Volume III, Treatise II, Chapter IX

A Continuation of the Same Subject

Tue renovation of vows is, moreover, instituted amongst us as an acknowledgment of the grace that God has done us in bringing us out of the world and calling us to religion; and it is properly a feast which we celebrate in memory of this great benefit, which is the source of all our happiness, and a great mark of our predestination. As the Church yearly celebrates the feast of the dedication of material temples, so it is very just that we should celebrate the feast of the dedication of our souls, which are the living temples of the Lord. But the better to celebrate it, and to render our thanks more pleasing to God, we must testify our thanksgiving by effects, which is the best mark of it: we must renew ourselves in renewing our vows. We must so fortify ourselves in the observance of all our duties, that for the future we may come to acquit ourselves of them with greater exactness and fidelity than ever we have done before. It is to this renovation of ourselves, says St. Gregory, to which the apostle exhorts us by these words: ‘ Be you renewed in spirit” (Ephesians 4:23) For, as to this exterior renovation we make by our mouths, to what can it serve if it be not accompanied with the interior renovation of our souls? When the colours of a picture are so worn out and effaced by time that one can scarce distinguish the strokes and figures, we refresh it with new colours, and it becomes again as beautiful] as if it had been newly painted. The colours of virtue are soon worn out and effaced in us by time, because we are dragged by our depraved nature, which carries us to corruption and disorder, “and this corruption of the body renders the soul heavy and uneasy” (Wisdom 9:15) Hence there is need from time to time to apply new colours, and to touch or move ourselves again, by renewing those holy resolutions we have already made, and strengthening ourselves more and more-in them. “If we desire not to relent in virtue”, says St. Gregory, “it is very necessary to imagine every day that we only now begin, as when first we came to religion”. Now, therefore, begin anew with the same courage and fervour you did then, and by this means you will renew yourself. This will be to give God a pleasing mark of that lively gratitude which you have for all his benefits. Cassian relates a short and solid exhortation, which the Abbot Paphnucius made, in the presence of all his religious, to a novice he received, and each one may apply it to himself as a means that may very much help to dispose him to the renovation of vows. You come to give yourself to God, says the saint, and to renounce all the things of the world; “take care you take nothing back again that you have quitted by this renunciation”. You have renounced riches by the vow of poverty; take care not to attach yourself to the possession of the least thing in religion; for it will signify nothing to you to deprive yourself of what you possess in the world, if in religion you adhere to the possession of anything. You have renounced your own will and judgment by the vow of obedience; beware of taking them back again, but say with the spouse, “I have taken off my coat, how shall I put it on again?”

—(Canticle of Canticles 5:3) I have divested myself of my own sentiments; may I never resume them. You have renounced all the pleasures and vain entertainments of the world; take great care never to admit them again into your heart. You have trampled under foot pride, vanity, and the opinion of the,world; beware of suffering them to take root anew in you, when you shall teach, or when you shall enter on some honourable employment. Do not, then, build up again what you have now destroyed, for that will be to become in a manner an apostate, “and to look back after you have put your hand to the plough” (Luke 9:62) But persevere to the end in poverty, and in stripping yourself of all things, and in the place you have promised God to live, persevere in that humility and patience which you had, when with tears you begged to be received into religion.

St. Basil, St. Bernard, and St. Bonaventure add another consideration. Consider, say they, that you no longer belong to _yourself, but that all you are, and all you possess, belongs to God, to whom you have given it by means of your vows. Beware, then, of taking back what you have already given, because this would be to commit a theft, “since it is a robbery to dispose of anything against the will of him to whom it belongs”. Did I not say in the beginning of this treatise, that he who enters into religion gives to God the fruit and the tree? But if any one had given a tree to another to plant in his garden, and should afterwards reap the fruit of it, would not this be a theft? This is what a religious does who follows his own will, instead of doing what obedience prescribes. Nay, he does what is | worse, for he commits a sacrilege; for there is question of a thing’ that is consecrated to God, and even a sort of sacrilege which God very much abhors, as he himself declares in these words: “I am the Lord, who love justice, and hate rapine in a holocaust” (Isaias 61:2) What greater crime can there be than to steal any part of a “holocaust”, which entirely belongs to God, and is wholly consecrated to him? ‘Hence St. Bernard says very justly, “that there is not a greater nor more enormous crime than to resume power over a will which has been once offered to God in sacrifice”—Bern., Ep. cccliii.

