88. Tin Wide Sweep of Love — Sermon for the Twenty-first Sunday After Trinity

Synopsis — The depths of our evil tendencies little understood — True Christians are never without anxiety concerning hidden weaknesses— These often take the form of excuses — Also shown by self-will in choosing devotions — Rules for alternating prayer and work. Why inner joy should always be suspected — Danger of indulging a critical spirit.

SECOND SERMON FOR THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY

AFTER TRINITY.

Behold, I have prepared My dinner. — Matt, xxii, 4.

After speaking yesterday of how God prepared His Son's marriage feast, I am now to further explain how the bride, that is to say our soul, is to be unclothed of all its old garments so that it may be adorned with new ones. We shall consider how God gives and takes all things, arranges and adjusts all things, for the purpose of this unclothing of His beloved bride so that he may newly array her with appropriate and divine nuptial robes. It is much more necessary to attend to this unclothing than to the reclothing of our souls, for the unclothing is as far as our part extends. We may not doubt but that God will do His part perfectly in the reclothing, once the soul is fitted for it.

I must further explain my teaching that the root of our imperfections must be dug out. For when one has weeded his garden, there may remain unnoticed a root or two deep set in the ground, which will spring up with the good seed and spoil the crop. By this I mean that the deep lying defects of our soul, which too often get little notice, are not destroyed, and are only touched on the surface by our confessions. Over these the plow of good spiritual exercises passes leaving the evil tendencies still there, rooted in our nature. It may be secret pride, or some subtle form of impurity, or some deep aversion for others joined with scorn and envy. These spring up in due time amid apparently admirable virtues, defiling the fruit of a good life,

Be sure that what ever else God does or intends for us, He insists peremptorily, that we shall uncover these harmful roots of sin and cast them forth from the soul. For as long as they are there, thou shalt have no rest : they will spring up again when thou least expectest. Such was plainly the case with many even of the fathers of the desert, who having lived in solitude for thirty or forty years in all holy exercises without destroying the roots of vicious inclinations, finally were ruined. Be watchful, children. The enemy may sleep long and sound, but he is liable to attack you suddenly, whether by pride, or self love, or inordinate love of creatures. Search your interior soul diligently : and if you find these root- weaknesses, destroy them relentlessly by humility and self-condemnation, appealing to God very fervently for His assistance. Follow this course; and rely wholly on God, for the cause is entirely His own ; persistently persevere. For some, as soon as they find relief in their prayers, give over their efforts at purification of heart. For thy part, never be without anxiety concerning these obstinate evil tendencies ; never fall into self-trust. The man who is on his guard about his interior weaknesses, is never caught unprepared ; when the storm of temptation breaks upon him, he instantly takes refuge in God, who is to him like a safe harbor within his soul. Those who are careless in this matter, are, when overtaken

. by death, in an awful state of misery. They have wilfully cherished sinful inclinations, and are now justly condemned to purgatory. What if this painful search and this hard repression of nature does

I afflict thee? Does it not reveal thee to thyself plainly and honestly?

■ And the pain that thou sufferest will serve thee for thy purgatory.

j! Dear children, there is no blemish of the soul so trifling (for I speak not now of gross sinfulness), but that it may be a serious obstacle to

, God's divine work in thee, if thou clingest to it wilfully. And it will cause thee more suffering in purgatory than the martyrs endured

I taking them all together. Thou mayest easily languish thirty or forty

I I years there for such faults: is it not better to suffer for a brief period f\ here in all patience and humility? — to say nothing of the wonderful increase of eternal joy to be thus obtained.

The king said : "Tell them that were invited : Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my beeves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready." You know how the invited guests refused to come, offering various excuses. And some even laid hands on the king's servants, beat them, and put them to death. So that at last it happened that though many were called but few were chosen. Dear children, the like of this is all too common among us in different classes of people, both secular and religious; for when God calls to perfection, objections and excuses are everywhere heard on the score of worldly occupations and even of mere slothfulness. It puzzles the brain to calculate the marvellous excess indulged in as to clothing and food and furniture. In many cases not a tenth part of what is provided is really necessary. Yet this miserable age of ours leads straight on to eternity; and it is as true today as ever before, that what keeps soul and body together should content us. A man should be willing to perish with want, rather than to wallow in such gross excesses.

Children, lay it to heart that God has called you away from this wretched world to His faithful service. Let us relentlessly cut off all that is not of real necessity, let us avoid every sort of multiplicity and all idleness whatsoever. Turn inward and harken to the call of God in your various vocations, one to the contemplative state of life, another to that of active charity or religion, and a third to that state which is far above both, namely the quiet stillness of the spirit in union with God in divine obscurity. And even these last God sometimes calls to outward activity but in due time returning them again to their interior repose, just as He wills. For if when God calls me to His outward work and I turn inward, then the inner life avails me nothing; and if He would lead me inward and I yet go outward, then my outward labor for Him comes to naught. Stay at home with thyself, therefore, intently listening for God's call : there can be no doubt but that He will sound it plainly in thy soul's ears. Whithersoever it may direct thee, there shouldst thou go and nowhere else.

