You know very well how Blessed Francis valued charity, but I will give you,
nevertheless, some more of his teaching on this great subject.
To a holy soul who had placed herself under his direction, he said: "We
must do all things from love, and nothing from constraint. We must love
obedience rather than fear disobedience. I leave you the spirit of liberty:
not such as excludes obedience, for that is the liberty of the flesh, but
such as excludes constraint, scruples, and over-eagerness. However much you
may love obedience and submission, I wish you to suspend for the moment the
work in which obedience has engaged you whenever any just or charitable
occasion for so doing occurs. This omission will be a species of obedience.
Fill up its measure by charity."
From this spirit of holy and Christian liberty originated the saying so
often to be met with in his letters: "Keep your heart in peace." That is to
say: Beware of hurry, anxiety, and bitterness of heart. These he called the
ruin of devotion. He was even unwilling that people should meditate upon
the great truths of Death, Judgment and Hell, unless they at the same time
reassured themselves by the remembrance of God's love for them. Speaking to
a holy soul, he says: "Meditation on the four last things will be useful to
you provided that you always end with an act of confidence in God. Never
represent to yourself Death or Hell on the one side unless the Cross is on
the other; so that when your fears have been excited by the one you may
with confidence turn for help to the other." The one point on which he
chiefly insisted was that we must fear God from love, not love God from
fear. "To love Him from fear," he used to say, "is to put gall into our
food and to quench our thirst with vinegar; but to fear Him from love is to
sweeten aloes and wormwood."
Assuredly, our own experience convinces us that it is difficult to love
those whom we fear, and that it is impossible not to fear with a filial and
reverent fear those whom we love.
You find some difficulty, it seems, my sisters, in understanding how all
things, as St. Paul says,[1] whether good, bad, or indifferent, can in the
end work together for good to those who love God.
To satisfy you, I quote the words of Blessed Francis on this subject in one
of his letters. "Since," he says, "God can bring good out of evil, will He
not surely do so for those who have given themselves unreservedly to Him?
Yes; even sins, from which may God in His goodness keep us, are by His
Divine Providence, when we repent of them, changed into good for those who
are His. Never would David have been so bowed down with humility if he had
not sinned, nor would Magdalene have loved her Saviour so fervently had He
not forgiven her so many sins. But He could not have forgiven them had she
not committed them."
Again: "Consider, my dear daughter, this great Artificer of mercy, who
changes our miseries into graces, and out of the poison of our iniquities
compounds a wholesome medicine for our souls. Tell me, then, I beseech
you, if God works such wonders with our sins, what will He not effect with
our afflictions, with our labours, with the persecutions which we have to
endure? No matter what trouble befalls you, nor from what direction it may
come, let your soul be at peace, certain that if you truly love God all
will turn to good. And though you cannot see the springs which work this
marvellous change, rest assured that it will take place.
"If the hand of God touches your eyes with the clay of shame and reproach,
it is only to give you clearer sight, and to cause you to be honoured.
"If He should cast you to the ground, as He did St. Paul, it will only be
to raise you up again to glory."[2]
[Footnote 1: Rom. viii. 28.]
[Footnote 2: Rom. viii. 28.]