Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/236

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224
THE PRIEST'S REWARDS.

ceptible to an inward sense. The incense of the Holy Mass in the morning, and of the Benediction of the evening, is as an odour from the eternal hills. A priest whose mind is full of this world must be often, if not always, spiritless and saddened. A priest whose mind is filled with the eternal world will be always—habitually and virtually, and very often actually—filled with its light, peace, and gladness. The promise of God by the prophet is fulfilled in him: "The Lord will give thee rest continually," even in the disorders of this tumultuous world, "and will fill thy soul with brightness," implebit splendoribus animam tuam; in the darkness without, his soul will be filled with the splendours of the world of light. "And thou shalt be like a watered garden," a garden for order and beauty, which is dressed by God Himself, and watered with continual streams: "and like a fountain of water, whose waters shall not fail."[1] He shall not alone receive the streams from "the Fountain of living water," which is God Himself, but he shall in himself be a fountain of perennial water, from which streams shall flow, not only into his own inward being, but outwardly upon all around him—streams of light, of charity, of consolation,

  1. Isaias lviii. 11.