UPON LENGTH OF LIFE.
Judging from outward appearances, from the vigour of his frame, from his sound constitution, and from the temperate simplicity of his manner of life, it seemed probable that Blessed Francis would live to an advanced age.
One day I said as much to him, he being at that time about forty-two or forty-three years old. "Ah!" he replied with a sigh, "the longest life is not always the best. The best is that which has been best spent in the service of God," adding these words of David: Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged; I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar, my soul hath been long a sojourner.[1] I thought he was secretly grieving over his banishment from his See, his beloved Geneva (he always called it thus), wrapped in the darkness of error, and I quoted to him the words: Upon the rivers of Babylon there we sat, and wept.[2]
"Oh! no," he answered, "it is not that exile which troubles me. I am only too well off in our city of refuge, this dear Annecy. I meant the exile of this life on earth. As long as we are here below are we not exiled from God? While we are in the body we are absent from the Lord.[3] Unhappy man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God by Jesus Christ."[4]
I ventured in reply to remind him how much he had to make his life happy: how his friends esteemed him, how even the very enemies of religion honoured him, how all who came in contact with him delighted in his society.
"All that," he answered, "is beneath contempt. Those who had sung Hosanna to the Son of God three days later cried out Crucifige. Such things do not make my life any dearer to me. If I were told that I should live as long again as I have already done, and that without pain, without law-suits, without trouble, or inconveniences of any kind, but with all the content and prosperity men desire in life, I should be sadly disturbed in mind! Of what small account are not the things of time to him who is looking forward to a blessed Eternity! I have always praised the words of the Blessed Ignatius de Loyola, 'Oh! how vile and mean earth appears to me when I meditate upon and look up to heaven.'"
[Footnote 1: Psalm cxix.]
[Footnote 2: Psalm cxxxvi. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Cor. v. 6.]
[Footnote 4: Rom. vii. 24-35.]
UPON PURGATORY.
Concerning Purgatory, St. Francis used to say that in the controversy with Protestants there was no point on which the Church could support her doctrine by so many proofs, drawn both from the Scriptures and from the Fathers and Councils, as on this. He blamed those who oppose the doctrine for their lack of piety towards the dead. On the other hand, he reproved those Catholic preachers who, when speaking of Purgatory and of the pains and torments suffered there by the holy souls, do not at the same time enlarge upon their perfect love of God, and consequent entire satisfaction in the accomplishment of His will, with which their own will is so indissolubly united, that they cannot possibly feel the slightest movement of impatience or irritation. Nor can they desire to be anywhere but where they are, were it even till the consummation of all things, if such should be God's good pleasure.
On this subject he recommended the careful study of the Treatise on Purgatory, written by blessed Catherine of Genoa. By his advice I read the book with attention, and have often re-read it, always with fresh relish and profit. I have even invited Protestants to read if, and they have been quite satisfied by it. One young convert admitted that had he seen this Treatise before his conversion it would have helped him more than all the discussions into which the subject had led him.