THERE is less apology needed than might perhaps appear at first sight for offering to the public a book which is hardly more than a record of private musings. Doubtless it contains little or nothing that has not been said before, and said better ; yet in many cases the truths are said in the writer’s own way; and so far he can claim to bring forth from his treasury old things and new—old, because truth is eternal; new, because its expression is infinitely variable. To give a new edge to truths and truisms blunted by use, it is not needful that they should be clothed in language either gorgeous or elegant; but only that their expression should be such as we are not accustomed to ; such, as to make us stop and listen. Since, then, each individual has his own individual language and accentuation, it is always helpful to hear from others. truths which, formulated in our own way, pass through our ears without friction and therefore escape our attention. For this reason, it does not seem altogether presumptuous or unreasonable to flood the market with meditation books, provided the authors can claim personality of manner, and disclaim all pretence at novelty in point of matter. A new gospel is not worth listening to; while to say the old things in the old words is tiresome.

These meditations are called “informal,” because the author has presented simply the substance of the thought in each case without the formalities of preludes, acts of the will, practical suggestions, colloquies, and the like, which can be easily supplied by those who are helped by method, and which others will gladly dispense with. As regards the work of the practical understanding and the will, it is plainly more in accordance with the mind of St. Ignatius Loyola that it should be the spontaneous outcome of our own reflection, rather than an explicit suggestion from without. Hence the points for meditation should rather address themselves to the receptive understanding and intellectual memory. It may well seem to some that these meditations are often abstruse and philosophical, rather than devotional; but here again it may be said that the error is on the safer side. For certain minds it often happens that the points of popular meditation books do not offer sufficient matter for the mind to lay hold of; and without some such purchase for the intellect the attention soon wanders for sheer lack of interest. Most of these thoughts are within the compass of even the least reflective, and the few that may seem more difficult will find a key in familiarity with those that are easier.

St. Ignatius was instinctively an opponent of the theory which, on a misunderstanding of a Gospel maxim, divorces intelligence from will in the work of sanctification. “ Sanctify them in Thy truth,” was our Saviour’s prayer for His disciples, “ Thy word is truth.” Holiness that rests on any other basis cannot hold out against the tempest and the flood. God’s sayings kept and pondered in the heart, the utterances of reason and of revelation, of common sense and of Catholic faith, these are the daily bread and manna of the soul: “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.” The wisdom which is hid from the wise and prudent and revealed to little ones, is nevertheless real wisdom ; and does not leave them as it finds them in their ignorance and littleness, but gives them understanding and a quick-minded intuition as unerring as instinct. Nor is there any connection between sanctity and stupidity. Divine love is but an opening of the spiritual eyes to beauties hitherto unsuspected. As hereafter, so also even on earth, man is perfected by vision. No doubt this highest intellectual perfection is compatible with great deficiencies in the lower wisdom which wins the admiration of the world; but it is, nevertheless, the truest and only essential enlightenment. A clear understanding is a great grace, for it will go more than half-way to kindle love in the will; whereas good-will without understanding is a lion let loose. If the intellect needs the control of faith, faith is perfected and served by intellect. Therefore let no man sunder what God has joined together.

As for the disorder in which these thoughts are presented, it may be said that no particular advantage was to be gained by a logical classification. Had there been any pretence at following the seasons of the Church, or at a complete treatment of ascetical theology, a little violence might have been used with improvement. But they have been recorded as they occurred from time to time, spontaneously and unsought for, in no way as parts of a whole. It would be vain to look for order where none can possibly exist ; and their very disorder is more in keeping with their purpose. For in hours of dryness and weariness, we naturally turn from the monotony of method to seek relief and variety in the unexpected, as one might occasionally fly from the geometrical precision of a Dutch garden to the freedom of some pathless wilderness. Where the Latin has been quoted, the appended translation is often free and unauthorized. The same reflections and thoughts are no doubt repeated over and over again; yet always with sufficient variety in the setting to give them another chance of striking home. Nor, as compared with other meditation books, have we much reason to fear the charge of vain repetition ; though it must freely be admitted that there is one leading thought or another which runs as a strain through the whole collection, and binds them together with a unity of spirit or ethos. The spirit of devotion to the Sacred Heart, the idea of the Benignitas et Humanitas Dei Salvatoris nostri, is one which it is the work of the Society of Jesus to evolve into greater clearness and distinctness, purging it from all admixture of foreign elements inconsistent with its unity and purity. Prior to the Jansenist controversy, there lived side by side in the minds and writings of many holy persons principles of piety and asceticism really, though unobservedly, antagonistic to one another. It was that controversy which first called for their careful scrutiny and assortment; and showed that many of them were logically based on a misapprehension of the relation of nature to grace. and on the false supposition of an entire and fatal divorce between them. The clear expression of the mind of Catholic Christianity as to Jansenistic principles was but the signal, so to say, for the eradication of the tares. The work of their detection and severance from the wheat, lurking as they do in the most unsuspected quarters, is a delicate and tedious operation still far from its completion. For in the other extreme, there is current outside the Church a low humanistic conception of Christ, which uses and thereby renders suspect the very words and phrases of Catholic truth. We have, therefore, to steer a difficult course. Still, much as these meditations and reflections insist on the humanness of Christ and His Church, no one will be likely to find fault with them as neglecting to give due emphasis to the Divinity of our Saviour and to the mystical aspect of Catholic Christianity.

