the directory of Bishops and the rule of Synods. The judgments of St. Charles have passed as precedents in the ecclesiastical government of the world, and his dicta as the counsels, or even the precepts, of ecclesiastical perfection. No one individual mind has, perhaps, ever laid so broad and tenacious a hold upon the Church at large. He seems to have entered into its will, and to have controlled its active powers, and given a direction to all its operations.

To this greatness of aim and enterprise, St. Charles added an extraordinary minuteness and industry in the execution of his works. He seemed to be present every where, to direct all things, and to do all things. The whole complex administration of the province of Milan, which extended from Venice to Genoa, and into the Swiss valleys, with its fifteen suffragan Bishops and more than two thousand churches in the diocese of Milan alone, in all its minutest details, seemed to emanate from him and return into him again. He was the life of the Provincial and Diocesan Councils of which I have spoken. They were directed by his mind, and in great part written by his own hand. They descend into the least particulars, all of which passed through his cognisance, and were executed under his eye. We find appended to his life a schedule of the audi ences given every day of the week to the adminis trators of congregations, councils, colleges, and confraternities; of functions and visits to be dis charged every month; and of solemnities to be observed at stated periods every year. Not a moment of his time was without its object, and all his employ ments had a perfect order and succession.

It would be impossible to enumerate the institutions which he founded. His first act on entering his archio episcopal see was to establish the Confraternity of the Most Holy Sacrament in every parish. On the third Sunday of the month, all the parishes of the city united in a procession at the Duomo. He awakened Milan to a consciousness of the presence of the Incarnate Word, which penetrated into all its streets, and made itself visible to all its population. He enthroned Jesus in the see from which he ruled; and the love of the Sacred Heart became the centre of his reforms. To this he added the Confraternity of the Penitents of the tL *j

Cross; and again, because he knew that the source of all spiritual and moral evil and of the deep corruptions by which his diocese was afflicted, was to be found in ignorance of the faith and of the will of God, he founded the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, of menfor boys, andof women for girls, which continues vigorous and efficient to this day. The constitution of this Confraternity was co-extensive with the diocese. It consisted of a supreme council under the direction of a priest, resident in Milan, and responsible only to himself. The other officers were laymen; a prior and sub-prior, with consultors and visitors, and other inferior officers. In every parish a similar council was established. To these were added a body of catechists and of pescatori as he called them, or fishermen, whose office it was to traverse the whole city, especially on the festivals; to enter places of amusement, the haunts of sin, as well as the streets and the piazzas of the city; and not only to admonish and to warn, but actually to bring the young and the old, the children and the adults, to receive instruction, or to prepare for the Sacraments. Every month the council of each parish reported its progress to the superior council, by which a monthly report was laid before St. Charles in person. The visitors of the supreme council continually went their rounds from parish to parish, to keep alive the zeal and the industry of the officers and teachers. At his death, St. Charles left behind him by this one Confraternity upwards of 700 schools, 275 superior officers, 1726 inferior officers, 3040 catechists, and 40,000 scholars. I have seen this system in vigorous action in the Church of the Oblate Fathers, at Rho. On Sundays the nave of the Church is curtained off, and subdivided for the classes, which are five in number, varying from children to adults; each have their special teachers; and office-bearers are appointed to go to and fro to maintain order and attention. It is to be remembered that the whole of this extensive and efficient system is composed of laymen, into whom St. Charles inspired somewhat of his own patient toil and burning zeal for souls. I may say that he created them for this work, and called them into existence to be the fellow-helpers of his pastoral care.

