"The presence of God which sanctifies or souls is that indwelling of the Trinity which penetrates to the depths of our hearts when they are submissive to the divine will; for the presence of God which we enjoy through the exercise of contemplation effects this intimate union in us only as do all other things which come to us in the order of God. It holds, however, the first rank among them, for it is the most excellent means of uniting one’s self with God when He wills that we should use it." (" Abandonment to Divine Providence.")
Our life may be estimated by our prayer, and our prayer by our mortification." (P. Crasset.)
" To place ourselves in the presence of God, it is necessary that we make some effort, or thac God Himself attract us; but to remain in it requires neither effort on our part nor attraction on the part of God. If we simply stay where He is pleased to have us, and because He is pleased to have us there, we remain in His presence." (St. Francis de Sales.)
FIRST TREATISE. : THE SOURCES OF OUR IMPERFECTIONS AND THEIR REMEDIES.
There are four general sources of our imperfections which require to be carefully considered.
I. Forgetfulness of the End. The first is that we think not at all, or very little, of the end of our creation and our vocation. We live as if we were placed in this world only to live, and not to serve God and save our souls.
We are satisfied with taking good resolutions and writing good purposes. Paradise is not obtained by desires, but by deeds.
Remedy for this Forgetfulness. To remedy this disorder, frequently consider whence you come and whither you are going. You come from God, and you are going to God. A traveler always keeps his destination before him. A marksman keeps his eyes fixed on the target. Let the eyes of your soul be always fixed upon your end, and frequently ask yourself, What have I come into this world to do? What have I come into religion to do? Is it to pass away time or to employ it well ?
II. Neglect of the Means. The second source of our imperfections and our infidelities is that, though we think of our end and desire to attain it, we do not take the necessary means. It is by means of our actions that we become perfect and that we gain heaven. Now a good action requires to be not only beautiful and regular in appearance, but must be good interiorly; that is, it must be actuated by a pure, upright, disinterested intention; it must be animated by an interior spirit, which is to the action what the soul is to the body. Our life is such as our actions, and the perfection of our life depends on the perfection of our actions.
Remedy for this Neglect. To correct this fault accustom yourself to perform your actions through a virtuous motive, with an upright, pure, and holy intention, with all the application of your mind, and all the affection of your heart, as if each action were the last of your life, reflecting that God s eyes are fixed upon you, and that He awaits this service from you. Frequently bring to mind the following thoughts, which will help you to perform them well : that God wills you to con tribute to His glory by this action ; that He con templates this action; that He attaches a special grace to this action ; that by this action He will recognize whether you love Him ; that you are rendering Him a service by performing this action well.
· That His wisdom has regulated this action from all eternity.
· That His infinite greatness ennobles this action.
· That His adorable sanctity consecrates this action.
· That His sovereign will ordains this action.
· That you satisfy His love by performing this action well.
· That your peace of heart depends on this action.
· That your merit is contained in this action.
· That you will offend God if you fail to perform this action.
· That you will be deprived of the grace which ought to follow this action.
· That your salvation, perhaps, depends on this action.
· That you should, therefore, think only of per forming this action well.
III. Want of Recollection. The third source of our imperfections is want of recollection and of attention to ourselves. We are pleased to converse and to remain with those we love. The heart flies to the place of its treasure and thinks only of what it desires. If we love God we shall think unceasingly of Him and willingly remain in His company. And as He is in the depth of our souls, if we love Him our hearts will never go abroad, or will return at once if they chance to wander. But alas! we must needs go abroad for we find nothing in our interior which pleases us, hence we are always abroad seeking consolation of creatures. A dissipated soul is like the wandering sheep, which is eventually devoured by the wolf.
Remedy for this Third Fault: a Spirit of Prayer. To avoid this misfortune, keep yourself always in the presence of God, and preserve a spirit of recollection in all your exterior occupations. Let your Soul walk alter me manner of your body, keeping one foot firm and motionless while the other advances; when your mind labors, let your heart be in repose and remain motionless in its centre, which is the wilt of God, from which it should never deviate.
Before beginning an action always see whether it is in order, whether it is pleasing to God, whether it is for Him you do it, and then ask His blessing.
During the action raise your mind from time to time to God, renew the purity of your intention; do not let your heart be wholly absorbed by the work or marred by natural satisfaction. Restrain the ardor of passion, which seeks to penetrate all actions, and if it must accompany you, let it not precede, but follow reason; let it not rule as master, but obey as a slave. You will know that you are performing an action for God, if you readily abandon it when necessary, and suffer interruption with patience.
After you have accomplished the action, return to the solitude of your heart and rest a brief moment on the breast of Our Lord before passing on to another. Do not imagine that you have lost the presence of God because you have been a few moments without thinking of Him; it is not possible in this life for the mind to be always occupied with God, and this thought might even divert you from your work. But the heart should never depart for a moment from its love and its obedience.
Bear this well in mind, that you are in the presence of God as long as you do His will, and that you are hinting at Him when you are thinking of acquitting yourself faithfully of the duties He has imposed upon you. He wishes you to discharge your duties faithfully, which you cannot do un less you apply all your mind to them. For this reason, if the thought of God prevented me from applying my mind to this present writing, I should be obliged to reject it as a distraction. Therefore do not imagine that you have wandered from the presence of God, or that God has withdrawn from you, because you have not thought of Him for a time; if you have done His will, you have continued in His presence, and you will lose it only when you do something contrary to His will. You are united in heart and mind to God when you apply yourself to doing well what He wills, and your intention is such that if you were asked for whom you were doing this action, you could at once reply, for God, to obey Him and to please Him. Remember that you are only as distracted as you will to be; if you have not wished to be distracted, you have not been.
IV. Want of Mortification. Tike, fourth and principal source of our imperfections, to omit all the others which would make these reflections too long, is that we are fond of the pleasant things of life and have a horror of mortification.
Within us we have self-love, which always seek s sensible pleasure; without us, the Evil One, who tempts us; the world, which attracts us; objects which flatter us; occasions which encompass us. Therefore if we are not always on our guard and if we do not close the doors of our senses to al) these enemies, they will soon become masters of our hearts.
There is a strange opposition between the soul and the body, between the spirit and the flesh, between grace and nature. That which strengthens one weakens the other; that which gives life to one is death to the other. Therefore, to preserve the life of grace, we must never cease to mortify the inclinations of nature.
It is not sufficient to mortify ourselves for a time and in one thing; we must, if possible, mortify ourselves in everything and at all times, with prudence and discretion. One untimely indulgence makes nature more proud and insolent than a hundred victories weaken it. A clock must be wound regularly, a garden must always be cultivated, the hands must be constantly washed, the hair must be constantly combed. If you cease for a time to mortify your passions you will no longer find anything in your soul. "My brethren," says St. Bernard, "that which is cut down springs up again, that which is extinguished rekindles, that which sleeps wakens again." To preserve the interior spirit of devotion, we must prevent the soul from diffusing itself abroad, by closing to it the doors of the senses, by encompassing it, as the Prophet says, with a hedge of thorns. We rouse nature instead of subduing it. All our efforts tend to strengthen it instead of to weaken it. This is too inconvenient, we protest ; this devotion is too severe, it interferes with my health, it would make me lose my mind. It does not suit me. I could not live in that way. Then acknowledge that you are not a reasonable man ; that you are not a Christian ; that you are not one of the elect ; to be predestined one must resemble Jesus Christ, walk in His footsteps, and imitate His example. Acknowledge, further, that you have not the spirit of Jesus Christ, since you obey the flesh, which continually wars against it. Acknowledge, finally, that you renounce the crown of paradise, since it is only for those who have fought the flesh and mortified themselves.
O Christian soul, did you come into this world to live as the beasts ? Where will you be placed in paradise ? In what rank ? In what order ? Among the martyrs covered with wounds ? Among the confessors exhausted with penance ? There is no saint that has not crucified his flesh with its vices ; and you, cowardly deserter of the cross, you ease-loving, effeminate soul, you would dare to take your place among these valiant warriors, these noble conquerors who spent their lives in combat and won innumerable victories ?
Remedy for this Fourth Fault : a Spirit of Mortification. The remedy for all these disorders is to persuade yourself that, having come into this world only to save your soul, and into religion only to sanctify yourself, you are obliged, whether in one or the other, to practise mortification ; since without mortification and without that holy hatred of yourself, you can be neither a Christian nor a saint, nor can you attain either perfection or happiness.
Begin then to cause Jesus Christ to live and reign in you by the mortification of your passions.
Die to the life of the senses by refusing them all that they desire contrary to the commands of God and the dictates of reason. Mortify your tongue, never speaking in anger, or in the time of silence, or when you have a great desire to speak. Mortify your eyes by keeping them cast down and by refraining from curious glances. Mortify your ears by closing them to vain discourses, idle words, un charitable, frivolous, or dangerous conversations. Mortify your flesh by granting it only what is purely necessary, unless reason or obedience dictate otherwise. As a rule, deny yourself anything that you passionately desire ; and, in return for the sacrifice, God will flood your soul with the torrent of His delights, and overwhelm you with ineffable consolations. Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.
SECOND TREATISE : MORTIFICATION.
I. TRUE IDEA OF MORTIFICATION.
The true idea of mortification is, that it is the love of Jesus, urged into that shape partly in imitation of Him, partly to express its own vehemence, and partly to secure by an instinct of self- preservation its own perseverance. There can be no true or enduring love without it, for a certain amount of it is requisite in order to avoid sin and keep the commandments. Neither without it is there any respectable perseverance in the spiritual life. The rest which forms part of the normal state of the spiritual life is not safe without it, because of the propension of nature to seek repose in natural ways when supernatural are no longer open to it. Mortification is both interior and exterior, and of course the superior excellence of the interior is beyond question. But if there is one doctrine more important than another on this subject, it is that there can be no interior mortification without exterior ; and this last must come first. In a word, to be spiritual, bodily mortification is indispensable.
II. NECESSITY OF MORTIFICATION.
Some have spoken as if bodily mortification were less necessary in modern times than it was before, and consequently that the recommendations of spiritual writers under this head are to be taken with considerable abatement. If this means that a less degree of mortification is necessary for holiness now than was necessary for past ages of the Church, nothing can be more untrue, and it comes up to the verge of condemned propositions. If it means that increased valetudinarianism and the universality of nervous diseases, combined with other causes, discreetly point to a change in the kind of mortifications, the proposition may be assented to, with jealousy, however, and wary limitations. The Lenten Indults of the Church may be taken as an illustration.
But this false doctrine is so deep in the minds of many that it is necessary to combat it before we proceed further. The degree of mortification and its idea must remain the same in all ages of the Church, for penance is an abiding mark of the Church. To do penance because the kingdom of heaven is at hand is the work of a justified soul. To get grace, to keep it, and to multiply it, penance is necessary at every step. And when we say that holiness is a note of the Catholic Church, we show forth the necessity of mortification ; for the one implies the other, the first the last. The heroic exercise of penance must be proved to the satisfaction of the Church before she will proceed to the canonization of a saint ; and the quite recent beatifications of Paul of the Cross and Marianna of Gesus how completely unaltered the mind of the Church remains on this point. Marianna s life is nothing but one unbroken series of the most startling austerities, which make us shudder from the inventive cruelty which they display. The life of St. Rose of Lima, by the side of those American virgins, looks soft, comfortable, and easy. It seems as if Paul were raised up to alarm the stagnant eighteenth century, and to renew before the eyes of men the austerities of St. Benedict, St. Bruno, St. Romuald, or St. Peter Damian. He reanimated the old severe monastic spirit, in con tempt of all modern usages and mitigations, and for a hundred years his children have trodden in their father s steps with undecaying fervor. The existence and primitive vigor of the austere Passionists is one of the greatest consolations of the Church in these effeminate days.
We must remember also that, according to the teaching of Scripture, it is quite a mistake to regard, as some unthinkingly do, the practice of mortification as a counsel of perfection and a work of supererogation.
When carried to a certain degree, or when expressed in certain ways, it is doubtless so. But mortification in itself, and to a certain degree, and under given circumstances, is of precept and necessary to salvation. This is not only true of the self- inflicted pains which are sometimes of obligation in order to overcome vehement temptations, or of those various mortifications which are needful too in order to avoid sin ; but a definite amount of fasting and abstinence, irrespective of the temptations or circumstances of individuals, is imposed by the Church on all her children under pain of eternal damnation. This expresses the idea of penance for its own sake, and the necessity of it, as one of the functions of the Church, as a soul-saving institute. When, therefore, men say that they do not practise mortification, but leave it to those who wish to be saints, they may, on being questioned, show that they are sound in doctrine and do not mean the error which their words, strictly taken, imply; but we may be sure that the very use of such loose language is a proof that a real error about mortification is deeply imbedded in their minds.
Indeed, modern luxury and effeminacy, which are often pleaded as arguments for an abatement of mortification, may just as well be called forward to maintain the opposite view; for if it be a special office of the Church to bear witness against the world, her witness must especially be borne against the reigning vices of the world, and therefore in these days against effeminacy, the worship of comfort, and the extravagances of luxury.
If the Church has to witness always against the reigning vices of the world, each soul has likewise, if not to witness, at least to defend itself against them. And how shall it defend itself against the worship of bodily comforts except by depriving itself of them ? Changeable as the world is, it is unchanging too. The world, the flesh, and the devil are practically the same in all ages; and so, practically, mortification has the same offices to perform. Whether we consider the soul in the struggles of its conversion, in the progress of its illumination, or in its variously perfected degrees of its union with God, we shall find that bodily mortifications have their own place, and their proper work to do, and are literally indispensable.
III. REPLY TO VARIOUS OBJECTIONS.
But let us look for a moment at the various objections urged against this. First, we are told that the health of the world is not what it was, and if there is an equal or even greater longevity, the normal state of health is more uniformly valetudinarian, and that if inflammatory attacks are less frequent, nervous complaints, on the other hand, are more prevalent, and that the relaxation of Church discipline on the subject shows her appreciation of these facts. All this is true, and doubt less many most important deductions are to be drawn from it. Still I maintain it is more con
cerned with the kind of mortification than the degree. The conduct of the Church in the mitigation of fasting is as wise as the conduct of Leo XII. was marked with the usual practical sagacity of the Holy See, when he caused the possibilities of the old observance of Lent to be medically investigated. Moreover, the plea of health, while it is al ways to be listened to, is to be listened to with suspicion. We must always be jealous of the side on which nature and self are serving as volunteers. Great, then, as we must admit the consequences of a state of valetudinarianism to be on the spiritual life, a general and plenary dispensation from corporal austerities is not one of them; and we must remember also that our forefathers, who troubled their heads little enough about their nerves, and had no tea to drink, were accustomed to hear from Father Baker, who only gave utterance to the old mystical tradition, that a state of robust health was positively a disqualification for the higher stages of the spiritual life.
A second objection, and one sometimes urged in behalf of priests and religious, is that modern hard work is a substitute for ancient penance. The fewness of the clergy and the multitude of souls have certainly brought upon the ecclesiastics of this generation an overwhelming pressure of work; and it is true of them, as it has always been of religious orders engaged in the apostolate, that the measure of bodily austerity to be expected of them is very different from that which we expect from contemplatives and solitaries. I do not say, therefore, that this objection expresses no truth, but only that it will not bear all the weight men put upon it. Certain kinds of penance are incompatible with hard work; while at the same time the excessive exterior propensities which hard work gives us are so perilous to the soul that certain other kinds of penance are all the more necessary to correct this disturbing force. All great missionaries, Segneri and Pinamonti, Leonard of Port Maurice and Paul of the Cross, have worn instruments of penance. The penalties of life, as Da Ponte calls them, are doubtless an excellent penance when endured with an interior spirit, and worth far more than a hundred self-inflicted pains.
Yet he who maintains that the endurance of the former is a dispensation from the infliction of the latter will find himself out of harmony with the whole stream of approved spiritual teaching in the Church; and the brevity of his perseverance in the interior life will soon show both himself and others the completeness of his delusion. Without bodily penance, zealous apostolic work hardens the heart far more than it sanctifies it.
A third class of objectors tells us to be content with the trials God sends us, which are neither few nor light. If they told us that the gay suffer ing and graceful welcome of these dispensations were of infinitely greater price than the sting of the discipline or the twinge of s the catenella, most true and most important would the lesson be, and to many a hot-headed spiritual suckling quite in dispensable. Youth, when it is strong and well, full of fervor and bathing in devotional sweetness, finds almost a physical pleasure in tormenting its flesh and pinching its redundant health. There is little merit in this, as there is little difficulty and less discretion. And at all times one blow from God is worth a million from ourselves. But the objectors fall into that mistake of exaggeration which runs through so many spiritual books. Be cause A is more important than B they jump to the conclusion that B is of no importance at all. Because the mortifications which God sends us are more efficacious and less delusive, if rightly taken, than the mortifications we inflict upon ourselves, it does not follow but that these last are not only an important, but even an indispensable element in the spiritual life. We may answer them briefly as follows. Yes, the best of all penances is to take in the spirit of interior compunction the mortifications which the wise and affectionate course of God s fatherly providence brings upon us, but unless we have practised ourselves in the generous habit of voluntary penances, the chances are very much against our forming this interior spirit of penance, and therefore of getting the full profit out of the involuntary trials God sends us.
Besides these objections there is another latent in many minds which should be noticed. Our present habits of life and thought lead to an obvious want of sympathy with contemplation. It has no results on which we can look complacently, or which we can parade boastfully. Everything seems wasted which is not visible; and all is disappointment which is not plain success. It is supernatural principles especially which are at a discount in modern days. Now it is easy to see how this want of sympathy with contemplation leads to a misappreciation of austerity. They are content with each other, and both enter deeply into the region of supernatural operations. To think lightly of either is to be out of harmony with the mind of the Church, and to injure our own soul, whatever may be its vocation, by narrowing the range of its supernatural vision.
From all these considerations it may warrantably be concluded that there is nothing in modern times to dispense us either from the obligation or counsel of bodily mortification; that, on the contrary, there is much in modern habits to enforce the obligation and to urge the counsel, and that all the modifications to which the actual circumstances of modern life point concern themselves wholly with the kind of mortification and not at all with the degree.
IV. BENEFITS AND ADVANTAGES OF MORTIFICATION.
Something remains to be said on the uses of mortification. These are ten in number, and all of them deserving a serious consideration. Its first use is to tame the body and bring its rebellious passions under the control of grace and of our superior will. Full half the obstacles to a spiritual life are from the body and the treacherous succor which its senses give to our baser passions. These must be, I do not say altogether removed, but effectually crippled, before we can hope to make much progress. We never find in any one a real earnestness of mind or seriousness of spirit where honest attempts are not being made to keep the body in subjection. The reason why men are religious under sorrow and not at other times is that they do not practise bodily mortification, whereas sorrow afflicts and rebukes the flesh, and so for the time performs the functions of mortification. Sorrow acts on the soul through the body as much as through the mind.
The second use is to increase the range of our spiritual vision. Sensitiveness of conscience is one of the greatest gifts which God gives us in order to a spiritual life. The things of God, says the Apostle, can only be spiritually discerned. The process of our purification by grace depends on our increasing clearness of vision as to what is faulty and imperfect. From the discernment of mortal sin we come to that of venial sin, from venial sin to imperfections, from imperfections to less per fect ways of doing perfect things, and from that to a delicate perception of the almost invisible in fidelities which grieve the Holy Spirit within us. And if bodily mortification is not the sole means by which this sensitiveness of conscience is obtained, it is one of the chief, as well from its own intrinsic method of operation, as from its power to impetrate the gift from God.
