Part 12 (1/2)
We believe the same great truths, and divine mysteries,--we profess the same faith which produced such wonderful fruits in the souls of the saints. Whence comes it that it has not the like effects in us?--that though we acknowledge virtue to be the richest treasure of the soul of man, we take little pains about it, pa.s.sionately seek the things of this world, are cast down and broken under every adversity, and curb and restrain our pa.s.sions only by halves?--that the most glorious objects, G.o.d and heaven, and the amazing and dreadful truths, a judgment to come, h.e.l.l, and eternity, strike us so feebly, and operate so little in us?
The reason is plain: because we meditate not sufficiently on these great truths. Our notions of them are dim and imperfect; our thoughts pa.s.s so slightly over them, that they scarce retain any print or traces of them.
Otherwise it is impossible that things {110} so great and terrible should excite in us no fear, or that things in their own nature infinitely amiable, should enkindle in us no desire. Slight and faint images of things move our minds very weakly, and affect them very coldly, especially in such matters as are not subject to our senses. We therefore grossly deceive ourselves in not allotting more time to the study of divine truths. It is not enough barely to believe them, and let our thoughts now and then glance upon them: that knowledge which shows us heaven, will not bring us to the possession of it, and will deserve punishments, not rewards, if it remain slight, weak, and superficial. By serious and frequent meditation it must be concocted, digested, and turned into the nourishment of our affections, before it can be powerful and operative enough to change them, and produce the necessary fruit in our lives. For this all the saints affected solitude and retreats from the noise and hurry of the world, as much as their circ.u.mstances allowed them.
Footnotes: 1. {} 2. Ep. 83, ad Magn.
3. B. 71.
4. Hist. B. 5, c. 5.
5. Apol. c. 5. L. ad Scap. c. 4.
6. Chron.
7. Or. 2, de 40 mart.
8. _Christianorum_ FORTE _militum precationibus impetrato imbri_.
Tertull. Apolog. c. 5. Euseb. l. 5, c. 5. Some take the word _forte_ here to signify, _casually, accidentally, as hap was_. Several learned Protestants have written in defence of this miracle: see Mr.
Weston's dissertation in 1748. The exceptions of Le Clerc, Hist.
Eccl. p. 744, and of Moyle, in his essay on the Thundering Legion, deserve no notice. The deliverance of the emperor is represented on the _Columna Antoniniana_, in Rome, by the figure of a Jupiter Pluvius, being that of an old man flying in the air, with his arms expanded, and a long beard which seems to waste away in rain. The soldiers are there represented as relieved by this sudden tempest, and in a posture, partly drinking of the rain-water, and partly fighting against the enemy; who, on the contrary are represented as stretched out on the ground with their horses, and upon them only the dreadful part of the storm descending. The original letter of Marcus Aurelius concerning this matter, was extant when Tertullian and St. Jerom wrote. See Hier. in Chron. Euseb. ad annum 176. Tert.
Apol. c. 5, et lib. ad Scapul. The letter of Marcus Aurelius to the senate now extant, is rejected as supposit.i.tious by Scaliger, (Animadv. In Eus. ad an. 189.).It is published in the new edition of the works of Marcus Aurelius, printed by Robert Fowlis in 1748, t.
1, p. 127, in Greek, t. 2, p. 126, in Latin, with notes, ib. p. 212.
Mamachi, t. 1, p 366.
ST. SEVERINUS, ABBOT,
AND APOSTLE OF NORIc.u.m, OR AUSTRIA.
From his life, by Eugippius his disciple, who was present at his death.
See Tillemont, t. 16, p. 168. Lambecius Bibl. Vend. t. 1, p. 28, and Bollandus, p. 497.
A.D. 482.
WE know nothing of the birth or country of this saint. From the purity of his Latin, he was generally supposed to be a Roman; and his care to conceal what he was according to the world, was taken for a proof of his humility, and a presumption that he was a person of birth. He spent the first part of his life in the deserts of the East; but, inflamed with an ardent zeal for the glory of G.o.d, he left his retreat to preach the gospel in the North. At first he came to Astures, now Stokeraw, situate above Vienna; but finding the people hardened in vice, he foretold the punishment G.o.d had prepared for them, and repaired to Comagenes, now Haynburg on the Danube, eight leagues westward of Vienna. It was not long ere his prophecy was verified; for Astures was laid waste, and the inhabitants destroyed by the sword of the Huns, soon after the death of Attila. St. Severinus's ancient host with great danger made his escape to him at Comagenes. By the accomplishment of this prophecy, and by several miracles he wrought, the name of the saint became famous.
