THE TRUE IDEA OF DEVOTION TAKEN FROM GROWTH IN HOLINESS by Father Frederick Faber, D.D. TAN BOOKS With Eccles. App., 1855 Devotion is a word which has a great many meanings, and it is unfortunately seldom used in the right one. Sometimes it is used to express a part of itself instead of the whole, sometimes one or other of its accidents, sometimes one of its kinds, sometimes one of its characteristics, and sometimes its effects, as its sweetness, beauty and heroism. But it is useless to appeal to etymology, or to fight about words. The substance is to have a right idea of the thing intended to be conveyed. To point out some of the mistakes of ordinary conversation will be a step toward this. We say that a person gives too much time to devotion, and not enough to his worldly affairs or works of charity. Here by devotion we obviously mean prayer. We say that a man is too devout; and here by devotion we understand the acts which concern the direct worship of God. When we talk of having had a great deal of devotion at a certain church, or on a certain feast, we mean by the word spiritual sweetness. Or a thing is devout which inspires us with serious feelings, or is in good religious taste. We often use the word for recollection, for much church-going and the like. There is a truth and a meaning in all these expressions, and it is useless to quarrel with them. But they have not infrequently done harm by making the true idea of devotion less clear. One fact all this shows, that as the word has fastened itself to so many holy practices and clothed itself in so many respectable significations, --- the thing must be of no inconsiderable importance. Indeed, to the misunderstanding of it much that is unreal, sentimental, fickle and exaggerated in spiritual persons, is to be attributed. In theology, devotion means a particular propension of the soul to God, whereby it devotes itself, commits itself, binds itself over, consecrates itself to the worship and service of God. This it may do by vow, by oath, or by simple sentiment. Thus an author, who once passed under the name of St. Augustine, says that devotion is the action of turning ourselves toward God with a humble and pious affection; humble because of the consciousness of our own weakness, and pious because of our trust in the Divine compassion. But St. Thomas more accurately as well as more clearly defines it as the will to do promptly whatever belongs to the service of God, and as Valentia warns us, it is not to be confounded with fervor, no uncommon mistake. St. Francis de Sales defines it to be a kind of charity by which we not only do good, but do it carefully, frequently and promptly. It falls under the virtue of religion. Directly, it is an act of the will, implying indirectly an act of the understanding which excites the will. Its cause is extrinsic, namely, God Himself, acting through intrinsic grace. St. Francis de Sales remarks that, though a kind of love, it is something more than the love of God; and that "something more" is a certain vivacity in doing what the love of God would have us do. Perhaps I may then be permitted to call devotion spiritual agility, which seems to express what St. Thomas and St. Francis say. Thus it appears that devotion is a very grave, solid, hard-headed, stout-willed, businesslike affair, and not at all the sweet, fervid, heroic, graceful, tender thing it is often taken for. It is well when it has all the qualities these latter epithets imply. But when they are there, they add something to it, and do not express merely its own nature. If it did not sound like a play upon words, I would say that it is desirable we should have a more theological and a less devotional idea of devotion than we commonly have. Theologians go on to divide devotion into substantial and accidental, and accidental they subdivide again into accidental spiritual, and accidental sensible. Substantial devotion is that intelligent promptitude of the will to serve God, which rests on no attraction of the imagination or sweetness of the affections, but on the principles of the Faith, and fixes the soul in a solid resolution to serve God, under whatever circumstances. Without this substantial devotion no other is worth anything, no other is enduring, no other is a reasonable service. Next to the gift of faith we should prize nothing so much as this substantial devotion. Accidental spiritual devotion is in reality only a state of substantial devotion, to which God is mercifully pleased to add His gift of sweetness. A certain recreation, corroboration, comfort of spirit, flows from Him into us and rests in our spirit without at all descending to the sensitive part of our nature. This adds to the agility of substantial devotion, and gives it more force to overcome difficulties, and a certain kind of pleasure in overcoming them. Accidental sensible devotion is a state of substantial devotion, and also of accidental spiritual devotion, wherein God condescends still further to our infirmities or needs, and lavishes upon us still more sensibly the caresses of His love, by allowing His sweetness not only to inundate our spirits, but also to flow down into our sensitive appetites, and sometimes into our very flesh and blood. Hence it follows that there are two kinds of dryness and desolation: desolation of spirit, which consists in the privation of accidental spiritual devotion, and leaves us in the state of bare substantial devotion; and desolation of sense, which consists in the privation of accidental sensible devotion, and stays the Divine sweetness in the upper parts of our nature, as Our Blessed Lord cut off the waters of His Divinity from the lower parts of His soul in the Garden of Gethsemane.   