enter into this poor heart, and say no longer, that thou hast not where to lay thy head, for I am wholly ready to receive thee.

Remember, O Lord! that when thou wast poor upon earth, & publican invited thee to eat with sinners, who were, as I am, very poor in thy riches; that their company did not displease thee; and that thou despisedst the murmers of the proud rich, who condemned thee.

Remember, that Zaccheus the sinner having desired to see thee, thou invitedst thyself to lodge at his house to satisfy him, and carriedst a blessing thither. That Magdalen went to seek thee in the house of another sinner, where she was sanctified; and thou wentest afterwards to seek her in her own. That being unwilling to possess anything in this world, thou invitedst all those, that suffered and were afflicted, to come to thee, with assurance of refreshing them. Content with being deprived of everything else, thou requirest nothing but the love of our hearts. What hinders me then, O Lord! from finding favour with thee.

It is true, I am not worthy thou shouldst enter into my soul; but since my unworthiness has not hindered thee from calling me, it ought not to hinder me from following thee: draw me therefore, saidst that if I be exalted from the earth, I will draw all things to myself (John xii. 32), thou didst not exclude me; and when thou my God! I am no less thine than Matthew, Zaccheus, or Magdalen: and if I am still more blind and miserable than they, the excess of my misery is a reason for drawing thy mercy upon me. Remember, O Lord! that thou didst not despise any sort of poor; thou wast born of a poor mother, in a poor place; thou drewest to thy manger poor and simple shepherds; chosest poor and ignorant disciples; calledst to thyself poor sinners; livedst amongst sinners; and diedst between two sinners. There is no poverty but what thou hast loved, either to practice, heal, or enrich it. Thus I shall not be excluded: I am poor enough to come to thee, O divine Jesus! and I have a lawful title to enter into thy society; receive me, therefore, O Lord! into the number of thine; thou wilt find in me whereon to bestow thy riches, and exercise thy mercies.

V. When I see thee so poor, I know not what my hearts feels; but I cannot separate myself from thee. There is a greatness and charm in thy poverty, wherewith my soul is overjoyed; I adore thee as much as I can: grant O my God! that I may love it as much as I ought. All these things whereof thou deprivedst thyself on earth, serve only to impoverish those who possess them affectionately; and thou heapest true riches upon those that despise them, and givest them a most solid consolation. The souls of thy poor thou forgettest not for ever, according to the expression of David (Ps. lxxiii. 19); they are illuminated with thy light, filled with thy wisdom, and guided by thy spirit: nothing troubles them, they

enjoy an unalterable peace, are upon earth, but converse in heaven and lead in their bodies of clay an angelical life. The poor taste sweetness, which worldings seek, and do not find; they have nothing, and possess all things. In the midst of the miseries of this life, they see themselves in a holy freedom, always elevated above the world and themselves; they are little in the eyes of men but great before thee, O my God! they despise what the world esteems, by which they are despised; they live with thee, sit at thy table, and after those delicious feasts everything on earth seems insipid to them.

When will the happy moment come, O my God and my all! when, far from all worldly joys, content with thee alone, and plunged in the ocean of thy riches, I shall say to thee, in a transport of love and gratitude, O my father, my treasure, my repose, and my happiness! It is true, O Lord! that thou art always so: but I feel it only when thou pleasest; that is, when thou touchest my soul interiorly; dispellest its darkness by a ray of thy light; consumest in it what is mean and earthly by the fire of thy charity; and re-unitest in thyself alone the multiplicity of its desires. How different is my heart from itself, when, full of thy gratitude and love, it cries out, my God, my riches, my strength and delight! It enjoys thee, then as a blessing that is its own, and everything else is nothing to it. Begone from me, earth, world, and riches; let me embrace Jesus, poor abject, and despised. O my Jesus! O my love! O my life! O my all!

