States of Christian Life and Vocation, According to the Doctors and Theologians of the Church/Part 1/Section 2/ARTICLE I. The State of Tendency to Perfection, or the Religious State/CHAPTER III. EXCELLENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS STATE.

CHAPTER III. EXCELLENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS STATE.
THE religious state, so deserving of respect for its antiquity and divine origin, does not deserve less on account of its end, and the means it affords for the attainment of that end. To understand this matter, we must go back to principles that we have already mentioned.

" Every art," says Suarez, " has an object at which it aims. The state of perfection has its end, too, in view of which it bears with all its trials. This end is nothing more than the perfection of the Christian life." " We have said, before, that the perfection of the Christian life is nothing more than the perfection of charity. However, the state of perfection has not solely in view the perfection of essential charity, which is common to all conditions of life, and which all Christians must possess who live up to their faith. The religious state has in view a perfect charity still greater and of higher excellence."

" The perfection essential to all states requires in man a disposition to fulfil all the commandments of God, and it consists in the life of grace.

" The profession of Christianity is ordained to enable man to reach, at least, that amount of perfection, and it supplies the means necessary and sufficient for that object. It is true that those who are in the common state, that is, in the world, have it in their power to perform works of supererogation, and, with God's grace, to grow as much as they choose in Christian perfection ; but their condition of life does not bind them to do so; nor does it furnish them any special means therefor.

" The state of perfection, and the religious state in particular, has also chiefly in view the fulfilment of the commandments. Next to the full remission of sin, the most important requisite for salvation is the preservation of grace and the avoidance of mortal sin. And because this twofold work is very hard for fallen nature, a state has been opened in which the occasions of sin are fewer, and the danger of losing grace less formidable : and this is one of the purposes of the state of perfection."

" Add to what has already been said, that the state of perfection, and consequently the religious state, has for end, not only the keeping of the commandments, that is to say, the avoidance of mortal sin, which is absolutely indispensable for salvation, but it aims, besides, at the complete observance of precepts which shut out as far as possible even venial sins, because that degree of perfection is more necessary and peremptory than the keeping of the counsel.

Finally, the perfection aimed at by the religious state consists in a desire to do the will of God, not only as manifested in the commandments, but also as pointed out to us by the counsels.

What a sublime purpose ! The religious state has for its aim to beget in men, even in this life, a disposition similar to that of the blessed in heaven. It seeks to establish the reign of God in its fulness here on earth, and to have the adorable will of the Lord done in this world as it is done in heaven itself.

But, in every wisely planned state, the means appointed for the attainment of its end must be in keeping with the end itself. Now, the state of perfection, or the religious state, has in view a degree of virtue higher than the charity which is imperative on all, and which consists in the fulfilment of the commandments. The religious state, therefore, must supply the soul with helps for perfection of a far nobler nature than are to be found in the common state of the commandments. For this very reason, too, it must, besides the keeping of the commandments, insist on and require the practice of the counsels. And so it does. We have seen that every one of the counsels promised to God by vow pertains to the substance of the perfect religious life. And these three counsels, according to St. Thomas, remove everything that could hinder man from tending fully to God. For they do away with, in the first place, the desire of worldly possessions, by the vow of poverty ; secondly, sensual enjoyments, by the vow of chastity ; and, lastly, the disorders of self-will, which are repressed by the vow of obedience. Moreover, the cares of the world, which choke desire for perfection, arise, first, from the management of earthly goods: but this source of anxiety is put an end to by poverty ; in the next place, from the responsibilities of a family : and this the religious is freed from by his vow of chastity ; thirdly, from the direction of one's own actions : and obedience rids us of all anxiety on this head.

What we say here is scarcely anything more than a translation of the words of St. Thomas in his " Sum of Theology." The treasures that we find in it make us admire the perfection of the means which the religious state possesses for the attainment of its end ; and they display the wisdom of God who has established that state for the perfection of the children of his holy Church. But there is something besides this. St. Thomas adds that the three vows of the evangelical counsels make a complete holocaust of man. Man has three sorts of goods : the goods of fortune, the goods of the body, which he offers up by the vow of chastity ; and the goods of the soul, that are given to God by the vow of obedience. When man has thus consecrated himself with all that he is and has to God, then it is that he truly becomes a religious.

To be a religious is to perform acts that are a worship of God. Now, sacrifice holds the chief place among such acts, and the most perfect sacrifice is the holocaust, whereby not only a part, but the whole victim, is offered to God. When, therefore, by the three vows of the evangelical counsels, man makes a holocaust of himself, he has performed the grandest act of religion, and he deserves to be called a religious in the highest sense of the name. No Catholic can deny what we are taught in the school of St. Thomas and Suarez on the perfection of the end and means of the religious state ; for, to put the secular life on the same footing as the religious would be to revive the error of Vigilantius.

The teaching of these great masters is the noblest apology of the religious life.

In defence of this divine institution unbelievers and worldlings have been told that as, according to their own principles, every one is free to live as he pleases, they ought not to complain of men using their liberty to choose the better part ; that often the misfortunes and deceptions of the world lead unhappy persons to despair and suicide, who in a cloister would have found peace for the present and hope for the future. Assuredly these statements are true; but there is more than that to be said in behalf of the religious life. Those who accused religious of leading an idle life, and of being useless to society, received a ready answer from St. Bernard and the Angelical : " It is not without a purpose that we hide ourselves in cloisters and in forests. I think there is no one among us who, if he did in the world the quarter of what he does here, would not be venerated as a saint, or pass for an angel. Yet he is daily reproached for the uselessness of his life."

And to confirm the truth of these words, apologists have had only to show the religious state in the course of Christian ages, and even at the present day, forming the fairest ornament, as well as the greatest strength, of the Church ; giving to God the glory which so many men refuse him ; appeasing his wrath by the fervor of prayer, the heroism of penance, and the purity of a holy life ; shielding against heresy the rights and doctrines of the Church ; strengthening Catholics in the faith ; defying every danger, to carry the light of the Gospel to nations buried in the darkness of unbelief; presenting to every one the spectacle of the grandest virtues ; instructing the ignorant ; in its solitude, saving science and letters that once had no other refuge ; keeping for ages to come the precious books delivered by antiquity , ransoming from barbarians the enslaved and manacled captive ; raising these monuments that are the masterpieces of Christian art, and which modern genius has not been able to rival ; opening hospitable asylums to every misfortune and every suffering; visiting the sick; providing for the poor ; clearing the forest ; draining marshes ; fertilizing the most arid deserts, and all that, at the cost of sacrifices which the world does not even know how to admire.

By such fruits the tree can be known. No serious mind will be deceived, even though on so fertile a tree there should be some twigs that bear no fruit some dry and worm-eaten branches.

But to the enlightened and sincere Catholic nothing can, it seems to us, give a grander and more correct notion of the religious state than what we have said on the perfection of its end and its means, and consequently of its superiority to the common Christian life.