Hence it is, that the saints, who were illuminated by God, judged themselves poor, amidst the riches of this world; and rich in the greatest poverty; because they were sensible in themselves, that earthly goods, though they were all joined together, are incapable of filling the heart of man; and that the spiritual goods which he possesses in God, are they alone wherewith the human heart can be satiated. Thus, evangelical poverty ought rather to be called plenty, than poverty; had not our Saviour, to make himself be understood, spoken the language of men.

We daily perceive that no person has a greater esteem of what he does, than he who is capable of doing little; and that, on the contrary, he who can perform a great deal, is rarely satisfied with his own work. The liberal man never thinks he gives enough, and the avaricious man believes he always gives too much. The glutton looks upon one day's fasting as a heroic action; and the passionate man imagines he makes a great sacrifice, when he kills not him that has offended him. Thus the poor in spirit esteems himself lavish, when he allows anything to his necessity: the patient man thinks himself passionate, when he is sensible of injuries: and the temperate believes himself guilty of gluttony, when he spends some days without fasting; it is the same in other things, because the disposition of our hearts is almost continually the rule of our judgments.

Thus, when we feel in ourselves any affection to temporal goods, we admire the poverty of St. Francis; whereas those who have tasted the spiritual sweetness of poverty, are astonished that he did not extend it still further. We look upon poverty as a misery, whilst we are in love with riches; but when we are full of the divine love, we find in poverty inestimable treasures.

V. There are in the church two sorts of poor. The first, in the abundance of earthly wealth, have their hearts disengaged from thence; the others renounce it for ever, that they may serve God with greater freedom. God has permitted, that amongst the first sort there should be some perfect men; that, on the one hand, the religious might not be puffed up on account of their poverty, and that, on the other, the rich of the world might be inexcusable in the bad use of their riches. Thus Abraham was a perfect model of obedience in grandeur; Susanna a rare example of chastity in marriage; and Job's heart was poor and disengaged in the midst of all his riches.

The rich, who aspire to poverty in spirit, have two extremities to fear, prodigality and avarice, but the latter is the most odious; for the prodigal does good to many, but the avaricious does it to none, not even to himself; the one loves to give, the other to receive; and our Saviour has said that it is more blessed to give than to receive.—Acts xx. 35. The prodigal is least attached to earthly

wealth, and, if he has other vices, the avaricious is not free from them, or at least does not avoid them out of the love of virtue, but for fear of expense. The prodigal is least remote from the kingdom of God, and he may be cured by depriving him of the instrument of his disorder; but the avaricious is insatiable, and finds in his tie to worldly goods, and almost invincible obstacle to his conversion. The prodigal child, corrected by his disgrace, returns to his father, and the avaricious rich man, insensible to the miseries of Lazarus, is buried in hell.

Those who have renounced the riches of this world by a religious profession, ought to remember that the poor Jesus is their treasure, and that in his poverty all their riches consist. Now, in regard of those who have thus offered up all without reserve in the sincerity of their heart, Jesus is that mysterious book written within and without (Apoc. v. 1), wherein they read this excellent truth; but he is a book shut up and sealed with seven seals, which can neither be opened nor read by those whose sacrifice is imperfect, and that commit theft upon the holocaust. Hence it is, that they are often in as much trouble about the loss or refusal of a trifle, as an avaricious person would be at the loss of his treasure; being so much the further from the poverty of divine love, as they are the less faithful in small things. Unless the religious is a devout man, he cannot be truly poor in spirit; it is prayer which separates him from the earth, and purifies his love: although he may satisfy his conscience by avoiding all property, he will never attain to evangelical poverty, nor relish the sweets thereof, but by a communication with God, which destroys and consumes all terrestrial affection.

