Trials And Crosses.
The days of the religious life of Father Ignatius might be numbered by
his trials and crosses. It was not that a goodly share fell to him, as
became his great holiness; but he happened to be so very keenly tried,
that what generally assuages the bitterness of ordinary trials served,
by a special disposition of Providence, to make his the more galling.
His trials were multiplied in their infliction; the friends to whom he
might unburthen himself were often their unconscious cause; and the
remedies proposed for his comfort would be generally an aggravation of
his sufferings. He had an abiding notion of his being alone and
abandoned, which followed him like a shadow, even unto the grave. This
feeling arose from his spirit of zeal. He burned to be doing more and
more for God's glory every day, and sought to communicate to others
some sparks of the flames that consumed himself. His projects for
carrying out his ideas seldom met the cordial approval of superiors,
and when he received such sanction, it was only after his schemes had
been considerably toned down. This restraint he had always to bear.
When his plans were tolerated, or even approved, he could not find one
to take them up as warmly as he wished. In fact, he found no second.
Catholics have an instinctive aversion to anything that wears the
appearance of novelty in their devotions. Father Ignatius's plans for
the sanctification of Ireland, the conversion of England, and the
perfection all should tend to, were very good things. No one could
have the least objection to them; but, somehow, every one could not
see his way to working them out. When {484} Father Ignatius proposed
the means he intended to adopt, the old Catholic shrugged his
shoulders as if he had heard a temerarious proposition. It was new;
the good old bishop that gave his life for his flock, or the saintly
priest he had listened to from childhood, never proposed such a thing.
He never read it in his books of piety, and though it seemed very
good, it "did not go down with him." He listened to the holy
Passionist, because he reverenced him; but he never encouraged his
zeal with more than a cold assent.
Father Ignatius found this want of correspondence to his suggestions
in every person even his own brethren in religion failed to be of
accord with him. He was perpetually speaking upon his favourite
topics, and never seemed satisfied with the work of his
fellow-labourers if they did not take up his ideas. He often drew down
upon himself severe animadversions on account of this state of mind.
When fathers returned to the retreat, tired and wearied after a number
of missions, they felt it rather hard to be told that they had done
very little, because they had not set about their work in his way. He
would be told very sharply that they should wish to see what he had
done himself; that his chimerical notions looked well on paper, or
sounded nicely in talk; that there was a surer way of guiding people
to heaven than talking them into fancies beyond their comprehension.
These remarks only served to bring out the virtue and humility of the
saintly man. He became silent at once, or turned the conversation into
another channel.
He had a still severer trial in this point. He very frequently
attributed the caution of his superiors to want of zeal, and used to
lecture them without human respect on what he thought to be their
duty. On one occasion he went so far as to complain of this to
Cardinal Wiseman; but the explanation was so satisfactory that he gave
expression to different sentiments for the future. Whenever they spoke
positively, he immediately acquiesced, and was most exact in carrying
out their injunctions. His zeal was unbounded, and one of his
superiors always said: "Father Ignatius will become a saint by the
very thwarting of his plans." If he had not the virtue of submitting
his judgment, it is hard to {485} say into what extravagances he might
rush. This one trial was the staple of his religious life for more
than thirty years.
We shall now give a few instances from his letters, and from anecdotes
recorded of him, to show the spirit with which he bore this and
kindred trials and crosses.
In 1853 he received a very severe letter from one of our Belgian
fathers, who is in high repute for learning and virtue. He forwarded
the letter to Father Eugene, who was then Provincial, accompanied by
these remarks:--
"I thought of answering the enclosed letter from Father ---- at
once, before sending it to your Paternity; but, on looking it over
again, I have changed my mind. The rule which I make for myself is,
to mind what my superiors say on this matter and the conversion of
England, and to charge them to stop my proceedings if they
disapprove of them. I shall take what they say as coming from God,
who has a right to dispose of all souls, and who may judge that the
time for grace in England is not come, or never has to come.
