The Creator and the Creature

Father Faber begins: "Life is short, and it is wearing fast away. We lose a great deal of time, and we want short roads to heaven, though the right road is in truth far shorter than we believe. It is true of most men that their light is greater than their heat, which is only saying that we practice less than we profess. Yet there are many souls, good, noble, and affectionate, who seem rather to want light than beat. They want to know more of God, more of themselves, and more of the relation in which they stand to God, and then they would love Bnd serve Him better. There are many again who, when they read or hear of the spiritual life, or come across the ordinary maxims of Christian perfection, do not understand what is put before them." Faber laments the fact: "The teaching of spiritual books and the doctrines of perfection, as laid down by the most approved writers, do not recommend themselves to them. They consider that, unless they are under the vows of some monastic order, they should aim iLt nothing m(lre than the avoiding of mortal sin, and giving edification to those around them. They are good people. They go to mass; they aid or start missions; they countenance the clergy; they are kind to the poor; they say the rosary; they frequent the sacraments. Yet when anyone talks to them of serving God out of personal love to Him. of trying to be daily more and more closely united to Him, of cultivating the spirit of prayer, of constantly looking out to see what more they can do for God, of mortifying their own will in things allowable, of disliking the spirit of the world even in manifestations of it which are short of sin, and of living more consciously in the presence of God, they feel as if they were listening to an unknown language. They have a jealousy, almost a dislike, of such truths, quite irrespective of any attempt being made to force such a line of conduct upon themselves. If they are humble they are puzzled: if they are self-opinionated, the, are angry, critical, or contemptuous, as the case may be There are many others to whom such views are simply new, and who with modesty and self-distrust are shaken by them, and to some extent receive them. Still upon the whole such doctrines have a sound in their cars of being ultra and extravagant, or poetical and fanciful, or peculiar and eccentric." This work proceeds to explain why God loves us and how we can love Him back as He wishes. It is an excellent work on the subject of divine love.