Good Evil 1

EWTN, Global Catholic Radio, and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s, and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now, here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Peace be to you. Up to this point, we were talking about conscience as an unbearable repartee, and about the meaninglessness of life, saying that we should lay our heart and mind open to saving experiences that come from without, and which completely change our character. So the subject, therefore, of this particular talk will be the divine invasion. But I believe the best way to start it is to tell you a story about a divine invasion. A woman wrote to me about her brother, saying that he was dying in a hospital, and that he had been away from the sacraments for about 30 years. She said he led not just a bad life, he was an evil man. There's a difference between being bad and being evil. Bad man steals. Bad man kills. An evil man may do none of those things, but he seeks to destroy goodness in others. Well, he was an evil man. He did much to corrupt youth and circulated all manner of evil pamphlets among the young to destroy both faith and morals. And the sister of this man, which she wrote, said, about 20 priests have called on him and he threw them all out of the hospital room. So will you please go? Last resort sheen, I am. I visited him this particular night and stayed about five seconds, because I knew that I would fare no better than anyone else. But instead of just making one visit, I made 40. For 40 straight nights I went to see this man. The second night I stayed about 10-15 seconds, and I went up 5-10 seconds every night. And at the end of the month I was spending 10 or 15 minutes with him. But I never once broke the subject of his soul until the 40th night. The 40th night I brought with me the blessed sacrament and the holy oils and I said to him, William, you are going to die tonight. He said, I know it. He was dying of cancer, but cancer of the face. One of the most loathsome sights you ever saw. I said, I'm sure you want to make your peace with God tonight. He said, I do not. Get out. I said, I'm not alone. I was with you. I said, I brought the good Lord along. Do you want him to get out too? He said nothing. So I knelt down alongside of his bed for about 15 minutes, because I had the blessed sacrament with me, and I promised the good Lord that if this man would show some sign of repentance before he died, that I would build a chapel in the southern part of the United States for the poor people, a chapel costing $3,500. Not much of a chapel, no, but an awful lot of money for me. So after the prayer, I again said, William, I'm sure you want to make your peace with God before you die. He said, I do not. Get out. And he started screaming for the nurse. So in order to stop him, I ran to the door as if I were going to leave. Then I quickly came back, and I put my head down alongside of his face on the pillow, and I said, just one thing, William, promise me, before you die tonight, you will say, my Jesus, mercy. He said, I will not. Get out. I had to leave. I told the nurse that if he wanted me during the night, that I would come back. About four o'clock in the morning, the nurse called, and she said he just died. And I said, how did he die? Well, she said, about a minute after you left, he began saying, my Jesus, mercy. And he never stopped saying it until he died. Now, you see, there was nothing in me that influenced him. There was a divine invasion upon someone who had the faith once and lost it. But it makes no difference whether one has the faith or not. There is this constant intrusion from the outside. It has come to many, many people. It comes to everyone, though it comes so subtly that many reject it. It came to St. Augustine when he was leading a wild and furious life. And it came to him in the voice of a child and picking up scripture and reading it. And then Augustine wrote those famous lines, Our hearts were made for thee, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee. And there was that famous playboy of the Sahara, Viscount Charles de Foucault, who in the midst of his wild life slept under the stars in the Sahara and endured what Thompson called the abashless inquisition of each star. And there found grace and ended his life as a priest among the Muslims in the Sahara. And died a martyr there. And this practically in our times. And so I might go on to mention many, many such cases of the divine invasion. But suppose we turn from just the stories to what form this divine invasion takes. It's an infection that gets into the soul. It's a grace, but up to this point we do not know exactly the meaning of the word grace. There, I may anticipate a bit and say there are two kinds of graces. White grace, which makes us pleasing to God, and the other is black grace, in which we feel his absence. Most people in the world today feel his absence. And really feel it. Even the atheists. You see, really it is not man who is on the quest of God. It is God that's on the quest of man. He leaves us restless. The first question we have in the scripture is, man, where art thou? No poet has ever better expressed this divine invasion than Francis Thompson. In his magnificent poem, The Hound of Heaven. Thompson was at one time a student of medicine. About the only thing he learned was how to take dope. He became a bum. Slept in Covent Garden, London, under the vegetable crocks. Contemplated suicide. And then with this poem found in his pocket, was befriended by a couple, the Maynells. And this poem sold 50,000 copies within a few years after his death. And within 30 years was studied in the University of Tokyo in Japanese. It's because it suits the modern mood. The modern mood in the sense that men are beginning to feel this stirring of the finger of God. And he goes on to narrate the various escapes that he used. God is the Hound of Heaven. And first is the subconscious or the unconscious mind. He feels that if he sunk down into that, he would be less conscious of this hound who was pursuing him. And so he said he fled God. I fled him down the nights and down the days. Down the arches of the years. I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind. Up thisted hopes I sped. And shot, precipitate, down titanic gloom. From those strong feet that followed, followed after. And with majestic speed, deliberate instancy, they beat. And a voice above their beat. Lo, not shelters thee who