Excerpt from Chapter IV - Intercessory Prayer
"Let us see what goes to the saving of a soul, and what is involved in its being saved. In the first place, it was absolutely necessary that God should become man, in order that that soul should be saved, according to the dispensation of God. It was absolutely necessary that Jesus should be born, teach, act, pray, merit, satisfy, suffer, bleed, die, for the saving of that single soul. It was necessary that there should be a Catholic church, faith, sacraments, saints, the Pope, and the sacrifice of the Mass, for that one soul. It was necessary that there should be a supernatural gift, a marvellous participation of the Divine Nature, called sanctifying grace, and that on this should be accumulated loving acts and impulses of the Divine Will, in the shape of manifold actual graces, preventing, accompanying, following, and efficacious, else that soul cannot be saved. Martyrs must die, doctors must write, Popes and councils must expose and condemn heresy, missionaries travel, priests be ordained, for the safety of that single soul. When all these preparations are completed, and by an act of merciful omnipotence that soul is created out of nothing, then there must be a guardian angel appointed over it; all through its life Jesus must be occupied about it; Mary must have a great deal to do with it; all the angels and saints must pray and interest themselves about it. To every good thought, pious word, and devout action, and, of course, they soon come to be innumerable, a participation of the Divine nature, grace, must concur. Unseen evil spirits have to be warded off from it, and foiled in their attempts upon it. Hourly temptations have to cause more or less emotion among its advocates in heaven. Every attribute of God vouchsafes to legislate for its advantage, so that it plays upon them all like one who fingers the keys of a musical instrument. The Precious Blood has to be communicated to it through extraordinary sacraments, which are full of mystery, and were invented both as to form and matter by our Lord Himself. All sorts of things, water, oil, candles, ashes, beads, medals, scapulars, have to be filled with a strange undefinable power by ecclesiastical benedictions in its behalf. The Body, Soul, and Divinity of the Incarnate Word have to be communicated to it over and· over again till it becomes quite a common occurrence, though each time it is in reality a more stupendous action than the creation of the world. It can speak up to heaven, and be heard and obeyed there. It can spend the satisfactions of Jesus as if they were its own, and can undo bolts and bars in Purgatory, and choose by its own determinate will whom it will liberate, and whom it will pass over. And all the time it is so near to God, and its heart is a place so sacred and so privileged, that none but God Himself can communicate grace to it, not even the angels, nor the Mother of God herself, blessed throughout all ages.
All this goes to the salvation of a soul. To be saved it has to be God's child, God's brother, and to partici pate in God's nature. Now see what is involved in its being saved. Look at that soul yonder that has just been judged; Jesus has this instant spoken; the sound of His sweet words has hardly died away; they that mourn have scarcely yet closed the eyes of the deserted body. Yet the judgment has come and gone; all is over; it was swift but merciful; more than merciful; there is no word to say what it was. It must be imagined. One day, please God! we shall experience it. That soul must be very strong to bear what it is feeling now. God must support it, or it will fall back into nothingness. Life is over. How short it has all been. Death is done with. How easy was its passing sharpness. How little the trials look, how puny the sorrows, how childish the afflictions! And now some thing has happened to it, which is to be for evermore. Jesus has said it. There can be no doubt about it. What is that something? Eye has not seen, nor ear heard. It sees God. There is stretched before it an illimitable eternity. Darkness has melted from before it. Weakness has fallen off from it. Time has vanished, that cramped it so. There is no ignorance. It sees God. Its understanding is inundated with unspeakable delights; it is strengthened by unimaginable glory; it abounds in that Vision to which earthly science is an illiterate stupidity. The will is flooded with love; excessive happiness thrills through every affection. As a sponge is filled with the sea, so it is filled with light, beauty, bliss, ravishment, immortality, God. These are foolish words, lighter than feathers, weaker than water. They are not a shadow of what it feels. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, heart has not conceived. There it is on the threshold of it all; the same soul that but a moment ago was sobbing in pain, feeble as an unmanly child. There can be no mistake about it.
