81. Bfi.innkrs, Proficients and the Perfect — First Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity

Synopsis — Greed for this world's goods a universal vice : the blindness and folly of it — Seeking for God's kingdom within us — Relation of outward good works to this inner quest — How improvidence is to be guarded against — The final result is the proper union of outward and inward religion.

SECOND SERMON FOR THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER

No man can serve two masters .... Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe, how much more you, and ye of little faith? Be not solicitous, therefore, saying what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed. For after all these things do the heathen seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye, therefore, first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. — Matt, vi, 24-33.

This is our Lord's teaching that we cannot serve both God and mammon, but must hate the one and love the other. You will find a wonderful doctrine taught here, if you study it attentively. Our Savior teaches us as plain as our Pater Noster, in very simple terms, and with beautiful comparisons. He bids us set aside all anxiety about transitory things. In this same gospel He says: "Which of you by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?" You know full well, children, men's shortcomings in this respect, many a hidden sin of distrust of providence being committed; and that the capital sin of avarice is also committed. These sins work, perhaps, more secret harm among men than any others. Let each one of us consider whether or not in his thoughts and his works he is overanxious to provide for his temporal wants, sometimes even to the injury of his neighbor. A full consideration of this — where would it end? How strange that we cannot trust everything to God, who rules absolutely over all things in heaven and earth. We act

BS if we were to live on earth for all eternity. If one but learned the lesson of this gospel, he would be shocked to think that he BO selfishly seeks his own advantage against all his fellowmen; all his words, works and thoughts being devoted to his own honor, or pleasure, or gain exclusively; and that even in the things which pertain to <!od's service. Children, this failing is so deep-rooted in many men that every corner of their soul is filled with greed for the perishable goods of this world, their soul being bent and twisted by it. like the poor crippled woman in the gospel, who was bent down to the ground by an evil spirit.

Poor blinded souls! Why will you not trust God, not in outward show but in all sincerity. Has He not delivered you from the infection of the solicitude of this treacherous world? Think of all He has done for you in the eternal things of heaven: and will He not provide you with the petty necessities of this life? Is it not lamentable, that a man pretending to be spiritual, should be absorbed in outward occupations — his petty little work, his little garments, and his trifling engagements? Until at last he can scarcely ever come to God or enter into his own heart: and indeed is quite content to forego all thoughts of eternal things, if only his temporal affairs go on prosperously. These men, though they have the outward show of spirituality, are yet as much immersed in their miserable little doings, as are men in the great world with affairs of high importance. So our Lord bids us seek His kingdom first and its justice, and after that all these temporal things wrill be given us. He does not so much as call them gifts, for they seem to him too trifling to merit so good a name. I can but be silent about the widespread evil of this foolish and most useless anxiety over temporal necessities, straight against the ordering of Gods' good providence. St. Peter says: ''Casting all your care upon Him, for He hath a care of you" (I Peter v: 7).

Carefulness about worldly things does a threefold harm: it blinds the judgment; it quenches the fire of love, deadening spiritual earnestness; and it hides the interior way to God. It is like a malarious vapor which chokes a man's breathing. Such is the influence of earthly solicitude, which without doubt springs from the vice of avarice.

Let each one of you, dear children, look carefully to himself as long as he remains in this life, setting himself to seek God's Kingdom deep down in his own soul. There it lies hidden, there it will be found, there it will yield you its riches. I say to you emphatically, that whatever spiritual things you neglect now for the sake of temporal advantage, you shall lack in eternity. This earnest devot.^d-ness involves a hard struggle; one must fight manfully against self-interest, against the evil spirit, and against the world. Many a sinful tendency must be overcome ere you shall find God's Kingdom; and this is not to be achieved in a day. It comes with hard striving and patient labor; it involves the withdrawal of our affections from transitory things, and the suppression of all anxiety about them. That a man shall seek his own interest, is a trait rooted deep In our animal nature. Yea, even in his dealings with God will he insist on having consolation of spirit and sweetness of feeling — he must always crave some compensation. He will, for example, join the pleasures of human companionship with the possession of the Kingdom of God. But we must learn to suffer in the spirit of faith in Christ; after that, God will gladly fill us with His gifts.

Therefore do good works ; exercise thyself in the practice of virtue ; God will in due time reward thee. But meanwhile carefully avoid judging thy neighbor, and never esteem thyself his better. Children, suppress all this natural tendency to self-seeking. Avoid doing spiritual things for petty temporal compensation, because this smacks of simony, which is a sin against God's justice, and therefore condemned by holy Church. God is by His very nature the end and object of all things that exist. Why, then, shouldst thou make some contemptible created thing the end and object of thy virtuous works?