“And how am I to use this book ? “ one may ask ; “ in what order shall I take the meditations ? “ ,In any order whatever. They only pretend to furnish raw material for thought, and in no way to prescribe method or order. Those who desire to have the preludes, colloquies, acts of the practical understanding and of the will, fixed for them, will find plenty of excellent books more suited to their needs than this, which is directed to another need. For they aim rather at guiding the stream of our thoughts and affections in an orderly way and to a definite end ; whereas it is the purpose of this little book to set the stream flowing where, for one reason or another, it has run dry.

G T.

March 7, 1897:

“Every scribe skilled in the Kingdom of Heaven is like to a householder who brings forth from his treasure old things.” Many seem to think there is here a full stop, but there is not. So far as he brings truth from his treasure he brings forth what is old; rather, what is not new, for it is eternal, neither old or new. Yet truth may be new to us, though old in itself; as the New World was there long before Columbus found it. And even the oldest, tritest truisms, can be clothed anew according to the current fashion of the hour, so as to be hardly recognizable. He who despises either the old or the new is no scriba doctus in regno ccelorm; he knows but one half of that kingdom, its “conservative “ aspect, or its “liberal” aspect.

“Who bringeth forth from His treasure old things and new,” i.e., old and new are not criteria of truth, of the treasures of Divine wisdom. A thing is not true because old, or false because new, or false because it is old, or true because it is new. Yet in the practice of controversy all these propositions are denied repeatedly.

“ Sweet is the remembrance of Jesus, giving true joy to the heart.” Love or charity is that joy which the heart derives from the contemplation of what is lovely or fair. There is no substantial difference between the beatitude of the saints on earth and in Heaven. This joy is to , see God as He is—Videbimus eum sicuti est; a contemplation of God under the aspect of His goodness, beauty, and truth. We may truly say that charity is knowledge, the taste or appreciation of the lovableness and beauty of Christ. He is the Summum Bonum—” the Sovereign Excellence ; “ that Pulcrum, quod visum placet—” that Beauty whose Vision is joy.” Yet not to all, but only to the little ones, does He reveal Himself. Natural wit or science cannot reveal Him. He must reveal Himself. There is the dry, barren knowledge of a violet which any soulless botanist can attain to : and there is the joy-inspiring sense of its beauty which the child or the poet experiences. It is the lingering memory, the contemplative pondering of the beauties of the Spouse that sets the soul aglow with passionate love. Such remembrance is “ sweet” to those who taste Him with a mind taught by the Holy Spirit “ to relish what is right.” Gustate et videte—” Taste and see.”

Dans vera cordi gaudia—There is the false joy of pride and self-satisfaction arising from continual self - remembrance and self - contemplation,— the “fool’s paradise,” in which we dream our dream and hold it true; and there is a bitter sadness where there is a full sense of one’s own smallness, and life’s unmeaningness ;. and there is the true joy which springs from the remembrance of Him whose infinite fulness is the complement of our infinite emptiness; who made us nothing in ourselves that we might be everything in Him.

