After I had preached several Advents and Lents in various towns of my
diocese of Belley, he thought it well that I should do so in my own native
city, Paris.
Well knowing, as he did, the various views and judgments of the great world
which rules there, he wished to teach me to care very little what people
said about me, and he impressed the lesson upon me by relating to me the
following story of an aged Priest and the college clock.
A good Father being incapacitated by infirmities even more than by age from
fulfilling the duty of teaching binding on his Order, and yet being anxious
to have some little useful employment, was entrusted by his Superior with
the winding and regulating the college clock.
Very soon, however, he came to complain of the difficulty and almost
impossibility of his work; not, he said, that it was at all beyond his
strength, but that it was quite beyond him to satisfy everyone. When the
clock was a little slow, he said, the young men who had difficult and
troublesome work to do indoors, complained, declaring that the town clocks
were much faster, and to please them he would put it on a little. As soon
as this was done complaints burst forth from those whose work lay outside
the college, in visiting the sick and prisoners, or providing for the needs
of the household in the city. They came back declaring that the town clocks
were much slower, and reproaching me for having put theirs on.
The Superior settled the matter by telling the good Father to let the
clock take its own course, but always to use soft words to those who might
complain, and to assure each one of them that he would do his best to keep
the clock right if possible. "So let it be with you," concluded our Blessed
Father. "You are going to be exposed to the criticism of many; if you
attend to all that they say of you, your work, like Penelope's, will never
be done, but every day you will have to begin it over again.
"Even some of your friends will in perfect good faith give you suggestions
on matters which seem to them important, but which in reality are not so at
all.
"One will tell you that you speak too fast, another that you gesticulate
too much, a third that you speak too slowly, and don't move enough--one
will want quotations, another will dislike them; one will prefer doctrinal,
another moral lessons; some one thing, some another.
"They will be like drones who do nothing but disturb the working bees, and
who, though they can sting, yet make no honey."
"Well! what is to be done in all this?"
"Why, you must always answer gently, promising to try and correct yourself
of your faults whatever they may be, for there is nothing which pleases
these counsellors so much as to see that their suggestions are accepted
as judicious, and, at least, worthy of consideration. In the meantime go
your own way, follow the best of your own character, pay no heed to such
criticisms, which are often contradictory one of the other.
"Keep God before your eyes, abandon yourself to the guidance of the spirit
of grace, and say often with the Apostle, 'If I yet pleased men I should
not be the servant of Christ,' who said of Himself that He was not of this
world. Neither, indeed, were His Apostles, for the friendship of the world
is enmity with God.
"It is no small matter for a steersman in the midst of a storm to keep
the rudder straight. Of little consequence ought it to be to us that we
are judged by men. God is our only true judge, and it is He Who sees the
secrets of our hearts, and all that is hidden in darkness."