The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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he recommends to be practised in all places and times. Ib. He insists,
that with David we begin the day by prayer, doing nothing before this
duty to God be complied with: and that with him we consecrate part of
the night to compunction and prayer. In. Ps. 6, he says many excellent
things on the remedies we are bound to employ against concupiscence,
especially assiduous prayer, shunning {264} all occasions which can
prove incentives to this enemy or to our senses, and above all dangerous
company; assiduous meditation on death and hell, &c. Ib. God only
afflicts the just out of the excess of his love for them, and desire to
unite them closely to himself. In Ps. 114, p. 308, as the Jews obtained
not their return from their captivity to Jerusalem but by long and
earnestly desiring it, so only an ardent and pure desire of the heavenly
Jerusalem can raise us thither; and an attachment to earthly goods and
pleasures links us to our slavery, and chains us down too fast for us
ever to rise so high. In Ps. Graduales, p. 328, it was the custom at
Antioch for all the faithful to recite, every morning, the 140th psalm,
which he desires them carefully to understand, so as to penetrate the
riches of the excellent sentiments every word contains, in order to
repeat it with more dilated affections of the heart. In like manner he
mentions that the 62d psalm was recited by all every evening. From his
exposition of Ps. 41, p. 131, it appears that the people answered by
repeating the first verse of every psalm, after every verse, as it was
sung by the clergy.
In the sixth tome occur his excellent discourses on the seven first
chapters of Isaiah: then his four homilies on the fall of king Ozias,
(Isa. vi.,) in which he sets forth the danger of pride, and necessity of
perseverance and constant watchfulness. (T. 6, p. 94.) After several
homilies on certain texts of Jeremy, Daniel, &c., we have his two
elegant discourses On the Obscurity of the Prophets, in which he shows
that the wisdom of Providence is displayed; for too great perspicuity
would not have so well answered the various ends of the Old Law. The
advantages of public prayer are here strongly set forth; and in the
second the saint declaims against detraction, a vice which brings
neither profit nor pleasure, yet is most enormous even in those who only
listen to it. If he who scandalizes one brother is so grievously
punished, what will be the chastisement of him who scandalizes so many?
We are bound to cover, not to proclaim the faults of others; but it is
our duty to endeavor to reclaim and save sinners, according to the
precept of Christ. The very company of detracters ought to be shunned:
to correct, or at least set a mark upon such, he wishes, in order that
they may be known and avoided, they were publicly branded with the name
of flies, because, like these insects, they delight to dwell on filth
and corruption. In the homily On Perfect Charity, he draws a most
amiable portraiture of that virtue in society; and another, in striking
colors, of the day of judgment. It is uncertain by what accident the