Letters to young men

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Farewell to the World .... 35

The Seminary of St. Sulpice. The Church and Progress 36 Protestantism and Rationalism . . . .39

II

gjpxtwtW to the WLn\&.

Seminary of Issy, June, 1824.

My old and deae Colleague,*

JUST two or three lines in a handwriting perhaps unfamiliar to you, from one to whom you never appeared indifferent. But very lately I received from several quarters proofs of your kind remembrance, and of the interest you take in me. I am glad your friendship has followed with interest a step which in its motives and its results will have so great an influence upon my life. You saw me vacillating between error and truth, loving them equally because unable to distinguish the one from the other; the hour marked out by God for my enlightenment has come : He has shown me the powerlessness of reason, and the necessity of faith.

Being thus drawn closer to you by my religious convictions, I have the happiness to find your counterpart in a brother whom I regret not having known sooner. I feel, too, that I am parting with you by

* "Written to a young barrister.

giving up the profession which decides your future, and in which people say you have already made way ; but if your success no longer urges me to emulation, if I no longer dream of the trophies of Miltiades in order to become a Themistocles, believe me, they will always be dear to me, and news of your glory always gratifying.

Adieu, my dear friend, don't lose sight of me: come sometimes in spirit to the desert: I embrace you with all my heart.

III. ©he J^minarg ajf £t. £uljta.— ®he (purrh

Seminary of Issy, 1825.

¥OU would never guess one of my delights : it is to begin my youth over again ; I mean the age between childhood and youth, with the moral strength belonging to a more advanced age. At college we are still too much of children : we cannot form a correct estimate of men and things ; our notions are too few to enable us to choose friends properly, and bind them to us by strong ties. The higher stages of friendship are unknown to such weak souls, to such untutored minds. And then in the world we are not in a position to form any very strong ties : whether it be that men do not live there in such intimacy, or that interest and self-love glide into what seem the purest unions, or that the hearkfeels less at ease amid the noise and bustle of society. Friendship has a better field among a hundred and forty young men who are constantly seeing one another, whose notions and feelings are similar^ and who are almost all like chosen flowers transplanted into solitude. I take a pleasure in being liked, in keeping up in the seminary something of the amenity of the world, a little of the polish of society. I am more simple, more communicative, more affable than I was : rid of that love of display which entered perhaps into my composition : not anxious about my future, with which I am satisfied whatever it may be : dreaming of poverty as I used once to do of wealth ; I live quietly with

my fellow-students and myself.

I am not afraid, as a believer, of those ideas of order, justice, strong and lawful liberty, which were my first conquests. Christianity is not a law of bondage ; and if it respect the hand of God which sometimes raises up tyrants, it draws up where obedience degenerates into guilty cowardice. It has not forgotten that its children were free at a time when the world was groaning in fetters under a series of brutal emperors, and that they had formed beneath the earth* a society which spoke of humanity under the palace of Nero. Is it not the Church which has introduced into our institutions a spirit of mildness and harmony unknown to antiquity ? It is religion which has made modern Europe what she is by its stability amid the ruin of nations, by adapting itself to circumstances, to times, and places, without ever abating an iota of its unshaken principles. The Church had the words reason and liberty on her lips when the inalienable rights of the human race were threatened with shipwreck.

She preached faith and obedience when she saw mental and moral debauch pave the way for a revolution which was to destroy liberty by anarchy, and reason by the very altars raised to it. Admirable wisdom, which can adapt itself to all the requirements of civilization, which at one time quickens, at another slackens the progress of ages, in order to keep them to that wise mean where peace and virtue are found, and from which human things deviate by an inevitable ebb and flow ! power wonderful in the variety of its action : firm and enduring in power and conscience, snatching nations from tyranny by liberty, from anarchy by power, and from two opposite extremes leading them to the same point.

IV. Protestantism m\& Ijtotioitalfem

Rome. January 10, 1837.

I GOT your letter very late, my dear friend. I thank you for all the tokens of confidence it contains, and am very desirous to testify my appreciation of them. It is unfortunate we cannot see one another for a short time, and chat together with open heart ; letters are always very cold and short when compared with conversation, and sometimes mutual pain may be unintentionally given in them. A look tells us what to unsay or explain, whilst, when a letter is once gone, the writer is not at hand to explain it to the friend who receives it. I handled you roughly in my first, because you did not seem to me childlike enough, and also because that is the best way of gaining possession of a soul sincerely desirous of being guided. You are aware that when postulants presented themselves at the gates of the old monasteries to give themselves to God, they frequently met with a reception calculated to disgust them, iii order that this severity might show whether the soul of the postulant was already humble, and up to the practice of the virtues it aspired to. "We are too fond of being flattered, even by our friends : I am then glad you have forgiven me the roughness of my first embrace, and that you came back to the charge kind and confiding.