“But sweeter than honey, His presence.” If there is sweetness in the merely imagined or remembered presence of the Beloved, much more in the Real Presence. But what is the special advantage of presence, seeing that His beauty and lovableness may absolutely be contemplated by memory as well as by sight ? This seems ultimate and incapable of analysis; unless it be that beauty, like all ideals, is valued in view of realization — good to be actualized or realized ; good, if only it were; and as possible, it pleases, only with a conditional and dependent pleasure. Yet this does not touch the case where the beauty is known, not merely to be possible, but to be actual, though absent. Is it not that its actuality, which is its crown, must also be contemplated and not merely remembered or inferred ; or is it that a sense of physical nearness satisfies the unitive appetite of love, which desires oneness in every possible order, and that localized beings seek local presence ? Qui amat intelligit—” He who loves knows.” Bernard never asked why ; but spoke as every lover has spoken, and felt as every lover has felt, and as God the Lover of all, when He says: “My delight is to be with the children of men.” “ Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given Me should be with Me; “ or when He was made Flesh and pitched His tent among us in the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Eucharist, and became Emmanuel—God with us; or pledged Himself to dwell in our very heart and flesh, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit : “ We will come and make our abode with Him.” In the contemplation, therefore, first of His beauty and goodness, then of His Real Presence, our soul finds its highest joy, and is most perfectly united to Him by charity.

“Jesu, hope of the penitent “ — “ Friend of publicans and sinners” drawing all to Thyself; veiling Thy justice in the cloud of mercy, sent for the salvation of the lost, to call, not the just, but sinners; in no wise casting out those who come to Thee burdened and labouring; Lamb of God taking upon Thyself the sins of the world. Sinners feel no need of hope and encouragement, except so far as they are penitent, sorrowful, fearful, and downcast: to such the Baptist, that great preacher of penance, cries out : Ecce, A gnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccatum mundi—” Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.”

“How pitiful to those that pray.” “More willing to hear than we to pray, and wont to give more than either we ask or deserve;”  pitiful to all who ask, even when because they ask unseasonably or ask amiss, He denies their request. Pitiful, when He seems silent and austere and suffers us to clamour after Him in vain, that we asking more largely, He may give more liberally. Pitiful, when in our folly we ask, not for the Bread of Life, or the Fish, but for a stone or a scorpion. Pitiful, when He refuses to promise us an unearned seat in His Kingdom ; but pledges us instead a share in His chalice and in His baptism of blood. Pitiful, as He would have us be, when He says, “Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away.” “ Freely ye have received, freely give,” “ good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.”

“ How good to those who look for Thee.” Many seek His gifts and graces; few seek Himself, the Grace of graces. “ What reward wilt thou have ? “ He asks of Aquinas. “ None, but Thyself, Lord.” Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi—” My beloved is mine and I am His.” He has promised that none shall seek vainly Him who came to seek and to save them. ,Quærite et invenietis—” Seek and ye shall find.” But how? “If with all your hearts you seek Me, ye shall surely find Me; “ i.e., if we seek Him as the necessary and all-sufficient Good ; or as the Magi sought Him, not for their own sakes, but for His ; not to get, but to give ; not to be honoured by Him, but to adore Him. Quam bonus! How good to the half-fearful disciples who followed Him shyly, when He turned round to encourage them : “ What seek ye?” •` Master,” they say, “where dwellest Thou ? “ It was He they sought. Venite et videte—  “Come and see;” and they abode with Him that day. How good to her who sought His Sacred Body in the early morning before it was yet day, for “ they that seek Him early shall find Him.” “Woman, why weepest thou, whom seekest thou ?” “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” “ Maria!” “ Rabboni.” QQuam bonus to quærentibus.

“But what art Thou to those that find?” Inveni, quern diligit anima mea, tenebo nec dimittam —” I have found Him whom my soul loveth, I will hold Him and will not let Him go.” Qui invenit me, invenit vitam—” He that findeth Me, findeth life.” This is that treasure hid in the field which when a man hath found, præ gaudio illius, vadit et vendit omnia—” for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all.” It is hid to all eyes—oculus non vidit—” for eye hath not seen it “—save to those which God has opened : Aperi oculos meos et considerabo mirabilia de lege tua— Open my eyes and I shall see the wonders of Thy law.” For our eyes are holden so that we are blind to our treasure when it is often close to our hand. We walk with Him in the way, and converse with Him, and gaze in His face, and all the while believe Him far away. We seek the living among the dead.

“When Thou dost visit our hearts.” Christ, “the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls,” makes. His periodic visitation of our hearts in times of light. and consolation. It is not always visitation-time,. yet the effects of each visitation are to carry us on to the next. So Ignatius bids us remember that we may not waste such precious moments basking in the sunshine which is given us, not for present enjoyment, but for future use. As of old, God from time to time, “visited His people” through His prophets, so He comes to our soul from time to. time.

