Claude La Colombière Sermons

Christian Conduct

Claude La Colombière, William P. O'Brien

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781609090920
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This volume presents for the first time English-language translations of twelve sermons by St. Claude La Colombière. Canonized in 1992 by Pope John Paul II, Claude was a 17th-century Jesuit priest who authenticated the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart. Like St. Francis of Assisi, Claude had been a man of privilege, and was a literary figure with a reputation as a master of Christian eloquence. He died a martyr at the age of forty-one.

Each sermon in this volume addresses a different issue under the general theme of Christian conduct. Together these sermons present the notions central to Claude's preaching and general attitude, above all the ideas of habituation and confidence in God. Preaching during Claude's lifetime developed under a variety of influences, most notably the thematic sermons of the late medieval period and the humanistic retrieval of classical letters during the Renaissance. Claude worked within and helped to create the stylistic conventions of the day by drawing on scripture and the Church Fathers in an attempt to convert his listeners. Taking a hybrid approach to his craft, he brought a balanced use of rhetorical art into the pulpit so as to please as well as to instruct and move his audience, hereby promoting the development of French classicism in the second half of the seventeenth century.

In his commentary on the sermons William O'Brien examines the dynamic vision of the human person that emerges from St. Claude's preaching and considers what this might mean for readers of today. While offering a historical-literary study of his preaching, the work is located firmly in the contemporary quest for a new unity between the theoretical and the practical in Christianity. What results is a book with a unique appeal. General readers interested in their own spiritual growth, as well as scholars and students of religious history, theology, and French literature, will find this book to be a valuable resource.

1-On the Flight from the World1

Jesus was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit. (Matt 4:1)2

It is difficult to be engaged in the world and not to become corrupted there; it is difficult to be converted there, unless one retreat from it.

As all the actions of Jesus Christ are for us appreciable lessons that teach us even better than his words, it is completely evident, by the retreat that he makes today into the desert and by which he begins his public life, that he wants to teach us the necessity that exists to retire into solitude in order to live in a Christian manner.3 If I were to tell you that this is a happy necessity, I do not know that one would like to take my word for it. Most people are oddly prejudiced against the solitary and secluded life; one barely has less horror of it than of banishment or of death itself. I am not surprised at this; it is that one knows neither the sweet pleasures nor the advantages of it; it is that one knows not that, in truth, one is never less alone than when one is alone, because then one has the pleasure of dealing with oneself, which is to say, with the person whom each one loves most in the world; or, as Saint Bernard said even better, because then one is with God, with whom one cannot say how sweet it is to converse, far from the commotion and the trouble of the world.4

Be that as it may, I am convinced that herein lies the most important matter that could be addressed in a Christian pulpit.5 For, while you still enjoy yourselves in the world, Christian auditors, whatever impression that the word of God have made on your hearts, whatever good desires that you already have formed, I cannot believe there be anything yet done for your sanctification. It will be in vain that I preach and that all preachers exhaust themselves in order to lead you to a great virtue: the seed that falls on the wide paths is a lost seed.6 If one wants to produce some fruit by preaching, one must address oneself to people withdrawn from the world, or one must lead those who are in the world to withdraw from it. That is what I am going to try to do, Gentlemen, in the confidence I have that the Holy Spirit, who today leads Jesus into the desert, will attract you by his grace, at the same time that I will lead you by my words.7 Mary will favor us in this, as she does in all things, by her powerful intercession: Hail, Mary, etc.8

I do not know if what one says about the first human beings9 is true: that, living in the forests, separated from one another, they had almost only the exteriors and the appearances of men, until, being gathered in places in which nature collected more amenities for life, they found, in society, this politeness and this perfection of reason that, hardly less than reason itself, distinguished them from the animals. But this commerce, by which [their] minds then were softened and civilized, has since contributed not a little to corrupt them.10 In such a way that, after having left the deserts in order to learn to live, the wisest judged appropriate to reenter there in order to learn again to live well.11 They discovered that there was less danger in associating with lions than with people and that the passions that the world inspires make us still more like animals than the wild and savage temperament that solitude maintains.

And yet, as depravity is greater today than it ever has been, and that our world, which refines itself every day, seems also to corrupt itself more and more every day, I do not know if there were ever a time in which one had more reason to take refuge entirely from civil life and to flee into the most distant places.12 It would be without a doubt a very salutary piece of advice, that one there; but after all it is only a piece of advice: even then it is not for everyone. However, we have spoken of necessity, and of a necessity that extends to all kinds of people. Here is, therefore, in what I claim that [this necessity] consist. I say that, in order to effect one’s salvation, one must withdraw from the world the most that one can, and above all from what one calls the “great world.” And the proof of this is only too evident. One can save oneself only by one of these two ways: either by living constantly in innocence, or by repairing the disorders of one’s life by a genuine conversion. And yet I am going to make you see that these two paths are as if closed to all those who have a great deal of communication with people. It is difficult to be engaged in the world and not to become corrupted there: that is the first point; it is difficult to be converted there, unless one retreat from it: that is the second.13 That is the whole plan of this talk.

First Point

It is certain that there is a world, even among Christians, that is enemy of Christianity, and that Jesus Christ disavows.14 It is this world that does not know God, as Saint John says,15 and that hates the Son of God, as the Son of God complained of it himself: “the world has hated me before you.”16 This world, completely Christian as it is in appearance, has the demon for prince and for chief; it is composed of reprobates,17 and the Savior of the world does not intend that it have any part in his prayers: “I pray not for the world, but for them whom you have given me.”18 It is this world that the same Savior has conquered, that he has confounded by his cross, that Saint Paul regarded as a villain condemned to be tortured and executed for his sins,19 against which all the saints have spoken, and that persecuted all the saints.20

It is, moreover, certain that to be of this world and to be among the number of reprobates—to love [the world] and to declare oneself enemy of God—is the same thing: “whoever will be a friend of this world, becomes an enemy of God.”21 Yet one asks if one can visit [the world], familiarize oneself with it, have dealings with those who compose it, find oneself in assemblies, without exposing one’s innocence and the salvation of one’s soul? In order to respond to this question, Gentlemen, it is necessary to tell you what this world is, and by what it can be distinguished. This world is almost completely composed of people vain, ambitious, attached to their pleasures, who dream only of pleasing, of making themselves liked, of spending life in idleness and in pleasure. It is in this world that reign luxury, pride, vengeance, malicious gossip. It is [this world] that invents fads, that makes the laws of false honor and that makes [people] observe them,22 that assembles itself only in the places where one cannot be attracted except by pleasure, that esteems all the arts, which are made only to flatter and to please the senses.

I do not say, Gentlemen, that all those who are of this world be voluptuous, lascivious, slanderous, libertine, impious; but I say, and it is true, that all those who are the most given over to all these vices are of this world, that they rule there, that there they receive praises and applause. Finally, as the founders of the religious orders have had it in mind to arrange a living space in which everything favored the design that one would have of saving oneself, they introduced there everything that might facilitate the acquisition of virtue, they banished from there all that is contrary to the purity of morals, all that might tempt or lead to evil; the demon, on the contrary, who is the prince of the world, has tried to assemble there all that might inspire vice, wealth, and immodesty of habits: gatherings of persons of different sexes, flattery, laxness of song and of dance, the licentiousness of the theater—in a word, all that could arouse the passions and introduce them through the senses.23 This supposed, one asks if there is nothing to fear for salvation by living in the midst of this world. And me, I ask if there is the least reason to believe that one will be able to save oneself there in any way?

To whom will we speak in order to be clear on this point? I wish to question only people themselves of the world. We see some of them every day who leave it in order to embrace religious life, and who leave at the same time great goods, great honors, and even greater hopes. If one wants to know from them the motive that has led them to such a strange resolution, I dare to assert that of a hundred there will not be two who have another thing to tell you, if it is not that it is difficult to remain in the world without keeping company with it, and that it is impossible to keep company with it without becoming corrupt.24

