Untitled - Saints' Books

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INSTR. x.] The Love of God. 385
hath engaged himself } Jesus Christ forbade the young
man who wished to become one of his disciples to re
turn home for the purpose of burying his father: Fol
low Me, and let the dead bury the dead? This lesson was,
as the same St. Ambrose writes, directed to all eccle
siastics, to teach them that it is their duty to prefer
the concerns of the divine glory to all human affairs,
which may be an obstacle to their belonging entirely to
God. 3
Even in the Old Law, God declared to the priests
that he had chosen them from among the people that
they might be his without reserve. Hence he told
them that they should have no possession, no portion
among seculars, because he himself wished to be their
portion and inheritance: You- shall possess nothing in their
land, neither shall you have a portion
among them: I am thy
portion and inheritance in the midst of the children of
Israel? On this passage Oleaster writes: O priest!
understand what great happiness God has conferred
upon thee by wishing to have thee as his inheritance.
And what can be wanting to thee if thou possesses!
E
God ?" The priest, then, should say with St. Augus
tine: Let others choose for their portion temporal
things; God is my portion."
1 "
Nemo, militans Deo, implicat se negotiis ssecularibus, ut ei
placeat, cui se probavit." 2 7 i?u. ii. 4.
2 "
Sequere me, et dimitte mortuos sepelire mortuos suos."
Matth. viii. 22.
3 "Hie paterni funeris sepultura prohibetur, ut intelligas humana
posthabenda divinis." In Luc. c. 9.
4
In terra eorum "
nihil possidebitis, nee habebitis partem inter eos;
ego pars et hereditas tua in medio filiorum Israel." Num. xviii. 20.
5
Magna "
dignatio Domini, si earn, Sacerdos, cognoscas: quod velit
Deus esse pars tua. Quid non habebis, si Deum habeas ?"
6 "
Eligant sibi alii partes, quibus fruantur, terrenas et temporales;
portio sanctorum, Dominus aeternus est. Bibant alii mortiferas voluptates;
portio calicis mei, Dominus est." Enarr^ in Ps. 15.
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