It is thus of great importance to distinguish the effects of devotion from devotion itself; and St. Thomas helps us to do this in a very simple and clear manner. The school of St. Thomas is always speaking of "light" and "understanding"; these are in his teachings what "will" and "affections" are in the school of Scotus. So here he says that devotion causes a light in the soul, and that the effects of this light vary according to the objects on which it falls. If it brings the beauty of God close to the soul so that it has a certain enjoyment of Him, the result is joy and gladness. If it shows God far off, beyond the reach of our nothingness and the attainment of our weak desires, then it causes the pain, not altogether painful, of desire and spiritual anxiety. If it shows us our own sinfulness and vileness, the result is a gracious sorrow and holy affliction. Putting this doctrine of the Angelic Doctor before our eyes, how strange must seem the delusions of those who are perpetually seeking devotion where it is not to be found, and perpetually lamenting the absence of one of its merest accidents and adjuncts, as if the soul had fallen off from God altogether. Many seek it in sweetnesses, which are simply God's gratuitous favors, and which nothing would be less likely to merit than a greediness to have them. Many look for it in freedom from temptations, which may be either a displeased condescension to our slow convalescence from sin, or a withdrawal of the materials of merit because we have been found unworthy of perfection, or an engrossing concentration of the human spirit in some temporary occupation, or a stratagem of Satan for purposes he will hereafter disclose. Some seek it in a multitude of practices, as if a man's strength consisted in the multitude of things he had to do, and not rather that he could do a multitude of things because he was strong: and what if the multitude of things should break his back? Some are so foolish as to seek it in a sensible love of images and pictures, which is like asking matter to have the goodness to make mind spiritual, a thing which a man might not say even of the wonderful Sacraments themselves. This mistake first weakens the head, secondly turns us unreal, and thirdly makes us foolish. Some seek devotion in vehement resolutions. There is little good to be found in vehemence of any kind in the spiritual life. And this amounts to confounding the intention to be virtuous with the actual possession of the virtue itself, to which it is but a help. Some seek it in continually increasing austerities. But it is not the invariable reward even of these. They often make a heart still harder, whose want of tenderness is the true cause of its want of devotion. I distrust all austerities done for a purpose. They should only be the twofold expression of love desiring at once to take vengeance upon self and to imitate her mortified Redeemer. Some seek devotion in sighs and tears, when these sighs and tears themselves must have come out of devotion, and be its outside accidents, to be themselves worth anything at all. Some place it in violent contrition. But contrition is a calm, intelligent, sorrowful purpose, so far as our side goes; its violence and intensity are the gifts of God. Some even place it in an ability to echo the hot and fervent words of others, forgetting first that there is hardly any state of feeling to which we cannot work ourselves up if we please, and secondly, that there is no feeling which we cannot deceive ourselves into believing we feel. Yet what baseless fabrics of radiant devotion often rest on this treacherous chasm! And lastly some think it consists in discerning what God is actually doing in our souls. But to see our own devotion is only to know we have got it, not to cause it. Here are ten delusions which fade away in the plain light of St. Thomas and his doctrine. We have already seen in what devotion consists, but how are we to know it? What are its infallible signs, its invariable concomitants, if these things are not? It is known by the strong practical will, which without relying upon itself puts forth every effort, and does not spare itself. It is known by a promptitude or agility of action which fears no kind of work and limits itself to no degree, which has no reserves with God, and does not stipulate for its reward. Perseverance shows it; for God's favors are meant to be transient, and man's delusions are showy and deceitful, while substantial devotion alone endures. It shows itself in suffering and self-violence; for though other things have the spirit to attempt great deeds, devotion alone can carry them through. It is manifest in the sanctification of our ordinary actions, a grace which has this privilege, that no delusion can counterfeit it with success. It shows itself in unselfishness and the renunciation of our own interests, whereas all its spurious imitations seek self only, under a more or less palpable disguise. In speaking of its signs, however, we must remember that substantial devotion is an essentially inferior thing; and many consequences flow from this one truth. Moreover it is a habit, and habits do not commonly become sensible except in acts. It is the doing of the act which makes substantial devotion apparent, and the sweetness accompanying the doing of it which makes devotion sensible. What then, it may be asked, are Special Devotions, and how do they fit in with that has been said of devotion in general? I must repeat somewhat, in order to make this plain. Devotion