The Priesthood

and Perfection

by REGINALD

GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, O.P. Translated by E. HAYDEN,
O.P.,S.T.L.,Ph.D. The

Newman Press, Westminster, Md., 1955

Nihil obstat:

A. M. Moynihan, O.P., S.T.L.
H, Marquess, O.P., S.T.L., D.Ph.

Imprimi potest:

T. E. Garde, O.P., S.T.M.
Provincialis

Nihil obstat:

Conlethus Kearns, O.P., S.T.M.

Censor Theologiae Deputatus

Imprimi potest: Joannes Carolus
Archiepiscopus Dublinensis, Hiberniae Primas
die 8 mensis Novembris 1954.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction..................................................................

1

Analysis of Modem Errors
Their Effects on Everyday Life
Remedies
Preparing the Apostle
Recapitulation
I. Interior Life and Infused Faith ...
15
Absolute Infallibility of Faith
Essentially Supernatural Nature of the Motive of
Faith
Essentially Supernatural Nature of Faith Itself
II. The Spirit of Faith and Signs of Its
Presence......................................................... 23
God Considered in a Spirit of Faith
Considering Ourselves in a Spirit of Faith
Considering Our Neighbor in a Spirit of Faith
Life’s Events Considered in a Spirit of Faith

III. Evidences of a Supernatural Spirit
The Pearl of Great Price
Practical Conclusions

.

.

29

IV. The General Obligation of Christians
to Seek Perfection........................................ 39
Introduction

The Obligation to Love God above All Things
Seeking Perfection in Love
Solving Some Difficulties
Further Clarification
Christians and the Counsels

V. The Obligation of Religious to Seek
Perfection......................................... 53
Introduction
Basis of This Obligation
Nature of This Obligation
Purpose of This Obligation
The Three Vows
Excellence of Religious Life
VI. Priestly Perfection.............................................. 69
VII. The Episcopal State............................................. 91
Fullness of the Priesthood
State of Perfection
Clarifying the Issue
Some Practical Questions
Priestly Ministry in the World Today
VIII. The Beatitudes Measure Priestly
Perfection....................................................... 113

IX.

Interior Life of the Priest.......................... 123

Introduction
Erroneous Ideas
True Interior Life
Growth in True Interior Life
Perfect Self-denial and Continual Recollection Lead
to Intimate Union with God
Answering the Call of Christ

X. Virtues of the Priestly Life . . . .
Harmony of the Virtues
Exemplified in Christ
Application of Doctrine to Priestly Perfection

135

XI. Purification of Virtues Is Necessary for
Priestly Perfection................................. 149
Introduction
Defects of Young Priests
How the Virtues Are Purified
Passive Purification of the Soul
Conclusion

XII.

Priestly Mental Prayer................................ 171
Introduction
Discursive Prayer
Affective Prayer
Theological Prayer

XIII. Eucharistic Worship and Priestly
Perfection
................................................. 183
Eucharistic Worship and the Interior Life
The Eucharist and Priestly Perfection

For Further Reading....................................................... 199
Index.................................................................................. 203

,

Introduction

1. Analysis of modern errors

The dangers of modern times are great, and the remedies
to which we often have recourse are insufficient. We shall
begin, therefore, by saying a few words about the need for
greater faith.
The poisonous errors in modern life are tending toward
a complete dechristianization of society, a dechristianization
which began in the sixteenth century with the rebirth
of paganism and the reappearance of pagan pride and
sensuality among Christians. This turning from Christ
advanced another stage under Protestantism, which rejected
the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the value of sacramental
absolution and confession, the infallibility of the Church
and Tradition, her teaching power, and finally, the need for
observing the precepts which lead to salvation—four denials
which strike at the root of the Christian life. Then the
French Revolution with its deism and naturalism lent a
hand in the dechristianization of society: God, if He exists,
is interested only in a universal ordering of things and not
in individual people. Sin, therefore, is not an offense
against God, but only an offense against reason which is
constantly evolving. Stealing, for example, was a sin so
i