St. Austin, explaining this passage of Genesis, ‘God took man, and put him in a paradise of pleasure, that he might work and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15),—interprets it after a manner that suits very well with our subject. Let us examine a little, says this father, what the Holy Ghost would have us understand by these words. Is it that God placed Adam in the terrestrial paradise to cultivate the ground? There is no probability at all that before sin God would oblige him to work, yet certainly there was no inconvenience that he should then exercise him in something by way of amusement or recreation, as those do who take pleasure in working in their own gardens: but was he obliged to it by constraint? This was neither convenient to his state, which was the state of innocence, nor necessary to the nature of the earth, which brought forth all things of itself, without being cultivated. Therefore what is there more to be understood, adds this great saint, by these words, “God put man in paradise to take care of it’? From whom ought he guard it, as there was no other man but himself in the world? Ought he not preserve it from the beasts? Before sin, the beasts did no hurt at all to man, nor to anything belonging to him; and how was it possible that one man alone should be able to guard a place of so great extent from so many sorts of beasts? Should not he at first have made an enclosure so securely fenced as to be sufficient to have hindered the serpent from entering into it? And before he had finished it, ought he not to have hunted out all the beasts that were in it? But how was it possible that a single man should be able to compass so many things? Hence it is not to be understood from this passage of Scripture, that God put man in Paradise to guard it after this manner, and. to cultivate the earth. But what then is the meaning of these words, “to work therein, and to guard it”? Their meaning is, answers this father, that he should take care to put in practice those commands that God had given him, in performing which he would have kept Paradise, which afterwards he lost by his neglect to practise them. _ Let us now apply this to our subject: why, think you, has God placed you in this paradise of religion? for this is a name which the saints give it, and which agrees very well with it: would you know why? it is that you may practise the conmimandments he has given you, and the evangelical counsels which are contained in your rules, that by practising them you may preserve this terrestrial paradise for yourself, which others have lost in consequence of their not practising them.

The same saint attaches another meaning to this passage. He observes, that the words of Scripture are, “ut operaretur, et custodiret illum”. Now the word “illum” may refer to “man”, as well and better than to Paradise. God therefore, adds the father, placed man in Paradise, not that man should cultivate and guard Paradise, but that God himself might there cultivate and guard man. For. as we say that man cultivates the ground, when he labours to render it fruitful; so we may say also that God cultivates man, when he labours to render him more just, more holy, and more perfect. But it was precisely for this that God placed him in the terrestrial paradise, to cultivate his soul by sanctity, to guard him by this means till such time as he should be pleased to transfer him from this Earthly paradise to that of Heaven, and render him for ever happy in glory. Be you persuaded, in like manner, that God has not placed you in this terrestrial paradise of religion, that you may cultivate and keep it, because it is guarded and cultivated by better hands than yours, but he has placed you in it, that he may cultivate you, that he may make you a man filled with the spirit of mortification, an interior man, a holy man, a perfect man, ‘and that he keep you by this means till he shall vouchsafe to transfer you from this house of peace into the eternal mansions of his glory.

We ought to help ourselves with these and similar considerations, and excite ourselves with all our strength to fulfil our obligations to God, and to reap from the renovation of our vows the fruit we ought to propose to ourselves therein. But if you regard pains and difficulties in the practice of the things which you have promised, think at the same time of the price annexed to them, “and how great the recompense is” (Hebrews 10:35) “We have promised great things”, says St. Francis to his religious, “but greater things are promised us”. Let us be faithful to our promises, and God will not fail to be faithful to his. Hence, when a religious makes his profession in the order of St. Francis, as soon as he has ended his vows, and made them to his superior, the superior answers him saying, “And I promise you in God’s name life everlasting’. I now make the same declaration. If you keep your promise to God, I promise you, on his part, eternal life; and I make you this promise by virtue of the words of Jesus Christ, who assures us in the gospel, that those who leave all to follow him, “shall have a trea~. sure in Heaven”—Mat., xix. 21.

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