There are various explanations for all the calamities, sorrows, misfortunes that weigh down on this poor human race; a thousand reasons, some true, some mistaken. We call one another the perpetrators of our misfortunes, we lay all the blame on one another, we give one another a cup of bitterness full to drink, we often rejoice in one another’s humiliation, and successful tears sometimes cannot cover the joy of the malignant joy of our interior.
And we cannot come to the true cause of the source of our misfortunes and sorrows, because we seek it not in the heart but in reason; because we seek it in the outer world, while it lives in our interior; because happiness does not reside in reason but in the heart, because not reason but the heart is the vouchsafe of our consolation, freedom and joy; because not reason but the heart transforms the earth into paradise, because not reason but the heart can save us! … We see millions of people unlearned but happy; you will not find a happy man with a giant reason and a dwarfish heart! Blessed indeed is he whose reason and heart, thought and feeling are in balance; but such a balance can only be maintained by love, which includes: earth and heaven, man and God!
Let us seek happiness as we wish and where we wish: in individuals, in families, in nations, if it is not based on love, if it does not flow from love, it is a delusion, it is a delusion!
Let’s look for love as we want, let’s look where we want, if not, like wheat from the sun, from the love of God will flow, such love is nothing!
“Love your friend in God, and your enemy for God,” says St. Gregory the Saint. The lack of love, more perhaps than when in this selfish age, is felt, and this lack of love, is this electric conductor, which draws the lightning of doom to the world. The more love in the heart tightens, the more love’s contradictory passion inflates: jealousy; and this passion as a hurricane blows the peace of the soul, destroying this flower of freedom barely developed, for love only under the protection of freedom can be! Ah! why do we want to voluntarily deprive ourselves of this established consolation, this whole consolation, which cold life warms, hard life softens, bitter life sweetens?
You love people, but this love does not make you happy! – Why? – Because you do not love for God, but for yourself; because you demand the love of reward not from God, but from people; you do not love God, therefore you will never learn to love people too!
Just ask this poor exile in a foreign land, let him tell you the story of his spiritual life; let him describe to you those lonely moments on the sea coasts, when with a tearful eye he pursued those clouds to the native land flowing by; let him tell you the joyful delight with which his heart trembled when he heard unexpectedly the native voices and pressed his companions to his heart!
O! we poor exiles in this wilderness of the world on the shores of the sea of eternity! let us just tell one another sincerely and faithfully the inner history of our hearts, these constant struggles, these incomprehensible sorrows, this longing which turns our eyes, our hearts, from earth to heaven; this heaven for which we do not want to work, which we fear to lose, and to which only this trinity: faith hope and love has the keys! Ah! why don’t we want to remember our comrades? Isn’t this life enough of bitterness, isn’t it enough of these illnesses of soul and body, of this moral and physical death, that we ourselves shorten this short life, poison this bitter life, that we ourselves exacerbate these thorns on which I must make our pilgrimages?
Why does man face man so menacingly? When will we learn to love? In the fire a red-hot iron softens, in the fire an afflicted inflamed heart – will it always remain hard? A lump of ice like tears melts in the rays of the sun – in the ray of God’s love, won’t the cold heart shed tears of complicity for its brothers? – Not hatred, envy, jealousy, suspicion – which are the children of self-love, – but unity, harmony, peace, which are the children of God’s love – can make us happy and save us! – Us and the country as a whole!… Ah! do we always prefer to see an enemy in our neighbor, as to love our brother? Lack of love disperses all forces, – in love only these forces in unity and wholeness welded together, bravely manage to act. God poured love into our hearts, and the world, having stripped the heart of it, substituted its lousy surrogate!….
The world – as if blaspheming – has this word on its tongue all the time, but it doesn’t understand it; it gives this word various meanings; it uses it to achieve its goals; this love shimmers like the scales of a chameleon: – it is only a soulless form, a dress – which fashion transforms into the strangest shapes. O! it is this wild frenzy of passion, which poisons peace in families, resilience in the nation, murders virtue, bleeds hearts, – which, innocent as an angel, will undermine, insult – and either into despair or into the abyss of crime, if the grace of God does not lift her out; – the world calls it Love! O! it is that wild frenzy of passion which poisons peace in families, resilience in a nation, murders virtue, bleeds hearts, – which will undermine an innocent being, insult it – and either into despair or into the abyss of crime, if the grace of God does not deliver her; – the world calls it Love!
Behold, a wife will betray her husband – break the most sacred oath, – and the world calls it love; behold, a husband will make a martyr of his wife, break her faithful heart, dig a premature grave for her, – for one lovely face, for one tender song, for a beautifully successful face, for graceful leaps – and the world calls it love!
It is this mother who has made her children puppets for her own and others’ amusement; she tunes their body, and strips their soul; she feeds them candy, and pours poison into their hearts – and the world calls it love!
It is this man who scatters alms with a generous hand, and immediately the whole world must know about it! a donation that only God would know about is often regretted – and the world calls it love!
The proud and proud, which would trample the people, for opinion , pretends tenderness and sentimentality – and the world calls it love!….
In a word, pretended love too much, – true love too little! and therefore apparent happiness a lot, true happiness scarce in the world! And that’s why, when I look at all that people say and sing and write and print about love, it would seem that the whole world must dissolve in this fire, but in the meantime, like an icy mountain range it rises! because with all this love, all its opposite elements develop.
Fame, good name, possessions, human happiness – it’s like a ball they flip for a toy or self-interest!
– We love our neighbor – but when this love does not oppose, but flatters our self-love.
In our neighbor we love pride, debauchery, greed, our vanity – we love ourselves.
But when the love of our neighbor with our own love clashes, then the love of our neighbor, the defenseless soldier, must surrender and dies from its bullet! We love the homeland, but to sacrifice for it, I do not say property, because it and the less noble heart can handle, but to sacrifice self-love – not many can be found. It’s easier to say: I will work for the good of my country and my brothers, but I hope and count on the gratitude, respect, reward of it, that my name on the hard engraved bullion, will pass gloriously into future generations!
But it is harder to say: I love like a mother my country and my brothers; happy, if alone in tears, I will look at their joy! I love, demanding nothing, desiring nothing, demanding nothing, expecting nothing; despised, misunderstood, I will work in devastation and humiliation; humiliated, repelled, I will work joyfully – I will die joyfully, seeing at least one seed thrown into the ground yielding a beautiful crop, seeing one soul to God – one heart to the country gained!
He who only has this “I” in sight is not capable of any sacrifice; momentary zeal will persuade him to do so, that he will sacrifice what he has: property and life, – but not what he is! – and for such one sacrifice of sacrifice he claims from the country that the country should sacrifice to him.
But whoever has God crucified in his sight, he must forget himself and his sufferings!
Under the Cross, pride humbled falls, obstinacy into love must be transformed; in the open wound of the Heart of Jesus, as in a fertile fountain of grace, our hearts will be filled with love; and this love will make us so strong that no ingratitude, no persecution will alienate us.
Love will persevere to the end – love will conquer the world! Where there is love, there is truth in the heart; where there is love, there is peace in the heart; for truth and inner peace are the hallmarks of true love, which brings us closer to Him who is the source of all love according to these words: “God is Love”! Amen.
Fr. Karol Antoniewicz – Adventitious Sermons. vol. IV, collected by Fr. Jan Badeni SI, Krakow 1893
Catholic during the Great Apostasy 
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