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We can reduce all the kinds of good which can
distinctly cause joy to the will to four: namely,
motive, provocative, directive and perfective. Of
these we shall speak in turn, each in its order; and
first, of the motive kind -- namely, images and
portraits of saints, oratories and ceremonies.2.
As touching images and portraits, there may be much
vanity and vain rejoicing in these. For, though they
are most important for Divine worship and most
necessary to move the will to devotion, as is shown
by the approval given to them and the use made of
them by our Mother Church (for which reason it is
always well that we should employ them, in order to
awaken our lukewarmness), there are many persons who
rejoice rather in the painting and decoration of them
than in what they represent.
3. The use of images has been ordained by the
Church for two principal ends -- namely, that we may
reverence the saints in them, and that the will may
be moved and devotion to the saints awakened by them.
When they serve this purpose they are beneficial
and the use of them is necessary; and therefore we
must choose those that are most true and lifelike,
and that most move the will to devotion, and our eyes
must ever be fixed upon this motive rather than upon
the value and cunning of their workmanship and
decoration. For, as I say, there are some who pay
more attention to the cunning with which an image is
made, and to its value, than to what it represents;
and that interior devotion which they ought to direct
spiritually to the saint whom they see not,
forgetting the image at once, since it serves only as
a motive, they squander upon the cunning and the
decoration of its outward workmanship.
In this way sense is pleased and delighted, and
the love and rejoicing of the will remain there. This
is a complete hindrance to true spirituality, which
demands annihilation of the affections as to all
particular things.
4. This will become quite clear from the
detestable custom which certain persons observe with
regard to images in these our days. Holding not in
abhorence the vain trappings of the world, they adorn
images with the garments which from time to time vain
persons invent in order to satisfy their own
pleasures and vanities. So they clothe images with
garments reprehensible even in themselves, a kind of
vanity which was, and is still, abhorrent to the
saints whom the images represent.
Herein, with their help, the devil succeeds in
canonizing his vanities, by clothing the saints with
them, not without causing them great displeasure. And
in this way the honest and grave devotion of the
soul, which rejects and spurns all vanity and every
trace of it, becomes with them little more than a
dressing of dolls; some persons use images merely as
idols upon which they have set their rejoicing.
And thus you will see certain persons who are
never tired of adding one image to another, and wish
them to be of this or that kind and workmanship, and
to be placed in this or that manner, so as to be
pleasing to sense; and they make little account of
the devotion of the heart.
They are as much attached to them as was Michas to
his idols,[658] or as was Laban;[659] for the one ran
out of his house crying aloud because they were being
taken from him; and the other, having made a long
journey and been very wroth because of them,
disturbed all the household stuff of Jacob, in
searching for them.
5. The person who is truly devout sets his
devotion principally upon that which is invisible; he
needs few images and uses few, and chooses those that
harmonize with the Divine rather than with the human,
clothing them, and with them himself, in the garments
of the world to come, and following its fashions
rather than those of this world.
For not only does an image belonging to this world
in no way influence his desire; it does not even lead
him to think of this world, in spite of his having
before his eyes something worldly, akin to the
world's interests. Nor is his heart attached to the
images that he uses; if they are taken from him, he
grieves very little, for he seeks within himself the
living image, which is Christ crucified, for Whose
sake he even desires that all should be taken from
him and he should have nothing.
Even when the motives and means which lead him
closest to God are taken from him, he remains in
tranquility. For the soul is nearer perfection when
it is tranquil and joyous, though it be deprived of
these motives, than if it has possession of them
together with desire and attachment. For, although it
is good to be pleased to have such images as assist
the soul to greater devotion (for which reason it is
those which move it most that must always be chosen),
yet it is something far removed from perfection to be
so greatly attached to them as to possess them with
attachment, so that, if they are taken away from the
soul, it becomes sad.
6. Let the soul be sure that, the more closely it
is attached to an image or a motive, the less will
its devotion and prayer mount to God. For, although
it is true that, since some are more appropriate than
others, and excite devotion more than others, it is
well, for this reason alone, to be more affectioned
to some than to others, as I have just now said, yet
there must be none of the attachment and affection
which I have described.
Otherwise, that which has to sustain the spirit in
its flight to God, in total forgetfulness, will be
wholly occupied by sense, and the soul will be
completely immersed in a delight afforded it by what
are but instruments. These instruments I have to use,
but solely in order to assist me in devotion; and, on
account of my imperfection, they may well serve me as
a hindrance, no less so than may affection and
attachment to anything else.
7.[660] But, though perhaps in this matter of
images you may think that there is something to be
said on the other side, if you have not clearly
understood how much detachment and poverty of spirit
is required by perfection, at least you cannot excuse
the imperfection which is commonly indulged with
regard to rosaries; for you will hardly find anyone
who has not some weakness with regard to these,
desiring them to be of this workmanship rather than
of that, or of this colour or metal rather than of
that, or decorated in some one style or in some
other.
Yet no one style is better than another for the
hearing of a prayer by God, for this depends upon the
simple and true heart, which looks at no more than
pleasing God, and, apart from the question of
indulgences, cares no more for one rosary than for
another.
8. Our vain concupiscence is of such a nature and
quality that it tries to establish itself in
everything; and it is like the worm which destroys
healthy wood, and works upon things both good and
evil. For what else is your desire to have a rosary
of cunning workmanship, and your wish that it shall
be of one kind rather than of another, but the fixing
of your rejoicing upon the instrument?
It is like desiring to choose one image rather
than another, and considering, not if it will better
awaken Divine love within you, but only if it is more
precious and more cunningly made. If you employed
your desire and rejoicing solely in the love of God,
you would care nothing for any of these
considerations.
It is most vexatious to see certain spiritual
persons so greatly attached to the manner and
workmanship of these instruments and motives, and to
the curiosity and vain pleasure which they find in
them: you will never see them satisfied; they will be
continually leaving one thing for another, and
forgetting and forsaking spiritual devotion for these
visible things, to which they have affection and
attachment, sometimes of just the same kind as that
which a man has to temporal things; and from this
they receive no small harm. |