href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@33701@[email protected]#id_29" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">TENTH PRESERVATIVE

XXX.

ELEVENTH PRESERVATIVE

XXXI.

MEANS TO SUPPORT THE EVIL THOUGHTS AND TONGUES OF OTHERS

XXXII.

SECOND MEANS TO BEAR WITH OTHERS

XXXIII.

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX:

THE PRACTICE OF FRATERNAL CHARITY

FRATERNAL CHARITY

I

CHARITY THE PECULIAR VIRTUE OF CHRIST

OUR Divine Saviour shows both by precept and example that His favourite virtue, His own and, in a certain sense, characteristic virtue, was charity. Whether He treated with His ignorant and rude Apostles, with the sick and poor, or with His enemies and sinners, He is always benign, condescending, merciful, affable, patient; in a word, His charity appeared in all its most amiable forms. Oh, how well these titles suit Him!—a King full of clemency, a Lamb full of mildness. How justly could He say, "Learn of Me, that I am meek and humble of heart"! His yoke was sweet, His burden light, His conversation without sadness or bitterness. He lightened the burdens of those heavily laden; He consoled those in sorrow; He quenched not the dying spark nor broke the bruised reed.

He calls us His friends, His brothers, His little flock; and as the greatest sign of friendship is to die for those we love, He gave to each of us the right to say with St. Paul: "He loved me, and delivered Himself up for me." Let us, then, say: "My good Master, I love Thee, and deliver myself up for Thee."

Religious, called to reproduce the three great virtues of Jesus Christ—poverty, chastity, and obedience—have still another to practise not less noble or distinctive—viz., fraternal charity. By this virtue they are not called to rise above earthly or sensual pleasures, nor above their judgment and self-will, but above egotism and self-love, which shoot their roots deepest in the soul. They must consider attentively the fundamental truths on which charity is based and its effects, as also the principal obstacles to its attainment, and the means to overcome them.

II

FIRST FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH

We are all members of the great Christian family

CHARITY towards our neighbour is charity towards God in our neighbour, because, faith assuring us that God is our Father, Jesus Christ our Head, the Holy Ghost our sanctifier, it follows that to love our neighbour—inasmuch as he is the well-beloved child of God, the member of Jesus Christ, and the sanctuary of the Holy Ghost—is to love in a special manner our heavenly Father, His only-begotten Son, together with the Holy Spirit. And because it is scarcely possible for religious to behold their brethren in this light without wishing them what the Most Holy Trinity so lovingly desires to bestow on them, acts of fraternal charity include—almost necessarily at least—implicit acts of faith and hope; and the exercise of the noblest of the theological virtues thus often becomes an exercise of the other two.

Thus it is that charity poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, uniting Christians among themselves and with the adorable Trinity whose images they are, is the vivid and perfect imitation of the love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father—a substantial love which is no other than the Holy Ghost, and makes us all one in God by grace, as the Father and Son are only one God with the Holy Ghost by nature, according to the words of our Lord: "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee: that they also may be one in Us."

Such is the chain that unites and binds us—a chain of gold a thousand times stronger than those of flesh and blood, interest or friendship, because these permit the defects of body and the vices of the soul to be seen, whilst charity covers all, hides all, to offer exclusively to admiration and love the work of the hands of God, the price of the blood of Jesus Christ and the masterpiece of the Holy Spirit.

III

SECOND FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH

We are members of the same religious family

TO love our brethren as ourselves in relation to God, it suffices without doubt to have with them the same faith, the same Sacraments, the same head, the same life, the same immortal hopes, etc. But, besides these, there exist other considerations which lead friendship and fraternity to a higher degree among the members of the same religious Order. All in the novitiate have been cast in the same mould, or, rather, have imbibed the milk of knowledge and piety from the breasts of the same mother. All follow the same rules; all tend to the same end by the same means; all from morning to night, and during their whole lives, perform the same exercises, live under the same roof, work, sanctify themselves, suffer and rejoice together. Like fellow-citizens, they have the same interests; like soldiers, the same combats; like children of a family, the same ancestors and heirlooms; and, like friends, a communication of ideas and interchange of sentiments.

If our Lord said to Christians in general, "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John xiii.), can He not say to the members of the same religious Order: "This is My own and special recommendation: Before all and above all preserve amongst you a mutual charity. Have but one soul in several different bodies. You will be recognized as religious and brethren, not by the same habit, vows, and virtues, nor by the particular work entrusted to you by the Church, but by the love you have one for the other. Ah! who will love you if you do not love one another? Love one another fraternally, because as human beings you have only one heavenly Father. Love one another holily, because as Christians you have only one Head. Love one another tenderly, because as religious you have only one mother—your Order"?

It is impossible for religious to love their brethren with a true, sincere, pure, and constant love if they do not look at them in this light.

IV

THE FAMILY SPIRIT

BASED on the foregoing principles, fraternal charity begets the family spirit—that spirit which forgets itself in thinking only of the common good; which makes particular give way to general interests; which forces oneself to live with all without exception, to live as all without singularity, and to live for all without self-seeking; that spirit which, binding like a Divine cement all parts of the mysterious edifice of religion, uniting all hearts in one and all wills in one, permits the community to proceed