This brings me to the third use of mortifications of all kinds, which is to obtain power with God. Suffering easily becomes power in the things of God. The price He sets upon it is shown by the fact that the world was redeemed by suffering, and that suffering gives their palm to the martyrs and their crown to the confessors. The gift of miracles followed hard upon austerity. When we complain that we have no power with God, that our prayers remain unanswered, that our efforts to root out some besetting sin are unavailing, and that we give way to temptations and to surprises of temper or loquacity, it is for the most part because we are not leading mortified lives. It is in this that mortification so amply repays us for the pain it gives. For not only is it an immense gain to have power with God, but the obvious connection between the mortification and the power enables us not so much to believe in supernatural things as to handle them with our very hands and feel their weight. Indeed, even a temptation may come from this. If, then, for the sake of our own spiritual growth and the interest we feel in the glory of God, the triumph of faith, and the salvation of souls near and dear to us, we desire to obtain power with God, we must habitually and constantly practise mortification.
Its fourth use is to intensify our love. It is of the nature of love to thrive on no food so well as on the evidence of its own vigor; and nothing testifies to us so surely our love of God as the infliction of voluntary austerities upon ourselves; and while it manifests our love it augments it also. Pain, too, of itself prepares the heart for the emotions of love by softening it and making it childlike. And where the object loved and
contemplated is of sorrow and suffering, as Jesus is, love impels us more or less vehemently to imitation. Do we complain that our love of our dear Lord is slackening ? Forthwith let us mortify ourselves in something, and the smouldering embers will break into a bright flame. As sure as power follows mortification, so also does love.
Its fifth use is to make us unworldly, and to inundate us with spiritual joy. Nothing is in itself so unworldly as mortification, because it is the killing of everything that the world most prizes and cherishes. It breaks off all the inordinate attachments to creatures which we may have formed, and it hinders us from embarrassing our selves with new ties; for mortification is found by experience to be so difficult that we dread to increase the breadth of the region over which we are compelled to extend it. And what is each new attachment but a fresh horde of savages to be brought painfully beneath control? As to spiritual joy, it flows like a tide into some empty place. In proportion, therefore, as our hearts are void of earthly attachments, and an attachment may be defined to be an affection which is not duty, in the same proportion are they capable of enjoying the sweetness of God. Hence it is that mortified persons, when discreet, are always mirthful. The heart is lightened, because the burden of the body is taken off it. Nothing can make us unworldly but mortification. Have we never seen persons clouded round with sorrow so deep and dark that we approached it reverently as we would a sanctuary, and yet it has not made the sufferer unworldly? That blessed office is the monopoly of mortification.
Its sixth use is to hinder our making a great mistake, which is leaving the via purgativa too soon. This is perhaps the chiefest danger in the whole of the spiritual life. Many try to go so fast when they first begin, that they lose their breath and give up the race altogether; and even if they do not, they cannot leave behind what they wish to leave before the appointed time. They are like men running wildly to outstrip their own shadow. It cannot be. Nature wants to be out of her novitiate. Meditation would fain be thrust up into affective prayer, and the captivity of little things longs to expatiate in liberty of spirit. The bruised flesh asks to be let alone, and interior mortification requests to be allowed its primitive vagueness, and to remain undefined. Weekly communion gravitates to daily, and the soul, a little tired of looking after itself, inclines to convert the world. If there is difficult navigation any where in the spiritual life, it is here. See ! the reefs are strewn with wrecks, and the waves wash up at every tide the bodies of half-made saints, of broken heroes and frustrated vocations. No harm comes of keeping long in the lower parts of the spiritual life. All possible evil may come of mounting too quickly. An evil when it is mortified first looks dead. It feigns death as beetles do. If it succeeds in deceiving us, and we pass on, we shall rue it bitterly. It is only the old story; look well to your foundations, dig them deep, and build broad, and plan your building magnificently large, as if you were a prince. Mortification, of all things, helps us to do this. Its difficulty brings out our weakness. One while clumsy, another while cowardly, we are content to be kept down, when daily failures are telling us what would happen on the giddy heights above us. But how long shall the via purgativa last ? Who can tell ? It depends upon fervor. Anyhow, we must count it by years, not by months.
The seventh use of mortification is to be found in its connection with prayer. How many com plaints are we daily hearing of the .difficulties of mental prayer! If we do not mortify ourselves, why complain? Listen to this vision which Da Ponte relates as having happened to a person whom he knew, tie gives it at length in the third tract of his " Spiritual Guide." God showed this person the state of a tepid and idle soul, which is given to prayer without mortification. She saw in the middle of a wide plain a very deep and strong foundation, white as ivory, about which a fair, ruddy youth of admirable beauty was walking. He called her to him, and said: "I am the son of a powerful king, and I have laid this foundation that I might build a palace for you to dwell in, and to receive me whenever I come to visit you, which I shall do frequently, provided you always have a room ready for me, and open as soon as I knock. In time, however, I shall come and live entirely with you, and you will be de lighted to have me for a daily guest. Judge, however, from the magnitude of this foundation what the edifice is to be. Meanwhile I will build, and you must bring me all the materials." The lady began to be sore amazed and afflicted, for she deemed it impossible that she should of herself bring all the requisite materials. The young man, however, said: " Do not be afraid; you will be quite able to do it. Begin to bring something at once, and I will help you." So she began to look about for something, but presently stopped and fixed her eyes on the young man, whose beauty delighted and refreshed her. Yet she took no pains to please him. She feared him very much when she saw that he was watching her. Nevertheless, she did not blush at her disobedience. While she was thus loitering, she saw that the foundation was being gradually covered with dust and straws by the wind, and sometimes such whirlwinds of dust arose that she could not see the foundation at all. Sometimes floods of rain covered the whole with mud, which gradually spread over them, and caused a rank vegetation of weeds to sprout up. At last nothing of the foundation remained but the spot which the young man s feet covered, and at last a sudden whirlwind covered him, and the foundation disappeared from her sight beneath a heap of filth. The lady was very much afflicted to find herself alone, especially as she was soon surrounded by ruinous heaps of lime, sand, and stone. She bewailed her tepidity and idleness; but believing that the young man was still hidden in some of the cavities of the foundation, she cried out in a loud voice: "Sir, I am coming; I am bringing materials; I pray you come forth to the building; for I am deeply penitent for my sloth and delay." While she was in these dispositions, the vision was thus interpreted to her: The foundation signifies faith and the habits of other virtues which Christ infuses into the soul at Baptism, desiring to build upon them a fair edifice of lofty perfection, provided the soul cooperates with Him by bringing the necessary materials, observance of the divine precepts and counsels, which by aid of the same Lord it can do. But the soul is often so delighted with meditating on the mysteries of Christ that it becomes tepid and idle in the imitation and obedience of Him, and through this inattention and slovenliness the habits of virtue are gradually obscured by venial sin, and the eyes of the soul so dimmed that they cannot see Our Lord. In punishment of this sloth He sometimes allows the soul to fall into a mortal sin, which stains and destroys everything. Then, by the mercy of God, it repents, finds the stones of contrition, the lime of confession, and the sands of satisfaction all round it, and calls on Jesus with a loud voice to pardon the sin and to begin the building for the second time.
The eighth use of mortification is to give depth and strength to our sanctity, just as gymnastic exercises give us muscle and play of strength. This is connected with what was said a while ago of not trying to get out of the via purgativa too quickly. When Simeon Stylites first began to stand upon his column, so Theodoret tells us, he heard a voice in his sleep which said, Arise and dig ! He seemed to dig for a time, and then ceased, when the voice said to him, Dig deeper ! Four times he dug, four times he rested, and four times the voice cried, Dig deeper ! After that it said, Now build without toil ! There can be no doubt but that the digging was the humbling toil of mortification. There is such a thing as a thin, meagre piety, a religious sentimentality which cannot go beyond the beauty of taste or the pathos of a ceremonial, a devotion for the sunshine but not for the storm ; and the fault of the lank, crazy edifice that is raised by it is the absence of mortification in its original construction.
The ninth use of mortification concerns bodily austerities. Without exterior mortification it is idle to expect that we shall ever attain the higher grace of interior mortification. It is the greatest of delusions to suppose that we can mortify judgment and will, if we do not mortify our body also. Interior mortification is certainly the higher ; yet in some sense exterior is harder. It is harder because it comes first, and has to be exercised when we have as yet scarcely any empire over ourselves. It is harder because it is more sensible. It is harder because our victories are at best mean to look at, and our defeats palpable and discouraging. It is harder because habit helps us less. If our bodily penances are rare, each one has the difficulties of a new beginning. If they are frequent, they fall on unhealed wounds. Whereas with interior mortification the victories always look dignified, the defeats are surrounded by such a host of extenuating circumstances as veil their disgrace. We must remember that throughout our spiritual life we have our body for our companion, and none but a very few privileged saints have ever quite subdued it. Moreover, body has to be saved as well as soul, and so it is not true that, in devotion, exterior things are only a means to interior. They have, besides that instrumental character, an import and significancy of their own. There have always been two classes of heresies with regard to spiritual theology ; and I cannot think of one heresy which has not come either from a disunion of the interior and the exterior, or a dwelling on one of them to the neglect and depression of the other. I tremble when people speak much of interior mortification; it sounds like a confession that they are leading comfortable lives. On the other hand, when men exaggerate the importance of bodily austerities, the chances are that they do not practise them at all, or that, practising them, they rest in them with complacency, and so are fakirs, not Christians, having no spiritual life which can deserve the name.
The tenth and last use of mortification is, that it is a most excellent school for the queenly virtue of discretion. The truly mortified man will as little think of not listening to discretion as he would think of listening to cowardice. Discretion is a habit of hitting the mark, and there must be a supernatural truth in the eye and a supernatural steadiness in the hand in order to attain this. Mortification is the grand subject-matter of these trials of discretion; and the virtue will show itself in obedience, humility, self-distrust, perseverance, and detachment from penances themselves. This was the trial to which the bishops put Simeon Stylites. They sent a messenger to bid him come down from his pillar. If he hesitated they would
know his extraordinary vocation was not from God. But the words were hardly out of the messenger s mouth than he put one foot down from his column. In his docility they recognized the call of God and bade him stay.
V. DISCRETION IN THE USE OF MORTIFICATION.
The details of mortification belong more to the direction of particular souls. Each one requires a legislation for himself. There seems, however, to be a consent among spiritual writers that while pleasures, passions, and pains are the three great fields of mortification, a certain order ought to be observed in our application to them. Pleasures should be mortified first, passions next, and pains be taken last. They do not mean by this that there are three distinct and successive classes of penances, and that we must practise one till we are out of the other, any more than writers when they divide mental prayer into twelve or fifteen states mean that we go out of one into another, as if they were separate rooms. All that is meant is, that upon the whole a certain order is to be observed, and upon the whole one object to be sought at a certain time rather than another one.
Mortifications are divided into exterior and interior. Of the exterior there are five principal classes. First, afflictive penances, such as fasting, discipline, hair-shirt, catenella, cold, and wakefulness. Of these the one which most requires jealousy is that which concerns loss of sleep, and next to it the bearing of cold. For the results of these to the health may be and often are permanent. And generally of all these penances two things may be observed : first, that no one should ever take them out of his own head, without counsel and obedience; and secondly, that perseverance in them is of far greater moment than either quantity or quality. It has often been noticed that when a person becomes spiritual, one of the very last infirmities which leaves him is an unmortified pleasure in eating and drinking. There is something wonderfully humbling in this; and we must pay particular attention to it, trying to mortify ourselves in something at every meal, and not to eat between meal-times.
The second class of exterior mortifications consists in the custody of the senses, in order to rebuke levity and curiosity, and in these singularity and affectation should be guarded against.
Under the third class comes the patient bearing of illness and pain, and especially the acceptation of death in the spirit of penance.
Under the fourth class come fatiguing and self-denying works for the good of our neighbor, or the relief of the poor, or the exaltation of the faith.
Under the fifth comes all that is penal in the common tasks and daily vicissitudes of life: the obligation of work, the inconveniences of poverty, the weather, and like things, all which may become meritorious by being endured in an interior spirit of penance, and united to Our Lord s endurance of them in His thirty-three years.
Under the head of interior mortifications comes first of all the mortification of our own judgment, or razionale, as St. Philip called it. Can there be a harder task in the whole of the spiritual life ? If you ask me how it is to be done, I answer the words are easy, not so the practice: Distrust your own opinion, and acquire the habit of surrendering it in doubtful things. In matters about which you are clear, speak modestly and then be silent. Try never to have an opinion contrary to that of your natural and immediate superiors. Let their presence be the death of your own views. With your equals try to agree in matters of no moment, and, above all, have no wish to be listened to. Judge favorably of all things, and be ingenuous in giving them a kindly turn. Condemn nothing either in the general or the particular, but make all things over to the judgment of God. When reason and virtue oblige you to speak, do so with such gentleness and want of emphasis that you may seem rather to despise than value your own opinion. Mortifications of the will form another class. The tongues of others fill a third to overflowing. Spiritual desolations are a fourth, and horrible temptations, specially allowed by God, a fifth. All these have their own symptoms and require their own method of treatment, which it would be out of place here to investigate. There is little left for the work of sanctification to do when our will is conformed to the will of God and endures humbly and sweetly the adverse wills of others. The strife of tongues is a mortification from which few can hope to escape, especially if they are endeavoring either to do good to others or aiming at a high sanctity for themselves. It was one of the ingredients in Our Saviour s chalice, and was considered by the Psalmist as so afflictive that he prayed God to hide him from it beneath the shadow of His wings. Spiritual desolation, so hard to bear, gives both courage and humility to our relations with God, while unusual and obstinate temptations purify the soul, as in a very crucible, from all re mains of earthly dross.
VI. DANGERS TO BE AVOIDED.
But if mortification has its difficulties, it has its dangers also. Many mortifications are preceded by Vainglory, who blows the trumpet before them. Other mortifications she accompanies ; and some even receive from her all their life, animation, and perseverance. It is as if this evil spirit had a standing commission from her master : Whenever a soul is about to practise a mortification, there be thou also ! The remedy for this is to put all our mortifications under obedience. It is difficult then for either vainglory, ostentation, affectation, wilfulness, or indiscretion to fasten upon our penances and corrode their precious life. And they are the six chief dangers of mortification. Neither must we forget to be on our guard against a superstitious idea of the value of pain growing up in our minds alongside of our austerities. Many mortifications remain mortifications when the pain of them has passed away ; and the value of them depends upon the intensity of the supernatural intention that was in them, not on the amount of physical pain or bodily discomfort. Mortification is a putting something to death, and the passion that is dead already is more mortified than one that is only dying, and yet the last feels pain, while the first is past all feeling. It is astonishing how many are unconsciously deceived by this superstitious notion of the value of mere pain ; not that it is without value ; but it is not the gem, it is only the setting of it. It is this error which has given so much vogue outside the Church, and sometimes also to unwary persons in it, to the delusion of thinking that perfection consists in always doing what we dislike, which implies that our affections and passions will never be brought to like the things of God or be in harmony with grace. Thus you will hear of persons having a scruple whether they ought to be kind to others because they have so much sensible pleasure in it, or visiting the poor for the same reason, or following a particular bent of devotion. Some even impose it as a rule upon the souls they guide in almost every instance with as much absurdity as indiscretion. In the only sense in which sound mysticism would allow of such a maxim, it would require a special and clearly-marked vocation, and it would be as rare as the call to make St. Teresa s and St. Andrew Avellino s vows always to do what was most perfect. Yet the Church stopped at those vows when she was called upon to canonize the saints, and would not proceed till evidence was given her of a special operation of the Holy Ghost. No one ever became a saint, or anything like one, by ceasing to cultivate the sweeter parts of his character or his natural virtues because the doing so was so great a pleasure. Yet Jansenism thought that the secret of perfection lay in this single charm. It is a most odious and uncatholic idea of asceticism.
VII. DELUSION TO WHICH MORTIFICATION EXPOSES US.
To the difficulties and dangers of mortification we must add a word on its delusions. It is a fertile subject. Guillore, who has treated of the subject at length and with his usual severity, sums it all up by describing the four classes of persons which are most subject to these delusions. The first class embraces those who have always led an innocent life, and on that account easily dispense themselves from austerities; and not being drawn to them themselves they make no attempt to draw others that way. They do not see why they should mal treat a body which is so little rebellious, and inflict on it such constant pain when it teases them with but an occasional disturbance. The second class contains those who, though their lives have been far from innocent, are nevertheless from softness of temperament disinclined to austerities. They can hardly believe that anything which is so far above their cowardice, as this persecution of self, can be necessary and indispensable. Useful they are willing to admit it to be, but surely not necessary; for in that case where should they be ? And are their intellectual views of perfection, or their sentimental aspirations after it, to end in smoke ? The third class comprises those who have greatly offended God, and therefore think that they must set no bounds to their austerities. Hence they go beyond the limits of sage reason on one side and the inspirations of grace on the other. The fourth class numbers men of fiery zeal and hot-tempered enthusiasm, whose peace is in war and their rest in struggle, and who satisfy nature by the chastise ment of their bodies. But when the blood runs or the face grows pale, they are miserably deceived if they consider that to be a true spiritual mortification which has only been the rude satisfaction of a natural and impulsive passion.
THIRD TREATISE: PRAYER
I. THE EXCELLENCE AND NECESSITY OF MENTAL PRAYER.
PRAYER, the holy fathers tell us, is an elevation of our soul to God by the union of our mind with supreme truth and of our heart with supreme goodness. It is a respectful homage which we render to the divine grandeur and majesty by the submission of all our powers.
St. Chrysostom, in his beautiful homilies on prayer, says that prayer is to the soul what the nerves are to the body, walls to a city, arms to a soldier, wings to a bird, respiration to animals. We judge a body to be dead, he says, when it no longer breathes, and we must believe a soul to be dead when it no longer prays.
To be sure, he speaks of prayer in general, inasmuch as it includes mental and vocal ; but as men tal prayer is the soul and the principal part of this exercise, if it is necessary to pray it is necessary to meditate, particularly as vocal prayer without it is not true prayer, but a vain and reprehensible occupation.
At the same time, it is not this kind of meditation that we are about to speak of here, but of purely mental prayer, which is undoubtedly preferable to vocal, except where the latter is of precept and of obligation.
Certain celebrated doctors quoted by Suarez believed mental prayer to be necessary for all classes of persons, and that they could not be saved without it.
This is going too far. It is probable that they meant by meditation the elevation and the reflection necessary to receive the sacraments worthily, to conceive sorrow for our sins, to ask for extraordinary graces from God, and to produce, at times of precept, acts of faith, hope, and charity.
However this may be, it cannot be denied that mental prayer is necessary to those who wish to lead, I do not say pious, but even Christian lives, whether they are beginners, or have already made considerable progress, or have attained perfection.
Beginners must acquire purity of heart by frequent confession and continual mortification ; confession effaces sin and mortification destroys its principle; now both require the assistance of meditation.
A penitent must hate his sin, and to do so he must understand its malice. How can he under stand it without reflection, without consideration, without meditation ? I do not speak of the examination of conscience he must make on the Commandments of God and of the Church, which is a manner of meditation as profitable as it is necessary.
Neither can we practise mortification without the assistance of mental prayer, for mortification is a thing that does violence to nature, and is very contrary to our inclinations ; it tends to subdue and destroy nature ; and as the natural instinct of all creatures is self-preservation, it is evident that if the soul does not rise above itself by means of prayer, it cannot conceive that holy hatred so necessary to enable it to deny itself what it loves and to embrace what it fears.
What we say of beginners applies also to those more advanced in the spiritual life : without prayer the first cannot cut off their vices, and the second cannot acquire virtue. It is in prayer that the soul discovers the beauty of virtue, is inflamed with love for it, and incited to practise it.
The great Cardinal Bellarmine, as celebrated for his piety as his learning, says that it is prayer, so to speak, which gives life to all the other virtues and preserves them in the soul.
It enlightens our faith by bringing us in contact with objects from which the senses tend to with draw us and to which they blind us.
