All For Jesus - Chap 1

The Interests of Jesus

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Jesus belongs to us. He vouchsafes to put Himself at our disposal. He communicates to us everything of His which we are capable of receiving. He loves us with a love which no words can tell, nay, above all our thought and imagination; and He condescends to desire, with a longing which is equally indescribable, that we should love Him, with a fervent and entire love. His merits may be called ours as well as His. His satisfactions are not so much His treasures as they are ours. His sacraments are but so many ways which His love has designed to communicate Him to our souls. Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle, and end of everything to us. He is our help in penance, our consolation in grief, our support in trial.There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous, which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but... 

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we can never exaggerate our obligations to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that are to be said about Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done. But then that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.

 
He has kept nothing back from us. There is not a faculty of His Human Soul which has not had to do with our salvation. There is not one limb of His Sacred Body which has not suffered for us. There is not one pain, one shame, one indignity, which He has not drained to its last dreg of bitterness on our behalf. There is not one drop of His most Precious Blood which He has not shed for us; nor is there one throb of His Sacred Heart which is not an act of love to us. We read wonderful things in the lives of the Saints about their love of God, wonderful things which we dare not think of imitating. They practiced fearful austerities, or they spent years in unbroken silence, or they were ever in ecstasies and raptures, or they were passionately in love with contempt and suffering, or they pined and wasted away in holy impatience for death, or they courted death and expired in the long tortures of an excruciating martyrdom. Each one of these things separately fills us with wonder. Yet, put them altogether, conceive all the love of Peter, Paul, and John, of Joseph and of Magdalen, of all the apostles and martyrs, the confessors and virgins of the Church in all ages, thrown into one heart made, by miracle, strong enough to hold such love; then add to it all the burning love which the nine choirs of multitudinous angels have for God, and crown it all with the 

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amazing love of the Immaculate Heart of our dear Mother; and still it comes not near to, nay, it is but a poor imitation of, the love which Jesus has for each one of us, however lowly and unworthy and sinful we may be! We know our own unworthiness. We hate ourselves for our own past sins. We are impatient with our own secret meanness, irritability, and wretchedness. We are tired with our own badness and littleness. Yet, for all that, He loves us with this unutterable love, and is ready, if need be, as He revealed to one of His servants, to come down from heaven to be crucified over again for each one of us.

The wonder is not merely that He should love us so much, but that He should love us at all. Considering who He is, and what we are, have we any one single claim to His love, except the excess and, without Him, the hopelessness of our misery? We have no claims upon Him, but those which He Himself in His compassion has invented for us. What can be more unlovely than we are, what more ungenerous, what more ungrateful? And yet He loves us with this excess of love! Oh, how is it we can ever turn ourselves away from this one idea! How is it we can take an interest in anything but this surpassing love of God for His fallen creatures! It is almost surprising how we can bear to go through our ordinary duties, or how it is that, like men in love with created loves, we do not forget to eat and drink and sleep, feeling ourselves every hour of the day and night the object of the most profound tenderness and the most unutterable abundance of the love of God, the Almighty, the All Wise, the All Holy, the All Beautiful, the Everlasting! O most incredible of startling wonders! Blessings are heaped upon us till we are almost out of breath with them. 

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Graces are multiplied upon graces till they get beyond our power of reckoning. His compassions are new every morning. And then, after all, there is yet to come the recompense which eye has never seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived! This is His side of the question.

Alas! for our dearest Lord! Up to this day, what have we done for Him? And see what He has done for us, and the end of His doing it all was to gain our love! We look upon a crucifix, and it hardly moves us. We hear of His bitter Passion, but our eyes are dry, and our hearts indifferent. We kneel down to pray, but we can hardly keep our thoughts fixed upon Him for a quarter of an hour together. We go into His own most holy presence, and we hardly bend the knee before the Tabernacle, lest it should spoil our clothes. We see others sin, and what matter is it to us that Jesus is offended, so long as it is not we who are striking our souls by offending Him? Oh, these are the signs of love! Surely Jesus cannot be much to us, if this is the way we feel about Him. Yet so it is. We go our own way, and do our own will. The great thing is to please ourselves, and to make things easy to us. Life must be taught to run smooth. As to penance, it must be kept at arms’ length. We must have bodily comforts and worldly conveniences, and our spiritual life must be nothing but a sufficiency of those inward consolations, without which our souls give us pain, because they are not at rest. If we worship God, it is for self; if we do good to others, it is self we are seeking even in our charity. Poor Jesus Christ! as S. Alphonso used to say, poor Jesus Christ! Who thinks of Him? who weds His interests?
 

