CHAPTER III.

A Peculiar Mission.

Father Ignatius had an idea in his mind for a number of years, and saw no practical way in which it might be realized. He looked forward, with a pleasing anticipation, to the prospect of going about from parish to parish on a kind of itinerary mission. The thing was unusual in our day, and he saw no plea by which it could be justified to others, or he should have gone on it long before. He proposed it at last to his Superiors, and the circumstances of his position wonderfully favoured its prosecution.

Voluntary poverty was raised to a virtue by the example and teaching of our Divine Lord, and poverty must always have a counterpart. To be poor is to be dependent, and want is ordained for the sanctification of plenty. When our Divine Master said that it was difficult for the rich man to be saved, He subjoined that with God all things are possible. The miseries of the poor are the channels through which riches can flow into Heaven, and make friends to their possessors of the mammon of iniquity.

In the dispensation of Providence, the Church watches over the interests of all her children, and whilst she proclaims the severity of the Gospel maxims, she provides for their observance. She must preach poverty of spirit, from the text of the sermon on the Mount, and she manages to make kings who are richer than David live after God's own heart. The beautiful harmony between rank and lowliness, authority and submission, prosperity and adversity, has long ago been arranged by the practice of the ages of faith, and by the Pontifical constitutions which impress the seal of the Fisherman upon the usages of Catholicity.

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In no department of Catholic polity is this superior wisdom so well exemplified as in the rules of mendicant orders. The Church takes the noble from his seat of power, she makes him cast his coronet at the feet of Peter, and stretch out his hand to his former vassal for the paltry morsel that is to sustain his future existence. She forbids him to accumulate; she makes him give back a thousand-fold what he receives. By thus bringing down the pride of power and making it pay court to the discontented child of penury, she reconciles man with Providence and suffuses reverence through the crowd, who might grumble at greatness, by making their lord according to the world their servant according to the Gospel.

The constitutions of the Congregation of the Passion are framed upon the spirit of the Church. If a man of property joins our poor institute, he cannot bring his possessions with him to enrich the community he enters; for Blessed Paul has not allowed them to have any fixed revenue. He may, indeed, give a donation towards the building of their church, the furnishing of their poor schools, or the paying off the debts they were obliged to contract to secure the ground upon which their monastery is built; but that is left to his own charity. He is supposed by our rule to hand over his property to a relative or a charitable institution, and reserve to himself the right to take it back, in case he may not persevere in his vocation, or abandon the life he has embraced.

Thus deprived of stable funds, we are to rely upon the Providence of God; and we can give Him glory by confessing that we never yet found His word to fail, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." Betimes we may have to send a brother to ask for some assistance from kind benefactors; but, as a rule, God inspires many to befriend us without our asking. The duties of missions and retreats, and the preparation for them, prevent us from digging a livelihood out of the earth; but the sweat of our brow that is thus spent earns our bread by procuring us friends. People crowd to our churches, and leave thank-offerings there to prove the reality of their devotion; and, as an ancient {370} father of ours once said, "our support comes in through the choir-windows."

When we have to build a church or a house, we must follow the custom of surrounding priests; but, as our working is not purely local, we send a father or brother to distant countries, and try not to be too burthensome to our neighbours. Charity endureth all things; but the branch of charity which is exercised in the giving of alms is not always content to be too much importuned, or called upon too often. Charity therefore requires that those who plead for the exercise of one arm do not strain the other, and it makes provision against provoking anger or ill-feeling from the weaknesses it tries to cure by stirring to activity.

In the year 1848 the fathers at Aston Hall stood in sore need of a church. Hitherto they had turned a room upstairs into a temporary chapel; and, inconvenient as it might be to have people going so far into a religious house, they would have borne up longer, had not a builder told them that anything like a crowd would bring the whole place down about their ears. Father Ignatius mentions this in a letter he wrote to Mrs. Canning. "It will," he says, "be a great addition to us to have a respectable church, instead of our chapel up-stairs; but we should not have had a plea for asking for it, if this chapel had not been so good as to give us notice to quit, by becoming cracky a little."

Here, then, was an opportunity. Some one should go out and beg. Father Ignatius was commissioned to write letters, but though the first was answered by a cheque for £100, with a promise of more, there was not enough forthcoming to enable them to build. Could he not do two things at once? Could he not ask for prayers as well as alms? Did not the very plea of begging give him a right to go to different places, even from parish to parish, and speak publicly and privately? It did. And he was forthwith sent out to carry into execution the dreams of half a life, which he scarcely ever expected to realize. He first began this peculiar mission of his by going through the towns with a guide, like ordinary questers: in a few years the plan developed itself into the "little missions."

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His first begging tour was through Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Oscott, Leamington, and Wolverhampton. In a few months he sallies forth again, and Liverpool is the theatre of his labours. Many and rude were the trials he had to endure in this humiliating work. He thus playfully alludes to some of them:

"I am on a begging mission here at Liverpool, in which I find rough and smooth, ups and downs, every day. The general result is very fair. I have been here since Monday, the 8th of May" (he writes on the 20th), "and have got more than £100, but with hard walking. I am, however, quite well, and the inflammation of my eye quite gone--nothing left but a little haziness. It lasted five weeks without relenting at all. If it had gone on, I must have stayed at home; but it just began to improve before I started, and has got well, _tout en marchant_. My present life is very pleasant when money comes kindly; but when I get refused, or walk a long way and find every one out, it is a bit mortifying. That is best gain for me, I suppose, though not what I am travelling for. .... I should not have had the time this morning to write to you, had it not been for a disappointment in meeting a young man, who was to have been my begging-guide for part of the day; and so I had to come home, and stay till it is time to go and try my fortune in the enormous market-house, where there are innumerable stalls with poultry, eggs, fruit, meat, &c., kept in great part by Irish men and women, on whom I have to-day, presently, to go and dance attendance, as this is the great market-day. I feel, when going out for a job like this, as a poor child going in a bathing machine to be dipped in the sea, _frisonnant_; but the Irish are so good-natured and generous that they generally make the work among them full of pleasure, when once I am in it."

One sees a vast difference between begging of the rich and of the poor. If the latter have nothing to give, they will at least show a kind face, and will not presume to question the priest about his business; whereas some of the former, because they have something which they will not give, either absent themselves or treat the priest unkindly for {372} asking. For what? Because he begs. It is not for himself: he even retrenches necessaries from his own table in order to spare something for the house of God. And what, after all, does he ask? The price of an hour's recreation, or an extra ornament, that may be very well spared. That is all. The priest wants people to look after their own interests, to send their money before them to heaven, instead of wasting it on vanity or sin. And because he does this, and humbles himself for the sake of his God, he must be made to feel it. Father Ignatius was keenly alive to this, and the way he felt for those who forgot themselves by sending him away empty was far more afflictive than the personal humiliation. He could thank God for the latter, but he could not do so for the former.

Once he was fiercely abused, when begging, and as the reviler had come to a full stop in his froward speech, Father Ignatius quietly retorted: "Well, as you have been so generous to myself personally, perhaps you would be so kind as to give me something now for my community." This had a remarkable effect. It procured him a handsome offering then, as well as many others ever since.

Another day he knocked at a door, and was admitted by a very sumptuously attired footman. Father Ignatius told the servant the object of his visit, his religious name, and asked if he could see the lady or gentleman of the house. The servant strode off to see, and in a few seconds returned to say that the gentleman was out, and the lady was engaged and could not see him, neither could she afford to help him. He then remarked that perhaps she was not aware that he was the Honourable Mr. Spencer. The servant looked at him, bowed politely and retired. In a minute or two Father Ignatius hears a rustling of silks and a tripping of quick steps on the stairs. In came my lady, and what with blushings and bowings, and excuses and apologies, she scarcely knew where she was until she found herself and him tête-à-tête. She really did not know it was he, and there were so many impostors. "But what will you take, my dear sir?" and before he could say yea or nay she rung for his friend the footman. Father Ignatius coolly said, that he did not {373} then stand in need of anything to eat, and that he never took wine; but that he did stand in need of money for a good purpose, and if she could give him anything in that way he should be very glad to accept it. She handed him a five-pound note at once, expressing many regrets that something or other prevented its being more. Father Ignatius took the note, folded it carefully, made sure of its being safely lodged in his pocket, and then made thanksgiving in something like the following words: "Now, I am very sorry to have to tell you that the alms you have given me will do you very little good. If I had not been born of a noble family, you would have turned me away with coldness and contempt. I take the money, because it will be as useful to me as if it were given with a good motive; but I would advise you, for the future, if you have any regard for your soul, to let the love of God, and not human respect, prompt your alms-giving." So saying, he took his hat and bid his benefactress a good morning.

Many were the anecdotes he told us about his begging adventures; but it is next to impossible to remember them. In every case, however, we could see the saint through the veil his humility tried to cast over himself. Whether he was received well or ill, he always tried to turn his reception to the spiritual benefit of those who received him. He made more friends than any person living, perhaps, and never was known to make an enemy; his very simplicity and holiness disarmed malice. He says, in a letter, upon getting his first commission to go and quest: "I am to be a great beggar!" His prognostication began to be verified. Strange fact, the Honourable George Spencer a beggar! And happier, under all the trials and crosses incident to such a life, than if he had lived in the luxury of Althorp. Religion is carrying out to-day what its Founder began eighteen hundred years ago. He left the kingdom of heaven to live on the charity of His own creatures.

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