his duty; but when he went, without
absolute need, and shared in the repugnant cares which the most devoted
servants of Christ in the hospitals undertake only after struggles and
heroic victory over revolted nature he rose to sublimity. It was because
he saw in the poor the suffering members of the Saviour; to love the
poor man, it is not enough to wish him well, we must respect him, and we
cannot respect him as much as any child of God deserves without seeing
in him the image of Jesus Christ himself. No one acquires love for God
without being soon wholly enkindled by it; thus it was no longer
sufficient for Mgr. de Laval to instruct and console the poor and the
sick, he served them also in the most abject duties, going as far as to
wash with his own hands their sores and ulcers. A madman, the world will
say; why not content one's self with attending those people without
indulging in the luxury of heroism so repugnant? This would have
sufficed indeed to relieve nature, but would it have taught those
incurable and desperate cases that they were the first friends of Jesus
Christ, that the Church looked upon them as its jewels, and that their
fate from the point of view of eternity was enviable to all? It would
have relieved without consoling and raising the poor man to the height
which belongs to him in Christian society. Official assistance, with the
best intentions in the world, the most ingenious organization and the
most perfect working, can, however, never be charity in the perfectly
Christian sense of this word. If it could allay all needs and heal all
sores it would still have accomplished only half of the task: relieving
the body without reaching the soul. And man does not live by bread
alone. He who has been disinherited of the boons of fortune, family and
health, he who is incurable and who despairs of human joys needs
something else besides the most comfortable hospital room that can be
imagined; he needs the words which fell from the lips of God: "Blessed
are the poor, blessed are they that suffer, blessed are they that
mourn." He needs a pitying heart, a tender witness to indigence nobly
borne, a respectful friend of his misfortune, still more than that, a
worshipper of Jesus hidden in the persons of the poor, the orphan and
the sick. They have become rare in the world, these real friends of the
poor; the more assistance has become organized, the more charity seems
to have lost its true nature; and perhaps we m