• Your picture of Germany does not surprise me much. By severing itself from Catholic unity, it lost the very fountain-head of great ideas. Those countries which are still Catholic, whether under a Protestant government or independent, catch something of the schismatical spirit with which they are in perpetual contact, and we may say that Protestantism is the one souvenir of all Germany, her blood, her life. France, on the contrary, by remaining Catholic, has raised herself to a position, fraught indeed with some difficulties, but which will sooner or later show its power. Amongst the men whom you mention as the latest glories of Germany, there are at least two who have been evil geniuses.

J allow that great intellectual criminals ^may have glorious names, but this glory is of an order disallowed by Christian hearts. I should like you to get at once into the habit of scorning the greatest renown when purchased by a pernicious influence, and never to value either in the author or the man of action anything but the good and the true. To write is to act. Stubborn persistence in writing what is false is a crime deserving of the most shameful punishment, the very success of which does but increase its guilt. The Gospel of Jesus Christ changed the world: whoever does not write in conformity with the Gospel is the enemy of God and man, much more so than the frail creature which simply yields to its passions. Sinful weakness deserves compassion, but the pride which attacks truth, inspires no kind feeling.

As to Vico, of whom, you also speak to me, his historical system, as far as I know it, tends to destroy the certitude of facts and traditions ; he makes myths and allegories of all events around which time has thrown a haze, and he is consequently false and dangerous.

Let me beg of you, my dear friend, not to let yourself be imposed upon by modern writings. They are nearly all pride-stricken, infected with sensualism, doubts, and prophecies, remarkable only for the boldness of the poets who indulge in them. Study the ancients closely. The Pagans themselves, such as Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, and many others, are preferable a thousand times over to the great mass of our modern writers; they were religious men, full of respect for tradition, who looked only for the perfecting of man in his daily intercourse with the Divinity. The others are more or less open enemies of Jesus Christ, that is of the sublime work which has spread over the earth the spirit of penance and humility : the work which the corrupted heart of man will never forgive Christianity, and which has hurried so many great modern minds into impiety, whilst those of ancient times cherished so deep a reverence for religion. For the last three or four centuries literature has been in a state of revolt against the truth. Even the good, weakened in their deepest convictions by the contact of error, have put forward false or fatal opinions in their best works. Consequently, my dear friend, you must be very choice in your reading.

I shall be staying here some time longer ; indeed, I do not know when I shall leave ; if you were coming some day, that would give me a little patience. I want to see and embrace you. Adieu, my dear friend, pray for me, love me a little, and be convinced that the communications of your heart will always be welcome.

V. Jfraptente of a |toU of %x\t

Rome, January 11, 1837.

My dear Friend,

I SEND you the rule of life I promised you. You are already so thoroughly religious that I need not insist upon your following this rule I have marked out for you. It is already in your heart, and it is less as a remainder of your resolutions that I send it, than a proof of the share you have in all my thoughts.

I beg of you to be faithful to your affection for me, so necessary to my happiness. Mine is more than yours already : it would be beyond my power to withdraw it or take from its depth. You will be ever clasped to my bosom as a son and a friend.

Adieu.

RULE.

Spend a fair share of every day upon the

serious occupations of your state, and look upon this

work as one of your first duties, and as the personal

accomplishment of that sentence passed by God upon

our first father. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thoti

eat thy bread. 4*

As to the lawful pleasures of the mind, the heart, or the senses, indulge in them with gratitude and moderation, drawing up sometimes in order to punish yourself, without waiting to be forced to do so by necessity.

Bear constantly in mind that we have two great vices to beat down and destroy, pride and sensuality ; and two great virtues to acquire, humility and penance.

Raise from time to time your heart to God, and think upon the painful passion of our Lord, in order to neutralize by the contemplation of His mangled and bleeding body the involuntary impression produced upon you by the objects you are condemned to see.

Choose some poor person, and relieve him regularly according to your means, and look upon him as Jesus Christ Himself, visit him, talk to him, and if you -have courage enough, kiss his clothes or his feet sometimes.