is a devoting of ourselves to God, a loving promptitude of the will in all that concerns His worship and service, a spiritual agility. It is this which renders all acts of virtue acceptable and meritorious; for it is the hand wherewith grace touches them. It is caused extrinsically by God, intrinsically by meditation; and the effects of it are joy, tenderness, softness of heart and delighted peace. Hence a tender devotion is the characteristic of the Gospel. But as substantial devotion rests on the principles of faith, all forms of heresy lose tenderness, as anyone may see who is acquainted with their history, or has compared the mysticism outside the Church with the mysticism within it. Tenderness in devotion is necessarily orthodox. Now devotion is a practical acting out of a belief in spiritual things and in an unseen world; and Christianity is a worship not of things, but of Divine Persons, disclosing themselves to us in certain mysteries, which are for the most part mysteries of sorrow and suffering. Thus the Infancy and Passion of Our Lord, the Blessed Eucharist, the dolors of Our Lady, the acts of the Martyrs, are things especially calculated to win and soften. This was the character Our Lord intended to give to His religion; and He made every circumstance of the Incarnation and every feature of the Church contribute to this unexampled and celestial pathos. Every such mystery, circumstance, and feature becomes in its degree the object of a special devotion. Every man who is a friend of God is in a state of habitual or Sanctifying Grace, in which his friendship with his Creator consists. Upon this habitual grace God is endlessly sending down the impulses of His actual grace, illustrating the understanding, as I believe, in every circumstance of life, and not merely rarely and on great occasions. In addition to these two kinds of grace, every Baptized person has infused into his soul seven supernatural gifts of the Holy Ghost. These gifts St. Thomas defines to be certain habits by which a man is enabled promptly to obey the Holy Ghost, and St. Bonaventure, habits disposing a man to follow the instinct of the Holy Ghost. These gifts lie in the soul as keys of an instrument on which no one is playing. They are passive, habitual and form a state, just as Sanctifying Grace does. They are played upon according to the needs of our spiritual life by what are called the actual impulses of the Holy Ghost, and which correspond in their subject-matter to actual grace, standing in the same relation to the habitual gifts as it does to habitual grace. Of these gifts, four belong to the intellect: Wisdom, Understanding, Science and Counsel; and three to the will: Fortitude, Piety and Fear. Tender devotion is the fruit of the gift of Piety, which may be defined to be the Divine ray that illuminates the mind, and bends the heart to worship God as our most loving Father, and to help our neighbor as His image. But tenderness of its own nature specializes, that is, it singles out an object and magnifies it, and for the time excludes other objects from its loving attention. Thus it always comes to pass that there is a dash of exaggeration in Special Devotions, which makes it the more needful that devotion should be orthodox, and take heed to the analogy of faith. They must be exclusive in order to be special, and what is exclusive has a tendency to be exaggerated. It may almost be said that the Incarnation, which is a galaxy of tender mysteries, involves special devotions in its very idea, and that the gift of piety is the telescope by which we resolve this galaxy into clusters of constellations or into single stars. Different devotions are connected with different virtues, and have special gifts for the attainment of those most congenial to their own spirit. The Holy Ghost also leads different souls, either by natural character or supernatural attraction, to different devotions, and gives them various lights upon them. Thus we have special devotions, and special saints to further them, to Our Lord's Infancy, His Boyhood, His Active Life, His Passion, His Wounds, His Cross, His Risen Life, His Precious Blood, and His Sacred Heart, to His Mother, His Angels, His Apostles, and the various orders of His Saints. The unity of our faith hinders the one-sidedness of our special devotions, and the devotions of all the children of the Church may be considered as one, full, harmonious, and for humanity, adequate worship of the most Holy Trinity, made co-equal to the infinitude of the Divine Majesty, by the worship of the Word made Flesh. Such is the account to be given of Special Devotions, which are as it were developments of the worship of the Sacred Humanity of the Eternal Word. They are essentially doctrinal devotions, and therefore we should always jealously ascertain that they have had the approval of the Church. But, say some, they change and grow, and this is a difficulty. Certainly; let us see what is to be said in answer to it. I will take the case of devotion to Our Blessed Lady as affording the greatest difficulty, as well as the one for many reasons the most likely to be felt. It must be admitted then that devotions grow. History is too clear to allow of a case being made out on the other side. If devotion were not grounded on dogma, it would be unreal. We have no business to be devoted to an untrue thing or a fanciful mystery. It would not however follow that because devotions grow, dogma grows. The two propositions are distinct. It is of faith that Our Lord lived a given number of years upon the earth, which were spent in such and such a way. This fact cannot