THE WAY
SERMON
DELIVERED AT THE VISITATION OF FRIBOURG, NOVEMBER 19, 1897
SECOND DAY OF THE TRIDUUM
CELEBRATED ON THE OCCASION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE CAUSE
OF THE VENERABLE MOTHER MARIE DE SALES CHAPPUIS
BY
FATHER FRAGNIÈRE
DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY
PROFESSOR OF DOGMA AT THE MAJOR SEMINARY OF FRIBOURG
, CHAPLAIN OF THE VISITATION
PARIS
SALESIAN ANNALS
79, rue de Vaugirard, 79
1898
I
The introduction of the Cause for the Beatification of the Venerable Mother Marie de Sales is undoubtedly a great and pure joy for this monastery to which this holy nun belonged. It must also be of great interest to our city of Fribourg, where the Venerable spent several years of her life, to the Swiss homeland from which she came, and to the entire Order of the Visitation, which this good Mother built up by her example and her words. But I dare to affirm that the principal interest of this cause is even more powerful, because it is universal. Indeed, the Beatification of our Venerable, if it is in accordance with God’s plans, can have its resonance everywhere, and its happy effects can spread throughout the entire world. What gives me this assurance? 14
It is the special character of the spiritual doctrine of the Venerable Mother Marie de Sales. This doctrine cannot fail to acquire great authority simply by the beatification and canonization of the Servant of God. Now, you will be convinced of the considerable and truly universal scope of this doctrine. I invite you, after your contemplation yesterday of the great examples given by our Venerable, to apply yourselves with me to the study of his doctrine. To do this more easily, we will group our thoughts around a common center and restrict our research to a point to which everything relates, both in the doctrine and in the life of the Venerable Mother Marie de Sales; this is what she herself called: THE WAY.
What, then, is the Way of Mother Marie de Sales? How does this Way belong to her? What is its effectiveness and what could be its practical significance? These are the questions we are going to address, and the solution to them will justify what I said about the universal importance of the cause just presented. I First, let us please dispel a false prejudice that could take hold of people’s minds here. When I speak of the spiritual doctrine of our Venerable, I in no way intend to attribute to him a doctrine that is so entirely his own that it was neither known, formulated, nor practiced before the Venerable Mother Marie de Sales. In terms of doctrine, nothing can be absolutely new in Catholicism. Understood in this way, novelty does not imply praise; it is a cause for condemnation. Indeed, it has always been an indisputable rule in the life of the Church: there must be no innovation in the field of faith: Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est. We must always return to what has been handed down since the apostles. In all doctrinal discussions, the Church has constantly appealed to this principle: “Let novelty be rejected and antiquity retained”: Explodatur novitas, retineatur antiquitas. Nevertheless, this fund of antiquity does not remain in a state of inert and lifeless crystallization. On the contrary, it is a living germ that constantly develops and flourishes.
Always ancient in its essence, always renewed in its form; Always one in its principle, always multiple in its fruits, Catholic doctrine is truly that grain of mustard, imperceptible at first, but which grows and becomes a tree powerful enough for humanity of all times to live and prosper in its shade. The way of the Most Reverend Mother Marie de Sales is a fine example of the truth of this principle. If we consider it in its essence, this doctrine tells us nothing that was not seen, said, and practiced before the Venerable Mother. It is clearly stated in two texts from our Holy Books. The first is that of Saint Paul, which I quoted at the beginning of this discourse: “I will show you a way even more excellent.” The Greek here is more forceful and is surprisingly close to the thought of our Venerable Mother. He says: I will show you a way that is pre-eminent, καθ’ ὑπερβολῆν ὁδὸν, that is, a way so superior to the others that it must truly be called par excellence: the Way. Now what does he mean by this way? Evidently, charity, for the apostle immediately demonstrates its excellence in this famous passage which bursts forth like a triumphant hymn in praise of this divine virtue: “If I spoke with the tongues of angels and men, and did not have charity, I would be like sounding brass and a clanging cymbal.” Charity is therefore, according to Saint Paul, the Way par excellence, the only true Way. Without it, nothing is of use; with it, everything is useful for salvation. It is to these terms, remarks Saint Augustine, that the entire thought of the Apostle is reduced: Adde charitatem, prosunt omnia; detrahe charitatem, nihil prosunt cætera (1).
