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I wished to leave Rome on the second day of Lent, and I called on the Holy Father at a time when all Rome was on the Corso. His Holiness welcomed me most graciously, and said he was surprised that I had not gone to see the sights on the Corso like everybody else.
Precisely so will it be in the moral world, and with reference to the holiness of God. That man who simply neglects to prepare himself to see a holy God, though he never denies that there is such a Being, will find the vision just as unendurable to him, as it is to the most determined of earthly skeptics.
The Pope, or rather the Cardinals, his advisers' conceiving that so great an instance of complaisance as the journey of His Holiness to Paris ought not to go for nothing; demanded a compensation, which, had they been better acquainted with Bonaparte's character and policy, they would never have dreamed of soliciting.
There seems to exist in every human being, no matter how deeply hidden, an inexhaustible desire for contact with the Infinite. And this desire can be as easily played upon by the tricks of impostors as by the holiness of saints, or the divine grace of saviours.
'What things soever ye desire'; it is that which gives intensity to your prayers, as well as 'believing that ye receive'. The Psalmist's words are equally fitting 'As the hart panteth after the water brooks' as the hunted deer longs for the stream 'so panteth my soul after Thee, O God'. That means more than a contention for the doctrine, more than a sentimental admiration of Holiness.
Oh, that people, in their enquiries about this blessing of holiness, would keep this one thing before their minds, that it is being saved from sin! sin in act, in purpose, in thought! I have a beautiful letter, received a short time ago from a young lady, who wrote me soon after my former services in the West End.
In his turn Pierre strove to show himself conciliatory in order that he might not further ulcerate that violent, grief-stricken soul: "Your Eminence," said he, "may be sure that I shall endeavour to remember every one of the kind words which your Eminence has spoken to me, in the same way as I shall remember the fatherly greeting of his Holiness Leo XIII."
Now, I am second to no one in admiration of the Pope's behaviour; the amnesty was a splendid action." "I am sure His Holiness ought to feel flattered " Grassini began contemptuously. "There, Grassini, do let the man speak!" Riccardo interrupted in his turn. "It's a most extraordinary thing that you two never can keep from sparring like a cat and dog. Get on, Galli!"
I was their only child; and the first ten years of my life were passed in much the same manner as those of other children of my sex and condition. I attended school, and received a good education; and my parents endeavored to instill the most pious precepts into my mind, to the end, they said, that I might become a vessel of holiness to the Lord.
And then at last, when there was no more human nobleness, no more agony left for Him to fulfil, no gem in the crown of holiness which He had not won as His own, no drop in the cup of misery which He had not drained as His own; when at last He was made perfect through suffering, and His strength had been made perfect in weakness, then He bowed that bleeding, thorn-crowned head, and said, "It is finished.
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