we, perhaps, daily commit without discernment.
"Fourthly, aspiration by the fervent, whose one desire and effort, in the midst of burdened and restless homes, is to rise higher and higher in union with God.
"Fifthly, self-accusation at our own unprofitableness, from the generosity and fidelity of those who are hindered on every side, and yet in humility, self-denial, charity and union with God surpass us, who have every gift of time and grace needed for perfection."
A similar effect is produced in us by the ordinary visitation of our people, even in the most difficult surroundings. How many do we not come across whose daily uphill struggle for virtue puts our own lives to shame! Others whose trust in God in apparently hopeless circumstances, and the answers which we see to their prayers, bring the closeness of God's providence over His elect sensibly nearer to us. Then our prayer with our people and for our people, our instructions and sermons, our indirect influence over them, all alike continually keep us in the presence of God. There is a tendency among some priests to look upon the devotions in which they lead their people as one thing, and their own spiritual exercises—their Office, Meditation, Spiritual Reading—as another. There is no need for any such distinction. The devotions which a priest goes through with his people—the Rosary, confraternity prayers, Benediction and the like— react on his spiritual life quite as strongly as his Meditation or Spiritual Reading which he may have omitted in their favour. The Cure of Ars for many years practically gave up his private spiritual exercises, except his mass, in order to devote the whole of his time to his pastoral work, either in the Confessional, or in the midst of his people, preaching to them, or saying night prayers or other devotions with them. In his later years he was dispensed by Rome even from saying his Office. His was indeed an extreme case; but the same principles hold good, in their measure, in the case of every priest who devotes himself to his pastoral work. Even the sin and misery which we see around us, bring vividly before us the dignity of our own office in trying to rescue our people from the results of their own folly. Still more when we minister at the death either of one who has led a good Christian life, or one who has become a true penitent, are we brought almost into touch with the other world. There is a sacredness about a Catholic death-bed which is all its own. One moment the patient is going through the last of his sufferings in this world, dependent upon our poor help and our prayers, and receiving the consolations of religion at our hands: a moment later he is in the other world, looking down on us, with knowledge and experience which we so long to have, his salvation we hope assured, and this the result of our ministry. Can any priest come back from a Catholic death-bed without a feeling of awe, and his faith strengthened as though he were in actual contact with the next world?
To sum up then, the pastoral work of the priest is in itself a means of sanctification as direct and as efficacious as any personal religious exercises can be; and while we should always be jealous of omitting any of our accustomed devotions through carelessness or laziness, we need have no misgiving when they are omitted in consequence of the pressure of our pastoral work. We may fitly conclude with one more quotation from Cardinal Manning on the sanctifying power of the self-sacrifice which a true pastor practises:—11
"The pastoral office is in itself a discipline of perfection. For first of all it is a life of abnegation of self. A pastor has so many obediences to fulfil, as he has souls to serve. The good and the evil, the sick and the whole, the young and the old, the wise and the foolish, the worldly and the unworldly—who are not always wise—the penitent and the impenitent, the converted and the unconverted, the lapsed and the relapsed, the obdurate and the defiant, all must be watched over—none may be neglected, still less cast off—always, at all times and in all ways possible. St. Philip used to say that a priest should have no time of his own, and that many of his most consoling conversations came to him out of hours at unseasonable moments. If he had sent them away because they came out of time, or at supper-time and the like, they might have been lost. Then again, the trials of temper, patience, self-control in bearing with the strange and inconsiderate minds that come to him, and the demands made upon his strength and endurance day and night in the calls of the sick and dying, coming often one after another when for a moment he has gone to rest; the weary and continual importunities of people and of letters, till the sound of the bell or the knock at the door is a constant foreboding, too surely fulfilled; all these things make a pastor's life as wearisome, and, strange to say, as isolated as if he were in the desert. No sackcloth so mortifies the body as this life of perpetual self-abnegation mortifies the will. But when the will is mortified, the servant is like his Master, and his Master is the exemplar of all perfection."
CONFERENCE III
THERE is nothing new in the remark that Christ at His coming sanctified the state of poverty in a manner totally new to the world. In this relation we look upon the circumstances which surrounded His birth as a very special Providence. The life of the Holy Family at Nazareth was indeed one of ordinary but apparently not extreme poverty. The question "Is not this the son of the carpenter whom we know?" "Is not this the carpenter?" show us that our Lord and St. Joseph practised a trade in the ordinary way, like any other Jews would have done, working no doubt day by day for their living, but not in a state of destitution, or in want for the necessaries of life. By a combination of circumstances however, which we believe to have been brought about by God for this express purpose, His birth took place away from His home and from the friends of His mother and St. Joseph, in surroundings which were without what may fairly be considered as the necessaries of life. It was under these circumstances that He preached His first sermon on the dignity of Poverty.
It was a new idea to the people and one of which the world had never before heard. The poor have ever formed the vast majority of mankind; yet the instinct has always been to look down upon them. The ancient Romans looked upon the needy and the afflicted as the object of the malediction of the gods. A story is told of one of the Emperors sending a whole shipload of them to sea, and having the vessel sunk, so as to rid the city of their presence. The Jews had indeed learnt something less opposed to the truth; but even they looked upon Poverty as a misfortune. A promise of an earthly reward was necessary as a stimulus to lead them on to do their duty. "I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." "Honour thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be long lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee." A modest competency was to them the minimum that was put before them to deliver them from care and anxiety. "Give me neither beggary nor riches: give me only the necessaries of life." 12 Yet they knew that if the poor were faithful to God, He would protect them; and indeed that one of the attributes of the God of the Jews was His providential care of the poor. "He shall judge the poor of the people, and he shall save the children of the poor, and he shall humble the oppressors. . . . He shall deliver the poor from the mighty, and the needy that had no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy; and he shall save the souls of the poor." 13
Our Lord in His teaching, however, went far beyond anything which even the Jews had before their minds, when He proclaimed that Poverty was the true state of blessedness. His first recorded words as official teacher of mankind are "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." In another passage we read still more explicitly, 14 "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God; Blessed are ye that hunger now, for you shall be filled; Blessed are ye that weep now, for you shall laugh; . . . but woe to you that are rich, for you have your consolation. Woe to you that are filled, for you shall hunger; woe to you that now laugh, for you shall mourn and weep." He is here putting the state of poverty forward as the state of blessing, more to be desired than the state of riches.
The same idea we find enforced by our Lord in His teaching in numerous instances. He speaks of as "the Mammon of Iniquity," so intimately connected does He consider them with vice. More than that. He speaks as though the salvation of a rich man was so difficult as to be almost a test of God's omnipotence. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
Prov. xxx. 8.
Ps. lxxxi. 4, 12.
St. Luke vi. 20.
