Our Blessed Father always insisted on the necessity of discretion as
well as charity in our devotion, and warned us against that want of
self-restraint and calmness, which he called eagerness. This, he said, is,
indeed, the _remora_ of true devotion, and its worst enemy, the more so
because it decks itself in the livery of devotion, in order more easily
to entrap the unwary and to make them mistake zeal without knowledge for
genuine fervour.
He was very fond of that saying of an ancient Emperor: "Make haste
slowly," and of another: "Soon enough, if well enough." He would rather
have a little done thoroughly well, than a great deal undertaken with
over-eagerness. One of his favourite maxims was "Little and good." In order
to persuade us that he was right, he used to warn us against thinking that
perfection depends on the number of our good works, exterior or interior.
When asked what then became of that insatiable love of which the masters of
the spiritual life speak, that love which never thinks that it has reached
the goal, but is always pressing on farther and farther, spanning the whole
extent of heaven with giant strides, he answered: "The tree of that love
must grow at the roots, rather than by the branches." He explained his
meaning thus: To grow by the branches is to wish to perform a great number
of good works, of which many are imperfect, others superfluous like the
useless leaves which overload the vine, and have to be nipped off before
the grapes can grow to any proper size. On the other hand we grow at the
roots when we do only a few good works, but those few most perfectly, that
is to say, with a great love of God, in which all the perfection of the
Christian consists. It is to this that the Apostle exhorts us when he bids
us be rooted and grounded in charity if we would comprehend the surpassing
charity of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. True devotion, he used to say,
should be gentle, tranquil, and discreet, whereas eagerness is indiscreet,
tempestuous, and turbulent.
Especially he found fault with the eagerness which attempts to do several
things at once. He said it was like trying to thread more than one needle
at a time. One of his favourite mottos was: "Sufficient to the day is the
labour thereof."
When he was reproached, as he sometimes was, with bestowing such earnest
and undivided attention on the most trivial concerns of the people who came
to him for sympathy and advice, he answered: "These troubles appear great
to them, and, therefore, they must be consoled, as if they really were so.
God knows, too, that I do not want any great employment. It is perfectly
indifferent to me what my occupation is so long as it is a serving of Him.
To do these small works is all that is, at the time being, asked of me. Is
not doing the will of God a work great enough for anyone? We turn little
actions into great ones when we perform them with a supreme desire to
please God, who measures our services, not by the excellence of the work we
do, but by the love which accompanies it, and that love by its purity, and
that purity by the singleness of its intention."