Salesian Literature

Chapter 9  :  We are to love all the evangelical counsels, but practise only those we can

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Each individual Christian is unable and would be ill advised to try to practise all the counsels.  However, each of us is obliged to love them all, for they are all very good.  If the scent of musk annoys you when you have a sick headache, would you insist that it no longer has a pleasant, attractive perfume? If cloth of gold did not suit you, would you say it was worthless?  Would you throw away a ring, simply because it failed to fit your finger?

 

Let us be glad to see others attempting to follow counsels that are not for us.  Let us pray for them, praise them, encourage and help them.  Charity binds us to love not only what is good for ourselves, but also what is good for our neighbour.

 

The man who loves and prizes one of the evangelical counsels because God gave it, must necessarily love all the others, for they are God’s too.  It is easy enough to practise some of them, but not all of them at once.  God offers a large number, so that each individual may keep one or two of them; and not a day passes without some opportunity dawns.

 

Suppose charity demands that you live with your father or mother, to look after them; for all that, preserve a love and a longing for solitude, keep your heart form becoming more entangled than is demanded by the task charity sets you.  Suppose your circumstances rule out the keeping of perfect chastity: keep it at least to the extent you can without violating charity.  The man who cannot do everything ought to attempt something.

 

Various stages of perfection exist in the counsels.  To lend to a poor man who is not in extreme need is the first stage of the counsel of almsgiving; a stage higher is to give him something; higher still is to give him everything; but the highest stage of all is to give oneself, devoting oneself to the service of the poor.

 

Hospitality, when there is no question of urgent need, is a counsel: to entertain a stranger is the first stage; to run out into the street to invite him in, as Abraham did (Gen. 18:2), is a stage higher; a higher stage still is to take up one’s abode at some danger-spot, to rescue, help and wait upon those who pass that way.  St. Bernard of Menthon, a native of this diocese, excelled in that.  The son of a noble family, he lived for many years high up in our Alps, where he gathered round him several companions, who could wait for, take in, help and save from peril of storms travellers and passers-by, who would have died from blizzards and cold but for the two hospices he founded on the peaks which now bear his name – the Great St. Bernard in the diocese of Sion, and the Little St. Bernard in the diocese of Tarentaise.

 

To visit the sick who are not in grave need is a praiseworthy act of charity; to serve them is still better; but to dedicate oneself to their services is the crown of this counsel – an institute of priests was founded to do this, and many women do it in various places.  They are imitating St. Samson, that nobleman and doctor of Rome; in Constantinople, where he was ordained, he completely dedicated himself with wonderful charity to the service of the sick in the hospital which he started, and which the Emperor Justinian erected and finished.  They are imitating Sts. Catherine of Siena and Genoa, St. Elizabeth of Hungary; also those glorious friends of God, Sts. Francis of Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola, who made such a fervent practice of this in the early days of their Orders as to bring them a spiritual gain beyond compare.

 

Virtues, you see, have quite a range of perfection, and normally there is no obligation on us to practise them in the highest degree.  If we begin to practise them, so that we have them to some extent, that is enough.  To go further, to progress in perfection, is a counsel.

 

Heroic virtue is not usually commanded, only counselled.  So that if on occasion we meet with the obligation of practising it, the circumstances are unusual or rare enough to make such practice necessary for preserving God’s grace.

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