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By Jean Pierre Camus
You know very well how Blessed Francis valued charity, but I will give you,
nevertheless, some more of his teaching on this great subject.
To a holy soul who had placed herself under his direction, he said: "We
must do all things from love, and nothing from constraint. We must love
obedience rather than fear disobedience. I leave you the spirit of liberty:
not such as excludes obedience, for that is the liberty of the flesh, but
such as excludes constraint, scruples, and over-eagerness. However much you
may love obedience and submission, I wish you to suspend for the moment the
work in which obedience has engaged you whenever any just or charitable
occasion for so doing occurs. This omission will be a species of obedience.
Fill up its measure by charity."
From this spirit of holy and Christian liberty originated the saying so
often to be met with in his letters: "Keep your heart in peace." That is to
say: Beware of hurry, anxiety, and bitterness of heart. These he called the
ruin of devotion. He was even unwilling that people should meditate upon
the great truths of Death, Judgment and Hell, unless they at the same time
reassured themselves by the remembrance of God's love for them. Speaking to
a holy soul, he says: "Meditation on the four last things will be useful to
you provided that you always end with an act of confidence in God. Never
represent to yourself Death or Hell on the one side unless the Cross is on
the other; so that when your fears have been excited by the one you may
with confidence turn for help to the other." The one point on which he
chiefly insisted was that we must fear God from love, not love God from
fear. "To love Him from fear," he used to say, "is to put gall into our
food and to quench our thirst with vinegar; but to fear Him from love is to
sweeten aloes and wormwood."
Assuredly, our own experience convinces us that it is difficult to love
those whom we fear, and that it is impossible not to fear with a filial and
reverent fear those whom we love.
You find some difficulty, it seems, my sisters, in understanding how all
things, as St. Paul says,[1] whether good, bad, or indifferent, can in the
end work together for good to those who love God.
To satisfy you, I quote the words of Blessed Francis on this subject in one
of his letters. "Since," he says, "God can bring good out of evil, will He
not surely do so for those who have given themselves unreservedly to Him?
Yes; even sins, from which may God in His goodness keep us, are by His
Divine Providence, when we repent of them, changed into good for those who
are His. Never would David have been so bowed down with humility if he had
not sinned, nor would Magdalene have loved her Saviour so fervently had He
not forgiven her so many sins. But He could not have forgiven them had she
not committed them."
Again: "Consider, my dear daughter, this great Artificer of mercy, who
changes our miseries into graces, and out of the poison of our iniquities
compounds a wholesome medicine for our souls. Tell me, then, I beseech
you, if God works such wonders with our sins, what will He not effect with
our afflictions, with our labors, with the persecutions which we have to
endure? No matter what trouble befalls you, nor from what direction it may
come, let your soul be at peace, certain that if you truly love God all
will turn to good. And though you cannot see the springs which work this
marvelous change, rest assured that it will take place.
"If the hand of God touches your eyes with the clay of shame and reproach,
it is only to give you clearer sight, and to cause you to be honored.
"If He should cast you to the ground, as He did St. Paul, it will only be
to raise you up again to glory."[2]
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
"All by love, nothing by constraint." This was his favorite motto, and the
mainspring of his direction of others. He has often said to me that those who
try to force the human will are exercising a tyranny which is hateful to God and
man. This was why he had such a horror of those masterful and dominant spirits
which insist on being obeyed, bon gré mal gré, and would have every one
give way to them. "Those," he often said, "who love to make themselves feared,
fear to make themselves loved; and they themselves are more fearful than anyone
else: for others only fear them, but they are
afraid of every one."
I have often heard him say these striking words: "In the royal galley of
divine love there is no galley-slave; all the oarsmen are volunteers." And
he expresses the same sentiment in Theotimus, when he says: "Divine love
governs the soul with an incomparable sweetness; for no one of the slaves
of love is made such by force, but love brings all things under its rule,
with a constraint so delightful, that as nothing is so strong as love,
nothing also is so sweet as its strength."[3] And in another part of the
same book he makes a soul, attracted by the delicious perfume shed by the
divine Bridegroom on his path, say:
"Let no one think that Thou draggest me after Thee like an unwilling
slave or a lifeless load. Ah! no. Thou drawest me by the odour of Thine
ointments; though I follow Thee, it is not that Thou draggest me, but that
Thou enticest me. Thy drawing is mighty, but not violent, since its whole
force lies in its sweetness. Perfumes draw me to follow them in virtue
only of their sweetness. And sweetness, how can it attract but sweetly and
pleasantly?"[4] Following out this principle, he never gave a
command even to those who were bound to obey him, whether his servants or his
clergy, save in the form of a request or suggestion. He held in special
veneration, and often inculcated upon me the command of St. Peter: Feed the flock of
God which is among you, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy
lucre's sake, neither as lording it over the clergy, but being made a
pattern of virtue to the flock. [5]
And here, my sisters, I feel that if will be for your profit, although the
story is not to my own credit, to relate a circumstance which occurred in
the early years of my episcopate. I was young, impetuous, and impatient;
eager to reform the abuses and disorders which from time to time I met with
in my pastoral visitations. Often, too, I know, I was bitter and harsh when
discouraged.
Once in a despairing mood because of the many failures I noticed in myself, and
others, I poured forth my lamentations and self-accusations to our Blessed
Father, who said: "What a masterful spirit you have! You want to walk upon the
wings of the wind. You let yourself be carried away by your zeal, which, like a
will-of-the-wisp, will surely lead you over a precipice. Have you forgotten the
warning of your patron, St. Peter, not
to think you can walk in burning heat? [6] Would you do
more than God, and restrain the liberty of the creatures whom God has made free?
You decide matters, as if the wills of your subjects were all in your own hands.
God, Who holds all hearts in His and Who searches the reins and the hearts, does
not act thus. He puts up with resistance, rebellion against His light, kicking
against the goad, opposition to His inspirations, even though His Spirit be
grieved thereby. He does, indeed, suffer those to perish who through the
hardness of their impenitent hearts have heaped to themselves wrath in the day
of vengeance. Yet He never wearies of calling them to Him, however often they
reject His offers and say to Him, Depart from us, we
will not follow Thy ways. [7]
"In this our Angel Guardians follow His example, and although we may
forsake God by our iniquities, they will not forsake us as long as there is
breath in our body, even though we may have fallen into sin. Do you want
better examples for regulating your conduct?"
[Footnote 1: Rom. viii. 28.]
[Footnote 2: Rom. viii. 28.]
[Footnote 3: Book i. 6.]
[Footnote 4: Book ii. 13.]
[Footnote 5: Peter v. 2, 3.]
[Footnote 6: 1 Peter iv. 12.]
[Footnote 7: Job xxi. 14.]
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