Now, what does our Venerable One understand by the Way? It is clearly the way of charity. She had received this special gift from Godto consider God as Charity always in action for the good of his creature, and the creature as an outflow of God’s natural Goodness and as a means for us to fulfill the duty that binds us to God, that is, to love. To receive everything from God and to return everything to God, this is certainly the actual exercise of charity. Now, according to the good Mother, this must also be the sole occupation to which she wishes to devote her soul. Her whole life, even here below, must be nothing but this: a perpetual act of love for God. Here are her words: “I dedicate myself to the love of the loves of the “Creator, wanting my being to return to Him what His “charity has given Him, wanting my will to “serve to this end with strength and power in virtue of the “Creator, to whom I wish to serve directly, without love “of anything else, for the love of the love that is in “Him, to Him, and for Him. This is received from His Goodness “as being just, having received everything for this purpose.” (That “is to say: since I have received everything for this purpose). ” Words like these recur on almost “every page of the Venerable One’s letters. One could “therefore not be mistaken in calling the way of the good Mother “the way of divine Charity. The second text to which this way relates is the one in which Our Lord Himself, in Saint John (2) declares: “I am the Way”: Ego sum Via. Now, He is the (1) Serm., 138. (2) XVI, 6. 7 Way, as man. God, as God, is truly the Truth and the Life: Truth and Life in Himself; Truth and Life for us, for He has given us revelation and grace, light and the true life of souls. But God, as God, is not the Way; rather, He is the blessed end to which the Way leads us. It is Jesus, through his humanity, who reestablished between God and man the communications broken by sin. Also, since the Incarnation, everything in Religion is done through the intermediary of the God-Man; it is through Jesus the man that man acquires the power to become a child of God. It is in Jesus the man that we are regenerated. Quicumque enim in Christo baptizati estis, Christum induistis (1); it is in him and through him that we receive the remission of sins, the enlightenment and the virtues that generate holiness. Ex ipso autem vos estis in Christo Jesu qui, factus est nobis sapientia a Deo, etjustitia, et sanctificatio, et redemptio (2); it is also through Jesus the man that our prayers and our sacrifices, our gifts and our tears, our expiations and our sorrows find the way to the heart of God. Carried to the heavenly altar by the hands of our Pontiff, who is also the Angel of divine counsel, all the supplicating ardors that rise from the earth cannot be rejected.
Alone, they would be worthless and lifeless before God. This is how man does not rise to the higher regions of his own accord. He borrows from a body lighter than air its subtlety, its specific lightness; he encloses this gas in a frail envelope and soars with it into ethereal space. Is this not an image of the soul’s ascents toward God? Unable to rise by his own strength, man can do so through Jesus. In him too, there is a kind of outer envelope, his holy Humanity; The invisible gas enclosed therein is the Divinity of the Savior dwelling substantively in the temple of His humanity. The upward movement that the balloon communicates to man is an image of the admirable ascents that Jesus prepares in the heart of the one who abandons himself to His action. Left to itself, the soul could not rise; it would crawl perpetually on the earth. The way is not open to it through space. It is Jesus alone who is truly our way: Ego sum via. Now, is this not also the dominant thought of our Venerable One? Wasn’t the guiding idea of her entire life always to act with and through the Savior, or rather to leave within her full freedom to the Savior’s action? Yes, her way was truly Jesus Christ, and especially holy Humanity. Her entire spiritual doctrine ultimately comes down to this single point: to make disappear from oneself everything that is human, to leave to the Savior the full and entire domain of our soul. It would be difficult to better realize the beautiful motto of Saint Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Jesus Christ who lives in me.” She had come to such a community of action with the Savior that she no longer did anything except through his movement and under the impulse of his grace. Thus, a life of charity, and life in Jesus Christ and through Him, these, if I am not mistaken, are the two elements of the Way, according to the Good Mother. Or rather, shouldn’t we say that, in reality, these two elements are one? For living perpetually in self-forgetfulness and the movement of Charity cannot be done by man. left to himself.
Man is naturally selfish, and it is a true miracle, as Taine, an author hardly suspected of mysticism, observed, it is a true miracle to see souls in whom the natural poles of human life are completely reversed, so that these souls no longer live for themselves, but for God and for their neighbor, seen and loved in God and for God. This is precisely the upward movement of the soul, and this movement can only be imprinted on it by Jesus Christ. On the other hand, if we ask ourselves: What does it mean to live from Jesus Christ? And in Him? The answer is easy. Jesus Christ is God made man out of love for us. And God is charity. It is therefore the charity of God coming out of itself, so to speak, to conquer man and to carry man with it to God. So loving God and loving Him in Jesus Christ and through Him, or rather, letting Jesus Christ love God and our neighbor in us and through us, this is the whole Way of the Venerable Mother Marie de Sales. Certainly nothing is older in Christianity. Jesus himself established this Way by saying: “Without me you can do nothing.” – “Remain in me and I in you. As the weapon cannot bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, so you, unless you remain in me.”
