September 21st – Feast of St. Matthew.

Adam Paige
Sep 22
4 min read

September 21st – Additional Meditation. Feast of St. Matthew.

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow on the generosity of St. Matthew renouncing everything for the love of Our Lord ; and in order to excite ourselves to imitate him, we will consider that there is: 1st, profit ; 2d, happiness, in depriving ourselves for the love of Jesus Christ. We will thence deduce the resolution: 1st, to mortify ourselves in whatever it costs us the most to renounce; 2d, to sacrifice to God during the day a part of our joy. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the maxim of the saints: “Privation is worth more than enjoyment;” or those other words which the gospel says of St. Matthew: “Follow Me, and he arose up and followed Him” (Matt. ix. 9).

Meditation for the Morning.

Let us admire the great detachment of St. Matthew, and his readiness to leave all as soon as God calls him. Neither relations, nor friends, nor attachment to his country, nor consideration of fortune and position, can keep him back. At the first call of Jesus he leaves his bank and his riches, that is to say, his dearest enjoyments, to follow Jesus Christ, who has not whereon to lay His head, who lives by alms, and who promises His disciples nothing but crosses, trials, and persecutions. Let us adore the goodness of Jesus Christ towards this holy apostle, and the efficacy of His word. Let us thank Him for all the graces He bestowed upon him, and let us abandon ourselves to the Divine Spirit in order to imitate so beautiful an example.

There is Profit in Depriving Ourselves for Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ declares in the gospel that, even during the present life, he who deprives himself of anything for the sake of His love shall receive a hundred-fold more than he has sacrificed (Mark x. 29, 30), and this hundred-fold, says St. Gregory, is perfection, a fruit of detachment ; or rather, it is Jesus Christ who gives Himself as a recompense, says St. Bernard ; and that is a possession which nothing in the world can equal, says St. Ambrose. In possessing Jesus Christ we be come masters of the whole world ; in Him we enjoy all creatures, and all the more advantageously since, possessing them in God, says St. Cyprian, we possess them exempt from inconstancy, anxieties, and all the other miseries which always accompany worldly possessions. Oh, what good reason, then, had St. Matthew to quit everything at the first call of the Saviour, in opposition to the example of the young man in the gospel who had great possessions, and went away sorrowful because Jesus Christ had told him that, in order to be perfect, he ought to sell all that he had and distribute it among the poor ! He lost everything by not being willing to leave anything, and St. Matthew gained all by quitting all. For he became a saint, an apostle, a man whose name is celebrated throughout all ages, great in all places, great even in heaven, whilst the name of the rich man is forgotten, perhaps it is even unknown in heaven. So true it is that in the service of Jesus Christ privation is worth more than enjoyment.

There is Happiness in Depriving Ourselves for the Sake of Christ.

The joy which St. Matthew had in the service of Jesus Christ was a million times greater than all that which the rich young man of whom we have just spoken could possibly taste in the peaceable possession of all his riches and in the agreeable enjoyment of them. St. Matthew, and all the saints who deprived themselves of everything for the sake of Jesus Christ, would tell us, if they could speak, that their joy was so great, their peace so deep, their consolation so full, that the utmost amount of pleasure which can be felt upon earth does not come near to the smallest drop of their happiness. On the one hand, all created goods inspire them with nothing but dis gust ; they are a burden from which they are happy to be delivered ; on the other side, virtue has so many charms and is possessed of so many attractions in their eyes that the whole universe is as nothing in comparison ; the spiritual consolations which God gives in exchange for temporal enjoyments are so superior that there is no proportion between the one and the other, says St. Cassian (Coll. xxiv. cap. ultim.). Let us add that for one person who pleases us and whom we quit, for an amusement which gives us pleasure and which we abandon, God often gives us a hundred persons who interest themselves in us, who endeavor to be agreeable to us, to render us a service when there is an opportunity of doing so, of solacing us in our necessities, and who feel towards us a charity which is all the more generous because it is not founded upon flesh and blood, but upon Jesus Christ, for the love of whom they love us. Oh, how much more happy St. Matthew was in the midst of the faithful converted by his apostolate than in his bank and amongst those from whom he gathered taxes !

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.

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