How? Then follows an application to practical lesson am I to draw from it? oneself: What What motives How am I to to persuade me to follow that practice? act in the future? And then the will and affections, turning to God, hold a colloquy with Him. The older method, which has the traditions of the desert and of the holy order of St. Benedict, is more simple, if less logical, in arrangement. The soul places itself in God's presence with acts of adoration, thanksgiving, love, joy, resignation, contentment. Different temperaments are drawn to adopt one or other of these methods, both of which are good. But a time comes that devout souls, when practising the former method, leave it and advance to the degree of affective prayer. The soul no longer discourses so much with its understanding about the mysteries of religion, but by acts of the will and heart grows in further union with our Lord. These acts are first enforced by the will, but subsequently are voluntary and spontaneous as the outcome of God's indwelling in the soul. "My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the Living God." All things become to it a matter of prayer. It loves God, it rejoices in God, it cannot cease to praise Him. All things that come, whether sorrows or trials, are only food for the elevation of the soul in union with the Divine Life. Not I that live, but Christ lives in me. And so the soul passes on to the state of contemplation. It becomes less active; it becomes more and more passive. It no longer labors and struggles. It is no longer engaged in such active warfare. Its natural powers become more quiescent. It has gone out of self and is resting in God. It does not work so much as God works within it. It is full of a diviner peace than that which came at the time of its conversion. God is its All in All. Its persistent maxim is "God only." It has been vouchsafed so ghostly a sight of the Passion that the old nature has been mortified and God lives within the soul. Oh, the sweetness, the blessedness of a state which is a foretaste of heaven! There is granted also to some favored souls, whose humility is such that God can trust them with His gifts, a degree of prayer or communion with God called the "prayer of quiet." St. Theresa was its great apostle and teacher. I have known souls myself so held in the embrace of God that their natural faculties were held in a passive state of stillness, and without words uttered, they communed with God and God with them. One law of this prayer they learned to obey not to seek it, but to let God give it; not to cling to the state of vision, which is known to be of God, because it does its work. LOVE The Gospel of Christ is the Gospel of love. It reveals to us that God is love, and His love to us. As love itself, it binds in oneness the Ever-Blessed Trinity in an eternal jubilation of joyous existence. God, in the Eternal and Ever Being Begotten Son and the Eternal Procession of the Holy Spirit, has the allsatisfying fruition of His own love. His love overflows in the mystery of creation. It reflects His nature and attributes. It advances to its perfection in the Incarnation. Therein God joins it to Himself by the union of the Divine and Human Nature of Christ in the Person of the Eternal Word. Love flows from its Incarnate Source in the Person of the Holy Spirit, Who fills the Church and transforms it into a likeness of Christ. It makes the Church, thus sanctified, the Bride of God. The Church in its completed fulness has been seen from all eternity, and been predestinated in its means of justification, and the completeness of its numbers, and the elevation of its sanctified life. God is Light, and the Light is Life, and that Life is Love. Our life is as nothing worth unless transfigured by the active presence of the loving God in us. His love is a redeeming and justifying and sanctifying love. His love is a purifying, illuminating, transfiguring love. His love is a divine love, a penetrating, triumphant love. It is a love beyond our measuring; permanent, inexhaustible, because it is the very love which is God Himself. It surrounds us by its providence. It pleads with us by His Spirit, invites us by its compassion, embraces us in its mercy, re-creates us by its grace, makes us partakers of the divine nature, fills us with the spirit of adopted sons, perfects us in the fulness of God, by His indwelling. It leads us on to the eternal reign of God Incarnate. We are to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. Our love for God, as the product of His grace, is a living principle of action in us. Nature, with its powers and imperfections, remains, to be used and to be ruled. For a Christian the dominant motive of action in us is the love of God. By the constant assertion of it, it strengthens into a habit. Habit, when formed, becomes kingly and rules the soul. It must rule even if it has to take the sword of discipline and mortification for a sceptre. This applies not only to the body, but to the mind and heart. It arms itself with the holy resolve to do all things for the love of God, that it may be less unworthy of His love. It never ceases to sweep the house diligently by self-examination, and to search for the lost drachma. As fire burns away the mould on the metal, so our imperfections are destroyed by perfect love. As the love of God grows in us, it grows, like the love in God, out of itself. It has tasted of the divine fruit and knows its sweetness. Experience has revealed "how gracious the Lord is." It lives in another than a mere material world. To it there is no joy like the peace of God "which passeth understanding." Filled with love it desires to work for others. It hears the cry of humanity lying in darkness. It feels the weakness of the Church, wounded and stricken by divisions. It may be able to do a little, but it must not wrap its talent in a napkin and bury it. If we cannot go forth as priests or sisters, yet in every parish and in every department of society there is work to be done. The principle of the Incarnation, which God brought down from heaven to save us, must be our example. The soul on the rock, saved from the angry, raging |