inward submission of the heart, essential to the perfection of obedience; hence it turns away the soul from "the way that leads to God": Scientes per hanc obedientiae viam se ituros ad Deum; it turns the soul away from God, its supreme Good, in turning it away from the authority that represents God. It is a stratagem of the devil to make a soul doubt the legitimacy of the orders of authority; when this doubt has arisen, the devil has won his part: this is the history of the first fall and of all those that have followed it. Even when a man murmurs without any bitterness, when he pretends only to state objectively the errors, the weaknesses or the faults of authority, he can do considerable harm to souls; serving as an agent to the devil to do his business, he repeats to others what the serpent breathes in his ears. With poisonous breath he tarnishes the freshness of the "humble and sincere love" towards authority that St. Benedict requires of the monk.

The evil of murmuring is so much the more to be dreaded in that it has the power of infecting others it is like a microbe capable of ravaging all the members of a community one after the other. However, in order to live and be propagated it needs a propitious soil. The Superior can do nothing directly against murmuring; it is in a sense beyond his grasp; it is for the organism to defend itself. If the murmurer finds no complaisant ear to listen to him, he loses his time and pains and has to keep his murmuring to himself; but it is a terrible evil because it is a sheer dissolvant of inward perfection.

Whence comes the evil of murmuring? Almost always from lack of faith1. One sees the man in the Superior, and no longer Christ; faith no longer covering the weaknesses or imperfections of the man, his commands are judged because the man himself is judged. And by force of habit, the murmurer spares nothing, neither men, nor institutions, nor customs, nor works. Nothing escapes his criticism. If he was governed by an archangel, he would still find means of criticising his orders. Look at the Jews in the time of the Gospel. Our Blessed Saviour was assuredly perfection itself; and yet the Jews often murmured at what He said or what He did. If Christ heals on the Sabbath day, these men,

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I. The disobedient man said the Eternal Father to St Catherine, "is deluded by his self-love, because the eye of his intellect is fixed with a dead faith, on pleasing his self-will, and on things of the world... because obedience seems weariness to him, he wishes to avoid weariness, whereby he arrives at the greatest weariness of all, for he is obliged to obey either by force or by love, and it would have been better and less wearisome to have obeyed by love than without it. Dialogue, ch.viii. Translated by Algar Thorold.

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full of bitter zeal and thinking themselves the guardians of the Law, murmur1. Does He eat with the Publicans ? they murmur 2. Does He enter the house of Zacheus ? they murmur 3. If He forgives sins, they are scandalised. If He reveals the secret of His love for men, in announcing the gift of the Eucharist, they cavil 5. Therefore Christ Jesus Himself says that nothing finds favour in their eyes: Whereunto shall I esteem this generation to be like ?..... For John came neither eating nor drinking; and they say: He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say: Behold a man that is a glutton and a wine drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners 6.

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Let us then carefully and before all things keep ourselves from all murmuring, as our Holy Father warns us to do so insistently and earnestly; for nothing is more contrary to the letter and spirit of the Rule than murmuring: ANTE OMNIA, ne murmurationis MALUM pro QUALICUMQUE causa in aliquo QUALICUMQUE verbo vel significatione appareat".

However, we must distinguish the difference between complaining and murmuring. Complaining is in nowise an imperfection, it may even be a prayer. Look at our Lord Jesus, the Model of all holiness. Upon the Cross, did He not complain to His Father of being forsaken? But what is it that makes the difference between these two attitudes ? Murmuring evidently implies opposition, malevolence (at least transitory) in the will; however, it proceeds more formally from the mind; it is a sin of the mind derived from the spirit of resistance. It is a contentious manifestation. Complaint on the contrary, if we suppose it to be pure, comes only from the heart; it is the cry of a heart that is crushed, that feels suffering, but however accepts it entirely, and lovingly. We can feel the difficulties of obedience, experience even movements of repugnance: that may happen to the most perfect soul; there is no imperfection in this as long as the will does not adhere to these movements of revolt which sometimes get the better of the sensitive nature. Did not our Lord Himself feel such inward trouble? Coepit taedere et pavere et maestus esse. And what did He Who is

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1. Joan. v, 16. 2. Matth. IX, II. 3. Luc. XIX, 7. 4. Ibid. v, 21. 5. Joan. vi, 53. 6. Matth. XI, 16-19, 7. Rule, ch. xxxiv. In St Benedict's eyes, monastic peace is a benefit which surpasses all others, as murmuring seems to him the worst of evils. Abbot Delatte, Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, translated by D. Justin Mc Cann, p. 253. The whole passage should be read.

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our Ideal say in these terrible moments ? Pater, si possibile est, transeat a me calix iste1. "My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me. What a plaint, come from God's innermost Heart, in the face of the most terrible obedience ever proposed here below! But likewise how this cry from the depths of crushed sensitive nature, is covered by the cry, far deeper still, of entire abandonment to the Divine Will: Verumtamen fiat voluntas tua, non mea!

From murmuring, on the contrary, love is absent: therefore murmuring separates from God; it destroys precisely what our holy Patriarch wishes to establish in us: that

amen

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of every instant, that loving "fiat" coming more from the heart than the lips : in a word, that perpetual and incessant submission of our whole being to the divine will for love of Christ.

XI.