wilt not shelter me. That failing? He tries nature, science. And he has a very rare and unique way of expressing the secrets of science. He said, I drew the bolt of nature's secrecies. You can almost imagine somebody pulling a giant bolt on a door and all the secrets of science and nature pouring out. I drew the bolt of nature's secrecies. Studied the swift importings on willful face of sky. I said to dawn, be sudden. To eve, be soon. Keep me o'er with thy sky blossoms from this tremendous lover. But, he said, nature, poor stepdame, cannot slate my thirst. We know not what each other speaks. Their sound is but their stir. They speak by silences. So he tries another escape from the hound. And that is illegitimate love. And herein is hidden the story of one that he calls a bud. That fell from the coronal crown of spring. And he uses the example of a hearted casement in a window in the northern part of England where there was a girl that he used to know. And he says, by many a hearted casement. Curtained red, trellised by intertwining charities. And he goes on to speak of how he sought love with all of these little ivy growths of affection that never quite satisfied. Then he adds his fear. For I was fearful, lest having him, I must have naught else beside. How many think that? That God is a kind of a competitor. And if I have him, I must reject everything else. And then he goes on to say, And when some hearted casement curtained wide, the gust of his approach would clash it too. Fear with not to avoid as love with to pursue. In other words, I did not know how to run away as fast as love knew how to catch me. And then he's fearful. Fearful at the end. And maybe after all, who is this one who pursues? Maybe he's going to bring some amount of detachment. And he asks, is thy love a weed? An amaranthine weed that suffers no flower to grow except its own? And then resorting to another example, he asks, Must thou char the wood, ere thou canst lime with it? In other words, must you put wood into a fire, burn it, purge it, sacrifice it before it becomes charcoal and before you can trace with it? And then another question, must all thy fields be dung with rotten death? Is there sacrifice everywhere? And there finally comes the answer. But before giving you his answer, unless this just be the poetic exploration of Thompson, let's find about this divine invasion in our own hearts. Just suppose you could take out your own heart and put it into your hand as a kind of crucible. To distill out of your heart its inmost cravings, yearnings, and aspirations. What would you find them to be? What do you want most? First, life. Honor, ambition, power, what good are these without life? And at night we put out our hand instinctively in the dark, ready to lose that member and lose that which we treasure most, our life. Then as we continue, we find there's something else we want in life and that is truth. One of the first questions we asked coming into the world was the question, why? We tore apart our toys to find out what makes the wheels go round. And then later on, we tear apart the very wheels of the universe to find out what makes its wheels go round. We are bent on knowing causes. That is why we hate to have secrets kept from us. Men just as well as women. We were made to know. And there's still something else we want besides life and truth. We want love. Every child instinctively presses itself to its mother's breast in token of affection. Goes to its mother to have its clay wounds bound. Then later on seeks a companion, young, likened to himself, to whom he can unpack his heart with words. One who measures up to that beautiful definition of a friend. One in whose presence you can keep silence. And so the quest for love continues from the cradle to the grave. And yet, do we want these things? Do we find them here? Do we find life here in its fullness? Certainly not. Each tick of the clock brings us closer to the grave. Our hearts are but muffled drums beating a funeral march to the grave. From hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. From hour to hour, we rot and rot. Life is not here, nor truth in all of its fullness. As a matter of fact, the more we study, the less we know. Because we see new avenues of knowledge down which we might travel for a lifetime. I wish I knew now, just one ten million, as much as I thought I knew the night I was graduated from high school. So truth is not here, and love is not here either in its fullness. Because when love does remain fine and noble, a day must come when the last embrace is passed from friend to friend. When the last cake is crumbled at life's great feast. So here we are, looking for life and truth and love and not finding it. Are we destined to live an absurd life? Wouldn't we ever have eyes unless there was something to see? These are fractions, there ought to be a whole somewhere. And so we ask ourselves very much like asking now, what's the source of light in this room? Certainly not here under the microphone, because there light is mingled with shadow. And under chairs, there light is mingled with darkness. If we are to find a source of light, we must go out to something that is pure light. And if we wish to find the source of the life and the truth and the love that is in this world, we must go out to a life that is not mingled with the shadow death. Out to a truth that is not mingled with the shadow error. Out to a love that is not mingled with the shadow hate or satiety. We must go out to pure life, pure truth, pure love. And that is the definition of God. In other words, that's what we want. That's what we were made for. And it's she that invades the soul as Thompson described. And after all of these evasions from the divine invasion, God speaks, and Thompson concludes his poem with God speaking and saying, poor, piteous, futile thing. Why should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I make much of naught, he said. And human love needs human merit. And how hast thou merited? Of all man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot. Alas, thou knowest not how little worthy of any love thou art. For whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee? Save me. Save only me. All that thy child's mistakes, fancies has lost, I have stored for thee at home. Rise, clasp my hand, and come. God love you. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the U.S., call 818-331-3549. And please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.