The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales Part 13

"On the other hand, harshness tests far better the fidelity of a heart which loves G.o.d sincerely. For, finding nothing pleasing in the command except the sweetness of divine love, to which alone it yields obedience, the perfection of that obedience becomes the greater, since the intention is purer, more direct, and more immediately turned to G.o.d. It was in this spirit that David said that, _for the sake of the words_ of G.o.d--that is, of His law--he had _kept hard ways_."[1] Our Blessed Father added this simile to explain his meaning further:

"Obeying a harsh, irritating, and vexatious superior is like drawing clear water from a spring which flows through the jaws of a lion of bronze. It is like the riddle of Samson, _Out of the eater came forth meat_; it is hearing G.o.d's voice, and seeing G.o.d's will alone in that of a superior, even if the command be, as in the case of St. Peter, _Kill and eat_;[2] it is to say with Job, _Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him._"[3]

[Footnote 1: Psalm xvi. 4.]

[Footnote 2: Acts x. 13.]

[Footnote 3: Job xiii. 15.]

UPON THE OBEDIENCE THAT MAY BE PRACTISED BY SUPERIORS.

Asking him one day if it was possible for persons in authority, whether in the world or in the cloister, to practise the virtue of obedience, he replied: "Certainly, and they can do so far more perfectly and more heroically than their subjects."

Then, seeing my astonishment at this apparent paradox, he went on to explain it in the following manner: "Those who are obliged, either by precept or by vow, which takes the place of precept, to practise obedience, are, as a rule, subject only to one superior. Those, on the other hand, who are in authority, are free to obey more widely, and to obey even in commanding, because if they consider that it is G.o.d Who puts them over the heads of the others, and Who commands them to command those others, who does not see that even their commanding is an act of obedience? This kind of obedience may even be practised by princes who have none but G.o.d set over them, and who have to render an account of their actions to Him alone.

I may add that there is no power on earth so sublime as not to have, at least in some respects, another set over it. Christian kings render filial obedience to the Roman Pontiff, and the sovereign Pontiff himself submits to his confessor in the Sacrament of Penance. But there is a still higher degree of obedience which even Prelates and the greatest among men may practise. It is that which the Apostle counsels when he says: _Be ye subject to every human creature for G.o.d's sake_.[1] Who for love of us not only became subject to the Blessed Virgin and to St. Joseph, but made Himself obedient to death and to the death of the Cross, submitting Himself in His Pa.s.sion to the most sinful and degraded of the earth, uttering not a cry, even as a lamb under the hand of him who shears it and slays it. It is by this universal obedience to every creature that we become all things to all men in order that we may win all to Jesus Christ. It is by this that we take our neighbour, whoever he may be, for our superior, becoming servants for our Lord's sake."

[Footnote 1: 1 Peter ii. 13.]

AN INSTANCE OF OUR SAINT'S OBEDIENCE.

On one occasion, when the Duke of Savoy, being pressed by many urgent public needs, had obtained from the Pope a Brief empowering him to levy contributions on the Church property in his dominions, Blessed Francis, finding some slackness and unwillingness on the part of the beneficed clergy of the diocese to yield obedience to this order, when he had called them together to settle what was to be done, spoke with just indignation.

"What! gentlemen," he cried, "is it for us to question and reason when two sovereigns concur in issuing the same command? Is it for us, I say, to scrutinize their counsels, and ask, Why are you acting thus? Not only to the decrees of sovereign courts, but even to the sentence of the most insignificant judges appointed by G.o.d to decide differences in our affairs, we yield deference so far as not to enquire into the motive of their decisions. And here, where two oracles who have only to render account to G.o.d of what orders they give, speak, we set to work to enquire into their motives and reasons as if we were charged to investigate their conduct.

a.s.suredly, I will take no part in such doings. Our virtue, indeed, lags sadly behind that of those christians--only lay people too--of whom St.

Paul said that being wise themselves they _gladly suffered bondage, stripes, every sort of ill-usage from the foolish_,[1] and of whom, in another place, he says that they _took with joy the being stripped of their own goods_, knowing that they had _a better and a lasting substance_.[2]

And the Apostle, as you know, is speaking to men who had been unjustly despoiled of their whole property by robbers and tyrants, whereas you will not give up a small fraction of yours to a.s.sist in the public need of our good Prince, to whose zeal we owe the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in the three divisions of the Chablais, and whose enemies are the adversaries of our faith! Is not our Order the first of the three estates in a christian kingdom? Is there anything more just than to contribute of our wealth, together with our prayers, towards the defence of our altars, of our lives, and of our peace? The people are lavishing their substance and the n.o.bility their blood for the same cause. Remember the late wars, and tremble lest your ingrat.i.tude and disobedience should plunge you again into similar troubles."

