How does he receive it? He says: "It is too hard." Too hard! And is it, then, only God for whom we are unwilling to do any thing hard? We must make sacrifices of some sort in life, and heavy ones, too. We cannot get rid of the necessity of making them, do what we will. The world requires them of us. Our families require them. Our health requires them. Our pleasure requires them. Nay, our very sins require them. And what we do willingly for the world, for our families, for our health, our pleasure, our sins, shall we refuse to do for the great and good God? for Christ our Saviour, who did not refuse the Cross to give us an example of the obedience we owe His Father?
Or take another example: A person who is not a Catholic finds much that is reasonable in Catholic doctrine, but makes a great stumbling-block of confession; or even a Catholic gets a dread of it, and stays away for years and years from the sacraments of the Church. Now, of course, in such cases it is only charitable to show that the difficulty of confession is very much magnified, and that, like many other things that frighten us, it loses its terror when we approach it; but, to say the truth, I always feel something like shame when I hear one trying to prove to such persons that confession is easy; partly because I know he cannot succeed perfectly, since confession is of its own nature arduous, and in particular cases may be very difficult; but chiefly, because I cannot help thinking if God Himself were to answer them, it would be in the few strong words He has used in the Holy Scripture: "Be still: and know that I am God." [Footnote 191] A creature must not parley with his maker, a sinner with his Judge.
[Footnote 191: Ps. xlv. 11.]
Yes: we shrink from the very mention of sacrifice, yet it is the spirit of sacrifice that makes all our duties easy. No doubt it is our privilege to reason about the commandments of God; and we shall often see, what we know is always the case, that they are full of wisdom and goodness; but we need in practice some principle that is ready at hand always to be used in every time of trial, in every difficulty, and that is the Spirit of Sacrifice, a profound reverence for God, an unquestioning conviction of His absolute right to dispose of us as He will. Abraham had this spirit, and therefore faltered not a moment when the command came to sacrifice his son Isaac. Moses had it, and therefore "when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer persecution with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a time." [Footnote 192]
[Footnote 192: Heb. xi. 24.]
The Christian saints have had it, and therefore they trampled on every repugnance, every attachment, when it came in the way of their perfection. And this principle is the life of the great religious and charitable orders of the Church. These institutions are a mystery to Protestants. Soon after the "Little Sisters of the Poor" were established in London, a Protestant writer, in one of the periodicals of the day, described a visit he had made to their establishment, and after giving a most interesting account of the self-denying labors of the community, he says he was curious to trace the feelings that actuated these ladies in devoting themselves to duties so apt to be repulsive to their class. He supposed that benevolence was the impulse most concerned, but, on questioning the Sisters, found that this was not the case, but that the basis of their action was a principle of self-renunciation for Christ's sake. To him such a motive had in it something strange and unnatural; but, really, this is always the sustaining principle of all high religious action. Every thing fails sooner or later but the spirit of sacrifice. This is the spirit that does great things for God, that cuts down the mountains in our road to heaven and fills up the valleys, making straight paths for our feet.
And how pleasing is such a spirit to God! Even among men such a spirit is highly esteemed. Who does not admire a generous, self-sacrificing man? In a family, who is so much loved as the one whose thoughts are all for others? Where are such tears shed as over the fresh grave of a self-forgetful friend? What makes the character of a mother so beautiful but the trait of self-sacrifice? And so before God there is nothing so beautiful as the spirit of Sacrifice. A religion which does not centre in itself, but which centres in God, that is His delight. There is nothing abject in such a spirit. To serve God is to reign. God knows our nature, and He requires of us nothing but what gives to our whole being its highest harmony. The man who has the spirit of sacrifice is a royal man. How beautiful, my brethren, is an altar! Every thing connected in our minds with an altar is beautiful. When we think of an altar, we think of sweet flowers and burning lights, and smoking incense, and a meek victim, and worship, music, and prayer. So, in the heart where the spirit or Sacrifice reigns, there are sweet flowers of piety, and flaming zeal, and the silent victim of a heart that struggles not, and the incense of prayer, and the harmonies of joy and praise. Oh, if there is a sacred place on earth, a home of peace, a shrine, a holy of holies, a place where heaven and earth are nearest, where God descends and takes up His abode, it is in the heart of the man who is penetrated through and through with the sense of God's greatness, and who walks before Him in reverence and continual worship.
My brethren, I covet for you such a spirit. I do not always find it among Catholics. I remember, some years ago, when collecting for a charitable object, I called on a man who was engaged in a large business, and asked for a contribution. He said, Oh yes, he thought highly of the undertaking, and wished to give a generous donation, say one hundred dollars. When I called for it at the appointed time, he asked me if I did not want any goods in his line. They were articles of luxury, such as very few persons have occasion for, and I told him, no. Then he mentioned a rich gentleman with whom I happened to be acquainted, and asked me to secure for him his custom, intimating that this donation of one hundred dollars depended on my success. Now I do not know that this person was at all sensible of acting an unworthy part, but I think you must all feel that this was very far from the spirit in which one ought to give any thing to God; and yet, my brethren, inferior motives enter too much and too often into our religious actions. Selfishness mingles too much with our piety. Oh, how diluted, how paltry and feeble is our religion, compared with that of other times! David refused the site for an altar that Areuna offered him as a gift, saying: "Nay but I will buy it of thee at a price; and will not offer to the Lord my God holocausts free cost." [Footnote 193]