grow out of it. No one can fix a limit to them. It is of course true that each additional definition soon becomes the basis of special devotions; because definition makes the truth plainer and surer to the eye of love, and devotions have a marked partiality for articles of faith. The mind and the heart of the Church, her doctors and her people work and move together; so that devotions almost always represent the turn theology is taking in their day. Sometimes they run ahead of the schools; sometimes the schools run ahead of them. The schools and the people are next found very far apart. The history of the doctrine and devotion of the Immaculate Conception is an illustration of this; while the rise of the devotion to St. Joseph is quite a singular phenomenon in the history of devotions, because it does not seem to have followed this rule. Now the Church is pre-eminently a soul-saving institution; and doctrine has as much to do with the saving of souls as Sacraments, jurisdiction, discipline, hierarchy and ceremonies, or perhaps even more; and devotions are the application of doctrine to the souls of the people. We must not lose sight of the livingness of the Church. If we do, then the growth of devotions becomes a serious difficulty, and the art of printing would have done as well as a pope. But the Church is a living soul-saver; and as soul-saving consists, not only in bidding souls come to her to be saved, but much more in following them into the wilderness whither they have wandered, the Church is, to a certain extent, dependent upon the vagaries of the world for her movements. So that variety, change, adaptation and growth were to be beforehand expected of her, and are not only not contrary to her unity, but actually fruits of it. A man is not always in one place because he is a soldier, but rather because he is a soldier he is successively in many places serving his country. He follows his enemy; the Church follows hers, to get back the plundered souls. The history of Canonical Penances and Indulgences is an example of this. It also explains the Church's apparent copying of the world, from time to time; though it is always after a fashion of her own. Her conduct at the time of the Renaissance is an illustration of it. This sort of adaptation of the soul-saving Church to the circumstances in which in every age she finds herself is effected by the Holy Ghost, who dwells in her, through the medium of the Popes, the Saints of the day and the spirit either of old orders who have kept their fervor, or new ones which He raises up to meet the exigencies of the times. The earliest Special Devotion, with a modern look about it, seems to have been to the holy angels, which fills the acts of the Martyrs; and St. Gregory's dialogues both represented the devotions of his day and propagated them to future times, especially devotion to the souls in Purgatory. Devotions seem to have become much more numerous when pilgrimages began to be disused, and to have multiplied proportionately with the liberality of the Church in granting indulgences. Moreover, as the European mind became more subjective, the reign of mental prayer was spread; and he must think strangely either of the copiousness of Divine mysteries or of the power of human contemplation, who should be surprised that eighteen hundred years' meditation on the mystery of the Incarnation has contributed, and is forever contributing, art and poetry and devotion to the Christian Church. The whole history of the worship of the Blessed Sacrament is a commentary on this. The same may be said of the Sacred Heart. St. Gertrude asked in vision why there was no special devotion to the Sacred Heart, and St. John answered her that its time was not yet come. It came at last, through Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Visitation. The devotion to the Interior Life of Jesus arose in France, and was part of a reform of the secular clergy. The devotion of the Precious Blood seems to have begun with St. Catherine of Siena, and took a definite shape at Ferrara. That to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was French. That of St. Joseph began among the bachelors of Avignon. That of St. John received a great development in the spirit of St. Sulpice. The Name of Jesus was a Franciscan devotion. The Month of Mary was unknown even to St. Alphonsus Liguori. Yet, when we say that devotions began at such a place or with such a person, we are speaking only of the date of their taking visible shape and consistency. There were always preludes of them in the Fathers and the Saints. This is especially the case with the devotion of the Sacred Heart. Meanwhile the Church is not taken unawares by any of these things. Rather it is she who gives them out as part of her own life. Thus when the feast of the Eternal Father was asked for in France, Benedict XIV gives at length the reasons why the Church was jealous of this devotion; and the reasons are exclusively doctrinal. The devotion of the Slavery of Mary was condemned also as unsafe in doctrine. The devotion to Our Lady in the Blessed Sacrament, though seemingly countenanced by St. Ignatius, met with the same fate. The difficulties experienced by Juliana of Retinue in the case of the Blessed Sacrament, by the Venerable Margaret Mary in the case of the Sacred Heart, and by St. Bernardino of Siena with his new devotion to the Name of Jesus, show how jealously and sagaciously the Church watches, and curbs, and tests, and ballasts new devotion, or new expressions of an old devotion. So it is with devotion to Our Blessed Lady. As Scripture says, she was to take root