CHAPTER XVI. How the Saints are united to us.

INASMUCH as God continually sends us inspirations by means of His
Angels, we may fitly send back our aspirations through the same
channel. The souls of the holy dead, resting in Paradise, who are, as
our Lord Himself has told us, “as the Angels in Heaven,” [42] are also
united to us in their prayers. My child, let us gladly join our hearts
with these heavenly blessed ones; for even as the newly-fledged
nightingale learns to sing from the elder birds, so by our sacred
communing with the Saints we shall learn better to pray and sing the
praises of the Lord. David is continually uniting his prayers with
those of all the Saints and Angels.

Honour, revere and respect the Blessed Virgin Mary with a very special
love; she is the Mother of our Sovereign Lord, and so we are her
children. Let us think of her with all the love and confidence of
affectionate children; let us desire her love, and strive with true
filial hearts to imitate her graces.

Seek to be familiar with the Angels; learn to realise that they are
continually present, although invisible. Specially love and revere the
Guardian Angel of the Diocese in which you live, those of the friends
who surround you, and your own. Commune with them frequently, join in
their songs of praise, and seek their protection and help in all you
do, spiritual or temporal.

That pious man Peter Faber, the first companion of Saint Ignatius, and
the first priest, first preacher and first theological teacher of the
Company of the Jesuits, who was a native of our Diocese, [43] once
passing through this country on his way from Germany, (where he had
been labouring for God’s Glory,) told how great comfort he had found as
he went among places infested with heresy in communing with the
guardian Angels thereof, whose help had often preserved him from
danger, and softened hearts to receive the faith. He spoke with such
earnestness, that a lady who, when quite young, heard him, was so
impressed, that she repeated his words to me only four years ago, sixty
years after their utterance, with the utmost feeling. I had the
happiness only last year of consecrating an altar in the place where it
pleased God to give that blessed man birth, the little village of
Villaret, amid the wildest of our mountains.

You will do well to choose out for yourself some individual Saint,
whose life specially to study and imitate, and whose prayers may be
more particularly offered on your behalf. The Saint bearing your own
baptismal name would seem to be naturally assigned to you.
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[42] S. Mark xii. 25.

[43] Faber was a Savoyard.
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