Saint Paul practiced this way, and all the Saints after him, for they are all members and organs of Jesus Christ; in all Christ dwells through Faith, and by a necessary consequence, all, as the Apostle says, are rooted and grounded in charity. Christ dwells for ever in the heart of the vestris: in charity radicati et fundati (1). II And yet, it can truly be said that this ever-ancient Way has been renewed by means of our Venerable Mother. And this should not surprise us. Every word of the Gospel is capable of endlessly producing new fruits and endlessly taking on new developments. Coming from God, ever-ancient and ever-new, His word borrows from this source something of His eternal youth. The sun is always the same. Yet, how different its effects! Here, its rays reach only part of the year and skim the ground obliquely. Therefore, the ice never disappears there: these are the polar regions. There, clouds filled with icy vapors intercept the sun’s heat, and the cold is felt even in midsummer. Further away, the sun can freely dart its rays, and we see the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics flourishing under its warm radiance. Finally, we can witness another phenomenon. The sun’s rays, condensed by a powerful lens, form an incandescent focus which, if it falls on combustible material, is enough to cause a great fire. It is the same with the Gospel. In all ages, the supreme law of the Christian has been this: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. But what a difference between the warmth of love that bursts forth in the martyrs and the cold breath produced in certain times and in certain Christian circles by the spirit of heresy and unbelief. In recent centuries, has not the spirit of infidelity and apostasy taken hold of a large part of Christian nations, and could one not wonder whether the time had come when the words of Our Lord were to be fulfilled: “When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will still find faith on earth?” and that other oracle: “And because iniquity has abounded, the love of many will grow cold”?
Now, in the great needs of the Church, God causes His Word to produce new fruits; He gives it greater splendor and an unusual increase in power, so that the same word seems, as it were, revealed a second time to the world, so much does it take on new vigor and effectiveness. It is ordinarily the role of the Saints to produce in the Church this renewal of the word of salvation. I would willingly compare them to this condenser glass which accumulates the rays at the point that needs to be illuminated and warmed. This is how the life of charity was certainly and in a marvelous way, developed, broadened, and applied II to a greater number of souls by Saint Francis de Sales. Before him, it seemed that the perfect life should be the province of monks and nuns. He showed that it is a path accessible to all. Now this greater diffusion of the life of charity is also the special mission of the daughters and sons of this lovable saint. It is only from the doctrine of this venerated Father that the good Mother constantly drew. It is from this ever- fertile source that she nourished her piety. It is above all through the very exact and heroic ffaithfulness to the observance of the Directory that she reached a truly extraordinary degree of union with the Savior and the constant and constant exercise of divine charity.
What constitutes the particular spirit of the doctrine and life of our Venerable One is therefore in no way to have innovated in theory or practice. She was in all things only a faithful disciple and daughter of Saint Francis de Sales. But she so condensed all the doctrine and all the practice of perfection of her blessed Father in this single point of charity through the Savior; she brought this point into such powerful relief; She so strongly attached to this true center of spiritual life everything that is of detail or particular practice, and, thereby, she gave her whole life such a stamp of unity, strength, and continuity, that one can truly say that in her the Way took on new life and shone with a new light. This will be her imperishable glory to have made the principle that all perfection is contained in one thing: to love God in Himself and for Himself with a very whole and unique love: to love one’s neighbor in God and for God. Sacred Scripture had already said it: Qui diligit legem implevit. Plenitudo legis est dilectio. Saint Augustine repeated it in these famous words: Ama et fac quod vis! But in Venerable Marie de Sales, it was not just a light that shines one moment only to go out the next. It was the constant intuition and, above all, the perpetual practice of her entire life, which was nothing but the development of this one and only view. Fixedness of view can certainly be very dangerous: in a narrow and meticulous mind, it can be the triumph of stubbornness and the harsh obstinacy of the monomaniac. But when this concentration of the soul is achieved on an absolutely central point and by a spirit of true self-forgetfulness, or rather, when the soul, instead of withdrawing into itself, expands in the bosom of infinite charity, then it is truly the triumph of God, the absolute victory of the divine over the human.