in an honorable people; and taking root is a work of time. Saints have rooted her, councils have rooted her, universities have rooted her, monastic orders have rooted her, schools of theology have rooted her, the eventful vicissitudes and personal homage of popes have rooted her. Pius VII at Savona is repeated in Pius IX at Gaeta. As the world got used to the mystery of the Incarnation, it hardened its heart to its tenderness; and this devotion, which is the very spirit of Jesus, breathed over it, like the moist, warm south wind over the garden of spices. The Church has worked it up inextricably into her whole system. God has sanctioned it by revelations, visions and miracles. Even in the weary, thankless, dusty toil of today, we are greeted by Rirnini, and refreshed by La Salette. The actual fruits of sanctity in the nineteenth century illuminate the devotion which was the subject of prophecy at the end of the first century in the inspired Apocalypse. We cease to envy those who heard Mary proclaimed Mother of God at Ephesus, since we have heard our own Holy Father of today infallibly pronounce her Conceived Immaculate. But spiritual books often warn us against false devotions. What are these? There are three classes of false devotions: those which are wrong from being too high for the person practicing them, those which are singular and uncommon and those which are too subtle. Those which are wrong from being too high for the person practicing them come sometimes from the temperament of the person, sometimes from the indiscretion of a director, and sometimes from a strong delusion of the devil. They lead men to force themselves into supernatural states of prayer, and to try to suspend the use of their understanding, and rest passively in God, when they are not called to it by Him. They consist in a wild, unhumble and indiscreet imitation of the Saints. Persons addicted to them disdain common things, affect an interior vocabulary and imitate the grandiloquent language of St. Denys and other mystics. Such persons are not often fond of the writings of St. Theresa. Directors sometimes drive their penitents into these false devotions by too hastily fancying they discern supernatural signs upon them, not sufficiently attending to their advancement in solid virtue, and too readily taking for their full value the descriptions such persons give of their own souls. Such coin must not pass current for a twentieth part of its nominal value. Other devotions are false by being singular, uncommon, or grotesque. Some souls look with disrelish over a whole host of common devotions, such as the multitude of pious Catholics practice, and with a sort of diseased instinct fasten upon some startling act or word of a saint, which was either really a mistake on his part or a special impulse of the Holy Ghost, and they will proceed to found upon it at once some peculiar and odd devotion of their own. There have been instances of persons whose whole prayers have been to request God to retire from them and keep Himself in His own grandeur, which they founded on St. Peter's words, Depart from me, a Lord! for I am a sinful man. Yet these people ought rather to have been climbing up sycamore trees with Zaccheus, to get a nearer view of Jesus. Devotions founded upon the apocryphal gospels or unrecognized revelations fall under this head; and indeed, everything which is foreign to the common and motherly ways of Holy Church. Devotions which are false from being too subtle are those which are founded on dubious theological opinions, or on the abstract conceptions of the schools. Such have been certain devotions to the Attributes of God, not very honorable to the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord. They were common among the Quietists; and some may be still found in the works of certain eminent French spiritualists of the school of Bernieres de Louvigny. They generally arise from the activity of the imagination, and often strike us as beautiful at first sight, but without unction in the using. Devotion must be artless, tender, simple, guileless, natural, spontaneous; and how can these things be, when the object of them is obscure, abstract, difficult and subtle? It need hardly be added that all devotions which are false in any of these three ways, are very ruinous to the soul. But in devotion we have to. receive as well as give, to receive more than we give. In truth from first to last it rather seems to be mostly receiving, and little giving. The exercise of devotion finds its chief theater in prayer; and inspirations are God's side of prayer. We must not always be speaking, we must be listening also. We must pause from time to time, and make all quiet in our hearts, that we may not lose the heavenly whispers that come floating there. I am not speaking now of extraordinary mystical colloquies, but of what will pass in the souls of all recollected men at prayer. As soon, says St. Gregory, as an inspiration touches our soul, it elevates it above itself, represses the thoughts of temporal things, and quickens the desire of things eternal, so that it is delighted with heavenly things only, and weary of earthly; and such a height of perfection does it communicate to the soul, that it likens it to the Holy Ghost; for, as Scripture says, What is born of the Spirit is spirit. These inspirations are the actual impulses of the Holy Ghost of which I spoke before; and they may be called the very necessaries of life to those who are aiming at perfection. They are wanting them nearly all the day long; for as it is by habitual and actual grace that we live the life of