Saint Margaret of Cortona by Francois Mauriac

Author:Francois Mauriac [Mauriac, Francois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2013-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXI

The Impossible Adaptation to the World

THE TUMULT IN THE SAINT’S CELL, THE PRATING and bibulous servant, the petty scandals provoked by the ecstasies, all of this, though it seems hardly avoidable, gives the feeling of the tragic unadaptability of the contemplative life to the requirements of the world. And that which is glaringly evident to one who experiences ecstasy is, to a lesser degree, true for every man if he takes the Christian life seriously—and for all the Holy Catholic Church. Let revealed truth contradict the world, let it take root there and endure only by virtue of evasions, concessions, a diminution—this is, when one thinks about it, rather decisive evidence.

The Gospel proclaimed that the time was close. The first Christian generation awaited the Lord’s return from one day to the next, scanned heaven and earth for signs announcing the second coming. Christ’s law struck head-on against a world which was condemned and about to disappear. The Christian virtues, poverty, chastity, obedience, glorified what it hated most. Without blinking an eye, the faithful renounced a criminal century whose destruction they were going to see, and, in their minds, they were already dwelling in the kingdom which is not of this world.

They are dead. More numerous than the sands of the sea, the generations have passed, and we, in our turn, are the first Christians awaiting the second coming. The only statement on this matter which has not deceived us is that of Saint Peter, in an epistle, when he reminds us that for God one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

Since that time the Church has had to establish herself in time, she who was born for the end of time. How this decline drags out, at least if we measure it by the ephemeral duration of a human generation! The Church is holy and a Christian is holy only in the face of wind and tide. Their holiness is in proportion to the scorn with which the material conditions of their establishment here below inspire them. The more the saints conform to Christ, the more do they seem to us like creatures cast off from the simple and normal life, misfits, dying or not dying.

The enemies (secret or avowed) of Christ and his warmest friends fall into agreement. Pierre Bayle, commenting on Pascal, approves of his believing that there are almost no real Christians, which means that in his eyes pure Christianity is impracticable. And doubtless Saint Cyran is heretical; and I know quite well everything which it is permissible for us to find reassuring in certain formulas such as “to possess as if not possessing.” Of course! Despite the maledictions of Christ, even the rich may be saved, and Saint Francis de Sales introduced Philotases of the court and the world to the holy life and even initiated them to pure love. But we must believe that they came to it only by means of an uprooting which was less spectacular but perhaps just as cruel as that which frightens us in our Margaret.

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