Publisher's Synopsis
Taken from sixty-nine canonized saints and ninety holy priests, religious, and lay people, each one of the more than 800 passages in this book comprises a most potent salve with which to treat and heal the wound of weariness. That salve is hope. "The Christian motto is Hope!" declares St. Theophane Vénard. "Hope on! Hope ever! O Christian hope, how beautiful thou art! How thou dost satisfy the heart of man, the creature of a day, and yet created for an eternity of bliss!" We are not made for this world. We are here for a brief moment only, a day in via. Heaven awaits us, and we would do well to remember the fact more often. "Dear mystery of [heavenly] glory!" Fr. Faber exclaims,
Why do we not call thee to mind more often than we do? Surely we stand in need of it. How weary we grow in well-doing. What a strange life is the spiritual life; to overcome one obstacle is only a guarantee that a worse one will be given us to overcome; labor leads to labor and away from rest. A temptation vanquished is only the miraculous multiplication of temptations; and the devils, like the flies, come in greater crowds the more we beat them away. How long can we go on? It seems desperate, an affair of moments, like the struggles of a drowning man to keep himself on the surface. The longer we persevere the more impossible does perseverance seem. Of many things it may be true that the first blow is half the battle: who will dare to say it is so with the spiritual life? Yet sometimes we turn from the thought of glory as if it were a selfish and unworthy thought, a not loving God for His own sake, nor an exclusive seeking of His sole glory. But is this wisdom? Is this humility? Not such was the lowly wisdom of the Psalmist, I have inclined my heart to perform Thy justifications for ever, because of the retribution! Set but the thought of Heaven to fight with the sight of earth, and we ourselves in our inmost souls shall have peace to think of God. (The Blessed Sacrament, 103-104)Would we but think on Heaven, how well we would realize-defeatism is not an option.
