"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.""I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
These words of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ contain an abridgment of all the motives for our faith, our hope, and our love. The life of the soul, the true life, the eternal life, is the only end of man and the dearest desire of his heart. Jesus Christ has declared to us that He is Himself this life, and that we can only be completely and supremely and eternally happy in the possession of Him. Therefore He alone must be the one sovereign and unchanging object of our love.
The means of attaining to this true life is by knowing and embracing the truth, and by drawing away, in our mind and heart, from all that is false and untrue. Now Jesus Christ tells us that He is the Truth, the infallible Truth, the essential Truth; and therefore everything outside Him must be falsehood and untruth. We ought then to apply ourselves to know Jesus Christ thoroughly, and we ought to employ all the strength of our mind and all the honesty of our heart with that intention; we ought to regulate our judgment of things upon His, our affections upon His, being certain that there is nothing really estimable and lovable but what He esteems and loves.
But by what way shall we attain the Truth? By Jesus Christ, Who assures us that He also is the Way, and the only Way, which can guide us to truth and life. It was on purpose to guide us and instruct us that He was made man, that He gave us in His own human Person united to the Divine Nature a most perfect model, and a model also that was perceptible and proportioned to our weakness, and that to this perfect example He united all the teaching contained in the precepts and the evangelical counsels. Let us see then what Jesus Christ taught. All His doctrine reduced itself to two heads: the love of God and of our neighbour. In the love of God is comprised the legitimate love which we may have for ourselves, in such a manner that the more we love God, the more we love ourselves, because to love God is to love our own true and sovereign and only Good. The love of God must also essentially exclude the love of creatures for their own sake, and looked at as being our good. It excludes in the same manner also all self-love; that is to say, no creature must love itself for its own sake, nor refer to itself the love it ought to have for God only, for this would be to reverse the order which commands us to love God for Himself alone, and ourselves and everything else in God and for God's sake. All our love therefore is due to God and to God alone, and He ought to be the end of all our affections, without any exception. What detachment, what self-abnegation, what a spirit of disinterestedness, does this love of God require, if we wish to practise it in all its purity! Every kind of self-love, whatever its immediate object may be, is a robbery from God. All self-interest, all consideration for ourselves, all views of our own advantage, all inordinate desire even of our own perfection, all this stains the infinite purity of Divine love. Hence it follows that the more a soul is dead to herself, the more utterly annihilated she is, the more also she loves God. Hence all the crosses and trials and deprivations of all kinds, and everything that tears us from ourselves, are the only steps by which we can ascend to the true love of God. When this one truth is well understood it throws a brilliant light upon all the teaching of Jesus Christ; it makes us comprehend the conduct of God in the sanctification of souls, it shows us that the practice of Divine love consists in sacrifice, and that the more we renounce ourselves the more truly and sincerely do we love. That hatred of ourselves which Jesus Christ commands is then seen to be a true love, and the love of ourselves which Jesus Christ condemns is seen to be a real hatred. To hate one's soul, in the sense of the Gospel, is to save it; to love one's soul is to lose it.
As to the love of our neighbour, Jesus Christ teaches us to look upon all men as our brothers by creation and redemption; He teaches us that the whole human race only composes one family, of which God is the Father, of which His only Son is the Saviour, of which Heaven is the inheritance, and that all the members of this family would one day possess that inheritance in common, if they would only correspond with the designs of God for them. Thus, we ought to love our neighbour because God loves him, because Jesus Christ loves him, and we ought to put no other bounds to this love than those which Jesus Christ has set; that is to say, we ought to be ready to suffer everything from our neighbour, we ought to forgive him everything, we ought to do him all the good we possibly can, even to give, if necessary, our life for his salvation; for it is thus that Jesus Christ wishes us to love him, following His Divine example.
That which Jesus Christ taught us, He practised Himself first of all in all its perfection; He proposed Himself as our model, but He did infinitely more than ever He asks of us.
He recommends us to be detached from the good things of this world; and He was born, He lived, and died in the greatest poverty. He never possessed anything whatever on earth neither land, nor house, nor money; and He saw His very clothes divided and torn up before He died.
He recommends to us the renunciation of the pleasures of the world; and from His cradle to the cross His life was only one unbroken tissue of sufferings: He never enjoyed a single moment of rest on earth.
He recommends us to fly from the honours of the world; and He willingly embraced every kind of humiliation. He was born in a stable; He worked in the shop of a poor artisan; he lived on alms during the whole time of His. public ministry; He was calumniated, outraged, persecuted, betrayed, denied, condemned to the most shameful punishment as a blasphemer and deceiver of the people.
Envy, malignity, contempt, derision, and rage were carried against him to the greatest excess; never was any wretched criminal or any public pest treated in a manner so cruel and so unworthy.
This was the life of Jesus Christ on earth. And in all these circumstances there was not one that He had not desired and chosen by preference; it was He Himself Who designed the whole course of His life and arranged all its sufferings. This choice was the choice of God Himself, and therefore an infinitely wise choice. This choice had for its end the reparation of the glory of God; it is then by poverty, by sufferings, and by humiliations that God wishes to be glorified. This choice had also for its object the salvation of the human race; and Jesus Christ, in saving us by this way of sorrow, has shown us what we also must do to save ourselves. Our little crosses, united to the heavy cross of our Lord and Saviour, are to be the means of our salvation, and the necessary and only means. Finally, this choice was for Jesus Christ at last the source of the greatest happiness and glory. And it will be the same for all the true lovers of the cross without exception: the more poor in heart they are here, the richer they will be in Heaven; the more they have suffered here, the greater will be their consolation there; the more they have been humbled here, the greater will be their glory there; in fact, the more they have been annihilated in this world, the more will they share in Heaven in the very Being of God.
To believe all this, to practise it, to persevere in it faithfully till death, is, according to the expression of Saint Paul, to be "clothed with Jesus Christ;" it is to follow Him as the Way, it is to love Him as the Truth, it is to possess Him even in this world as the Life.
This Way is one; this Truth is one; this Life is one. Whoever does not walk in this Way draws away from the truth, and will never live with the true life. The contrary way is the way of falsehood, which ends in eternal death. There is no middle course; we must follow one way or the other. Happy are those who have taken Jesus Christ for their guide, and who walk in His light! they will arrive at the same end. Then the Way will pass, but the Truth and the Life will remain for ever.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou