Then again, if you will look at it from another standpoint, there remains still on earth such a thing as love of God, pure love of God.  And this love can be translated into acts and life.  Love, as all well know, has its degrees of intensity and perfection.  All well-born children love their parents, but they do not all love them in the same degree.  Some are by nature more affectionate, some appreciate favors better, some receive more and know that more is expected of them.

In like manner, we who are all children of the Great Father are not all equally loving and generous.  What therefore is more natural than that some should choose to give themselves up heart, soul and body to the exclusive service of God?  What is there abnormal in the fact that they renounce the world and all its joys and legitimate pleasures, fast, pray and keep vigil, through pure love of God?  There is only one thing they fear, and that is to offend God.  By their vows they put this misfortune without the pale of possibility, as far as such a thing can be done by a creature endowed with free will.

Of course there are those for whom all this is unmitigated twaddle and bosh.  To mention abnegation, sacrifice, etc., to such people is to speak in a language no more intelligible than Sanskrit.  Naturally one of these will expect his children to appreciate the sacrifices he makes for their happiness, but with God they think it must be different.

There was once a young man who was rich.  He had never broken the Commandments of God.  Wondering if he had done enough to be saved, he came to the Messiah and put the question to Him.  The answer he received was, that, if he were sinless, he had done well, but that there was a sanctity, not negative but positive, which if he would acquire, would betoken in him a charity becoming a follower of a Crucified God.  Christ called the young man to a life of perfection.  “If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, give to the poor, then come, and follow me.”  It is not known whether this invitation was accepted by the young man; but ever since then it has been the joy of men and women in the Catholic Church to accept it, and to give up all in order to serve the Maker.

Scoffers and revilers of monasticism are a necessary evil.  Being given the course of nature that sometimes runs to freaks, they must exist.  Living, they must talk, and talking they must utter ineptitudes.  People always do when they discourse on things they do not comprehend.  But let this be our consolation:  monks are immortal.  They were, they are, they ever shall be.  All else is grass.

CHAPTER XLI.  THE RELIGIOUS.