THE INTERIOR LIFE. (6)

Zeal.

"Behold I come that I should do Thy Will. O my God, I have desired it, and Thy law in the midst of my heart."

(Ps. xxxix. 8, 9).

1st. Prelude. Jesus living in and working through Mary.

2nd. Prelude. The grace of zeal according to His methods.

There is a very close connection between prayer and zeal; the more perfect the prayer, the greater necessarily will be the zeal. Why? Because prayer is identifying oneself with the mind and Will of God, and doing everything with the unique intention of pleasing Him. What are the Will and pleasure of God? The salvation of the world for which He became incarnate—The closer we unite ourselves to God in prayer, the dearer will His intentions be to us. The best workers are those who pray best, those who enter most deeply into God's Will and plans. When we find our zeal flagging, it would be well to examine ourselves on our spirit of prayer.

Point I. The zeal of JESUS living in Mary.

This zeal showed itself at once. No sooner had He become incarnate than He inspired His Mother to take a difficult journey into the "hill country" to visit her cousin Elizabeth. The zeal of Jesus showed itself first of all, as it naturally would, on His Mother and filled her spirit with the humility and charity and forgetfulness of self which were needed for the journey. It then effected Elizabeth and filled her with the Holy Ghost, but these were only the overflowings of His zeal on His way to make what Father Faber calls His "first convert." The soul of John the Baptist, His chosen Precursor, was very precious to Him and as yet it lay unconscious at a distance from God in darkness and the shadow of death. One of the first acts of God Incarnate was to deliver that soul from prison and let it see what great things He had in store for it. At the sound of the voice of the Mother with her Child, a change was wrought in that dark soul; it was set free from the curse of original sin, it was flooded with grace, it was brought nigh to God, the Holy Ghost with all His gifts took possession of it and as a consequence, it leapt in the womb in joy and gratitude and adoration.

The voice of Mary directed by her Child had simultaneously worked two miracles of grace. Elizabeth heard the salutation first, but it was the leaping of the Babe in her womb which made her understand that the Incarnation had taken place, and cry with a loud voice: "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb."

If the zeal of Jesus was so powerful during the first hours of His life, what must it not have effected during the nine months! How many souls without knowing (as St. John the Baptist did) the cause, were brought nearer to Heaven by the presence of the Incarnate God in the world!

Point II. Mary's zeal.

We have no need to dwell at any length on the zeal of her whom Jesus used as His instrument during the nine months. Mary's was a zeal which compelled her to spend and be spent in the service of those whom Jesus loved; and the secret of its force was the interior life which she lived with her Son—a perfect union of will and purpose with His.

Let me try to copy my Mother in her interior life and then I may hope that her Son will use me too as an instrument of some of His zeal for souls. He must use someone, for He has made Himself as dependent now in the Tabernacle as He was during the time that He lived in Mary. He has deliberately put Himself in the position of needing instruments for His work and He will naturally choose those who are most imbued with His spirit and who are willing to adopt His methods. Such an instrument was Mary. She put no obstacles in His way, because she had no will apart from His, her zeal was only a reflexion of His.

Point III. "Learn of Me."

If I am to fashion my zeal after the pattern of the zeal of Jesus, I must be careful to see that my methods are the same as His. What were His?

(1) Solitude. Such was His solitude that no one but Mary knew that He was there. He chose solitude not only during this first stage but during the greater part of His life on earth, and He chooses it still in His Eucharistic life. It must then be a very necessary accompaniment to zeal. "Learn of Me." What am I to learn? That if my zeal is to be efficacious I must live a hermit's life far from the haunts of men? Not necessarily. It would be possible to do this without finding the solitude that begets zeal; and it is quite possible to find the necessary solitude even in the midst of the world's tumult. To say that I have no opportunities for doing good because I am in uncongenial surroundings, or because I am obliged by my circumstances to lead a lonely life or to live where there is apparently no scope for work for souls is to fail to understand what zeal is. Why do people shut themselves up in convents, cries the world, when they might do so much good outside? Uniquely because of their zeal for souls—they have sufficient courage to adopt Our Lord's methods. If I am one whom He has trusted with the trial of loneliness in my life, let me cultivate a devotion to Him in His Mother's womb, and let me take heart and be of good courage. All the activity in the world that is of any use is of use because of the prayer that is behind it. Whose prayers who shall say? They may be mine if I live an interior life, for those who live in the retreat of their own heart with God have a limitless scope for their zeal.

