One Minute Meditation
Following the Way of the Narrow Gate:
Let us, then, try to estimate how honorable it is to wish to please God, as well on account of the goodness and beneficence he has shown us, as because his divine pleasure is the rule of all rectitude. Hence Saint Francis, when often asked by his brethren what was the most pleasing thing they could do for God, was wont to answer that nothing was more grateful to him than zeal for detachment …
What Saint Bernard says of the apparition of the angel sent to the shepherds at the nativity of Christ … is to the point here: “How many of the powerful and of the wise men of the world were resting in their soft beds at that hour, and none of them was esteemed worthy to see this new light, to know that great joy and to hear the angels singing!” He thence draws this beautiful conclusion: “If God deigned to show such love to those shepherds, who were poor out of necessity on account of the pleasure this virtue of detachment gives him, how much greater love will that same God not show to those who are poor in spirit and are such by their own free will!”
If, therefore, we ought to follow Christ with such zeal, we certainly should consider both with what words and by what examples he himself and his saints have taught us this virtue. Saint Bernard speaks thus: “For this is the way, which can save your souls, and there is no other way besides it. He who goes by another way, falls rather, because humility alone exalts, it is it aIone that leads to life.” Experience itself, also, teaches us this through the lives of the saints, who were conspicuous in some particular order, as, for example, that of the apostles, martyrs, pontiffs, confessors, etc.
St. Aloysius Gonzaga SJ
