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Beware of resisting the leadings of grace: be thoroughly
generous
in great things and in small
It is proper to grace to strive against nature. Therefore, we must
expect that it will frequently, orrather continually, demand of us
such things as are contrary to our vicious or imperfect
tendencies, and that consequently nature will offer a violent
resistance, and will not yield until the last moment. The will,
however, must always be on the side of grace. By the word 'will',
I do not mean certain ineffective desires, certain repugnances or
aversions which are not free, but a firm and determined
resolution--not I would, but I will, triumphant equally over likes
and dislikes.
Such a generous intention, firmly resolved to respond in
everything to God's designs, is not often met with, even among
those who think they have given themselves entirely to Him. At
certain times of sensible fervour, we declare ourselves ready and
willing for everything, and we fancy that our protestations spring
from the depths of our will. But it is not so; they are only the
effect of the glow of grace.
When that glow has abated and the soul is restored to itself and
to ordinary grace, we are surprised to see that all our good
intentions have vanished. Or else, like St. Peter, we presume on
our strength and, so long as danger is afar off, we fancy
ourselves ready to confront everything. But when the opportunity
presents itself we yield, as the apostle did, to the slightest
temptation. There is a great difference, said a holy man who spoke
from experience, between sacrificing one's life to God in a
transport of fervour, and doing the same thing at the foot of the
gallows. The true disposition of the will is to be judged at the
actual moment ofthe sacrifice, when the temporary effect of the
heavenly warmth is withdrawn, and the soul has cooled down and
returned to a state of ordinary grace.
Therefore we ought not lightly to imagine that we have this good
will: rather we should always fear that we have it not. We are
not, indeed, to be pusillanimous, but we are bound to mistrust
ourselves always and rely solely on help from heaven, confident
that it will never fail us in time of need. We are so weak that we
cannot be sure of victory beforehand. The slightest presumption
renders us unworthy of it, and often the enemy snatches the
victory from our hands, just when we think it is ours.
Do you want to be sure of never resisting God? Then remember
always Our Lord's own words: The spirit indeed is willing, but the
flesh is weak. [72] We must watch and pray, as He bids us, that we
enter not into temptation. Watch, so as not to expose ourselves or
give advantage to the enemy; pray, in order that we may obtain
from God the strength we need. Abiding, thus, in the salutary fear
of being unfaithful to grace, God will preserve us from all evil.
Or, if He permits us from time to time to realize our weakness, it
will never be by a deadly fall: He will interpose His own hand
between us and the blow, to prevent it from doing us harm. He will
quickly raise us up again, and we shall be all the stronger
afterwards.
The fear of resisting grace may be looked upon in yet another
light. Such resistance is the greatest evil we have to dread. When
God intends to take possession of a soul and direct it himself He
gives it much instruction relative to its perfection. He watches
with extreme care over its thoughts, words, acts and motives. He
overlooks nothing, examines every action, and keenly rebukes the
slightest unfaithfulness.
Now the soul cannot be too attentive to the light it thus receives
from God, and His secret reproaches: it is of the greatest
importance to pay them every regard. For in the first place, if we
resist God's will, we at once arrest the progress of our own
perfection. We place a stumbling-block in our own way, and make no
advance until we have surmounted it. Not only shall we not
advance, but we shall fall back; for it is an axiom of the
spiritual life that we must either go forward or fall back. In the
second place, one grace rightly used attracts a second, the second
brings a third, and so on, for graces are linked together; they
form a chain which ends in holiness and final perseverance. In the
same way, a grace rejected deprives us of the next, and therefore
of those which should follow. And this may be carried so far as to
prove fatal in the long run.
Therefore it is always extremely dangerous to break this chain,
and as it is certain that we shall undoubtedly arrive at that
perfection that God expects of us if we advance faithfully from
grace to grace, so it is equally certain that we run a grave risk
in the matter of our salvation if we break the chain of graces in
any way whatsoever.
This is especially true of certain principal graces which form, as
it were, the master links in the chain, upon which so much
depends. Such are the grace of one's vocation, an attraction to
interior prayer, and others of like nature. They are a kind of
starting point from which God is going to lead us to our final
haven. If we respond faithfully and assiduously, we will have
nothing to fear, but if we reject His overtures at the outset we
can never be sure of having a second opportunity.