Thus conceived, the Way of Charity reveals itself to us with a completely new force and energy. From then on, we also understand that this Way can renew the world, if God wishes to spread it and make it bear all its fruits. That this renewal is in God’s sight is a point on which the Venerable One had views and assurances from on High. But since it is not appropriate for us to rely on these testimonies before the infallible authority of the Church has pronounced on the matter, we will content ourselves with measuring, as far as a feeble human eye can, the practical scope of this happy Way of the good Mother. III First, let us note what renewal this Way is called to produce in the guidance of souls. Assuredly, no one among Catholics would dare to deny, in theory, that charity is an excellent Way, since Saint Paul declares it positively. But, in practice, does divine Charity occupy the same place in the lives of most Christians as it does in the law of God, that is, the first! Are there really many who place the thought and care of loving God at the forefront of their cares and concerns, their plans and desires? Are there many Christian lives, or those who claim to be Christians, which are so governed and governed by the love of God that everything, absolutely everything, goes, directly or indirectly, to loving God? And yet, there is no doubt that everything must be directed toward this goal. This is the true meaning of the first and greatest of divine precepts: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” If man is truly created to love God, everything in his life must serve the duty of love. What are so many people doing who present themselves as restorers of human society and dream of a state of perfect happiness here below by purely natural means and outside of God? Great steps, no doubt, but outside the Way (magnos passus extra viam), great progress according to their own judgment, but outside the essential order desired by God, that is, in evil. Is there in heaven and on earth a single perfect happiness outside of the love of God? We Christians will answer with all the energy of our faith and reason: No. But why is it that this sovereign importance of the love of God is still so little understood after almost twenty centuries of Christianity? Have the guides of souls done their full duty in this regard? Have they never given secondary practices more importance than the first and greatest of the commandments? Even among the best and most authoritative spiritual guides,Does divine charity really hold the place to which it is entitled? In particular, do we not too easily become accustomed to considering charity as the goal of perfection, without wanting to use it as a means of perfection? That is to say, do we not too easily forget that it is a Way, to simply make it an end? Now, in truth, it is both, end and means. Let us take a striking example of this dual way of considering charity.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola did so much good throughout the – 14 world with the help of his Spiritual Exercises, that one can never say too much in praise of this admirable work. However, what place does charity occupy in this learned strategy of the means of salvation? The last. Not certainly the last in importance and dignity, but the last in the time and order of the means employed. That is to say, Saint Ignatius reserves it for the end, as being the most perfect, which can only be attained after having practiced the lower degrees. Therefore, in short, charity appears here more as a goal to be attained than as a means to perfection. And even as a goal, charity appears only at the last point of the Exercises, in the contemplation that concludes the entire vast work of the retreat. When, at the beginning, it is a question of clearly setting the goal and the end of our entire existence, the word love is not even uttered.
Thus, while our catechism declares that man was created to know, love, and serve God and by this means acquire eternal life, Saint Ignatius tells us simply: man was created to praise, revere, and serve God Our Lord and by this means save his soul. Thus, according to this definition, the love of God does not appear as the goal of human life, nor as a necessary path to our supreme end. This omission is certainly not tantamount to a negation. Saint Ignatius in no way prohibits the use of charity as a universal means of salvation. How could he do so without denying the truth of the inspired words: Qui diligit legem implevit. “He who loves has fulfilled the whole law”? However, he did not see fit to emphasize, or even state, this truth at the beginning of his Exercises. One can easily find good reasons to justify this omission, in particular this one: that Saint Ignatius wanted, above all, to purify the soul, that before this purification, it may seem useless to propose a path of charity to a soul incapable of understanding it, while a purified soul will go straight to the love of its Creator. All this is true. However, I cannot help regretting that such a fundamental phrase, intended to give the human soul a complete idea of its temporal and eternal destiny, has omitted precisely the most necessary and essential word, that of the love of God. Everyone, in fact, can easily sense what an immense difference there will be in the very conception we have of all human life, if we adopt the habit of considering charity only as a sort of hors d’oeuvre, admirable no doubt, but added on, like a crowning touch to a completed and complete edifice; or, if, on the contrary, we make charity not only the sole goal of life, but also the universal means of salvation, that is, the one that serves everything, and without which nothing suffices. Indeed, in the latter case, charity becomes the most essential, the most intimate part of all life, the central, unique, fundamental point to which everything relates, outside of which everything loses its reason for being. In the first case, on the contrary, charity appears to us, at least practically, as a very distant goal, that is, as something almost foreign to it, which one arrives at only after a long journey and after having done anything other than loving God for a long time. Certainly, I do not deny the necessity of purifying the soul, to bring it to the perfection of divine love.