Let us watch over ourselves. Obedience is too precious a good for us not to safeguard it with care. Let us love this good, this “bonum, as our Holy Father is pleased to call it, for it contains and gives God. Let us seek it with love and guard it jealously. Let us think of the example given us by those who seek for gold. They are told that in some El Dorado, in some region unknown to them, gold is to be found. They set off with gladness, upheld by the hope of riches; they leave country, friends, family; they embark, cross the seas, force their way through a thousand dangers, to the interior of unknown lands. Behold them at last, after many toils, perils and explorations, arrived at the place where lies the precious metal. Let us now suppose that after having extracted it from the ground, at the cost of many pains and labours, they prepare to return without taking back with them all the ingots they can, but content themselves with a few nuggets held in the hollow of their hands. What should we say of these men who have undergone so many sufferings, endured so many labours, overcome so many obstacles to content themselves finally with such meagre gain? That they are fools. And we should be right.

Now that is the portrait of a monk who, after some time spent in the monastery, suffers the loyalty of his obedience to be impaired. There is none amongst us that has not made great sacrifices before crossing the threshold of the cloister. We read one day in Holy Scripture, or we heard

1. Matth. xxvi, 39.

Christ give us in prayer, the counsel to leave all things and follow Him. "Come, follow Me and I will give thee life, I will be thy beatitude." This Divine Voice, full of sweetness, touched our soul to its depths; we understood the call of Jesus; and then, like the merchant in the Gospel, who, having found a treasure in a field, sold all that he had to gain this field and make himself master of the treasure, we left all things. We said farewell to all that was dear to us, we renounced the legitimate joys of hearth and home, the visible affection of our own dear ones. Why did we consent to all these acts of renunciation ? To gain the treasure which is none other than God Himself. And where do we find this treasure? In eternity we shall find it in the ineffable and supreme bliss of God; here below in the obedience of faith. This is the treasure we seek and that obedience gives us. And after such great sacrifices, so often renewed, instead of appropriating this precious good in the greatest possible measure, shall we content ourselves with taking some small particles? Is it sufficient for us to obey from time to time, just enough not to fail in our vow? God grant it is not so, that we are not so foolish as thus to squander eternal treasures in advance!

Neither let us forget that our vow of obedience is a solemn promise made to God on the day of our profession. Each time that we deliberately exempt ourselves from obedience, in whatever way it may be, we like cowards" (it is St. Benedict' expression) take back something from what we have given. On the day of judgment, God Who is not mocked, Deus non irridetur1, will require of us, with a rigorous judgment, the account of the fidelity we swore to Him. We shall not be able to say to God: "I wished to attain perfection, but my Superior was an imperfect, exaggerated, annoying person who let himself be guided by paltry and partial motives, who opposed my plans. God would answer us: "The faults of your Superior only concern Me; it is before Me that he is responsible for them, as for all the orders

1 Gal. VI, 7. 2. St Bernard compares obedience to a coin which we have to render to God and that He will not accept unless it be entire and exempt from falsification. "If we argue, if we obey one precept and not another, the coin of our obedience is broken, Christ will not accept it, for we have all promised obedience simply and without any restriction whatsoever. If then we make a feint of obeying under the master's eye, while murmuring secretly, our coin is debased, there is lead in it, all is not silver, and we pay in leaden talents; there lies our iniquity. We defraud, but it is under God's eye; now, God is not mocked. 2nd Sermon for the feast of St Andrew, § I. P. L., 183, 509. See also Rule, ch. LVIII: Si aliquando aliter fecerit, ab eo se damnandum sciat quem irridet.

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that he has given; as to you, I was, by My wisdom and goodness, bound to make up for the imperfections and human errors of the one who represented Me towards you; and I would have done so abundantly if, having had faith in My word, you had placed your hope in My fidelity.

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Let us rather live in obedience, let us make it "our food" as Christ Himself did: Meus cibus est ut faciam voluntatem eius1. Let us ask our Lord for this virtue of obedience in all its perfection, this virtue which surrenders the judgment, will, heart, the whole being to God and to His representative. If we are faithful in asking for this grace, Christ Jesus will certainly grant it to us. Each morning, let us join ourselves to Jesus in His obedience, in the entire submission that He made of Himself at the moment of the Incarnation : Behold me, O my God, I give myself to Thee, to Thy good pleasure. Because I love Thee, I will give Thee the homage that consists in submitting my whole being to Thy will whatever it may be. I wish to say in union with Thy Son Jesus: Quia diligo Patrem, et sicut mandatum dedit mihi Pater, sic facio 2. This Will may perhaps be painful to my nature, to my tastes, it may be opposed to my personal ideal, hard to my spirit of independence, but I want to offer Thee this sacrifice as testimony of my faith in Thy word, of my confidence in Thy power, and of the love I bear to Thee and to Thy Son Jesus." We ought to renew this offering every day, even --and especially if it happen that a work imposed or approved by the Superior responds to our personal tastes. Otherwise, it is greatly to be feared that the natural satisfaction we may find in it will carry us away and make us forget that spirit of obedience with which our works ought to be done in order to be pleasing to God 3.

If we act in this way, our obedience will be sanctified by contact with that of Jesus. He, who infinitely desires that we be one with Him 4, will grant us to reach little by little the perfection not only of the vow, but of the virtue. And through this virtue, He will finish the work of detaching us from ourselves to unite us entirely to Himself, since we shall no longer have any will but His own, and, through Him, we shall be united to His Father.

Then all will become more and more pleasant and easy for us because we shall draw our strength from Jesus, Who, in order to communicate it to us, draws it Himself from 1. Joan. IV, 34. 2. Ibid. XIV, 31. 3. This is the counsel that St Gregory gives us: Obedientiae sibi virtutem evacuat qui ad prospera etiam et proprio desiderio anhelat. Moralia, lib. xxxv, c. 14. P. L., 76, 706. XVII, 21.

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4. Joan.