IV
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint and Coppens, Charles
A third cause that made the life of Christ so holy was that He did everything perfectly well: “He hath done all things well” (St. Mark vii, 37). Our goodness does not consist so much in what we do as in the manner in which we do it. In fact, during the thirty years of His private life, which we are now studying, Christ did no great things whatever. His occupations were of the humblest kind; millions of men are doing the same day after day; but His actions derived their excellence from the perfection wherewith He did them, and our goodness consists in imitating His perfect manner of acting.
The excellence of a masterpiece in painting and sculpture results from the excellent delicacy and appropriateness of every, even the smallest, detail; the beauty of a specimen of good penmanship does not result from bold dashes, but from the perfection of every single letter; and so the excellence of the life of Christ, and the lives of those who wish to become like unto Him, lies not in doing great things, but in doing everything excellently well.
Few of us, if any, have occasion of doing many great things in the course of our life; but we can all, with God’s grace, do a multitude of little things well, and thus resemble our Divine model. Our crown in Heaven will not consist of some one or two magnificent jewels, as does the crown of many glorious Martyrs, but of countless little gems, each shining with its own peculiar lustre. These are the lessons we should learn from the private life of the God incarnate.