August 25th – Feast of St. Louis, King of France.

Adam Paige
2 days ago
5 min read

August 25th – Additional Meditation. Feast of St. Louis, King of France.

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow, in the person of St. Louis, upon one of the most beautiful master pieces of grace, and we shall see that religion made of this prince:1st, a great king; 2d, a great Christian. We will then make the resolution:1st, to act, to speak, and to think in a spirit of faith, with a view to God and His glory; 2d, always to treat our neighbor in a spirit of charity, forgetting ourselves for the good of others. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the beautiful eulogium pronounced upon St. Louis by one of his historians: “He endeavored always to please Jesus Christ, as the sole King of all hearts.”

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ forming by His grace, in the person of St. Louis, a finished model of the most sublime virtue, and thereby showing to all Christians that a man may be a great saint everywhere — at court, in the midst of its dangers, as well as in a cloister, in the midst of all the means of salvation; that we can be saints in all conditions — in the midst of the embarrassments of affairs, of tumults, and of dissipation, as well as in the silence of solitude and far from the preoccupations of human affairs. Let us thank Our Lord for this great lesson, and propose to ourselves to profit by it abundantly.

Religion Made a Great King of St. Louis.

By a great king is to be understood not only a powerful monarch who makes everyone surrounding him tremble, but rather a prince eminent in justice, in goodness, in wisdom, in bravery, in dignity of character. Now, by means of religion St. Louis was all this.1st. He was eminent in regard to justice; he never undertook or did anything which was not just. He refused the empire offered him to the prejudice of Frederic, because in his eyes nothing was great but that which was upright; and he would not have bought a king dom, of no matter what extent, at the price of a lie. To render justice to all was, in his eyes, the first of his duties, even in the case of the Saracens, who were guilty of so much injustice towards him. 2d. He was eminent in regard to kindness. He aspired to nothing so much as to relieve all who were suffering, and he looked upon himself as the provider of the poor and the steward of Jesus Christ; he raised taxes only in order to be able to give more aid to the indigent, and it was said of him that, like Jesus Christ, his hands were pierced, so that they retained nothing and gave all, even their own blood. Every day he received at his table three poor old men, whom he served with his own hands. On feast days he served as many as two hundred, for, he said, it is our duty to honor Christ in His poor, and if the poor gain heaven by penance, the rich ought to gain it by charity. 3d. He was eminent in wis dom. He reconciles the most powerful monarchs, he is successful over foreign armies, he stifles domestic seditions, he unites several provinces to the crown, and no reign has ever been longer or more stable than his, lasting as it did forty-four years; and no line has ever been more fortunate than his, which gave so many kings to France. 4th. He was eminent in bravery. In the crusades which he undertook to conquer an empire for Jesus Christ beyond the seas, he was the first to advance, sword in hand, against the Saracens. On all occasions he gave proof of intrepid courage, and if he lost two flourishing armies, the treasures and the noblest blood of France, if he lost his labors, his sweats, his liberty, whilst waiting till he lost his life, he never allowed his great soul to be cast down. He was able to keep his kingdom intact, without any of its provinces being detached from it, spite of so long an absence, and he did not lose a single ray of his glory. 5th. He was eminent in the dignity which marked his character. Humble as the most hidden amongst monks, without any haughtiness of speech, without ostentation in his deportment, without luxury in his clothing, without disdain in the expression of his eyes, without anything affected in his con versation, he knew how to show his greatness when it was necessary to do so, and to rise by generosity above all the powers of the world, above even the Saracens, his conquerors, who were astonished to find in him rather a master than a captive, and who desired to have him for their king. Let us admire the manner in which religion ennobles and elevates characters, how it makes men great and truly honorable, to the point of making even their enemies respect them.

Religion Made a Great Christian of St. Louis.

Faithful to the lessons of Queen Blanche, his mother, who had said to him, " My son, I would rather see you dead than see you commit one mortal sin," St. Louis did not allow himself to be rendered effeminate by the pleasures of the court, or seduced by the baits of voluptuousness. God alone was everything to him; he breathed only for His service and His glory, the defence of the faith, the abolition of vice, the triumph of virtue, the salvation of his people; and in order to attain this end, he prayed during the day, he prayed during the night, reciting the breviary and assisting daily at two Masses with the fervor of the most perfect religious. He was as mortified as an anchorite; he fasted every Friday, he constantly wore a hair-shirt, he wounded his body with an iron discipline. He was as zealous as an apostle; he made use of all possible means for converting sinners, he sent away actors, he threatened blasphemers with severe penalties, he encouraged all the religious Orders devoted to the preaching of the gospel, he neglected no means whatever of making God known, loved, and served; he labored every day to advance in the perfect life, he was recollected in the midst of the dissipation of the world, mortified amongst pleasures, humble at the summit of earthly great ness. Could there be a more beautiful model? Let us endeavor from this very day to draw near to it by means of recollection, mortification, and humility.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.

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