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"His employments were different, yet he was indifferent to all employment, and different from them all, his soul not taking its colour from his affairs and conversations, as the chameleon does from the places where it is, but remaining ever wholly united to God, ever white in purity, ever red with charity, and ever full of humility. "I am not ignorant, Theotimus, of that wise man's counsel,
Still more then may one suffer them with little charity. Now, I say, Theotimus, that it may come to pass that a very small virtue may be of greater value in a soul where divine love fervently reigns, than martyrdom itself in a soul where love is languishing, feeble, and dull. Thus, the least virtues of our Blessed Lady of St.
You know that it was on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception that he received episcopal consecration, and at the same time that inward unction which we learn so much of from the history of his life. He also dedicated his Theotimus to the Queen of Sovereign Charity, and preached continually and with extraordinary sweetness and fervour upon the perfections and greatness of that divine Mother.
In a remarkable passage in Theotimus the Saint asks: "Were there not heretics, who, to exalt charity towards the poor, deprecated charity towards God, ascribing man's whole salvation to almsdeeds, as St. Augustine witnesses?"
Our Blessed Father treats of this mingling of love and sorrow proper to true penitence with so much grace and gravity in his Theotimus that I think nothing grander or sweeter could be written on the subject. Here is an extract.
Hence the disorders which we see in the world around us and the truth, that, while many are called few are chosen. On this subject our Blessed Father speaks as follows in his Theotimus: "We are," he says, "to will our salvation in such sort as God wills it; now He wills it by way of desire, and we also must incessantly desire it, in conformity with His desire.
So, Theotimus, if with equal charity one should suffer death by martyrdom, and another suffer only hunger by fasting, who does not see that the value of this fasting will not, on that account, be equal to that of martyrdom?
In another of his books, speaking to Theotimus, he says: "All true lovers of God are equal in this, that all give their heart to God, and with all their strength; but they are unequal in this, that they give it diversely and in different manners, whence some give all their heart, with all their strength, but less perfectly than others.
O happy fault which merited to have such and so great a Redeemer! Truly, Theotimus, we may say, as did he of old, 'We were ruined, had we not been undone; that is, ruin brought us profit, since in effect human nature, through being redeemed by its Saviour, has received more graces than ever it would have received if Adam had remained innocent."
An extract from Theotimus will close this subject most suitably: "Remorse which positively excludes the love of God is infernal, it is like that of the lost. Repentance which does not regret the love of God, even though as yet it is without it, is good and desirable, but imperfect: it can never save us until it attains to love, and is mingled with it.
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