The truly poor in spirit build in gold, silver, and precious stones, according to the expression of the Apostle (1 Cor. iii. 12), whilst others make houses of nothing but wood, hay, and stubble. Both may be saved, but the last shall be so as by fire, as those who are not saved from a great conflagration but by passing through the midst of the flames: for the fire shall try all our works, and whatever is earthly in them must necessarily be consumed, either by the fire of the love of God, or by that of his justice. The figure of this world passes away (1 Cor. vii. 31); happy is the man who adheres to what is solid, and places his heart where his true treasure is.

CONTEMPLATION.-On Christ in his Poverty.—0 Treasure of celestial riches! O abundant source of all blessings! O infinite happiness of souls desiring thee! O Jesus, my God, my Lord, my King, my only good, and all my greatness! let my heart be sensible, and my spirit know, by means of the divine light, the designs of that eternal love. Grant, O Lord! that I may love what thou givest me the knowledge of, and that my will being

perfectly conformable to thine, I may live in thee, and thou in me. Immortal thanks be given thee, because thou vouchsafest to be my riches and felicity. I possess all in thee, and I possess it securely: for thou art so high, that evil cannot reach thee; so powerful, that nothing can be wanting to thee; and so rich, that no misery can be found where thou art. Thou possessest a thousand times more riches than I can know; thou promisest me more of them than I can desire; and thy goodness is infinitely above all that I can comprehend.

Thou possessest in such a manner everything that can render me happy, that I find nothing but misery out of thee; and since thou art pleased it shoud be so, O my God! how can I desire it should be otherwise? I accept, O Lord! of this incomparable mercy; teach me to desire, love, and preserve it. Separate my heart from the earth; take from my senses the relish of everything that brings me not to thee; deliver my mind from those vanities which amuse it; fill thou alone that space which thou hast made only for thyself, that thou mayest be in me what thou desirest to be; and that I may sigh after and embrace none but thee, who art all my happiness: but a happiness, which is wholly mine, great and certain. Thou art a good, since thou art the source of all goodness; thou art wholly mine, since thou refusest me nothing of what thou art: thou art a great good, since thou art a divine good; and thou art a certain good, since nothing can take it from me unless I am willing.

Let my whole interior therefore be turned towards thee, O my God; let all my powers be employed about thee, and let my whole soul be absorbed in thee: for I can never desire a greater happiness, nor even find any true one out of thee. May thy love, O my God! take deep root in me, that the weight of the flesh may not move it; that the torment of the world may not carry it away; and that no tempest may force it out of my heart. For since thou art all my happiness, I have nothing further to desire, than that thou wouldst defend me against what might separate me from thee.

II. Undoubtedly it is to induce me to this disengagement, that thou wouldst not possess anything in this world. Thy design was that in beholding thee I should see nothing but thee alone, to whom I owe all that I am, and who alone deservest all my love. There is nothing in heaven or on earth but what is thine; everything is governed and directed therein by thy orders; this is a demesne, which thou canst not alienate. Although thou hadst employed, during thy mortal life, all creatures in paying thee service, thou wouldst not have been more powerful thereby: and such an example could have inspired me with nothing but the desire of earthly goods. Thou wouldst not make use of them, though they

Thou

were thy own, in regard to my blindness and weakness. wast born poor, livedst poor, and diedst poor; and thou hadst not so much as either where to lay thy head whilst alive, or wherewith to be buried after death. If thou hadst not whereof to eat, and sufferedst hunger: if anything was given thee, thou returnedst thanks for it, as the poor do; and if it was refused thee, thou murmuredst not. On Calvary they stript thee of thy clothes, which were the booty of those that crucified thee; on the cross thou wast deprived of the small comforts thou hadst need of in the excess of thy pains, and thou diedst thereon entirely resigned and forsaken.

O Jesus, poor and abandoned! is it possible that thou art in want of all things, and everything is thine; but also dost thou not want all things, that I might find nothing in thee but thyself? Thou leavest me thy humanity, poor, naked, forsaken, and yet full of all the riches of the divinity. I behold nothing in thee but God and man, the divine nature and ours; and thou showest mè clearly, in that so pure an union, that I ought to love thee purely, and live in thee without the mixture of any terrestrial affection. I adore thy poverty, O treasure of eternal riches! I adore thy infinite wisdom, and thy designs of bereaving my soul of everything but thyself.

