Page 34 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

O. R. VASSALL-PHILLIPS

senses sensible. This recovery, at least in part, of the rightful
dominion in the Universe, which Man lost in the beginning by his
first great Fall, is one of the unforeseen consequences resulting in
God's goodness, from the austerity of the Saints, often to their own
confusion — an austerity that sometimes appals us by the dread
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determination of its ceaseless self-crucifixion.
It may be asserted without any fear of exaggeration that amongst
all the Saints hardly will one be found more austere or more devoted
to corporal penances than was Saint Gerard Majella; yet at the same
time he well understood that the austerity which holds the first place
before God, and which is most acceptable in His sight, is the
austerity that leads us to the faithful discharge of the duties of our
state, always sparing others whenever possible, never sparing
ourselves. Well did he know that without this vivifying spirit, issuing
forth from the Heart of Jesus, the mortifications even of the Baptist
in the desert, or of St. Simeon on his pillar, would have been as
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sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.

12 Thus St. Paul write: “Always bearing about in our body the mortification of
Jesus, that the life also of 'Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies’” (2 Cor.
iv. 10).
13 An all-embracing, all-pervading spirit of self-sacrifice— the mortification of
the whole being, not only of the pleasures of sense, but much more of the will,
for the love of God and man, is the dominant note of Christian asceticism. This
it is that differentiates it from the purely external austerities of the Fakir or the
Dervish, which too often are but an emanation of the subtle spirit of pride and
contempt for the rest of men, by which they are held in bondage. The
asceticism of the Saints derived all its energy from an insatiable longing, that
grew with their growth in its power and intensity to become more and more
conformable to the Likeness of the Crucified Lover of our race; it was animated
not merely by a desire to safeguard personal salvation, but also by the
knowledge that thus they might help effectually those — their brothers and
their sisters in the world-wide family of God — for whom Jesus had shed His
Precious Blood. If St. Paul tells us that he chastised his body lest he might after
all become a castaway (i Cor. ix. 27), in another place he writes, “I fill up in my
body those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, for His Body's
sake, which is the Church” (Col. i. 24). The law of love must ever be also the law
of self-immolation in behalf of the beloved. The false asceticism of fanatics is

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