Children, seek God's kingdom and His justice, and make this the foundation principle of your religious life— seek God alone in His kingdom, the object we long for and pray for in our Pater Noster. 0 how powerful a prayer that is; but you do not know how much this petition in it means: "Thy kingtom come." It is really a prayer to obtain possession of God's own self, for the kingdom of God is God Himself, reigning in all created things. In that kingdom God is our Father (as we begin the Pater Noster), full of fatherly fidelity and fatherly power. If He finds our souls ready, then (as the Pater Noster proceeds) He makes His name known, hallowed and lovingly adored in our interior life. And then follows the coming of nis holy kingdom, in us, lie guiding us, and doing His work of justice within us. So, too, His will is done in us as it is in Heaven, that is to say, as it is done in Himself. Alas, children, how often do we give up our will to God's in this His interior kingdom only to take it back again, and use it against God's will. Rise up and restore God thy will, bind thyself fast and firm to God's will in true self-renunciation, trusting for thy care to His fatherly providence. Can He not do all things? Hast thou not often proved His loving care of thee? Trust Him, ilicrefore, most confidently, seeking His justice and His kingdom every day and hour thou livest.

The righteousness of God consists in seeking Him interiorly ana clinging faithfully to Him, having Him ever in mind in what thou dost, and giving Thyself over to His guidance. The soul that does all this is ruled by God, and from it all inordinate anxiety about created things falls away.

I do not mean to say that one should be improvident; we must not tempt God. You must exercise prudent foresight for all proper provision for yourself, as well as for others confided to your care. You should also be in a position to do acts of kindness to your neighbor in a spirit of common charity, all things being ordered discreetly. But whatsoever you do or strive to do, conversing with others, eating and drinking, sleeping and waking — in all things whatsoever, keep God in view and God alone, and not your own interests. In this way a noble spirit will go through this mortal life clean of all sordid avarice, passing amid creatures in real detachment, enslaved to none, looking forward to his heavenly country, ever considering His heavenly Father, from whose bosom He came forth at his creation.

You might object, that if God does not abandon those who put their trust in Him, how does it happen that He often permits good and faithful servants of His to suffer painful want? Albertus Magnus gives three reasons to account for this. The first is, that God may leal a man's trust in Him, so that it may become sincere and steadfast. Many a one does God allow to suffer want that He may perfectly teach him the virtue of detachment. And then He in due time comes to his help, that he may love his Heavenly Father more tenderly, and pour out his soul in gratitude to Him. In all this he is drawn nearer to God. The second reason is for the sake of penance ; for by suffering in this life with a devout resignation to the divine will, a man lessens his purgatory hereafter. And the third reason is that perhaps these servants of God are called on to suffer as an eternal reproach to evil men, who, though well able to assist them, yet culpably refuse to do so.

Dear child, seek this kingdom, for it is nothing less than God's own self. When attachment to creatures ceases, then the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. The will of God in heaven is the same as His will in His divine Son. If thou wilt thyself become God's kingdom and be ruled wholly by Him, then desire nothing, intend nothing but God's will. Then shall God be in thy soul, the eternal King seated on His throne and gloriously reigning.

This kingdom is in the deepest depths of the spirit. A man is first practiced in all good outward exercises of piety, and then he retires into the interior life of his intelligence, and becomes, as it were, the union of two different men, one the man of the religious life of the senses, the other of that of the intelligence. Thus being now made a twofold man, he penetrates yet deeper into his spirit, into the secret recesses ; there it is that he finds the divine image enshrined. Now he is engulfed in the abyss of the deity, in which he was foreknown, by God in the eternity before his creation. When God finds a man thus turned to Him in all self-renunciation, He responds by embracing him in His infinite, paternal bosom. God takes the soul thus abandoned to Him, and new forms its created life, as if He transformed it into the uncreated life, making it one with Himself. If that soul could but see its own being as it now really is, it would see itself so invested with the divine dignity that it might for a moment think it saw God Himself — it would even seem to behold all the words and works of itself and of all other souls.

And what shall be the sign that thou art coming into this inner Kingdom of God to partake of this divine nobility? When all solicitude about temporal things has fallen away from thy soul ; for our Lord tells us that it is in this that we seek the Kingdom of God and His justice — the giving up of all care and anxiety into I ho hands of the all faithful heavenly Father. We know that we can never love God too much, and, just the same, we can never trust Him too confidently, as long as our trust is rightly guided.

St. Paul bids us be "Careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. iv:3). And here indeed is a kind of solicitude each one should anxiously cultivate, for interior peace is to be vigilantly guarded. In that peace of the Spirit everything is included — God and His justice and His kingdom. This peace a man must never forfeit, come what will, adversity or prosperity, honors or shame. And what is ihis peace? It is the love of an undivided heart for each and all of the members of the human race; just as God loves Himself; a love after the sweet example of our Lord Jesus Christ, considering how that love did its task, suffering Himself alone more than all the saints put together. Our Savior was all His days more desolate than any man ever was, and he ended His life by the bitterest death any man ever died. And yet in all this the higher faculties of our Lord's soul were as happy as they are now in heaven. The men who imitate Him most closely in outer abandonment and in interior desolation, and who stand their ground courageously, wholly deprived of help — these are the ones who find the inner kingdom of God of which we have been discoursing. God's justice is found in following Christ's footsteps in poverty and desolation of spirit. That we may thus seek and find, let us lay aside all anxiety. God's Son has said : "Whosoever will save his life, shall lose it" (Mark viii : 35). Our way lies in self-denial, and that means that a man shall essentially go out from all that he is inwardly and outwardly. May God grant us this grace. Amen.