2. Tunc lucet ei veritas—“Then Thy truth shines therein.” This is the first effect of His visitation. Scrutabitur , Ierusalem lucernis, illuminabit abscondita tenebrarum, et revelabit consilia cordium—” He will search out Jerusalem with torches, and bring to. light the hidden things of darkness, and will reveal the secrets of hearts.” He lightens the darkest corners of our heart; shows us our most secret motives; holds up to us a truthful mirror from which we cannot turn our gaze—humiliating though the contemplation be. For we need now and then to be disillusioned about ourselves, to be purged from the poison of self-contentment by the bitter hyssop of self-knowledge.

3. Mundi vilescit vanitas— “The empty world grows contemptible.” This is the second effect of Divine visitation. In the dim light many a shadow seems real and substantial ; a painted Jezebel looks young and fair. But daylight discloses the hollowness and unreality of such beliefs. Living in the world, we cannot so withstand the effect of universal example as not gradually to become more impressed with its importance; less alive to the unseen, true, and only realities. The same inward light that shows us ourself, shows us the world as it is, not as it seems.

4.Et intus fervet caritas—” And love glows within.” For all would be to no end did it not also show us the King in His beauty and lovableness. Indeed, He, so seen, is the light in which self and the world are revealed in their ghastly nothingness. It would be a desolating and bitter knowledge did it stop short of this, which sweetens and consoles.

“ Being filled with the fruits of justice which are through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”1 The fruits of justice are “love, joy, peace,” &c. They are the outcome of grace or justice turned to good account, not stopping short with the foliage of good words and pious conversation—” Though I speak with tongues of angels and have not charity,” &c.; “ Let us not love in word or in tongue [only], but in deed.” Nor again, stopping short at the blossom of good desires and velleities, which are, so to say, good works in promise, or in the bud. “Through Jesus Christ.” He is the gardener of the Householder who has taken my soul as a wild vine and set it in the richest soil and sunniest corner of His vineyard, and watered it with the dews of actual graces from above, and from below with the streams of living water beside which it is planted ; and has digged round the roots by sorrows and humiliations designed to soften and loosen the affections; and has pruned and trained the branches in lateribus domus suæ—” over the walls of his house,” “ to the praise and glory of God,” i.e., of the Householder and Lord of the vineyard ; that He may glory in this tree which by its fertility does credit to Him and His care ; that He may not be disgraced by it and say, “ Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground ? “

Faith, in those who have faith, does not vary directly with evidence, but, as Aquinas teaches,1 according to the Divine lumen fidei whereby the believableness stands out more brightly and clearly to one than to another. Even in the natural order, given equal knowledge of the proximate future, one man’s foresight is clearer, stronger, more efficacious than another’s. Children and savages are little affected by what they know mentally; but much, by what they see or imagine vividly, i.e., they fall short of human strength and dignity in this respect. In an age and country of faith the imagination is much helped by externals and by the publicity of religion, which is sensibly felt on all sides. Even when practice is dropped, faith will remain in an individual so environed; for it is not tempted by opposition, but is supported by the imagination, and costs nothing. But here and now it is all otherwise, and faith does not long survive charity. Even for ourselves the impossibility of picturing the other world when once we find that our childish imaginings were but symbolic, makes it very unreal and so far ineffectual as a stimulus to action. But in proportion as we act up to our knowledge it becomes real to us. We therefore embody it in conduct, as a secret cause is bodied in its manifest effect. This principle is at the root of the power exerted on us and on our faith by the lives and examples of believers. 1 C. Gent. iii. 38.

“ He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not” may be well applied to the world of intellect and knowledge, which is the highest creation of the True Light. He is in that world creating and causing all that there is in it of light and truth ; and yet when He comes to it from without as a Teacher, and as the Truth taught, it receives Him not: Hic est hexes, it says,. venite occidamus eum et hereditas exit nostra—” Here is the Heir : let us slay Him, and the heritage will be our own.” Men want to have their reason for their own heritage ; they will not have this Man to reign over them.

“ I have raised up my eyes to the mountains whence cometh my help “—(i) to the Mount of the Beatitudes for light in the midst of darkness, from Him who is the Way and the Truth, whose “ word is a light to my feet and a lamp to my path ; “ (2) to the Mount of Thabor, for hope in discouragement ; hope in the “ glory that is to be revealed” beside which the sufferings before me are light, momentary, and not worthy to be considered ; for if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign—” it is good for us to be here ; “ (3) to the Mount of Olives, in temptation, to the High Priest “touched with feeling for our infirmities,” “ tempted in all as we are,” “tasting the weakness of the flesh,” and overcoming it by the willingness of the spirit “resisting even unto blood” in His agony and conflict; (4) to Mount Calvary for pardon and forgiveness when I have fallen ; or when in terror for the sinful past, to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world ; (5) to the Mystical Mount Zion whither He has ascended to the right hand of God to plead His wounds for me “ ever living to make intercession,” and to  shower down in torrents upon the thirsty earth the living water that springs from the five “ wells of the Saviour.”