It sustains our hope by giving us familiar access to God, and by uniting us with our principle.
It causes us to recognize the vanity, inconstancy, and infidelity of creatures ; inspires us with horror of the world, and inflames us with love for God by the knowledge and experience which it gives us of His goodness.
It gives us a knowledge of ourselves, which teaches us wise lessons of humility, makes us realize and appreciate our nothingness, and reveals to us the greatness and sanctity of God, before Whom our imaginary virtues have no existence, beauty, form, or measure.
Finally it leads us into those sacred solitudes where the soul enjoys its God in the peace and repose of holy recollection. It conducts us, in spirit, to hell, where we behold the place which might have been ours ; to the cemetery, to look upon our final resting-place on earth ; to heaven, to behold the throne which is destined for us ; to the valley of Josaphat, to behold our Judge ; to Bethlehem, to look upon our Saviour; to Tabor, to behold our Love ; to Calvary, to behold our Exemplar,
A volume would hardly suffice to enumerate all the treasures of grace which the faithful soul finds in meditation, and the consolations in all its trials which it receives from God.
No doubt there are persons who are unable to give a considerable portion of time each day to meditation, but I am convinced that we can never attain Christian perfection unless we supply for meditation in some way, either by pious reading, or the instruction of confessors, or the teaching of sermons.
It is not necessary to demonstrate that the perfect must be souls given to prayer, since it is prayer which unites them to God, in which union their perfection consists. Thus there never have been saints who were not devoted to prayer ; it was their occupation and their consolation. Their lives, we may say, were an unceasing prayer, as the Son of God commands ; their every breath was a prayer, which makes me conclude with St. Augustine that to live well we must pray well ; just as to pray well we must live well. This is a necessary condition of the prayer of which we are treating.
II. DISPOSITIONS FOR PRAYER
Poverty is eloquent ; to pray well we must know our misery. There is no advocate at the bar who pleads his cause better than the poor man seeking relief in his necessity from a rich patron. If we are cold in our prayer it is because we do not realize our misery or appreciate our need.
And yet, just as there is no man without desires, there is no man without needs. The rich of this world are full of them ; kings are more dependent than their subjects; they need more assistance than a poor workman ; he is dependent only upon the labor of his own hands, but a sovereign is dependent upon all his subjects ; which shows that exalted positions are only a form of brilliant servitude. It was David s appreciation of his misery which made his prayer so eloquent, so powerful, and so constant.
It is the same with the rest of mankind ; as there is no one without needs there is no one who does not know how to pray and to recommend his necessities to God ; but how many will you find who know how to converse with Him ? When Moses had conversed with God he could no longer converse with men, and he prayed God to dispense him from bearing His orders to Pharao. But we find, on the contrary, many clever minds who converse brilliantly with men, but find it impossible to converse with God. Why is this ? It is because their hearts are engaged in sin and filled with affection for creatures. " Where the heart is there is its treasure." We like to converse with those we love, hence it is not astonishing that one who has no love for God should do all he can to avoid His presence and His company. But when a soul is detached from all created things, it is impossible to express or conceive of the delight which it finds in prayer.
The apostles formerly said to the Son of God : " Lord, teach us to pray." Strange request ! There is nothing more miserable than a man who does not recognize his wretchedness ; he is full of needs and knows not how to reveal them. Behold the effect of sin, which blinds our mind and debauches our will !
But what is still more deplorable is that there are many who recognize their misery, yet seek no relief ; they feel their wretchedness and cannot declare it ; they come before God and have nothing to say to Him. Their prayer is a continual distraction of mind and dissipation of heart.
To remedy an evil so common and so deplorable, we would facilitate for all souls the practice of prayer. We find innumerable precepts concerning prayer in books ; the shortest way, in my opinion, is that of detachment and mortification. Prayer is a fire that is fed with the wood of the cross. How can a heart, agitated by passions, a prey to all the desires of a sensual, avaricious, ambitious nature, remain at peace in the presence of God ? Grace is a quality so pure and so delicate that it can have no intercourse with the senses. Therefore to rise to heaven we must be detached from earth, and to unite ourselves with God in prayer we must separate ourselves, by mortification, from all creatures. How can we practise mortification if we do not know how to pray? you ask, for prayer is as necessary to mortification as mortification is to prayer. True, and for that reason they must never be separated ; however painful or laborious we find prayer, we must never abandon it, inasmuch as this labor is very great mortification, and disposes the soul to receive great graces. When we practise what we know, God teaches us what we do no: know. Do what you can and God will do what you desire. But to do what we can we must know what we ought to do. That is what we shall teach in the following chapters.
III. VARIOUS KINDS OF PRAYER
There are, besides vocal, seven degrees or kinds of mental prayer.
The first is called meditation. The second, affective prayer. The third, the prayer of silence. The fourth, the prayer of union. The fifth, the prayer of privation. The sixth, the prayer of transformation. The seventh, the prayer of quiet.
In the prayer called meditation the soul considers, ponders, and digests Christian truths; it dwells upon the life and death of Our Lord, upon His actions, His sufferings, His doctrine, His example. This prayer, the basis, the foundation of all the others, is the gate of the sanctuary through which we must enter. It would be extremely rash, St. Bernard tells us, for a newly-converted soul to seek the embrace of the Bridegroom before it has kissed His feet by penance and His hands by the practice of good works. When it has labored long and faithfully in the acquisition of virtues, then it may sigh for a favor which we hardly venture to desire in this life, so much is it above the merit and condition of man.
The soul, therefore, must meditate before it loves, must labor before it rests, seek before it possesses*. But when the mind, after the enjoyment of great light, no longer finds wherewith to occupy itself in meditation, then it may pass on to affective prayer, incessantly sighing and yearning for this divine Bridegroom Whose worth it has learned and Whose goodness it has experienced.
From this prayer of aspiration it passes to the prayer of silence ; for when it is wearied with crying, speaking, meditating, sighing, seeking, calling, there follows a silence in the heaven of its soul, by which it learns, like St. Augustine, that it is seeking without that which it possesses within ; it is in this mysterious silence that it sees things and hears secrets which it is not permitted to reveal to men.
This is a great favor, but it is followed by a still greater ; for the mind being, as it were, excluded from this divine sanctuary, the Spouse enters the heart ; all the doors of its interior and exterior being closed, He unites Himself with the soul by a secret touch which St. Louis de Blois calls substantial. For the soul, after this union, believes firmly that it has substantially touched the divinity, inasmuch as it was not through the sense of sight, or hearing, or smell, or taste, or spiritual odor, that it felt God present, but by that of touch, which has this in common with the corporal sense that it produces immediate contact with the object. Just as a friend, during the night, feels and knows when his friend touches him, though he does not seem to see him, so the soul, its mind plunged in profound obscurity, insensibly feels in its heart and touches its Spouse through a knowledge which St. Bonaventure calls experimental, immediate, and substantial ; and this union, inexplicable and even inconceivable to those who have not experienced it, is the spiritual marriage of the soul with God, the nuptials of the Lamb which render it a fruitful mother in virtues, merits, good works, and spiritual children, which it unceasingly produces through the unction of the Word, which is that of its divine Spouse. Blessed are they who are called to this feast, to these nuptials of the Lamb !
This operation endures only a short time, but the memory of it is a balm which rejoices the mind and the senses, though they have scarcely any knowledge of it. The bereft spouse, at thought of it, sighs without wishing to sigh, weeps with out wishing to weep. She remains so filled with God that she cannot speak ; and though the operation is past, she cannot doubt that God is in her heart and her heart in God. In the presence of this divine Spouse, Who reposes in the depth and the centre of her soul, she becomes sometimes in flamed with a love so violent that if she did not moderate her transports she would swoon away.
But, inasmuch as this state is infinitely delightful and may be called paradise on earth, if it lasted for a long time the soul would not merit anything, any more than the blessed in heaven ; at least, finding its repose and happiness in this life, it would hardly think of the other. For this reason Our Lord deprives souls, some suddenly, others gradually, of these extraordinary delights and plunges them into a state of privation.
It would be impossible to depict the astonishment of the poor loved one when it finds itself suddenly plunged into this horrible darkness, abandoned to the fury of its passions, and thrust from such a paradise into an abyss of misery. At first, it believes itself lost and imagines it has committed a great sin which has offended its Spouse and obliged Him to withdraw from its presence. It weeps, it sighs, it groans, it languishes; it yearns to return to its former state, but it cannot; it finds an armed cherubim at the gate of this paradise to refuse it entrance; it makes strenuous efforts to produce acts, but to no effect, inasmuch as its Spouse, Who is hidden in its heart, holds its powers bound, and prevents them from being diffused abroad. Oh, what need the soul has at such times of an experienced person to assure it that all is well, and that it has entered into the life of the spirit and the kingdom of grace, where the senses have no part ! When a soul is faithful and tranquil in this state of privation, the divine Spouse never fails to make Himself seen and felt like the sun which scatters the clouds which concealed it; this is the moment of ecstasies and rapture; the joy of the soul is so great that it would be beside itself, did it not moderate its transports and permit itself to be guided. It cannot conceive how it could have believed itself separated from Him Who was in the depth of its heart; it is filled with confusion because of its infidelities, and after the experience it has had of its love, it passes into the prayer of transformation, where it becomes one in spirit with God by the annihilation of its judgment, its will, its acts, its powers, and of its being, so to speak; just as wood after being dried and purified is changed and converted into fire with this difference, that the wood changes its nature, and that of the soul is preserved however penetrated it may be with God. Henceforth its prayer is that of sweet and tranquil rest in God without care, desire, movement, or seeking of any kind, like the streams which at the end of their long course rest in the bosom of the ocean, like the blessed who enjoy God and are lost, so to speak, in Him, and have no thought or care for themselves.
This is the state to which the soul attains when it is faithful to the exercise of meditation and the practice of mortification, when it abandons itself to the providence of God and relies on no creature. As my aim in this treatise is to instruct only be ginners and to facilitate for them the practice of prayer, I shall not dwell upon the higher or extraordinary prayer, or how it. must be regulated, but only on the ordinary prayer called meditation.
IV. MEDITATION.
This prayer is necessary to beginners and requires rules, methods, and precepts; it is composed of four parts, called preparation, consideration, affection, and resolution.
This subject is treated of at length by all the spiritual fathers; I give a brief summary of it for the benefit of those who have not read or cannot read fuller treatises.
I. Preparation. : It is tempting God to begin our meditation without preparation, and manifest want of respect to present ourselves before Him with careless in difference. As our intelligence is limited, we can do nothing well without previous preparation. Great actions require great consideration, and great enterprises great preparation. Now what is greater, nobler, more important, than to converse with God on the affairs of our salvation? Therefore we must never go to meditation without preparation. Preparation is required in everything: artists prepare themselves to execute their conceptions; orators to deliver their discourses; politicians to carry out their policy; wise men to carry out their designs.
There are two kinds of preparation: one is remote, the other immediate.
Remote preparation consists in three things: 1. In keeping the mind recollected during the day. 2. In preserving the heart pure from sin and free from passion. 3. In reading the subject of meditation.
As I am instructing beginners, I do not pretend to lay down rules for perfect souls. There are mystics who do not hesitate to say that they have no need to prepare themselves for meditation. This, I think, is speaking unwisely; they mean, no doubt, that they are always prepared for meditation, which is true, for they are always united to God, and their subject is always present in their minds and is contained in these three significant words, God, all, nothing.
As to the immediate preparation, it includes three things very necessary to a good meditation.
1. A lively faith in the presence of God, which we may call the soul, the sun, the fire of meditation; the soul which animates it, the sun which enlightens it, the fire which inflames it.
There are two ways of placing ourselves in the presence of God; one by considering, like St. Stephen, Our Lord, either in heaven, whence He looks down upon us, or in the Blessed Sacrament, where He lives for us. This representation of the sacred humanity may be useful for beginners, provided it require no great exertion of the mind or effort of the imagination.
The other manner of placing ourselves in the presence of God is more spiritual: it consists in believing and recollecting that we are before God and that God is before us; that we are with God and that God is with us; that we are in God and that God is in us; that His immensity fills all things, and that we are filled therewith to the very depth of our being, as St. Augustine says; that, therefore, we can never be separated from the being of God, though we may sever ourselves from His love.
2. After placing yourself in His presence, adore Him with profound respect, prostrating yourself, body and soul, before Him. Then offer Him your meditation and the time you intend to devote to it, protesting that it is for love of Him, and to please Him, that you are about to perform this action; be prepared to spend the time of meditation in light or in darkness, in consolation or desolation, seeking no other satisfaction than that of pleasing God. This resignation is important for receiving God s graces and remaining in the state in which He may place you. If, when you have done your best, you leave meditation satisfied, it is a mark that you have entered upon it with a pure intention; but if you are sad and despondent, it is a mark that you have sought your satisfaction and not that of God.
3. The last thing required as preparation is to invoke the Holy Spirit, acknowledging that you are not capable of a good thought if He does not in spire it; of applying your mind if He does not restrain it; of elevating your heart if He does not attract it; of loving Him if He does not inspire and animate you.
II. Consideration: The consideration forms, so to speak, the body of the meditation. The Prophet Jeremias says that the whole earth is desolate because there is no one that enters into himself and considers the great truths of religion. And David tells us, "Blessed are they who search the testimonies, the commandments of God, for they will find the fountain of living water, and the treasures of grace contained in them." "Blessed," he says elsewhere, "is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence: But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he shall meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due season." Thus does he begin the first of all his canticles.
The manner of making the consideration varies according to the subject of the meditation and the person meditating. If the subject is some mystery or action of Our Lord s life, we must examine all the circumstances; for example, if we are meditating on the Passion, we must consider Who it is Who suffers, what He suffers, where He suffers, how He suffers, for what purpose He suffers.
If it is a virtue upon which we are meditating, we must consider its nature, its characteristics, its beauty, its advantages, its necessity, the means of acquiring it, and the occasions of practising it. If it is a vice upon which we are meditating, we must endeavor to learn the malice of it, the evil effects of it, and the remedies to be applied to it.
In regard to the person meditating, there are people who cannot readily discourse in meditation, either because they are convinced of all the Christian truths, or because they have no facility in reasoning, or because of a dull intelligence or a too lively imagination.
They who are convinced of the truths of religion should give themselves more to affections than considerations. They would do well also some times to remain quietly in the presence of God, listening to His voice in the depth of their soul, or sitting at His feet like Magdalen, or waiting, like the paralytic, until the waters are stirred, sending forth loving sighs from time to time, and begging Our Lord to give them His love.
They who have difficulty in reasoning or discoursing may make use of the method of Louis de Grenada or of St. Francis de Sales, who counsel beginners, particularly women, to keep a book before their eyes, to read the first point, and if it suggest no good thoughts, to begin again and to read the first two lines with great attention, as if it were Our Lord Himself Who spoke in them ; then to pause and ponder a little upon what they have read, and to produce some affection conform able to the subject ; after these two lines, to read two more, considering the truth proposed in them, reflecting upon their lives and producing sentiments of gratitude or of sorrow for their sins. When they find something which touches them, they should pause, and before going any further, derive all the profit they can from it.
If they find nothing to occupy them, let them have recourse to other methods, which we shall each later on.
Persons possessed of a lively imagination should fix the mind upon some mystery, or place, or figure, representing the mystery as actually taking place before them. Thus, if the nativity of Our Lord is the subject of our meditation, we must imagine ourselves in the stable of Bethlehem ; if His death, upon Calvary ; if His transfiguration, upon Tabor. If we meditate upon hell, we must descend in spirit to this place of torment; if upon death, we must picture ourselves upon our bed about to render up our soul to God. If it is a truth we are considering, we must imagine Our Lord instructing us, or think of Him under some figure relating to the truth we are contemplating. This kind of representation serves to fix the imagination, and St. Ignatius makes it a prelude to the consideration.
But we must beware, as I have said, of forcing the mind ; on the contrary, if at the beginning of the meditation we feel drawn to the presence of God, we must remain there without entering into the subject. If the same happens during the meditation, we must cease to discourse, and abandon ourselves to the operation of the Holy Spirit. This is the advice given by St. Ignatius himself in his " Exercises."
III. Affections: Considerations are formed by the understanding, and affections by the will. Sterile reflections serve only to make a man vain and wicked, but affectionate reflections make him humble and holy. The light of the sun would be a vain ornament to the earth if it did nothing but shed its light upon it ; it must also warm and fructify it. As God desires principally our hearts, affections are much more noble and more necessary than considerations.
Affections are the good desires and movements of the soul produced by the consideration of some subject ; such are the acts of all the virtues, of faith, of hope, of charity, of adoration, of admiration, of praise, of thanksgiving, of offering of one’s self, of sorrow for sin, of confusion at our past life, etc.
As it is by means of such acts that the heart is detached from creatures and united with God, we must endeavor to produce them as much as possible, without, however, making any violent effort. If you cannot produce acts of charity, produce acts of humility ; this virtue, St. Bernard says, compensates for want of charity. Suffer if you cannot pray ; make a meditation of patience instead of consolation. Above all, be at peace and do not be troubled, but be convinced that the most excellent of all prayers is to do the will of God, and to be satisfied wherever He places you.
IV. Resolutions: Our resolutions are the most important of all the affections of the soul, and must be made whether the meditation has been one of consolation or one of dryness. There are some who spend the time of prayer in learned speculations ; others in tender affectionate sentiments ; others in obscurity of mind; others in dryness and aridity of heart; some are always moved to tears, others never weep. Others, again, have a complacent admiration for virtue, but never come to the practice of it ; others make many and excellent resolutions, but which are never followed by any results. Aristotle says that they who study ethics without being any the better therefore are like a sick man who delights to hear his physician discourse upon his malady but will take no remedy.
A meditation without fruit is an amusement of the mind and a very dangerous form of idleness. We must not judge of meditation by the tender sentiments we have experienced, but by the profit we have derived from it, or at least by the sincere desire we have to do good and to practise virtue. When you leave meditation, however dry it may have been, with the desire, the resolution, to correct your faults and to do God s will, your time has not teen lost. The sacraments do not render us impeccable, much less meditation; but it ought to prevent our falling so frequently or so grievously, and incite us to greater ardor in the practice of virtue.
There are two kinds of resolutions; one general, the other particular. General resolutions are, for example, to love God with our whole heart, to practise virtue, to avoid anger, to conform our selves in all things to the will of God. Particular resolutions determine the time, place, circumstances; as, for instance, to mortify ourselves on certain occasions ; to practise meekness and patience under certain circumstances ; to conform our will to that of God in some loss, humiliation, or sickness.
General resolutions are not bad, but we must make special ones also, particularly against the vice to which we are most addicted, and to which we must lay siege in meditation, directing all our batteries against it. At other times we may resolve to perform a certain number of acts of virtue during the day ; if you derive this fruit from meditation you have no reason to fear that it is not well made. But bear in mind four things :
First, that our affections, whether sweet and sensible or dry and cold, must be followed as much as possible by resolutions, which are their proper fruit.
Second, that we must not make many resolutions at a time, but confine ourselves to one well fixed in our mind. A skillful sportsman never goes after several hares at a time; he confines himself to one.
Third, that we must begin by what is easy before undertaking what is difficult; correct our exterior before reforming our interior; for he who is not faithful in little things will not be in great; while, on the contrary, if you acquit yourself faithfully in little things God will help you to accomplish great.
Fourth, that we must not make resolutions for life, but sometimes for a month, or a week, and chiefly for the present day; if we fail in carrying out our resolution, and we fall as before, we must not lose courage, but rise at once and repair our fault at the first opportunity.
V. Conclusion: The conclusion or colloquy includes three things: thanksgiving, offering of ourselves, and petition.
We must first thank God for the honor of being allowed in His presence, for the lights we have received, and the good desires He has inspired.
