The School of Love, February 2

LONELINESS
[Part 1]

EVERY profession requires a special training; besides special powers and talents, besides special instruction, one may almost say it requires special virtues. The virtues most needful for a successful physician are not precisely those required for a successful law­yer; the one will have patience with the body of a man, the other will have patience with his ways.

From both of these a soldier differs in almost every particular; perhaps he most of all needs patience with himself. The same is true of an apostle, of whatever kind he may be; he, too, must have his special qualifications. Priest or layman, religious or secular, man or woman, old or young, if God would make apostles of them, there is one school through which one and all must pass, one certificate they must all acquire; and when he is determined that they shall be apostles, he puts them through this school, whether they choose it or not.

And it is a school very different from that in which the world develops its ideal....
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From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918