|
All the Martyrs; Theotimus, died for the love of God;
for when we say that some of them died for the faith,
we mean not that they died for a dead faith, but for
the living faith, that is, quickened by charity.
And again the confession of faith is not so much
an act of the understanding and of faith, as an act
of the will and of the love of God. And this is why
the great S. Peter, keeping the faith in his soul on
the day of the passion, yet lost charity, refusing in
words to profess him to be his Master, whom in his
heart he acknowledged to be such.
But there were yet other Martyrs who died
expressly for charity alone, as our Saviour's great
Precursor, who was martyred for fraternal correction;
and the glorious princes of the Apostles, S. Peter
and S. Paul, and particularly S. Paul, died for
having reclaimed those women to a pious and pure life
whom the infamous Nero had led into sin. The holy
Bishops Stanislaus and Thomas of Canterbury were
slain for a matter that touched not faith, but
charity.
In fine a great part of the sacred Virgin-martyrs
were slain for the zeal they had to preserve their
chastity, which charity had caused them to dedicate
to their heavenly spouse.
But some sacred lovers so absolutely give
themselves over to the exercises of divine love, that
this holy fire wastes and consumes their life. Grief
does sometimes so long hinder the afflicted from
eating, drinking, or sleeping, that in the end
weakened and wasted they die; whence it is commonly
said that such die of grief: but it is not so indeed;
for they die through failure of strength, and
inanition. Yet since this failure came through grief,
we must allow that though they died not of grief,
they died by reason of grief and by grief.
So, my dear Theotimus, when the fervour of holy
love is great, it gives so many assaults to the
heart, so often wounds it, causes in it so many
languors, melts it so habitually, and puts it so
frequently into ecstasies and raptures, that by this
means, the soul, almost entirely occupied in God, not
being able to afford sufficient assistance to nature
to effect digestion and nourish itself properly, the
animal and vital spirits begin little by little to
fail, life is shortened, and death takes place.
O God! Theotimus, how happy this death is! How
delightful is this love-dart, which, wounding us with
the incurable wound of heavenly love, makes us for
ever pining and sick, with so strong a beating of the
heart, that at length we must yield to death.
How much, do you think, did these sacred languors
and labours undergone for charity, advance the days
of the divine lovers S. Catharine of Siena, S.
Francis, young Stanislaus Kotska, S. Charles, and
many hundreds more who died so young?
Verily, as for S. Francis, from the time that he
received the holy stigmata of his master, he had such
violent and sharp pains, pangs, convulsions and
illnesses, that he became mere skin and bone, and he
seemed rather to be a skeleton, or a picture of
death, than a man yet living and breathing.
|