But, what should not be ignored, or rather, what should be emphasized, is that the best way to purify oneself is to love. The Savior said it: “Many sins were forgiven her, because she loved much.” He does not say: she loved much because she wept over her sins. And yet this too is a truth; but Jesus Christ judged it less important than the first: much was forgiven her, because she loved much. Here, then, as elsewhere in the whole sequence of the spiritual life, the true, complete, and above all practical truth is that charity is – 16 not just an end, but also a means and the principal one: it is a true path, along which one must walk, and not merely an end toward which one must walk. Well, this was, as we have demonstrated, the great merit of the Venerable Mother Maryde Sales to conceive and practice this way of charity as a universal means of sanctification. She seems to be telling us through all the examples of her life: this is the Way, it is up to you to walk in it: Haec est via, ambulate in ea. We can therefore hope, if the cause of the good Mother comes to fruition, to see charity better known, better appreciated, and more generally practiced as a way. We will arrive at this profound, energetic, and effective conviction that everything in us belongs to charity; that the entire life of the soul must begin, continue, and end in charity, through charity, and for charity; that if we do not do this, nothing is done; for whoever loves God truly knows Him; God is love, and love is known only by loving. Whoever does not diligit God does not novit: whoever does not love God has charity (1). Whoever loves God praises and reveres Him as He wills; for He is Father: Si ergo Pater ego sum, ubi est honor meus (2). Whoever loves God sincerely renders Him faithful service, for He has no need of our help, and what He requires of us is the service of love. Everything else is nothing to Him without this. Saint Paul said: “Even if I give my body to be burned for the service of God, if I do not love Him, I do not have charity, I am nothing.” Now, once this truth is practically understood and generally observed, the following necessarily follows: First, the whole path of virtue is admirably facilitated. The path of charity is sweet: it is by it that the Savior’s yoke is easy and His burden is made easy. (1) 1 John 4:8. (2) Matthew 1:14. , 1, 6. 17 is light. You preach duty and virtue to me. I understand you; but my heart is cold and my soul is weak. I am without strength, and your words only discourage me. You tell me to pray. But how can I pray if prayer only inspires disgust in me? Ah! You want to drag me on a long journey, and you forget to light the engine that is to give me the power.
This fire is that of charity. Tell me that it is sweet, that it is beneficial, that it is easy to love Jesus. If we represent charity as an arduous summit reached by a few after long and painful efforts, we will repel most men; for they are all naturally weak, inconstant, and fearful of effort and hardship. But, look at this same human nature, as soon as the fire of a great love has touched it, it is no longer recognizable: it passionately seeks what it feared most. It enjoys hardship; work is a rest, deprivation no longer costs it, humiliation does not frighten it; death, for the Beloved, it desires; it loves and that is enough for it. It must not be believed that this heroism is a very rare phenomenon and the exclusive preserve of certain privileged souls. A great number of souls remain in a state of baseness and cowardice because they have not found their true path. But every human soul was created to love God. It can therefore attain this love. Grace cannot be lacking for this essential work. Now, as soon as a soul loves seriously and deeply, it has within it the source of all heroism. How many obscure heroes do we see every day without being moved by them?
A few days ago, I read this passage. A poor Arab sees a missionary who had done him good leave for an apostolic expedition in the desert: If he leaves, he said to himself, I’ll go with him, and if he dies, I’ll die with him. He did so, as he had said, and died shortly afterward, massacred along with the pious missionary by the savage Tuaregs. 18
Thus, charity is not only a sweet path, it is also a high, strong, and sublime one. Nothing stops it: it is capable of all good; it triumphs over all obstacles. Fortis ut mors dilectio. Every human soul becomes great through the love of God; everything becomes possible and even easy for it. I am not saying that it will be spared hard sacrifices. On the contrary, love here below lives by sacrifices; it mercilessly immolates everything that opposes it in nature. But sacrifice attracts the soul that loves and intoxicates it, far from repelling it. This is why charity is the only true way. It is proportionate to all, for it gives strength to the weak and delights the strong. Haec est via, ambulate in ea. Thirdly, charity is a short and perfect way, because it reaches the end at the first stroke. It transforms everything it touches into gold; whereas without it, everything remains only vile and worthless lead. Everything is beautiful and delightful in the eyes of God Himself, in a soul that loves, for its action is not its own, it is God’s action in it. Now, God values as great only that which is from Him. The creature, as such, is nothing in his eyes; but the creature divinized by charity, God loves it like anotherHimself.