grace, obeying the Commandments of God and the precepts of the Church, so it is by the habitual gifts of the Holy Ghost and His actual impulses and inspirations, superadded to grace, that we live the lives of perfect men and of ascetics who are training for perfection. These inspirations are not chance things, or rare, or what are technically called spiritual favors. We must beware of confounding them with these. They are our daily bread. They are to perfection, what grace is to virtue. They flow into us, whether we hear and feel them or not, in an almost uninterrmitting stream. Before we gave ourselves up to God without reserve we had them frequently, more frequently than sinners, who nevertheless have them very often in right of their Baptism; but now they flow into us in an unintermitting stream. One great mystical theologian calls the gifts of the Holy Ghost the seven sails of the soul, in which it catches the various breezes of inspiration, and so navigates the sea of perfection. The first thing then to be observed about these inspirations is what St. Thomas tells us, that all the just have a right to ask for them and to expect them, because of that first infusion of the Seven Gifts at Baptism, which were communicated to them simply to make them capable of obeying and quick to obey these very inspirations; and that we should especially ask for them when we are attempting the more perfect ways either of the active or contemplative life. This involves on our part continual prayer for them, a habit of listening for them, and an obligation, to be discreetly ascertained, to obey them. The second important observation to make is that we ourselves cannot fix the time, place, exercise or occasions of these inspirations. They depend simply on the will of the ever blessed Giver, the Holy Spirit Himself. "Dost thou know," said the Lord to Job, "by what way the light is spread, and the heat divided upon the earth?" He bloweth where He willeth, and chooses His own occasions. Thus no vehemence of our own, no straining of our inward ear, will bring us these inspirations. We must be careful that our listening in prayer does not become idleness, or degenerate into a quietude to which we are not called. We must not put out force; that will only delay the Holy Spirit. We must use patience, and wait; and patience will accelerate His coming. Nevertheless, which is the third thing to be observed, there are certain places where He is wont to come, and therefore where it is wisest to wait. St. Gregory, in his Morals, has given us the whole theology of inspirations so fully, and with so much system and completeness, that later writers seem to have added nothing to him. He calls these means of communication which the Holy Ghost vouchsafes to use, the veins of the whisper of God, like the veins of water which irrigate the earth, and the veins which distribute in all our members the blood of life. He numbers among them prayer, the Word of God, sermons, spiritual reading, and all the exercises of the contemplative life. But the richest veins of all are the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrament of the Altar; and thus the likeliest time and place for these inspirations to come are indicated to us. But there are four sources of these inspirations: though indirectly they are of course all from God. The first source is God Himself, acting directly upon the soul, as in the inspirations of which I have been speaking. The second source is our guardian Angel; the third, conscience; and the fourth, love. Of the inspirations which come direct from God, I have already spoken. Scripture speaks of our guardian angel as a fountain of holy inspirations; and indeed, we could hardly conceive so inseparable a companion, and so loving and efficacious a guide as our guardian Angel, not frequently communicating his mind to ours, when we are so often made to feel against our wills the impressions of the minds of devils in our almost daily temptations. Thus God says to Moses: Behold, I will send My Angel, who shall go before thee, and keep thee in thy journey, and bring thee into the place that I have prepared. Take notice of him, and hear his voice, and do not think him one to be contemned; for he will not forgive when thou hast sinned, and My Name is in him. (Ex. 23). So Zacharias says: The Angel that spoke in me came again, and he waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep. And I answered and said to the angel that spoke in me, saying, What are these things, my Lord? And the Angel that spoke in me answered, and said to me, Knowest thou not what these things are? And I said, No, my lord. And he answered and spoke to me, saying ... Then presently after the vision changes, and the prophet says, The word of the Lord came to me. (Zach. 4). So when Elias fled from Jezebel, the Angel of the Lord awoke him as he slept under a juniper, and spoke to him and fed him, and gave him directions to go to Horeb, and when there, not the Angel, but God Himself spoke to him. So that the cases of Elias and Zacharias not only established the office of the Angel, but also its relation to the direct inspirations of God. Oh, with what care, says St. Bernard, quoted by Da Ponte, and with what gladness, the Angels join themselves to those who sing psalms, assist those who pray, remain with those who meditate, accompany those who contemplate, and preside over those who are occupied in active business! For these supernal powers recognize their future fellow citizens, and therefore, with all solicitude, cooperate with those who are to receive the heavenly inheritance. They rejoice with