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The words in which our Saviour exhorts us to tend
towards and aim at perfection, are so forcible and so
pressing, that we cannot dissemble the obligation we
have to undertake to carry out that design. Be holy,
says he, because l am holy.(1) He that is holy, let
him be sanctified still; and he that is just, let him
be justified still.(2) Be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect.(3) For this cause, the great S.
Bernard writing to the glorious S. Guerin, Abbot of
Aulps, whose life and miracles have left so sweet an
odour in this diocese: "The just man," says he,
"never says it is enough; he still hungers and
thirsts after justice."
Truly, Theotimus, in temporal matters nothing
suffices him who is not satisfied with what is
enough; for what can suffice him to whom sufficiency
is not sufficient? But in spiritual goods he has not
sufficient who is satisfied with what is enough, and
sufficiency is not sufficient, because true
sufficiency in divine things consists partly in the
desire of affluence. God in the beginning commanded
the earth to bring forth the green herb, and such as
may seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its
kind, which has also seed in itself.(4)
And do we not see by experience, that plants and
fruits are not come to their full growth and maturity
till they bring forth their seeds and pips, whence
other trees and plants of the same kind spring. Never
do our virtues come to their full stature and
measure, till such time as they beget in us desires
of progress, which like spiritual seeds serve for the
production of new degrees of virtue. And, methinks,
the earth of our heart is commanded to bring forth
the plants of virtue, which bear the fruits of good
works, every one in its kind, and having the seeds of
desires and resolutions of ever multiplying and
advancing in perfection.
And the virtue that bears not the seed of these
desires is not yet come to its growth and maturity.
"So then," says S. Bernard to the tepid man, "you do
not want to advance in perfection? No. Nor yet grow
worse? No, truly. What, then - you would neither grow
better nor worse? - poor man, you would be what
cannot be. Nothing, indeed, in the world is either
stable or constant; but of man it is said even more
specially that he never remaineth in the same
state.(5) It is necessary then that he either
go forward or backward."
Now I say not, any more than does S. Bernard, that
it is a sin not to practise the counsels. No, in
truth, Theotimus: for it is the very difference
between commandments and counsels, that the
commandment obliges us under pain of sin, and the
counsel only invites us without pain of sin. Yet I
distinctly say that to contemn the aiming after
Christian perfection is a great sin, and that it is a
still greater to contemn the invitation by which our
Saviour calls us to it; but it is an insupportable
impiety to contemn the counsels and means which our
Saviour points out for the attainment of it. It were
a heresy to say, that our Saviour had not given us
good counsel, and a blasphemy to say to God: Depart
from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways:(6)
but it is a horrible irreverence towards him who with
so much love and sweetness invites us to perfection,
to say: I will not be holy or perfect, nor have any
larger portion of thy benevolence, nor follow the
counsels which thou givest me to make progress in
perfection.
We may indeed without sin not follow the counsels, on
account of the affection we may have to other things:
as for example, it is lawful for a man not to sell
what he possesseth to give to the poor, because he
has not the courage to make so entire a renunciation.
It is also lawful to marry, because one loves, or
because one has not strength of mind necessary to
undertake the war which must be waged against the
flesh.
But to profess not to wish to follow the counsels,
nor any one of them, cannot be done without contempt
of him who gives them. Not to follow the counsel of
virginity, and so to marry, is not wrong, but
marrying as if putting marriage higher than chastity,
as heretics do, that is a great contempt either of
the counsellor or of his counsel. To drink wine
against the doctor's advice when overcome with thirst
or with a desire to drink, is not precisely to
contemn the doctor nor his advice: but to say - I
will not follow the doctor's advice - must
necessarily proceed from some bad opinion one
harbours of him.
Now as regards men, one may often contemn their
counsel, without contemning those who give it,
because to think that a man may have erred is not to
contemn him. But to reject and contemn God's counsel,
can only spring from an idea that he has not
counselled us well; which cannot be thought but by a
spirit of blasphemy, as though God were not wise
enough to be able, or good enough to will, to give
good advice.
We may say the same of the counsels of the Church,
which by reason of the continued assistance of the
Holy Ghost, who instructs and conducts her in all
truth, can never give evil advice.
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