It would be out of place to speak at this time of his mighty influence in restoring and raising the Priest hood of his diocese to an imitation of himself; but I cannot pass in silence the work which he called his " delight." After he had for many years formed and matured his clergy to a higher life, he chose out. those who were the most perfect and conformed to his own spirit. He united them in a community, and gave to them a rule written by his own hand. They bound themselves to him by an oblation, from which they took their name. He formed them to direct his semi naries, to prepare for the visitation of his diocese, to direct parishes, to be about his own person, and to discharge whatsoever office he might lay upon theni. To them he committed the Church and House of San Sepolcro, which became the centre of his active works. He erected schools, colleges, and seminaries of a higher instruction for every class. He instituted colleges of various professions: physicians, lawyers, magistrates, and the like. He inspired into the laity a like spirit of generous devotion; and in the rule of his Oblates provided that laymen also should offer themselves to him by an oblation to serve the poor and afflicted: the physician by his skill, the lawyer by his counsel, the tradesman by his art, without payment or recompense. Perhaps no pastor ever wielded the hearts of his laity with such a commanding sway of love and confidence, or ever awakened on so large a scale, or guided with such perfect organization, their active charity. The discipline which is thought to belong to the clergy alone, was, by his prudence and persuasive zeal, extended to men of the world; they became his fellow-workers, not only one by one, but in masses, bound by rule and perfect unity of action. He established also in the Church of San Sepolcro, missions and retreats for women of every class, the high born, matrons, and servants. These are but the general heads, and few out of many of the spiritual industries, whereby lie pervaded the whole population of Milan and the diocese. He participated in them all, and was himself present, as it were, in all these labours; for he had eminently the gift of the greatest minds: not that of attempting all things in person, but that of creating and multiplying agents for his works, and of inspiring them freely of their own will to accomplish his intentions; so that while they laboured, all their works were his.

Another conspicuous feature of his character was the invincible fortitude with which he endured opposition and exposed his life. The greater part of his episcopate was spent in a contest for the liberties of the Church. The civil powers of the Spanish government in Milan and in Spain endeavoured to intimidate him by threats, and even by violence. He never gave way for an hour, and never failed in every conflict to gain his cause. His more serious trials were from unworthv v and disorderly priests, and from religious Orders which had lost their observance. The Chapter of La Scala was notoriously relaxed. St. Charles gave notice of an episcopal visit. He arrived at the church upon his mule, with his archiepiscopal cross borne before him. Some of the canons seized the reins of his mule, and rudely thrust him back, while others shut the doors of the church against him. He alighted, and, with his archiepiscopal cross in his hand, proceeded to the doors of the church. Shots were fired at him, which struck and mutilated the cross as he held it. He returned to the Duomo, and knelt before the Blessed Sacrament; after which he excommunicated the canons of La Scala, who, in the end, after much obstinacy, were compelled to submit. In another case his life was only preserved by miracle. The Umiliati, whose disorders he was vigorously reforming, suborned a murderer to destroy him. One evening, when St. Charles was kneeling with his familia at night-prayers in his chapel, while the choir were singing Tempus est ut revertar ad eum qui misit me, and Ne turbetur cor vestrum neque formidet, the assassin fired within a few paces of his person. The bullet struck him in the back. He fell forward on his face; and though believing his wound to be mortal, he again lifted him self, and continued to the end of his prayer. He was then supported to the sacristy; and on examination it was found that the ball had not even pierced his rochet,³ but had left a black mark upon the flesh, which continued to his death. Other shots from the same explosion had pierced the hard wood on either side of him.

But his fortitude was still more conspicuously shown, when for months he gave his life, day by day and hour by hour, with a perpetual renewal of the generosity of the Good Shepherd, in ministering to the dying in the great plague of Milan. His whole life then was a continual oblation of himself. All the day long he gave his life for his sheep; fearless and in flexible when others fled, and only desiring to win the crown of martyrdom by charity. The same spirit of uniform and inflexible perseverance sustained him without variation and without remission in his life of labour; neither mind nor will had any reserve. All his powers were urged habitually to their highest point, and he consumed a way in their perpetual tension and activity. More he could not do, for nature had reached its utmost; and less he could not, for the zeal which ever consumed him. His short life was long, because of its intensity, and ascended as a continual sacrifice till it was accomplished. Consummatus in brevi, explevit tempora multa, as the Church of Milan sings in the Ainbrosian rite upon his festival.

