St. Simon Stock: From 'The Flaming Arrow' by Nicholas of France, prior general

 

St. Simon Stock: From 'The Flaming Arrow' by Nicholas of France, prior general

From 'The Flaming Arrow' by Nicholas of France, prior general

I will lead her into the desert, and there I will speak to her heart

Was it not our Lord and Saviour who led us into the desert, as a mark of his favour, so that there he might speak to our hearts with special intimacy? It is not in public, not in the market place, not amid noise and bustle that he shows himself to his friends for their consolation and reveals his secret mysteries to them, but behind closed doors.

  To the solitude of the mountain did Abraham, unswerving in faith and discerning the issue from afar in hope, ascend at the Lord’s command, ready for obedience’s sake to sacrifice Isaac his son; under which mystery the passion of Christ – the true Isaac – lies hidden. To the solitude of the mountain was it too that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was told to flee for his life in haste from Sodom.

  In the solitude of Mount Sinai was the Law given to Moses, and there was he so clothed with light that when he came down from the mountain no one could look upon the brightness of his face.

  In the solitude of Mary’s chamber, as she conversed with Gabriel, was the Word of the Father most high in very truth made flesh.

  In the solitude of Mount Tabor it undoubtedly was, when it was his will to be transfigured, that God made man revealed his glory to his chosen intimates of the Old and New Testaments. To a mountain solitude did our Saviour ascend alone in order to pray. In the solitude of the desert did he fast forty days and forty nights together, and there did he will to be tempted by the devil, so as to show us the most fitting place for prayer, penance, and victory over temptation.

  To the solitude of mountain or desert it was, then, that our Saviour retired when he would pray; though we read that he came down from the mountain when he would preach to the people or manifest his works. He who planted our fathers in the solitude of the mountain thus gave himself to them and their successors as a model, and desired them to write down his deeds, which are never empty of mystical meaning, as an example.

  It was this rule of our Saviour, a rule of utmost holiness, that some of our predecessors followed of old. They tarried long in the solitude of the desert conscious of their own imperfection. Sometimes however – though rarely – they came down from their desert, anxious, so as not to fail in what they regarded as their duty, to be of service to their neighbors, and sowed broadcast of the grain, threshed out in preaching, that they had so sweetly reaped in solitude with the sickle of contemplation.