TO LOVE TO BE HATED, AND TO HATE TO BE LOVED.
This maxim of our Blessed Father's seems strange and altogether contrary to his sweet and affectionate nature.
If, however, we look closely into it, we shall find that it is full of the purest and most subtle love of God.
When he said that we ought to love to be hated, and hate to be loved, he was referring in the one case to the love which is in and for God alone, and in the other to that merely human love, which is full of danger, which robs God of His due, and of which, therefore, we should hate to be the object. He expresses himself thus:
"Those who have nothing naturally attractive about them are very fortunate, for they are well assured that the love which one bears them is excellent, being all for God's sake alone."
UPON OBEDIENCE.
Blessed Francis always said that the excellence of obedience consists not in doing the will of a gentle, courteous superior, who commands rather by entreaty than as one having authority, but in bowing the neck beneath the yoke of one who is harsh, stern, imperious, severe. He was, it is true, desirous that those who had to judge and direct souls should do so as fathers rather than as masters, as, indeed, he did himself, but at the same time he wished those in authority to be somewhat strict, and those subject to them to be less sensitive and selfish, and consequently less impatient, less refractory, and less given to grumbling than most men are.
He used also to say that a rough file takes off more rust and polishes iron better than a smooth and less biting one, and that very many and very heavy blows of the hammer are needed to temper a keen sword blade.
"But," I said to him, when discussing this subject, "as the most perfect obedience is that which springs from love, ought not the command to be given lovingly, so as to incite the subordinate to a loving obedience?" He answered: "There is a great deal of difference between the excellence of obedience and its perfection.
"The excellence of a virtue has to do with its nature; its perfection with the grace, or charity, in which it is clothed. Now, here I am not speaking of the supernatural perfection of obedience which emanates most assuredly from the love of God; but of its natural excellence, which is better tested by harsh than by gentle commands.