Under penalty of being but a phantom or illusion, love must be manifested in deeds of which it is the principle, and this love must generously shape the course of the soul's whole activity. Recalling the words of Jesus, "If you love Me, keep My commandments," Dom Marmion wrote, "Fidelity is the one touchstone of real love." Reference to this main principle is often to be met with in his spiritual works; we find it again, not less explicit, nor less frequent, in his correspondence:

    "To be intimately united to God, it is necessary:

• To take the habit of doing everything to please God. If one strives, out of love, at every moment, to please God, after a certain time, God give Himself and one lives continually with Him in faith.

• Great fidelity, because God is a jealous God, He does not unite Himself to an unfaithful soul, but He truly does so to a weak soul, for God is Mercy, and never does the misery of a soul separate from God."

In a letter written to a nun during Pascaltide, he gives a just commentary on the Augustinian adage:

"Alleluia! I send you this joyful good wish from the bottom of my heart. The alleluia announces to the saints and to us the triumph of Him 'Who loved us and delivered Himself for us'.

I pray that this first Lent may be fruitful for you and fill your heart with a sincere love for Jesus. Saint Augustine writes, Ama et fac quod vis. 'Love and do what you will.' That is true, for a sincere love of God makes us leave ourselves and give ourselves to Jesus. The interests of Jesus become ours, and as soon as we know that anything gives Him pleasure, real love does not hesitate an instant to think whether the thing demanded pleases us or not; the one thought is 'will that give pleasure to the One Who is the Object of my love?' You will learn by experience that this sincere love of Jesus, in its simplicity, will settle all your difficulties, for our difficulties come from our self-love, and the sincere love of Jesus destroys self-love. I say that you will have no difficulties, but I do not say that you will have neither crosses nor trials; but when one has real love, ipse labor amatur ,trials cease to be difficulties, for nothing is difficult to love."

Thus, then, love is only proved by generous fidelity to the Divine good pleasure:

"Try," he writes to a very young girl, "to prove your love of Jesus by your fidelity. REAL love consists in doing the will of the one we love, and the will of Jesus is that you imitate Him, Who at each moment could say, 'I do always the things that please' (My Father)."

And again to the same:

"Try to show your gratitude to Jesus Christ by great fidelity in all things. My dear child, we must never forget that true piety does not consist only in saying long prayers, but above all in showing our love to Jesus by the care and fidelity we take to do His holy will. For you, His will is manifested in your keeping the house and your duties of state. Then, the more you love Jesus, the more faithful you will be to give yourself up entirely to carrying out His will."

"What you tell me of your progress in your studies," he writes to a student, "much consoles me, for true piety, the real love of Jesus urges us ever to do our best to fulfill our duties of state."

He makes this fidelity the object of his prayer for the souls confided to him:

"The collect for the Second Mass on Christmas Day asks that we may show forth in our actions what shines in our minds by faith, that is my New Year's wish for you all."

He wants this fidelity to be total, absolute, even in small things, for the Divine Will is contained in them:

"You ought not to be discouraged, "he wrote to a nun, "nor think that your are going back; but you are not making the progress that I should like to see you make. I would have you belong to the Good God entirely for you are able to love Him dearly. You ought to dread the least little voluntary infidelity towards Our Lord, and accustom yourself to be faithful, out of love, even in the smallest things. Make your particular examen on this."

And to another:

In certain points of detail, he insists on this fidelity because he sees in it a more decisive and desirable orientation for the soul:

"Regularity and fidelity in rising in the morning are of capital importance."

And in a happy phrase, he shows the reason:

"It is a question of giving the first moments of the day to Our Lord or to His enemy, and the whole day bears the reflection of this first choice."

"God loves you," he writes to a married woman, "for you are straightforward, and do your duty for love of Him. I recommend you to direct your day each morning by an act of love towards God, and then, during the day, to think of Him from time to time. He gazes unceasingly upon you, and He so much loves to have us think of Him. 'Think of Me,' He told a Saint, 'and I will think of thee'."

Constant and likewise generous fidelity:

"I do hope you are very faithful to Our Lord even in the midst of the darkness through which He so often wishes to lead you. Nam et si ambulavero in medio umbrae mortis, non timebo mala, quoniam TU mecum es…

"I pray daily for you, and do hope you are keeping up your courage despite the dryness of your ordinary life."

That he was inspired by a holy horror of tepidity, that rust of the heart which gradually destroys love, need not surprise us. "Piety without the spirit of sacrifice," he often said, "is like an organism without a backbone." In the following letter he puts the soul on her guard against the oft recurring danger of mediocrity, and his zeal for God's glory gives a somewhat vehement tone to his warning.

"Your kind letter," he writes to a Benedictine nun, "gave me great pleasure. I can say with Saint John, Majorem horum non habes gratiam quam ut audiam filias meas in veritate ambulare. Our vocation is so beautiful that my greatest sorrow is to see anyone lose a particle of the grace and joy contained in our Rule and our life, for want of corresponding to God's goodness. We are so weak, yes, so weak! If Our Lord should withdraw His hand for a second, we should be capable of every sin, so that no weakness astonishes me, and it does not prevent Our Lord from loving us all the same and from giving Himself to us. But I do not understand a monk or nun making a voluntary reserve. I cannot conceive how a person who has received Our Lord in Holy Communion, and to whom He has given all, even His Precious Blood, can say afterwards, 'I know that would give pleasure to Our Lord, but I will not do it.' A person living in this disposition will never be anything but a tepid monk or nun. Of such, God said, 'I would thou wert cold or hot, but because thou art lukewarm… I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.' I love sinners dearly, I am never so happy as when I can help them and can feel like the Good Shepherd Who left the ninety-nine sheep in the desert to go after to lost sheep, but I confess to you that I have to make a supreme effort to be even polite to indifferent religious who serve the Lord above all for their own satisfaction, and do not wish to follow Him in His humiliation and His generosity."