Fasten yourself in spirit to His cross, hand yourself over to the executioner: to dwell upon the thought of chastisement, and undergo it mentally, is a suffering in itself. The martyrs had immolated themselves a hundred times in their hearts before they were sacrificed in reality.

Think too of the number of slaves and poor who get scarcely anything but a little bad bread moistened with their tears and even with their blood.

Endeavor to be good, amiable, simple in your dealings with every one, and do not consider the life of a Christian as necessarily one of moroseness and melancholy. Saint Paul is continually saying to the faithful, rejoice! The real Christian is filled with interior joy even in the midst of sufferings : he bears his cross good-humoredly ; martyrdom and opprobrium don't affect his spirits ; he offers his body to be afflicted as Providence sees fit without losing his serenity; he turns into roses chains, hunger, thirst, rags, fire, scourges, the sword, death. He loves and is loved, what more does he need?

VI. Rome, August 19, 1837

My dear Friend,

YOU know how much attached I am to you. I learn with grief that you are sad and taciturn. 5t is quite true that, humanly speaking, you have had a very unfortunate year : but, on the other hand, you have reason for consolation. Be careful, my dear friend, not to give way to gloomy sadness, which would gradually ruin you to no purpose. Religion is not a yoke of terror : she is all love and confidence to her real children. If our passions give us trouble, we must look upon them gently, as proofs of our frailty, but like children who are not frightened at their littleness when by the side of their father. Melancholy is a fashion we must fight down. I too know what it is. But the greater the influence of God upon my soul became, the less hold melancholy had over me. I should be very much distressed to think that you are not happy and contented. Oh! my dear friend, don't afflict me with the thought that you are unhappy. You have been so bountifully endowed by Providence that you can easily muster up courage to bear with your own defects, and with the inevitable shortcomings of everything human. You are young, full of health, of first-rate talent, good and amiable. You only want to know what you really are in order to become proud and vain. If the lightning of truth has struck you, it is not for your destruction : but to raise you by doing away with your natural weaknesses.

I shall be leaving Eome, if possible, on the 15th of September. I should be really delighted to meet you once again on Italian soil. Pray that this may come about, and love me ever from the bottom of your heart as I do you.

VII. Metz, January 2, 1838

My dear Friend,

I HAVE heard of you in a letter from your respected mother, which was sent to Rome and then came back to France. I read it with joy, like a letter from a friend about whom one is uneasy. You have had a hard year's work, you have been ill, you have tended the sick, you have travelled alone, seen brilliant society, and I am told that in all these circumstances you have been good-natured, which gives me real pleasure. Tell me how old you are ; I don't remember your ever having done so. Youth is a lovely time of life. As children we have not enough sensibility nor knowledge of things : nothing is deep. In our prime we know too much, and no longer please so much ; the heart has less calls upon it and is more wary, and neither gives nor receives so fully. But between twenty and thirty, what vigor, what fulness ! We love and are loved so quickly. I should like to know if you are affectionate, if you feel the value of another soul, if affection is your great leaning. Every man has one predominant bent, which forms the heart of all the others. In some it is vanity, that chilling sentiment which makes people think of nothing but show, which loves to be surrounded by flatterers, to be looked at. In others it is the lust of power, a stern passion which would have all men slaves. The loving heart lives chiefly within itself, not in selfishness, but in that holy seclusion in which we require but one other being, where its memory suffices to fill up a day, where we don't trouble ourselves about the crowd and its ideas, where the exterior goes for nothing. This is the passion of all great and noble souls. I hope it may be yours ; not that it is unattended by great dangers — for where are there not dangers ? — but because the reefs once passed, we taste the only true consolation here below. True love is pure : it is of the heart and not of the senses. The life of the senses wanes, falls away ; and no one is such a stranger to love as a debauchee. The purer the heart, the more it is purified and ennobled by the love of God, and the more capable it is of real and sterling love. I am sure, my dear friend, that you will always keep the pure and calm region in which a fondness for creatures is sanctified by the love of God, and that you will not give way to unmanly affections, the end of which is an empty gratification of the senses, fleeting and bitter as smoke.

Let me tell you, in short, that I am at Metz, a strong and large town, where I am giving conferences upon religion. After Easter I shall go to Liege and Brussels for a few days, thence to a Benedictine abbey to pass the summer. I hope to hear from you before then. I embrace you tenderly, although from afar. Present my respectful compliments to your mother, and give me a share in the affection you bear her.