Adding example to precept, he paid so heavy a tax upon a part of his own revenue that none could say he did not practise what he preached, and all those who had ventured to oppose him in the matter were not only effectually silenced, but covered with confusion and put to a just shame.

[Footnote 1: 2 Cor. xi. 19, 20.]

[Footnote 2: Heb. x. 34.]

UPON THE LOVE OF HOLY POVERTY.

_G.o.dliness with contentment_, says Holy Scripture, _is great gain_.[1]

So content was the G.o.dliness of Blessed Francis that, although deprived of the greater part of his episcopal revenues, he was fully satisfied with the little that was left to him.

After all, he would say, are not twelve hundred crowns a handsome income for a Bishop? The Apostles, who were far better Bishops than we are, had nothing like that sum. It is not for us to fix our own pay for serving G.o.d.

His love of poverty was truly striking. At Annecy he lodged in a hired house, which was both handsome and roomy, and in which the apartments a.s.signed to him as Bishop were very elegantly furnished. He, however, took up his abode in an uncomfortable little room, where there was hardly any light at all, so that he could truly say with Job: _I have made my bed in darkness_;[2] or with David: _Night shall be my light in my pleasures_;[3]

or again, _I am like a night raven in the house, or as a sparrow all alone on the housetop_.[4]

He called this little room, or, to speak more truly, this sepulchre of a living man, Francis' chamber, while to that in which he received visitors, or gave audience, he gave the name of the Bishop's chamber.

Truly, the lover of holy poverty can always find a means of practising it, even in the midst of riches.

Blessed Francis, indeed, always welcomed poverty with a smiling countenance, though naturally it be apt to cast a gloom and melancholy upon the faces both of those who endure it and of those who only dread it.

Involuntary poverty is surly and discontented, for it is forced and against the will. Voluntary poverty, on the contrary, is joyous, free, and light-hearted. To show you how cheerfully and pleasantly he talked on this subject, I will give you one or two of his remarks.

Once, showing me a coat which had been patched up for him, and which he wore under his ca.s.sock, he said: "My people really work little miracles; for out of an old garment they have made me this perfectly new coat. Am I not well-dressed?"

Again, when his steward was complaining of down-right distress, and of there being no money left, he said: "What are you troubling yourself about?

We are now more like our Master, Who had not even where to lay His head, though as yet we are not reduced to such extremity as that." "But what are we to do?" persisted the steward. "My son," the Bishop answered, "we must live as we can, on whatever goods we have, that is all." "Truly," replied the other, "it is all very well to talk of living on our goods when there are none left to live upon!" "You do not understand me," returned the Bishop; "we must sell or pledge some of our furniture in order to live.

Will not that, my good M.R.,[5] be living on our goods?"

It was in this fashion that the Saint was accustomed to meet cheerfully money troubles, so unbearable to weaker characters.

On one occasion I expressed my admiration at his being able to make so good a show on his small means. "It is G.o.d," he said, "Who multiplies the five loaves." On my pressing him to tell me how it was done, "Why, it would not be a miracle," he answered, with a smile, "if we knew that. Are we not most fortunate to live on only by help of miracles? _It is the mercy of G.o.d that we are not consumed_." "You go quite beyond me," I said, "by taking that ground. I am not so transcendently wise."

"Listen," he replied. "Riches are truly thorns, as the Gospel teaches us.

They p.r.i.c.k us with a thousand troubles in acquiring them, with more cares in preserving them, and with yet more anxieties in spending them; and, most of all, with vexations in losing them.

"After all, we are only managers and stewards, especially if it is a question of the riches of the Church, which are the true patrimony of the poor. The important matter is to find faithful dispensers. Having sufficient to feed and clothe ourselves suitably, what more do we want?

a.s.suredly, _that which is over and above these is of evil_.[6]

"Shall I tell you what my own feeling is? Well and good, but I must do so in your ear. I know very well how to spend what I have; but if I had more I should be in difficulty as to what to do with it. Am I not happy to live like a child without care? _Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof_.

The more any one has to manage the longer the account he has to render. We must make use of this world as though we were making no use of it at all.

We must possess riches as though we had them not, and deal with the things of earth like the dogs on the banks of the Nile, who, for fear of the crocodiles, lap up the water of the river as they run along its banks. If, as the wise man tells us, _he that addeth knowledge addeth also labour_; much more is this the case with the man who heaps up riches. He is like the giants in the fable who piled up mountains, and then buried themselves under them. Remember the miserable man who, as the Gospel tells us, thought that he had many years before him in which to live at his ease, but to whom the heavenly voice said: _Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of thee; and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided_? In truth happy is he only who lays up imperishable treasures in Heaven."

