But probably the most common pursuit of religious bodies in our day is teaching. Hundreds of thousands of religious men and women, in all lands whence they are not banished, spend their lives in the class-room. And the reason for this preference is the extraordinary demand for schools in every direction. The young must be taught, and Holy Mother Church knows only too well that religious training must be woven into the fibre of secular learning if we would not have a conscienceless and irreligious generation. So she issues her stirring appeal for volunteer teachers, and a vast multitude of religious have responded in solid phalanx. Some one has said that if all the sisterhoods were taken out of our schools in the United States, we should soon have to close half our churches.
Religious, then, are carrying on vast and important works for the benefit of the Church and society. Many other services which they render might be mentioned, such as preaching and hearing confessions, the publication of books and periodicals, the cultivation of the arts, science, literature and theology. But enough has been said to show that they are leading a strenuous life, and that boy or maid, who is emulous of heart-stirring deeds, could scarcely find a more propitious field of action than in the religious state.
[CHAPTER IX]
MUST I ACCEPT THE INVITATION?
It is not the purpose of the writer to exaggerate, to frighten or coerce persons into religious life, by holding out threats of God's displeasure to those who refuse, or by citing examples of those whose careers were blighted through failure to heed the Divine call. It is His desire rather to imitate Christ's manner of action, portraying the beauty and excellence of virtue, and then leaving it to the promptings of aspiring hearts to follow the leadings of grace.
Christ, all mildness and meekness as He was, uttered terrible denunciations against sin and the false leaders of the people; but nowhere do we read that He denounced or threatened those who failed to accept His tender and loving call to the life of perfection. To draw men's hearts He used not compulsion, but the lure of kindness and affection.
Our Lord sometimes commanded and sometimes counselled and between these there is a difference. When a command is given by lawful superiors it must be obeyed, and that under penalty. God gave the commandments amidst thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, and those commandments, as precepts of the natural law, or because corroborated in the New Testament, persist in the main to-day, and any one who violates them, refuses to keep them, is guilty of disobedience to God, commits a sin. But when Christ proclaimed the counsels, He was merely giving advice or exhortation, and hence no one was obliged to follow them under pain of His displeasure. Suppose a mother has two sons, who both obey exactly her every command, and one also takes her advice in a certain matter, while the other does not; she will love the second not less, but the first more. So of two boys, who are both favorites of God, if one accept and the other decline a proffered vocation, He will love the latter as before, but the former how much more tenderly!
Moreover, God loves the cheerful giver. By doing, out of an abundance of charity and fervor, what you are not obliged to do, you gain ampler merit for yourself, since you perform more than your duty, and at the same time you give greater glory to God, showing that He has willing children, who bound their service to Him by no bargaining considerations of weight and measure. But if, through fear of threat or punishment, you make an offering to God, your gift loses, to an extent, the worth and spontaneity of a heart-token.
Some think that not to accept the invitation to the counsels, is to show disregard and contempt for God's grace and favor, and hence sinful. But how does a young person act when he declines this proffered gift? He equivalently says, with tears in his eyes, "My Saviour, I appreciate deeply Thy invitation to the higher life; I envy my companions who are so courageous as to follow Thy counsel; but, please be not offended with me if I have not the courage to imitate their example. I beg Thee to let me serve Thee in some other way." Is there anything of contempt in such a reply? No more than if a child would tearfully pray its mother not to send it into a dark room to fetch something; and as such a mother, instead of insisting on her request, would only kiss away her child's tears, so will God treat one who weeps because he cannot muster courage to tread closely in His blood-stained footsteps.
The young have little relish for argumentative quotations and texts, but it may interest them to know that Saints Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, Cyprian, Augustine and other Fathers all speak in a similar strain, holding that, as a vocation is a free gift or counsel, it may be declined without sin. [1] The great Theologians, St. Thomas, Suarez, Bellarmine and Cornelius a Lapide also agree on this point.