VIII. ®pn %zxA

LENT is at hand, and I owe it to my tender affection for you to give you a few explanations upon this time set aside for penance. You yourself asked me to do so, consequently I am after all only obeying you.

Penance is, as you are aware, one of the chief virtues of the Christian. It is made up of humility of heart, which sees the enormity of our faults, and our natural corruption, and of the mortification of the body, which both humbles the mind, and curbs the bad passions of which the flesh is the source.

If the Christian always practised real and courageous penance he would be a saint. But the Christian is weak : he lives in the midst of the world, he leads like others a soft and easy, even when not a criminal life. This is why the Church has instituted, or rather had marked out by apostolic tradition, a particular time for penance. This is the period preceding the time when we commemorate the passion and resurrection of the Saviour. It consists of but forty days, signified by the term Quadragesima.

On Ash- Wednesday the faithful repair to the church, cast themselves at the feet of the priest, who makes the sign of the cross on their foreheads with ashes, saying : Remember, man, thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt return !

Fasting is a penance laid upon the faithful for the whole of Lent with the exception of Sunday. Fasting, in the strictest sense of the term, means taking one meal a day after midday, and this made up of nothing very substantial, vegetables and fish. This penance, which is nothing out of the way, which the ancient philosophers recommended to their disciples, is very useful because it weakens the body, curbs our intemperance, and makes us much fitter for prayer and meditation. By food man partakes of the lowest creatures, of the flesh and blood of brutes : by fasting he rises above bodily wants, and yields to them only in what is absolutely necessary.

Go to confession at the beginning of Lent as a preparation for it, and again shortly before Easter, in order to fit you for communion the following day. At confession do not consider the man, but God who humbled himself for your salvation so far as to die like an outcast and a culprit. Doubtless it is a consolation to kneel at the feet of a priest one reveres and loves, but even suppose We don't know him, we must see Jesus Christ in him, and confess interiorly that we have deserved public humiliation, and not simply secret ones. Open your soul to your confessor, do whatever penance he imposes on you without asking for any particular one, and be persuaded that a well spent Lent will be a very meritorious work of expiation.

Just consider how incapable you are of great things,

and don't despise little ones. 5

IX. ©n t\u (purrit

Abbey of Solesmes, June 24, 1838.

My dear Friend,

I WAS expecting with some impatience to hear from you, for I cannot do without you. Your letter dropped in exactly on the feast of my patron, St. John the Baptist. I thanked God for having sent me so sweet a present on that day. Your letter is the reflex of all the good and amiable qualities God has given you, as well as of a sound mind which sees difficulties, but can work out solutions.

This is the shortest road to truth. Many minds see rhe weak point of the true; this comes from its immense disproportion with our faculties. The number of those who see its strong side is less ; this comes of the connection between all that goes to make it up. Truth is an infinite web which bears us up. Children as we are, we can neither measure nor tear it. The objection that troubles you is one touching the Unity of the Church. You have understood, my very dear friend, that unity is the characteristic mark of truth. ■ Cicero understood and said so before you.

The phrase which embodied the remark of that great man is what most powerfully urged Queen Christina of Sweden to become a Catholic.

You will tell me that unity of mind, the chief of all, can only exist in the Church inasmuch as the Church is infallible, and that Catholics themselves do not agree with regard to the seat of infallibility in the Church.

Were this the case you would be right in maintaining that unity in the Catholic Church is an impossibility, since this infallibility itself is a subject of division. Such however is not the case, and I will give you a convincing proof of it : it is that as a fact unity does exist in the Catholic Church, and that consequently Catholics know well and with certainty where resides infallibility. All know well, all believe, all are obliged to believe, unless they are desirous of becoming schismatics and heretics, that the bishops, with the Pope at their head, are infallible in matters of faith and morals.

Outside this dogma each one is free to adopt his own opinion. For you must remember, my dear friend, that a vast number of questions are not yet denned by Catholic dogma, and are controverted matters. The Church, enlightened by the word of Jesus Christ, of the apostles and prophets, and assisted by the Holy Ghost, holds a certain number of necessary truths which she propounds and defends as the heritage of the human race. They are her treasure : they are the common treasure. AVoe to him who lays hands upon them ! As to the rest, which are more or less bound up with these necessary truths, they are open to discussion. Thus with regard to infallibility, the Church affirms as part of her creed, that the bishops, icith the Pope at their head, are infallible in matters of faith and morals.

