Self-Conquest - December 28
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Self-Conquest
Once a day, at least, recall very earnestly that
I Cor. iii. 15Ꚛ Twenty-eighth Day of December
“If any man will come after Me,” Jesus Christ our Lord ha£ said, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”—Matt. xvi. 24.
The Christian soldier must be willing to carry his cross after Jesus Christ, Who opened heaven to us by the cross, and conducts His soldiers thither by the way of the cross. Embrace, then, O my soul, this happy instrument of thy salvation, in which, if thou bearest it in a proper manner, thou wilt find an inexhaustible source of grace and comfort. Embrace the holy will of God, which lays the cross upon thee, to bring thee to Himself. He knows what is best for thee, because He is infinitely wise, and He sends thee what He knows is for the best, because He is infinitely good, and good to thee. Thou canst not be in a safer or better way than in the way of the cross, by which Jesus Christ and all His saints have gone to heaven. Even in this life, the true soldiers of Christ find often a greater sweetness in the cross than in all the pleasure of this world.
Consider that the soldiers of Christ are all called, even as His first disciples were, to follow Him; that is, to walk in His footsteps by an imitation of His life. He came down from heaven to be our teacher and our model, and it is the great duty of all that desire to belong to Him to copy after this blessed original and to show forth in themselves the life of Jesus Christ; to learn of Him to be meek and humble of heart; to learn of Him poverty of spirit, a contempt of the honors, riches, and pleasures of this world, and a disengagement of the heart from all earthly things; to learn of Him a horror of sin, and an obedience even unto death; in fine, to learn of Him a perpetual conformity to the will of God, and an unbounded charity to every neighbor. Such was the life of Jesus Christ, and such ought to be the life of all His soldiers.
—Challoner.
You may have seen a picture of the Babe of Bethlehem asleep in the manger, while above His head moves the sad procession in which He is carrying His cross to Calvary. This dream of the Holy Child reminds us of a deep and touching truth. From the first moment of His life all the anguish of His coming passion was present to Our Saviour; waking or sleeping He never lost sight of it. He looked forward to it with dread, indeed, and yet with most earnest longing.
To me the cross is terrible—I cannot help that; yet, if I love Jesus Christ ever so little,'I will try to bear it cheerfully for His dear sake.
“The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom, and dost thou seek for thyself rest and joy?” (a Kempis, ii. 12).
Many bitter tears have been shed and will be shed to the end of time at the remembrance of opportunities forever gone when we might have shown kindness, sympathy, and forbearance, and would not; perhaps there will be a special purgatory for those who have failed in kindness, with the memory of those plaintive words of Jesus, “Inasmuch as you did it not to the least of My brethren, you did it not to Me.” Let us then endeavor, by an attentive watchfulness, to avoid, on the one hand, giving those little pains so common in everyday life; and, on the other, to render those trivial kindnesses which cost us so little, to make allowances for the possible or invisible trials of others, which will prevent us from being astonished at their apparent weakness in supporting little crosses. And a happy thing it will be for us to have gone on our way through life, gentl