by Boudreaux, Florentin, 1821-1894
You are learned, eloquent, gifted with power of mind and grace of body ; you are courted, flattered, admired. Whatever you undertake succeeds ; what you recommend is accepted and approved, and experience confirms the recommendation. You are high in the esteem of men, elevated to a distinguished position; you are blessed with the gifts of fortune, and surrounded by all the splendour and magnificence which befit your station. Nature can desire no more ; vanity and self-love are satisfied; and you are in great danger from pride. But beware of attributing to yourself any portion of this good fortune. Remember that from God it came and to God it must return. If much has been given to you, it was given to a beggar at the best, and it will all be required from you again. Be deaf to adulation, callous to admiration, insensible to applause. Give to God what belongs to Him and take to yourself what alone is yours — your secret littlenesses, your conscious deficiencies, your many sins, your natural nothingness. Purify your intention, give glory to God; and when you have done all you could, still say: “We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which we ought to do.” (Luke xvii.) “ Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy Name give glory.” ( Ps . cxiii.) Vainglory is the natural attendant upon success. There are some, it is true, of whom it may be said that they are too proud to be vain. They gloat over their honours in secret, they feast their pride upon their own excellence and greatness : but they are too wary to expose themselves to the ridicule which vanity brings upon itself. These are the strongminded proud ones. Let us hope that they are few in number ; because their pride is more satan-like than that of others. In general, men are too weak to conceal the satisfaction which success gives them. We are fond of ostentation ; we love to rehearse our exploits, to display our trophies, to point out our merits to the notice of others. We can converse for hours, with any one who will listen to us, on what we did and how we did it ; what dangers we foresaw, and how skilfully we avoided them ; what hardships we underwent, what obstacles we surmounted.
We can never forget what honours were bestowed on us ; what signal marks of favour we received from great personages; what encomiums were written, what compliments addressed to us, what tokens of confidence, gratitude and veneration were lavished. Poor human nature ! And what is the value of all this ? What does it weigh in the scales of God’s judgment? Quid hoc ad vitam aeternam ? Of what avail is it for eternity? Vanity of vanities; empty shadows ; painted nothings ; that is what it amounts to. If then we desire sincerely to become humble like the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we must mortify our vanity and not indulge in vainglory. What we have done was done for God alone and for the increase of His glory. There let it rest. It is written in the book of life, and our reward will come to us in due time. Meanwhile there is work enough to be done for the same good cause to take up all our time and all our attention. We have no leisure to look back at the past or the good that belongs to it. We must hasten forward ; for, the way is long and the day is declining. “Forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press towards the mark,” (Phil, iii.,) says the great Apostle who had done so much for God ; and we should imitate him in this and thus escape the danger to which success would otherwise expose us. Let us forget ourselves, speak little of ourselves, and faithfully deposit at the feet of our Lord all the treasures we gain, all the crowns which are placed on our brows. “ To God alone be honour and glory.” We have thus passed in review some of the principal means for the acquisition of the first virtue which the Sacred Heart proposes to us. We have seen that the painful path of humiliation is the only one by which we can reach humility ; and, as we can neither pursue our course in the Paradise of God, to view its remaining beauties and taste its other fruits, nor even be permitted to linger within its happy enclosure, unless we are humble of heart : let us hope that our resolution is taken and firmly fixed: we will submit to humiliation for the sake of humility: the pearl is of sufficient value to warrant the expense. We will then “ humble our hearts and endure,” and when an occasion of humiliation is presented, we will “ keep patience.” If we are generous, and disposed to be largehearted with God, we will not be satisfied with waiting for such occasions as may occur ; but we will seek for them ourselves, we will go to meet them as they approach ; we will embrace them with joy. We may even be disgusted with the vanities of the world, throw aside its yoke, put on the livery of our Lord and go to live with Him in humble poverty and obscurity and labour in the Nazareth of Religion. And thus we shall sooner be humble and more perfectly humble : the foundation of our edifice will be deeper and stronger, and the tower of our sanctity will reach a greater elevation. For our encouragement and support in the practice of this difficult virtue, let us remember that there is “ an immense weight of true and lasting glory ” awaiting us in heaven, where pride cannot rob us of it nor vanity destroy it. The desire of excellence was given us by our Creator, and as He planted it in our souls, He must have provided for its fulfilment. It is the inordinate desire alone that is criminal and vicious. But since we are a fallen race, since we strayed from God through the path of pride, we must return to Him by the path of humiliation, we must suffer the penalty of our fall, and merit, by our similarity to Him in whom alone there is plentiful redemption, our restoration to the dignity of children of God. It is on this account that our life is beset with trials, that the service of God is an unceasing struggle against nature. Our home is not here, nor is our triumph in this world. But when life has been spent in the humble imitation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus ; when the struggle against nature is terminated by the death of nature ; when the work is finished which God has given us to do ; when we have glorified Him, as His Divine Son had glorified Him : then God will glorify us as He glorified His firstborn ; then the desire of excellence which we feel in our souls will find its full gratification. We shall be crowned with glory among the saints of God, and shall shine as stars for all eternity ; we shall reign with Christ for evermore.
