Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the Remedy Against the Fifth and Sixth Sources of Weariness.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 14.—Of the Remedy
Against the Fifth and Sixth Sources of Weariness.
20. If, again, your spirit has been
broken by the necessity of giving up some other employment, on
which, as the more requisite, you were now bent; and if the sadness
caused by that constraint makes you catechise in no pleasant mood,
you ought to ponder the fact that, excepting that we know it to be
our duty, in all our dealings with men, to act in a merciful
manner, and in the exercise of the sincerest charity,—with this
one exception, I say, it is quite uncertain to us what is the more
profitable thing for us to do, and what the more opportune thing
for us either to pass by for a time or altogether to omit. For
inasmuch as we know not how the merits of men, on whose behalf we
are acting, stand with God, the question as to what is expedient
for them at a certain time is something which, instead of being
able to comprehend, we can rather only surmise, without the aid of
any (clear) inferences, or (at best) with the slenderest and the
most uncertain. Therefore we ought certainly to dispose the matters
with which we have to deal according to our intelligence; and then,
if we prove able to carry them out in the manner upon which we have
resolved, we should rejoice, not indeed that it was our will, but
that it was God’s will, that they should thus be accomplished.
But if anything unavoidable happens, by which the disposition thus
proposed by us is interfered with, we should bend ourselves to it
readily, lest we be broken; so that the very disposition of affairs
which God has preferred to ours may also be made our own. For it is
more in accordance with propriety that we should follow His will
than that He should follow ours. Besides, as regards this order in
the doing of things, which we wish to keep in accordance with our
own judgment, surely that course is to be approved of in which
objects that are superior have the precedence. Why then are we
aggrieved that the precedence over men should be held by the Lord
God in His vast superiority to us men, so that in the said love
which we entertain for our own order, we should thus (exhibit the
disposition to) despise order? For “no one orders for the
better” what he has to do, except the man who is rather ready to
leave undone what he is prohibited from doing by the divine power,
than desirous of doing that which he meditates in his own human
cogitations. For “there are many devices in a man’s heart;
nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord stands for ever.”1416
21. But if our mind is agitated by some cause of
offense, so as not to be capable of delivering a discourse of a
calm and enjoyable strain, our charity towards those for whom
Christ died, desiring to redeem them by the price of His own blood
from the death of the errors of this world, ought to be so great,
that the very circumstance of intelligence being brought us in our
sadness, regarding the advent of some person who longs to become a
Christian, ought to be enough to cheer us and dissipate that
heaviness of spirit, just as the delights of gain are wont to
soften the pain of losses. For we are not (fairly) oppressed by the
offense of any individual, unless it be that of the man whom we
either perceive or believe to be perishing himself, or to be the
occasion of the undoing of some weak one. Accordingly, one who
comes to us with the view of being formally admitted, in that we
cherish the hope of his ability to go forward, should wipe away the
sorrow caused by one who fails us. For even if the dread that our
proselyte may become the child of hell1417
comes into our thoughts, as, there
are many such before our eyes, from whom those offenses arise by
which we are distressed, this ought to operate, not in the way of
keeping us back, but rather in the way of stimulating us and
spurring us on. And in the same measure we ought to admonish him
whom we are instructing to be on his guard against imitating those
who are Christians only in name and not in very truth, and to take
care not to suffer himself to be so moved by their numbers as
either to be desirous of following them, or to be reluctant to
follow Christ on their account, and either to be unwilling to be in
the Church of God, where they are, or to wish to be there in such a
character as they bear. And somehow or other, in admonitions of
this sort, that address is the more glowing to which a present
sense of grief supplies the fuel; so that instead of being duller,
we utter with greater fire and vehemence under such feelings things
which, in times of greater ease, we would give forth in a colder
and less energetic manner. And this should make us rejoice that an
opportunity is afforded us under which the emotions of our mind
pass not away without yielding some fruit.
22. If, however, grief has taken
possession of us on account of something in which we ourselves have
erred or sinned, we should bear in mind not only that a “broken
spirit is a sacrifice to God,”1418
but also the saying, “Like as
water quencheth fire, so alms sin;”1419
and again, “I will have
mercy,” saith He, “rather than sacrifice.”1420
Therefore, as in the event of our
being in peril from fire we would certainly run to the water in
order to get the fire extinguished, and we would be grateful if any
person were to offer it in the immediate vicinity; so, if some
flame of sin has risen from our own stack,1421
and if we are troubled on that
account, when an opportunity has been given for a most merciful
work, we should rejoice in it, as if a fountain were offered us in
order that by it the conflagration which had burst forth might be
extinguished. Unless haply we are foolish enough to think that we
ought to be readier in running with bread, wherewith we may fill
the belly of a hungry man, than with the word of God, wherewith we
may instruct the mind of the man who feeds on it.1422
| 1422 Reading istud edentis; for
which some editions give studentis = of one who studies
it. | There is
this also to consider, namely, that if it would only be of
advantage to us to do this thing, and entail no disadvantage to
leave it undone, we might despise a remedy offered in an unhappy
fashion in the time of peril with a view to the safety, not now of
a neighbor, but of ourselves. But when from the mouth of the Lord
this so threatening sentence is heard, “Thou wicked and slothful
servant, thou oughtest to give my money to the exchangers,”1423
what
madness, I pray thee, is it thus, seeing that our sin pains us, to
be minded to sin again, by refusing to give the Lord’s money to
one who desires it and asks it! When these and such like
considerations and reflections have succeeded in dispelling the
darkness of weary feelings, the bent of mind is rendered apt for
the duty of catechising, so that that is received in a pleasant
manner which breaks forth vigorously and cheerfully from the rich
vein of charity. For these things indeed which are uttered here are
spoken, not so much by me to you, as rather to us all by that very
“love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that
is given to us.”1424
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
