Part 6

I shall be too weak and suffering on my bed of death, too appalled by the sight of my past life to be able to do much by way of preparation for the Last Sacraments. Yet I shall need all their grace, and I must bring to them at least the necessary dispositions. Take the care of all upon Yourself. See Yourself to my dispositions. Look upon all as a trust committed to You long ago, committed to You again and again with the more self-abandonment as the time and circumstances of my last hour are absolutely unknown to me. Let me find out in that hour how well it is to have hoped in the Lord. Let me find You, my Lord, in death equal to Yourself--to all I have found You in life.

And when the hour for Sacraments has passed; when the Church has stretched her hand to the utmost to hold me to the last, up to the very confines of that world where her jurisdiction stops; when my soul is passing beyond the reach of that hand which has stayed me up till then, and been help and healing all my life through--then, O my Saviour, do for me immediately, by Yourself, what You have done for me through Your Church. Hear Yourself my last confession made straight to Your Heart. Hear my last avowal “of my so many sins”; of those for which I have sorrowed most bitterly, which have been brought oftenest under the absolving hand of Your priest. When my last words in this world are said; when my eyes are closed to the crucifix, and my hands can grasp the rosary no longer; when my ears are shut to all the sounds of earth, and all things are sinking round me--then let me feel You near. Inspire Yourself my last cry for mercy. Sweep away the clouds that will gather thick and fast before the eyes of my soul, seeking to hide that mercy from me. Let Your hand hold me. Let Your arm be round me when all else is falling away. You have passed, O Lord, through the agony of death: be with me in my agony. All the nameless terrors of that hour are known to You. All the dangers that await me then are clear to You here in the tabernacle--the weakness, the weariness, the pains of spirit, and of sense, the temptations kept for the last, the loneliness, the unsuspected snares, the lack of human help. O human Heart, be my secure refuge in that awful hour. I call upon You now to fulfil in my favour then the promise to those devoted to Your sacred Heart: “I will be their assured refuge in life and more especially at death.”

Recordare, Jesu pie, Quod sum causa Tuae viae Ne me perdas illa die.

Quaerens me sedisti lassus, Redemisti crucem passus: Tantus labor non sit cassus.

Recollect, O love divine, ’Twas for this lost sheep of Thine Thou Thy glory didst resign.

Sattest weary seeking me, Suff’redst upon the tree: Let not vain Thy labour be.

XXXV.

“DOMINE, ECCE QUEM AMAS INFIRMATUR.”

--_John_ xi. 3.

How many Bethanies, Lord Jesus, have there been in the world since the day You stood with Martha and Mary by the grave of Lazarus! How many there are at this hour! And each with all its pain is known to Your pitying Heart. Every detail known--the fear, the anxiety, the weary yet unwearied prayer, the long, long waiting for Your coming; the hope that rises and falls and clings the faster for its less foothold to Your promises, Your mercy, Your dear human Heart. You know it all. You have seen all, heard all for years. And still You wait, just as You waited beyond the Jordan whilst the sisters wept beside their brother’s bed, beside his grave.

“Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister Mary, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He still remained in the same place two days.”[109] Why, Lord, why--with Your heart so tender and Your arm so strong, and danger near, and time short, and those You love so fearful and so sad? Why did you still remain, O Lord?

Truly Your thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor Your ways as ours. Our love stands sentry round its dear ones, to ward off pain or sorrow: “Far be it from Thee, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee”.[110] Your love, seeking rather to sanctify than to spare, assigns to sorrow a definite work in behalf of Your beloved. “Whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth, and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”[111] “Now Jesus loved Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He still remained in the same place two days.”

“Our Lord Himself was perfected by His passion.”[112] And in that passion it was not the nails which tore the flesh, but the anguish which rent the spirit, that drew forth His bitter cry. It was the passion of His Heart that was the hardest. It is by the crucifixion of the heart that Christ is perfected in us. Therefore He stays away and leaves us to suffering harder far to bear than physical pain. We cry out. We send our messages to Him. And He does not come. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me!” He hears and does not come. The echo of His own cry of desolation moves His Heart. And still He does not come. It is because Jesus loves that He does violence to His heart and lets the cross do for His friends what it alone can do. This is His way of showing love. He expects us to understand it.

