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One cannot graft an oak upon a pear tree, of so
contrary a humour are those two trees: nor can anger
or despair be grafted on charity, at least it would
be very difficult. As for anger, we have seen this in
the discourse upon zeal; as for despair, unless it be
reduced to the legitimate distrust of ourselves, or
to a sense of the vanity, weakness and inconstancy of
worldly favours, helps and promises, I see not what
service Divine love can draw from it.
And as for sadness, how can it be profitable to
holy charity, seeing that joy is ranked amongst the
fruits of the Holy Ghost, coming next to charity?
Still, the great apostle says: The sorrow that is
according to God worketh penance unto salvation which
is lasting: but the sorrow of the world worketh
death.(1) There is then a sorrow or sadness according
to God, which is employed either by sinners in
penance, or by the good in compassion for the
temporal miseries of their neighbours, or by the
perfect in deploring, bemoaning and condoling the
spiritual calamities of souls. For David, S. Peter,
Magdalen, wept for their sins; Agar wept when she saw
her son almost dead of thirst; Jeremias over the ruin
of Jerusalem; Our Saviour over the Jews; and his
great Apostle sighing says these words: Many walk of
whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping)
that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.(2)
There is then also a sadness of this world, which
likewise proceeds from three causes.
For - 1. It comes sometimes from the infernal
enemy, who by a thousand sad, melancholy and
disturbing suggestions obscures the understanding,
weakens the will, and troubles the whole soul: and as
a thick mist fills the head and breast with rheum,
and by this means makes respiration difficult, and
greatly incommodes the traveller; so the evil spirit,
filling man's mind with sad thoughts, deprives it of
facility in aspiring to God, and possesses it with an
extreme tedium and discouragement, in order to bring
it to despair and perdition.
They say there is a fish called the sea-toad,
surnamed the sea-devil, which stirring and spreading
the mud troubles the water round about it so as to
hide itself therein as in an ambush, from whence, as
soon as it perceives poor little fishes, it darts
upon them, kills and devours them: whence perhaps has
come the common expression - fishing in troubled
waters.
Now it is the same with the devil of hell as with
the devil of the sea; for he makes his ambush in
sadness, and then, having troubled the soul with a
multitude of sad thoughts cast hither and thither in
the understanding, he makes a charge upon the
affections, bearing them down with distrust,
jealousies, aversions, envies, superfluous
apprehensions of past sins, adding withal a number of
vain, sour and melancholy subtleties of the
imagination, that all reasons and consolations may be
rejected.
2. Sadness sometimes also proceeds from one's
natural disposition, when the melancholy humour
predominates in us: and this is not vicious in
itself, yet our enemy makes great use of it to weave
and prepare a thousand temptations in our souls. For
as spiders scarcely ever spin their webs save when
the weather is dull and the sky cloudy; so this
malign spirit never finds as much facility in
spreading the nets of his suggestions in sweet,
kindly and bright souls, as he has with the gloomy,
sad and melancholy; for these he easily disturbs with
vexations, suspicions, hatreds, murmurings, censures,
envies, sloth and spiritual numbness.
3. Lastly, there is a sadness which the various
accidents of life bring upon us. What manner of joy
shall be to me, said Tobias, who sit in darkness, and
see not the light of heaven?(3) Thus was Jacob sad on
the news of the death of his Joseph, and David for
that of his Absalom. Now this sadness is common to
the good and the bad; but to the good it is moderated
by acquiescence in and resignation to the will of
God: as we see in Tobias, who gave thanks to the
Divine Majesty for all the adversities which came
upon him, and in Job, who blessed the name of the
Lord for them, and in Daniel, who turned his griefs
into songs of joy.
As to worldlings, on the contrary, this sadness is
an ordinary thing with them, and spreads out into
regrets, despair, and deadness of soul: for they are
like apes and monkeys, which are always sullen, sad
and peevish at the waning of the moon, as, on the
contrary, at the new moon, they leap, dance and play
their apish tricks. The worldling is out of temper,
uncivil, bitter and gloomy when temporal prosperity
fails him; and in abundance he is almost always
boastful, foolishly elated and insolent.
Indeed the sadness of true penitence is not so
much to be named sadness as displeasure, or the sense
and detestation of evil; a sadness which is never
troubled nor vexed; a sadness which does not dull the
spirit, but makes it active, ready and diligent; a
sadness which does not weigh the heart down, but
raises it by prayer and hope, and causes in it the
movements of the fervour of devotion; a sadness which
in the heaviest of its bitternesses ever produces the
sweetness of an incomparable consolation, according
to the precept of the great S. Augustine: "Let the
penitent sorrow always, yet always rejoice for his
sorrow." "The sadness," says Cassian, "which works
solid penitence, and that desirable repentance of
which one never repents, is obedient, affable,
humble, mild, sweet, patient, -- as being a child and
scion of charity: so that spreading over every pain
of body and contrition of spirit, and being in a
certain way joyous, courageous, and strengthened by
the hope of doing better, it retains all the
sweetness of gentleness and longanimity, having in
itself the Fruits of the Holy Spirit, which the holy
Apostle recounts: Now the Fruits of the Spirit are
charity, joy, peace, longanimity, goodness,
benignity, faith, mildness, continency."
Such is true penitence, and such is right sadness,
which in good sooth is not really sad or melancholy,
but only attentive and earnest to detest, reject and
hinder the evil of sin for past and for future. And
indeed we often see repentances which are very eager,
troubled impatient, wet-eyed, bitter, given to
groans, very crabbed and melancholy, which at last
turn out fruitless and lack all true amendment,
because they do not proceed from the true motives of
the virtue of penitence, but from selfish and natural
love.
The sorrow of the world worketh death,(4) says the
Apostle; we must, therefore, Theotimus, carefully
avoid and banish it as much as we can. If it be from
nature, we must repulse it by contradicting its
movements, turning it aside by the practices suitable
to that purpose, and using the remedies and way of
life which physicians themselves may judge best.
If it come from temptation, we must clearly open
our mind to our spiritual father, who, will prescribe
for us the method of overcoming it, according as we
have said in Part IV. of the Introduction to the
Devout Life. If it arise from circumstances, we will
have recourse to the teaching of Book VIII., in order
to see how grateful tribulations are to the children
of God, and how the greatness of our hopes for
eternal life ought to make all the passing events of
the temporal almost unworthy of thinking about.
At last, in all the sadness which may come upon
us, we must employ the authority of the superior will
to do all that should be done in favour of divine
love.
There are indeed actions which so depend upon the
corporal disposition and constitution that we have
not the power to do them just as we please: for the
melancholy-disposed cannot keep their eyes, or their
words, or their faces, in the same good grace and
sweetness as they would do if they were relieved from
this bad humour; but they are quite able, though
without this good grace, to say gracious, kind, and
civil words, and, in spite of inclination, to do what
reason requires as to words and works of charity,
gentleness and condescension.
We may be excused for not being always bright, for
one is not master of cheerfulness to have it when one
will; but we are not excusable for not being always
gracious, yielding and considerate; for this is
always in the power of our will, and we have only to
determine to keep down the contrary humour and
inclination.
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