Meditations on the Gospels for every day in the year

Front matter

Class 5^/^j Book J^hh

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Preface

Father Médaille was a French Jesuit, who labored assiduously, some two centuries ago, in his native country, for thirty long years, in the pulpit and the confessional. He died in 1709 at an advanced age. His Meditations on the Gospels have been translated into Latin, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch. This is the first English version. It will bring the number of editions hitherto published to within a fraction of forty.

It is evident that the book possesses merit which has been widely recognized. Some meditation books disappoint highly educated people, because the points are unduly spun out. Father Médaille is brief, terse and suggestive. Each of his meditations contains germs of thought that spontaneously, as it were, run into natural developments, and very many are fertile with seedlings that quickly grow up into fruit-bearing plants. The author, moreover, writes soberly and is singularly free from far-fetched sentiviii Preface.

ment. Ninety-nine out of every hundred Englishmen dislike anything that seems to savor of affectation or unreality. At times, too, complaints are heard that what amount of thought is to be found in the first point of a meditation is reproduced in a milder form in the second and all but vanishes in the third. But as Médaille composed his book for the use of members of his Order, these meditations could not be otherwise than practical and solid. And once more, they are methodical. The gospels are contemplated in the order of the Church's festivals and liturgy, beginning with the Precursor of Christ and ending with the fulness of Pentecostal grace.

Occasionally, though very seldom, a few words have been altered — where the author makes reference to religious life — in order that people living in the world may not think that these meditations are unsuited to them. The Editor has found more than sufficient warrant to justify these slight changes, in the example of Father Bolle, a French Jesuit, who published an edition of Médaille, omitting the meditations on the Jesuit Saints and all special allusions to religious life in the Society.

The Editor has, in addition, taken upon himself to tone down some expressions concerning

Preface. ix

the number of the saved, which possibly would be more susceptible of misinterpretation at the present day than two hundred years ago. When Médaille wrote his book, textual criticism was not in as advanced a stage as it now is, and, in the spiritual writings of many authors, Jansenism was struggling for the mastery with genuine piety.

In England we are accustomed, more perhaps than the inhabitants of other countries, to take words in their literal meaning. It is, therefore, more necessary here than elsewhere that preachers and writers should guard themselves against the risk of exaggeration in phrase or inference.

There are supplementary meditations, written in 1818, after the manner of Father Médaille by the Abbé Vernier, of the Missionary Fathers at Besançon, in which town some of the best editions of the work have been published at various times. These are marked in the Table of Contents with an asterisk. Médaille wrote three meditations only for each week, as every meditation was meant to be repeated on the following day.

It may be remarked, in conclusion, that no subject could possibly be pondered with greater profit than the words which fell from the sacred x Preface.

lips of our Blessed Lord. Hence it would seem assured that any one making daily use of these Meditations on the Gospels must be laying up in his mind a vast treasure of spiritual wealth.

Feast of the Purification, 1891.