VI. In thee, O divine Jesus! have I hoped, let me not be confounded for ever.— .-Ps. xxx. 1. All my fears vanish at thy sight. I shall never be ashamed nor repent for having loved thee, believed thee, and left all things to follow thee. Although all creatures should rise up against me, my heart shall not fear, because thou art my defence. Armed with thy poverty, I shall be invulnerable against the designs of my enemies; and they shall not know on what side to attack me. Hear, O Lord! the voice of my misery; lend an ear to the desires of a soul that loves thee, and hasten to assist me against those who separate me from thee. I come to thee, and choose thee for my riches and only happiness. Confound all those that endeavour to obscure this light, that they may run away with my treasure under favour of my darkness. Be thou my support, my protector, my refuge, and my salvation.

When thou commandest me to follow thee, and to renounce everything for thy love, thou knowest my weakness; wherefore, thou engagest thyself, at the same time, to become my strength, and to have regard, not to the merit of my works, but to the greatness of thy mercy. How secure am I, O divine Jesus! under the shadow of thy wings! how quietly do I live in thy arms! how sweetly do I repose on thy breast! Thou deliverest me from the

snares my enemies have hid for surprising me; thou takest upon thyself the care of defending me, that I may neither be moved by poverty which oppresses me, nor infirmity which weakens me, nor the world which persecutes me, nor the devil who tempts me, Thou wilt have it so, and it is just, that I should live without fear in loving and imitating thee, since thou givest me the grace of doing what thou commandest me, and art omnipotent to protect me.

I cast myself, therefore, O my Lord and my God! with my miseries, weakness, and sins, and the good desires thou inspirest me with, into thy paternal arm: I commend my spirit into thy hands, which made it to thy own image; reform it by thy wisdom and truth; grant I may discover their secrets, love their conduct, and execute their designs. May that hand, without which I can do nothing, not refuse me its help, that being poor in heart, and separate from everything that separates from thee, I may esteem those spiritual riches, which are to be found in thy poverty, as I ought.

O most pure Mother of God! imitatrix of Jesus's poverty, and dispensatrix of his riches; you are not so the mother of the poor, but you may be also that of sinners; obtain me that poverty of spirit, which filled you with so many heavenly riches. Blessed spirits, assist this poor sinner, that he may deserve, by the contempt of temporal things, to possess one day with you eternal riches. Amen.

TWELFTH SUFFERING OF CHRIST.-The Austerity of his Life.

I. Voluntary poverty is commonly accompanied with corporal austerity. The saints that have been poor in spirit, and those who have been so in spirit and body, by renouncing worldly riches for the love of God, have joined to that renunciation an austere and penitent life, every one after his own manner and according to his own strength; that they might subject the flesh to the spirit, and practise in regard of their bodies that holy hatred which Christ has so much recommended to us. He has given us also very great examples of this virtue, whilst he lived on earth; and though he was not obliged, like us, to mortify his body, which was always subject to the spirit; yet, because he was come upon earth, not only to be our remedy, but also our model, he was pleased to show us, in himself, the form of all virtues, and especially of those which are the most necessary for us, without considering whether they were consistent with the dignity of his person. For having undertaken to satisfy for our sins, as in his passion he did not avoid any of those torments which they resolved to make him suffer, so during his life he omitted none of those painiul works which could mortify his humanity.

This divine Saviour of our souls saw how necessary penance was for us: and because interior penance, which consists in sorrow for sins committed, was incompatible with his infinite purity, he embraced the exterior, which is nothing else but an austere and laborious life; recommending it to us as a salutary plank in shipwreck, and in order to render it profitable to us, he consecrated it in his own person.

