Pleasure is not the foundation of society, but virtue. Enjoyment is not our vocation here below, but labor and grief. God has created us expressly to produce by us a thing which He could not produce alone: that is, greatess in vileness, strength in infirmity, purity in flesh and blood, love in selfishness, good in evil, virtue in a heart which possessed each moment the liberty of being a convinced sinner. This is our vocation, our fate.
Jesus Christ conquered the world only because He knew [this fate]; and because, from His Cross, slave and God, he supremely fulfilled it. Salvation (as well as all glory and all joy) is found in following him.
This is why -- thanks be to God! -- pleasure and enjoyment shall never [be the foundation] of a society here below. Misfortune must be stronger, so that virtue may exist; there must be poor, so that alms shall be given; wounds, so that they may be bound up; tears, so that they may be accepted; disorders, so that men may aspire to order; ruins, so that pride may be humbled; ... bloodshed, so that there may be saints.
Henri-Dominique Lacordaire
Conférences à Notre-Dame de Paris (1845)
Conférences à Notre-Dame de Paris (1845)
