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The spiritual man, then, must look carefully to it
that his heart and his rejoicing begin not to lay
hold upon temporal things; he must fear lest from
being little it should grow to be great, and should
increase from one degree to another.
For little things, in time, become great; and from
a small beginning there comes in the end a great
matter, even as a spark suffices to set a mountain on
fire and to burn up the whole world. And let him
never be self-confident because his attachment is
small, and fail to uproot it instantly because he
thinks that he will do so later. For if, when it is
so small and in its beginnings, he has not the
courage to make an end of it, how does he suppose,
and presume, that he will be able to do so when it is
great and more deeply rooted.
The more so since Our Lord said in the Gospel: 'He
that is unfaithful in little will be unfaithful also
in much.'[577] For he that avoids the small sin will
not fall into the great sin; but great evil is
inherent in the small sin,[578] since it has already
penetrated within the fence and wall of the heart;
and as the proverb says: Once begun, half done.
Wherefore David warns us, saying: 'Though riches
abound, let us not apply our heart to them.'[579]
2. Although a man might not do this for the sake
of God and of the obligations of Christian
perfection, he should nevertheless do it because of
the temporal advantages that result from it, to say
nothing of the spiritual advantages, and he should
free his heart completely from all rejoicing in the
things mentioned above.
And thus, not only will he free himself from the
pestilent evils which we have described in the last
chapter, but, in addition to this, he will withdraw
his joy from temporal blessings and acquire the
virtue of liberality, which is one of the principal
attributes of God, and can in no wise coexist with
covetousness.
Apart from this, he will acquire liberty of soul,
clarity of reason, rest, tranquillity and peaceful
confidence in God and a true reverence and worship of
God which comes from the will. He will find greater
joy and recreation in the creatures through his
detachment from them, for he cannot rejoice in them
if he look upon them with attachment to them as to
his own.
Attachment is an anxiety that, like a bond, ties
the spirit down to the earth and allows it no
enlargement of heart. He will also acquire, in his
detachment from things, a clear conception of them,
so that he can well understand the truths relating to
them, both naturally and supernaturally. He will
therefore enjoy them very differently from one who is
attached to them, and he will have a great advantage
and superiority over such a one.
For, while he enjoys them according to their
truth, the other enjoys them according to their
falseness; the one appreciates the best side of them
and the other the worst; the one rejoices in their
substance; the other, whose sense is bound to them,
in their accident. For sense cannot grasp or attain
to more than the accident, but the spirit, purged of
the clouds and species of accident, penetrates the
truth and worth of things, for this is its object.
Wherefore joy, like a cloud, darkens the judgment,
since there can be no voluntary joy in creatures
without voluntary attachment, even as there can be no
joy which is passion when there is no habitual
attachment in the heart; and the renunciation and
purgation of such joy leave the judgment clear, even
as the mists leave the air clear when they are
scattered.
3. This man, then, rejoices in all things -- since
his joy is dependent upon none of them -- as if he
had them all; and this other, through looking upon
them with a particular sense of ownership, loses in a
general sense all the pleasure of them all. This
former man, having none of them in his heart,
possesses them all, as Saint Paul says, in great
freedom.[580] This latter man, inasmuch as he has
something of them through the attachment of his will,
neither has nor possesses anything; it is rather they
that have possessed his heart, and he is, as it were,
a sorrowing captive.
Wherefore, if he desire to have a certain degree
of joy in creatures, he must of necessity have an
equal degree of disquietude and grief in his heart,
since it is seized and possessed by them. But he that
is detached is untroubled by anxieties, either in
prayer or apart from it; and thus, without losing
time, he readily gains great spiritual treasure. But
the other man loses everything, running to and fro
upon the chain by which his heart is attached and
bound; and with all his diligence he can still hardly
free himself for a short time from this bond of
thought and rejoicing by which his heart is bound.
The spiritual man, then, must restrain the first
motion of his heart towards creatures, remembering
the premiss which we have here laid down, that there
is naught wherein a man must rejoice, save in his
service of God, and in his striving for His glory and
honour in all things, directing all things solely to
this end and turning aside from vanity in them,
looking in them neither for his own joy nor for his
consolation.
4. There is another very great and important
benefit in this detachment of the rejoicing from
creatures -- namely, that it leaves the heart free
for God.
This is the dispositive foundation of all the
favours which God will grant to the soul, and without
this disposition He grants them not. And they are
such that, even from the temporal standpoint, for one
joy which the soul renounces for love of Him and for
the perfection of the Gospel, He will give him a
hundred in this life, as His Majesty promises in the
same Gospel.[581]
But, even were there not so high a rate of
interest, the spiritual man should quench these
creature joys in his soul because of the displeasure
which they give to God. For we see in the Gospel
that, simply because that rich man rejoiced at having
laid up for many years, God was so greatly angered
that He told him that his soul would be brought to
account on that same night.[582]
Therefore, we must believe that, whensoever we
rejoice vainly, God is beholding us and preparing
some punishment and bitter draught according to our
deserts, so that the pain which results from the joy
may sometimes be a hundred times greater than the
joy.
For, although it is true, as Saint John says on
this matter, in the Apocalypse, concerning Babylon,
that as much as she had rejoiced and lived in
delights, so much torment and sorrow should be given
her,[583] yet this is not to say that the pain will
not be greater than the joy, which indeed it will be,
since for brief pleasures are given eternal torments.
The words mean that there shall be nothing without
its particular punishment, for He Who will punish the
idle word will not pardon vain rejoicing. |