2

Priesthood and Perfection

long as the right of private property was admitted; but if,
as communists hold, private property is an injustice against
the community, then private property itself becomes a
theft.
This spirit of revolution led naturally to liberalism, which
tried to steer a middle course between the teaching of the
Church and modem errors. But liberalism could reach no
definite conclusions: it neither affirmed nor denied, but
always made distinctions; and discussions dragged on
because it could not solve difficulties which were springing
from a denial of the principles of Christianity. Liberalism
failed to provide a norm of conduct and it gave way to
radicalism, which was even more opposed to the Church.
Because it did not like the word “anti-Christian” it called
itself “ anticlerical.” That is typical of freemasonry. But
radicalism led to socialism and socialism to atheistic and
materialistic communism, as found in Russia today.
Attempts were made to spread communism in Spain and
other countries also, and to reject religion, private property,
the family, the idea of a fatherland, and reduce human
life to economics, as if we had no soul, and as if religion,
science, art, and rights were the invention of those who
wished to keep others in subjection and, in the name of
private property, possess everything themselves.
The only effective opponent of materialistic communism
is the Catholic Church, because only true Christianity, or
Catholicism, contains the truth without any mixture of
error.
Nationalism cannot withstand communism. Equally
powerless in the religious sphere, because it contains serious
error, is Protestantism as practiced in Germany or England;

Introduction

3

for error, like a virulent disease which kills a living organ­
ism, kills any society built upon it as a foundation. Protes­
tantism is like consumption or cancer; it slowly destroys
life, because it denies the sacrifice of the Mass, confession,
the infallibility of the Church, and the necessity of keeping
the commandments.
2. Their effects on everyday life

What effect have all these errors on civil legislation? It
gradually becomes atheistic. Not only does it forget the
existence of God and divinely revealed law, both positve
and natural, but it even enacts legislation opposed to the
divine revealed law—laws permitting divorce, for example,
and laws establishing neutral schools, which eventually
become atheistic in all three divisions: primary, secondary,
and university. In these schools religion is often reduced
to a more or less rationalistic history of religions in which
Christianity wears the garb with which the modernist heresy
dressed it, a new though higher product of the evolution
of the “religious sense” which changes continually so that
no dogma and no law are immutable. Finally there is com­
plete freedom of cults and religions; even impiety and
irréligion have their freedom. But the repercussions of these
laws on society are immeasurable—laws permitting divorce,
for example, which in every nation ruin thousands of
families each year and leave children without real educa­
tion and guidance. And so, year after year, young people
who are the country’s future citizens leave these atheistic
schools without a grasp of any religious principles. Dis­
ordered reason, the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupi­
scence of the eyes, the desire for money and the pride of

4

Priesthood and Perfection

life take the place of Christian faith, hope, and charity.
All these things form a special naturalistic system under the
name of a lay or independent ethic, without any obligation
or sanction. Sometimes, it is true, a small vestige of the
ten commandments remains, but a vestige always liable to
change.
If the sorrowful effects of these cancerous errors are not
evident in the first generation, they will become very
obvious—according to the “law of acceleration in fall”—
in the second, third and fourth generations. This deteriora­
tion in succeeding generations is like the quickening speed
of falling bodies: if in the first second the rate of fall is
20, in the fifth second it will be 100. But progress in
charity is of a completely different kind: it is like that in the
parable of the sower, where each seed sometimes produces
thirtyfold, sometimes fifty, sometimes a hundredfold.
It is a real dechristianization, an apostasy of nations. The
great Catholic Spaniard, Donoso Cortes, gave a brilliant
analysis of the errors at the root of this dechristianization in
a long letter given to Cardinal Fomari to present to Pius
IX, who in his own turn noted those errors in his "Syllabus”
(cf. Denz. 1701).
At the root of these errors is the idea that God, if He
exists at all, is only interested in universal laws and not in
individual people. As a result, sin is not an offense against
God, but against a constantly evolving reason. There is no
such thing as original sin, a redemptive Incarnation, regen­
erative grace, sacraments, and sacrifice. The priesthood
and prayer are useless.
Indeed, to think that God exists at all is a mistake. If
men individually do not need God, why should we suppose

