The School of Love & Other Essays, April 11

THE APOSTLE'S GRIEF

"Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalised, and I am not on fire?" 2 COR. xi. 29.

[continued from yesterday]

...One day we are puzzled. We can point to nothing in particular, we can lay our hands on nothing; the glittering eye is there, the art­less confidence of action is there, even the happy laugh, and frank expression, and merry overflow of words.

And yet through and around it all there is something, which we can­not detect, but which was not there before; so thin is the film covering it that we blame ourselves for rash judgment, we tell ourselves that it is at most only a new phase of the soul to which our eyes have not yet been accustomed.

Nevertheless it is there, and remains, and soon finds a clearer definition. The laughing eye still laughs, but perhaps with a certain conscious boldness; the artless confidence of action has something aggressive in it; the frankness is too dramatic, the lauguage too loud, there is an exaggeration somewhere which does not ring true.

And once that jarring is discovered, then begin in the chords of one's own heart a sympathetic jarring, a wondering at it knows not what, an aching that will not be located, a wandering of mind, an aimlessness of action, a reaching out to any kind of relief, a yearning to do something where there is nothing to be done, a craving to shed tears which will not come - al1 these the foresigns of the storm that is about to burst....

[continued tomorrow]
___________
From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918