Again, our merit will be in proportion to the excellence of the work in itself considered. One apple is better than another, though both have grown upon the same branch. To attend the bedside of some poor sick person, is a more excellent work than merely to bestow an alms upon him. To be contrite for one's sins, is more excellent than to do penitential works in expiation of them. To forgive the injury of one's enemy, is more excellent than to pardon the unkindness of an acquaintance. The poorest effort at self-control, is better than the best advice given to another. I remember a story which shows what even one excellent work will do for a soul. It is in "The Lives of the Fathers of the Desert." A monk, who was serving God with much prayer and self-denial, was tempted with the desire to see a man whose merit in the sight of God should be the very counterpart of his own. God gratified his weakness. He was directed to go to a certain inn in a neighboring village where he would see such a man. On reaching it, there stood before the door a poor fiddler playing for pennies. The monk understood, by an interior light, that this was the man. Much surprised, and rather mortified too, he nevertheless addressed the fiddler, and asked him what sort of a life he had led, and what he was then doing for God? He answered, that he had, for many years, gained a poor but honest livelihood in the same humble employment. That as to his having done any thing very good, he did not know about that, although there was one thing that he always remembered with a great deal of satisfaction. "With some danger to myself, I once rescued a poor girl from those who would have ruined her." The good monk was made to understand, that for preventing that outrage, God had raised this poor fiddler to a great purity of soul.
A good work, again, is more excellent in proportion as it is more difficult. What a consolation this ought to be to us! How hard we think it sometimes to get on in life, with its multiplied vexations and discouragements! We say, "What a strange world!" "What a weary world!" In the language of Holy Scripture we say, "In the morning, who will grant me evening? and at evening, who will grant me morning?" [Footnote 146] as though things were turning out very different from what we had a right to expect.
[Footnote 146: Deut. xxviii., 57.]
[Transcriber's note: The USCCB reference is Deut. xxviii., 67.]
Ah! God has been good to us in the planning out of our lives, better than we should be, if we had all the planning to ourselves. I have shown you that future rewards are to be determined by merit; now our merits are measured by our trials. By your own admission then, this world, in being full of trials, most completely answers the end for which God created it. If we could but get into the habit of looking at things from this point of view, the face of life would be lit up with a perpetual sunshine. Yes, the harder our state of life is to bear, the more difficulties we find in following our Lord, the more laborious the work, so much the brighter are our prospects for the life to come, if we prove faithful to the end. How well the mother of the Maccabees, that noble woman, knew this! Holy Scripture says: "She was to be admired above measure, and worthy to be remembered by good men, who beheld her seven sons slain in the space of one day, and bore it with a good courage for the hope she had in God." [Footnote 147]
[Footnote 147: 2 Maccabees vii., 20.]
As the youngest, her last and dearest, was about to be put to death, she encouraged him to be resolute; and he went to a martyr's reward under the influence of a consoling thought, which he thus beautifully expressed: "My brethren having now undergone a short pain, are under the covenant of eternal life."
Again, our merit is in proportion to the purity of the intention with which we do the work. The intention we make, either actual or habitual, is the chalice, as it were, in which we make our offerings to God. It is even more than this; for the excellence of the intention is imparted to the work itself, and becomes the measure of its merit. I once saw some wooden goblets in the window of an apothecary shop. Being curious to know what they were for, I was told by the clerk that they were made of quassia, a peculiar kind of wood which imparted to pure water, when drank from these goblets, a most healthy tonic. Now, so it is with a pure intention. If the work that we do for God is only pure and good in itself, the intention will communicate to it its own peculiar excellence, and the work will receive the reward of that excellence, which has become its own.
Suppose, for instance, you hear Mass from a mere motive of duty, as being a Catholic. It is a supernatural work, and it will secure a supernatural reward. But to that intention you have added another the next time you hear Mass; namely, the intention of doing penance for your sins. Well, the same act is now doubly meritorious. The third time you hear Mass from a pure desire to make reparation to our Lord for all the injuries He has received in the Blessed Sacrament, and your intention is more excellent still, and, if united with the other two, will merit a three-fold reward.
Again, great merit is gained by small things done for God. This is surely very encouraging for us who have not the abilities, or the opportunities, of doing great things. Of course I mean great things as the world views them. A check put upon a wrong thought; the arrest of an improper word; the silence to which we have forced ourselves, when we feel within us the swelling of anger; the call we make upon a sick neighbor in passing; the alms we bestow, however small; the effort to be patient under sickness or pain; the kind word of advice to the erring; each such act as these, will be a passport at the gate of Heaven.
And now, dear brethren, I repeat once more what I said when I began. There is an aristocracy, there is a hierarchy, in Heaven. As there are nine choirs of Angels, and, so St. John tells us, except "the one hundred and forty four thousand" who had consecrated their virgin bodies as first-fruits to God, none could sing the "new song" or "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth," so shall it be forever.