A BISHOP'S CARE FOR HIS FLOCK.
Good digestions assimilate all kinds of food, and convert it into wholesome nourishment, and so in like manner holy souls turn all that they meet with into material for instruction and into help towards their eternal profit. Thus, the great St. Anthony, saw the Creator on every page of the book of nature and in all living creatures. The tiniest flower, growing and blossoming at his feet, raised his thoughts to Him Who is the Flower of the Field and the Lily of the Valley, the Blossom springing from the root of Jesse.
Those who are smitten by some passionate human love are so absolutely possessed by it that they think of nothing else, and since their tongue speaks out of the abundance of their heart this is their one subject of conversation, all others being distasteful to them. They write the name of the beloved object on rocks and trees, and wherever they can they leave behind them some carved token or emblem of their affection.
Just so was it with our Blessed Father. His delight was to make all subjects of conversation, all incidents that might occur, further in one way or another the glory of God, and kindle His divine love in the hearts of others. On one occasion, when he was visiting that part of his diocese which lies among the lofty and bleak mountains of Faucigny, where it is always winter, he heard that a poor cowherd had lost his life by falling over a steep precipice while trying to save one of his herd. From this incident he drew a marvellous lesson upon the care which a Bishop ought to take of the flock entrusted to his charge by God, showing that he ought to be ready to sacrifice even life itself for its salvation. He thus relates the incident, and gives his comments on it in one of his letters.
"During the past few days I have seen mountains, terrible in their grandeur, covered with ice ten or twelve inches thick; and the inhabitants of the neighbouring valleys told me that a herdsman going out to try and recover a cow which had strayed away fell over a precipice from a height of thirty feet, and was found frozen to death at the bottom. Oh, God! I cried, and was the ardour of this poor herdsman in his search for the beast that had strayed, so burning that even the cold of those frozen heights could not chill it? Why, then, am I so slothful and lax in the quest after my wandering sheep? This thought filled my heart with grief, yet in no wise melted its frozen surface. I saw in this region many wonderful sights. The valleys were full of happy homesteads, the mountains coated with ice and snow. Like the fertile and smiling valleys, the village mothers play their homely part, while a Bishop, raised to such a lofty eminence in the Church of God, remains ice-bound as the mountains. Ah! will there never rise a sun with rays powerful enough to melt this ice which freezes me!" What zeal for souls, what humility, what holy fervour breathe in these words!