Besides, they are the proper judges whether my proceedings are
correct _in toto_ or in part. Your Paternity has lately expressed
your mind upon the matter, and I have no scruple on the subject; but
it is well you should know what others feel. I beg you to take this
letter from Father ---- as kindly meant, and, with me, to be
thankful for it."
Another to his Provincial:--
"With regard to the principal topic of your Paternity's letter, I
will first thank you, and thank God that I am thought worthy to be
spoken and written to, without dissimulation or reserve, of what
people think of me. If I make use with diligence of their remarks, I
shall be able to gain ground in the esteem of God, and, perhaps,
also in men's esteem; but that is not of consequence. Now, I suppose
it would be best not to have said so much in explanation of my
intentions in time past; and certainly I have said things which were
vexing in the course of these explanations. It is no justification
of this to allege that your Paternity's style of writing admonitions
and reproofs is more severe than that of some persons, because I
ought to receive {486} all with joy. But the cutting tone of some of
your letters excites me to answer more or less in a cutting tone on
my side, and I have given way to this temptation. It appears to me,
it would be better if with me and others your tone was not so
cutting. But God so appoints it for us, and so I had better prefer
his judgment to my own, and persevere correcting myself, till I can
answer cutting letters with the same gentle, affectionate language
as I might the mildest ones. In this way I shall be the greatest
gainer. So I will conclude with leaving it to your Paternity to
decide in what tone you will correct me--only begging that you will
not omit the correction when you see me in the wrong, and that you
will inflict it, for charity's sake, at the risk even of suffering
pain from my hasty and improper answers, which I cannot expect to
correct at once, though I will try to do it. Will you let me meet
you at the station when you pass through London, and accompany you
to the station for the Dover Railway?"
In another letter, he writes:--
"I am frequently assailed with black doubts about the prudence of
all my proceedings; but these pass by, and I go on again with
brighter spirits than ever, and, in the end, I am astonished how
Providence has carried me clear of danger and perplexities when they
have threatened me the most. I trust it will be so now.
"I beg your Paternity will write to me again what you decide about
St. Wilfrid's functions, and tell me what I can do by writing
letters or otherwise. I feel better qualified to do what I am told,
than to give advice what others should do."
As may be seen from some of the letters introduced above, Father
Ignatius had to endure trials from the want of sympathy with his ways,
in many of the English converts. One celebrated convert went so far as
to prohibit his speaking of the conversion of England to any of the
members of a community of which he was Superior. Another used to tell
him that "England was already damned," and that it was no use praying
for it. A third treated him to some sharp cuts about the work of his
little {487} missions, when answering an application of Father
Ignatius to give one in his parish. These and many other crosses of
the like nature, he used to complain of with deep feeling among his
fellow religious. It is remarkable that those who crossed him had
great respect for his holiness, and, very likely, their opposition
proceeded from not giving him credit for much prudence.
An incident that happened to him in one of his journeys in Ireland
will give an idea of how he bore humiliations. He was walking to one
of the principal towns in Tipperary, and a vehicle overtook him on the
road. The man in the car took compassion on the poor old priest, and
asked him to "take a lift." Father Ignatius took his seat at once;
before they had proceeded far together, his companion perceived that
he spoke in an "English accent," and began to doubt his being a
priest. There had been some ugly rows in the town, lately, on account
of a gang of "soupers" that infested it, and it struck the good
townsman that his waggon was carrying a veritable "souper. "What,"
thought he, "if the neighbours should see me carrying such a precious
cargo?" And, without asking or waiting for an explanation, he
unceremoniously told Father Ignatius "to get down, for he suspected he
wasn't of the right sort." Father Ignatius complied at once, without
the least murmur. When the man was about a mile ahead of his late
fellow-traveller, and could not stifle the remorse occasioned by his
hasty leave-taking, he resolved to turn back and catechise him. The
result satisfied him, and the good father was invited to take a seat a
second time. To atone for his almost unpardonable crime, as he thought
it, the man invited him to stay at his house for the night, as it was
then late. Father Ignatius said he was due at the priest's house, but
in case he found nobody up there, he should be happy to avail himself
of his friend's hospitality. They parted company in the town; Father
Ignatius went to the priest's, and the other to his home. They were
all in bed in the presbytery, and no answer was returned to the
repeated knocks and rings of the benighted traveller. He went to the
friend's house, but found _they_, too, were gone to bed. No word was
left about {488} Father Ignatius, and his strange accent made the
housewife refuse him admittance. He went off without saying a word in
explanation. The man bethought himself shortly after, and sent
messengers to seek him, who overtook him outside the town, walking off
to the next, which he expected to reach before morning.