When one is called to the inner life of stillness and divine darkness, and then insists on never resuming outward works of charity — an unfaithfulness too common nowadays — much harm ensues. A man must under all circumstances do those works of charity that Providence has assigned to him. He must leave the interior, in a spirit of self-denial, not choosing this or that state or work according to his natural disposition, as many, alas, are accustomed to do. All must be done from motives of unmixed love of God's will, and in real detachment from self. A really detached spirit is keen euough to detect danger of injurious multiplicity of mind in devoting himself to external duties; no one knows so well what multiplicity is. Hence he avoids what is dangerous to his recollection, even though it be the companionship of ordinary good people; for their conversation is only too often light and trivial and concerning an infinity of affairs. Turn thou away from all this, and enter into thyself as soon as possible, lest thy soul shall swarm with a multiplicity of useless forms and images.

Once thy work of external charity be done, then hasten inward again. And if entire recollection be not granted thee immediately, then occupy thy mind with deep thoughts of God's unspeakable goodness, such as His overflowing bounty in giving us His divine Son's blessed humanity, and in our Saviour's life, passion and death; as well as the glorious virtues of God's saints. Thus may one be absorbed very profitably in God, in all love and gratitude. Presently this lights up one's soul, revealing one's faults, and it moves one to deep sorrow. All this is good and spiritually stimulating. But better still is interior quiet — as much better as the interior is better than the exterior life. And one greatly errs if he would disturb this restful calm by introducing forms and figures of the imagination — in the same way as one would cripple necessary works of charity by over-much of the restful spirit.

And now a caution : Sometimes men's heads are turned with the favors of the inward rest, and self-gratulation results; true poverty of spirit is forfeited, and the soul enjoys the sweetness of divine grace with the gluttony of a bear devouring honey. The inner of joy contemplation should have no place in us except as a way to the love of God and God alone. One should seek naught of self, clinging only to the divine honor, lest one's fate should be that of the wicked servant in the gospel, who having appropriated his master's goods to his own use, was stripped both of them and of his own, and then put to death.

From this right relation of the inward and outward spiritual life, is born interior peace amid the silence and obscurity of God's presence in the spirit. About this, much is said in both the old and new Testaments, as, for example, how Moses was led by God into darkness; and in the Book of Kings, how God was not in the stormy wind but in the whistling of a gentle air ; and as we read in the book of Wisdom : "While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty Word leaped down from heaven" (Wisdom xviii, 14, 15). All our spiritual exercises, all our good works, should serve this holy silence of the spirit, our attention never wandering from it, every effort bent on deepening it.

But some confuse this supernatural quiet of soul with mere natural interior peace. Be on your guard; stand in sincere fear of God, be humble, making nothing of self, suspecting self love in all things, flying incessanily to God's protection. True, this course means a sharp anguish of soul; it is painful in the extreme to be tormented with unceasing yearnings after self-renunciation and simplicity : but it is the anguish of purgatory, whose cleansing fires are thus endured before their time.

Perhaps one may not be able to withdraw his mind from the multiplicity and distraction caused by external works of charity as quickly as he would like. But that should not distress him. If all is done for God's sake, He will shortly abate the hindrance it would otherwise cause: God needs no long time to work His purpose in our soul. Turn quickly inward as soon as occasion serves. When thou hast established the Unnamable in thy soul's depths, all that may be named will be gathered to it, for all must respond to the divine summons within thee. If entire recollection is slow in coming, then exercise thyself briefly and regularly in the interior ways already treated of, till the greater gift of quiet in God shall be granted thee. If a man will but reject self and place God as the only object of thought and act, without doubt God will guide him in whatsoever way he treads.

Now, when simple hearted men hear all this, they directly resolve to make a beginning, and to do it strictly in this manner: always to begin, over and over again to begin, such is their whole ambition, such their life. But men of a critical spirit act otherwise: they take what is taught them in their own meaning of it, and carry it out after their own natural devices and methods. But when death is approaching they find their souls void of God, and are in much distress. They have not. to be sure, departed from holy faith, they are not in a state of mortal sin, but they are to be cast into purgatory to atone for grave venial sins : either that or the eternal fires of hell, if they have unhappily died in mortal sin.

When our Lord says that His beeves are killed, He may be taken to mean outward works of religion; when He says His fatlings are killed, we can apply the term to interior works, namely holy contemplation ; and the wedding supper itself, represents the interior quiet of spirit, which the soul enjoys in God as God does in Himself. Finally God the King "went in to see the guests, and He saw there a man that had not on a wedding garment. And He saith to him : Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the King said: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness." The wedding garment is divine love and a divine intention in all things. This excludes all other love, either for self or for any creature: God alone absorbs it wholly. Now we meet with men who claim to possess this love and this purity of purpose : they have heard it explained, they have read of it in books, they know the meaning of it. But this is true only of their reasoning powers, for they have not worked it out in act. They possess it in knowledge and not in essence. It is not in their soul's depths that this love abides-all love for God alone, every purpose for God alone; no, what they have is self love in disguise. For as a matter of fact what they have in view and what they love is God's gifts and not God alone. Hence the question : "Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment" of real love? A man should indeed use all of God's gifts, but he must not rest upon them with joy, but only on God alone. Hence the King's words : "Bind him hands and feet," that is to say fetter all the powers of his soul, and cast him for a further trial in God's cleansing processes, amid darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Therefore, dear children, think of God alone amid all His gifts, love Him alone, lest your fate should be the same. May God grant us His true light to this end. Amen.