and treated her as a beast of burden; she had to do all the work that the others refused, and she pretended that she liked best what was most abhorrent to her nature and her senses. At last a man of great sanctity discovered the secret, and made known the holiness of that heroic virgin.
Yet in most cases it remains hidden. Meanwhile such cases are very rare. Oh, how many there are of both sexes whose holiness is buried from the light! How many chosen souls there are in religious houses, nay, even in the world, whose great virtue is utterly unknown, because they conceal it so effectually! How many decent poor suffer the privations of their state with the utmost patience for God’s sake! How many a workman offers up his daily toil to God with a pure intention! How many a lowly servant-maid spends her life in the meanest occupations, in the stable of some peasant, and her holiness, patience, and resignation to the divine will are known only to the all-seeing eye of God! How many tears of repentance and divine charity are shed in private houses in the secrecy of the bedchamber! How many privately and by night mortify their bodies by the frequent use of the discipline! How many there are who wear hair-shirts and iron girdles under costly robes! How many acts of mortification are practised of which one never hears a word! How much is given and taken in charity without the generous donor’s name ever coming to light! It seems to me quite true that there are souls in heaven greater in holiness and higher in glory than many others who have been canonized by the Church and whose relics are honored by the world; and it seems equally certain to me that there are actually many souls on earth who imitate or even surpass the example of the saints, and yet are not looked on as holy.
Hence there will be a day of general judgment, on which the secret holiness of men shall be published and admired. And must this remain always hidden, and that too from the world out of which the greater number of men shall be condemned to hell? No; it must not and cannot be so. The Lord Himself says to all His servants by the Prophet David: “Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in Him: and He will do it.” What will He do? “He will bring forth thy justice as the light: and thy judgment as the noon-day.”[1] For this purpose is fixed the day of general judgment on which all in heaven, on earth, and under the earth shall be summoned to the same place by the sound of the trumpet, and there, as it were, on a vast public stage
- ↑ Revela Domino viam tuam, et spera in eo, et ipse faciet. Educet quasi lumen justitiam tuam, et judicium tuum tanquam meridiem.—Ps. xxxvi. 5, 6.