Introduction

5

that He exists in heaven? Rather, humanity is evolving
itself into god. God is that tendency to progress, to achieve
the happiness of all, the happiness of which socialism and
communism speak.
How, therefore, according to these principles, can we
discern truth from falsehood? There is only one way:
liberty of discussion in parliament and elsewhere. This
liberty is absolute. It has jurisdiction over everything—the
utility of divorce, private property, the family, and the
value of religion. And so discussion remains as open as if
there never had been a divine revelation: the fact that
divorce, for example, is forbidden in the Gospel is of little
importance.
All these things cause great disturbances, innumerable
injustices and crimes; and the only remedy applied is to
increase continually the power of civil magistrates, the
police, and the army.
But the police are subject to those in power and often
a rival group, with completely opposite ideas, will take over
control. Besides, when private property is abolished, patriot­
ism, which is like the soul of an army, generally disappears
also.
These remedies, therefore, because they reject the divine
law and even the natural law written on man’s heart, can­
not preserve public order and prevent serious disturbances.
This failure is a proof, per absurdum, of the existence of
God.
In conclusion we may note with Donoso Cortes that
those societies which are based on grossly false principles
and atheistic legislation are on their way to death. In them,
the individual as such can, with God’s grace, be saved; but

6

Priesthood and Perfection

as societies they are dying because the error upon which
they are founded is a deadly one. In a similar way, con­
sumption or cancer progressively and infallibly destroys our
human organism. Only the Christian and Catholic faith
can resist these errors and rechristianize society, but it can
do so only on condition that we have deeper faith. As St.
John said: “This is the victory which overcometh the world:
our faith” (I John 5:4).
3. Remedies

Two remedies, excellent in themselves, are often pro­
posed: the apostolate of Catholic Action and the study of
faith and morals. Frequently, however, the heart of our
study lacks what ancient theologians called “contempla­
tion,” which should be the spring of the apostolic life. As
St. Thomas says: “teaching and preaching spring from the
plenitude of contemplation.” 1 This was true of the apostles
after Pentecost. It was true in the case of St. Peter, St.
Paul, St. John, the Apostolic Fathers, St. John Chrysostom,
St. Augustine, St. Gregory, St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St.
Dominic, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius, St. Francis
Xavier, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Francis de Sales, St. John
Bosco, St. Joseph Cottolengo, the Curé d’Ars, John Baptist
Manzella. Yet we often find priests lacking an interior life
sufficiently intense to be the soul of the apostolate.
Catholic Action in Europe and America has done great
work in renewing the Christian life among members of the
working class in city and country, and among university
students. Great progress has been made in Italy, France,
Switzerland, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Canada, Mexico,
the Argentine and other places. Occasionally, however,

Introduction

7

priests engaged in directing Catholic Action are too much
absorbed in "bureaucracy,” in the organization of external
activity and in propaganda, with detriment to their own
interior life and the interior life of others under their care.
It is with difficulty that they find time to read their breviary
even rapidly; sometimes, also, a too great familiarity with
young people of both sexes lessens their dignity and power
to do good. Often, too, the better educated among the laity
become quasi-preachers. In this there are two great dangers:
religious sentimentality and humanitarianism. Often the
lecturer, or quasi-preacher, does not live sufficiently from
deep faith and apostolic charity. We can speak vividly and
eloquently only of those truths which we fully live. If we
have not, therefore, a deep faith and a true apostolic charity,
our words will spring merely from religious sentiment and
humanitarianism, whose formal object is very different
from that of true apostolic charity. If the preacher or
lecturer who does not live very close to God speaks, for
example, from democratic aspirations, he says that he is
speaking about a Christian democracy; but he should take
care that it is truly Christian. Otherwise, as sometimes
happens, the motive of his work will not be supernatural
but natural, and will be robbed of its efficacy.
Freemasons make use of this deviation so that apostolic
work in the Church may become a practical naturalism
which is a denial, at least in practice, of the supernatural
life. In the apostolate there is often lacking that interior
life which ought to be the very soul of the apostolate.
Another excellent remedy which has been used is the
study of faith and morals. In our day, it is true, there is
increased interest in philosophy, exegesis, theology, sociol­

