Salesian Literature

Chapter 5  :  Our wills compliant with God’s will as it is declared by his commandments

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God’s desire that we should keep his commandments knows no limits, as the whole of Scripture shows.

 

In order to arouse a love for God’s commandments – a love which is the symbol of sanctity and salvation – we need to contemplate their wonderful beauty.  Some actions, you see, are wrong because they are forbidden; others are forbidden they are wrong.  Similarly some actions are good because they are commanded; others are commanded because they are good, because they are useful.  This means that they are all of them good, all of them lovable; the commandment makes indifferent actions good, good actions better.

 

Keeping the commandments, for many people, is like swallowing medicine – their fear of dying in God’s disfavour is greater than their delight in living to his liking.  Some people too will refuse medicine, however palatable, simply because it is called medicine; in the same way, there are those who have a horror of what is commanded, simply because it is commanded … They tell of a man who lived quite happily in Paris for eighty years, and never once left the city.  Yet the moment the king ordered him to stay there for the rest of his days, he took himself off to see the surrounding countryside – something he had never wanted in his life before.

 

A loving heart, on the other hand, loves commandments.  The more difficult they are, the easier and pleasanter it finds them, because now it can gratify the beloved more perfectly, give him greater honour.  Praise bursts from such a man’s lips, as God makes him known his will, the observance that wins his approval (cf. Ps. 118:171).

 

Just as a pilgrim who sings merrily on his way adds the effort of singing to that of walking, yet lightens the rigours of the road, so the soul endowed with charity finds such charm in God’s commandments that it knows no greater comfort in this life than their gracious burden.  Such was the cry of the psalmist: Gone out into a land of exile, of thy covenant, thy commandments, I make my song (Ps. 118:54).

 

Thus charity makes us comply with God’s will, brings us to a careful observance of his commandments as the positive will of the God we mean to please.  Such gratification prompts us by its gentle strength to that obedience which the law imposes on us of necessity – making of necessity a virtue, changing it into charity, transforming all its difficulty into delight.

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