“He will not suffer thy foot to slip ; “ for -we are walking, as it were, in dim light over a raging river on stepping - stones; or picking our steps from tussock to tussock, through a treacherous quagmire. And which of us can be ever so continuously watchful over every step as to escape destruction? There are times when we look back on past hair-breadth escapes, and the seeming chancefulness of our safety ; and feel that perseverance for a day, let alone for a lifetime, is impossible. Then, we must remember that there is another watching our footsteps more anxiously than ourselves, of whom it is said : “ He that is thy guardian will not slumber:” i.e., will not for a moment blink, or take His eyes off us: though we should take our eyes off Him, and “slumber and sleep” and forget Him, through fault or through frailty. It is not enough to remember the presence of God if we forget that it is the presence of One whose attention and observation is concentrated on us, scrutans renes et corda—” searching our inmost heart.” He is the Watchman who by night watches the Israel of our soul. “ Unless the Lord keep the city, the watchman watcheth in vain.” He is the nurse and faithful spouse of the soul who sits with us through the long night of our delirium, when others lie dreaming and heedless. He is the Father who watches the footsteps of the wandering prodigal and sees him when yet a long way off. He it is who seems to slumber within us when the frail vessel of our soul is storm-tossed and water-logged, but whom in their fury, no less than in their calm, the winds and seas obey. “ Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”

“For behold from henceforth all generations shall call me Blessed: for He that is mighty hath done great things for me.” Mary’s humility is not blind to her great gifts, Fecit mihi magna—” He hath done great things for me ; “ and beatam me dicent —”men shall call me Blessed.” But they were. God’s doing and the fruits of His blessing.

She lifts her eyes and looks into future ages and. sees every altar, shrine, picture, well ; every church and sanctuary where she, the little maid of Nazareth,. shall be set up and worshipped and loved, blessed among women, blessed of all times and nations. She hears Gabriel’s Ave re-echoed a million times. daily, age after age, “to the last syllable of recorded time ; “ and then on, into eternity, when the ora pro-nobis shall have been forgotten together with the remembrance of sin and sorrow, and the troubled dream of mortal life ; and when saints and angels will mingle Ave, gratia plena with the harmony of their unending Tersanctus. And she hears Salve Regina and Ave maris stella, Regina Cali and the Litany of Loreto, and Bernard’s Memorare, and the undying rhythm of the Holy Rosary, the fifteen Mysteries, and the Seven Sorrows—all this she sees-and hears when, inspired by the Holy Ghost, she cries: “Behold from henceforth all generations shall call me Blessed “—Blessed, not as the primal source, but as the recipient of blessings—” for He that is mighty hath done great things for me and Holy is His Name.”

(Collect for St. Callistus.) I. “O God, who seest how through weakness we fall away.” Apart from our sins of malice, our infirmities tend continually to weaken charity and separate us from God. Spiritus promptus, caro infirma—” The spirit is ready, but the flesh weak.” There is nothing sustained in our love, which now and then flames up and forthwith begins to dwindle. Repeated experience of this tends to discourage us by a conviction of our own fickleness. But if we know it, God knows and sees it too, “who remembers that we are but dust;” “all flesh is grass, and its glory,” its fervour, its aspirations, “ are as the flowers of the field. The .grass withereth, the flower fadeth.”

2. “ Mercifully restore us to our love of Thee.” “If we confess our sins,” if we frankly acknowledge our fault, He will have mercy, and restore us not only to our former love, but to a greater. For by such relapses and renewals we progress like the incoming tide. Our hearts are in God’s hand ; He alone can make us sorrow for coldness and wish for restoration ; and this very wish is an earnest that He is ready to fulfil it if we do not resist.

3. “ By the example of Thy saints.” God uses the ministry of creatures for our conversion, which thereby become graces and sacraments in His hands. The love of a Paul, an Augustine, a Bernard, a Francis, may be, through His grace, the means to rouse us to wonder what it was they saw that we do not see; to long to enter into their peace and serene joy. For this is even natural, as when we see one rapt in the reading of a book whose meaning is to us incomprehensible; or at least uninteresting. Converte nos Deus Salutaris poster et averte iram tuam a nobis—” Convert us, O God our Saviour, and turn away Thy anger from us.”

xcxxcxxc  F ” “ This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 2025

....x....  ’ “”.