That generous fidelity which Dom Marmion demands for so many reasons, he wishes to be an enlightened fidelity. Rarely has such keen solicitude been exerted in warning the soul against the erroneous conception that places all perfection in merely outward and material fidelity to the Divine will. "Although the word I use is severe," he said when speaking on this matter, "I do not hesitate to pronounce it: the abovesaid prejudicial idea would border upon pharisaism, or would risk leading to it, and that would be a great danger."

"Your retreat resolution, 'To do in all things what is most pleasing to Our Lord,' is excellent. I would not like to see a pharisaical fidelity in you, but I very much want you to be faithful out of love."

"What is important in our observance," he wrote again, "is the inner principle that animates us. The Pharisees observed all things exactly but it was that they might be seen and applauded by the multitude, and this moral deviation utterly spoiled all their works…Outward observance, sought after for its own sake, without the inward love which quickens it, is a formal show-even a Pharisaical show…The ideal we ought to have in view is the exactitude of love… The interior life must be the soul of our exterior fidelity. It must be the result, the fruit and manifestation of the faith, confidence, and love that govern our heart…Fidelity is the most precious and delicate flower of love here below…"

"In this exactitude which is born of love," he added, "there is something easy, wide, free, lovable, joyous."

He has said too much on this theme in more than one place in his works for us to need to insist upon it. He is intent on doing away with scruples:

"An excessive meticulousness," he said, "only creates difficulties where there are none."

"The holy Bishop of Geneva wrote to Mme de la Flechere: 'I should like to have a good hammer to blunt the edge of your mind, which is too subtle in the thought of your advancement. I have told you so often that we must set about our devotions in simple good faith and, as they say, in a 'wholesale' manner. If you do well, praise God for it, if you do badly, humble yourself. I am well aware that you would not do ill willfully. Have no fear then, and do not be so ready to tease your dear conscience, for you know too well that after all your efforts, there is nothing more for you to do than to implore the love of Him Who only desires you to give Him yours."

Dom Marmion speaks in the same strain. To a nun of good will whom he saw was forever embarrassing herself in a complicated searching out of the motives of her actions, he takes a firm and reassuring tone. She must free her soul from the trammels which impede its flight. The letter is dated December 21st, 1922, a month before his death:

"The great grace of the Nativity is one which will deliver you from all your troubles. 'That new birth will deliver you from the yoke of the old bondage.' It is the grace of being born with Jesus, to that liberty of the children of God. 'Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' It is this spiritual childhood that is wanting to you. A child receives simply and unquestioningly what his father says to him; you, on the contrary, make yourself a doctor of the law. You examine minutely all that is said to you, you lose yourself in details. God is too pure, too noble to concern Himself with all these whimwhams, these distinctions. Take the advice that is offered you in the wide and natural sense in which it is given, and leave the rest to God. The more of a child you are, the more light and joy you will have; the more you play the advocate, the jurist, the more you will entangle yourself in a mesh of details. Do not seek too much for the motives of your actions. Look at God, and He will be Himself your motive. In a word, be a good child and Jesus will be pleased to rest in your heart. He does not like blue-stockings."

The life of union with God cannot but blossom out in peace and joy.

"I am so glad to hear that your soul is in peace, Inquire pacem et persequere eam. God would have us do all in our power to be in peace, in order to communicate Himself to our souls. Non in commotione Dominus.

"You must not go back on the past, God does not wish it, except in a general way, just to humble yourself before Him, casting yourself at His feet as a poor sinner and asking His pardon. 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.' "

"A little word," he writes to a nun, "to tell you what joy your letter caused me. I long so much to see you given up to Our Lord in holy and ever increasing joy. The more you are united to Jesus, the more you will be a child of God-for He is by essence Filius Dei- and the note of the child of the Heavenly Father is 'the holy liberty of the children of God.' I say to you then, with my dear Saint Paul, 'Be ye therefore followers of God, and walk in love as most dear children.' Despise the vain fears that the enemy puts into your soul and at these moments, with Saint Augustine, cast yourself into the arms of the Heavenly Father."

Many of his letters are full of these counsels which reassure and set free, counsels of a quite "Columbanian" flavour as certain of those under his direction used to say:

"Be very faithful, but without scruples, to your spiritual exercises. Remain in peace; during the day often make acts of submission and abandon to God's holy will, and fear nothing."

The same counsel to a contemplative nun. "You need," he writes, "a great fidelity, but without constraint or scruple, for the more one is a child of the Heavenly Father, the more one enjoys the holy liberty of His children."

This liberty of heart ought to extend even to good works voluntarily chosen, nay even to practices which one finds impossible to perform; it is above all things important to keep in peace and in the spirit of abandonment to Providence:

"It is good to make little mortifications from time to time out of love, but they must be made with entire liberty of heart, without thinking that if we omit one or another that presents itself, we are doing wrong. The devil sometimes thus tries to falsify our conscience and to make us believe we are doing wrong if we omit a mortification that comes our way. It is good to make them sometimes, and at other times it is good to omit them in order to keep our liberty of heart."

"If experience shows you," he writes excellently, to a Carmelite Prioress, "that you cannot fast, you must bow before the will of God Who wishes more for the sacrifice of your attraction and your will than for the sacrifices which are born of austerity."

Those of a right way of thinking will not put a wrong construction on what Dom Marmion says; liberty of spirit, far from being relaxation, infidelity or want of zeal is, on the contrary, but the result of habitual fidelity to love; it is "an adhesion to the Divine Will beyond human means of sanctification". Far from lessening fidelity it gives its true meaning and safeguards "the primary of the inner life".

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