8

Priesthood and Perfection

ogy, and even ascetical and mystical theology. At times
these studies are made in a more scientific way than form­
erly, and they are carefully distinguished from “pious
exhortations” which lack any solid doctrinal basis.
But a “distinction” should not be a “separation.” Too
often study is unfortunately separated from the interior
life, so much so that it is not inspired by our interior life
nor does it aim sufficiently at fostering it. The interior life
is neglected and so we study in a purely natural way, with­
out a spirit of faith, with the result that our interior life
gradually grows dim. In ascetical and mystical theology,
theses dealing with the spiritual life are expounded and
defended, but this study is not directed primarily to the
actual work of sanctification and consequently has little
effect. It would be much better to live a life of prayer
than to write a tract on it! Many people criticize spiritual
books unjustly. They say that they are either scientific
works or vulgarizations. But the New Testament and the
work of the great spiritual writers are neither scientific in
the technical sense nor vulgarizations: they are the fruit of
contemplation.
Hence the remedies which have been applied to the evils
of modem life, although excellent in themselves, have not
been properly used and produce little fruit. We fail to rise
again to higher things. We realize this, but in order to
escape from a feeling of sadness about it we take refuge in a
superficial optimism, which is either the effect of our tem­
perament or else is deliberately willed. But this superficial
optimism is not strong enough to prevent a weakening of
our spiritual life.
And thus not only is no remedy applied to our ills but

Introduction

9

a peace is pursued which is not the peace of God—not joy
in God, but rather a joy without any foundation, a joy
often fatuous and insipid.

4. Preparing the apostle
It follows, therefore, that the interior life is absolutely
necessary for the priest and the apostle if he is to develop
a deep faith, a faith which will radiate and communicate
itself to all so that all may resist the deadly poison of modern
errors. And so we come back to the definition of the apos­
tolic life given by St. Thomas Aquinas: “to contemplate
divine things and to give to others the fruit of our con­
templation.” “Just as it is a greater thing to illuminate
others than merely to shine, so it is a greater thing to com­
municate one’s contemplation to others than merely to
contemplate. [And this form of life] most resembles the
perfection of bishops who are the successors of the Apos­
tles.” 2 In the same context, St. Thomas says that the
preaching of the word of God should proceed from the
fullness of contemplation, from a deep interior life.
It follows, therefore, that the sanctification of the priest
is of primary importance, far more necessary than the
“natural development of our personality." This latter
expression is naturalistic and could be used even by an
unbeliever or an atheist. It springs from a forgetfulness of
the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, Hallowed he thy
name, a petition that God’s name may be glorified, that it
may be accepted as holy by every creature.3
It follows also that a priest should celebrate with very
great care the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and so join his
daily personal sacrifice to the great sacrifice of Christ,

10

Priesthood and Perfection

renewed in an unbloody manner—doing this in a spirit
of reparation and mortification, in spite of the stress laid
on personal comfort in modem times.
It follows, also, that there is a need for intimate prayer,
without which it is impossible to have a spirit of prayer.
When this spirit of prayer is absent, liturgical prayer some­
times degenerates into religious aestheticism. St. Bernard
once had a vision which brought this point clearly home
to him. He was in choir one day presiding over the Divine
Office and he saw over the head of one of the monks his
angel guardian writing the psalmody in letters of gold;
over another, an angel wrote in letters of silver; over a third
in letters of lead; over a fourth in colorless water. But over
a fifth religious, his angel guardian stood hand poised and
pen extended, not writing a word, to indicate that this
religious was not praying at all, that he had not any spirit
of prayer.
Examination of one’s conscience is also very necessary,
even though in some seminaries the retreat-master has been
asked not to speak of “examination of conscience” but
rather of "introspection.” Others refer to it as “psychoan­
alysis.” This is clearly a deviation from the proper super­
natural spirit to practical naturalism. An examination of
one’s conscience ought to proceed from infused prudence,
illuminated by faith and by the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
whereas both introspection and psychoanalysis are some­
thing natural. This change of phraseology reveals a change
from a true supernatural life to a mind and heart imbued
with practical naturalism.
If these higher and true remedies are neglected, the priest
will have merely a superficial faith which touches only the

