Salesian Literature

Chapter 10  :  A way of knowing if we change in charity

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You will recognize it all right, Theotimus.  If the mystic nightingale sings to please God, it will sing the song it knows God likes; but if it sings to please itself, it will sing what takes its own fancy, what it thinks will give the self the most pleasure.  Take two divine songs … one could be sung because it is divine, the other because it is pleasing.

 

“Don’t you see,” you could say to me, “that God means you to sing the pastoral song of his love to your people? In charity’s name he commands you three times to feed your flock, speaking to you through St. Peter (cf. Jn. 21:15-17), the first pastor.  What’s that you say? … Rome or Paris offer greater spiritual consolations; charity is easier to practise there!”  Heaven knows, if that were so, I should not be singing to pleas God, but myself; I should not be seeking God through charity, but the personal gratification which the practice of charity brings!

 

Religious priests would like to sing the song of secular priests, married folk the song of religious; they mean by it, they say, to love and serve God better.  Why, you are deceiving yourselves, my friends; don’t say it is to love and serve God better.  Of course not; it is to minister more to your own satisfaction, which you prefer to God’s.

 

In health or sickness we can find God’s will – usually more so in sickness; but if we prefer health, let us not pretend that this is the better to serve God.  Can’t you see that all we want from God’s will is health?  We are not really trying to see health as something God wills.

 

It is difficult, I admit, to love God and not love too the pleasures this gives us.  But there is all the difference between the joy we take in loving God because his beauty attracts us, and the joy we take in loving God because we find it pleasant.  Our aim must be to love God for his beauty, not to enjoy the beauty of loving him.

 

At prayer, if you are aware that you are praying, your attention has wandered; you have taken your mind away from God to let it rest upon what you are doing.  Our biggest distraction, very often, is the care we take not to have any distractions!

 

Simplicity is the best way in spiritual things.  If you want to contemplate God – do that, and don’t think of anything else.  If you begin to look back on yourself, to examine your contemplation, you are no longer looking at God, but at your own behaviour, yourself.  That man is praying fervently, who cannot tell whether he is praying or not; he is not concerned with what he is doing, all his thoughts are on God.

 

Look at that man over there, saying his prayers … he seems to be so devoted, so on fire with charity.  Wait a while, however, and you will see if it is God he loves.  As soon as the charm and gratification which he feels in loving come to an end, as soon as dryness appears, he will not keep it up, but only pray occasionally.  Had it been God he was loving, why did he stop?  After all, God is still God.  it was the encouragement which God gives that he was in love with, not the God who gives all encouragement (2 Cor. 1:3).

 

Most assuredly, many people have no time for loving God unless the process is steeped in sense pleasure; like children given bread and honey, they would like to lick off the honey and leave the bread.  If they could separate love from the pleasure of loving, they would throw away the love and keep the pleasure.  This means that since they follow love because it is pleasant, once they find nothing in it any more, they have no further time for it.

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