In the cross, as in the sacred mystery of the altar, His love puts on strange disguises. But puts them on so regularly, so frankly, that losing by this time their power of disguise, they ought to reveal instead of hiding Him.

We must be patient and wait. The time of His coming, with its ways and means, we can leave to His wisdom and His love. Our work is to send urgently and perseveringly the message whose trust vanquished His Heart at last and made Him say, “_Let us go to him_”.

* * * * *

“_Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick._” Before a thousand tabernacles that cry is rising. No prayer, but pleading more potent than any prayer. Its perseverance is its power. Can it but hold out, ignore neglect, support delay, it is sure to hear in God’s own time: “Thy brother shall rise again.... Lazarus, come forth.”

Listen, Lord Jesus, to that cry. By the pity it woke in Your sacred Heart--listen! By the tears You shed with the weeping sisters--listen! Not for one Lazarus only, but for each and every one throughout the world, do we entreat You: _Domine, ecce quem amas infirmatur!_ If a miracle is needed, we ask it with confidence. Is there one You would work more gladly? O Lord, make haste to help us. To-day, to-day--to-morrow, perhaps, it will be too late. _Ecce quem amas infirmatur!_

[109] John xi.

[110] Matt. xvi.

[111] Heb. xii.

[112] Heb. ii.

XXXVI.

AFTER A DEATH.

And his disciples came and took the body, and buried it, and came and told Jesus.--_Matt._ xiv. 12.

Poor disciples! They had lost their master. Life lay a blank before them; all its meaning gone, all its purpose changed. The support on which they had leaned was taken away--what was to become of them?

Poor disciples indeed--yet happy too. For the hand that dealt the blow held the remedy. It led them to Jesus. What does that mean but that all they had lost was made up to them a thousandfold?

They took the body, and buried it, _and came and told Jesus_. We can see Him receiving the forlorn little band. We can hear His words of tender pity and comfort as He drew them out and got from them all their troubled tale. We can feel the relief it was to tell Him all; feel the peace that stole into their hearts as He spoke to them of their master, and gently won them from their grief, and drew them to Himself. They yielded to the divine attraction of that Eye and that Voice, to the irresistible sympathy of that Heart, to the grace that spoke to their own hearts. And thus that bitter loss proved the crowning grace of their lives, the cause of their eternal joy--because they let it lead them to the feet of Christ--because _they came and told Jesus_.

O Master! I too come to Your feet to tell You all. I have buried my dead. I have lost what can never be restored to me in this world. I have come from the grave with half myself buried there. I have come back to a life with all its meaning gone from it--a life without joy, interest, anything to which my soul responds--a dreary waste stretching before me that I must cross alone. Where shall I turn for courage and for strength? Where but to You to Whom the disciples of John turned in their desolation? Open to me Your arms and Your Heart. Listen tenderly to me whilst I tell You all my trouble. Speak to my soul and calm it and strengthen it. Make up to me for what You have taken away. And if You ask what compensation I desire, I answer: “None other than Thyself, O Lord”.

Let us both be gainers by this bitter loss--You by the fuller surrender into Your hands of all that I have and am; I by the fuller gift of Yourself to my soul--a fulness satisfying its every craving with the love of Him, from Whom neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come, have power to part me.

XXXVII.

GOD’S WAYS.

Wherein hast Thou loved us?--_Malach._ i. 2.

