Salesian Literature

Chapter 9  :  Further corroboration; an example worth noticing

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The only bond of love with Jacob that Leah knew was the fact that she was the mother of his four sons.  Once, at harvest time, Ruben, the eldest of the these, went to the fields and found some mandrakes, which he brought home as a present for his mother.  Rachel, who was watching, said to her sister: Give me some of the fruit thy son has found.  What, answered she, art thou not content with stealing my husband from me?  Must thou have my son’s mandrake fruit as well?  And Rachel said, Jacob shall sleep with thee to-night, if I may have some of thy son’s mandrake fruit.  The bargain was struck; and that evening, as Jacob came back from the fields, Leah – impatient with joy – went out to meet him.  Thou art to share my bed tonight, she told him; I have paid thy hire with the mandrake fruit which my son found … and she went on to tell him of the agreement her sister had made (cf. Gen. 30:14-16).  Jacob, however, as far as we know, made no reply.  He was bewildered, I imagine, and dismayed at Rachel’s fickleness in foregoing for a whole night the honourable pleasure of his company in return for so little.

 

Frankly now, Theotimus – wasn’t it a strange and fickle whim on Rachel’s part, to prefer a heap of little apples to the chaste favours of such a loving husband? Had it been for kingdoms, for crowns! … but for a paltry handful of mandrakes! … What do you make of it?

 

Nothing commoner, however, heaven knows, than for us to find ourselves making choices even more shameful and wretched!  It is for such mandrakes, for such illusions of contentment, that we forsake the love and grace of God.  How, then, can we claim to love him more than anything, when we prefer such paltry shams?

 

I have one word more, worth taking to heart … Heretics are called heretics, because they pick and choose at will which of the articles of faith they decide are deserving of belief, and dismiss or deny others.  Catholics are Catholics, because they accept unchoosingly, unreservedly and with equal firmness, everything which the Church proposes for belief.  It is the same with charity’s creed.  It is heresy to pick and choose among God’s commandments, deciding to keep these and break those.  The murderer, though he be no adulterer, has yet transgressed the law: he who forbids adultery has forbidden murder as well (Jas. 2:11).  If you do not commit murder, but are guilty of adultery, the love of God is hardly your motive for not killing;  some other motive has made you choose to keep one commandment rather than another – a choice which makes you a heretic in the practice of charity.

 

It is a principle[1] that good comes from an utterly perfect cause, evil from one that is defective.  For an act of charity to be genuine, it must come from a love that is perfect, all-embracing, all-penetrating, a love that extends to all God’s commandments.  Therefore, if we are wanting in love for any one commandment, our love is no longer perfect nor all-embracing; we cannot be called truly loving, nor consequently truly good.

 

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[1]  Cf. St. Denis: The Divine Names, 4.30.  It was also a scholastic axiom: Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu.

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