It might be thought that, in a character so great and comprehensive, so vigorous and unrelaxed, so full of fortitude and of perseverance, a certain hardness would prevail, or, at least, the softer qualities be wanting; but it was not so. St. Charles was as eminent for tenderness as for force of character: nothing more o beautiful can be found than the character of the man which lay concealed under the energy of his archiepiscopal life. If we would know St. Charles as he was in himself, we must see him in his familia, in the private life of his household. It consisted of a hundred persons of all nations, characters, and ages. It was ordered almost as a religious house, with division of time, meditation in common, exercises of piety, perpetual industry of study and of business. It was an austere life, with many mortifications, and yet so sweet and attractive that men of every kind sought to enter it. When once entered, they scarcely ever left it; for they loved him as sons, and he loved them as a father. It is beautiful to read the little traits of his tenderness towards them. He would call them in the morning, and light their lamps. After they were gone to rest at night, while he was waking with the cares of his state, he would walk to and fro throughout the house barefoot, lest he should awake them. The sick he nursed with his own hands; the morose and difficult he bore with inexhaustible patience. There was one whose beha viour to him was such that his household prayed for his dismissal. St. Charles kept him to the last. He would dismiss none, except for sin. The only fault he would never pardon was a lie. Those that grew old in his service, he supported with the tenderest care; and if any refused to stay with him, he sent them away with abundant gifts. In the visitations of his diocese, he would sleep upon the floor or upon a table, to give his bed to his attendants.

His compassion to the poor had no bounds. Even when he was twelve years old, he refused to apply to his own use the revenues of an abbacy which he inherited: he prayed his father to bestow all its revenues upon the poor. His father, who was a man of God, and lived alife of singular devotion, confessing and communicating every w r eek, and reciting daily an office upon his knees, discerned the operations of the Holy Ghost in his child, and granted his desire. In after-life the same spirit of compassion was confirmed in him; whatsoever came to him, he sold and distributed to the poor. At one time, during the plague, 60,000 poor were fed daily by his alms. He stripped his house even of its furniture to clothe them.

But his tenderness maybe more strikingly perceived in his personal dealing with the poor. In his archiepiscopal visitations through the diocese, he would sit by the wayside to teach a poor man to make the sign of the Cross, and to say the Pater and Ave. He entered the homes and the hovels of his flock; and while his attendants would hardly pass the threshold for the repulsive stench of these poor dwellings, St. Charles would sit by their hearth as if he had no sense. We read also, that, as he sat to share the food of some poor family, he sharply rebuked one of his attendants who brought him a spoon of metal instead of a spoon of wood, which he was using like the rest. Nevertheless, traits of his tenderness are to be found throughout his life. They are not isolated acts, but the texture of his character. They describe not his condescension, a word that implies assumed superiority, but the profound humility which he chose for his legend and manifested in his person. In his dealings with the poor, they never felt his greatness. His presence was no burden; and his acts of humility had such a delicate grace and such a sensitive forbearance, that the lowest were at ease with him. It was the gentleness and the attraction of the Great Shepherd of the sheep; for the Sacred Heart burned and beat in his, and made him to be the rest and solace of his flock. And yet this tenderness had in it no mere softness, no weak emotions, or effeminate sensibility: it was a firm and truthful sympathy; the genuine fellow-feeling of a soul conformed to the Sacred Humanity of Jesus in its vast and profound compassion.

Once more. It might also be thought, that in a life of such unresting toil and ceaseless occupation, there could have been no time for prayer, no love for the interior spirit of devotion; and yet whole hours he spent upon his knees before the tabernacle or the Exposition in the Duomo, or in the crypt of San Sepolcro, or in the cells of the Capuchins and of the Barnabites. Long hours of the morning, before business began, were spent in mental prayer. He would do nothing until he had celebrated the Holy Mass. It seems incredible how he could have found the time; but the use and order of his day was so minute and so exact, that he seemed never to be in haste, and to have leisure for every duty. It may be said, that his whole life was prayer; for all his works were begun and ended in the presence of God. They did not distract him from union with his Lord; but were so penetrated with the intention and spirit of devotion, that every several action had the nature of prayer. We read that when present in the choir, he was sometimes so rapt in union with God, that the master of ceremonies had need to rouse him to recite the office. In his journeys he was lost in prayer as he went; and once we read that his mule fell with him by the wayside. It was dark, and his retinue passed by. Some time after, finding that he was not with them, they returned, and found him unconscious of what had happened, and praying where he fell.