Another time he undertook the foundation of a convent in
Staffordshire. With his usual indifference in matters temporal, he
made no material provision whatever for the reception of the sisters,
except a bleak, unfurnished house. The reverend mother came, with
three or four sisters, and was rather disconcerted at what she found
before them. Father Ignatius was expected in a day or two, and as the
time of his arrival approached, the reverend mother went into the
reception-room, and there sate--
"A sullen dame,
"Nursing her wrath to keep it warm."
Father Ignatius got a very hot reception. The lady scolded him
heartily for his carelessness, and descanted most eloquently on the
wants and grievances she had to endure since her arrival. He replied
calmly that it was not his fault, that that department of the
proceedings devolved on the parish priest. This only fired her the
more--"Why didn't he tell the parish priest?" He then waited, quietly
standing until she had exhausted her stock of abuse; whereupon he
asked if she had done, and on receiving a nod in the affirmative, he
said: "Oh, well, I know how I must approach your ladyship in future, I
must make three bows in the Turkish fashion." So saying, he bowed
nearly to the ground, retreated a step and bowed again, a third step
backwards brought him to the door of the apartment, and when he had
bowed still deeper than before, he stood up straight, took out a purse
with some sovereigns in it, and spun it to the corner of the room in
which the good nun sat petrified with astonishment:--"Take that now,
and it may calm you a bit," was the good morning he bid her, as he
closed the door after him, and went his way.
The tongue of slander assailed him again the last year of {489} his
life. We will give the occurrence in the words of the only one to whom
the reverend mother told it in confidence. Father Ignatius himself
never spoke of it.
"As our dear Lord loved him much, he wished to try him as he had
tried the dearest and best-beloved of his servants. Therefore he
permitted that his character should be assailed in the most vile
manner by one who, through mistaken zeal, gave out the most
injurious insinuations regarding our dear father and the late
reverend mother. When Father Ignatius heard of it, he sent for the
reverend mother to exhort her to bear the calumny with love and
resignation. In speaking to her he said that God had asked all of
him, and he had freely given all but his good name, and that he was
ready now to offer as it had pleased God to ask for it; for all
belonged to Him and he thanked Him for leaving him nothing. 'Will
you not.' he continued, 'do the same? Do you not see that God is
asking you for the dearest thing you can give? Give it, then,
freely, and thank Him for taking it, for don't you see that by this
you are resembling Him more closely? Besides, He has permitted this
to happen, and if we do not give up our good name, which already
belongs to Him, cheerfully and willingly, He will take it, in spite
of us, and we shall lose the merit of our offering. How foolish,
therefore, is it to go against God! Let us resign ourselves
unreservedly into his hands. However, to remove any scandal that
might follow, and to show this good priest that I have no
ill-feeling against him, I will go and visit him on friendly terms.'
And so he did."
