The School of Love & Other Essays, April 13

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.

[continuation from yesterday]

...In truth we reckless creatures seldom con­sider what we are doing when we play fast and loose with right and wrong. We know we make ourselves miserable by it, but we pretend not to care for that; we do not always know how miserable we make others, or if we do we affect not to believe it.

But often enough for the sake of someone else we will a void evil, even when we will not avoid it for our own; and if we would only realise how our own determination hurts the heart of one we love, perhaps we would at least think twice before we acted.

I do not know what good can come of need­lessly hurting others; I do not even know what self-satisfaction the most selfish human being can gain by it; yet I do know that many a time in life a soul that is going from good to bad, or from bad to worse, will trample on the hearts of those who love it - a mother's, a father's, a sister's, a brother's, a husband's, a wife's, a truly loving friend's - revelling in the blood that is spilt, even while each stamp of the foot sends agony into its own heart, and when asked why it so acts it will cry out simply that so it chooses.

It is the hardest thing to understand in human life, this deliberate defiance of common human feeling by the soul that determines to have its own way; it is the most fruitful cause of misery in every home; yet it is found again and again, and always the cause is the same....

[continued tomorrow]
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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