Salesian Literature

Chapter 9  :  Benevolence leads us to invite all creating things to praise God

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When the human heart is seized with the urgent desire of praising God beyond its limits, it makes several attempts and then turns to all other creatures with an appeal for help in achieving its aim.  Three of God’s servants did this from the furnace (cf. Dan. 3:51ff); in their hymn to God’s omnipotence they urged everything in the heavens, on earth, and in the waters, to give thanks to the eternal God by blessing and praising him above all things.

 

The glorious psalmist (cf. Ps. 148) too, in the grip of an uncontrollable spiritual emotion prompting him to praise God, goes leaping from heaven to earth and back again, as he addresses promiscuously angels, fishes, mountains, waters, monsters of the sea, birds, creeping things, fire, hail and mist.  His longing gathers together all creatures, to concur in lovingly extolling their Creator; some to sing his praises with their own lips, others to provide themes for praise as their astoundingly different characteristic witness to their Maker’s greatness.

 

St. Francis of Assisi too sang his Song of Brother Sun and many another wonderful hymn, to call created things to his aid – heart-sick at being unable to praise the dear Saviour of his soul to his heart’s content.

 

Gratification fills the heart so full with God’s charms that it is quite overcome with emotion.  Benevolent love, however, leads to ecstasy – ecstasy in praise of every kind.

 

This is the passionate love for God that has been the inspiration of so much preaching, that has prompted the Xaviers, the Berzees, the Anthonys[1], to venture into so many dangers – all those Jesuits, Capuchins, religious and priests of all kinds, in India, Japan, Maranon[2] – to bring vast nations to know, acknowledge and adore the holy Name of Jesus.

 

This is the passionate spiritual love that has led to the production of so much devotional literature, the building of so many churches, the erection of so many altars, the founding of so many convents.  For this is the love that keeps so many of God’s servants on the watch, at work, even laying down their lives – holocausts to an all-devouring zeal.

 

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[1]  St. Francis Xavier, Berzée, and Anthony Possevin were Jesuit preachers and writers of the early days of the Society.

[2]  Maranon was a stretch of the Amazon in South America.

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