Besides casual attacks of illness brought on by his want of care or
great labours, he suffered during the latter part of his life from
chronic ailments. His heart often troubled him, and medical men told
him that he would very likely die of disease of the heart. He had an
ulcer in one of his ancles for a number of years, and was often
obliged to keep his bed on account of it. No one ever heard him
complain, and yet his sufferings must have been very acute. We never
remarked him rejoice so much over this painful sore, than when one of
the fathers, who respected him much, and {490} wanted to test his
mortification, became a Job's comforter. He said: "You deserve to be
lame, Father Ignatius, you made such use of your feet in the days of
your dancing and sporting, that Almighty God is punishing you now, and
the instruments of your pleasure are aptly turned into instruments of
pain." He said it was quite true, and that he believed so himself, and
that his only wish was that he might not lose a particle of the merit
it would bring him, by any kind of complaint on his part. He got a
rupture in 1863, and he simply remarked, "I have made another step
down the hill to-day."
Whilst labouring under a complication of sufferings he never abated
one jot of his round of duties, though requested to do so by his
subjects. He was Superior, and exercised his privilege by doing more
than any other instead of sparing himself. He did not take more rest
nor divide his labours with his companions. During the time of his
rectorship in Sutton, he used to preach and sing mass after hearing
confessions all morning; attend sick calls, preach in some distant
chapel in the evening, return at eleven o'clock, perhaps, and say his
office, and be the first up to matins at two o'clock again. The only
thing that seemed to pain him was a kind of holy envy. He used to say
to the young priests: "Oh, how well it is for you that are young and
buoyant, I am now stiff and old, and must have but a short time to
labour for Almighty God; still I hope to be able to work to the last."
This was his ordinary discourse the very year he died, and the young
fathers were much struck by the coincidence between his wishes and
their completion.
Father Ignatius Paoli, the Provincial, gave the cook orders to take
special care of the indefatigable worn-out Rector. He was not to heed
the fasts of the Rule, or at least to give the Superior the full
supply of meagre diet. Father Ignatius took the indulgence thankfully
for two or three days after returning from a mission; but when he saw
a better portion served up for himself oftener than was customary for
the other missionaries, he remonstrated with the brother cook. Next
day he was served in the same manner, he then gave a prohibition, and
at last scolded him. {491} The good brother then told him that he was
only carrying out the Provincial's orders. Father Ignatius was silent,
but, after dinner, posted off to the doctor, and made him give a
certificate of good health and ability to fast, which he forwarded to
the Provincial. Father Provincial did not wish to deny him the
opportunity of acquiring greater merit, and, at the same time, he
would prolong so valuable a life. To save both ends he placed him
under the obedience, as far as regarded his health, of one of the
priests of his community, whom he strictly obeyed in this matter
thenceforward.
Once he went on a sick-call in very wet weather, and either a cramp or
an accident made him fall into a dirty slough, where he was wetted
through and covered with mud. He came home in this state, and finding
a friend of his at the house, who more or less fell into his way of
thinking, he began to converse with him. The good father began to
speak of the conversion of England, and sat in his wet clothes for a
couple of hours, and likely would have stayed longer, so thoroughly
was he engrossed with his favourite topic, if one of the religious had
not come in, and frightened him off to change garments by his surprise
and apprehension.
He seemed indifferent to cold; he would sit in his cell, the coldest
day, and write until his fingers became numbed, and then he would warm
them by rubbing his hands together rather than allow himself the
luxury of a fire. He went to give a retreat somewhere in midwinter,
and the room he had to lodge in was so exposed that the snow came in
under the door. Here he slept, without bed or fire, for the first
night of his stay. It was the thoughtlessness of his entertainers that
left him in these cold quarters. In the morning some one remarked that
very probably Father Ignatius slept in the dreary apartment alluded
to. A person ran down to see, and there was the old saint amusing
himself by gathering up the snow that came into his room, and making
little balls of it for a kitten to run after. The kitten and himself
seem to have become friends by having slept together in his rug the
night before, and both were disappointed by the intrusion of the
wondering visitor.
