On Human Respect

One of the greatest obstacles to solid virtue is human respect. This malady of the soul consists in a depraved desire to please men, and in a servile fear of displeasing them.

It is clear that it originates in pride, from which this fear of contempt and love of esteem arise. Therefore, searching the inmost recesses of your heart, seriously examine:

1st. Whether you have not committed many evil deeds from this vain fear of displeasing others, and omitted many good works out of a base desire to please them. If you have done so "Know that for all these God will bring you unto judgment." (Eccle. xi. 9.) This plague is a mad folly, the most galling tyranny and the greatest contempt of God.

2d. Inquire diligently whether you believe with a lively faith the following oracles of Eternal Truth. "No man can serve two masters" (Matt. vi. 24.); that is to say, Christ and the world. "Whoever will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God." (St. James iv. 4.) "If I did yet please men I should not be the servant of Christ." (Gal. i. 10.) "God hath scattered the bones of them that please men." (Ps. lii. 6.)

Examine, therefore, whether you seek not the favor of men by ceremonious behavior, by abject flattery, by fulsome praise, by imitating the manners of worldlings? Senseless mortal that you are! what you so eagerly seek is as dust, which is blown away, as smoke that is scattered abroad by the wind, as a thin fog which is dispersed by the storm. You are like the dog in the fable which lost the reality by snatching at the shadow; you neglect eternal, that you may enjoy transitory goods.

3d. Consider whether you are practically persuaded of this truth, which is inculcated by Christ. "Fear ye not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear Him that can cast both body and soul into Hell." (Matt. x. 28.) See, therefore, whether you are firmly resolved to incur the displeasure and hatred of men; to be harassed by jests and mockeries of your companions, to be excluded from their gatherings, to be ridiculed, despised and shunned by them, rather than offend God by a single venial sin. Why do you hesitate?

Hear what the Holy Spirit says: "Be not ashamed of any of these things, and accept no person to sin thereby." (Eccl. xlii. 1.) "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm." (Jer. xvii. 5.)

4th. Lastly, examine whether you are troubled and take it ill when others speak coldly to you, avoid your company, turn away from you, and shun you? This is the very thing, you say, which is so hard to nature and which stings me.

But tell me why do you grieve at the removal of deceptions? Why do you lament the drying up of a source of much weariness of spirit? Why do you regret the loss of that companionship, the abstaining from which will one day be your joy?

Is not God better to you than a dozen such companions, yea, than a thousand of such erring, inconsistent and wicked friends? Rather rejoice that the world hates you, for it is a sign that Christ has chosen you from out of the world. "If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you." (St. John xv. 19.) Be glad, therefore, and rejoice. "Know ye that it hated Me before you." (St. John xv. 18.) "The disciple is not above his Master." (Matt. x. 24.)

Rejoice exceedingly that you are treated by the world in the same manner in which Christ was treated.

Finally, this transitory contempt, which tepid persons evince for you, is abundantly compensated for by the genuine and enduring esteem of the just on earth, and the Blessed in Heaven. Yea, these very scoffers, at the end of their lives, and on the last day, will praise you. Although such revilers may have "a forehead of brass" (Is. xlviii. 4), God will give you, if you carry out your heroic resolution, "a face stronger than their faces, and a forehead harder than their foreheads." (Ezech. iii. 8.)

You have only to receive their taunts and railleries for the first few days with undaunted courage, and you shall have conquered. These very same people will afterwards praise you, and, as they thought little of you, when you were like themselves, so will they revere you now for being unlike themselves.

Follow, then, the advice of St. Paul: Turn your back upon the world and let it be crucified; laugh at it, when it laughs; despise it, when it despises; and setting at naught its judgments, fear only the judgments of God.