(2) Silence. Zeal for God and His work does not depend then, on words. I need not be troubled because I am not eloquent, or because I have an impediment in my speech, or because I never know what to say. How could such things matter to God, the Omnipotent God! He could alter them in a moment if necessary. The Word Himself Who could have spoken so attractively and with such power was silent for most of His life. The time He chose for His Incarnation was "while all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her course" (Wisdom xviii. 14); and He is silent still in the Tabernacle; He loves silence, and the more the soul is interior, the more it will adopt His method of silence and the more it will understand what a marvellous help it is to zeal. How can this be? Because the silence that we choose to keep for God means shutting out all else, that we may talk to Him alone. Could there be a better method than this for making us zealous for the work so dear to His Heart?

(3) Obedience. Think of His obedience in the womb of His Mother. His very Incarnation was an act of obedience, He waited for Mary's Fiat. His waiting for nine months was purely an act of obedience to the laws of nature, for His Soul and Body were perfect from the moment of His conception. All the time that He lived in Mary, He obeyed all whom she obeyed—St. Joseph, the Roman Emperor, the people at Bethlehem. He gave up His own Will to others.

This was His method of being zealous. This is how He did the work that He had come to do. Can I adopt this method? It is not easy. I do so love to follow my own sweet will especially when I am working for the souls of others. I feel that no one has a right to dictate to me, that my work ought to be spontaneous, not cramped nor confined nor limited nor any other adjective that the devil can persuade me to use, if only he can make me believe that it is a blessed thing to be independent! If my zeal for God is to be worth anything, let me follow the methods of God Incarnate in the womb of His Mother and be absolutely obedient to God, to His Holy Church and to those whom I ought to obey.

(4) Poverty. "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich, He became poor for your sakes, that through His poverty you might be rich" (2 Cor. viii. 9). In His zeal for our wealth, He made Himself poor, He deliberately adopted poverty as one of His methods in His life of zeal. Poverty is the voluntary laying aside of all that we might have, in order that our purpose may be single. All can do this whether rich or poor, for all have much that they would rather not lay on one side, and all have self. Let us think what the Eternal Word was as God, and then what He was in Mary's womb, and we shall understand what poverty means. If we are to be zealous in His service, we must not only understand, but copy.

(5) Patience. Patience is a twofold grace, that of waiting and that of suffering, both are a great aid to zeal. The Eternal Word's zeal for the salvation of men had existed in all its perfection and all its fulness from all eternity, yet think how long He waited! When the conditions were changed and He had at length become incarnate, He still waited patiently for nine months, and after that He waited for thirty years! This was zeal, zeal in its perfection. Is my zeal tempered with patience? Am I patient with souls, patient with myself, patient above all when God says: Wait, do nothing?

Jesus showed His patience in the womb of His Mother not only by waiting; but by suffering, as we have already seen, all the inconveniences that were incident to His new existence. He doubtless also forestalled all the sufferings that were in store for Him and offered them all to His Father. Zeal without the aid of suffering cannot go far and it was one of the methods He chose. If I have not courage enough to choose it, I must, if my zeal is to be at all like His, be ready for it when He chooses it for me.

It will probably be seen one day that those whose lives have been lives of suffering, and who have never been able to do any active work for Him, are those whose zeal has effected the most for His glory and His Kingdom.

Those of us who are not entrusted with this wonderfully blessed gift of suffering, can at any rate offer to Him for souls all the many little inconveniences and incommodities of our lives, and so copy to some small extent the life of Jesus hidden in Mary.

O my little Jesus, help me, at whatever cost to self, to copy Thee.

Colloquy with Jesus hidden in Mary, asking Him for grace, so to adopt His methods that He may use me as an instrument of His zeal.

Resolution. Not to shrink from adopting His methods.

Spiritual Bouquet. "Every one that hath zeal ... let him follow Me" (1 Macc. ii. 27).