{492}
His humility was as remarkable to any one who knew him as was his
zeal; and on this point also he was well tried. It is not generally
known that in the beginning of his Passionist life he adopted the
custom of praying before his sermons that God's glory would be
promoted by them and himself be humiliated. At the opening of Sutton
Church in 1852, he was sent for from London to preach a grand sermon
in the evening. A little before the sermon he was walking up and down
the corridor; the Provincial met him and asked more in joke than
otherwise: "Well, Father Ignatius, what are you thinking of now?" "I
am praying," he replied, "that if it be for the glory of God my sermon
may be a complete failure as far as human eloquence is concerned." We
may imagine the surprise of his Superior at hearing this extraordinary
answer; it is believed that this was his general practice to the end.
Contrary to the common notion that prevails among religious orders, he
wished that the Order would receive humiliations as well as himself.
He wished it to come to glory by its humiliations. On one occasion, he
expected that the newspapers would make a noise about something that
might be interpreted as humiliating to the community of which he was
Superior. Father Ignatius addressed the community nearly in these
words: We shall have something to thank God for tomorrow; the
Protestants will make a great noise in the papers about this affair,
and we must be prepared for a full feast of misrepresentations. Let us
thank God now in anticipation." He was disappointed, however, as the
papers were content with a bare notice of the matter.
Many persons did not give him credit for great humility; they thought
his continual quoting of himself, and his readiness to speak about his
doings, was, if not egotism, at least inconsistent with profound
humility. We cannot answer this imputation better than by giving
Father Faber's description of simplicity, which every one knows to be
the very character of genuine humility:--
"But let us cast an eye at the action of simplicity in the spiritual
life. Simplicity lives always in a composed consciousness of its own
demerit and unworthiness. It is {493} possessed with a constant
sense of what the soul is in the sight of God. It knows that we are
worth no more than we are worth in His sight, and while it never
takes its eye off that view of self, so it does not in any way seek
to hide it from others. In fact it desires to be this, and no more
than this, in the eyes of others; and it is pained when it is more.
Every neighbour is, as it were, one of God's eyes, multiplying His
presence; and simplicity acts as if every one saw us, knew us, and
judged us as God does, and it has no wounded feeling that it is so.
Thus, almost without direct effort, the soul of self-love is so
narrowed that it has comparatively little room for action; although
it never can be destroyed, nor its annoyance ever cease, except in
the silence of the grave. The chains of human respect, which in the
earlier stages of the spiritual life galled us so intolerably, now
fall off from us, because simplicity has drawn us into the unclouded
and unsetting light of the eye of God. There is no longer any
hypocrisy. There is no good opinion to lose, because we know we
deserve none, and doubt if we possess it. We believe we are loved in
spite of our faults, and respected because of the grace which is in
us, and which is not our own and no praise to us. All diplomacy is
gone, for there is no one to circumvent and nothing to appropriate.
There is no odious laying ourselves out for edification, but an
inevitable and scarcely conscious letting of our light shine before
men in such an obviously innocent and unintentional manner that it
is on that account they glorify our Father who is in
Heaven."--_Blessed Sacrament_, Book II., c. vii.
The secret by which Father Ignatius arrived at this perfect way of
receiving trials was his _thanking God_ for everything. When some one
objected to him that we could not thank God for a trial when we did
not feel grateful, "Never mind," he would say, "you take a hammer to
break a big stone; the first stroke has no effect, the second
seemingly no effect, and the third, and so on; but somewhere about the
twentieth or hundredth the stone is broken, and no one stroke was
heavier than the other. In the same way, begin to thank God, no matter
about the feeling, continue, {494} and you will soon break the hardest
difficulties." His maxims and sayings on resignation would fill a
good-sized volume were they collected together. We shall conclude this
chapter with one picked by chance from his letters:
"In trials and crosses we are like a sick child, when its mother
wants it to take some disagreeable medicine. The child kicks and
screams and sprawls, and spits the medicine in its mother's face.
That is just what we do when God sends us crosses and trials. But,
like the mother, who will persevere in giving the medicine until the
child has taken enough of it, God will send us crosses and trials
until we have sufficient of them for the health of our souls."
{495}