Again, of another of those “steps” of the Beatitudes, of the “hungering and thirsting after righteousness,” Leo said, “It is with God Himself man would be filled.” To love righteousness is nothing else than to love God. “Nihil aliud est diligere justitiam quam amare Deum.” And when he reached the last of those seven upward steps, fervently he spoke of the purity of heart which cleanses the mirror (of the heart) to see and to reflect God, “whose reward is to see Him not in a mirror darkly, but face to face.” The fine balance of his words throbbed on the heart like the vibrations of a church bell. “In Christ,” he proclaimed, “we are all one. All the regenerate in Christ the sign of the Cross constitutes kings, the unction of the Holy Spirit consecrates priests, in order that, besides that special service of our ministry, all the whole body of spiritual and rational Christians should recognize themselves to be partakers of royal race, and of sacerdotal office. For what is so royal as a soul subject to God and ruler of the body? And what is so sacerdotal as to dedicate to God a pure conscience, and the sacrifices (_hostias_) of a spotless piety from the altar of the heart?” [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. A RETREAT WITH ST. LEO THROUGH LENT AND EASTER. Spring, with its wealth of beauty on the earth, and its Lenten discipline in the Church, was slowly passing away in Rome; and all the time Aquileia was holding out through the three months’ agony of her siege, a perpetual reminder and symbol to the household on the Aventine of the spiritual conflict to be waged always by all. For Marius, their own Marius, was there, in what might prove the last death-struggle of civilization and Christianity, or might prove the travail-pangs of the birth of a new world of life and light. And now the fast of Lent was deepening into the shadows of Gethsemane, and the Passion-tide was bringing the pathos and strength of the Cross; and again the voice of Bishop Leo rang through the basilicas with its deep, inspiring tones. “So it is, dearly beloved, that the true ground of Christian hope is the Cross of Christ. Whilst the blindness of the Jew does not see what is Divine in Christ Jesus, and the wisdom of the Gentiles despises what is human; whilst the former speak deprecatingly of the Lord’s glory, and the latter assume airs of pride about His lowliness, we adore the Son of God equally in His own might and in our infirmity.” As Ethne listened, to her, Jew and Gentile were no lifeless, technical expressions; her heart went up to God for Miriam and Eleazar, that they might look up, and looking, be no longer blind, but see the love which is the glory of God. Again, in Leo’s words, she prayed “for that nation by whom the Lord had been crucified, and desired that mercy might be obtained by that people, on account of whose stumbling we have received the grace of reconciliation.”