Drawn from the writings of Fr. Frederick William Faber (1857–1860), this meditation compiled by Helen Howell calls the faithful to a deeper love for divine truth and a holy hatred of heresy—a virtue born only of an undivided heart for God.
HERESY
The crowning disloyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, the very loathsomeness of things which God looks down upon in this malignant world. Yet how little do we understand its excessive hatefulness! We take the worst of all impurities, the most revolting of God’s truth, which is the worst of all impurities, and we do not shudder. We look at it, and no fear. We see it touch holy things and we have no sense of sacrilege. We breathe its odor and show no signs of detestation. Some of us affect its friendship; and some even extenuate its guilt.
We do not love God enough to be angry for His glory. We do not love men enough to be charitably truthful for their souls. Having lost the touch, the taste, the sight, and the sense of heavenliness, we can dwell amidst this odd plague in imperturbable tranquillity, reconciled to its foulness, and without some boastful professions of liberal admiration, perhaps even with a solicitous show of tolerant sympathy.
Why are we so far below the old saints and even the modern apostles of these latter times, the abundance of our conversions? Because we have not the antique sternness. We want church-spirit, the old ecclesiastical genius. Our charity is untruthful, because it is not severe, and it is unpersuasive because it is untruthful. We lack devotion to truth as God’s truth.
Our zeal for souls is puny because we have no zeal for God’s honor. We act as if God were complimented by conversions, instead of trembling souls rescued by a stretch of mercy. We tell men half the truth, the half that best suits our own pusillanimity and their comfort; and then we wonder that so few are converted, and that of those few so many apostatize.
We are so weak as to be surprised that one half-truth has not succeeded as well as God’s whole-truth. WHERE THERE IS NO HATRED OF HERESY, THERE IS NO HOLINESS. A man, who might be an apostle, becomes a fester in the Church for the want of this righteous abomination.
WE NEED ST. MICHAEL TO PUT NEW HEARTS INTO US IN THESE DAYS OF UNIVERSAL HERESY. Whoever drew his sword with nobler haste, or used his victory more tenderly than that brave archangel, whose war-cry was ALL FOR GOD!
— Fr. Faber – “The Precious Blood,” 1860
HATRED OF HERESY
This is peculiarly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world’s view and condemn us; for there is a meek-looking positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is daring enough for a harsh judgment. HERESY CAN ONLY BE HATED BY AN UNDIVIDED HEART!
— Fr. Faber – “The Colors of Mary,” 1857
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