III. Have mercy on me, O Lord! and grant to thy poor creature the grace of possessing thee alone, and giving itself wholly to thee. But, alas! wretch that I am, I let thee go, seek what thou fliest, submit myself to what thou disdainest, and run after the meanest things with an insatiate hunger; and I am blind enough to think, that I can find wherewith to satiate myself out of thee. What profit can I receive from the conveniences of the body, which thou hast rejected; the favour of men, which thou hast despised; the temporal goods, which thou hast renounced, and the pleasures of the world, which thou hast deprived thyself of? Thou, O Lord! to whom all was due, and whom nothing could hurt, hast preferred the privation of all these things to their abundance, by the love alone which thou hadst for me; I think myself unhappy when I want them, and happy when I possess them, even without thee. What blindness! what misery! These perishable goods corrupt me, and I desire them; they make me lose thy love, deprive me of thee, O my God! and of thy divine riches; and yet I esteem myself rich, when I posssess them, and poor, when I am without them.

What hinders me from loving and esteeming thee as I ought, O divine Jesus! is the placing my love and esteem on everything thou hast judged unworthy of thine. But thou art not surrounded with any of those things which I love, how then shall I find thee in them? O infinite goodness! who wilt not the death of a sinnner,

but that he be converted and live: it was not with a design that I should want anything in thee, that thou wast pleased to be poor, but to teach me that thou art sufficient for me, and that I can be rich with thee alone. Let thy poverty, therefore, operate in me what thou desirest of me.

Thou seest, O Lord! that what I possess on earth affectionately, or earnestly wish for, takes up my whole mind, carries away all my thoughts, and destroys my peace. Whilst I am infatuated therewith, I forget thee, and am no longer able to pray, or adore thee in spirit and truth: I think no more of my obligation of loving thee: I reject the graces which thou offerest me; and, what I cannot confess before thee, O my God! without an extreme confusion, if I have any weak desire of recurring to thee, I find myself so oppressed with misery, that I have not the strength of lifting up my eyes to heaven. I am tied down by a very trifle, a childish amusement, or a fickle fancy. The least pleasure draws me away, although it has no solidity; and I find nothing in it but my mortal poison, and such things as the devil makes use of for withdrawing me from thee. But the height of my misery is that I do not as much as perceive the state I am in, nor am sensible of the temptations and dangers whereto I expose myself, till I am fallen into the precipice. Thou knowest my miseries, O Lord! and thou alone canst remedy them. O Jesus! poor and destitute of everything, have pity on my poverty. Alas! it is not that which thou lovest and requirest of me; on the contrary, it is that which thou hatest, and whereby I lose thee. For I acknowledge how far I am from that poverty of heart, which sanctified thy servants. But such as I am, I cast myself at thy feet; break off my chains, loose the bonds which bind me to the earth, and inspire me with sacred horror of everything that thou hast despised in this life; re-unite in thyself alone all my desires, affections, and thoughts.

IV. O divine light! O thou only treasure of my soul! hearken to it, O Lord: and answer it interiorly. Speak to me, O eternal Word! and grant that I may desire nothing but what thou wouldst have me to ask of thee. But since poverty is so dear to thee, and thou wilt love nothing earthly, wilt thou not also reject the weak desires of this heart, which has been so long attached to the earth? My heart, wholly blind as it is, answers me, thou wilt not: and it would not give me this answer, if thou didst not inspire it therewith. Yes, O my Saviour! it is to be alone with me that thou hast divested thyself of everything else; and thou wilt be poor, only that my heart may take the place with thee of everything thou forsakest. Thou desirest to find in me thy food, clothing, and repose: and I alone am sufficient to thee in the privation of all creatures. In fine, thou art poor, that all poor hearts might hope to receive thee. Come then, O poor and divine Jesus!