St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER V. The first fruit to be drawn from the consideration of the second Word spoken by Christ upon the Cross.

We can gather some chosen fruits from the second word spoken from the Cross. The first fruit is the consideration of the immense mercy and liberality of Christ, and how good and useful a thing it is to serve Him. The many pains He was suffering might have been urged as an excuse by our Lord for not hearing the petition of the thief, but in His charity He preferred to forget His own grievous pains rather than not listen to the prayer of a poor penitent sinner. This same Lord answered not a word to the curses and reproaches of the priests and soldiers, but at the cry of a confessing sinner His charity forbade Him to be any longer silent. hen He is reviled He opens not His mouth, because He is patient: when a sinner confesses his guilt, He speaks, because He is benign. But what shall we say of His liberality? Those who serve temporal masters frequently gain but a slight recompense for many labours. Even at this very day we see not a few who have spent the best years of their life in the service of princes, and retire in their old age on a small pittance. But Christ is a truly liberal Prince, a truly magnanimous Master. He receives no service at the hands of the good thief, except a few kind words and a hearty desire to assist Him, and behold with how great a reward He repays him! On this very day all the sins which he had committed during his life are forgiven: he is also ranked with the princes of his people, to wit, with the patriarchs and the prophets: and finally Christ raises him to the companionship of His table, of His dignity, of His glory, and of all His goods. “This day,” He says, “thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” And what God says, He does. Nor does He defer this reward to some distant day, but on this very day He pours into his bosom “a good measure, and pressed down, and shaken together, and running over.”

The thief is not the only one who has experienced the liberality of Christ. The Apostles, who left either a ship, or a counting-house, or a home to serve Christ, were made by Him “princes over all the earth,”[1] and the devils, serpents, and all kinds of diseases were made subject to them. If any man has given food or clothing to the poor as an alms in the name of Christ, he shall hear these consoling words at the Day of Judgment–“I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat; naked and you covered Me:”[2] receive therefore, and possess My eternal kingdom. In fine, to pass over many other promises of rewards, could any man believe the almost incredible liberality of Christ, if it had not been God Himself Who promised that “every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundred-fold, and shall possess life everlasting.”[3] St. Jerome and other holy Doctors interpret the above-quoted text in this way. If any man, for the love of Christ, abandons any thing in this present life, he shall receive a two- fold reward, together with a life of incomparably more value than the trifle which he has left for Christ. In the first place, he shall receive a spiritual joy or a spiritual gift in this life, a hundred times more precious than the temporal thing he forsook for Christ’s sake; and a truly spiritual man would choose rather to keep this gift than exchange it for a hundred houses or fields, or other like things. Secondly, as though Almighty God considered this reward of little or no value, the happy merchant who barters earthly things for heavenly ones shall receive in the next world life eternal, in which one word is contained an ocean of everything good.

Such, then, is the manner in which Christ, the great King, shows His liberality to those who give themselves to His service without reserve. And are not those men foolish who, forsaking the standard of such a Monarch, desire to become the slaves of mammon, of gluttony, and of luxury? But those who know not what things Christ considers to be real riches, may say that these promises are mere words, since we often find His cherished friends to be poor, squalid, abject, and sorrowful, and on the other hand, we never behold this hundred-fold reward which is proclaimed to be so truly magnificent. So it is: the carnal man will never see the hundred-fold which Christ has promised, because he has not eyes wherewith he can see it; nor will he ever participate in that solid joy which a pure conscience and a true love of God begets. I will adduce, however, one example to show that even a carnal man can appreciate spiritual delights and spiritual riches. We read in a book of examples about the illustrious men of the Cistercian Order, that a certain noble and rich man, named Arnulph, left the whole of his fortune and became a Cistercian monk, under the authority of St. Bernard. God tried the virtue of this man by the bitter pains of many kinds of diseases, particularly towards the end of his life; and on one occasion, when he was suffering more acutely than usual, he cried out with a loud voice: “Everything Thou hast said, O Lord Jesus, is true.” Those who were present asking him what was the reason of this exclamation, he replied: “The Lord, in His Gospel, says that those who forsake their riches and all things else for His sake, shall receive a hundred-fold in this life, and afterwards life eternal. I at length understand the force and import of this promise. and I acknowledge that I am now receiving the hundred-fold for everything which I left. Indeed, the immense bitterness of this grief is so pleasing to me through the hope of the Divine mercy which will be extended to me on account of my sufferings, that I would not consent to be liberated from my pains for a hundred times the value of the worldly substance I have left. For, indeed, spiritual joy which is centred in the hope of what is to come surpasses a hundred thousand times all worldly joy, which springs from the present.” The reader, by pondering these words, may judge how great an esteem is to be set on the heavenly-derived virtue of the certain hope of eternal felicity.


ENDNOTES

1. Psalm xliv. 17.
2. St. Matt. xxv. 35, 36.
3. St. Matt. xix. 29.