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1592 A.D. May 17 How great soever his love was for his profession, he found several difficulties in it which made him think of leaving it. He was not able, notwithstanding all the care he could take, to hinder a flock of goats he had in charge from sometimes trespassing on another's land. This occasioned his relinquishing the care of that flock. But he found other troubles in taking care of other cattle. Some of his companions, not having the same piety as himself, were too much addicted to cursing, quarrelling, and fighting, and they were not to be reclaimed by his gentle rebukes on these accounts. He was therefore determined to leave them, in order not to be party to their crimes. And to learn the will of God in this important choice of a state of life in which he might most faithfully serve Him, he redoubled his prayers, fasts, and other austerities. After some time spent in this manner, he determined to become a religious man. Those to whom he first disclosed his inclination to a religious state pointed out to him several richly-endowed monasteries. But that circumstance alone was enough to disgust him, and his answer was, "I was born poor, and I am resolved to live and die in poverty and penance." Being at that time twenty years of age, he left his master, his friends, and his country and went into the kingdom of Valentia where there was an austere monastery of barefoot reformed Franciscans, called Soccolans, which stood in a desert solitude but at no great distance from the town of Montfort. He addressed himself to the fathers of this house for spiritual advice and, in the meantime, entered into the service of certain farmers in the neighborhood to keep their sheep. He continued here his penitential and retired life in assiduous prayer and was known in the whole country by the name of the Holy Shepherd. To sequester himself from the world, he made the more haste to petition for the habit of a lay brother in the house above-mentioned and was admitted in 1564. The fathers desired to persuade him to enter himself among the clerks or those who aspired to holy orders and sing the divine office in the choir, but they were obliged to yield to his humility and admit him among the lay brothers of the community. He was not only a fervent novice, which we often see, but also a most fervent religious man, always advancing and never losing ground. Though his rule was most austere, he added continually to its severity but always with simplicity of heart, without the least attachment to his own will, and whenever he was admonished of any excess in his practices of mortification, he most readily confined himself to the letter of his rule. The meanest employments always gave him the highest satisfaction. Whenever he changed convents according to the custom of his order, the better to prevent any secret attachments of the heart, he never complained of anything nor so much as said that he found anything in one house more agreeable than in another because, being entirely dead to himself, he everywhere sought only God. He never allowed himself a moment of repose between the Church and cloister duties and his work, nor did his labor interrupt his prayer. He had never more than one habit, and that always threadbare. He walked without sandals in the snow and on the roughest roads. He accommodated himself to all places and seasons and was always content, cheerful, mild, affable, and full of respect for all. He thought himself honored if employed in any painful and low office to serve anyone. The general of the order happening to be at Paris, Paschal was sent thither to him about some necessary business of his province. Many of the cities through which he was to pass in France were in the hands of the Huguenots who were then in arms. Yet he offered himself to a martyrdom of obedience, traveled in his habit and without so much as sandals on his feet, was often pursued by the Huguenots with sticks and stones, and received a wound on one shoulder of which he remained lame as long as he lived. He was twice taken for a spy, but God delivered him out of all dangers. On the very day on which he arrived at his monastery from this tedious journey, he went out to his work and other duties as usual. He never spoke of anything that had happened to him in his journey unless asked, and then was careful to suppress whatever might reflect on him the least honor or praise. He had a singular devotion to the Mother of God, whose intercession he never ceased to implore that he might be preserved from sin. The holy Sacrament of the altar was the object of his most tender devotion as was the Passion of our divine Redeemer. He spent, especially towards the end of his life, a considerable part of the night at the foot of the altar on his knees or prostrate on the ground. In prayer he was often favored with ecstasies and raptures. He died at Villa Reale near Valentia on May 17, 1592 at the age of fifty-two. His body was exposed three days, during which time the great multitudes, which from all parts visited the church, were witnesses to many miracles by which God attested the sanctity of his servant. St.Paschal was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1618 and canonized by Alexander VIII in 1690. If Christians in every station endeavored with their whole strength continually to advance in virtue, the Church would be filled with saints. But alas, though it be an undoubted maxim that not to go on in a spiritual life is to fall back, "Nothing is more rare," says St. Bernard, "than to find persons who always press forward. We see more converted from vice to virtue than increase their fervor in virtue." This is something dreadful. The same father assigns two principal reasons. First, many who begin well after some time grow again remiss in the exercises of mortification and prayer and return to the amusements, pleasures, and vanities of a worldly life. Secondly, others who are regular and constant in exterior duties neglect to watch over and cultivate their interior so that some interior spiritual vice insinuates itself into their affections and renders them an abomination in the eyes of God. "A man," says St. Bernard, "who gives himself up entirely to exterior exercises without looking seriously into his own heart to see what passes there imposes upon himself, imagining that he is something while he is nothing. His eyes being always fixed on his exterior actions, he flatters himself that he goes on well and neither sees nor feels the secret worm which gnaws and consumes his heart. He keeps all fasts, assists at all parts of the divine office, and fails in no exercise of piety or penance, yet God declares, 'His heart is far from me.' He only employs his hands in fulfilling the precepts, and his heart is hard and dry. His duties are complied with by habit and a certain rotation; he omits not a single iota of all his exterior employments, but while he strains at a gnat, he swallows a camel. In his heart he is a slave to self-will and is a prey to avarice, vainglory, and ambition; one or other or all of these vices together reign in his soul." |
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