Introduction

1 1

fringe of Sacred Scripture, not a deep, radiating faith. Such
a priest may speak of the need of dynamism in the apostolate, but this dynamism seems to be mainly natural and it
differs very much from the apostolic spirit of St. Peter at
Pentecost, or that of St. Paul or St. John Chrysostom or St.
Augustine or St. Bernard or St. Dominic or the Curé d’Ars
or St. John Bosco.
This point was stressed by Pius XI in his encyclical, Ad
catholici sacerdotii (Dec. 20, 1935), in that section where
he discussed the virtues, and in particular the piety, of
a priest.
Clearly, it is not enough that the priest should be a man
of keen intelligence, wide culture and eloquence. Even if
he has these gifts his life may, as happened in the case of
Lamennais and Loisy, be unfruitful. Here the priest does
not seek God or the salvation of souls, but he seeks himself,
his own natural satisfaction in intellectual work and in that
natural activity which is not sanctified because it does
not proceed from an interior life of faith, hope, charity,
and prayer. It does not produce, therefore, a supernatural
effect, the salvation of souls.
On the other hand, the apostolic work of a priest who
has little natural intelligence but a great supernatural faith,
a true interior life and real piety, will be very fruitful. This
apostolate, modest though it be in outward form, will bear
much fruit, and without any appeal to “dynamism’’ will
save many souls. At the moment of his death such a priest
will be judged by the love which he has for God and for
souls, his forgetfulness of himself and his self-abnegation.
When one follows this traditional way of priestly forma­
tion, the virtue of faith is deepened, even without any help

12

Priesthood and Perfection

from lofty theological speculation or the knowledge of
Oriental tongues. Such a faith, already firm and living,
becomes deeper every day, because its intensity is deepened
with the deepening of charity, and it is illuminated by the
gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, and
piety. As a result, it diffuses itself, touches the hearts of
sinners and converts them. It shows itself as a higher sense,
a Christian sense, and it is as far superior to the natural
sense as infused faith, illuminated by charity, is superior to
natural reason. A saintly parish priest, the Curé d’Ars, had
this Christian sense in a very high degree.4
If through the recitation of the Divine Office and the
celebration of Mass and meditation, the prayer of a priest
does not develop into a true spirit of prayer and reach its
normal goal—the contemplation of divine things, which is
the soul of the apostolate—it will degenerate into a mere
mechanical routine, and the recitation of the breviary will
be like scanning the morning headlines.

5. Recapitulation

The milieu in which we live demands a moral and
spiritual revival, a realization and an acknowledgment of
our dependence on God. A positive approach is the means
best fitted for accomplishing such a reform, an approach
whereby we lift our hearts and minds to God and ask His
grace to obey His command that we love Him above all
things and love our neighbors as ourselves.
As a practical conclusion, we may use those words of
St. Augustine quoted by the Council of Trent: "God does
not order you to do impossible things. But when He does
command you, He admonishes you to do what you can

Introduction

13

and to ask for help in what is outside your power, and He
helps you so that it may be within your power.”5 New
graces, therefore, are continually being offered to souls,
particularly to priests, in this crisis of modern life, so that
they may now carry out their obligations completely.
Many even feel that God is preparing exceptionally great
graces for priests so that they may possess that faith of
which we spoke—not merely a strong and living faith, but
a profound, penetrating, discerning and radiating faith.
They must communicate this to the Christian world so that
it may be able to resist modem errors—a deadly poison—
and find once more that pure air of the Christian ages. That
would be the verification of St. John’s words (I John 5:4)
This is the victory which overcometh the world: our faith.
We may conclude by noting that theological study and the
interior life should be united; we must, indeed, make a
distinction between the two, but we must never separate
them or confuse one with the other. Otherwise theological
science, through a confusion with piety, would lose its
objectivity and immutability, and the interior life might
perhaps be reduced to the theses on spirituality. Sacred
theology would thus unhappily be reduced, as the Modern­
ists reduced it, to an intellectual expression of subjective
religious experience. On the other hand, our interior life
would become too intellectual; it would become a theory of
the interior life and would lose its realism, its serious depth
and fecundity.
These two must not be separated, but distinguished and
united, just as they were in the lives of St. Augustine and
St. Thomas and all the Doctors of the Church. Body and
soul, the head and the heart, blood and the veins are dis­