In short, all theology agrees that the true and only measure of all merit is charity. Thus, it is neither the greatness nor the difficulty of the work one does that constitutes the true proportion of merit, but rather the degree of love with which one does it. Gathering a straw, with a hundred degrees of love, is a hundred times better than suffering martyrdom with a single degree of love. Oh! God, how many hidden martyrs you will produce in the great day of your justice, for whom men have never had anything but contempt and disdain! Fourth, the way of charity is a happy way. The Most Reverend Mother Marie de Sales said that she was not destined to participate in the cross of Jesus Christ through pain, but through joy. At every moment 19 transports of joy and cries of happiness burst forth from her pen. However, she did, in fact, suffer greatly; the abundance of love delighted her so much that she could say with the apostle: Superabundo gaudio in omni tribulatione nostra. Anyone who wishes to enter seriously on this path will be able to have this sweet experience that the secret of living happily is to live in the habitual exercise of God’s love.
Finally, the way of charity gives God all the glory he expects from us. The glory of God consists in the fact that he can show himself as he is. Now, he is by nature pure goodness. Deus de suo optimus, de nostro justus, said Tertullian. He therefore desires above all to communicate ever more abundantly the treasures of his goodness; but he can only do so, as he desires, in loving souls and in proportion to their love. There are, then, many treasures to be exploited in this royal path of charity. Each soul can find there: perfect purity, greater ease in the practice of virtues, outstanding merits attached to every action, at every moment of life, peace, security, happiness, perfect honor rendered to God through our only mediator Jesus Christ. In a word, this would be the complete realization of the Savior’s mission: glory to God, peace to men of good will. Is that all? No, after the individual effects, it would still be necessary to point out the results that this path could produce on human society. This would be an immense field to cover. I cannot approach it today, for it is time to finish.
However, one word will give you a glimpse of everything. It is not, as is commonly believed, external agitations that determine the course of human events and have the most profound influence on history; it is the good or bad affections of men. All life proceeds from the heart. Ex ipso enim vita procedit (1). (1) Prov., 4, 23. 20 God made nations curable; but he will not heal them by any means other than individuals. There is no other morality for societies and another for individuals. If, therefore, peoples are to be healed; if all of human society, so deeply divided and restless, is to arrive at a more normal and reassuring state, this can only be done through a sincere return to the law of God. In society, as well as in the individual, God must resume his place, which is the first. People must renounce this foolish pride which imagines itself independent of God. All people are equal (1). In a word, no rest is possible, neither for society nor for the individual unless man consents to enter into the essential order established by God for every human creature.
Now, order does not consist, as some devilish beings suppose, in considering God as the enemy, but in loving God with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul and with all one’s strength. When this supreme law is universally observed, when the reign of God, which is nothing other than the reign of this law of love, has come, then there will be no more struggles between one class of society against another class, nor between one Christian people against another Christian people. I do not know how this will be done, but I know by the very word of God that it will be the certain result of accepting the kingdom of God. Non levabit gens contra gentem gladium, nec exer cebuntur ultra ad prælium (2). Then too, the power of spreading and conquering Christianity, so weakened in recent centuries by the internal divisions that heresy, schism, and unbelief have created in Christianity, will resume its victorious rise. Nations are opening themselves on all sides to the action of Europe. Immobile Asia is shaken; the formerly unknown depths of Africa are explored in all directions by the pioneers of civilization. 1) Psalm 19:21. (2) Isaiah 11:4. 21 Is this not an indication that God wants to work to finally extend his kingdom throughout the earth? But for Europe to fulfill its mission, it must be Christian, it The law of love must be marked on his forehead, so that all unfaithful nations may recognize by this sign the God who made them and convert to their Creator.
These are undoubtedly effects that are contained, as it were, in their principle in the Royal Way of divine charity. But for these effects to occur, this way must radiate everywhere and be accepted. Will it be? Can we hope to see charity, the daughter of heaven, received in a world devoted, it seems, to the sole worship of selfishness, sensuality, and money? Will beings who have denied Jesus Christ and blush at the very name of Christians be transformed into vessels of honor into which the Holy Spirit can pour the divine liquor of God’s love? This is impossible for man. But all things are possible for God. There is no other name given to men to be saved than Jesus Christ. If God wants to glorify his only Son and give him, as he promised, the nations for his inheritance and the ends of the earth for his possession, he will give strength and power to his Way, and we will be saved for time and for eternity. Amen
(1) Gal., 111, 27.
(2) I Cor. 1:30.
Source: La voie