them, comfort them, guard them, foresee and provide for them, that is for ourselves. Finally, they inspire us to pray, and mortify ourselves, to sing psalms, and to beat our cymbals, for our bodies which we macerate are our cymbals, that God may be pleased with the music of prayer, mingled with the music of mortification. If sleep invades us in these exercises, they arouse us, and say, Arise and hasten, for the active life is a long journey still before you, and the contemplative life still longer, if at least you are to go from virtue to virtue, and see the God of Gods in Sion, who will recreate your spirit, and speak to your heart, and unite you with Himself by the thin, sweet whisper of His inspirations. O lofty Angel! adds Da Ponte, whose impulses help me so much to receive these sweet inspirations, assist me always, rouse me from my torpor, animate my confidence, supply my infirmity, so that with thee for my companion, I may promptly walk the ways of mortification and prayer, until I come to the mountain of God, where I may see Him, and enjoy Him in His glory. [Dux Spiritualis. Tract 1, cap. xxi., sect. 2. I quote from the Latin translation of Trevinnius, not possessing the Spanish.]   The third fountain of inspirations is our own conscience. Its office is to tell us what to pursue, and to warn us what to avoid, and to incline our will as well as illuminate our understanding. Fallen as we are, St. Thomas says that the virtues are natural to us, and in a certain way conformable to the natural propensions of our spirit. The inspirations of conscience call these propensions into play, actively discerning them from under the law of sin, the sting of the flesh, and the buffeting Angel of Satan, by which they are overlaid. Its office, says Origen, is to call the house, never to sleep, always to be preaching, and to sit like a pedagogue in the upper chambers of our soul, and give orders. But its inspirations are not only suggestive before action, but when need requires, reproachful afterwards. It is, in fact, the good side of the human spirit, and claims obedience by Divine right. The fourth fountain of inspirations is the stimulus of love. The charity of Christ urgeth us, saith the Apostle. It is of the very nature of love to quicken our perceptions of what the object of our love requires. Its docility is equal to its quickness. An eye can command it without a word, and a smile can sufficiently reward it. It is essentially inventive, full of affectionate wiles, divining unexpressed desires, prophesying the future, and thoroughly alive to every feature of the present. When it sleeps, its heart waketh. So that what with its sensitiveness, and what with its delicacy, and what with its contagious nearness to God Himself, it is an independent fountain of inspirations, which, as human, are often marred by indiscretion and extravagance, yet nevertheless, with caution and counsel, are great helps to perfection. All these four kinds of inspiration are, according to their several degrees, entitled to our obedience. They form as it were the rule under which we live, filling the places of superior and subordinate superiors, according to the order and harmony which is in all the works of God, and nowhere more than in 'the subordinations of the interior life. As in the matter of devotion it is important to distinguish between inspirations and spiritual favors, one being of the common, the other of the uncommon order, so is it also important to distinguish between tenderness and spiritual sweetness, the former being of the common, the latter of the uncommon order. These distinctions are often overlooked, which leads not only to our having unclear ideas in our own mind, but to our misunderstanding and misapplying spiritual books. Tenderness is the Christian feature of devotion. I am not saying we are not to seek for spiritual sweetness: that is the question for the next chapter to consider; but we must by all means pray for the impulses of the gift of piety, and for our inspirations to play upon that gift, because tenderness is quite an essential in Catholic devotion. We must pray for tenderness as we pray for grace. We must claim it as we claim the spirit of prayer. It belongs to us, not as one of the unusual phenomena of the Saints, but as something without which we can neither pray, confess, nor communicate as we ought to do. I cannot illustrate my meaning better, nor bring the mind of the Church more forcibly before you, than by speaking of what is called in theology the gift of tears. I am sure most persons will think that, although it is a great and good thing to have this gift, yet it would not come natural to ask for it. But in the collection of collects in the Missal, a set, and those among the most beautiful, are to ask the gift of tears, which is the chosen symbol of tenderness. They are as follows: "Almighty and most merciful God, Who didst draw from the rock a fountain of living water for Thy thirsting people, draw from the hardness of our hearts the tears of compunction, that we may be able to bewail our sins, and through Thy mercy merit their remission. We beseech Thee, O Lord God, propitiously to look upon this oblation, and draw from our eyes the rivers of tears which may extinguish the fury of the fires we have deserved. O Lord God, mercifully pour into our hearts the grace of the Holy Spirit, which may enable us to wash away our sins with the plaintiveness of our tears, and through Thy bounty obtain the fruit of the indulgence we desire." It is our duty, says St. Gregory, in the third book of his Dialogues, to implore of our Creator with profoundest