Henry Edward Manning

“ The continual exercise of brotherly love to all—to our flock, to our kindred, to our friends, and to our enemies—in all the extension of charity, is a discipline of perfection and of perseverance.
And this life of charity is more perfect in the proportion in which it exacts of us a mortification of self. But the sacerdotal or pastoral life is full of daily and hourly self-denial. We are called to die to ourselves, to our own wish and will and choice, and to be at the beck and bid of all, good and evil, reasonable and unreasonable, "becoming all things to all men, that I might save all." ”

“ The love of children for a priest is the most unselfish love on earth, and so long as they are innocent it binds them to him by a confidence which casts out fear. The most timid and shrinking come to him as a relief and protection. They tell him everything—their hopes and fears, their troubles and their faults—with an undoubting confidence in his love and care. No priest has greater joy than the priest who loves his schools, and trains with his own eye and care the boys who surround his altar. ”

“ THE PRIEST'S DEATH.
Sooner or later—soon at latest, for the longest life is short and fleet in ending—it will go abroad that we are dying. Our turn will be come. We who have lived to stand by and see so many die, as if we should live for ever, we shall be lying on our deathbed at last. Will that day come upon us unawares? And shall we have time for the last Sacraments? Priests often die without them. When our people are sick, however suddenly, we are always near to watch beside them; when we are sick there is not always a priest at hand. ”

“ Their preaching was the outpouring of their unchanging consciousness. Their whole soul, intellect, conscience, heart, and will went with every word. Their preaching was the testimony of an eye-witness and an ear-witness. It had in it a force beyond all words. Words rather hinder than help the directness and the power of truth when simply told by those who believe what they say. Men just delivered from some great danger, or coming from some terrible sight of death, use few words. If they use many, we feel that they have but little sense of what they have seen, and of what they are saying. ”

“ THE VALUE OF A PRIEST'S TIME.
Next to grace time is the most precious gift of God. Yet how much of both we waste. We say that time does many things. It teaches us many lessons, weans us from many follies, strengthens us in good resolves, and heals many wounds. And yet it does none of these things. Time does nothing. But time is the condition of all these things which God does in time. Time is full of eternity. As we use it so we shall be. Every day has its opportunities, every hour its offer of grace. ”

“ All these are failures in the law of liberty.
What motive, then, is there wanting to constrain a priest to the highest aspiration? We all are bound by the law of nature to obey our Maker with the utmost powers and affections of our whole being; by our redemption we are bound to glorify our Redeemer, for He has bought us for Himself. By our regeneration we are bound to obey the Holy Ghost as sons of God; by faith we are bound to obey the revealed law of God; by hope, to use all means of attaining eternal life; by charity, to love Him super omnia, with our whole soul and strength. ”

“ The world has stolen away the heart of such a priest. It is no longer in his silent room, nor in the fellowship of his brethren, nor in the sanctuary, nor in his priesthood. It is somewhere abroad, in some house, or in some friendship, or in some intimacy. And when such a priest comes to die he cannot choose but cast up his reckoning, and make a horarium of his life. How many hours have I spent at the altar, and how many in the world? how many in the homes of the poor, and how many in the homes of the rich? ”

“ Every act of piety towards Him receives an augmentation of love. Every true prayer of the heart kindles the grace of charity. All mental acts of contemplation and adoration bring an increase of love into the soul of the least and the humblest, in the busiest and the most overburdened life. How much more in the life of a priest and of a pastor, whose whole toil in thought, word, and deed is in and for the kingdom of God. Every Mass we say, every recital of the Divine Office, may be an act springing from love to God, and drawing down accessions of love into the heart. ”

“ Do not let any one think that a priest who has one Divine Friend will be cold or heartless, or careless of flock and friends, of the lonely and the forsaken. The more united to his Master the more like Him he becomes. None are so warm of heart, so tender, so pitiful, so unselfish, so compassionate, as the priest whose heart is sustained in its poise and balance of supreme friendship with Jesus and in absolute independence of all human attachments. ”

“ The world suffers no loss for them, nor is it humbled, nor wounded. We have not, indeed, seen our Divine Master, nor heard His voice; but if by faith and mental prayer we realise His presence, His truth, His will, and our own commission to speak in His name, we shall be filled with a consciousness of the unseen world and its realities, and out of that fulness we shall speak. We shall, indeed, need careful and minute preparation of what we are to say. But having a clear outline in our intellect, words will by a law of our nature follow the spontaneous courses of our thought. ”

“ There is no degree of sanctity or perfection to which a priest ought not to aspire. To aim at any mark or measure below the highest is to fall short of our vocation. "Not to advance in virtue, nor out of our old selves to be made new, but to linger in the same state, we account to be a vice." [15] S. Gregory of Nyssa says: "Let no one complain at seeing the liability of nature to change, but let him be always changing himself for the better, and being transformed from glory to glory, becoming better by daily growth, never thinking that he has attained the bounds of perfection. ”

