THE ATHLETE OF GOD

 

THOUGH the idea may at first seem unusual to us, there is no novelty whatever in considering the saints as athletes. It was one of the most eminent of the saints, the great Apostle St. Paul, who compared the fervent Christian to the contender in the athletic games of Greece and who reminded us that the saint, like the athlete, must deny himself many things, must go through a course of rigorous training, must concentrate on his work, must diligently strive for mastery and must manifest both skill and endurance in the contest in order to win the prize. The athlete strives for a corruptible crown of laurel or parsley, the saint for an incorruptible crown of eternal glory. Let us in this chapter consider how St. John Baptist de la Salle showed himself to be a true athlete of God.

The boy who wishes to distinguish himself in school athletics must do several important things. He must, first of all, make up his mind to go out and win, to lower records, to know the game and play the game. Play the game he must, and play it hard. On a fine sunny afternoon, when he feels very much like sitting around and taking things easy, he must conquer the inclination and go out on the field and get dusty and heated and bruised; and he must keep up that daily practice right through the season. And he must study the game—know it in its larger outlines and in its fine points. He must, too, observe experienced players in action and strive to learn the secrets of their success. And he must live a regular life, going to bed and getting up at fixed times, eating certain kinds of food and avoiding delicacies.

Our athlete of God, St. de la Salle, did all these things. The game he played was a more complex and exacting and interesting game than track work or football, but he followed the same general principles of training and practice. He was striving for spiritual perfection, for exceptional holiness of life; and while still very young, in a very real and vital sense, he was out to win. He was tremendously in earnest. He made holiness, sanctity, the absorbing interest of his life, and he bent every energy and all his will power to secure skill in the science of the saints.

Not for a single day did he neglect regular practice of his conflict with the enemies of salvation, the devil, the world, the flesh. These are the adversaries against which God's athletes fight a lifelong battle. He was careful not to expose himself to temptations, and when temptations came to him—when, so to say, his opponents broke through his line—he was quick to check the rush and recover his ground. And he was most exact in using the means of securing spiritual strength and agility, without which it is impossible to win in the game of holiness.

The means of becoming strong and active in the ways of God are chiefly two—prayer and mortifica­tion. All the saints were experts in prayer, for prayer is the food that nourishes the soul and strengthens the will to do good and avoid evil. St. John Baptist de la Salle was devoted to prayer. Not only did he recite the community prayers of his Brothers with reverence and attention, but he often prayed while going through the streets and on his long and frequent journeys all over France. He loved to recite the Divine Office, and when walking about he usually had his rosary beads in his hand. Even as a boy he liked to make frequent visits to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. This liking increased with the years, so that if he was wanted at any time, he could almost always be found on his knees in the chapel.

The athletes of God give great attention to a certain kind of prayer that makes the soul grow in suppleness and strength. That form of prayer is what is called mental prayer or meditation. No matter how busy he might be with teaching or studying or superintending schools, St. de la Salle always spent several hours in mental prayer each day, and often he gave to this practice of devotion several hours of the night. As a young priest at Reims, every Friday he would spend the entire night in meditation in the church. Once a priest, who was staying at the Brothers' house, had occasion to go to the saint's room very late at night; he found the holy founder on his knees, intent on his conversation with God. Another time one of the Brothers found it necessary to go to St. de la Salle about four o'clock in the morning. He knocked several times at the door, and receiving no, response, ventured to enter the room. The saint was lying on the floor beside an overturned prie-dieu; completely worn out by his toils and his vigils, he had fallen down exhausted in the midst of his prayers. He was like an athlete who overtaxes his strength and drops unconscious in the middle of the game.

The practice of mortification is an important part of the holy athlete's course of training. St. de la Salle, who knew how valuable this virtue is in laying the foundations of holiness of life, loved it and practiced it up to the hour of his death. As a boy and a young man he had been accustomed to the daintiest food, so when he first went to live with the Brothers the coarser food sometimes actually made him ill. He tried hard to overcome this delicacy of taste, and soon succeeded. One day the cook—who seems to have had the absent-mindedness that characterizes a good many other cooks—accidentally seasoned the food with wormwood. The Brothers had only to taste the dish to discover that a mistake had been made; but St. de la Salle paid no attention to the bitter taste, and continued to eat his portion. That is but one example out of many to show how he practiced exterior mortification.

He was not less adept in the mortification of his mind and heart. When he gave up his canonry and distributed his wealth among the poor, many persons told him to his face that he was a fool. Instead of getting angry or trying to defend himself, the saint would quietly agree with them and ask them to remember him in their charitable prayers. When he opened his first school in Paris some of the rougher elements among the people would hoot at him and pelt him with mud as he went through the streets. Such insults he endured patiently and even gladly, for they made him a little more like to Our Lord, who had been abused and mocked at as He carried His cross through the streets of Jerusalem.

