IT was necessary to describe somewhat minutely the country destined to be the scene of the events we are about to relate. It is of no less importance to indicate beforehand what light, or I should rather say what profound moral truth lights up the starting point of this history, in which, as will be seen, the hand of God has visibly appeared. These reflections will retard us but an instant in the commencement of our recital.
It appears almost superfluous to point out the strong contrasts to be met within this world, in which the wicked and the good, the rich and the poor are mingled together, and the cottage of the indigent is sometimes separated but by a single wall from the abode of opulence. On one side, all the pleasures of a life of ease, agreeably organized in the midst of the comforts and elegance of luxury; on the other, the horrors of want, cold, hunger, disease—the melancholy procession of human sufferings. Around the former, adulation, visits and loud professions of friendship; around the others, indifference, solitude, desertion. People of the world shun the poor man and leave him out of all their schemes, either because they fear the importunity of his actual or silent appeals, or because they dread the sight of his fearful destitution, as a reproach to themselves. The rich, forming themselves into an exclusive circle which call “good society,” consider all outside of themselves as having only as it were a secondary existence, unworthy of their attention— all those in fact who do not belong to the class of “gentlemen.”
When they employ a workman, even when they are charitably disposed and succor the poor, they treat him as a protégé, as an inferior. They do not act towards him with that simple intimacy with which they would conduct themselves towards one of their own set. With the exception of some rare Christians, no one treats the poor man as his brother or his equal. With the exception of the Saints alas! few and far between in our day—who would ever think of showing him the respect they deem due to a superior? In the world, properly so called, in the great world the poor man is absolutely forsaken. Overwhelmed with the weight of labor, worn out with want, despised and abandoned, would it not appear as though he were cursed by the Creator of the earth? Ah! it is just the contrary; he is the beloved one of the universal Father. While the World has been cursed for ever by the infallible word of Christ, it is the poor, the suffering, the humble, the insignificant who are the “good society” in the eyes of God, the chosen company in which his heart delights. “Ye are my friends,” he tells them in his Gospel. He does more. He identifies himself with them and only opens the kingdom of heaven to the rich on condition of their having been the benefactors of the poor. “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto me.”
So, when the Son of God came upon earth, it was His will to be born, to live and to die in the midst of the poor—to be Himself poor. It was from among them He chose his Apostles, his principal disciples, the first-born of his Church. In the long history of that Church, it was upon the poor that He generally poured forth his choicest spiritual graces. In all ages with some slight exceptions—Apparitions, Visions, especial Revelations, have been the privilege of the poor and little ones whom the world despises.
When God, in His wisdom, deems fit to manifest himself sensibly to men by these mysterious phenomena, He descends, as do the kings of the earth when traveling, into the houses of His ministers or of His particular friends. And this is the reason of His habitual choice of the dwellings of the poor and the humble.
For nearly two thousand years past has the word of the Apostle been verified, “God hath chosen what is weak according to the world to confound that which is powerful.”
The recital undertaken by us will perhaps furnish some proof of these high truths.
No comments:
Post a Comment