The Spirit of Sacrifice

After the Priesthood, the life of the monk or nun, the brightest ornament of the Church of Jesus Christ. We may say of it what one of the Fathers in the first ages of Christianity said of virginity: "It is the fairest, most glorious fruit of divine grace; a work perfect and unblemished, worthy to be extolled and magnified, a mirror in which the holiness of God is reflected here below, the most glorious gift of Christ to His flock, the joy of the Church." No wonder, then, that so lovely and attractive a theme should have inspired the pen of a great number of writers. How delightful it is to work for the souls whom Our Lord loves with a special predilection! How exalted a task to promote the sanctification of those favored ones who, provided they correspond to the wondrous grace vouchsafed to them, afford abundant consolation to the heart of their divine Spouse, and abundant edification to holy Church, their Mother, whose most illustrious children they are! It is to Father Rodriguez, S.J., that we owe the first comprehensive treatise on the religious life, the first and foremost in every respect. His admirable work is and always will be the one most highly esteemed by religious communities. We, in our turn, have attempted to be of service to them in the work of their sanctification, a work of such vital importance. The treatise we now lay before the reader treats of the religious state from the special point of view of the victim's self-surrender. We employ the word victim here, although on the title page of this work we have preferred to speak of the life of sacrifice. The sense is the same in both, but we thought it best to make use of the latter term lest our announcement might seem to suggest some singularity of doctrine and practice. It will, however, be seen that the standpoint we have chosen is anything but a fanciful or unauthorized one. The view we take of the religious life is, in fact, by no means new; every author who has selected this beautiful subject as his theme points it out, butwithout enlarging upon it; whereas what we propose to consider in the religious state is preeminently the life of the monk or nun as a victim. The essential point is that every soul whom the divine Spouse has deigned to call to the signal honor of this celestial union with Himself should endeavor, by the use of every attainable means, to correspond to His merciful designs. The times in which we live are evil, and we may well say with St. Paul: "Redeeming the time because the days are evil" (Eph. v. 16). The spirit of seduction is so powerful! Who can say whether there are not within the vast fold of the Church of God some Communities which, under pretexts more or less plausible, have allowed the spirit of the world to find its way into their midst, and effect the deterioration of that grand and holy life of religion which constituted the strength and the glory of their institute at the outset? And who can say whether days of trial, of tribulation, of persecution, are not in store for us? 1 If so, what will then become of the tepid Religious, of the Community in which laxity prevails? Let us then lose no time, but set to work without delay, and by renewing our zeal, no longer render the sublime, the inestimable grace of our vocation void and illusory.