Outside this truth there is a conflict of opinions. Some, like the Count de Maistre, maintain that the Pope himself, in his capacity of Pope, speaking doctrinally to the whole Church, according to the duty of his charge, is infallible ; since otherwise, if he could teach error, one could not imagine how the Holy See is the foundation on which the Church is built. Others do not allow this consequence, and think that the decrees of the Sovereign Pontiff are only irref amiable or infallible, inasmuch as the bishops accept them either tacitly or expressly. This is a family discussion, which is no bar to unity, since all Catholics submit as soon as the Pope and the bishops have spohen. If you were to read our big theology books, you would see these two classes of ideas at every turn. The one class is necessary, the other free : the one forming part of the Catholic creed, the other not forming part of it, although not devoid of interest and having sometimes very grave consequences.

You will perhaps ask why God has left so many questions open to discussion. You might as well ask why God has not revealed everything. Now God has revealed the principles in order to serve as foundations; He has not done exactly the same with the consequences, in order to give our liberty play, like a mother who holds her child up by leading strings, but is delighted to see him try and walk like a man. You must bear in mind too, that this infallibility may, at any moment, transfer ideas from the realm of opinion to that of dogma, and consequently from the free to the necessary order. A simple decision of the Church works this change, and she never withholds that decision from the human race in case of need. Seated in the midst of minds, unchangeable like God whose Spirit she has, the Church diffuses in a wonderful manner light and heat, drawing to herself every soul of good will, judging human ideas by the standard of divine ones, and welding together in admirable peace the very differences she allows to exist among her children.

Their liberty gives her no uneasiness, for she knows on the one hand, the point at which she will

6* check them, and on the other she is certain they will stop at her bidding. It is much the same kind of feeling as that of God about the ocean. On the contrary, Protestant liberty recognizes no bounds, and is destructive of all unity. The Protestant has not a single dogma to serve as a centre of unity or a rallying point. He is his own unity : in other words, his unity is something essentially variable, a cloud, a dew-drop. His individuality itself does not constitute unity : he is alone without the possibility of being one; God is one without being able to be alone, and His Church in like manner. We will hold over the different incidental points arising out of the chief objection for our subsequent conversations. These details would take too long. Not that I am disinclined to talk at length with you, my dear friend ; God knows it does not tire me : your candor does quite the contrary. But, as you say, everything must have an end, even that to which we are most inclined, and moreover I think you yourself will now be able to solve the secondary difficulties.

I come now to your misgivings touching the salvation of one who loved you so tenderly, and who on her deathbed pronounced those beautiful and Christian words to which in great part we may reasonably attribute your conversion to the Catholic faith. God has, like yourself, laid these words up in His heart, and to them I undoubtedly owe the happiness of knowing and loving you. Now, why should you fear

that the Catholic Church would inspire afflicting thoughts touching your loving Mother ? God alone judges man ; He alone, at the hour of death, weighs his life; He it is who puts into the scales what he knew and what he did not, what he has done, and what he might have done, what He gave him, and what He withheld, good and evil, insuperable obstacles, and, like a merciful Master, He fills up the measure of love which saves, there where there is love enough to deserve an increase. Possibly the grace which is pressing you is but a superabundance of that given your mother when she prayed for you. Look upon her as the cause of your conversion. Be convinced you are fulfilling her last wish : — "I feel assured that the memory of my tender love for my dear son will suffice to keep him virtuous, and to make him cling to the Lord, the source of all grace and all virtue."

There is much more that I could say ! Do not suppose your long letters will tire me ; you cannot let me have them too long. Treat me just like you would an old friend of your own age. I am not uneasy about the objections which suggest themselves

Wt to your mind, I know too well the hold God has taken of your soul to look upon them as anything else but a course of gymnastics which you want to strengthen you in truth.

I think the conclusion of M. de Maistre's Pape will please you better than the opening, which is slightly too scholastic a controversy, and which is unsuited to your present state of mind. There is no One book which has not the disadvantage of not being written specially for us. The living word, issuing from a soul which understands ours, is much more powerful. I am always uneasy when I recommend books, because scarcely any single book will be precisely suited to any one particular man. The soul, on the contrary, requires but a moment to read into another, and give her what she wants. I am consequently yearning for the moment when we shall again take up our conversations. I shall be in Paris on the 18th of July; I shall immediately closet myself with you, and, by God's grace, finish the work already begun.