Second, we must offer Him our soul, our body, our mind, our heart, all that we possess, all that we hope for, particularly the good resolutions we have formed in meditation.
Third, we must ask His blessing and the grace to accomplish what He inspires, representing to Him our weakness, our inconstancy, our infidelity, our malice ; addressing ourselves sometimes to Our Lord, sometimes to His blessed Mother, sometimes to the saints to whom we have most devotion, and who excelled in the virtue we need.
Fourth, after meditation we must endeavor to keep ourselves in the presence of God and to pre serve a recollected spirit, frequently returning during the day to what has touched us most, that we may thus preserve our devotion and be constantly reminded of our resolution. This is what St. Francis de Sales calls the spiritual bouquet.
V. DISTRACTIONS
St. Bonaventure truly says that spiritual exercises consist in knowing three things: what God is, what man is, and how man is to unite himself with God. There are several kinds of union, one of which is prayer; but it is difficult to preserve it, for the reason that the Evil One does all he can to disturb it: he torments us with distractions and evil thoughts ; then he persuades us that we ought to abandon prayer, that we are losing our time ; that to pray as we pray is not to please but to offend God; that it is better not to pray at all than to pray with so much irreverence ; that our mind is too active, our imagination too lively, our occupations too numerous, that we cannot reason and discourse on such subjects; that God is cold and indifferent to us; that it is better to leave this exercise to those who have little else to do, and content ourselves with ordinary devotions. Credulous souls are only too often deceived by such temptations, and abandon God through fear of displeasing Him.
To remedy so great an evil, we must be convinced of three things:
First, that of all the remedies which we may apply to distractions in prayer the worst and the most pernicious is to abandon meditation; the Evil One urges it, knowing that when he has cut off the source of grace the soul must languish and die for want of nourishment.
Second, that there is a great difference between consolation and devotion: consolation usually has to do with the senses, devotion has its seat in the heart; consolation passes away, devotion remains; we may have consolation without devotion, as we may also have devotion without consolation. When a soul in great aridity is contented and abandons itself to the will of God, it possesses devotion in a sovereign degree; for true devotion, according to St. Thomas, is a firm disposition of the will to do generously, promptly, and constantly all that God asks of it. Thus we may say that there is no one more devout than one who has no consolation, who feels no devotion, provided he is faithful to meditation, and is content with whatever disposition God sends him, whether to punish him or to sanctify him.
Third, that distractions and dryness are by no means the unmitigated evils we imagine, but, on the contrary, a precious mine capable of affording us rich treasure, if we only use them aright.
VI. CAUSES OF DISTRACTIONS AND ARIDITY
I should need a large volume to give all that the fathers have said on this subject. St. Bona- venture estimates six causes, Gerson seventeen;
they may be reduced, however, to three: God, man, and the Evil One.
All that God does is for our good; His object is our salvation, whether He remains with us or whether He withdraws from us. The absence of the sun is almost as necessary to the earth as its presence; one makes the day and the other the night; the night is not as beautiful as the day, but it is quite as necessary. Now God withdraws from us in prayer for several reasons.
The first is to keep us humble. Pride is a strange thing in man; he can do nothing of himself and yet he prides himself on all that he accomplishes; he is nothing but misery, yet thinks he has no need of mercy.
If God bestows any favor upon him he thinks it the result of his own merit or labor, and robs its Author of the glory due Him; if he catches a fish, he offers sacrifice, as a prophet says, to his net instead of to God; if he gains a victory, instead of kissing the hand of the Lord Who has won it, he kisses his own, which Job says is a grievous sin, an impiety like to that of a man who denies God.
Now it is to make man know his misery and his dependence that God withdraws His consolations; He deprives him of tender and sensible graces to make him feel the need of them; in darkness he discovers what he is; in aridity he learns to appreciate and to ask for what he has not. " My God," said the great St. Augustine, " let me know myself and let me know Thee." We cannot know God if we do not know ourselves, and we learn to know ourselves in the school of poverty.
Here we also learn the value of grace. Things are valued in proportion to their rarity. Abundance, Tertullian says, impairs and vitiates itself; to know the worth of a possession we must have lost it. If we always had this manna from heaven, perhaps we should weary of it like the Jews; but when we are deprived of it we begin to appreciate its worth; consequently we seek it more fervently, we ask for it more humbly, we find it with greater pleasure. We guard it with greater circumspection, fear, and watchfulness. I fear much, says St. Bernard, that ungrateful souls will be abandoned by grace, which they regard, not as a favor, but as a rightful possession of which they are sovereign master and proprietor. The saint refers to the grace of devotion of which God frequently deprives souls, leaving them always what is necessary to resist temptation and to do His will.
This privation is painful, but at the same time necessary not only to keep us humble and make us appreciate grace, but also to enable us to increase our merits; for, as I shall show presently, we merit but little in meditation or prayer filled with tender affectionate sentiments; it is not a state which raises the soul above itself; it is gratifying and satisfies nature; the state in which we merit is that of pure love, of humility, of patience, and rarely is charity pure in sensible fervor, humble in elevation, patient in pleasures.
It is for this reason that Our Lord, as He one day told St. Teresa, leaves souls in darkness, desolation, and aridity. The saint was astonished to hear enlightened souls complain of aridity, knowing it to be a state in which the soul gives greater honor to God, acquires more merit, and practises all virtues with greater perfection.
It is also a time when God recognizes those who are faithful to Him and who truly love Him. Many, in the abundance of grace, declare, like David, that nothing shall ever change or overcome them, and no sooner do they lose their abundance than they are immediately cast down and troubled. Others, at the festival board, declare, like St. Peter, that they will never deny their Master, but when temptation comes abandon Him like the apostle. The weakness of man is inconceivable and his presumption still more so. He blinds himself with his own lights, he forgets his poverty the moment he has left it, he is no sooner restored to health than he imagines himself immortal; hence God afflicts and tries us,. not to learn what we are, for that is well known to Him, but to make us know ourselves. Thus did He try Abraham, recognizing His servant s fidelity in his prompt obedience. " Because thou wast acceptable to God," said the angel Raphael to Tobias, " it was necessary that temptation should prove thee." Therefore we have no reason to tread these states of aridity as we do, since God permits them to keep us humble, to prove our love,, lo make us appreciate grace, and to increase our merits. No doubt some will say, " I should have- no difficulty in bearing this state if I were sure it came from God; but what troubles me is that these-
distractions come through my own fault, through my negligence and in punishment for my infidelities." Even if this were true, you must not lose courage, but patiently endure the trial you think you have merited, making up by your humility for what you lack in charity.
It is true that distractions do frequently come from ourselves, from the activity of our mind, from the strength of our passions, from bodily infirmity, from a wandering imagination, or as the result of unfaithfulness or of attachment to creatures. But all these distractions are innocent, provided we do not dwell upon them. Only those which have their seat in the heart are culpable, for these are deliberate and voluntary, at least in their principle.
Still another source is dissipation of mind during the day ; if we are constantly occupied with vain, and dissipating reflections, it is difficult to rid ourselves of them during prayer. Hence the fathers and the masters of the spiritual life tell us that we must dispossess ourselves of all earthly things if we would be filled with spiritual, and that we must keep ourselves during the day what we would be in prayer.
When I say this I refer particularly to the heart and not to the mind. There are persons whose only efforts are against their thoughts, and who never think of combating their passions. Their hearts are filled with earthly attachments, disquieting desires, and yet they hope to enjoy the repose and peace of detached souls. This cannot be. They must dispossess the heart to free the mind, they must be free from the tyranny of passions to pray without distractions ; for the heart follows its treasure, and is wont to dwell on what it loves.
There is a certain state where the soul is so fully convinced of the beauty and excellence of the Christian virtues that it can no longer reason in meditation, and as it has labored much it asks only to rest, even as the beloved disciple who reposed on the breast of his Master while the others partook of the repast prepared for them. The distractions which arise in this state do not come from an evil source ; they are, on the contrary, a mark of robust spiritual health, and indicate that the soul needs change of disposition and method. Thus, if your heart is detached from creatures, and if you are faithful to your spiritual exercises, this state of aridity and dryness will afford you a rich harvest of grace and cause you to exclaim with the Wise Man : " I have labored a little and have found much rest to myself." Blessed indeed are they who die in the Lord; they will find the treasure of their good works, they will enjoy the fruit of their labors, the God of peace will wipe away their tears, they will never more know care or anguish, grief or pain.
A third cause of our distractions is the Evil One. He appreciates the profit a soul derives from prayer; hence he leaves nothing undone to make us weary of it, to make us abandon it. To this end he persuades us that it is a waste of time, that prayer such as ours, instead of pleasing, offends God ; or he overwhelms us with drowsiness, plunges us into melancholy, fills us with vexation, harasses us with abominable thoughts ; if we yield to the latter he has accomplished his purpose ; if they fill us with horror, he persuades us, by exaggerating our aversion and fear, that we have sovereignly displeased God, and that to rid ourselves of such abominations we must abandon meditation, since it is then that these phantoms
take possession of our mind and imagination. Alas ! only too many souls are deceived by these suggestions of the Evil One, and fly, like Cain, from the presence of God.
Now that we have learned the causes of this evil, let us endeavor to apply the proper remedy..
VII. WE MUST NEVER BE TROUBLED BECAUSE OF DISTRACTIONS AND ARIDITY
In order to bear joyfully, or at least patiently, the privation of sensible sweetness and divine consolations, we must be convinced of two truths : one is, that the evil of these states of desolation and dryness is not what we imagine ; and the other, that they benefit the soul and enable it to acquire much merit.
The first truth does not need to be proved, but illustrated. There is no doubt that a sin to be such must be voluntary ; hence your distractions, if you do not yield to them, cannot but be innocent, even though they continue all the time of your meditation.
You will tell me, perhaps, that they are voluntary as to their cause, and that you give occasion to them ; but even though this be true, it is no reason for yielding to discouragement and abandoning prayer ; for either you know or you do not know their cause. If you do not know it, you must regard them as a temptation of the Evil One, a disposition of grace, a trial of your virtue, an occasion of merit, a physical infirmity, none of which prevent your prayer from being a very pleasing sacrifice to God. If you recognize the cause, ask pardon of God for it and promise to remove it, accept what you suffer in a spirit of penance, and believe me, you will make an excellent meditation.
It is an unwise proceeding to apply one evil to remedy another. If you have yielded unrestrainedly during the day to dissipation of mind is, it any reason for flying from God after you have offended Him? Should we abandon ourselves to the wilds of the forest because we have wandered ever so little from the right path ? It is a mistake to think that distractions always come from dissipation of heart. I have shown the contrary in the preceding chapter, and even were it the case, what does it avail to be troubled? Trouble increases instead of lessening the evil, besides adding to the disturbance of your mind, instead of restoring it to recollection.
You say that you do nothing in meditation. I cannot agree with you. I am of the opinion, on the contrary, that you never accomplish more than when you think you have done nothing. To convince you of this second truth, I must observe again that the time of consolation, though more pleasing than that of desolation, is not a time in which we accomplish most for our spiritual interests or acquire most merits. In consolation we receive God s favors, in desolation we give Him what He asks of us; in one we plan, in the other we labor ; in the first we enjoy God, in the second we combat for Him. Do you not think it is higher and nobler to give than to receive ; to labor than to sleep ; to combat than to follow our pleasure ?
To resist temptation is to suffer a species of martyrdom for the faith, for charity, for religion, for justice. It is to sacrifice our soul, our body, our heart, our mind, and all our passions to the glory of God, Who witnesses our combats, ever ready to crown our patience. It is to produce, in the noblest and most heroic manner, acts of all the virtues : of faith in darkness of spirit, of hope in abandonment, of charity in weariness, of poverty in spiritual destitution, of patience in suffering : this is what you do, and you call it nothing !
A soul, as I have already said, merits hardly anything in consolation. It cannot be sure of producing a single act of supernatural virtue ; for we call supernatural that which is above nature, which surpasses its powers. Man naturally believes only that which he understands, hopes for only that which is possible to him, loves only that which pleases him. Hence his faith is supernatural when he believes what he does not understand ; his hope is supernatural when he hopes for that which he cannot accomplish or compass ; his charity is supernatural when, for love of God, he loves that which does not please him. To believe in the midst of spiritual darkness, to hope in the midst of infirmity, to love despite all obstacles, is to perform acts of virtue which are beyond the power of nature, and which can be done only through the assistance of God.
And this is what a soul does which continues faithful and peaceful in these painful states of privation and aridity: it believes a God present Whom it cannot see ; it hopes in Him against all hope; it abandons itself to One by Whom it believes itself abandoned ; it loves Him despite the weariness and anguish in which He plunges it; it bows to His severe and crucifying designs; it surfers a martyrdom of love; it humbles itself at sight of its misery; it is content with its poverty and blesses God, like Job, when it beholds itself despoiled of all its spiritual possessions, covered with wounds and ulcers, and persecuted by devils, striving to make it break forth into murmurs and complaint.
Oh, if a soul knew how it honors God in a prayer of patience, if it knew the treasures of merit it amasses every moment, it would never wish to change this state! Not that we must reject consolation when God offers it; it is a heavenly dew necessary to tender souls not yet firmly rooted in virtue ; only we must endeavor not to be attached to it. The peace of great souls is not founded upon these sensible favors, but upon the order and good pleasure of God, Whose will constitutes their happiness and their only consolation. Theirs is a life of the spirit and of grace uninfluenced by nature and the things of sense.
Now, what is more natural than to believe that which we see? To hope for that which we may touch ? Who would not believe God present if he felt His divine operations in his heart ? Who would not hope in God if he experienced His caresses ? Who would not love God if he were unceasingly consoled by Him ? It is not in light, therefore, that we practise supernatural faith, but in darkness. It is not when God flatters us that our hope is divine, but when He afflicts us. It is not in consolation that we love God with a pure love, but in desolation. Yes, believe me, you never do more than when you think you have done nothing ; you never merit more than when you think you have merited nothing, inasmuch as in these painful states we produce, as I have shown, acts of divine faith, of supernatural hope, of pure charity, of general mortification, of Christian humility, of blind obedience, and of heroic patience: it is then that man pays God the homage of his whole being, and offers Him the sacrifice of all his passions. Then why should we be troubled, or lose courage, or abandon meditation ?
You cannot, you tell me, think of God. Then be satisfied to love Him and to conform your will to His, accepting the state in which He places you. Your mind wanders? There is no great harm in that, provided you do not let your heart follow, but keep it steadfast. Alas ! I have no consolation in prayer. What, is it for that that you come to meditation? Do you deserve that God should console you, you who have so grievously offended Him, and whose place is among the reprobate ? But what greater consolation can there be than to do God s will, to be in His presence, to manifest your fidelity and your love for Him ? I am always distracted. If your distractions are voluntary, you offend Him; if they are against your will, you honor Him, you please Him, you love Him : everything is pleasing to God except sin, and there can be no sin when the will is lacking. A prayer of suffering is better than a prayer of enjoyment. It is a sweet perfume which rises to heaven and fills paradise with its fragrance. Let us keep these words of St.Angustine always in mind: "You please God if God pleases you ; He is satisfied with you if you are satisfied with Him."
I am satisfied with God, but I am not satisfied with myself. And why are you not satisfied with yourself, unless you take pleasure in being miser able ? You are told that God is satisfied with you provided you are satisfied with Him, and you do nothing but worry and murmur. It is not against yourself that you murmur, but against God, for leaving you without consolation, for not treating you, it seems, according to your merits.
Moreover, since you do what you can, I do not see what reason you have to be dissatisfied with yourself. Far from it, you reply ; it seems to me that I never do all that I might. You take pleasure in tormenting yourself. Tell me, could you do more than you are doing at present ? If you could, why do you not do it? If you could not, why are you troubled ?
The enjoyment of God constitutes the happiness of heaven and earth, with this difference the happiness of heaven is unalloyed, that of earth is mingled with sorrow in heaven we shall worship a God of happiness, on earth our God is a Man of sorrows. Our union with God in this life must resemble that of the sacred Humanity with the Word: the superior part of the Humanity was happy, the inferior suffered; its moments of happiness were few, its heart was continually plunged in an ocean of bitterness, for it had come to expiate in suffering the pleasure which men take in sin.
This is the state of holy souls in this life : according to the spirit nothing could be more pleasing, according to the senses nothing more painful. It is true that God, from time to time, permits them to taste that happiness which eye hath not seen, which ear hath not heard, and which hath not entered into the heart of man ; but this endures only for a short time, for this life is a time of probation and merit. The kingdom of God, St. Paul tells us, does not consist in these sensible consolations, but in justice and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, Who peacefully dwells in a heart. Therefore, though you are distracted in mind, if your heart only remains steadfast, you have nothing to fear. Your mistake is, that you confound these two kinds of distractions, and you do not distinguish between two kinds of union ; one of the heart, and the other of the mind. Be convinced of this, that you may be intimately united with God in heart, though your mind may be distracted, and that all the involuntary distractions in the world cannot distract you and separate you from His love.
I understand this perfectly, some good souls will say, and yet I am not satisfied ; there is a feeling of disquiet in the depth of my heart which fills my meditation with bitterness. Whence is this? The cause is not difficult to find ; you do not come to meditation alone, self-will accompanies you. You wish to give uninterrupted attention and you are not willing to suffer distractions ; you want to burn with fervor and you are not willing to endure coldness; you wish to enjoy light and you are not willing to be left in darkness ; you wish and you do not wish ; you do not find that which you wish, and you find that which you do not wish. What wonder that you are troubled ! Banish this self-will, and your trouble will cease ; purify your intention before entering upon meditation ; do not seek your own satisfaction, but that of God ; accept whatever state it may please Him to place you in, and be convinced that all states are good in which there is no sin ; that you can find God wherever self is not to be found ; that He fills your heart in proportion as you empty it of all earthly things ; that being spirit, He wishes to be adored in spirit ; that sensible unions are dangerous ; that fruitfulness follows sterility ; that after the night comes the morning, and that the best of all prayers is to die to your desires and to mortify your passions. In this way you will restore peace to your soul and dissipate the gloom which possesses it. But as all distractions do not come from the same causes, there are still other remedies to be applied.
VIII. REMEDIES FOR DISTRACTIONS.
Every one complains of distractions, and few are willing to apply the remedy. We like the cause and dislike the effect ; we wish to be recollected in prayer and dissipated at all other times. Is not this desiring what is impossible?
We have said that distractions come from three sources from God, from man, and from the Evil One. When they come from God we must endure them ; when they come from the Evil One we must repel them ; when they come from man we must apply a remedy.
There are two kinds of remedies. The first precede prayer, the others accompany it. The remedies which precede it are numerous ; among others, recollection of mind, purity of heart, mortification of the senses, victory over the passions, flight from companions, detachment from all possessions, honors, and created pleasures, interior silence, and the annihilation of all desires.
It is astonishing, says Pope St. Gregory, that we who are so unmortified presume to aspire to contemplation. We are full of ourselves and we would be filled with God ! We exercise no restraint over either our body or our heart ; we grant our senses all that they ask ; we gratify our eyes with curious objects, our mind with innumerable vanities; we spend our time in vain and idle conversations ; we give ourselves up to dissipation of heart every day,, and we think we can establish ourselves in recollection at once and when we will. This is impossible.
To establish and preserve ourselves in interior peace, we must be ever on our guard and continually watch over the movements of our heart. There are few persons truly dead to all their de sires; hence the majority, in prayer, are like a ship tossed on the waves and impelled hither and thither by every wind. Yet such souls ought not for this reason to abandon prayer ; they have greater need of it than they who are quietly anchored, so to speak, in the spiritual haven. But what must I do, you ask, to banish these importunate thoughts ? You must, first, place yourself in the presence of God and renew the thought of it from time to time. Second, when you go to prayer you must free your mind of all affairs likely to distract it, and conceive a great desire to converse with God ; then turn to your subject, and propose to yourself the truth upon which you wish to meditate.
I do this, you answer, but to no purpose as far as my mind is concerned ; it is impossible to keep it a moment in the presence of God; it is an idle truant constantly escaping and returning only at long intervals. This is what makes me weary of prayer and leads me to think I am not fitted for it.
This is a common complaint with a great many souls. The way to remedy the evil is to find the means of occupying our minds and enkindling our hearts in this time of dissipation, coldness and dryness.
IX. FIRST MEANS OF DEVOTION.
Perfect prayer does not consist in thinking much, but in loving much; and, generally speaking, activity in prayer does not equal passive en durance. There is a species of contemplation in which the soul suffers divine things; suffers the wanderings of the mind, the weariness and despondency of the heart, the follies of the imagination, the harassing temptations of the Evil One. This is to suffer divine things; it is a kind of contemplation which is not pleasing to nature, but which is very meritorious and which gives great honor to God.
But besides this exercise of patience there are excellent practices which will enable us to spend the time of prayer peacefully and profitably, should we find ourselves unable to apply our mind to our subject.
The first means of devotion is a manner of prayer, partly mental and partly vocal, which St. Ignatius teaches in his " Exercises," and which St. Teresa tells us she used to advantage for a long time. It consists in reciting slowly some vocal prayer and pausing upon each word to derive from it all the spiritual sustenance it may afford us.
Thus, when you say the Lord s Prayer, pause after the words Our Father, and endeavor to appreciate the tenderness and love which the title implies. Then make an act of faith in God as your Father. Consider by how many titles you are His child viz., by creation, by conservation, and by justification. Then address your soul thus: My soul, if God is thy Father, why dost thou not love Him? If God is thy Father, why dost thou not hope in Him ? Why dost thou not make known to Him thy needs? God is thy Father and thou fearest to die of hunger ! He has given His blood for thee and thou thinkest He may refuse thee bread ! O my God and my Father, I hope in Thee! O best of fathers, what an unworthy child Thou hast ! I am truly grieved for having offended, persecuted, dishonored Thee as I have since I came into this world. Father, I have sinned against Thee, and I am not worthy to be called Thy child; but let me be numbered among Thy servants. I will cease to offend Thee; hence forth I am determined to love Thee.
If these words serve to occupy you, do not go any further. When you have gathered from them all they afford you, pass on to the next, Who art in heaven, and consider how great and powerful God is Who dwells in this magnificent heaven; that this beautiful paradise, this magnificent dwelling, is your inheritance, and that, therefore, you must not fix your heart upon the paltry things of earth. Develop this evangelical field, and it will afford you a treasure of grace which will enrich you and open to you a source of living water which will refresh you.
After the "Our Father " you may take the " Hail, Mary," or the "Creed," or a psalm, and analyze it in the same way. You may also recite the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus, and, pausing upon each title given the Son of God, produce acts of faith, of hope, of love, of contrition, of thanksgiving, or of any good sentiment the words suggest. For example, when you say, Jesus, God of peace, have mercy on me, pause and consider that Jesus is a God of peace, that He only can give peace to your heart. Then say, O my soul, why dost thou seek to find peace among creatures? O God of peace, give peace to my poor heart, for it is frequently troubled and disquieted. Oh, when shall I rest in Thy heart, which is the centre of my peace ? O sweet Jesus, give me Thy peace, Thy love, Thy blessing ; speak, and command the waves to be still; appease this tempest, which hinders Thy repose and mine ! O my soul, love only Jesus, since He only can give thee peace and satisfy thy desires.
You will find this manner of prayer most profit able, and it may also serve to excite your devotion after Communion. You cannot fail, among all these beautiful titles of the Son of God, to find one which touches your heart and appeals to the present position of your soul. When you have found it, let your mind dwell upon it like a bee upon a flower, extracting from it all the honey of devotion it contains.
You may also read with respect and attention devout sentences from Scripture or from the " Imitation;" they certainly will afford you thoughts which will excite your devotion either during meditation or after Communion.
X. SECOND MEANS OF DEVOTION.
As the end of prayer is to correct our faults, we should consider that as the best prayer which in spires us with the greatest horror of sin and the greatest desire to avoid it. Prayer, it seems to me, may be compared to an orange-tree bears leaves, flowers, and fruit; there are some persons who amuse themselves with culling the leaves, others with wreathing the flowers into bouquets, but the wisest gather the fruit and eat it with pleasure.
Now the fruit of prayer consists, principally, in a knowledge of our faults and in the resolution to correct them; thus we make a good meditation when we make a good examination of conscience. St. Ignatius has also taught us this manner of prayer. He tells persons not yet accustomed to meditate, and who are desirous to begin a new life, to examine their conscience on the commandments of God and the Church; to dwell upon each one for a short time, considering what it commands, and how just, salutary, easy, and reasonable it is; then to consider how they have observed it, and at sight of their failings against it to make acts of contrition for the past and to resolve to do better for the future.
We may make the same examination on the seven deadly sins, by considering their malice and conceiving great sorrow for having offended God so grievously.
Persons accustomed to make meditation may have recourse, with advantage, to this remedy when they find themselves in a state of dryness or desolation. Let them consider their own sins, particularly the vice to which they are most addicted ; let them search the causes and the evil effects of their sins, and, after conceiving a horror of them, determine upon the means of avoiding them in future. If they leave meditation firmly resolved to adopt these means of amendment, they may be sure that they have made an excellent prayer.
There are others who find much profit and consolation in dwelling on the graces God has conferred upon them, and the dangers from which He has delivered them. Those who are more advanced in prayer may make use of this consideration to excite their love for God and their sorrow for their sins, contrasting the benefits they have received from Him with their indifference, their coldness, their cowardice, their infidelities, and their ingratitude : this will certainly afford occupation for the space of half an hour.
XI. THIRD MEANS OF DEVOTION.
A soul sometimes finds itself in certain states in which nothing can console it; everything grieves and afflicts it; it seems to be suspended, as the patient Job says, between heaven and earth, un able to derive consolation from either. St. Bernard, who experienced such a state, gives an admirable picture of its misery, which ought to console all sufferers.
Perhaps the most grievous suffering of the soul in these states of darkness and desolation is the Temptations which are so violent that it cannot be sure that it has not consented to them. I could bear this anguish, it says, if I were sure I did not consent to these abominations; but it seems to me that I utter all these thoughts that assault my mind, that I consent to all that I feel. There are two remedies for the suffering caused by this cruel uncertainty. One is to submit our judgment to that of our director, to fear only what he fears, and to despise all that he despises. There is no safe path in the spiritual life but that of submission and obedience.
The other remedy is to have some exterior sign to indicate that we embrace what is good and reject what is evil. Thus, some souls finding themselves violently tempted, or unable to produce any of the acts proper to meditation, take a crucifix and say: "My God, I declare before heaven and earth that whenever I kiss my crucifix it is to adore Thee; whenever I press it to my heart, it is to protest that I love Thee. Whenever I bow my head, deign to accept it as an act of humility; whenever I strike my breast, as an act of contrition; whenever I raise my eyes to heaven, as an act of resignation to Thy adorable will. When I utter the name of Jesus, it is to protest that I reject all the suggestions of the Evil One, and that I detest all that displeases Thee." God, as you know, does not need these exterior signs to understand the dispositions of your heart; He knows, without our telling Him what we wish and what we do not wish: this, therefore, is only to reassure timid souls and to restore their peace of mind; for, as the body acts only through the impulse of the soul, these exterior acts must necessarily proceed from the heart even though it seem to have no part in them. And as God is satisfied with our good desires, you will have the merit of acts that you cannot make, and spend the time of meditation most profitably.
Others, again, adopt still another method: their prayer is one of desire when they feel unable to pray as they would wish. If they find themselves constantly distracted and unable to preserve their recollection, or to free themselves from a state of coldness and indifference, or to excite any pious sentiments in their hearts, they raise their eyes to heaven and say: " My God, I would, in truth, do more for Thee than I do. Oh, that I could love Thee with my whole heart! Oh, that I could praise and honor Thee like the blessed in heaven ! Would that I could make my prayer like that of the many good religious now in prayer before Thee! My God, I am not worthy to assist at the banquet of prayer with them; grant me but the crumbs which fall from their table. Oh, that I could pray with their fervor and attention ! I offer Thee their prayer and that of Thy beloved Son to compensate for all that mine lacks."
This is an excellent and most meritorious prayer; it is like that of the countryman travelling with St. Ignatius. On their arrival at an inn, the saint and his companions knelt down to pray; the good man fell on his knees and said: "My God, I desire to do what these holy men are doing, and to pray as they pray." God rewarded the good man s humility with a great gift of prayer.
XII. FOURTH MEANS OF DEVOTION
You will tell me, no doubt, that these desires are soon over, and that you do not know what to do with the rest of the time ; but there are still many other ways of spending it with great merit.
Do as the Son of God did in the Garden of Olives ; He spent several hours repeating the same words : " Father, not My will but Thine be done." You cannot think a prayer unworthy of you which was worthy of God and which has been consecrated by His heart and His lips. It is a prayer of union than which you could offer none more perfect.
Then recall to mind all that grieves and afflicts you, and say with profound respect : " My God, behold this chalice of weariness and desolation in which my lips are steeped, and which is in truth most bitter. I beg Thee, if it be possible, let it pass from me, but not my will but Thine be done.
4< My God, behold this chalice of sorrow and humiliation which is presented to me ; my heart faints and quails at sight of it. I beseech Thee that I may not drink it, yet not my will but Thine be done.
" My Father and my God, I am threatened with a grievous malady ; it appalls and terrifies me. If it be possible, let this chalice pass from me, yet not my will but Thine be done."
Bring to mind in this way all that troubles you or is likely to grieve you, and, despite the repugnance of the senses, conform yourself to the will of God. I do not know that you could offer a better prayer than this.
XIII. FIFTH MEANS OF DEVOTION
If you cannot converse with God, invite creatures to praise and bless Him with you : this will not be a distraction, but a holy occupation which is the theme of our most beautiful canticles.
Say, for example : " All ye works of the Lord, bless Him, praise Him, and glorify Him forever. Angels of heaven, bless and praise God. Ye sons of earth, chant the praises of your Saviour and Lord ; love Him with all your hearts."
Bring before you in this way the whole universe, and invite all creatures, animate and inanimate, to bless God like the men in the fiery furnace. Unite yourself with this concert of loving praise, and honor God to the best of your power by your humility and your patience. Bless and extol His infinite perfections, His goodness, His beauty, His wisdom, His power, His munificence, His mercy, His justice, His meekness, His patience, His grandeur, His majesty, His magnificence. Consider these attributes one by one and offer them the homage of your heart, saying : " O my God, how loving Thou art ! Oh, how great is Thy beauty ! How great is Thy goodness ! How great and powerful Thou art ! " Endeavor to be penetrated with the admiration which these words are fitted to excite, and say : " Bless the Lord, O my soul : and let all that is within me bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul : and forget not all that He hath done for thee : He forgiveth all thy iniquities : He healeth all thy diseases. He hath re deemed thy life from destruction: He hath crowned thee with mercy and compassion : He renews thy strength like the eagles."
Continue in this way with all the perfections of God, pausing upon those which make most impression on your heart.
But the most beautiful and most consoling prayer for a sorrowful and despondent soul is to go in spirit to all the scenes of Our Lord s life and to thank Him for all that He endured for us.
Enter in spirit into the stable of Bethlehem, and adore Him with the shepherds ; admire His humility, love His meekness, hope in His goodness, draw near to the manger, and if you find yourself incapable of any good thought, remember that the animals honored Him by their mere presence as best they could. Repeat the sweet canticle of the angels ; give glory to God, and ask peace for your heart.
Then from the mystery of the nativity pass on to the adoration of the magi; go to the Temple and offer the infant Saviour to God with Mary ; fly with Him into Egypt ; shut yourself up with Him in the poor house of Nazareth; study His life there; then His public life, His fasting in the desert, His preaching in Judea, His walking upon the waters, His healing of the sick, His raising of the dead. But, above all, follow Him through all the stations of His passion, from the Garden of Olives to Mount Calvary ; thank Him for all that He endured for you ; hear His gentle reproach to His sleeping disciples : "What ! could you not watch one hour with Me ? Watch ye, and pray that ye enter not into temptation." A suffering soul will find in estimable consolation in contemplating these sorrowful mysteries.
XIV. SIXTH MEANS OF DEVOTION
When we have learned how to love God we have acquired a noble science. There are many who cannot meditate, but few who cannot send forth loving sighs. These sighs, which voice the yearning love of the soul, are in reality the most beautiful, the most fervent, the most eloquent of all prayers : they are the prayer of souls wounded by the love of God, and aspiring to union with Him ; they can no longer speak ; their love is poured forth in sighs. " Daughters of Jerusalem, " they cry, " stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples, because I languish with love." This is all that breaks from time to time the beautiful silence of the soul where the heart alone speaks and where its every breath his a sigh of love.
Now, though this prayer is the final disposition for union with God, and the occupation of those who can no longer meditate, yet all souls can practise it : it constitutes what we call ejaculatory prayers, which are loving darts which speed from our heart to the very heart of God.
It is also a prayer which knows neither art nor method ; it is taught by love ; to practise it the heart must be in no way constrained, but left free to say to God all that it wills. The language of love, St. Bernard says, is barbarous to one who understands it not ; but it is the language of the court of heaven, where charity reigns.
Though spontaneous acts are always best, we are not obliged to refrain from seeking to make others, particularly at seasonable times. For example, when we are suffering from aridity or distractions, or when we find nothing to occupy us, then the soul should seek its entertainment in loving. The aspirations should be short, particularly when they come from a heart wounded with the dart of love.
O my God and my All, when shall I be wholly Thine ? when wilt Thou be wholly mine ?
O God of my soul, how happy I am to be Thine ! O my Glory, my Life, why can I not love Thee as Thou shouldst be loved ?
My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? Ah ! I need not ask. I have truly deserved to be abandoned.
My heart is ready, my God ; my heart is ready : not my will but Thine be done.
O Jesus, look upon me with compassion and bless me !
Oh, why did I ever offend Thee, God of my heart and Father of my life ?
Oh, when shall I love Thee, when shall I embrace Thee, when shall I possess Thee?
In this way we may produce any number of aspirations according to the disposition of our soul; and even though in times of aridity we seen? not to feel the sentiments which they express, they will, nevertheless, be pleasing to God.
XV. SEVENTH MEANS OF DEVOTION
I must repeat again that the end of meditation is, not to meditate, but to love ; hence affections, as they detach the heart from creatures and unite it with God, avail more than speculations and reasoning. We cannot love without meriting, but our meditations are not always an occasion of merit. Meditation is a means of exciting affection. When we have attained the end, the means are no longer necessary ; if you can love, I dispense you from meditating.
Love is the disposition, the occupation, of souls who have long resisted their passions, who are persuaded of all the truths of religion, and who have made much progress in virtue ; such souls, as I have said, have nothing more to do but pour forth their love in sighs and desires till they find the object of their desires in the enjoyment of the Beloved. It is but a moment a moment so brief and yet so long!
Souls advanced in prayer have no need of method or rule in the production of these affections; they should simply abandon their heart to the impressions of love and the movements of the Holy Spirit. But beginners who find themselves unable to meditate should, until they are more accustomed to the exercise of prayer, have recourse to a book containing all these acts of the various virtues.
XVI. LAST MEANS OF DEVOTION
Though the practices taught in the preceding chapters are fitted to occupy the most distracted mind and to inflame the most tepid heart, yet, as there are states where the soul is unable either to think of or to speak to God, and feels the utmost aversion for pious exercises, our final counsel is to make, in such case, an exercise of humility and patience.
The prayer of the humble is so powerful before God that it may be said to be irresistible. Achaz was a wicked king ; but when he humbled himself, God was compelled, as it were, to lay down His arms, and when urged by a prophet to punish him He declared that, Achaz having humbled himself, it was not in His power. But when patience is united with humility, there is no anger which it will not appease, no scourge which it will not avert, no grace which it will not obtain, no power which it will not disarm, no strength and consolation which it will not merit.
Oh, how powerful in heaven is the cry of a humble soul ! How it forces God s mercy and goodness ! " Blessed," says St. Paul, " be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, Who comforteth us in all our tribulations." St. Bernard bids us observe the words of the Apostle : God is not the Father of special mercy, but of many mercies ; He is not the God of special comfort, but of all comfort ; He comforts us not in special tribulation, but in all our tribulations ; He is the plenitude of goodness, charity, and mercy, desiring only to be poured upon us.
Now, upon whom of all men does God look with most pleasure? Upon the humble in mind and heart, who believe themselves unworthy of all consolation, and who feel it too great an honor that He suffers them in His presence.
The streams of divine consolation flow not upon the mountains, says St. Bernard, but in the valleys. Patience is a virtue whose work is to finish and perfect that is, to impart perfection to its possessor, as St. James says.
If it is God s glory we are seeking in prayer, there is nothing which honors Him so much as humble patience and patient humility ; if it is our own merit, there can be no merit without humility and patience; if it is our perfection, humility must be its foundation, and patience its crowning glory, We cannot always discourse in meditation, we cannot always reason, we cannot always weep ; but we can always humble ourselves. We cannot always have consolation, but who is there that cannot always practise patience?
Humble yourself, then, Christian soul, when your meditations seem to you cold and fruitless ; when you are assailed by distractions and temptations; humble yourself in all your trials; acknowledge that you can do nothing without the assistance of God s grace, that you are nothing but ignorance, weakness, and malice. Do not be satisfied with acknowledging that of yourself you can do nothing, but confess that you deserve nothing but chastisement ; beware of complaining or murmuring as if God treated you with more severity than you deserve. Descend in spirit into hell, and consider whether your present position, your present trials, are not more endurable than that which your sins prepared for you there. Is it not God s presence which constitutes paradise? The saint s enjoyment of this presence is unalloyed ; if yours is mingled with trials and difficulties, it has the advantage of affording you new merits and graces.
Avoid idleness. At the same time be convinced that you are not idle when you are not voluntarily distracted; that you accomplish much when you suffer much ; that a prayer of consolation is not equal to a prayer of patience; and that if you do what you can, God will give you what you desire.
Great graces are the result of great struggles ; great consolations follow great temptations. St. Teresa was sixteen years practising the prayer of patience, and merited by her fidelity to receive a great gift of prayer and extraordinary communications from God. If she had lost courage, if she had abandoned meditation, she never would have attained the prayer of union.
But you tell me God has abandoned you so long; that you are like the mountains of Gelboe cursed by God upon which neither the rain nor the dew of heaven ever fell ; that God is displeased with you. Do not heed these discouraging thoughts. God is leading you through this hard and stony desert to the promised land flowing with milk and honey. He is establishing you in humility in order to fit you to receive the great favors He intends to bestow upon you. He is despoiling you in order to enrich you, and to make you merit what He yearns to give you.
Your whole duty consists in fidelity, and in never abandoning meditation, however painful or difficult you find it. If, when you are unable to pray, the Evil One asks you what you are doing, tell him that you are doing the will of God ; that you persevere in this present duty because He commands it ; that it is only too great an honor to be allowed in His presence ; and that, if you can do nothing, you will at least learn to suffer.
Happy soul that can say at the hour of death, "I have never, whatever my occupations or distractions, failed to make my meditation." I am sure that-a soul that can say this will not wait until the hour of death to be introduced into the promised land.
Some will tell you that they leave God for God that is, to serve Him, to preach, to hear confessions, to visit the poor, to comfort the sick. Alas! I fear they leave God to seek themselves. A good meditation furnishes matter for a good sermon ; our hearts must be filled with that which we would impart to others; we must be united with God to win others to Him. Can we save souls without the assistance of grace? And is not meditation the channel through which it flows to us? Some allege, in extenuation, their inability to meditate; but this is, in truth, only a want of faith, of confidence, of charity. It is not tempting God to do what He commands, and to unite ourselves with Him by means of prayer. It is tempting Him, on the contrary, to expect His blessing and His assistance when we abandon the means He has prescribed for obtaining them; it is fighting without arms, guiding without light. In fact there is much reason to fear that these persons so zealous for the glory of God are over-zealous about themselves, and would rather lose their meditation than risk losing a little of their reputation.
O my God, encloses nothing in Thy service; too much dost Thou honor those who honor Thee. I shall always keep in mind this maxim of one of Thy faithful servants: "I would rather lose my reputation than my meditation, and preach a poor sermon than make a bad meditation."
Then be faithful, devout soul, to your spiritual exercises, whatever repugnance you may experience, however numerous your occupations. When you fall into some infidelity, do not lose courage, but repair it by your patience. Our homage is due to the justice of God as well as to His other perfections; our suffering pays this homage. His justice debars us from His merciful graces, but when it is satisfied, God is free to lavish His favors upon us. Our humility and patience satisfy His justice ; they are the victims to be immolated on its altar ; hence we are gaining immeasurably when we think all is lost.
Finally, remember that where there is least o( nature grace reaps the richest harvests ; that the operations of God are only the purer for being less sensible ; that you are never nearer to God than when you think yourself furthest from Him; and that if you are faithful in this purgatory of desolation you will enter before you die into the paradise of consolation, where you will sing the praises of God, and where you will say, with the son of Sirach: " Behold with your eyes how I have labored a little and have found much rest to myself."
FOURTH TREATISE. : THE DEVOTION OF CALVARY.
FIRST INSTRUCTION : HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO MEDITATE ON THE PASSION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
I CALL the devotion of Calvary meditation on the Passion of Our Saviour. The prince of the apostles, instructing the faithful and desiring to render them victorious over all evil spirits, recommends them above all things to arm themselves with the thought of the sufferings of the Son of God as with a buckler impervious to all their attacks. " Christ," he says, "having suffered in the flesh, be you also armed with the same thought." St. Paul, writing to the Hebrews, exhorts them to use the same arms both to defend themselves in combat and to strengthen them in trials. "Think diligently upon Him that endured such opposition from sinners against Himself, that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds."
In truth, the thought of a God dying for sinners detaches the heart from affection for the world, inspires it with horror for the pleasures of sense, renders the trials of this life sweet and pleasing ; it heals the wounds of the soul by the precious blood which flows from those of His body ; it conquers the temptations of the Evil One and puts him to flight ; it fills the Christian with divine consolations ; it enlightens his mind and inspires him with firm hope of his salvation, through the knowledge it gives him of God s goodness and of the in finite price of the blood shed for him on the cross.
It is a devotion so dear to the heart of our divine Master that He instituted the great sacrifice of our altars to perpetuate the memory of it ; and St. Paul, His disciple, after being raised to the third heaven, protests that he knows nothing but " Jesus Christ, and Him crucified ;" as if he learned in his exalted state nothing greater, more sublime, and more necessary to the world than the knowledge of Jesus crucified and the devotion of Calvary.
Yet this knowledge is not to the taste of all. There are some who, it would seem, cannot adapt themselves to this devotion, sometimes because their hearts are attached to worldly possessions, honors, and vanities ; or they are eager for the pleasures of the senses, which are not to be found on Calvary ; or they cannot bear the reproach of this great example of patience ; or, finally, because they cannot apply their minds to these sorrowful mysteries, or they do not move their hearts. This is the usual complaint of certain pious persons who, with strange inconsistency, seek only consolation in meditating on the Passion of Our Lord, and would drink the delicious wine of grace contemplating their Saviour s bitter draught of vine gar and gall.
To assist souls aspiring to perfection who find it difficult to meditate and to apply their minds, I have undertaken in this little work to give an easy and profitable manner of considering the sufferings of Our Lord.
SECOND INSTRUCTION : A NEW MANNER OF MEDITATING ON THE PASSION.
The masters of the spiritual life teach several ways of meditating with fruit on the Passion of Our Saviour.
The first is that of St. Bernard, who wishes us to consider it, not as something that is past, but as actually present before us. This is also the manner of the Church : she represents all the mysteries of our religion to us as taking place the day she commemorates them : "This day," she says, "is born unto you a Saviour." To-day He died on the cross ; to-day He rose from the dead ; to-day He ascends into heaven.
The second is to believe that He suffered not only for all men in general but for each one of us in particular; that He thought of us in the midst of His greatest sufferings ; that we were continually present to Him through all His Passion. It was after this manner that St. Paul meditated on this great sacrament of piety : " He loved me." he says, "and delivered Himself for me."
The third manner of meditating on the Passion is taught us by St. Bonaventure, that great lover of the cross and glorious imitator of Jesus crucified. He would have us, after considering all the sufferings of Our Saviour, enter into ourselves and recognize that we are the cause of all that He endured, that it was our sins which caused Him to die on the cross. This truth of faith is fitted to move the hardest heart.
The fourth and easiest manner consists in pondering all the circumstances of the Passion presented in these beautiful lines, which I found in the works of P. Suffren, who, I think, is the author :
RECOGITATE.
Quis patitur? Christus, Verbum, sapientia Patris.
Quid patitur? Spinas, verbera, sputa, crucetn.
Pro quibus haec patitur ? Pro nostra hominumque salute.
Cur patitur ? Semper ne patitur homo.
A quibus haec patitur ? Ab arnica stirpe suorum.
Haec quando patitur ? Cum mage fortis erat.
Haec ubinam patitur ? Medio telluris in orbe.
Quomodo die patitur ? Discere nemo potest.
Fortis, amans, mutus, patiens, mansuetus obedk.
Sic patiente Deo, tu quoque disce patL
RECOLLECT.
Recollect, again, again, O ye Wood-bought sons of men! Who this Sufferer ? Christ, the Word, The wisdom of the Father, God. What the suffering ? Scourge and spear, Thorns and spitting, cross and bier. For whom this woe ? Oh, think again! For our salvation, for us men. Why this suffering ? So that we Suffer not eternally.
From whom comes this sore distress ? From the men He died to bless. When this suffering ? In the hour Of His manhood s brilliant flow r. Where this suffering ? In that town, The centre of earth s true renown. How He suffered te 1 ! to-day! Ah! no human tongue can say. Strong, loving, mute, in patient wise, Meekly, obediently, He dies. O ye blood-bought sons of men! Seeing your God endure such pain. Learn to follow H is bleeding feet, And kiss the cross, and find it sweet.
(Translated by Miss S. L. EMERY.)
Besides these four ways of meditating on the Passion there is still another, which seems to me easier and perhaps simpler than those we have just been considering. It consists in applying the reason and two of the senses, sight and hearing.
To understand it we must imagine we are assisting at a tragedy, where we do three things : we look, we listen, and we think. We look at what the actors are doing ; we listen to what they say; and we reflect on their actions and their words. Jt is through these two senses that the pleasure and pain of such spectacles enter. We weep when we see a great prince unjustly persecuted ; we rejoice when the scene changes and fortune becomes more favorable to him. Then the mind resolves to practise his virtues and to imitate his example, which is the object of the tragedy.
St. Gregory Nazianzen has written a tragedy inverse on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. When you go to meditation persuade yourself that you are about to assist at this tragedy, at which the angels wept, the sun was darkened, the rocks were rent and trembled to their very foundation. We must look at what takes place in each scene; hear what is said; and reflect upon what we see and upon what we hear.
St. Augustine says that when the Roman stage represented a struggle between two friends who wished to die one for the other, the spectators were moved to tears. And can we behold unmoved the Son of God, the Monarch of the world, our best Friend, voluntarily suffering for us the most cruel and shameful death ? Shall we be insensible to His sufferings ? " O all ye that pass by the way, at tend, and see if there be any sorrow like to My sorrow." It is Jesus Christ Who speaks here and Who teaches us by the lips of Jeremias how we should meditate upon His Passion. "Attend" that is, give ear, apply the sense of hearing ; " see " apply the sense of sight ; " see if there be any sorrow like to My sorrow" apply the mind, consider if there be any sorrow equal to that which I endure for thee. St. Ignatius, the founder of our society, calls this kind of meditation the application of the senses. He applies all five; I appeal only to two, to which
I add the operation of the mind.
Now, to facilitate this holy exercise we must observe the following rules :
I. We must know the history of the Passion that is, what is said and what is done in each mystery.
II. We can divide the Passion into seven parts, for the seven days of the week, meditating upon two mysteries each day, one in the morning and the other in the evening. Persons who make only one meditation, and to whom one mystery furnishes matter for one or for several days, may devote two weeks or even the whole month to the meditation of all the Passion; and they should begin in the same way each week or each month.
III. We must beware of entering upon meditation to seek sensible favors and consolation; our purpose must be to honor Jesus Christ, by our presence to console Him for the part we have taken in His sufferings, to learn from His example, and to be incited to practise His virtues.
IV. After reading the history of a mystery of the Passion we should quietly consider what is taking place and listen to what is said as if we were present at the sorrowful spectacle ; then apply the reason to the consideration of the mystery; then produce affections and resolutions in conformity with the mystery.
V. If the reading of the history excites a sentiment of devotion in your heart, dwell upon it and go no further. If it is unmoved, pass on to the meditation of the mystery. Begin by applying the sense of sight; then hear what is said; then consider the circumstances of the mystery.
If the heart continues unmoved, it is well to recite certain prayers fitted to produce affections. Finally determine upon the practices and resolutions: they are the chief fruit of meditation; there fore they must never be omitted.
VI. The devotion of the Passion may serve not only as meditation, but also furnish a devout means of assisting at Mass, particularly when you are to receive Holy Communion. Consider Our Saviour in your heart, in the mystery you have been contemplating adore Him, and thank Him that He willed to endure so much for love of you. You may apply the devotion in the same way in your visits to the Blessed Sacrament. You will find much consolation in contemplating Our Saviour in the mystery which has been the subject of your morn ing meditation.
THIRD INSTRUCTION. : WHAT THEY SHOULD DO WHO CANNOT MEDITATE ON THE PASSION.
I find there are two classes of persons who excuse themselves from meditating on the Passion of Our Saviour.
The first are those who are not yet accustomed to meditate, and who, from want of study, or capacity, or intelligence, or ability to reason, or because of a lively imagination, or, finally, because of a hard, insensible heart, cannot fix their minds on these mysteries.
There are directors who counsel such persons to abandon all subjects of meditation and to make no effort to think of anything. This may be good advice for souls advanced in perfection, but is very pernicious for beginners: it introduces the soul into a state of criminal idleness and of false peace instead of nourishing it with good thoughts and holy affections. It is contrary to all the principles of nature, of grace, and of faith. It ruins the foundations of the spiritual life and opens the door to innumerable illusions and distractions. It deadens the passions instead of conquering them. It lulls vices instead of stifling them. It flatters nature, and instead of raising the soul to true perfection brings it to the verge of dangerous precipices. It is not necessary to give the opinion of spiritual authorities on this subject. Common-sense and our natural intelligence are sufficient to show us that we can rest only after we have labored; that we reap only after we have sown ; that we find the treasure of the Gospel only by searching for it; that we become masters only after we have been disciples.
Fear is the beginning of wisdom and the foundation of holiness. The conversion of the sinner does not usually begin through love, but through fear of God s judgments. Only Moses dares ascend Mount Sinai and enter into the mysterious darkness where one beholds God face to face and converses with Him as friend with friend. The gross and carnal people beheld the light at a distance and trembled at the sound of the terrible thunders. They were even forbidden to approach the foot of the mountain under pain of death; which shows us that only pure and holy souls may aspire to this union.
This is the doctrine of St. Thomas, of St. Augustine, of St. Bonaventure, and of all theologians. They teach that it is with grace as with nature, where the instrument must be prepared even to penetrate matter. St. Bernard considers souls most audacious, presumptuous, and rash who, though still unpurified from their vices, dare to aspire to the position of spouse and ask that the divine Bridegroom "kiss them with the kiss of His mouth." He tells them they should kiss the feet of Jesus by penance before venturing to kiss His hands, and afterwards kiss His hands by good works before they may kiss His mouth. In a word, he would have them purge the mind of its errors by the meditation of Christian truths, and the heart of its evil inclinations by continual mortification; he would have them pray, seek, desire, send forth continual sighs, and struggle without respite against their passions, before they aspire to the repose of contemplation. Therefore they who aspire to perfection must begin by meditating on the great truths of religion in order to detach themselves from the world, and to recognize its false maxims. They must ponder and carefully weigh the end for which God has placed them in this world; consider such truths as death, judgment, the eternity of punishment, the malice of sin and the punishment which God has inflicted upon it since the beginning of the world, the small number of the elect, the vanity and infidelity of creatures, the graces they have received and the account they will have to render of them. When such reflections have in spired them with great horror of sin, they should contemplate Jesus Christ, the great Model and Exemplar Whom God commands us to imitate, Let them meditate upon His actions and His words, but principally on His Passion, to excite themselves to the practice of virtue, as well as to be strengthened in their struggles and consoled in their trials. But they must bear in mind two things. One is, to be faithful to their meditation and never to abandon it, whatever difficulties they experience ; the other is, never, as I have said, to seek their own satisfaction in meditation, but only the honor and glory of God, Who has manifested an extreme desire to have us compassionate His sorrows. If He strikes their hearts with the rod of Moses, that is, with the cross, were they of rock, they will break forth into a torrent of tears, and they will find in the wounds of the Saviour the oil and honey of devotion. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the Way for beginners ; He is the Truth for those who are advanced ; He is the Life for the perfect. This, it seems to me, is what they have to do who are not versed in spiritual things and who aspire to perfection.
FOURTH INSTRUCTION : WHAT THEY SHOULD DO WHO HAVE CEASED TO BE ABLE TO MEDITATE ON THE PASSION.
There are others to whom, at one time, no devotion appealed more tenderly than that of Calvary; they drank with joy of the living water from this divine source. And then a time comes when they fall into such insensibility towards these divine mysteries that they can no longer apply their minds to them or relish their sweetness. The touching objects which formerly moved them to tears no longer make any impression upon their hearts. In vain do they seek this divine source; it is as if it were dried or closed to them; it awakens no sentiment of compassion or devotion in their hearts. What are souls to do who find themselves in this state ? The most enlightened masters of the spiritual life are of the opinion that if such persons are fully convinced of all the truths of our holy religion, if they have long striven against their passions, and if they are perfectly abandoned to the providence of God, they may remain peacefully in His presence, and repose quietly on His breast, without constraining either their heart or their mind to make any effort. For we must not imagine the repose of such souls to be pure idleness. The mind is never inactive. It acts in this state, but in a quiet, spiritual, imperceptible manner which is known only by souls whom God has raised above the senses ; who have been introduced, as Holy Scripture says, into the " wine-cellar " of the Bridegroom. St. Francis de Sales compares such souls to persons in a ship, who make more progress even in sleep than the best traveler can accomplish in walking and running. If you ask what a soul does in this mysterious repose, I will tell you in a few words.
I. It mortifies all its passions and represses all the movements of nature in order not to disturb the operations of the Holy Spirit, Who never fails to fill a soul with His divine presence when He finds it void of creatures. The full effect of His power is realized by a heart that does nothing to hinder His divine operations.
II. It repels all distractions that are presented to the mind, and shuts out the image of all objects likely to divert it from its intimate union with God.
III. It inflicts a species of martyrdom on nature, silencing all its thoughts, stifling all its desires, and suspending all its operations, that it may be possessed, moved, and animated only by God.
IV. It loses itself, buries and annihilates itself, in God. It dies to itself, seeking only the accomplishment of God s will, which it learns through the one who governs it, through the attraction which it feels, and through its inability to pray in any other way.
V. It offers God the sacrifice of all its powers, its thoughts, its desires, its actions, being like a victim that is slain, burned, and consumed on the altar of His love. It never ceases to keep its heart void of self and of all creatures, that it may be filled with the spirit of God.
VI. It presents itself before God as an unwritten page upon which He may imprint what figures and characters He will ; as a blank, immovable canvas upon which the divine Artist may trace His own image; as a spotless mirror upon which the heavenly Sun sheds all its rays and transforms it into another sun like itself.
VII. It sleeps so calmly and profoundly on the breast of its Spouse that the hours seem as moments, and it comes forth from this repose as strong and robust as a man from bodily sleep, and who, though apparently idle during these hours of repose, is, nevertheless, renewing his powers and does not deem the time lost though the whole night has been given to uninterrupted sleep.
VIII. It remains lost in the divinity of God like a river which has reached the ocean, on the bosom of which it is borne and rests after its weary course over mountain and vale.
IX. It is united with God, in a measure, like the saints in heaven that is, in a close and immediate union.
X. It produces, in an eminent degree, acts of all the virtues: of faith, plunging into the mysterious darkness which envelops the throne of God; of hope, relying upon no creature, yet finding no sensible support from either heaven or earth ; of charity, seeking God only and desiring no sensible consolation ; of humility, humbling and annihilating itself in the presence of God with the knowledge of itself ; of poverty, having nothing and desiring nothing; of mortification, keeping all its passions enslaved; of patience, suffering all the distractions which the Evil One creates in its mind to disturb its peace; of conformity to the will of God, abandoning itself to His guidance and desir ing only to please Him. And so it is with all other virtues: the soul practises them in an eminent degree though it seems to be in a state of inaction and sleep.
But the principal occupation of the soul in this mystical repose, and which includes all that we could say on the subject, is the enjoyment of God. Acts of virtue are good in their time and for all kinds of persons; but there are some more perfect than others. An act of love of God is incontestably the noblest of all; but among acts of love there is one which in merit and dignity exceeds all the others viz., the enjoyment of God, for it unites the soul to its final end, which constitutes the perfection and happiness of man. But this enjoyment is not a sudden brief emotion like the other acts of love produced in the fervor of devotion; it is a peaceful, tranquil repose in God like that of the blessed in heaven. This manner of prayer, there fore, may be called a continual and uninterrupted exercise of the love of God, through which the soul enjoys its sovereign good and its final end, in the repose of all its powers, in the annihilation of all its desires, and in the abandonment of itself to all the designs of God, which St. Francis de Sales calls " remitting one s soul into the hands of God."
This is what a soul does in that prayer, which persons of more learning than experience censure as idle. They are prompted by the zeal which impelled Martha to tax her sister Mary with idleness as she sat at the feet of Our Saviour, listening to the ineffable words which fell from His lips. St. Bernard wisely remarks in regard to such persons: " If any one censure the repose of the soul in contemplation as idle, be sure he is a carnal man with no knowledge whatever of the workings of the spirit of God. Let him heed Our Lord’s words to Martha : * Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her. "
They who censure this repose confess, frankly enough, that they have no experience of it and pride themselves on roundly acknowledging it. Yet the same St. Bernard and all spiritual writers after him insist that this science is acquired only by experience, and that they who have no experience of it have no knowledge of it, and can no more judge of it than the blind can judge of colors.
Now, is it wise,. is it just, to censure a thing of which we have no knowledge, and to condemn what we do not understand ?
FIFTH INSTRUCTION: IN WHAT MANNER PERFECT SOULS MAY MEDITATE ON THE PASSION OF OUR SAVIOUR.
This instruction will make the preceding instruction more clear, and afford, I hope, much consolation to certain souls who grieve that they cannot meditate on the Passion of Our Lord.