He would never allow himself to be called _poor_; saying, that any one who had a revenue sufficient to live upon without being obliged to labour with head or hands to support himself should be called _rich_; and such, he said, was the case with us both.

To my objection that our revenues were nevertheless so very small that we must be really considered poor, for little, indeed, must we be working if our labour was not worth what we got from our bishoprics, he replied: "If you take it in this way you are not so far wrong, for who is there who labours in a vineyard and does not live upon its produce? What shepherd feeds his flock and does not drink its milk and clothe himself with its wool? So, too, may he who sows spiritual seed justly reap the small harvest which he needs for his temporal sustenance. If then he is poor who lives by work, and who eats the fruit of his labour, we may very well be reckoned as such; but if we regard the degree of poverty in which our Lord and His Apostles lived, we must perforce consider ourselves rich. After all, possessing honestly all that is necessary for food and clothing, ought we not to be content? Whatever is more than this is only evil, care, superfluity, wanting which we shall have less of an account to render.

Happy is poverty, said a stoic, if it is cheerful poverty; and if it is that, it is really not poverty at all, or only poverty of a kind that is far preferable to the riches of the most wealthy, which are ama.s.sed with difficulty, preserved with solicitude, and lost with regret."

Our Saint used to say that, as for the cravings of nature, he who is not satisfied with what is really enough will never be satisfied. I wish that I could give any just idea of his extraordinary moderation even in the use of the necessaries of life. He told me once that when the time came for him to lay down the burden of his episcopal duties and to retire into solitude, there to pa.s.s the rest of his life in contemplation and study, he should consider five hundred crowns a year great wealth; in fact, he would not reserve more from either his patrimony or his Bishop's revenue, adding these words of St. Paul: _Having food, and wherewith to be covered, let us_ (priests) _be content_.[7] He gave this as his reason. "The Church," he said, "which is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, is established on foundations directly opposed to those of the world, of which our Saviour said His kingdom was not. Now, on what is the kingdom of this world founded? Listen to St. John: All that is in the world is the _concupiscence of the flesh, or of the eyes, and the pride of life_; that is to say, the pleasures of the senses, avarice, and vanity. The Church then will be founded on mortification of the flesh, poverty, and humility. Pleasures and honours follow in the train of wealth; but poverty puts an axe to the roots of pride and sensual enjoyments. Some, says David, blaming them, glory in the mult.i.tude of their riches; and St. Paul exhorts the rich of this world not to be high-minded.

"It is a perilous thing for humility and mortification to take up their abode with wealth." This is why he wished for nothing but bare necessaries, fearing that superfluity might lead him into some excess.

When I reminded him that if we had this superfluity we might give alms out of it, as it is written, _Of what remaineth give to the poor_, he replied, that we knew well enough what: we ought to do; but that we did not know what we should do, and that it was always a species of presumption to imagine ourselves able to handle live coals without burning ourselves, seeing that even the Angel in the vision of the Prophet took them up with tongs!

[Footnote 1: 1 Tim. vi. 6.]

[Footnote 2: Job. xvii. 13.]

[Footnote 3: Ps. cx.x.xviii. 11.]

[Footnote 4: Ps. ci. 8.]

[Footnote 5: Georges Roland.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 37.]

[Footnote 7: Tim. vi. 8.]

UPON THE SAME SUBJECT.

Our Blessed Father was so absolutely indifferent to the goods of this world that I never heard him so much as once complain of the loss of almost all his episcopal revenue, confiscated by the city of Geneva. He used to say that it was very much with the wealth of the Church as with a man's beard, the more closely it was clipped the stronger and the thicker it grew again. When the Apostles had nothing they possessed all things, and when ecclesiastics wish to possess too much, that too much is reduced to nothing.

His one hunger and thirst was for the conversion of souls, living in wilful blindness to the light of truth which shines only in the one true Church.

Sometimes, he exclaimed, sighing heavily: "Give me souls, and the rest take to Thyself." Speaking of Geneva, to which city, in spite of its rebellion, he always applied terms of compa.s.sion and affection, such as "my dear Geneva," or "my poor Geneva," he said to me more than once: "Would to G.o.d that these gentlemen had taken such small remains of my revenue as they have left to me, and that we had only as small a foothold in that deplorable city as the Catholics have in La Roch.e.l.le, namely, a little chapel in which to say Ma.s.s and perform the functions of our religion! You would then soon see all these apostates come back to their senses, and we should rejoice over the return to the Church of these poor Sunamites, who are so forgetful of their duty."[1] This fond hope he always nourished in his breast.