"If," he says, "the world despises us, let us rejoice, for it is right—we see for ourselves that we are very contemptible. If it esteems us, let us despise its esteem and its judgment, for it is blind. Trouble yourself very little about what the world thinks; do not ask or even care to know. Despise equally its appreciation and its contempt, and let it say what it will, good or evil. I do not approve of doing what is not right, that people may have a bad opinion of us. Transgressing is always transgressing, and we are thereby making our neighbour transgress likewise. On the contrary, I desire that, keeping our eyes always fixed upon our Lord, we do what we have to do without regarding what the world thinks of us, or its behaviour towards us. We need not endeavour to give others a good opinion of ourselves, yet neither have we to try to give a bad one, and especially must we be careful not to do wrong with this intent.
"But we can never stand quite well with the world; it is far too exacting. If out of compliance we yield to it, and play and dance with it, it will be scandalized; and if we do not, it will accuse us of hypocrisy and gloom; if we are well-dressed it will impute to us some bad motive; and if we are ill-dressed it will call us mean; it will style our gaiety dissoluteness and our mortification gloom. It will exaggerate our failings and publish our faults; and if it cannot find fault with our actions it will attack our motives. Whatever we do the world will find fault. If we spend a long time at confession it will ask what we can have to say; if we take but a short time, it will say that we do not tell everything. If one little cross word escape us it will pronounce our temper unbearable; it will denounce our prudence as avarice, our gentleness as folly. Spiders invariably spoil the bees' labour. Therefore, do not mind what opinion the world has of you, good or bad; do not distress yourself about it, whichever it be. To say that we are not what the world thinks, when it speaks well of us, is wise, for the world, like a quack doctor, always exaggerates."
You question me, regarding the contempt which we should feel for the world and the world's opinion of us; in other words you want to know exactly what St. Paul means when he says that, being crucified to the world and the world to us, we should glory only in the Cross of our Saviour Jesus Christ.[2]
This seems to you a paradox; light evolved from darkness, and glory from shame. Let me remind you that the Christian religion is full of such paradoxes, and that we belong to an all-powerful God, who has given life to us by His death; who has healed us by His wounds, and who makes us rich by His poverty. I cannot, however, explain the difficulty to you better than by quoting the words of our Blessed Father in one of his letters. He says: "In this alone lies our glory, that our divine Saviour died for us, the Master for His slaves, the just for the unjust."
[Footnote 1: Cf. The Devout Life. Part iv., c. 7.]
[Footnote 2: Galat. vi. 14.]
AGAINST OVER-EAGERNESS.
Blessed Francis advised his penitents to avoid above all things, excessive eagerness, which, in his view, is the mortal foe of true devotion. He says: "It is far better to do a few things well than to undertake many good works and leave them half done."
This was the mistake of the man in the Gospel who began to build and was not able to finish because he had not counted the cost beforehand. There are some who think they are never doing well unless they are doing much. They are like the Pharisees who considered the perfection of prayer to consist in its length. Our Lord reproves them for this and much more for devouring widows' houses with their long prayers. In one of his Conferences the Saint speaks thus: "It is not by the multiplicity of things we do that we acquire perfection, but by the perfection and purity of intention with which we do them."
And this is what he says on the subject in his Theotimus: "To do few actions but with great purity of intention and with a firm will to please God, is to do excellently. Such greatly sanctify us. Some men eat much, and yet are ever lean, thin, and delicate, because their digestive power is not good; there are others who eat little, and yet are always in excellent health and vigorous, because their stomach is good. Even so, there are some souls that do many good works and yet increase but little in charity, because they do those good works either coldly and negligently, or have undertaken them rather from natural instinct and inclination than because God so willed and with heaven-given fervour. On the contrary, others there are who get through little work, but do it with so holy a will; and inclination, that they make a wonderful advancement in charity; they have little talent, but they husband it so faithfully that the Lord largely; rewards them for it."[1]
[Footnote 1: Love of God. B. xii., c. 7.]