Yet this is the very object of our Confraternity of the Precious Blood,—to look after the interests

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of Jesus, and to forward them in every way we can. There is hardly any worldly object of importance which has not got some association to defend its rights and to forward its interests; why should not the interests of Jesus have one also? Science has its meetings, and its corresponding societies: Men band together in order to gain the victory for some favourite political opinions. They make companies for railways and for steam-packets and for coal-mines. Why should not we open an office to transact the affairs of Jesus, to protect His rights, and advance His interests? Now remember! this is just the business of the Confraternity of the Precious Blood. When we join it, we must leave self at the door. There is no self in it. It is all for Jesus. It is the office of the interests of Jesus.

Now, let us try to get an idea of the interests of Jesus; else how shall we be able to do anything to advance them? Men cannot work in the dark; they must know what they are about. You know what it is to have an interest. If you look over the world, you will see that everybody has some interest at heart, and is working hard for it. There are almost as many interests in the world as there are men. Every one you meet in the streets is going after something. You see it in his face, his quick eye and his rapid walk. Either it is political, or literary, or mercantile, or scientific, or fashionable, or simply ambitious, or dishonest. Still, whatever it is, every man has wedded the interest of his choice, and is doing his duty to it. He works hard for it all day; he goes to bed with the thought of it, and he wakes with it in the morning. Even on Sunday, it is rather his hand that is resting, than his head or his heart; they are full of his interest. Look what men---

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will do, singly or banded, to put down slavery, or to get free trade, or to compete for a large order, or to carry the mails, or to make new railroads. It is plain men have interests enough in the world, that they love them dearly, and work for them manfully. Oh that it were all for God, the good, the merciful, the eternal God.

The devil also has his interests in the world. He has been allowed to set up a kingdom in opposition to God, and, like all sovereigns, he has a multitude of interests. Thus he has agents everywhere, active, diligent, unseen spirits, swarming in the streets of the cities, to push on his interests. They canvass the labourers in the field. They see what they can do with the monk in his cloister and the hermit in his cell. Even in the churches, during Mass or Benediction, they are hard at work, plying their unholy trade. Our fellow-men also, by thousands, let themselves out to him as agents; nay, numbers work in his interests for nothing; and, what is more shocking still, many do his work, and almost fancy it is God’s work they are doing; it looks so good and blameless in their eyes. How many Catholics oppose good things, or criticize good persons; yet they would never consent to be the devil’s agents, if they really knew what they were about. These interests of the devil are very various. To cause mortal sin, to persuade to venial sin, to hinder grace, to prevent contrition, to keep back from sacraments, to promote lukewarmness, to bring holy people and bishops and religious orders into disrepute, and to stand in the way of vocations, to spread gossip, to distract people at prayer, to make men fall in love with the frivolities and fashions of the world, to get men to spend money on comforts, furniture, jewels, nicknacks, parrots, old china, fine dress, instead of on the poor of 

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Jesus Christ, to induce Catholics to worship great people and put their trust in princes, and fawn upon political parties in power, to make them full of criticism of each other, and quick as children to take scandal, to diminish devotion to our Blessed Lady, and to make people fancy divine love is an enthusiasm and an indiscretion:—these are the chief interests of the devil. It is amazing with what energy he works at them, and with what consummate craft and dreadful ability he advances them in the world. It would be a thing to admire, if it did not make us afraid for our own souls, and if all things which are against God were not simply abominable, and to be hated. The dark enemy of the Creator is mysteriously allowed a marvellous share of success in that creation which the All Holy once looked down upon, and blessed in His unspeakable complacency. Men’s interests put the interests of Jesus on one side, partly as troublesome, more often as insignificant. The devil’s interests are directly opposed to those of Jesus, and where they are successful, either debase them, or kill them altogether.
 
Now, let us look at the interests of Jesus. Let us take a view of the whole Church, which is His Spouse. Look first into heaven, the Church triumphant. It is the interest of Jesus that the glory of the most Holy Trinity should be increased in every possible manner, and at every hour of night and day; and this glory, which is called God’s accidental glory, is increased by every good work, word, and thought, every correspondence to grace, every resistance to temptation, every act of worship, every sacrament rightly administered or humbly received, every act of homage and of love to Mary, every invocation of the saints, every bead of the Rosary, every sign of the cross, every drop of holy water, every

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pain patiently endured, every harsh judgment meekly borne, every good wish, though it end only with the wishing and never sees fulfillment,—provided there be a devout intention along with all these things, and they are done in union with the merits of our sweet Lord. Every hour, at least so we trust, a new soul lands in heaven from purgatory or from earth, and begins its eternity of rapture and of praise. Each soul that swells the throngs of worshippers, each silent voice added to the angelic choirs, is an increase to the glory of God; and so it is the interest of Jesus to make these arrivals more frequent, and that they should bring more merits and higher degrees of love with them when they come. Even in heaven the Confraternity has work to do, and power to do it. Heaven is one of our offices, and there is much business to be despatched in its beautiful courts, business for the interests of Jesus, business which He has at heart, and therefore which it behoves us to have in hand.