But I should warn timid souls that the chain is not broken by
faults of inadvertence and impulse or even of imprudence and
indiscretion: in other words, by sins of frailty. It is only
broken by sins knowingly, wilfully and repeatedly committed. For
God does not leave us just for one fault; He returns again and
again, and is as patient as the end He has in view is great. Even
when He sees that we are determined to have nothing to do with
Him, He does not withdraw altogether.
He acts in a similar manner when He is asking certain sacrifices
of us. Sometimes He pursues a soul for years before He wearies,
especially if the sacrifice is important and the soul feels a
great repugnance for it. The moment when His pursuit ceases is
known to Him alone. Should the soul want to withdraw itself from
the order of supernatural Providence, it is to be feared that it
may never re-enter it, and even its eternal salvation may be
endangered. God showed St. Teresa the place she would have had in
hell, had she lost that which was prepared for her in heaven. For
her there was no middle course, it was one thing or the other; and
there are many souls in a like state without knowing it.
This is one of the principal reasons why masters of the spiritual
life so strongly urge the duty of recollectedness and
correspondence with grace. The soul cannot attend too carefully to
the warnings that God does not cease to give, constraining it to
do good and avoid evil. The soul should observe the greatest
fidelity in following these inspirations of grace. This attention
and docility Our Lord Himself made the distinctive marks of His
disciples: My sheep, He said, follow Me, because they know My
voice. [73] And it may be affirmed that the whole system of true
direction consists in moulding souls to such a disposition.
Finally, we ought to question God's will in nothing, great or
small. It is not our place to decide on the greater or less
importance of the things God requires of us, and we can so easily
fall into error on such points. Besides, if God signifies His will
concerning any matter, however small, that intimation at once
invests it with importance, and, more than all else, we are bound
to consider the intention and good pleasure of so great a Master.
What, in itself, was the eating or abstaining from a certain
fruit? And yet the happiness of the human race depended upon the
observance of so apparently trifling a command. God is the
absolute arbiter ofthe graces He bestows upon us, and also of the
conditions He attaches to them. On our fidelity in a seemingly
trivial matter may depend many graces which He has in store for
us.
Opportunities for doing great things for God are rare, but those
for doing little things for Him are continually arising, and it is
precisely in these little things that the refinement of love shows
itself. Nothing proves the depth of our love for God and our
desire to please Him more than the conviction that nothing is
little where His service is concerned. And how, indeed, can we
expect to be faithful to Him in big things if we are careless in
obeying Him in small? It is just these that are more within our
reach and more adapted to our weakness. The bigger things, on the
other hand, call for great efforts, which are often beyond our
strength, and of which it would be presumptuous to deem ourselves
capable. Great acts of virtue are God's work rather than ours, and
if the smaller ones seem to belong to us, none the less God's
action plays the greater part in them also.
Our fidelity, then, is not perfect unless it embraces everything,
without exception. We ought to judge of the service due to God by
that which we ourselves expect of others. We look for exactness,
promptness, and thoroughness, and would be offended if our orders
were not carried out, just because they were not gravely
important. Is it too much, then, to serve God as we desire to be
served ourselves?
Faithfulness in little things keeps us humble, and shields us from
vanity, and is of inestimable value in God's sight if it proceeds
from a high motive. By it we acquire that extreme purity of
conscience which brings us very close to God. The special
characteristic of His own holiness was precisely His utter
incompatibility with the least stain of sin. So it is with the
saints, allowing for due proportion in the comparison.
How mistaken are those souls who try to keep anything back from
God. Who, so to speak, bargain with Him, who consent to give Him
certain things but obstinately refuse Him others; who keep a watch
on themselves in certain directions but are negligent in others;
who set bounds to their perfection and say within themselves: I
will go so far and no farther. Can they not see that the very
thing that they withhold from God is just what He is particularly
asking of them, and of which He reproaches them so frequently and
insistently? If He presses His demand, it is not for His sake but
for ours. Not only does He see more clearly than we do, but He
alone knows what is best for us, indeed what is necessary for our
advancement. And His very insistence is a sure sign that what He
asks is more important than we think.
Here, then, is a subject for our examination of conscience. We
must overlook nothing, spare nothing, search the innermost corners
of our heart, lest there be some hidden reservation, some rapine
in the holocaust. And, having made a thorough search, let us beg
God to bring His own light to bear on the dark corners of our
soul, making our interior dispositions clear to us, constraining
us to refuse Him nothing, and using all His authority to take from
us what we have not the courage to give Him.
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