14

Priesthood and Perfection

tinguished and yet united as are Church and State, or
the various classes in society, or parents and children in
the family.
If in our organism that distinction becomes a separation,
death will follow. If that separation is allowed in society it
too will die. It is the same with our life which must be both
spiritual and intellectual. We should ask for this great
grace—the union of our study and our piety—through the
intercession of the Doctors of the Church who must first
be canonized for their sanctity before they can be given
the title of Doctor because of their knowledge.®
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

1. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2-2, q. 188, a. 6.
This work will henceforth be abbreviated S.T.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., q. 83, a. 9.
4. See H. M. Cormier, O.P., Rétraite ecclesiastique; modèles:
S. Vincent de Paul, S. Phillippe de Néri, S. François de Sales.
5. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 804.
6. On this question see the life of St. Alphonsus by Father
Bréthe, as it contains two chapters of great importance.

CHAPTER 1

Interior Life and Infused Faith

All theologians admit that the knowledge which we have
by Christian faith, in spite of its obscurity, is absolutely
certain. But they do not agree in the way in which they
explain this certainty. For several centuries there have been
two main schools of thought. One school teaches that the
formal motive of faith is not itself known by faith; the
other teaches that this formal motive is known by faith.
In the first school of thought are the Nominalists,
Durandus, Gabriel Biel, Scotus, Molina, Ripalda, Lugo,
Franzelin, Billot, Bainvel, van Noort and Harent. These
authors teach that the infallible motive of faith (i.e., the
authority of God revealing and the revelation itself) is
an object of natural knowledge, because through natural
knowledge we know that God can neither deceive nor be
deceived, and through certain signs—miracles, in particular
—we know the fact that He has actually spoken.
Criticism: One obvious difficulty may be raised against
this position. The certainty of infused faith is quite defin­
itely based materially and extrinsically on the rational
knowledge of the “signs” of revelation. Formally and intrin­
sically, however, it is based on something higher. If this
15

16

Priesthood and Perfection

were not so, it would mean that a higher certitude would
be based on a lower one. Moreover, very few of those who
believe have actually seen miracles with their own eyes.
Very few have been able to examine them sufficiently well
to judge their supernatural origin. Normally, therefore,
those who believe have, in the natural order, only moral
certainty of the "signs” of Christian revelation, a certainty
which depends on human testimony, known only in an
uncritical way.
If, therefore, as many other theologians point out, the
certainty of Christian faith is based ultimately on this
moral certainty of the “fact” of revelation, confirmed by
various “signs,” it would only be firm and infallible hypo­
thetically, i.e., on the supposition that one is certain for
some other reason that God has revealed the Trinity, the
Incarnation and Redemption, and the infallibility of the
Church when it proposes these mysteries to our belief. One
should have to presume, in other words, that the preaching
of these mysteries is not due to the natural evolution of
the religious sense in the subconsciousness of the prophets
and Christ. This is what the Modernists held. For them,
faith was an accumulation of probabilities.
A second theory is defended by Thomists and, to some
extent, by Suarez. They teach that by infused faith the
believer infallibly and supernaturally knows the formal
motive of faith as that by which one believes and that
which is believed (id quo et quod creditur). This act of
knowledge is not discursive, but simple and firm, surpass­
ing by far the knowledge, which is at least morally certain
from apologetics, that the mysteries of faith are clearly