I call, with St. Jerome, a perfect soul not one that discovers only virtues in itself, that, like the Pharisee, is distinguished from the rest of men only by its penances and good works, but one that perfectly recognizes its nothingness and its imperfection; that feels the weight of its misery, of its passions, and of its evil habits; that considers itself as filled with vices and faults; that believes itself the most unfaithful, the most ungrateful, the basest of creatures; that, far from being satisfied with itself or dazzled by the splendor of its virtues, regards itself as an abyss of poverty, weakness, and malice; that distinguishes itself from others only by its humility, its obedience, its disinterested service, its confidence in God and its abandonment to His providence, and, above all, by a sincere, constant, firm desire to do God s will in all things, however they may thwart its natural inclinations. This is what I consider being holy and perfect; for humility is the foundation of perfection, and one who is humble truly believes, with St. Paul, that he is the greatest of all sinners. Now, whatever certain mystical writers may say to the contrary, I hold, with St. Bonaventure and St. Teresa, that souls in a state of union and raised by God to an eminent degree of contemplation may, when the divine Spouse does not bind their powers and attract them to profound recollection may, I say, and even do well to consider Our Lord in some scene of His sufferings, not as formerly, by reasoning and discoursing upon the mystery, or by producing numerous acts or exciting sentiments of sorrow with more or less effort, but by quietly picturing to themselves the Son of God suffering for love of them, regarding Him with tender compassion, as a friend who witnesses the sufferings of a friend, as a bride who beholds the bridegroom treated with indignity.
It is not necessary, as I have said, to make any effort of the heart or the imagination; it is sufficient to cast a tender look of compassion upon Jesus Who is afflicted; for it is impossible to look upon the sufferings of one we love without being moved to compassion. Such was the sorrow of the Blessed Virgin when she beheld her divine Son dying on Calvary between two thieves. The terrible spectacle penetrated her inmost soul, and pierced it, as Simeon predicted, with a sword of grief. Yet she did not break forth into plaints and sighs; she did not reproach the Jews with their perfidy, their cruelty, their ingratitude. No; she stood silent at the foot of the cross, and gazed with tender compassion upon her dear Son overwhelmed with sufferings which she could not soothe.
In this manner may perfect souls contemplate the mysteries of the Passion of Our Saviour. They should not constrain their heart to sigh, nor endeavor to force tears from their eyes, but wait until the Spirit of God moves and inspires them, if He please, with tender and devout sentiments.
In truth, it is a grievous torment to suffer and make no moan. Devout souls who fain would sigh and relieve their overcharged hearts may do so without scruple by means of the following acts, but let them be made in a quiet, almost imperceptible manner.
The first is an act of thanksgiving to God the Son for having deigned to endure so much suffer ing and ignominy for love of them.
The second is an act of sorrow for having caused His sufferings and His death by the crimes they have committed since they came into the world.
The third is an humble prayer that He will deign to apply to them the fruit and the merit of the mystery they are contemplating : for example, if it is the suffering in the Garden of Olives, that He will console them in their afflictions and strengthen them in their combats; if it is the scene before Caiphas, when they struck His sacred face, that Ke will give them the grace to bear injuries with patience; if it is His appearance before Herod, that He will give them grace to despise the world and endure its contempt and neglect; if it is the pretorium of Pilate, that He will purify their flesh through the bleeding wounds which the scourges inflicted upon His own; if it is the carrying of His cross, that He will help them to bear their cross after Him; if it is His death on Calvary, that He will cause them to* die to all their desires, to all their passions, and to all their vices. This, it seems to me, is the way pious souls may contemplate the Passion of Our Lord.
If it happen that they cannot fix their mind upon these sorrowful subjects, but desire to rest like a man overcome with sleep, then, as I have said, they must follow the attraction of the Holy Spirit, and close their eyes to all that is corporal and sensible, to let their soul be plunged in the Divinity, Which is the end and final term to which meditation on the truths and the example of Jesus Christ leads us ; for He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Way which leads to Truth, and the Truth which leads to Life.
These are the instructions which I have thought necessary to souls who desire to relish and practise the devotion of Calvary, whether they are still led by the way of ordinary meditation, or have attained the state of union and contemplation.
FIFTH TREATISE : THE INTERIOR LIFE
CHAPTER I.
ARTICLE I: In what the Interior Life consists.
THE interior life consists in two sorts of acts, viz., in thoughts and in affections. It is in this only that perfect souls differ from imperfect, and the blessed from those who are still living on earth. Our thoughts, says St. Bernard, ought to be " ever following after truth, and our affections ever abiding in the fervor of charity." In this manner, our mind and heart being closely applied to God, being fully possessed by God, in the very midst of exterior occupations we never lose sight of Him, and are always engaged in the exercise of His love.
ii. Good and bad religious differ from each other only in the nature of their thoughts, their judgments, and their affections. In this also consists the difference between angels and devils, and it is this that makes the former holy and blessed and the latter wicked and miserable. Accordingly we ought to watch with extreme care over our interior, and pay continual attention to regulate our judgments according to truth, and to keep our affections in subordination to charity.
III. The essence of spiritual and interior life consists in two things: on the one hand, in the operations of God in the soul, in the lights that illumine the understanding, and in the inspirations that affect the will; on the other, in the co-operation of the soul with the lights and movements of grace. So that to hold communion with God, and to dispose ourselves to receive from Him larger and more frequent communications, we must possess great purity of heart, great strength of mind, and ob serve a constant and inviolable fidelity in co-operating with God and following the movement of His Spirit in whatever direction it may impel us.
IV. One of the occupations of the interior life is the examining and ascertaining particularly three sorts of things in our interior; first, what comes from our nature our sins, our evil habits, our passions, our inclinations, our affections, our desires, our thoughts, our judgments, our sentiments ; secondly, what comes from the devil his temptations, his suggestions, his artifices, the illusions, by which he tries to seduce us unless we are on our guard ; thirdly, what comes from God His lights, His inspirations, the movements of His grace, His designs in our regard, and the ways along which He desires to guide us. In all this we must examine and see how we conduct ourselves, and regulate our behavior by the Spirit of God.
We must carefully observe what it is that the Holy Spirit most leads us to, and in what we most resist Him ; at the beginning of our actions ask grace to perform them well, and mark even the slightest movements of our heart.
We ought not to devote all our time of recollection to prayer and reading, but employ a portion in examining the disposition of our heart, in ascertaining what passes there, and discovering what is of God, what is of nature, what is of the devil ; in conforming ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and strengthening ourselves in the determination of doing everything and suffering everything for God.
ARTICLE II. : How we ought to imitate the Interior Life of God.
We ought to imitate the interior life of God in this, that He possesses within Himself an infinite life, as well by the operation of the understand ing, by which He is the principle of the Person of the Word, as by that of the will, by which He is ihe principle of the Person of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, He acts externally to Himself, according to His good pleasure, by the production and government of the universe, without this exterior action causing any diminution or any change in His interior life, in such wise that in respect hereto He acts externally, as though He were not acting at all.
This is our model : in the first place, we ought to have within ourselves and for ourselves a most perfect life by a constant application of our understanding and will to God. Then we shall be able to go out of ourselves for the service of our neighbuor without prejudice to our interior life, not giving ourselves up wholly to others, nor applying ourselves to exterior occupations, except by way of diversion, so to say ; and thus our principal business will ever be the interior life. Tuus esto ubique, says St. Bernard to Pope Eugenius; concha esto, non canalis. Do not give thyself up to thy neighbor so as to be no longer thine own ; possess thy self always ; fill thyself with grace as a reservoir ; then thou wilt be of use in communicating thereof to others. Be not like a canal, through which the water passes without staying therein.
This advice of St. Bernard ought to be the rule of evangelical laborers. But often they do the very reverse. They pour themselves forth entirely; they exhaust themselves for others, and remain themselves dry. All the marrow of their soul, if one may use the expression, all the vigor of their mind, spends itself in their exterior actions. There remains scarcely anything for the interior.
Hence it follows that, unless they take care, they have just ground to fear that, instead of being raised to heaven, according to the excellence of their vocation, they will be of the number of those who will be detained the longest time in purgatory and placed in the lowest ranks in glory.
ARTICLE III. : How it is that we make so Little Progress in the Interior Life.
This proceeds from three causes :
1. Exterior objects attract us to them by the appearance of some good which flatters our pride or our sensuality. This happens especially to those whose feelings are warm and who easily take fire.
2. The devil, exciting the phantoms of the imagination, awakening the recollection and the image of past things, corrupting and inflaming the humors of the body as occasions offer, produces in us anxieties, scruples, and a variety of passions. This he effects chiefly in those who, not having their heart as yet thoroughly purged, give him more hold upon them and are more in his power.
3. Our soul does not enter into itself except with pain, seeing there nothing but sins, miseries, and confusion ; so that, to avoid this distressing and humiliating sight, it casts itself incontinently into exterior things and seeks its consolation in creatures, unless we are careful to keep it to its duty.
CHAPTER II. OF THE MOTIVES THAT LEAD US TO THE INTERIOR LIFE.
ARTICLE I. We make No Progress in the Ways of Perfection unless we give ourselves to the Interior Life.
The exterior life of religious employed in the service of their neighbor is most imperfect, and even perilous, unless it be accompanied with the interior life ; and they who are engaged in these kinds of offices of charity and zeal, unless they join thereto exercises ot interior recollection, will never make any notable progress in perfection.
i. And first, they will never attain the perfection of the purgative life. It is true they will have at times some of its sentiments. They will do things that appear great in the eyes of the world. They will preach; they will labor in missions; they will traverse seas and expose themselves to danger of death, and to the fatigue attendant on the longest journeys, for the salvation of their neighbor. But with all this they will never make much progress in the purgative life. The acts of virtue they perform will proceed partly from grace and partly from nature. They will never do such as are purely supernatural, and under specious pretexts self-love will always make them follow their own inclinations and do their own will. They will fall continually into
their ordinary faults and imperfections, and will be in great danger of being lost ; for as they are occupied in anything but discovering the irregularities of their heart, they never think of purging it ; so that it is continually filling with sins and miseries, which gradually enfeeble the strength of the soul, and end at last in entirely stifling devotion and the Spirit of God.
2. They will never attain to the perfection of the illuminative life, which consists in recognizing in all things the will of God ; for it is only interior men who can discern it in everything. My superiors, my rules, the duties of my state, may indeed direct me in regard to the exterior, and indicate to me what God desires me to do at such a time and in such a place ; but they cannot teach me the way in which God wills that I should do it. I know, for instance, that it is God s will that I should pray when I hear the clock strike which calls me to prayer according to my rule ; but the rule does not tell me what my comportment ought to be during my prayer. My superior will tell me what God wills that I should apply myself to ; but he cannot teach me how I ought to apply myself.
In order to do the will of God well, it is not sufficient to know that it is God s will; for example, that I should forthwith sweep my room. I must also know with what thought He would have me occupy myself while performing this exterior act of humility which my rule prescribes, for God desires to regulate the interior of my actions as well as the exterior. I must fulfil God s will as well in the manner as in the substance of the action. His providence extends to the direction of all my powers and all the movements of my heart. Without this there will be a void in my actions ; they will not be full of the will of God ; I shall do what He demands of me only in part and by halves ; the best will be wanting, which is the interior. Thus I shall incur great losses of grace and glory, losses that are irreparable ; and I shall be the cause of others, whose salvation and perfection I am bound to promote, incurring the same.
Where, then, shall I be able to learn the will of God in regard to the manner of performing well those things which He desires me to do ? It must be in my own interior and in the depth of my own heart, where God gives the light of His grace, in order to enlighten me inwardly, that I may listen attentively to Him and converse familiarly with Him. I will walk in His light, which will enable me to see what He desires of me, and the means of performing it, and the interior perfection which it is His will I should practise therein.
3. It is clear they will never attain to the perfection of the unitive life, since it consists in the interior union of the soul with God.
For the rest, whoever is resolved to lead an interior life, and to be really spiritual and a man of prayer, must expect that when he has reached a certain point people will cry out against him ; he will have adversaries and other contradictions ; but in the end God will give him peace, and will everything turn out to his profit and the advancement of his soul.
ARTICLE II. Without Prayer we cannot acquit ourselves of the Duties of our Vocation, nor gather Fruit from our Ministrations.
Without a solid devotion and a close familiarity with God, we cannot carry on our functions nor discharge them properly. The prophets, apostles, and other saints have wrought wonders because they were inspired by God and conversed familiarly with Him.
Saints succeed in everything because by their prayers they obtain a benediction and a virtue which render their labors efficacious. Although they be infirm and suffering from constant ill-health, like St. Gregory and St. Bernard, they effect wonders.
In vain we toil and form great projects for the glory of God and the service of souls : without prayer nothing can be hoped from our labor and undertakings ; but with the gift of prayer we may do great things, even in matters of prudence and the management of affairs.
Let us season our exertions in behalf of our neighbor with recollection, prayer, and humility ; God will make use of us for great ends, although we may not possess great talents.
We ought to undertake nothing, whatever the matter be, without having prepared ourselves for it by prayer.
II. It is to God we ought to look for every success in our employments. We are His instruments, and we work under Him as under a master-architect, who, directing singly the whole design, allots to each one his task, according to the end he proposes, and the idea he has conceived. Thus we shall produce the more fruit the more united we are with God, and the more we yield ourselves to His guidance, always supposing we possess the talents and the capacity requisite for the active service of our neighbor. Now it is prayer that unites us to God. It is by this holy exercise that we dispose ourselves to receive the impression and movement of grace, as instruments to work out His designs.
iii. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, explaining that saying of the Wise Man, " All is vanity," says that the devil displays before the eyes of men of the world honors, pleasures, riches, and all the creatures of the universe, like puppets which he sets in motion, shifting them, turning them, showing them in different aspects and different colors, decking them out with various ornaments and a false brilliancy; but in reality it is but a child s game, a vain amusement ; there is nothing solid in it ; it is but a pleasing illusion.
The devil employs the same artifice with those who compose the little world among religious; for in religion there is a little world, the elements of which are: the esteem of human talents; preference for employments, offices, and stations of importance ; the love and the seeking for distinction and applause, or repose and an easy life. These are the things of which the devil makes, as it were, a puppet-show to amuse and deceive us. He sets it all moving before our eyes in such a way that we stop to gaze, and allow ourselves to be seduced by it, preferring vain appearances to true and solid goods.
IV. Prayer alone can make us secure against this delusion. Prayer teaches us to judge soundly of things by looking at them in the light of truth, which dissipates their false splendor and fatuous charms.
Therefore it is that St. Ignatius desires that the professed and all those who have taken their last vows should give to prayer all the time they have remaining after fulfilling the duties of obedience. This ought to be the employment of those who in the colleges are not occupied with the office of regent, but only with hearing confessions, or some other duty which leaves them a good deal of leisure. They ought to be men of prayer, who by the help of their prayers sustain the whole house, the whole company nay, the whole Church ; and this is to be a Jesuit, this is to be the child of those great saints who desired more worlds to convert. Behold how we may spend our days sweetly in the beauty of peace, in the security of a pure conscience and repose, rich with holy treasures : instead of wasting our time in trifles unworthy of an evangelical laborer, we ought to visit often the Blessed Sacrament, then apply ourselves to reading, then again return to our devotions, say the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, and refer everything to prayer.
V. As there are certain humors which, when they gain too much strength and are too abundant, cause the death of the body, so in the religious life, when action is carried to excess and is not moderated by prayer and recollection, it infallibly stifles the spirit.
And yet there will sometimes be found persons who, being occupied whole days and years in study and in the turmoil of exterior employments, will feel it difficult to devote a quarter of an hour a day to spiritual reading ; and then how is it possible that they should become interior men ? Hence it is that we gain no fruit, because our ministrations are not animated by the Spirit of God, without which, with all our talents, we cannot attain the end we are aiming at, and are but "as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
An interior man will make more impression on hearts by a single word animated by the Spirit of God than another by a whole discourse which has cost him much labor, and in which he has exhausted all his power of reasoning.
ARTICLE III. : Peace is not found except in the Interior Life, and our Dissatisfactions spring only from our not being Interior Men.
Never shall we have peace until we are interior men and united with God. Repose of mind, joy, solid contentment, are found only in the interior world, in the kingdom of God which we possess within ourselves. The more deeply we enter there in, the more happy shall we be. Without this we shall always be in trouble and difficulty, always discontented and murmuring ; and if any temptation, any rude trial, come upon us, we shall not overcome it.
ii. St. Augustine says that they who have an ill- regulated interior are like married men with peevish and ill-tempered wives. They leave home early in the morning and return as late as they can, because they dread a domestic persecution. In like manner, the former, having no peace in their interior, and finding there only remorse and reproaches of conscience, avoid as much as possible entering into themselves.
Iii If in our employments we practise the exterior of virtue without the interior, we are miserable, bearing the weight of exterior labor but never tasting interior unction and sweetness. This makes us fall often into notable faults ; whereas, by means of recollection and prayer, we should effect more in our ministrations, with less difficulty, weariness, and danger, and with more perfection to ourselves, more advantage to our neighbor, and more glory to God. "This," adds Father Rigoleu in his collection, " is what our father director represented to us with much force, and it is one of the points he most urged upon us."
CHAPTER III. THE OCCUPATIONS OF THE INTERIOR LIFE.
ARTICLE I. Of Watchfulness over our Interior.
Our principal study ought to be to watch over our interior, in order to ascertain its state and correct its disorders. To this the following considerations powerfully excite us :
1. We remain immersed, and, as it were, buried in a mass of faults and imperfections, which we never see till the hour of death, unless we exercise ourselves in observing the movements of our interior, wherein the devil and nature play strange parts while we are wholly absorbed in the hurry and excitement of exterior occupations.
2. The ruin of souls in the path of perfection .proceeds from the multiplication of venial sins, whence follow a diminution of divine lights and inspirations, spiritual consolations, and other sources of grace ; next, a great weakness in resisting the attacks of the enemy; and, finally, a fall into some grievous fault, which makes us open our eyes and perceive that, while we were thinking of something else, our heart was betraying us for want of watchfulness in guarding it, and from not entering into it to ascertain what was passing.
3. It is this living out of ourselves, and this carelessness in ordering our interior, which is the reason that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are almost without effect in us, and that the sacramental graces which are given us by virtue of the sacraments we have received, or are frequenting, remain without profit.
By sacramental grace is meant the right which each sacrament gives us, before God, of receiving from Him certain succors which preserve within us the effect that sacrament has wrought in our soul. Thus the sacramental grace of Baptism is a right which Baptism gives us to receive lights and inspirations to lead a supernatural life, as members of Jesus Christ, animated by His Spirit. The sacramental grace of Confirmation is a right to receive strength and constancy to combat against our enemies as soldiers of Jesus Christ and to win glorious victories over them. The sacramental grace of Confession is a right to receive an increase of purity of heart ; that of Communion is a right to receive more abundant and efficacious succors to unite us to God by the fervor of His love. Each time we confess and communicate in a good state these sacramental graces and the gifts of the Holy Spirit increase in us ; and yet we do not perceive their effects in our daily life. Whence comes this ? From our unmortified passions, our attachments and disorderly affections, and our habitual faults. We allow these vicious principles to have more dominion over us than sacramental graces and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that the former keep the latter, as it were, bound and captive, without the power of producing their proper effects. And why do we let sin and the vicious principles of corrupt nature usurp this despotic empire over the divine principles of grace and the Spirit of God ? It is for want of entering often into ourselves. If we did so, we should discover the state of our interior and correct its disorders.
ii. . By watching over our interior we gradually acquire a great knowledge of ourselves, and attain at last to the direction of the Holy Spirit. And at times God brings before us in an instant the state of our past life, just as we shall see it at the Judgment ; He makes us see all our sins, all our past youth. At other times He discloses to us the whole economy of the government of the universe ; and this produces in our soul a perfect subjection to God.
2. They who have applied themselves for three or four years to watch over their interior, and have made some progress in this holy exercise, know already how to treat a multitude of cases with address and absence of all rash judgment; they penetrate, as it were, naturally, the hearts of others, and discover almost all their movements by the knowledge they possess of their own interior, and of the natural movements of their own heart.