Next look at that vast kingdom of Purgatory, with its empress-mother, Mary. All those countless throngs of souls are the dear and faithful spouses of Jesus. Yet in what a strange abandonment of supernatural suffering has His love left them! He longs for their deliverance; He yearns for them to be transferred from that land, perpetually overclouded by pain, to the bright sunshine of their heavenly home. Yet He has tied His own hands, or nearly so. He gives them no more grace; He allows them no more time for penance; He prevents them from meriting; nay, some have thought they could not pray. How then stands the case with the souls in the suffering Church? Why it is a thing to be meditated on when we have said it—they depend almost more on earth than they do on

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heaven, almost more on us than on Him; so He has willed it on whom all depend and without whom there is no dependence. It is clear then that Jesus has His interests there. He wants His captives releasing. Those whom He has redeemed He now bids us redeem, us whom, if there be life at all in us, He has already Himself redeemed. Every satisfaction offered up to God for these suffering souls, every oblation of the Precious Blood to the Eternal Father, every mass heard, every communion received, every voluntary penance undergone; the scourge; the hair-shirt; the prickly chain; every indulgence gained, every jubilee whose conditions we have fulfilled, every De Profundis whispered, every little alms doled out to the poor who are poorer than ourselves, and, if they be offered for the intention of these dear prisoners, the interests of Jesus are hourly forwarded in Mary’s kingdom of Purgatory. This is another office of the Confraternity, and there is no fear of overworking the glorious secretary of that wide realm, the blessed Michael, Mary’s subject. See how men work at the pumps on board ship when they are fighting for their lives with an ugly leak; Oh, that we had the charity so to work, with the sweet instrumentality of indulgences, for the holy souls in Purgatory! The infinite satisfactions of Jesus are at our command, and Mary’s sorrows, and the Martyrs’ pangs, and the Confessors’ weary perseverance in well-doing. Jesus will not help Himself here; because He loves to see us helping Him, and because He thinks our love will rejoice that He still leaves us something we can do for Him. There have been saints who have devoted their whole lives to this one work, mining in Purgatory: and to those who reflect in faith, it does not seem, after all, so strange. It is a foolish comparison,

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simply because it is so much below the mark, but on all principles of reckoning, it is a much less work to have won the battle of Waterloo, or to have invented the steam-engine, than to have freed one soul from Purgatory; and I should be slow to think there was a single member of the Confraternity who had not done more than that already.

Now look at the Church militant on earth. The interests of Jesus are rich and plentiful enough here. There are things to be done and things to be left undone. Hearts to be persuaded, and hearts to be dissuaded. There is so much to do, the puzzle is where to begin, and what to do first. Men who do not love Jesus are to be made to love Him, and men who love Him to love Him a great deal more. Each of us might take one department, and we should find more work to be done in it than we can get through in our best of times. There are so many people in their agony, and dying every minute, all over the world. Oh in what danger the very dearest interests of Jesus are at their dying beds! Satan is hard at work; temptations thicker than flakes in a snow storm; and whoso wins this battle, Jesus or the devil, is so far conqueror for ever; for there is no fighting it over again. There are Catholics who have not been near the Sacraments for years, and there are saints whose half century of merits and heroic love is positively in peril of being lost; they only want one thing, and let them suffer ever so much they cannot merit it, and that is, final perseverance. There are heretics who never suspected they were in heresy, and heretics in bad faith, who have told falsehoods about the Church, and have run down the Mother of God. There are Jews descended from those who crucified our Lord, and there are Mahometans who are the masters

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of Jerusalem. There are Hottentots who worship loathsome images, and there are American Indians, who have no higher thought than to hunt for all eternity, their merits proportioned to the number of their murders. There are men whom the unthawing snows whiten, and men whom the fierce heats of the south scorch, on the mountain tops, in the deep valleys, in the city and in the wilderness, on the land and on the sea, in the dungeon and in the palace; all dying, many a minute, in the most frightful unpreparedness that can be conceived; and Jesus died for every one of them, as exclusively as if there had been nobody else to die for, and He is ready this moment to come down and die for each one again, if it were needed. Go all through His long Passion, mark His steps, His tears, His drops of blood; count the thorns, the blows, the spittings, the falls; fathom the interior depths of the shame and shrinking, the torture and the sickness, of His Sacred Heart; and it was all for that poor Indian dying far away this hour beneath the shadow of the Andes; and if he dies and is not saved, it will have been in vain. This is but one department of the interests of Jesus, men in their last agony; and S. Camillus was raised up to found an order expressly for them. What might I not say of souls in mortal sin, of heretics and infidels, of criminals in prison, of persons under calumny, of others in scruples or temptations? I should never have done if I described all the interests of Jesus upon earth.

There is not a public-house or a gin-palace, not a theatre or a casino, not a ball-room or a concert, not a public meeting or a parliament, not a shop or a wharf, not a fair, a race-course, or a market, not a carriage or a ship, not a school or a church, where His interests are not in danger at all hours, and where He is not

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to be continued