His chief devotion was to the Passion of our Lord. It is not wonderful that such a life of toil and of the Cross should have found its special food and solace in the sufferings of Jesus. It was in the school of the Passion that his masculine spirit had been formed, and it is the Passion alone that forms such spirits as St. Charles. We are told that above all he was devoted to two particular mysteries: the agony of Jesus in the garden, and His burial in the tomb. I have often tried to find the reason of this choice. It is not, indeed, wonderful that a life of such self-discipline, and of such self-chastisement, and of such self-sacrifice should have found its light and its replenishment in the agony of Gethsemani, and in the words, " Not My will, but Thine be done." His whole life was a subjection of his sensitive will to his superior will, and of both alike to the will of God; and he well knew by long trial some shadow at least of that great interior anguish which poured forth its life-blood in the Garden of Olives. But why he should have chosen the burial of Jesus is not so easy to understand, unless it be that he saw in it the last crowning humiliation of God, dead, and buried out of sight by the hands of his creatures; and because he saw, too, the pledge and the promise of the rest for which he longed, the rest after death, the only rest laid up in store for him.

But I have said both too little and too much: too little to give any conception of the masculine and tender character of this glorious Saint; too much, because it might seem that what is but a fragment is all that could be told. I must hasten, therefore, to the end.

As he lived, so he died. He had the instinct of death upon him, and dropped many words of preparation to those about him. He then set forth to make his retreat at the Calvary of Varallo, in the midst of representations of the Passion of Jesus. As he knelt before the agony in Gethsemani, his last sickness struck him. Nevertheless, he persevered, or rather his austerities increased. He slept on bare boards, and his food was bread and water. One day two young students came upon him as he knelt before the mystery of the burial of Jesus: he invited them to stay with him; and morning by morning, as his wont was, he would light their lamps, and wake them. His confessor was with him in retreat; and as he passed through his chamber, while he was yet sleeping, he would make a reverence to him, in honour of our Lord, whom he regarded in his person. So he passed his last days of preparation. The fever began to grow upon him, and his life to ebb sensibly away. He set out for Milan, and embarked at Arona to pass the Lake of Como, to finish the establishment of the college at Ascona. As he went over, he said the Litanies with the boatmen who rowed him, and exa mined them whether they could say the Pater, Ave, and Credo; and he made them promise him never to go to their work without saying their morning prayers. The spirit of the Good Shepherd was upon him everywhere and at all times. The weight of his last sickness did not slacken his zeal for souls. So he journeyed slowly homewards, preaching and instruct ing as he went. When he reached his palace, the sickness became soon hopeless. He lay with the pic tures of the Agony in the Garden and of the Burial hung before him; and while multitudes were on their knees in prayer before the presence of the Most Holy Sacrament exposed in the Duomo, he received the Holy Viaticum as a pastor should die, in his rochet and stole, surrounded by his flock. On the night of Saturday, the 3rd of November, his short life, con sumed with labours for the glory of God and for the salvation of his flock, was spent; and he entered upon his first and his endless rest. His last words, like to the last words of Jesus as He bowed His head upon the Cross, were Ecce, venio, " Behold, I come;" and with a calm so great that they who were nearest could hardly tell the moment of his departure, he passed to the joy of his Lord. He died the Good Shepherd s death, worn out and wearied with toil for the flock; consumed as a sacrifice of love for the souls for whom his Master died. It was not long before the consciousness that he was in the glory of the Saints began to spread abroad. About three hours after his death, his confessor was sleeping; St. Charles appeared to him in a raiment of surpassing splendour, and encompassed by the effulgence of heavenly light. Believing, through the effect of sleep, that the Saint was still lying in his sickness, he expressed his wonder. St. Charles said to him, Dominus mortificat, Dominus autem vivificat, "the Lord giveth death, and the Lord giveth life." He then perceived that he was impassible and glorious. Again: twice he appeared to one of his priests, who was grieving out of measure for his loss, saying, " Grieve not for me; for I am in the bliss of the Lord." He foretold to him the death of the then reigning Pontiff, which was soon after verified; and the afflictions of his beloved city of Milan, which have never ceased until this day.