Favianes, a city on the Danube, twenty leagues from Vienna, distressed by a terrible famine, implored his a.s.sistance. St. Severinus preached penance among them with great fruit; and he so effectually threatened with the divine vengeance a certain rich woman, who had h.o.a.rded up a great quant.i.ty of provisions, that she distributed all her stores among the poor. Soon after his arrival, the ice of the Danube and the Ins breaking, the country was abundantly supplied by barges up the rivers.
Another time by his prayers he chased away the locusts, which by their swarms had threatened with devastation the whole produce of the year. He wrought many miracles; yet never healed the sore eyes of Bonosus, the dearest to him of his disciples, who spent forty years in almost continual prayer, without any abatement of his fervor. The holy man never ceased to exhort all to repentance and piety: he redeemed captives, relieved the oppressed, was a father to the poor, cured the sick, mitigated or averted public calamities, and brought a blessing wherever he came. Many cities desired him for their bishop; but he withstood their importunities by urging, that it was sufficient he had relinquished his dear solitude for their instruction and comfort.
{111}
He established many monasteries, of which the most considerable was one on the banks of the Danube, near Vienna; but he made none of them the place of his constant abode, often shutting himself up in a hermitage four leagues from his community, where be wholly devoted himself to contemplation. He never ate till after sunset, unless on great festivals. In Lent he ate only once a week. His bed was sackcloth spread on the floor in his oratory. He always walked barefoot, even when the Danube was frozen. Many kings and princes of the Barbarians came to visit him, and among them Odoacer, king of the Heruli, then on his march for Italy. The saint's cell was so low that Odoacer could not stand upright in it. St. Severinus told him that the kingdom he was going to conquer would shortly be his; and Odoacer seeing himself, soon after, master of Italy, sent honorable letters to the saint, promising him all he was pleased to ask; but Severinus only desired of him the restoration of a certain banished man. Having foretold his death long before it happened, he fell ill of a pleurisy on the 5th of January, and on the fourth day of his illness, having received the viatic.u.m, and arming his whole body with the sign of the cross, and repeating that verse of the psalmist, _Let every spirit praise the Lord_,[1] he closed his eyes, and expired in the year 482. Six years after, his disciples, obliged by the incursions of Barbarians, retired with his relics into Italy, and deposited them at Luculano, near Naples, where a great monastery was built, of which Eugippius, his disciple, and author of his life, was soon after made the second abbot. In the year 910 they were translated to Naples, where to this day they are honored in a Benedictin abbey, which bears his name. The Roman and other Martyrologies place his festival on this day, as being that of his death.
A perfect spirit of sincere humility is the spirit of the most sublime and heroic degree of Christian virtue and perfection. As the great work of the sanctification of our souls is to be begun by humility, so must it be completed by the same. Humility invites the Holy Ghost into the soul, and prepares her to receive his graces; and from the most perfect charity, which he infuses, she derives a new interior light, and an experimental knowledge of G.o.d and herself, with an _infused_ humility far clearer in the light of the understanding, in which she sees G.o.d's infinite greatness, and her own total insufficiency, baseness, and nothingness, after a quite new manner; and in which she conceives a relish of contempt and humiliations as her due, feels a secret sentiment of joy in suffering them, sincerely loves her own abjection, dependence, and correction, dreads the esteem and praises of others, as snares by which a mortal poison may imperceptibly insinuate itself into her affections, and deprive her of the divine grace; is so far from preferring herself to any one, that she always places herself below all creatures, is almost sunk in the deep abyss of her own nothingness, never speaks of herself to her own advantage, or affects a show of modesty in order to appear humble before men, in all good, gives the _entire_ glory to G.o.d alone, and as to herself, glories only in her infirmities, pleasing herself in her own weakness and nothingness, rejoicing that G.o.d is the great _all_ in her and in all creatures.
Footnotes: 1. Ps. 150.
{112}
ST. LUCIAN,
APOSTLE OF BEAUVAIS, IN FRANCE.