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| Of the Attainment of Cheerfulness in the Duty of Catechising, and of Various Causes Producing Weariness in the Catechumen.
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Chapter 10.—Of the
Attainment of Cheerfulness in the Duty of Catechising, and of
Various Causes Producing Weariness in the Catechumen.
14. At this point you perhaps
desiderate some example of the kind of discourse intended, so that
I may show you by an actual instance how the things which I have
recommended are to be done. This indeed I shall do, so far as by
God’s help I shall be able. But before proceeding to that, it is
my duty, in consistency with what I have promised, to speak of the
acquisition of the cheerfulness (to which I have alluded). For as
regards the matter of the rules in accordance with which your
discourse should be set forth, in the case of the catechetical
instruction of a person who comes with the express view of being
made a Christian, I have already made good, as far as has appeared
sufficient, the promise which I made. And surely I am under no
obligation at the same time to do myself in this volume that which
I enjoin as the right thing to be done. Consequently, if I do that,
it will have the value of an overplus. But how can the overplus be
super-added by me before I have filled up the measure of what is
due? Besides, one thing which I have heard you make the subject of
your complaint above all others, is the fact that your discourse
seemed to yourself to be poor and spiritless when you were
instructing any one in the Christian name. Now this, I know,
results not so much from want of matter to say, with which I am
well aware you are sufficiently provided and furnished, or from
poverty of speech itself, as rather from weariness of mind. And
that may spring either from the cause of which I have already
spoken, namely, the fact that our intelligence is better pleased
and more thoroughly arrested by that which we perceive in silence
in the mind, and that we have no inclination to have our attention
called off from it to a noise of words coming far short of
representing it; or from the circumstance that even when discourse
is pleasant, we have more delight in hearing or reading things
which have been expressed in a superior manner, and which are set
forth without any care or anxiety on our part, than in putting
together, with a view to the comprehension of others, words
suddenly conceived, and leaving it an uncertain issue, on the one
hand, whether such terms occur to us as adequately represent the
sense, and on the other, whether they be accepted in such
a
manner as to profit; or yet again, from the consideration that, in
consequence of their being now thoroughly familiar to ourselves,
and no longer necessary to our own advancement, it becomes irksome
to us to be recurring very frequently to those matters which are
urged upon the uninstructed, and our mind, as being by this time
pretty well matured, moves with no manner of pleasure in the circle
of subjects so well-worn, and, as it were, so childish. A sense of
weariness is also induced upon the speaker when he has a hearer who
remains unmoved, either in that he is actually not stirred by any
feeling, or in that he does not indicate by any motion of the body
that he understands or that he is pleased with what is said.1392
| 1392 The sentence, “either in that
he is actually not stirred…by what is said,” is omitted in many
mss. | Not that
it is a becoming disposition in us to be greedy of the praises of
men, but that the things which we minister are of God; and the more
we love those to whom we discourse, the more desirous are we that
they should be pleased with the matters which are held forth for
their salvation: so that if we do not succeed in this, we are
pained, and we are weakened, and become broken-spirited in the
midst of our course, as if we were wasting our efforts to no
purpose. Sometimes, too, when we are drawn off from some matter
which we are desirous to go on with, and the transaction of which
was a pleasure to us, or appeared to be more than usually needful,
and when we are compelled, either by the command of a person whom
we are unwilling to offend, or by the importunity of some parties
that we find it impossible to get rid of, to instruct any one
catechetically, in such circumstances we approach a duty for which
great calmness is indispensable with minds already perturbed, and
grieving at once that we are not permitted to keep that order which
we desire to observe in our actions, and that we cannot possibly be
competent for all things; and thus out of very heaviness our
discourse as it advances is less of an attraction, because,
starting from the arid soil of dejection, it goes on less
flowingly. Sometimes, too, sadness has taken possession of our
heart in consequence of some offense or other, and at that very
time we are addressed thus: “Come, speak with this person; he
desires to become a Christian.” For they who thus address us do
it in ignorance of the hidden trouble which is consuming us within.
So it happens that, if they are not the persons to whom it befits
us to open up our feelings, we undertake with no sense of pleasure
what they desire; and then, certainly, the discourse will be
languid and unenjoyable which is transmitted through the agitated
and fuming channel of a heart in that condition. Consequently,
seeing there are so many causes serving to cloud the calm serenity
of our minds, in accordance with God’s will we must seek remedies
for them, such as may bring us relief from these feelings of
heaviness, and help us to rejoice in fervor of spirit, and to be
jocund in the tranquility of a good work. “For God loveth a
cheerful giver.”1393
15. Now if the cause of our sadness
lies in the circumstance that our hearer does not apprehend what we
mean, so that we have to come down in a certain fashion from the
elevation of our own conceptions, and are under the necessity of
dwelling long in the tedious processes of syllables which come far
beneath the standard of our ideas, and have anxiously to consider
how that which we ourselves take in with a most rapid draught of
mental apprehension is to be given forth by the mouth of flesh in
the long and perplexed intricacies of its method of enunciation;
and if the great dissimilarity thus felt (between our utterance and
our thought) makes it distasteful to us to speak, and a pleasure to
us to keep silence, then let us ponder what has been set before us
by Him who has “showed us an example that we should follow His
steps.”1394
For
however much our articulate speech may differ from the vivacity of
our intelligence, much greater is the difference of the flesh of
mortality from the equality of God. And, neverless, “although He
was in the same form, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a
servant,”—and so on down to the words “the death of the
cross.”1395
| 1395 Phil. ii. 17. The form in
which the quotation is given above, with the omission of the
intermediate clauses, is due probably to the copyist, and not to
Augustin himself. The words left out are given thus in the Serm.
XLVII on
Ezekiel
xxxiv.: “Being made in the likeness of men, and being found
in the fashion of a man: He humbled Himself, being made obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross.” [See R.V.] | What is
the explanation of this but that He made Himself “weak to the
weak, in order that He might gain the weak?”1396
Listen to His follower as he
expresses himself also in another place to this effect: “For
whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we be
sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth
us, because we thus judge that He died for all.”1397
And how,
indeed, should one be ready to be spent for their souls,1398
if he
should find it irksome to him to bend himself to their ears? For
this reason, therefore, He became a little child in the midst of
us, (and) like a nurse cherishing her
children.1399
For is it
a pleasure to lisp shortened and broken words, unless love invites
us? And yet men desire to have infants to whom they have to do that
kind of service; and it is a sweeter thing to a mother to put small
morsels of masticated food into her little son’s mouth, than to
eat up and devour larger pieces herself. In like manner,
accordingly, let not the thought of the hen1400
recede from your heart, who covers
her tender brood with her drooping feathers, and with broken voice
calls her chirping young ones to her, while they that turn away
from her fostering wings in their pride become a prey to birds. For
if intelligence brings delights in its purest recesses, it should
also be a delight to us to have an intelligent understanding of the
manner in which charity, the more complaisantly it descends to the
lowest objects, finds its way back, with all the greater vigor to
those that are most secret, along the course of a good conscience
which witnesses that it has sought nothing from those to whom it
has descended except their everlasting salvation.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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