And again—“Oh, man, recognize the dignity of thy nature! Remember that thou art made in the image of God; once corrupted in Adam, now moulded anew in Christ.”
She listened with eager delight to Leo’s “seven steps” of the Beatitudes: the first, Poverty of Spirit. “He commends the humility of souls, rather than the indigency of faculties.” Humility, he admitted, might be easier for the poor than for the rich, “nevertheless,” he said, “in many of the rich a mind is found which uses riches not to swell the tumour of pride, but to do works of loving-kindness, that is, counts it the greatest gain to relieve the miseries of others.”
Again, of another of those “steps” of the Beatitudes, of the “hungering and thirsting after righteousness,” Leo said, “It is with God Himself man would be filled.” To love righteousness is nothing else than to love God. “Nihil aliud est diligere justitiam quam amare Deum.” And when he reached the last of those seven upward steps, fervently he spoke of the purity of heart which cleanses the mirror (of the heart) to see and to reflect God, “whose reward is to see Him not in a mirror darkly, but face to face.” The fine balance of his words throbbed on the heart like the vibrations of a church bell.
“In Christ,” he proclaimed, “we are all one. All the regenerate in Christ the sign of the Cross constitutes kings, the unction of the Holy Spirit consecrates priests, in order that, besides that special service of our ministry, all the whole body of spiritual and rational Christians should recognize themselves to be partakers of royal race, and of sacerdotal office. For what is so royal as a soul subject to God and ruler of the body? And what is so sacerdotal as to dedicate to God a pure conscience, and the sacrifices (hostias) of a spotless piety from the altar of the heart?”
