all His omnipotence.

purpose What has He made you? A being after His own image and likeness. With what love was He influenced? With an infinite and eternal love; loving you from eternity with His entire heart, in preference to innumerable other creatures whose creation was equally possible to Him. What consequence, then, should you draw from all this? It is this-Therefore, you are bound to serve God with your entire soul, and you ought to employ in His service all those gifts with which He has endowed you.

2. You have been created by God to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life, in order to enjoy Him afterwards in the life to come. Hence, to

serve God is your essential end: since it is for this purpose that God has created you, and not that your life should be passed in the enjoyment of riches, pleasures, and honours; 2. To serve God is your only end. You may have achieved wonders upon earth, but if you have failed to labour for God what does it all avail you? Nothing! 3. To serve God is your last end, and for this reason your soul is ever restless until it comes to possess Him; 4. To serve God is your chief and greatest end, because upon your doing so depends for you an eternity of happiness or of misery.

3. You must serve God in whatever manner is pleasing to Him: since no one values services rendered to him against his will. Therefore, in serving God, you ought to regard indifferently whether you do so in riches or in poverty; amid pleasures, or in afflictions; surrounded by honours, or sunk in abasement; during a short life, or a long one; in that state of life to which He may call you, or, in

the state already chosen, in that degree of perfection in which it is His will that you should serve Him.

LECTURE.

On the First Meditation which S. Ignatius calls "The Foundation".

§ I.

It was not without the assistance of the Divine light that S. Ignatius commenced his Exercises with the consideration of the last end for which we have been created. For, 1. in every undertaking the mind naturally reverts, in the first place, to the end for which we act; this being, as it were, the centre towards which everything else is directed. S. Ignatius, therefore, wishing, by means of his Exercises, to reform the lives of men, wisely commences by proposing for their consideration the end of man; since, not only is the reformation of our life directed towards this, but even the very method of working out this reformation ought to be regulated with a view to it. 2. Moreover, the object of these exercises is to conduct the soul, through the threefold way of perfection, to the attainment of its last end. Now, this cannot be accomplished if the soul have not first discovered what her last end is: therefore, this is very wisely made known to her from the start; 3. Finally, before proceeding to erect a building of any kind, we must first lay the foundation, and for this reason, S. Ignatius very properly places before the other meditations this one which he calls "The Foundation". "Since" (as the Directory says), "it is the basis of the Spiritual Edifice. And as the foundation supports the entire building, so the influence of this truth is felt throughout all the Exercises, and

more particularly in what concerns the choice of a state (or of a more perfect life), as this election almost entirely depends upon it" (a). For since a true emendation of life consists in electing to serve God in whatever manner is most pleasing to Him, we can never succeed in accomplishing this properly, unless our minds are so evenly balanced as to be generously prepared for any sacrifice. This "equilibrium" of mind (if we may so speak) is the fruit which we should principally gather from the present meditation. Hence, we see with what justice it is said to influence all the exercises, and how it constitutes the foundation of the entire spiritual edifice : nay more, how it is an indispensable condition required in order to derive the desired advantages from the Retreat.

2. "Wherefore" (to use the words of the Directory), "by how much the more successfully we make this meditation, by so much the greater advantage shall we derive. from the others that are to follow; and the deeper we dig this foundation, the more solid will be the superstructure which we shall raise upon it" (b). What attention, then, and what earnestness ought we not employ, in order to meditate this truth with fervour! The devil, who well knows how great will be his own loss and our gain if we meditate upon it thoroughly, employs all his powers to distract us, or induce us to read it over hurriedly, as a truth already sufficiently clear, and in fact self-evident. Meanwhile, he suggests to us the desire of making amends for this by redoubling our fervour on the morrow, and all this time he (b) Chap. xii., n. 3 & 7.

(a) Chap. xii., n. 1 & 7.

is undermining the foundation stone of our spiritual edifice.

To counteract the effects of this deception, S. Ignatius does not assign any fixed time for this meditation, nor does he limit its duration, as in the case of the others, to one hour, thus giving us to understand that we should occupy ourselves with it so long as is necessary to imprint deeply in our souls the truth which it conveys (a). For the same rea

son, and in conformity with the intention of the saint, I also direct, that it be repeated in the evening, either to compensate for any want of fervour there may have been in the morning, or to increase it.

§ II.

1. When we meditate upon the end of man, two points demand our most serious consideration. 1. "Man has been created by God for the purpose of praising, worshipping and serving his Creator, that he may finally enjoy Him. 2. All others things on

earth have been created for man's use, that they may assist him in accomplishing the end for which he has himself been created" (b).

As man, then, has been created for God, so all other things have been created for man; and therefore, as God is the end of man, so everything else that exists in the world finds the end of its creation

in man. The subject of the first meditation was, that to serve God constitutes our essential, our only

(a) Directory, ch. xii. n. 6.

(b) In lib. Exercit. de Fundamento.

and our greatest end: the subject of the second will be, that all other created things are merely means to help us in working out this end.

From these two truths, S. Ignatius draws two logical consequences of the very greatest importance. The first is: "Therefore, we are bound to make use of, or abstain from, created things in proportion as they prove a help or a hindrance to us in the attainment of our end". The second is as follows: "Therefore, we ought to hold ourselves indifferent with regard to all created things, and select and desire such only of them as serve to conduct us most securely to our last end. In such manner, that we no longer prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honour to disgrace, nor a long life to a short one" (a). The first of these propositions declares the use of created things; the second regulates the disposition of the soul with regard to them. Both combined contain within them the secret by which we may most securely and speedily attain greater perfection.

Oh! words, then, replete with heavenly wisdom! Martin Olave, that shining light of the Sorbonne, frankly confessed that in a single hour employed in meditating on "the foundation," he had learned more than he had from all the speculative theology which he had been studying day and night for so many years.

There lived in the convent of "Torre di Speechi, at Rome, a nun named Bonaventure- a lady of noble lineage and of keen intellect, skilled in mathematics, and endowed with every gift of nature, but so entirely given up to vanity and the spirit of the world,

(a) In lib. Exercit. de Fundamento.