A whole mountain of virtues, if destitute of this living, reigning, and triumphant love, was to Blessed Francis but as a petty heap of stones. He was never weary of inculcating love of God as the supreme motive of every action.
The whole of his Theotimus (The Treatise on the Love of God) breathes this sentiment, and he often told me that it was impossible to insist upon it too strongly in our teaching and advice to our people. "For, in fact," he used to say, "what is the use of running a race if we do not reach the goal, or of drawing the bow if we do not hit the target?" Oh! how many good works are useless as regards the glory of God and the salvation of souls, for want of this motive of charity! And yet, this is the last thing people think of, as if the intention were not the very soul of a good action, and as if God had ever promised to reward works not done for His glory, and not applied to His honour.
ALL FOR LOVE OF GOD.
You know very well how Blessed Francis valued charity, but I will give you, nevertheless, some more of his teaching on this great subject.
To a holy soul who had placed herself under his direction, he said: "We must do all things from love, and nothing from constraint. We must love obedience rather than fear disobedience. I leave you the spirit of liberty: not such as excludes obedience, for that is the liberty of the flesh, but such as excludes constraint, scruples, and over-eagerness. However much you may love obedience and submission, I wish you to suspend for the moment the work in which obedience has engaged you whenever any just or charitable occasion for so doing occurs. This omission will be a species of obedience. Fill up its measure by charity."
From this spirit of holy and Christian liberty originated the saying so often to be met with in his letters: "Keep your heart in peace." That is to say: Beware of hurry, anxiety, and bitterness of heart. These he called the ruin of devotion. He was even unwilling that people should meditate upon the great truths of Death, Judgment and Hell, unless they at the same time reassured themselves by the remembrance of God's love for them. Speaking to a holy soul, he says: "Meditation on the four last things will be useful to you provided that you always end with an act of confidence in God. Never represent to yourself Death or Hell on the one side unless the Cross is on the other; so that when your fears have been excited by the one you may with confidence turn for help to the other." The one point on which he chiefly insisted was that we must fear God from love, not love God from fear. "To love Him from fear," he used to say, "is to put gall into our food and to quench our thirst with vinegar; but to fear Him from love is to sweeten aloes and wormwood."
Assuredly, our own experience convinces us that it is difficult to love those whom we fear, and that it is impossible not to fear with a filial and reverent fear those whom we love.
You find some difficulty, it seems, my sisters, in understanding how all things, as St. Paul says,[1] whether good, bad, or indifferent, can in the end work together for good to those who love God.
To satisfy you, I quote the words of Blessed Francis on this subject in one of his letters. "Since," he says, "God can bring good out of evil, will He not surely do so for those who have given themselves unreservedly to Him? Yes; even sins, from which may God in His goodness keep us, are by His Divine Providence, when we repent of them, changed into good for those who are His. Never would David have been so bowed down with humility if he had not sinned, nor would Magdalene have loved her Saviour so fervently had He not forgiven her so many sins. But He could not have forgiven them had she not committed them."
Again: "Consider, my dear daughter, this great Artificer of mercy, who changes our miseries into graces, and out of the poison of our iniquities compounds a wholesome medicine for our souls. Tell me, then, I beseech you, if God works such wonders with our sins, what will He not effect with our afflictions, with our labours, with the persecutions which we have to endure? No matter what trouble befalls you, nor from what direction it may come, let your soul be at peace, certain that if you truly love God all will turn to good. And though you cannot see the springs which work this marvellous change, rest assured that it will take place.