II. There have been many saints that seemed more austere than Jesus Christ. St. John the Baptist had neither human clothes nor food; that austerity drew upon him the admiration of the people, which judges always by the exterior, of the merit of virtue: and the Pharisees were scandalized at seeing our Saviour eat with sinners. Yet all the austerity of the saints, though it seemed greater, was much less perfect than his: for it only exercised in them the lowest employment of penance, which was to labour in the cure of their wounds, to stop the disorders of corrupt nature, and to repress its appetites. But Christ's austerity gave a value and efficacy to that of the saints, and merited to penitent men those great graces which made them such agreeable victims to God. The end of the penance of the saints is, to destroy what hinders in them the purity of divine love; but our Saviour's penance was the effect of his love; and proceeded from an infinite charity: thus it ought to have been more rigorous in the saints, who were sinful men; but more exemplary and imitable in Christ, who was to be a model proportioned to our weakness.

Christ has appeared above man, only in those things wherein he would not be imitated; as in the power of working miracles, the authority of his word, and sublimity of his doctrine; but what he has obliged or counselled us to imitate in him, was that common life, which had no extreme, for fear of discouraging us; and which was steady without remissness, in order to fix the levity of our nature. He was clothed with woollen, fed with ordinary diet, often contenting himself with water and barley bread, and if he diminished a little of that rigour, when he was invited to eat, he re-assumed it immediately after. He lay upon the ground, slept only as much as was necessary for supporting nature, and wrought no miracles for supplying his own necessities, lest people should doubt whether he was truly a man. To that severe life, he added great labours, journeys, watchings, long prayers night and day, continual fastings, and many other austerities, which are not set down in writing.

III. It is not easy to show in general how and to what degree we ought to imitate Christ in this virtue; since all men have not the same strength and necessities, nor are in the same circumstances. What may be said here on that head, till it be spoken of more fully, is that we ought to avoid excess and remissness therein.

The chief part of penance is an interior sorrow and detestation of sins we have committed, in which we can never exceed; because it increases in the soul in proportion to the light and love which God infuses therein; and in this life we can neither know the whole deformity of sin, nor love God adequately to his amiableness. Notwithstanding, he vouchsafes to be content that we should weep for our crimes, according to the measure of his light and grace; but we ought at least to endeavour to obtain that sorrow, by exercises of piety, the practice of good works, and by everything in our power; and when we neglect these means, we are always in an extreme danger of our salvation.

He whom the knowledge of his sin draws not from the occasions of committing it, who confesses it not sincerely, who dissembles, softens and disguises it, who does not resolve to correct and punish himself for it, and to mortify the inclinations which induce him to it, flatters himself in vain with being truly penitent: because all these defects show still some affection to the sin, and very little sorrow for having committed it; and yet they are but too common, especially among young people, who seldom detest sin heartily, shun but little the occasion of it, and hate not in themselves the propensity of corrupt nature.

The mark of sincere penitence, according to St. Jerome (1. 4, Ep. ad pœnit.), is to hate sin equally to the love we have borne it; according to St. Ambrose (1. 2, de pænit. c. 4), to suffer willingly, in abhorrence of our past life, all manner of injuries, in order to repair those we have done to God: and according to the devout Thaulerus, not to be more desirous of the pardon than the punishment thereof, by an entire resignation to the divine justice. In this last opinion consists the perfection of interior penance: but because it is not common, the holy Scriptures admonishes us only, that we of the sins forgiven be not without fear.-Eccles. v. 5. Not, that God will call us to account for the sins once remitted us; but for fear the assurance of remission should augment in us the facility of sinning. Besides, without a special revelation we can have no certainty that our sins are pardoned us; but only a mere confidence founded on our own conjectures of having used the means prescribed by God for obtaining his mercy, yet we know not whether we have used all necessary diligence therein.

Thus ought we always to weep for sins once committed, and to be continually afraid of committing new ones. For since after penance we can feel ourselves still so inclined to evil, we may think, with an humble fear, that we have not sufficiently detested sin, so as to pluck up the deep roots it has left in our souls.

Therefore the saints teach us, that penance ought to continue till death, that sin is a great evil, that we ought not to believe we can expiate it by any sorrow shorter than life, and that God, by