On one occasion I was complaining to him of the difficulties which I met
with in the discharge; of my episcopal duties. He replied that on entering
the service of God we must prepare ourselves for temptation, since no one
could follow Jesus Christ or be of the number of His true disciples except
by bearing His Cross, nor could anyone enter Heaven except by the path and
through the gate of suffering. "Remember," he said, "that our first father
even in the state of innocence was put into the earthly Paradise to work in
it and to keep it. Do you imagine that he was banished from it in order to
do nothing? Consider how God condemned him and all his posterity to labour,
and to till an ungrateful earth which produced of itself nothing but
thorns and thistles. There is much more toil and difficulty in weeding and
cultivating souls than any earthly soil, rough, stony, and barren though
it may be. The art of arts is the direction of souls, it is of no use to
undertake it unless we have made up our minds to innumerable labours and
disappointments.
"The Son of God being a sign of contradiction, can we wonder if His work is
exposed to the same; and if He had so much difficulty in winning souls,
is it likely that his coadjutors and those who labour with Him will have
less?"
Then fearing to depress me by the enumeration of so many difficulties, he
went on to cheer me with the example of the Prince of Pastors, the Bishop
of our souls, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who preferred shame and
toil to joy, that He might further the work of oar salvation.
He added that of the Apostles, and other Pastors of the Church, reminding
me that if we think much of the honour of being their successors we
must, with the inheritance, accept its burdens, nor shelter ourselves
by, in legal phrase, _disclaiming liability for debts beyond the assets_
inherited. Otherwise, he said, we should be like that kinsman of Ruth who
wished to have the inheritance of the first husband, but not to marry the
widow and raise up to him an heir.
He generally wound up his remarks with some reminder of that love which
makes all that is bitter to be sweet: sometimes quoting to me those words
of St. Augustine, "Where we love, there is no labour, or if there is any we
love the labour itself, for he who labours in loving, loves to labour for
the beloved object."