plaints the gift of tears; and the Catechism of the Council of Trent, speaking of contrition, says that tears ought to be desired and sought for with the greatest care. There can hardly be a doubt then about the mind of the Church. In accordance therefore with her wish, spiritual theologians have treated systematically of this gift of tears. They have divided tears into four kinds: natural, diabolical, human, and Divine. Natural tears are those which proceed from constitution, temperament, age, sex, and the like causes. God, says one writer, has made His tears to rain both upon the just and the unjust, that they may use them or not for the good of their souls. Such tears have no character, either for good or evil; and those who have them not, need not be cast down; for the physical expression, though sweet and helpful, is but the outward manifestation of the inward tenderness. Diabolical tears are caused by the devil acting through our minds on our physical temperament. Such were the tears of Ismahel, the son of Nathanias, of whom Jeremias speaks; and those also of which Ecclesiasticus says, An enemy weepeth with his eyes; but if he find an opportunity, he will not be satisfied with blood. An enemy hath tears in his eyes; and while he pretendeth to help thee, will undermine thy feet. Such also are the tears of hypocrites, who make themselves appear sad to the eyes of men; and mystical theologians remark that heretics have often had a diabolical gift of tears, in order that they may mistake this physical softness of heart for the tenderness of devotion, and so not find out that they have gone astray from the true road of interior piety, and that those whom they delude, women especially, may fancy their leaders are saints, and that where they are, the Church must be also. Human tears are those which flow from the human spirit. Tears at the loss of temporal goods, at the breaking of earthly attachments, or at moving narratives and pathetic incidents, these are all human. Such were the tears of Esau, when, as the Apostle says, he found no place for penance though he sought it with tears, because it was the loss of the temporal benediction, not of the spiritual promises, for which he wept. St. Jerome says that these tears are signified by Micheas, under the names of the wailing of dragon and the mourning of ostriches. It is plain that they are not holy in themselves, and many of them nothing can sanctify, because an evil motive corrupts them. But who would say that the mother's tears for her only son departing to the horrors of the Crimea, or the long, silent streams of the soldier's widow, fructify not in their souls with the fruits of eternal life? Surely, in the good, they are a kind of prayer. The tears which are from the Holy Spirit, and which we mean properly by the gift of tears, are like those of Tobias, , to whom St. Raphael said, When thou didst pray with tears, I offered thy prayer to the Lord; or those of Ezechias, to whom God said, I heard thy prayer, and I saw thy tears; and those of Our Blessed Lord, of whom St. Paul says, that in the days of His Flesh, He offered up prayers and supplications, with a strong cry and tears, and was heard for His reverence. They come from those unutterable plaints with which the Holy Ghost is making intercession in our hearts; and it is their characteristic to clear the mind and not to trouble it, to leave the spirit not perturbed, but delightfully and unspeakably serene. Theologians distinguish five degrees of these tears, which are more or less perfect. The first degree consists of those which we shed over human miseries. Even these may be the gift of the Holy Ghost. Such were the tears of Anna, the mother of Samuel, of Tobias, of Sara the daughter of Raguel, and of Judith. The tears of the second degree flow from the consideration of sin, seen in the light of the Divine compassions. Such were the tears that David often shed, such those of Magdalen over her Master's feet, such those of Peter, when he rose from his fall. Tears of the third degree flow from the compassion of Jesus, and the meditation of His Passion. Such were the tears of Mary in her dolors. The tears of the fourth degree arise from the desire of seeing God, and the intolerable burden of His absence. Such were the tears of David, which were his bread day and night, while his soul thirsted for the face of the strong and living God; and the tears that Magdalen wept, when she stood weeping at the sepulchre because Jesus was not there. The tears of the fifth degree come from an ardent love of our neighbor, and a supernatural sorrow for his sins and his calamities. Such were the tears that Samuel shed for Saul, and Our Blessed Lord for Lazarus, and over His beautiful, infatuated and dear Jerusalem. It appears then that these tears are no slight help to holiness; that while they are gratuitous, they are nevertheless to be impetrated; and that it is the mind of the Church that we should ask for them with persevering earnestness. Still while we are anxious, our anxiety is to be moderate, else it will harm us. Our appetite is not to be inordinate, else it is a symptom of disease. We may take complacency in our tears, yet we must not be attached to them. Neither must we pride ourselves upon them; for they are a gift. Still --- what think you, is the mind of the Church about inward tenderness, when, so unlike her usual self, she would have us even pray for its exterior and physical manifestation? Forward takes you next sequential page of this series.   E-Mail HOME--------------------------THE SAINTS DIRECTORY www.catholictradition.org/Tradition/silence8.htm