And not only those who have thus renounced grandly the secular life, but those who are still engaged in it—who take pleasure in it, who cannot resolve to leave it—both of these, I say, still use the same language. When one reproaches them for their continual relapses, their imprudence in giving or taking certain liberties that lead to serious consequences; when one points out to them the danger that there is, both for them, and for others, in initiating or in carrying on talk that harms decency, that harms the reputation of their brothers [and sisters], that harms even religion; in a word, when one proposes to them the maxims of Jesus Christ and when one makes them notice the extreme opposition that there is between these maxims and their conduct—“You are right,” they say, “but one then would have to go mute, seeing that all conversations operate today on these three principles: impiety, malicious gossip, and what one calls charm25. Unless one be of bronze, one would not be able to defend oneself from evil desires in the midst of a world where everything conspires to arouse them. Besides, one finds oneself every day in such disastrous circumstances, such great conveniences to do evil present themselves there, that one might say that it becomes almost necessary there.” Here, Gentlemen, is what one hears said every day, and by people who intend by that to justify in some way their faults. But they are mistaken. It is impossible to see the world, to be of the world, without offending God or without exposing oneself to the danger of offending him. You are therefore forced to withdraw and to break this dangerous dealing that you have with it.

“But I am not of this mind,” someone might say: “I believe that one can live in the midst of the world, and live there as one lives there, without affecting one’s conscience and without running any risk of one’s salvation; there are people of great integrity who are of this same opinion; and indeed one knows people whose life, although worldly, is nevertheless quite beyond reproach.” To that, Gentlemen, I want to oppose only your own experience. Although that may be, both regarding the sentiments, and regarding the conduct of others, it is to you alone whom I speak in this discourse; and I ask you, if indeed life and dealings with the world have not done you wrong until now; for in vain would you demonstrate to me, by a hundred examples and by the authority of the greatest experts, that one there could maintain innocence and piety, if you there have lost both the one and the other, and if every day your heart there receives fresh wounds.

Tell me then, if you please, in these great gatherings, in these long conversations that you have with the world, which is to say, with men and women who dream only of amusing themselves and of passing the time pleasantly: have you occasionally spent an entire day without making some disparaging remark or at least without hearing one; without amusing yourself at the expense of your neighbor or without taking some pleasure in the mockeries that one makes of him? I am not speaking of the bad desires that you have inspired in others and of which the care that you take to be liked, to dress yourself to your advantage make you only too guilty. But would you dare to say that you always have brought back from the gatherings a heart as chaste, as free, an imagination as pure as you had taken there? There is one thing on which it seems to me that everybody agrees: that is that people who have some principles of piety, some taste for prayer, some desire to please God and to be sanctified feel that these desires weaken, that this taste is lost by dealings with the world. Hardly has one found oneself a few days in these gatherings than this fervor begins to slacken. One returns with difficulty to the exercises of devotion, one feels that God withdraws, and already one becomes accustomed to his absence.26 What does this mean, Christian auditors? Is it that you are already lost, that all is hopeless? No, but you see by this that you are not invincible and that with time, the world will be able to spoil you like the others. It is not yet death, but it is your stoutness that goes, it is your health that is ruined; it is not death, but it is an illness that leads to it.27 I know well that you intend to hold yourself to certain limits that the fear of God prescribes for you; but it is a hope that the holiest of all people could not have without an extreme presumption. The world will not be content with what you intend for it, and I do not see how you will be able to resist it in your weakness, since you gave in at the time that the Lord was near you, that you had all your strength, and that you had not yet received any attack.

But when the good and the vicious, when you yourself would not give testimony to the truth that I am preaching to you, I would not fail to be persuaded of it by reason. If we are safe in the world, tell me, if you please: where will there be danger for salvation? There is good reason to fear even in cloisters, from which all occasions [of sin] are banished and where one is protected by a thousand bastions against the tricks of Satan;28 and we will believe ourselves safe in a place of which all avenues are open to him, in which you have thousands and thousands of occasions to sin! O my God, one doubts that it is difficult to live innocently in a place in which one sees that all the difficulties that could oppose themselves to innocence are quite obviously gathered together!

Besides the objects that attract so powerfully to do evil, and the occasions that lead there as though necessarily, does not the conversation of corrupt people, their examples, their company, even their breath, so to speak, have something contagious?29 The Wise Man30 warns us not to associate with a furious man, for fear that he communicate imperceptibly to us his violent temperament: “Do not walk with a furious man, lest perhaps you learn his ways.”31 And nevertheless one might say that of all vices, anger is the one example that has the least malignancy.32 It seems that the glance of a person who loses her temper is more capable of inspiring horror of thi...