3. Without performing extraordinary mortifications, or any of those exterior actions which might be the occasion of vanity to us, by simple attention in watching our own interior we perform excellent acts of virtue and make prodigious advances in perfection ; whereas, on the contrary, by neglecting our interior we incur incalculable losses.
4. These exercises may be practised at every age, at all times and in all places, in the midst of our exterior functions and in time of illness; and there is no business so embarrassing which does not allow us to enter into ourselves from time to time, to observe the movements of our hearts.
5. What exterior actions did St. Paul the Hermit perform, and so many other saints, and so many holy virgins ? It is the merit of their interior life which raised them to the highest ranks of the blessed.
But, alas! we are so little enlightened, or so bewitched with all the brilliancy of exterior employments, that we understand not the excellence, nor the necessity, nor the merit of that life which is hidden from the eyes of men and known to God alone.
iii. Nothing is so dangerous as to neglect the care of our interior, and to take no pains to know what is passing therein. This negligence and this ignorance give occasion to a multitude of venial sins, which dispose us insensibly to some mortal sin or great temptation, whence ensue fatal falls.
Such is often the end of the purely exterior life of those among us who are continually engaged in the tumult of action, abandoning the care of their interior under pretext of zeal and charity, because they labor for the service of their neighbor. But even should they not proceed to this extremity, it is still certain that by wasting themselves exteriorly, and giving scarcely any attention to the regulation of their interior in the exercise of their functions, they suffer incalculable losses of grace and merit. Their labors produce but very little fruit, not being animated by that strength and that vigor which come from the interior spirit, nor accompanied with the benedictions which God bestows on men of prayer and recollection. They do nothing purely for God; they seek themselves in everything, and always secretly mix up their own interest with the glory of God in their best undertakings.
Thus they pass their lives in this mixture of nature and grace, without once taking a single step forward towards perfection for ten or twenty years, "he mind as distracted, the heart as hard, amid all the exercises of Christian piety and the religious life, as if they had never enjoyed all these aids.
At last death comes, and then they open their eyes; they perceive their illusion and blindness, and tremble at approaching the dread tribunal of God.
The means of avoiding all these woes is to regulate our interior so well, and to keep watch over our heart so carefully, as to have ground for desiring, rather than fearing, to appear before our sovereign Judge. It is this watchfulness that Our Lord so much recommends to us in the Gospel, when He says so often, Vigilate, "Watch." "Our father director," says Father Rigoleu, "requires nothing else from us but this constant attention to our interior."
ARTICLE II. How Important it is that we should join the Interior Life with our Exterior Occupations.
Our occupations are often indifferent in themselves, and yet may be most glorious to God, and more to is glory than others which in themselves are supernatural. Thus our studies and our office of regent conduce to the salvation of others, and promote the glory of God, more than would the assisting in choir and chanting the divine office, were such the practice of the society, as in other orders. But unless in this occupation of the classes and of study we act from the principle of the interior spirit, we are just like seculars, and often merit only chastisements in the next life.
ii. We ought to unite action and contemplation in such a way as not to give ourselves more to the former than to the latter, endeavoring to excel as much in one as in the other. Otherwise, if we throw ourselves altogether into the exterior life, and give ourselves wholly to action, we shall undoubtedly remain in the lowest degrees of contemplation ; that is, we shall practise only ordinary prayer, and perform the other exercises of piety in an inferior and imperfect manner.
Iii We should unite action and the exterior life with contemplation in such wise as to give ourselves to the former in the same proportion as we practise the latter. If we make much mental prayer, we ought to give ourselves much to action; if we have made but moderate progress in the interior life, we ought to employ ourselves only moderately in the occupations of the exterior life; and if we are but little advanced in the ways of the interior, we ought to abstain altogether from what is exterior, unless obedience prescribes the contrary; otherwise we shall do no good to others and ruin ourselves.
IV. We must be like the eagle, who soars into the air as soon as he has seized his prey. Thus we ought to retire for prayer after any active employment for our neighbor, and never intrude ourselves into such unless obedience enjoins it.
V. Let us be thoroughly convinced that we shall gain fruit in our ministrations only in proportion to our union with God and detachment from all self-interest. A preacher when he is much followed; a missionary when he produces a great sensation; a confessor when he sees his confessional surrounded by a crowd of penitents; a director when he is the fashion; a person when he devotes himself entirely to good works one and all flatter themselves they are gaining much fruit, and to judge from appearances we might Believe it. The world praises them; applause confirms them in the good opinion they have of their success. But are they united to God by prayer ? Are they perfectly detached from themselves ? Do they act only from divine motives ? Do not human views mix themselves up with their designs ? Let them beware of deceiving themselves. Men are easily deceived in this matter. They seek God, it is true, but do they not also seek themselves ? They in tend the good of God and the good of souls, but do they forget their own glory and their own petty interests ? They employ themselves in works of zeal and charity, but is it out of a pure motive of zeal and charity ? Is it not because they find their own satisfaction in it, and love neither prayer nor study, and cannot live retired in their own room or endure recollection ?
If we examine ourselves well, perhaps we shall find in our souls so little union with God, and in the service we render to our neighbor so much self-seeking, that we shall have just ground for doubting whether we do all the good to others that we imagine, and do not inflict more evil upon ourselves than we are aware.
To labor profitably for the salvation of others, we must have made great progress in our own perfection. Until we have acquired perfect virtue, we ought to practise very little exterior action. But if superiors lay too much upon us, we may trust that Providence will so dispose things that the burden will soon be diminished, and all will turn to the greater good of inferiors, if they are good men.
VI. We must acquire virtues in a solid degree, and after that labor to promote the salvation of souls; then exterior action will aid us in the interior life. But until we have acquired solid virtues and are closely united to God, exterior occupation will certainly be injurious to us.
ARTICLE III. We ought not to engage in Exterior Occupations of our Own Accord.
It is not for us to choose our own employments. Of our own free will we ought to give our whole attention to ourselves, unless obedience imposes on us functions for the service of our neighbor. From obedience must come the movement which leads us to external action for the good of others. So long as it leaves us at rest, let us willingly remain so. God will know very well how to find us when He wishes to make use of us to His glory. It is great rashness to intrude ourselves into the government of souls an office which the most perfect saints, the Ambroses and Gregories, fled from with fear* The blessed Louis Gonzaga had a scruple in having speculated for a moment as to what employment superiors would allot him.
CHAPTER IV. ADVICE FOR THE INTERIOR LIFE.
ARTICLE I. We ought to cultivate the Will more than the Understanding.
Application to study is befitting a religious, especially if he is called by his vocation to apostolic labors ; but there are some who devote themselves thereto with more of passion and curiosity than zeal. We are sometimes bent only on filling the mind with such knowledge as serves rather to harden and chill it than to soften it by devotion and inflame it with fervor. It is the will we ought principally to cultivate. We have sufficient knowledge, but we are not sufficiently united to God. We ought to make it our chief study to acquire the spirit of prayer, and to become filled with a great love of God.
Cardinal du Perron, when dying, testified his repentance for having during life applied himself more to perfecting his understanding by the sciences than his will by the exercises of the interior life. Some of us will perhaps feel the same regret in the last passage. Woe to that knowledge which makes us neither humble nor better men !
ARTICLE II. The Path of Faith is a Safer Way to Perfection than that of Sensible Graces.
God leads souls by two sorts of ways. Some He guides by interior lights, consolations, and sentiments of devotion. And this way is the most dangerous, because it gives occasion to self-love to luxuriate in favors of this kind, on account of the relish we find in them, and the high esteem we hence conceive of ourselves. Along this road lies the precipice of the bad angels, whose sin was pride, which puffed them up by the consideration of the spiritual goods they had received from God.
Others are led by reason and faith, assisted by the ordinary aids of actual graces, but without sensible consolations, except on rare occasions. And this road is the safest, and leads most directly to perfection, because therein we walk more in spiritual poverty and humility.
ARTICLE III. The Best Mode of Practising the Virtues.
We ought to tend continually towards God, without stopping short at His gifts and graces. Some are too much engrossed with the formal objects of virtues, which are merely natural. It would be far better to act on a principle which would raise us straight to God, as does the divine love. It is true that all the virtues lead us to Him by their own proper motives, but it is with greater slowness and with less perfection.
ii. There are some whose minds are intent upon discovering several motives of virtue with a view of performing their actions thereby, thinking by some such means to render them more agreeable to God. We ought merely to try to ascertain what virtue God desires we should practise in each action, and then simply perform that action in the presence of God, according to the intention with which He inspires us, and with the motive and purpose of imitating Our Lord.
It is to this end that the love of Our Lord is so strongly urged upon us, the motive of which is easy, suited to all the world, and full of sweetness. And the good that is done by the principle of this love an act of temperance, for example, performed with the view of imitating Our Lord and pleasing Him, is far more excellent than when it is done simply to observe such moderation as temperance prescribes.
SIXTH TREATISE. MEANS OF ACQUIRING PERFECTION.
We must will to acquire it. Spiritual books suggest a great many means of acquiring perfection, yet we may say that the only real means is a determined will. There is nothing difficult to a good will assisted by the grace of God. We cannot think that this assistance will be denied us, since the Son of God tells us we must be perfect even as His heavenly Father is perfect, and this we cannot be unless He help us.
They who will to acquire Perfection. Inclination to good does not make a man righteous, any more than inclination to evil makes him wicked. To be good we must will what is good, and we are good in proportion as we will what is right. If you will to be perfect, you must avoid all that turns you from the practice of virtue, and embrace all that leads you thereto. If you do nothing it is because you do not will to accomplish anything. You may have a complacent admiration for perfection without any desire or will to be perfect.
Necessity of a Director. A man who is wise will not attempt to go through a dangerous forest full of tortuous, winding paths without a guide; a prudent merchant will not go to sea without a good pilot. If you are without a good director you will miss your route and suffer shipwreck. God does not govern men by special revelations. The prudence so necessary in the spiritual life is a gratuitous gift bestowed upon us for the benefit of others and not for ourselves. "Woe to him that is alone! " says the Wise Man, " for when he falleth he has none to lift him up." If he wander from the right path there is none to bring him back. If he fall ill there is none to nurse him back to health. If enemies attack him there is none to defend him. Choose, therefore, a wise director and obey him faithfully.
We must recognize our Imperfection and Misery, There are some souls who hope to become perfect in a day. As long as we have enemies we must combat them : as long as we have vices and faults we must resist them, and we are free from them only at the hour of death; so much so, that perfection almost consists in recognizing our misery and humbling ourselves for it before God. I fear much for those souls who imagine they have attained perfection and who complacently regard their virtues. I am of the opinion of St. Bernard, that "one who thinks he lacks nothing lacks everything." In the spiritual life a soul is ill indeed that believes itself in perfect health, and vicious indeed if it think itself devoid of any vice, for it is infested with pride, which brings all vices in its train.
We must be Faithful in Little Things. Great things depend upon little things, and little things lead to great. You will make great progress in virtue if you are faithful in little things. " He that is faithful in that which is least," says Our Lord, " is faithful also in that which is greater." What excuse may you offer for not being perfect, since God only asks of you what is easy and within your power? Do what you can, and what you are unable to do God will do for you. Do what is easy and God will do what is difficult. If you despise venial faults you will inevitably fall into grievous sins.
We must keep ourselves in the Presence of God. "Walk before Me," said God to Abraham, "and be perfect." You will be perfect if you walk before God and always keep yourself in His presence. God is in the depth of your soul: you will find Him if you enter into yourself by recollection ; you will lose Him if your thoughts are abroad and you are occupied with exterior things. He is pleased to dwell in solitude and silence. It is creatures that rob us of Him ; fly them and you will possess Him in security. Where are you when you are not with God ? What are you seeking when you possess God ? Happy soul that carries its sovereign Good within its heart, that sees God in all things and all things in God!
We must avoid Dissipation. To keep the soul in recollection and prevent it from wandering abroad we must close the doors of the senses, we must watch over our eyes and our ears. These are the windows through which the soul escapes; we are dissipated in proportion as we admit external matters into the citadel of our soul, or allow our thoughts to be engaged in them. Place guards at all the avenues which lead to your soul, and permit nothing to enter without knowing whence it comes and whither it tends.
We must be Faithful to Prayer. If we are not men of prayer we shall never attain perfection. How can you be perfect if you do not love God ? How can you love Him if you do not know Him ? How are you to know Him if you do not consider and study Him ? Now, it is in meditation that the soul learns the perfections of God, that it discovers His infinite beauty, that it recognizes His benefits, that it receives His caresses and is inflamed with His love.
We must mortify our Body and its Passions. To pray well we have only to be faithful mortifying ourselves. The wood of the cross is needed to enkindle this fire in our hearts. The spirit gains in proportion to the weakness of the flesh, and the flesh in proportion to the weakness of the spirit. Observe moderation in your penances, and do nothing except by the order of your superiors.
We must keep the Thought of Death before us. Only two things are necessary to become perfect in a short time : one is to believe that it is to-day that we are beginning to serve God ; the other is that it is the last day we have to serve Him. If you were about to die, how would you perform this action ? Perform all your actions in the same way, and you will soon become perfect.
Our Hearts must be attached to Nothing. Consider as lost to you all that you can lose ; do not be attached to anything the loss of which would grieve you. Let your heart be fixed upon nothing inferior to God ; esteem nothing but what leads to God. The root of all our trouble in this life is that we esteem what we ought to despise, and despise what we ought to esteem.
Our Hearts must be detached from Everything. Since a thing is perfect when it is united to its principle, man s perfection consists in being united to God. You will never be united to Him unless you are detached from all things. Take one step beyond creatures and you will find the Creator. Leave visible things and you will find the invisible. Pass beyond time and you will enter eternity. Detach yourself from all that is not God and you will find yourself united to God.
We must correct our Vices. Perfection does not consist so much in filling as in emptying our hearts, in doing good as in avoiding evil. Open the doors of your heart and God will enter at once. Empty your heart of creatures and it will be filled with God. Correct your vices and God will sanctify you.
We must never choose for ourselves. To hold to nothing, to be disposed for all that God wills, to have no choice or desire, indicate a perfect soul and one that is wholly abandoned to God. Preserve your freedom ; let no creature enslave you. Do not be ruled by wicked masters. You could not have a more cruel master than your passions; when they no longer rule you in any way you have attained perfection.
We must conform ourselves in All Things to the Will of God. Whatever path you choose in perfection, you will find none shorter, easier, or more secure than that of conformity in all things to the will of God. It is a devotion which is singularly free and unencumbered, and leads incontinently to union. Do all that God wishes and He will do all that you wish; be content with Him and He will be content with you ; labor for Him and He will labor for you. A man who has no self-will does the will of God, for God s will takes the place of his own ; and as the divine will is continually done, it is true to say that a man who is devoid of self-will does God s will without ceasing.
We must humble ourselves for our Faults. To be righteous and appear so is a dangerous state. To appear righteous when we are not is a vicious state. To be righteous and appear the contrary is a state of perfection. God leaves us with faults to keep us humble and to protect us from vanity. There is nothing more dangerous than a reputation for great sanctity. Glory is the portion of the other life, humility of this. Bear your faults, holy soul, when you cannot get rid of them, and never cease to labor for your perfection. Our desire for perfection is, not unfrequently, the de sire for our own excellence rather than our sanctification.
We must love Solitude. To fly from the world, to seek solitude, to speak little to men and much to God ; to do all that is required of us and yet recognize that we are unprofitable servants; to accomplish works worthy of praise and yet desire no praise this is the summit rather than the path of perfection. You will never live safely among the throng until you have learned to appreciate solitude. Remain in your nest until your wings are fully fledged. Cast deep roots before you try to bear fruit ; dig deep foundations before you attempt to raise your edifice. Your elevation will be in proportion to your former humility; your glory in heaven will be proportioned to your lowliness on earth.
We must die to our Desires. Accustom yourself to do without creatures, to desire nothing outside yourself, and to be content with the enjoyment of God. Your desires are so many tyrants which make you the victim of ambition and self-love. Have but one desire, to do the will of God, or rather, do it unceasingly. Beginners should have a great desire for perfection, but they will never attain it until they die to all their own desires. What can a soul desire that possesses God ? What may a soul seek that has found God? Keep yourself in peace whatever happens, and when your desires rebel, tell them that you know nothing comparable to peace of soul, and that you will not forfeit it for all the treasures of the world.
We must continually do Violence to ourselves. If we would speedily become saints we must unceasingly do violence to ourselves. We reach life only through death, victory only through combat, repose only through labor, union only through detachment, perfection only through the cross and mortification. Give your flesh to God and He will give you His Spirit. Watch over your senses and He will watch over your heart. Guard the citadel without and He will guard it within.
Mortify yourself in little things and He will render you victorious in great.
We must love our Neighbor. If we love our neighbor we are perfect, for the Apostle tells us it is the fulfilment of the law. It is also loving God, for it is keeping His commandments, which are almost all included in the precept of charity. Then love your neighbor and God will love you ; assist him and God will assist you ; excuse him and God will excuse you ; bear with him and God will bear with you; pardon him and God will par don you. If you were to work miracles and suffer martyrdom, yet had not charity, you would be nothing; and what will become of one who commits nothing but crimes and is a martyr only to the Evil One?
We must always think of God. Let no week pass without Communion, no day without a cross, no hour without thinking of your soul, no moment without thinking of God. Is it not just that you should think of Him when He is lavishing benefits upon you and are not His benefits unceasing? To do God s will is to think of Him. Offer Him the beginning of each action, and do not imagine that you have done nothing for Him if during the performance of the duty begun for Him you have not thought of Him: He knows your heart and your intentions. If you were asked for whom you were doing this action, would you not answer that you were doing it for God ? Then have no fear: you have been laboring for Him even though some time has elapsed without your thinking of Him.
We must endure the Privation of Spiritual Consolations. Though we must not reject the consolations which God gives us in meditation, yet we must not be attached to them. A soul in the enjoyment of this sensible fervor receives gifts from God, but gives Him nothing; it enjoys much, but merits little. There is hardly any state in which a soul honors God and enriches itself more than in that of suffering. It honors God by the sacrifice of its mind, of its will, of its passions, and of all its powers. It enriches itself by the practice of all the most heroic virtues: faith, hope, charity, poverty, resignation, fidelity, humility, patience, and perseverance.
We must deny ourselves. Live as one who passes beyond figures to truth, beyond death to immortality, beyond time to eternity. An eternity of happiness or an eternity of misery awaits you : you will attain the first by bearing your cross and denying yourself; you will reap the second by serving your passions and following your own will.
We must obey our Superiors. You will know whether all is well with you by the obedience you render your superiors. " It is impossible," says Cassian, " for an obedient man to fall into delusions, and equally impossible for him to avoid them if he is not obedient." Your progress, your perfection, will be in proportion to your obedience To the soul that sacrifices its spirit to God gives His own ; He does the will of one who does His will. If you will not renounce your own light you will lose that of faith and fall into error. Therefore obey all your superiors : obey in all that is not manifest sin; obey at all times, under all circumstances; obey in heart and mind.
We must be Master of our Hearts. It is a pity to love and not know what we love; to have a heart and not be master of it. Watch over your affections ; love nothing too eagerly or in a manner to disquiet your heart. Keep always in mind this beautiful motto of St.Bernard: "Nothing short of God, nothing like God, nothing with God, nothing after God."
Abridgment of Perfection. All the counsels that could be given concerning perfection might be almost reduced to four, which are like the four wheels of the chariot of sanctity, and the square of Christian justice: to abandon one’s self to the providence of God ; to obey one’s superiors in all things; to do harm to no one; to deny one’s self by continual mortification. These constitute a sure road to perfection.
Books | Quotes | 27 Volumes | Pictures | Videos | Audio Books | Articles | Prayers