My God, I may tell You anything and everything. All I have to tell interests You, more especially the difficulties and troubles which do not easily come out to others, and are not for the most part very helpfully met when they do come out. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him?”[113]

But “the Spirit (of God) searcheth all things.”[114] You know me through and through, and I am only owning to what You see and understand perfectly when I tell You of repinings aroused by gifts and opportunities bestowed on others, but denied to me. I find myself questioning, if not Your wisdom, at least Your love, in that I am less richly dowered than others with the happy temperament, the talents, the moral and social qualities that we reckon among the better gifts of life, that render life not a duty merely, nor a source of merit, but a continual joy. I do not see that “the lines are fallen unto me in goodly places”; rather I ask petulantly, “_Wherein hast Thou loved me?_”

The source of such disquiet is selfishness. This is the dismal consolation I should get were I to confide my trouble to the most indulgent of friends. But have You no better comfort for me, my Creator and my Father? To whom shall I go in my pains if not to Him Whose “hands have made me and formed me”;[115] to my Father “that hath possessed me, and made me, and created me”;[116] Who says to me, “I will have mercy on thee more than a mother”?[117] There is no humbling avowal I may not trust to You, and trusting it be sure of sympathy. “Why hast Thou done so to us?” was the meek remonstrance of the most submissive of handmaids. “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” was said by the most cross-grained and thankless of peoples. And to both questioners You vouchsafed a reply. I too, then, may ask: Why, Father, hast Thou done so to me? In withholding what is good in itself, what would have made me happier, _Wherein hast Thou loved me?_

Your answer might be: “Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, why hast Thou made me thus?”[118] But in place of rebuke You silence my trouble by an invitation: “_Come up hither_”.[119] I am to take my stand by Your side, and from that height look around on the design framed from eternity. Parts of a plan can be viewed aright only in connection with the whole. To consider them independently is to miss not only the meaning and grandeur of the scheme in its entirety, but particular excellence also. This I know. Yet the tendency of selfishness is to contract the vision, and let the tiny portion assigned to itself in the universal design absorb the interest and warp the judgment. I am too near to earth, too involved in its passing interests to preserve the relative proportion necessary for viewing things aright. I must move further off--look forward a few years--plant my feet, not on this transitory world, but on the eternal shore, and from that standpoint look out upon creation.

“_He hath begotten us ... that we might be some beginning of His creature._”[120]

What an unsealing of eyes awaits me the moment after death! What a vista all but infinite will open out before me as the divine plan unfolds! All this human race, which because it encloses my lot is apt to engross my whole interest--if indeed my interest extends to the race and is not absorbed by the little miserable me--all this vast assemblage of human souls to be--but _some beginning of His creature_!

In eternity I shall see the part assigned to this beginning in the universal scheme. I shall see the part assigned to each unit. I shall grasp without effort, without reasoning, the self-evident fact that the dignity of every human being lies in its having a place in God’s eternal design; that independent or solitary greatness is an impossibility; that our happiness no less than our grandeur consists in filling that place in the vast mosaic which divine wisdom and love has appointed us; that the significance of the creature, its beauty and well-being are to be found only in its conformity with the ideal in the Creator’s mind. Those who on earth have worked out that ideal and thereby reached their appointed place are happy. Those who, absorbed by selfish aims, have failed to fit themselves for the place assigned them, are necessarily cast aside as failures--and this whatever the gifts, station, influence that distinguished them in the momentary interval between two eternities that we call Time. Nothing indeed will astound me more than the reversal of lots in the world beyond the grave. I shall see how in innumerable instances paths of glory have led to everlasting confusion and oblivion. How, on the other hand, the unnoticed, the meagrely gifted, have made their way up to the highest honour, and are placed “with the princes of His people”. The beggar of the Roman streets, shunned by every passerby, the shepherdess of an obscure village, the simple, illiterate Curé d’Ars, as “the friends of God are made exceedingly honourable”. Whilst high above all, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, is a village Carpenter of heretofore.

Truly God’s ways are not our ways! When I see as He sees, there will be no heartburnings, no pining for anything however good in itself that has not found place in His designs for me. Narrow views will melt away so completely as to be deemed wholly inexplicable in the past; egotism disappear in the burst of admiration at the design revealed in creation. What will be my delight to have a place, my particular place, in that glorious scheme! What my regret, as I turn away to purgatory, that I have failed to co-operate in the perfecting of the whole in the measure determined for me!

