The Secret of the
Curé de Ars

Compiled, Partially Rewritten, and Arranged
by Pauly Fongemie

SOURCES USED:
Secrets of the Saints, Henri Ghéon, 1944;
From the Housetops Magazine, Vol. XXIV,
No. 3, Serial No. 53;
The Life of the Curé de Ars,
Abbé Alfred Monnin, 1861;
and Eucharistic Meditations,
Curé de Ars, Eccles. Appr. 1923


THE CROSS

Taken from Monnin.

The Saint:

"If the good God sends us crosses, we resist, complain, and murmur. We are so averse to every thing which crosses us, that we want to be in a box full of cotton wool, when we should be in a box full of thorns. The Cross is the way to Heaven. Sicknesses, temptations, and sorrows are so many crosses, which are to bring us to Heaven. All this will soon be over. Look at the Saints who have arrived there before us. The good God does not ask of us the martyrdom of the body, He asks of us only the martyrdom of the heart and the will Our Lord is our pattern; let us take up our cross and follow Him. Let us do like the soldiers of Napoleon. They had to cross abridge on which the enemy was firing; no one dared pass over it; Napoleon seized the standard, went forward, and all followed him. Let us do the same; let us follow our Lord, Who has gone before us.

"A soldier told me one day, that in a battle he had walked for half an hour upon corpses; he could hardly find a spot to set his foot upon; the ground was red with blood. It is thus that in the journey of life we must tread upon crosses and, sufferings, in order to reach our home.

"The Cross is the ladder of Heaven. How consoling is it to suffer under the eye of God, and to be able to say to ourselves, in the evening, in our examination of conscience, 'Come, my soul, thou hast had two or three hours today of resemblance to Jesus Christ. Thou hast been scourged. crowned with thorns, and crucified with Him. Oh, what a treasure for the hour of death! How sweet to die when we we lived on the Cross!

"We must suffer whether we will or no. Some suffer like the good thief, and some like the bad. Both alike suffer. But one knows how to render his sufferings meritorious; he accepts them in a spirit of reparation, and, as he turns to Jesus crucified, he catches those blessed words, 'Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.' The other, on the contrary, howled, cursed, and blasphemed, and died in the most frightful despair.

"There are two ways of suffering; to suffer with love, and to suffer without love. The Saints suffered all things with patience, joy, and perseverance, because they loved. We suffer with vexation, impatience, and anger, because we love not. If we loved God, we should love crosses; we should desire them and delight in them. We should be able to suffer for Him Who vouchsafed to suffer for us. What have we to complain of? Alas! the poor heathens who have not the blessing of knowing God and His infinite loveliness, have the same crosses as we, but they have not the same consolations.
 
"You say it is hard: no, it is sweet, consoling, delightful; it is happiness. Only we must love while we suffer; we must suffer and love.

"Mark this, my children; in the way of the Cross it is only the first step that is hard. Our greatest cross is the fear of crosses. We have not courage to bear our cross---we are very wrong; for, do what we will, the cross holds us in its arms, we cannot escape it. What, then, have we to lose? Why not love our cross, and make use of it to take us to Heaven? But, on the contrary, most men turn their back on the cross and fly from it. The more they run, the more the cross pursues them, the harder it strikes, and the more heavily it weighs upon them. If you would be wise, go like St. Andrew to meet it, saying: 'Hail, good cross! admirable cross! O cross greatly to be desired! Receive me to thine arms, take me from among men, and restore me to the Master, who redeemed me by thee.'
 
"Take good heed to this, my children: he who goes to meet crosses finds them indeed, but is glad to find them; he loves them; he bears them courageously. They unite him to our Lord; they purify him; they detach him from this world; they remove all obstacles from his heart; they help him to pass through this world, as a bridge helps us to cross water. Look at the Saints; when no one else persecuted them, they persecuted themselves. When God did not send them sufferings, they invented sufferings for themselves. A good religious was complaining once to our Lord that he was persecuted. He said, 'Lord, what have I done to be treated in this way?' Our Lord replied, 'And what had I done to be led to Calvary?' Then the religious understood; he wept, asked pardon, and never again dared to complain. People of the world are in despair when they meet with crosses; good Christians weep when they have none. The Christian lives in the midst of crosses, as the fish in the water.

"We ought to run after crosses, as the miser after money. Nothing else will give us confidence in the day of judgment.

"The good God wishes that we should never lose sight of the Cross; therefore He places it every where,---along the road, on the heights, in the market-place,---that at the sight of it we may say to ourselves, 'See how God has loved us!'

"The Cross embraces the world; it is planted at the four corners of the universe; there is a piece for everyone.
 
"If anyone said to you, 'I wish very much to grow rich; what must I do?' you would answer, 'You must work.' Well: to go to Heaven we must suffer. Our Lord shows us the way in the person of Simon the Chanaanite: He calls His friends to bear His Cross after Him.

"Crosses are, on the road to Heaven, like a fine stone bridge over a river. Christians who do not suffer pass that river by a frail bridge, a line of wire, which is always ready to break under their feet.

"He who loves not the Cross may perhaps be saved, but it will be with great difficulty: he will be but a little star in the firmament of Heaven. He who has fought and suffered for his God will shine like a glorious sun.

"Crosses transformed into the flames of love are like a bundle of briers which are thrown into the fire and consumed to ashes. The briers are hard, but the ashes are soft.

"Oh, what sweetness do those souls experience in suffering who belong wholly to God! It is like the mixture of a little vinegar with a great quantity of oil. The vinegar is still vinegar indeed, but the oil corrects its sharpness so that we scarcely perceive it.

"If you put a fine bunch of grapes under the press, a delicious juice exudes from it: our soul under the pressure of the Cross gives forth a juice which nourishes and strengthens it. When we have no cross, we are dry. if we bear our cross with resignation, we feel a consolation, a sweetness, a happiness, which is the foretaste and commencement of Heaven. The good God, the Angels, and Saints surround us; they are at our side and see us. The passage of the good Christian tried by suffering to the other world is like that of a person carried upon a bed of roses.

"Thorns give forth balm and the Cross sweetness. But we must squeeze the thorns in our hands, and press the Cross to our heart, to make them distill the fragrance which is within them."




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