“ He has long cast up his reckoning for himself and for his flock. He has long talked familiarly of death, as of a friend who is soon coming. He fears it, as an awful transit from this dim world to the great white Throne, and as a sinner, an unprofitable servant, and a creature of the dust, he shrinks; for the Holy Ghost has taught him to know the sanctity of God and the sinfulness of sin. ”

“ The title of father is the first, the chief, the highest, the most potent, the most persuasive, the most honourable of all the titles of a priest. He may receive from the world and from its fountains of honour many names, from the schools of learning many degrees, from the ecclesiastical law many dignities; but none has so deep and so high a sense as father, and none but the spiritual fatherhood will pass into eternity. The world has overlaid the title of father with its own profuse adulation, and priests have consented to their deprival in accepting the world's addresses. ”

“ All this binds together the pastors and people in England by a mutual dependence and with a primitive charity, on which as yet the world has not breathed its withering taint. Happy the priest who loves his pastor's lot and lives wholly in it, fulfilling day by day the slight and despised acts of charity to all who need his care, and laying up in heaven unconsciously the gold dust of a humble life, looking only for his eternal reward. ”

“ If for "every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account in the day of judgment," [16] what shall be the account of the words which we have spoken in long years and in a long life, as if in God's name? If the words of God by the prophet ought to be true of us as of himself, "Is not my word fire, and as the hammer that breaketh the rocks in pieces?" what shall be judged of our cold, light, interminable flow of words with few thoughts and empty rhetoric; idle because inefficacious, and inefficacious because our own? Whose heart have we set on fire? what hard heart have we broken? ”

“ What motive to confidence is then wanting to the priest? He is encompassed by the signs of God's love and power. The will of God to save him eternally is made known to him by every token and pledge short of a direct and personal revelation. This strong and changeless confidence is a motive to self-oblation in greater things, and to self-denial in the less. Hope is a source of joy, and joy is a source of strength. The downcast and timid are weak and inert. The hopeful and confident are energetic and courageous. Fear does not honour our Divine Master. ”

“ How great a love of God and of souls ought, therefore, to be kindled within us, and with what a fire ought our hearts to burn. 'The flame of the pastor,' S. Bernard says, 'is the light of the flock.' For in the priest the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the principle and fountain of love and fervour, ought to live and reign. Our missionaries, kindled with the ardour of zeal for souls, will strive to deliver, by a true exposition to the people committed to them, the commandment of God, 'exceeding broad' in all fulness and sanctity. ”

“ If souls will not be redeemed he cannot save them. God Himself respects the freedom He created and gave to them. They can destroy themselves. As life draws on, and the work of a priest in the midst of his flock has brought him into contact with the good and the evil, the innocent and the penitent, he can look round upon it as the sower in the lingering summer when the corn is ripening, looks upon the harvest-field. ”

“ They say prayers, but their prayers are not mental, The mind does not realise or aspire or stay itself upon God, upon the glory of the ever-blessed Trinity, upon the beauty of the sacred Manhood, upon the bliss of the Mother of God, upon the rest and joy of the Saints, upon the fellowship we have with them now, upon the share which is promised to us in their rest and joy hereafter, upon the presence of Jesus with us always, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in every pure and humble soul, above all in the soul of a pure and humble priest, of a faithful and fervent pastor. ”

“ There is no manifestation of self, no natural excitement, no subtil allurements of a personal kind in sitting for long hours listening to the sins, and sorrows, and often the inconsiderate talk of multitudes, for the most part unknown. It is like fishing with a single line. Long hours of waiting are rewarded by one solitary gain. But it is, in the highest sense of the word, the pastor's work—that is, the care of souls. And it demands in a high degree an abnegation of self, a repression of personal infirmities of temper, and a generous love of souls, especially of the poor. ”

“ THE PRIEST'S FRIEND.
It is not to be denied that the life of a priest is a life of austere loneliness. From the day that he is set apart by ordination the words are true of him, "Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but likened unto the Son of God, a priest for ever." [1] He leaves home and friends; his birth and name and race are forgotten; no one asks where he was born, or cares where he may die. He is separated from the world, and never more alone than when he is in thronging streets and crowded rooms. ”

“ The evil-minded are often less dangerous, for they are open enemies: but the good, who are often unwise, or light, or lukewarm, throw him off his guard by their goodness, and lower him before he is aware. They waste his time by their visits: they devour it by their invitations: they entangle him by their talk: they encompass him by what is called society—that is, by people of all kinds, and by recreations which, though without sin, are out of all proportion and out of all harmony with the gravity of the priesthood. ”