But not only so. There is not the slightest risk of its being forfeited. All is sure. All is its own, its very own, inalienable, and for ever. Sin can never come nigh it. Imperfection cannot breathe upon it. It knows no change, though its variety is infinite It knows no inequality, though its joys are multitudinous and its delights innumerable. It is crowned king, and for ever. And the empire of all this magnificence, how cheaply has it been purchased! Those transient toils and cares of life, which grace turned into contentments, and love to real pleasures! And now, here is this come, the light of glory, and the beauty of the Everlasting Vision! It would appear but a dream; only that the marvellous calm of the soul tells of the power and the depth of its new life. Its ability to bear its own consciousness is the gage of its freshness and its immortality. And all this is involved in the saving of a soul! How wonderful is the world if we remember how many of its inhabitants die every moment of the day and night; and there is probably never a moment in which there is not some soul in this predicament, just judged, its sentence favourable, and its eyes opened on the incommunicable beauty and goodness of God. O dull and weary, weary and dull! This is all we can say, when we turn our thoughts back to our own petty cares, teasing temptations, vexatious self-love, annoying littleness, ungenerous shabbiness with God! He has gone, is judged, it is well with him! Oh how well! And we still here. Our great risk yet to be run! O dull and weary, weary and dull!
Yet a few minutes ago, and that soul was not secure. There was a desperate contest going on, a pitched battle between heaven and hell, and heaven seemed at a disadvantage. The sufferer was patient enough to merit anything that could be merited. But God put the last gift, the ultimate grace, final perseverance, beyond the reach of merit; and so seemed almost to throw the victory into the hands of the enemy. It was a terrific moment. All was at stake. All that had gone to the saving of that soul, from eternity up to that hour, was on the point of being lost and frustrated for ever; it is lost, it is frustrated, and for ever, almost every minute, perhaps quite every minute, all the world over. All, too, that was to be involved in the saving of that soul. just then ran the risk of never being attained. Can risk, even in idea, go beyond this risk? And Jesus stood by, watching the turnings of the battle, how it would go. The beatings of His Sacred Heart might have been heard in the silence of the moment. He had suspended His own sweet and easy law, whereby, because of His merits, we can merit also. Although He Himself had merited for us the gift of final perseverance, and whosoever receives that grace receives it for the sole merits of our Lord, yet it seemed as if He had given that moment up to the sheer sovereignty of the Divine Majesty. It was thrown, so it appeared, on the great, overpowering, limitless might of the mercy of the Undivided Trinity. One law alone is left unfettered. It is on purpose. The law of prayer, intercessory prayer. You are of kith and kin to that dying man, or you are his enemy; you are his priest, or his nurse, or his benefactor; you are his neighbour, or you are a thousand miles away; you know him well, or you never heard of his existence, or dreamed of his agony. It matters not. The victory has been left to you. The matter is in your hands. His soul hangs on your prayers. Jesus has decreed that you, not He, (if I may say so untrue a thing) are to save that soul. You are to put the crown on all that has gone to His salvation. You are to put the crown on all that is involved in his salvation. You may never know it, or at least not till you are judged yourself. Yet in the communion of saints, and in the unity of Jesus, you are to be the saviour of that uncertain soul, the victor of that unsettled strife!
[...] Perhaps, never while we are on earth shall we realize the heavenly might of prayer, nor the exceeding riches of that treasure, which now, alas! we make so light of, seeing not how thereby God's glory is so much within our power. Oh, what might we not do by prayer! What might we not do in every remotest corner of the earth, in the cells of purgatory, and in the open courts of heaven! Yet the times are against prayer: the spirit of the age is against it; the habits of our countrymen are against it. Oh, for faith in prayer! for only faith in prayer! for faith in simple prayer! and the interests of Jesus shall spread like a beneficent conquest all over the world, and the glory of God shall beautifully cover the earth as the abounding waters cover the bed of the sea, and the choirs of redeemed souls shall multiply and multiply, till the Good Shepherd should be, were it any other than He, overladen with the sheaves of His prolific Passion!"
Source for quote: Google books