Such was St. Charles: great and masculine in his powers, tender and compassionate in his charity; a true pastor of Jesus Christ, shaped and fashioned to the mould of the Sacred Heart. In his day he ruled the Church of God, and laid his hand upon all the springs of its power. The whole activity of the Church received his direction; and his spirit has penetrated into its very structure, and gives laws to its Hierarchy, to its Councils, and to its Schools.

Such he was whom I have endeavoured to sketch in outline, and such the comprehensiveness and the intensity of the will which, in a few short years, con sumed the life of this great Servant of God. But it is time to make an end: for on so great a subject, all that I can say would be but little, and the more I say, the more ought to be said to give any proportion to the outline of so great a life. He is, indeed, the special example to the Priesthood, the light and glory of the secular clergy; but it is not so that I would consider him to-day. Enough to say that he has taught the priest to know that he is called to be perfect; that he may aim at no lower standard; that he may take no lax indulgence; that his whole life, with all its powers and faculties, is consecrated; that the Priesthood itself is, as Saints have said, the sign of perfection attained already; and that this perfection is to be acquired only by obedience, by the religious in conformity to their state, by the secular priest in obedience to the law of liberty, in the generous use of his freedom, and in charity, which makes no reserves of self. And this twofold law of the sacerdotal life he incorporated and made perpetual in the Congregation of the Oblates of St. Ambrose, the mature fruit and perpetual record of his great episcopate.

The last words shall be of the lessons he has given to laymen. Fie taught them detachment from the world. He was himself of noble birth, rich with ample inheritance, surrounded by the privileges of his class, invested with all dignities and powers, next to the Supreme Pontificate; and yet he was detached from all. All these things were little in proportion to his moral greatness. They could not elevate him; they had neither fascination nor worth in his eyes, except as means of doing the Will of God. In this he speaks to the rich; while to those also of an humbler state, his voluntary poverty gives a perfect rule of simplicity and indifference.

He is a pattern likewise of generosity, not only in his boundless alms, but in the unselfish spirit of his life, in the dedication of all his time and powers, solicitude and sympathy, to those who needed help. He teaches the rich to be generous also for the glory of God and the beauty of His Church, in the splen dour of his zeal and the vastness of his gifts. He teaches all in like manner that the busiest life may be a life of prayer; that perpetual toil need bring no hindrance to the union of the will with God. No man of the world was ever taxed to his full strength more than he. No one had so great right to plead his unceasing work as an excuse for dispensation in the practices of prayer. We make our little cares, our common duties, our trade or our profession, a plea for shortening our devotions, or leaving our conscience unexamined, or postponing our confession. He worked always, and he prayed always; for his prayer and his work were one.

Another example he has given to laymen is a zeal for souls. He set in activity the educated laymen of Milan to catch, one by one, the souls that were perishing; and to count one soul an over-payment of all their toil, and the mere labour for their salvation itself an ample reward. And to all this he added one other lesson, most needful to the laity as well as to the priest a filial, loyal love to the person of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, whom he never named without uncover ing his head, and a docile and glad obedience to the Holy See, the lightest judgment of which to him had force of law. But it would be endless to speak on such a theme. It must be enough to set before you his life of unwearied duty as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and his tenderness as the Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep. It was a mixture of gravity and sweetness, of calm and of intensity, of invincible courage and exquisite compassion. It was a character high and stern, yet loving and gentle; severe in its reality and in the majesty of truth. He teaches all men that their work is what they are; that to do one thing and to be another is a falsehood and impossible; that if they would teach men to serve God, they must do His will; if they would bring souls to contrition, they must live in penance: if they would kindle hearts with the love of God, their hearts must burn within them; that we are not what we seem to others, nor what we think ourselves, but what we are before God, and neither more nor less: to such he is the special patron, example, and father, and for such he ever prays, kneeling with out stretched palms before the Eternal Throne.

Footnotes

1. Dan,, xii, 3. ↩

2. Giussano relates, that when St. Charles was a child, he was one day lost for some hours. At last he was found in a solitary cham ber, arranging a number of apples in order. When asked why he was there, he said, " I am portioning out the world." ↩

3. The rochet in which St. Charles was struck was given by Pius VII to the Cathedral in Bordeaux, and a large portion of this precious relic was sent, by the kindness of the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, to the Oblates of Westminster, a week before the Feast of St. Charles. ↩