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God has ordained that we should employ our whole
endeavours to obtain holy virtues, let us then forget
nothing which might help our good success in this
pious enterprise. But after we have planted and
watered, let us then know for certain that it is God
who must give increase to the trees of our good
inclinations and habits, and therefore from his
Divine Providence we are to expect the fruits of our
desires and labours, and if we find the progress and
advancement of our hearts in devotion not such as we
would desire, let us not be troubled, let us live in
peace, let tranquillity always reign in our hearts.
It belongs to us diligently to cultivate our
heart, and therefore we must faithfully attend to it,
but as for the plenty of the crop or harvest, let us
leave the care thereof to our Lord and Master. The
husbandman will never be reprehended for not having a
good harvest, but only if he did not carefully till
and sow his ground. Let us not be troubled at finding
ourselves always novices in the exercise of virtues,
for in the monastery of a devout life every one
considers himself always a novice, and there the
whole of life is meant as a probation; the most
evident argument, not only that we are novices, but
also that we are worthy of expulsion and reprobation,
being, to esteem and hold ourselves professed.
For according to the rule of this Order not the
solemnity but the accomplishment of the vows makes
the novices professed, nor are the vows ever
fulfilled while there remains yet something to be
done for their observance, and the obligation of
serving God and making progress in his love lasts
always until death. But after all, will some one say,
if I know that it is by my own fault my progress in
virtue is so slow, how can I help being grieved and
disquieted?
I have said this in the Introduction to a Devout
Life,(1) but I willingly say it again, because it can
never be said sufficiently. We must be sorry for
faults with a repentance which is strong, settled,
constant, tranquil, but not troubled, unquiet or
fainthearted. Are you sure that your backwardness in
virtue has come from your fault ? Well then, humble
yourself before God, implore his mercy, fall
prostrate before the face of his goodness and demand
pardon, confess your fault, cry him mercy in the very
ear of your confessor, so as to obtain absolution;
but this being done remain in peace, and having
detested the offence, embrace lovingly the abjection
which you feel in yourself by reason of delaying your
advancement in good.
Ah! my Theotimus, the souls in Purgatory are there
doubtless for their sins, and for sins which they
have detested and do supremely detest, but as for the
abjection and pain which remain from being detained
in that place, and from being deprived for a space of
the enjoyment of the blessed love which is in
Paradise, they endure this lovingly, and they
devoutly pronounce the canticle of the Divine
justice; Thou art just, 0 Lord, and thy judgment is
right.(2) Let us therefore await our advancement with
patience, and instead of disquieting ourselves
because we have so little profited in the time past,
let us diligently endeavour to do better in the time
to come.
Behold, I beseech you, this good soul. She has
greatly desired and endeavoured to throw off the
slavery of anger; and God has assisted her, for he
has quite delivered her from all the sins which
proceed from anger. She would die rather than utter a
single injurious word, or let any sign of hatred
escape her, and yet she is subject to the assaults
and first motions of this passion, that is, to
certain startings, strong movements and sallies of an
angry heart, which the Chaldaic paraphrase calls
stirrings (tremoussements), saying: Be stirred and
sin not; - where our sacred version says: Be angry
and sin not.(3) In effect it is the same thing, for
the prophet would only say that if anger surprise us,
exciting in our hearts the first stirrings of sin, we
should be careful not to let ourselves be carried
further into this passion, for so we should offend.
Now, although these first movements and stirrings
be no sin, yet the poor soul that is often attacked
by them, troubles, afilicts and disquiets herself,
and thinks she does well in being sad, as if it were
the love of God that provoked her to this sadness.
And yet, Theotimus, it is not heavenly love that
causes this trouble, for that is never offended
except by sin; it is our self-love that desires to be
exempt from the pains and toils which the assaults of
anger draw on us. It is not the offence that
displeases us in these stirrings of anger, there
being none at all committed, it is the pain we are
put to in resisting which disquiets us.
These rebellions of the sensual appetite, as well
in anger as in concupiscence, are left in us for our
exercise, to the end that we may practise spiritual
valour in resisting them. This is that Philistine,
whom the true Israelites are ever to fight against
but never to put down; they may weaken him, but never
annihilate him. He only dies with us, and always
lives with us. He is truly accursed, and detestable,
as springing from sin, and tending towards sin:
wherefore, as we are termed earth, because we are
formed of earth and shall return to earth, so this
rebellion is named sin by the great Apostle, as
having sprung from sin and tending to sin, though it
never makes us guilty unless we second and obey it.
Whereupon he exhorts us that we permit it not to
reign in our mortal body to obey the concupiscence
thereof.(4)
He prohibits not the sentiment of sin, but the
consenting to it. He does not order us to hinder sin
from coming into us and being in us, but he commands
that it should not reign in us. It is in us when we
feel the rebellion of the sensual appetite, but it
does not reign in us unless we give consent unto it.
The physician will never order his feverish
patient not to be athirst, for that would be too
great a folly; but he will tell him that though he be
thirsty he must abstain from drinking. No one will
tell a woman with child not to have a longing for
extravagant things, for this is not under her
control, but she may well be told to discover her
longings, to the end that if she longs for hurtful
things one may divert her imagination, and not let
such a fancy get a hold on her brain.
The sting of the flesh, an angel of Satan, roughly
attacked the great S. Paul, in order to make him fall
into sin. The poor Apostle endured this as a shameful
and infamous wrong, and on this account called it a
buffeting and ignominious treatment, and petitioned
God to deliver him from it, but God answered him:
Paul, my grace is sufficient for thee, for virtue is
made perfect in infirmity.(5) Thereupon this great
holy man said in acquiescence: Gladly will I glory in
my infirmities that the power of Christ may dwell in
me. But take notice, I beseech you, that there is
sensual rebellion even in this admirable vessel of
election, who in running to the remedy of prayer
teaches us that we are to use the same arms against
the temptations we feel. Note further that Our Lord
does not always permit these terrible revolts in man
for the punishment of sin, but to manifest the
strength and virtue of the Divine assistance and
grace.
Finally, note that we are not only not to be
disquieted in our temptations and infirmities, but we
are even to glory in our in our infirmity that
thereby God's virtue may appear in us, sustaining our
weakness against the force of the suggestion and
temptation: for the glorious Apostle calls the stings
and attacks of impurity which he endured his
infirmities, and says that he glories in them,
because, though he had the sense of them by his
misery, yet through God's mercy he did not give
consent to them.
Indeed, as I have said above, the church condemned
the error of certain solitaries, who held that we
might be perfectly delivered even in this world from
the passions of anger, concupiscence, fear, and the
like. God wills us to have enemies, and it is also
his will that we should repulse them. Let us then
behave ourselves courageously between the one and the
other will of God, enduring with patience to be
assaulted, and endeavouring with courage by
resistance to make head against and resist our
assailants.
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