In order to become more and more proficient in holiness of life, St. de la Salle studied the Lives of the Saints, that book which contains the history of God’s most distinguished athletes. He there learned the details of the difficult art of sanctity, and encouraged himself to renewed efforts to grow more and more like to the martyrs and confessors of earlier days. Above all, he read daily in the New Testament, the wonderful book wherein Our Lord Himself has laid down the rules which His athletes are to observe if they would win the eternal crown of glory. He thought so much of this holy volume that he directed his Brothers to carry it about with them always and to read a portion of it every day. For he wanted his Brothers to be God’s athletes, too. They were to be the torch-bearers of Christian learning, and it was in the New Testament that they were to find the source of light and strength.

A mark of the boy athlete is that he is always loyal to his school. He tries to win games, not merely for his own personal glory, but for the honor of the institution he represents; that is why he wears the school’s monogram on his running suit or the block letter on his jersey. Similarly, St. de la Salle was characterized by intense loyalty to our Holy Mother, the Church. He had the deepest reverence and love for the Pope, and he honored and obeyed the bishops as the successors of the Apostles and the repre­sentatives of God. This loyalty of his was severely tested owing to the fact that in the days of Louis XIV in France some Catholics took part in a movement which was condemned by the Church. That movement is known as Jansenism.

The Jansenists were people who had wrong ideas about grace and free will, and who in their conduct aimed at being extremely strict and rigorous. They thought, for example, that only very great saints should receive Holy Communion often, and they made the business of saving one’s soul much harder than it really is. They were something like the Pharisees in the time of Our Lord and like the Puritans in seventeenth century England. Indeed, we can understand this matter fairly well if we try to remember that the Pharisees were long-faced Jews, the Puritans were long-faced Protestants, and the Jansenists were long-faced Catholics.

Although he was a very holy man who could, when necessary, be very severe with himself, St. de la Salle was in no sense a long-faced man. He accounted good humor one of the marks of true devotion. His own habitual expression was gentle and pleasant; and he distinctly tells his Brothers in the rules he composed for their guidance to endeavor to have a cheerful rather than a melancholy countenance. Once he noticed a Brother who was looking somewhat surly and sour, and the holy founder said quietly, "My dear Brother, try not to go around with a face like the door of a jail”.

Nor did he possess those habits of mind of which a long face is the outward indication. He had no sympathy with the gloomy doctrines of the Jansenists, who looked upon God as a sort of tyrant, eager to punish us for all our weaknesses; to him God was a kind and loving Father, who should be served through love rather than through fear. Some very learned and pious men of the time—including the brilliant writer, Pascal—and even some priests and bishops, were Jansenists; but St. de la Salle was on his guard against their errors and took every precaution that his disciples might not be led astray. Some of the Jansenists tried hard to win the saint over to their party, and offered to finance a novitiate for him and to endow several schools; but he would have absolutely nothing to do with them. When the sect was formally condemned by the Pope, St. de la Salle publicly announced his obedience to the Holy Father; and in his last words of advice to his Brothers he urged them to keep ever faithful to the teachings of the Church. Such was the loyalty of a true athlete of Christ.

As the well-rounded athlete excels in many forms of sport, so St. de la Salle carried all the virtues to a high degree of perfection. His active faith, his ardent love of God, his self-sacrificing devotion to the welfare of his neighbor, his deep humility, his spotless purity, and his desire to do in all things the holy will of God, were the admiration of all who knew him. Every practice of Catholic piety was dear to his heart. He loved the Mother of God with a tender, filial devotion, and always spoke of her as the Most Blessed Virgin, a beautiful custom which is to this day perpetuated by the Brothers and their pupils. He placed his Institute under the protection of St. Joseph, and he urged his Brothers to encourage their students to have a special devotion to the Holy Guardian Angels. A saint to whom he was particularly attached was like himself a teacher-saint, St. Cassian or Cassianus, who is one of the characters in Cardinal Wiseman’s novel, “Fabiola”.

When we read of the many schools founded by St. de la Salle, of the success with which he formed his teachers, of the numerous improvements which he introduced in educational work, of the great good he performed in the world, we may well wonder how he managed to do so much and to do it so thoroughly and well. The secret of his success is his holiness of life. The roots of the tree he planted and made to grow so tall and straight were his Christian virtues. He was able to work manfully for the Church and for the state, for the salvation of souls and for the spread of learning, because he was a superb athlete of God.