Father Faber begins: "Life is short, and it is wearing fast away.
We lose a great deal of time, and we want short roads to heaven,
though the right road is in truth far shorter than we believe. It
is true of most men that their light is greater than their heat,
which is only saying that we practice less than we profess. Yet
there are many souls, good, noble, and affectionate, who seem
rather to want light than beat. They want to know more of God, more
of themselves, and more of the relation in which they stand to God,
and then they would love Bnd serve Him better. There are many again
who, when they read or hear of the spiritual life, or come across
the ordinary maxims of Christian perfection, do not understand what
is put before them." Faber laments the fact: "The teaching of
spiritual books and the doctrines of perfection, as laid down by
the most approved writers, do not recommend themselves to them.
They consider that, unless they are under the vows of some monastic
order, they should aim iLt nothing m(lre than the avoiding of
mortal sin, and giving edification to those around them. They are
good people. They go to mass; they aid or start missions; they
countenance the clergy; they are kind to the poor; they say the
rosary; they frequent the sacraments. Yet when anyone talks to them
of serving God out of personal love to Him. of trying to be daily
more and more closely united to Him, of cultivating the spirit of
prayer, of constantly looking out to see what more they can do for
God, of mortifying their own will in things allowable, of disliking
the spirit of the world even in manifestations of it which are
short of sin, and of living more consciously in the presence of
God, they feel as if they were listening to an unknown language.
They have a jealousy, almost a dislike, of such truths, quite
irrespective of any attempt being made to force such a line of
conduct upon themselves. If they are humble they are puzzled: if
they are self-opinionated, the, are angry, critical, or
contemptuous, as the case may be There are many others to whom such
views are simply new, and who with modesty and self-distrust are
shaken by them, and to some extent receive them. Still upon the
whole such doctrines have a sound in their cars of being ultra and
extravagant, or poetical and fanciful, or peculiar and eccentric."
This work proceeds to explain why God loves us and how we can love
Him back as He wishes. It is an excellent work on the subject of
divine love.
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