Half-Hours With The Saints and Servants of God/Part 1: 4. On the Word of God
4.— On the Word of God.
"The seed is the word of God."
ACCORDING to St. Augustine, the Divine Word falls on a weak and sensitive element, and it becomes a sacrament. This word also falls on impure hearts, and it makes them chaste; on the wicked, and makes them saints. It finds them in sin, and it converts them to God.
As in the most wonderful of our Sacraments, those words, Hoc est Corpus Meum, are transubstantiations of bread into the Body and of wine into the Blood of the Son of God, because they are not the words of the priest, but the words of Jesus Christ, offered up nevertheless by the priest; so in like manner preachers make use of moral but wondrous transubstantiations, and change old sinners into new servants of God.
What miraculous wonders has not this Word produced! It falls on the heart of an% adulterous David, and it makes him a royal penitent. It falls on the heart of a Magdalen; it finds her a worshipper of sin, and it makes her a model of penance. It falls on Matthew, and from a public usurer, it makes him an Evangelist. You see a soul enter the Church — a soul enamoured of the world and full of vanity — it enters into the Church; it pays but little attention to the Word of God, and immediately a penetrating light pierces the heart, which shows the bad state in which it is. From this knowledge it sees its shame, its baseness; this shame produces the grief for having offended God, and this sorrow brings forth the resolution of a change of life.
What is the reason of this wonder, if it be not the Word of God?
The force and energy of the Word of God is such that one could say that it was all-powerful: Vox Domini in virtute in magnificentia. It is found in the nothingness of the ears who have listened to its voice. " It calls those which are not, as well as those which are."
It has subdued the world, overturned idolatry, converted whole nations. It has brought kings, wise men, ministers of state, under the subjection of the Gospel. It has done more than this: throughout the universe the most barbarous and savage of people have been civilised. In short, we owe to this Divine Word the conversion of the whole world and the extirpation of idolatry.
However enlightened and clever we may be, we must not, on account of that, neglect the assistance of holy instructions; however bright may be our intellect, we can easily go astray; however learned and scientific, we can always learn something from hearing the Word of God. If your understanding learns of nothing new, your heart will, at least, feel that you know nothing, if you do not know Jesus and Him crucified. If you are sinners, what more capable of bringing you to a sense of your own unworthiness than by listening to the voice of the missionary sent by God? If you are good, what sweeter consolation than hearing truths explained, truths you love and practise, and which become more beneficial the oftener you hear them?
Our Lord has given to the preacher of His Word, a help which is not to be found elsewhere. The commonest truths, in the mouth of the preacher, have a strength and unction which can alone move and convert the most hardened heart.
In what disposition do you come to hear the Word of God?
Many attend to decide upon the merit or incapacity of him who announces it; many, to make unjust comparisons between this and that preacher. Some glory in being very difficult to please, in order to appear of excellent taste; they, inattentively, listen to simple explanations which are necessary to be touched upon, and all the fruit which they gather from a Christian discourse consists of disparaging remarks and pointing out the defects of the preacher. They come, with an intention of finding fault, and ever find something to censure and criticise,
Listen with devotion to the Word of God, whether you hear it in familiar conversation with your spiritual friends or at a sermon.
Make all the profit of it you possibly can, and suffer it not to fall to the ground, but receive it into your heart as a precious balm, imitating the most holy Virgin, who preserved carefully in her heart all the words which were spoken in praise of her Son.
Remember that our Lord gathers up the words we speak to Him in our prayers, according as we gather up those He speaketh to us by preaching.
Have always at hand some approved book of devotion, such as the spiritual works of St. Bonaventure, of Gerson, of Thomas a Kempis, &c., &c., and read a little in them every day with as much devotion, as if you were reading a letter from those Saints.
Manna suited everybody's taste; in like manner the Word of God, which is preached to all throughout the world, supplies the wants of all kinds of persons, and according as it is listened to by those of ordinary intelligence it will be found — as did the manna of old — to be suitable to everybody's taste.