CHARITY (or the Love of God)
Second Meditation - Priestly Motives
I. Our innate weakness offers many an obstacle to the keeping of God's law, and our twisted inclinations and vicious habits provide many more. But greater still are the stumbling blocks on the steep climb of priestly duty. We cannot but strain and stagger under this yoke with all its extra burdens, enough to tax the strength of an angel.
All the more reason why we should not forget that charity alone endows with superabundant energies, for "Charity sustains, believes, hopes, endures to the last" and, giving a little twist to our Lord's words: all things are possible to him that loveth.
The author of the Imitation, in an immortal passage worthy of Plato, has this to say:
"Love does not feel the burden nor take account of hard work; it desires more than it can cope with; it does not complain if the impossible is commanded, being sure of accomplishing everything in God; and it brings many things to a successful issue where one who loves not would falter and fall." (Bk. III, ch. vi.)There is one label for all my cowardice and lack of courage, that chafes at any restraint and sees mountains in molehills: want of the love of God.
II. Our Divine Lord, when making me His distinguished and privileged minister, might well have asked me: "Dost thou love me more than these?" (John xxi, 15)
Who should love Thee, Lord, if not I? Into these feeble hands of mine Thou didst deposit Thy doctrine, Thy Sacraments, Thy honour and glory, Thy own Person; a complete retractation, it would seem, of a former statement: I will not give my glory to another (Is. xlii, 8).
No one contemplates and actually touches the inexhaustible wealth of the Lord's Mercy so closely as I, and for all that, this tremendous Lover comes begging to me for a few crumbs of my love, of that paltry love which I have lavished so prodigally up to now on a host of vile creatures without receiving or even asking in return for so much as a disdainful "thank you"; and yet, of a love which is my heart's only treasure to dispose of freely.
I must confess with shame, O Lord, that when I did give Thee something of my love it was only after a lot of bargaining, only by driblets, as it were; and many a time I just answered thee with a round refusal, or else, I asked for, or snatched, it back after giving it, as though repentant of having deposited my sole treasure in such hands, or rather, in such a Heart, as Thine.
III. And yet, I would love Thee! Yes, I would that my heart were a red-hot cinder in the brazier of Thy divine Charity! Because if love unites and transforms, what more desirable gain than to transform my heart into Thine? Ah, but I find it hard to accomplish. It is hard for the mind to ascend the rugged heights of faith to the Absolute Truth where God dwells in Light inaccessible (1 Tim. v, 16); harder still for the human will to keep to the hilly road of love and the fulfilment of God's Will and reach the All-spiritual Sovereign Good, which is so remote and so estranged from the greater number of my tastes and pleasures.
And I am so accustomed to, and glutted with, the clammy sweetness of tangible things - portrayed to me so fascinatingly amid the auroral splendours of desire - and I am so much at home with the love of what is human and with the human ways of love, that my soul refuses to face, rejects as an airy nothingness, as unsubstantial food, the love of what is purely Divine.
And precisely for this reason the Word of God became Man, became flesh, as St. John puts it, who also writes:
"Our message concerns that Word, who is Life; what he was from the first, what we have heard about him, what our own eyes have seen of him; what it was that met our gaze, and the touch of our hands." (l John i, 1)The result is, O Jesus, that now when I think of Thee, remember Thy actions, bring Thee before my imagination, sympathise with Thy griefs, ruminate Thy words, and love Thee in all things, I am entering into a mind like my own, cherishing a flesh like mine, loving a heart like mine; and at the same time, I am loving my God and keeping the greatest and first Commandment; because in seeing and loving Thee, one sees and loves Thy Father; for Thou and the Father are One (John xiv, 9; x, 30).
I thank Thee, dear Jesus, for having placed the precept of loving God within such easy reach of me. No, it will not be hard for me now, it will be something easy and smooth to love Thee; for Thy life I read and ponder over every day; Thy doctrine I teach; Thy flesh I eat, and Thy blood I drink.
St. Gregory no longer baffles me when he says that "the Saints learn by loving what they speak about when teaching".
IV. The precept to love God is very much like God Himself: unseen and unfelt, and yet it is in everything, sustaining and giving life to everything.
So too, this commandment seems to impose no particular obligation, but it is the soul of the entire decalogue. I shall therefore derive motives for observing it from the fact of its being so gently insinuating and easy to fulfil.
Negatively, I shall observe this precept by a fixed determination never to offend God and to lose everything rather than God. And on the positive side, when the occasion arises of offending Him, I shall choose to forgo any other good, however great, rather than incur mortal sin; and when tempted and allured by the enemies of my soul to go astray, I shall sooner see them disappointed and myself stripped of everything than insult and forfeit God.
Moreover, I shall thank the good God who in His loving kindness has so condescended to my human condition and so adapted Himself to my natural manner that, without reproach, He allows me to love all created things, as many as I wish, on the sole condition that their place in my affections is not opposed to, and incompatible with, His; and even allows me to love them with stronger feeling and greater intensity than Himself, as long as I hold Him in higher esteem and appreciate His love more than that of all creatures.
Resolutions
1. I shall school myself in the affective love of God by directing all my activities to His greater glory; that is, to a clearer and more adequate knowledge of God and to loving Him and conforming to His divine Will in everything:
(a) Choosing whatever pleases Him best either in work or in suffering,2. Putting it in a nutshell: I shall transfer the fourth commandment to the first, conducting myself towards God as to a true and only Lord and Father; caring for Him, revering Him, and obeying Him as such; for this is the Christian manner of divine worship. And thus my whole life, with all its yearnings and in all its dealings, will be but one long act of piety and filial fear and worship in spirit and truth towards my Father who is in heaven.
(b) Doing so in the mode and manner most acceptable to Him; and
(c) Simply and solely because it does please Him, with that purest intention alone.
3. In sum, I shall stake my all on loving in every way my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, God and Man; studying Him affectionately, meditating on His life and character, feasting my mind and senses on Him; preferring Him to all my friends, all my kith and kin, to father and mother, and to my own self; because he that loves father or mother more than Christ is not worthy of Christ (Matt. x, 37)
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.
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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!
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