Page:TheYoungMansGuide.djvu/518

 produces continually, in this direction also, fresh buds and blossoms. And it is in the peasant, artisan, and industrial classes, youths are ever and again to be found, whom the voice of God calls, and forcibly impels to enter the hallowed precincts of the cloister. What are we to think concerning this vocation to the religious life? Lay to heart in the first place the happiness of such a vocation.

2. The judgment of the short-sighted world is entirely false when it imagines the life of a Religious to be joyless, melancholy, depressing, more or less unhappy. The monk must indeed renounce much which men regard as pleasure and enjoyment, but only to be compensated a hundred-fold by higher and purer joys. Have you ever seen a vine pruned? The process seems to hurt the vine and bitter drops, like tears, ooze from the stem; yet it proves to be for its good, and increases its value. Thus it is with a Religious. All the sacrifices which he has perchance to make, do but augment his happiness; they increase that peace which, as Christ says, "the world can not give." And fee same divine Redeemer gives this assurance to those who serve and follow Him: "My yoke is sweet, and my burden light."

3. Consider attentively another remarkable utterance which the Saviour spoke. When St. Peter asked: "Behold, we have left all things and have followed thee. What