And this I shall see soon! Soon I shall be viewing all things from God’s standpoint, the only one possible in the land of Truth. Recognising at last in my outfit a marvellous adaptation of means to the end, I shall see wherein He has loved me. I shall bless His will that has ordered all things sweetly. I shall trace His love in withholding as well as in giving, in ordaining my limitations and deficiencies no less than my aptitudes as means for attaining to my place in His kingdom. The greater or less glory and happiness of that place will be a matter of indifference to me. To reach the degree in which _He_ would place me, to satisfy _Him_, to give Him throughout eternity the praise and reverence and service He asks of me--this will be the only ambition possible to my enlightened understanding and will. “In Thy light we shall see light.”[121]

* * * * *

O Father, that it might be thus even now! That now, whilst my place in heaven is to be sought and reached, I might have the light and strength to accept, not with resignation only--this were too poor a gratitude--but with deepest, tenderest thankfulness, the means fashioned to my hand, designed by Your wisdom _for me_!

[113] 1 Cor. ii.

[114] _Ibid._

[115] Psa. cxviii.

[116] Deut. xxxii.

[117] Ecclus. iv.

[118] Rom. ix.

[119] Apoc. iv.

[120] St. James i.

[121] Psa. xxxv.

XXXVIII.

TWILIGHT AND NOON.

My eyes are ever towards the Lord.--_Psa._ xxiv. 15.

How marvellous is the vehemence of David’s utterances when we consider the dimness with which God revealed Himself in the time of twilight before the coming of Christ! He was not altogether the hidden God. Throughout His dealings with His people we are struck by the mingling of light and darkness, distance and nearness, terrific chastisement and the tenderest blandishments of love. There was wonderful condescension and approach in the tabernacle of the wilderness, in the revelations to the prophets, in the interventions of mercy that times without number succoured the stiff-necked people. There are words of love in the Old Testament unsurpassed perhaps in tenderness by any in the New. Yet when His presence is nearest, when His reproaches are most touching, His words most endearing, we are conscious of the measureless difference between God’s manifestation in the past and the intimacy and familiarity brought into our relations with Him by the Incarnation. We who live in the full illumination of that day which kings and prophets desired to see, cannot but feel how little earth’s most enlightened men knew the God Who made them, before “the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us”.

Yet so powerfully were they drawn to Him, that their words are the fittest exponents of every human heart when by desire, praise, affection, thanksgiving, it leaps up to God. They give expression to our every need. But, alas! they give too much matter also for self-reproach.

“_My eyes are always towards the Lord_,” said David. God revealed Himself with special intimacy to the man according to His own Heart, that spoke in his own person of the sufferings and the glories of Him Who was to delight in the name of the Son of David. Yet after all what did David know of the Lord compared with the knowledge vouchsafed to the least enlightened of the Church’s children! He had the memory of past mercies to the “seed of Abraham His servant, the sons of Jacob His chosen”.[122] He had the shadowy presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant. And he had the dim foreknowledge of One to come, of the root of Jesse, “beautiful above the sons of men,”[123] yet “a worm, and no man, the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people,”[124] of “a Holy One Who should not see corruption,”[125] but “sit on the right hand of God till all His enemies be made His footstool”.[126] This was all. But it was enough to keep the eyes of David fixed on God: “_My eyes are always towards the Lord_.”

I think of myself. I think of the careful teaching from my childhood onwards: of the Gospel stories so familiar to me that I may follow the life of the God-man from His crib to His cross; living in His company; listening to His teaching; noting His look and gesture and act; studying His ways and dealings with men, His likes and dislikes, the human character which individualised Him and endeared Him to His friends. I may watch Him at His work, I may mark the effect upon Him of kindness and appreciation, and, on the other hand, of ingratitude, scorn, cruelty and hate. I may see him thirsty, wayworn, footsore, and feast the eyes of my soul on the absolute perfection with which all the eventualities of life were met by Him Who, very God of very God, was yet the Son of Man and one of us.

Again, I may contemplate Him abiding ever with His Church, the source of every supernatural act throughout its length and breadth. I may see the Divine sap flowing through the vine to its furthest extremities, the principle of life and growth, of beauty and of fruitfulness in every soul His grace has sanctified. I know that all His merits are placed at my disposal; that He desires to make the meanest actions of my life meritorious of an eternal reward by uniting them with His. I have his invitation in the early morning to offer with Him His daily sacrifice that is offered for me. I hear Him asking of me, if not a daily, at least a frequent invitation to my heart. I hear him calling “Come aside and rest a little” when in afternoon hours the day’s tasks are lightening; calling me to Him for an evening blessing when the day’s work is done. Through the long hours of day and night His eye is following me--how often are my eyes towards the Lord?

O eager heart of David, that has met, if not with adequate response, at least with all your strength, the advances of our God, become to ours the stimulus they so sadly need! In our noontide splendour, in the fulness of fruition, we turn back to catch the glowing heat of your desires: “_O God my God, to Thee do I watch at break of day. For Thee my soul hath thirsted; for Thee my flesh, oh, how many ways!_”[127]

Your envying of our happier days and higher privileges shall make us appreciate them better: “They have seen Thy goings, O God, the goings of my God, of my King Who is in His sanctuary”.[128]

We will prize His sanctuary in our midst; the sanctuary nearest to us, where most of all our homage and our love are due. Morning, afternoon, and evening we will seek Him there to bless Him and be blessed. “In the churches bless ye God the Lord.”[129] “Seek ye the Lord, and be strengthened, seek His face evermore.”[130]

[122] Psa. civ.

[123] _Ibid._ xliv.

[124] _Ibid._ xxi.

[125] _Ibid._ xv.

[126] _Ibid._ cix.

[127] Psa. lxii.

[128] _Ibid._ lxvii.

[129] _Ibid._ lxvii.

[130] _Ibid._ civ.

XXXIX.

RESPONSIBILITY.

Behold I and my children, whom God hath given me.--_Heb._ ii.

No sympathy is so genuine and so ready, none so acceptable and helpful as that created by similarity of experience. “What doth he know that hath not been tried?”[131] “Who can rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep”[132] like one whose heart has thrilled with the same gladness, and found relief in the same tears?

Nothing more endears our Lord to us than the proofs of fellow-feeling that come out in every act of His human life. The Incarnation was the supreme gift of His sympathy. Every weary journey to and fro, every cure of soul or body, every word of warning and of comfort spoke of His sympathy. The Eucharist is His sympathy incarnate to the end of time.

No burden of ours is unshared by the Son of man. He has devised expedients that bewilder us by their condescension, in order to bring home to us the truth: “I also have a heart as well as you.”[133] He will weep with his friends beside a grave. He will cower before pain and ignominy. He will be “tempted in all things like as we are”.[134] Nay, He will even clothe Himself with the appearance of sin, be “made sin for us”;[135] feel its burden and its shame; bear the penalty of its guilt, to prove His devotedness to us in His most winning of ways--the sharing of our miseries out of love.

All the heavy-laden He invites to Him, but none, perhaps, are more tenderly welcomed than those who come bowed beneath the weight of responsibility. Whether this devolves upon them through their relations with others as superiors, or is the consequence of kinship or friendship, it surely wins for them the sympathy of Him Who knows by His own experience the nature of all such responsibilities and the solicitude they entail.

“You call Me Master, and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.”[136] “Is not He thy Father that hath possessed thee, and made thee and created thee?”[137] “As one whom the mother caresseth, so will I comfort you.”[138] He is our Elder Brother, “first-born amongst many brethren;”[139] “the Physician of Whom we all have need;”[140] “the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls”.[141] He knows, therefore, experimentally the peculiar trials of the charge with which we are laden, and we may pour out our hearts to Him with the freedom that comes of perfect trust in One “sorrowful,” “heavy,” “troubled”--“in all things like as we are”.[142]