Interior Life and Infused Faith

17

credible—the "fact” of revelation, in other words, con­
firmed by definite signs.
In my book De Revelatione (t.I, c. xiv, pp. 467-497),
I have cited many texts from St. Thomas and from both
early and modem Thomists to support the second theory.
This second theory is based on three arguments:
(1) the absolute infallibility of faith; (2) the essentially
supernatural nature of the motive of faith; and
(3) the supernatural nature of faith itself.
1. Absolute infallibility of faith
The fact that there has been a revelation is proposed
to us with moral certainty by history, which tells us of the
preaching and miracles of Christ. But it is also infallibly
proposed to us by the Church, which defines that this reve­
lation is strictly supernatural and has not evolved from the
subconscience of prophets. What is taught infallibly by
the Church, however, must be accepted by all on super­
natural faith. It follows therefore that those who believe
must accept on supernatural faith the fact of revelation
as well as the mysteries revealed. St. Thomas says: "By
one and the same act we believe God revealing and God
revealed (uno et eodem actu credimus Deo et Deum)."1
And infused faith so perfects the intellect, says St. Thomas,
"that the intellect infallibly moves toward its object.”2
If the formal object of faith were only naturally known
by human testimony, the certainty of faith would not be
absolutely, but hypothetically infallible. The words of St.
Paul would not, therefore, be infallibly true: "When you
had received of us the word of the hearing of God, you

18

Priesthood and Perfection

received it not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed)
the word of God who worketh in you that have believed

(I Thess. 2:13).
2. Essentially supernatural nature of the motive of
faith

Truth and being are convertible, for truth is being as it
is known by the intellect. Consequently, whatever is essen­
tially supernatural cannot, formally as such, be known in
a natural way. But the formal motive of faith is essentially
supernatural, because it is the authority of God the Author
of grace and glory, the authority of God revealing mysteries
essentially supernatural. This formal motive of faith is
supernatural to an even greater extent than a miracle. He
who reveals is God, not as Author and Ruler of nature,
but precisely as Author of grace and our Father in Heaven.
That is why Christ says: ‘‘I confess to thee, O Father,
because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones” (Matt.
11:25). He says also: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona,
because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but
my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17).
The formal motive of infused faith, like that of infused
hope and charity, is inaccessible without grace. Otherwise
it would not be necessary to have these infused virtues
at all.3
3. Essentially supernatural nature of faith itself
Revelation teaches us that faith is a gift of God (Eph.
2:8), the "substance of things to be hoped for” (Hebr.
11:1), a supernatural virtue (Vatican Council, Denz.

Interior Life and Infused Faith

19

1789). But habit and act are specified by both formal
objects, quo and quod, of the same order. Therefore the
formal object quo, or the formal motive by which infused
faith is specified, must be of the same order as faith, and
cannot, therefore, be known without faith. Otherwise,
infused faith would not be absolutely indispensible in
order to believe in the way necessary for salvation. It would
be indispensible only in order to believe more easily and
more firmly, as the Pelagians taught. Similarly, infused
hope and infused charity, or the state of grace, would be
necessary merely in order to perform acts of these super­
natural virtues with greater ease.
Thus, as St. Thomas says, in one and the same act of
faith we believe God revealing (Deo) and God revealed
(Deum).* Faith is thus more certain than every natural
knowledge; its infallible certainty is vastly superior to that
which people normally reach after a careful examination
of apologetical writings.
Fr. Lacordaire expressed very well the supernaturalness
and infallibility of faith: “There is the learned man who
studies Catholic teaching and who says continually: ‘You
are lucky to have the faith; I would like to have it as you
have it, but I am unable.’ He is right; he is not yet able
. . . but one day this learned man kneels down, becomes
conscious of man’s misery, raises his hands to heaven and
says: ‘From the depths of my misery, O my God, I cry to
you.’ At that moment something happens to him, the scales
fall from his eyes, a mystery is accomplished in him, and
behold, a change! He is a man gentle and humble of
heart: he can die now, he has reached the truth. (A mys­
tery is accomplished in him; the infused light of faith has

20

Priesthood and Perfection

been given to him.) A sympathetic intuition between two
men can accomplish what logic could not do in many years.
Occasionally, even a sudden illumination can enlighten
the spirit. A convert will tell you: ‘I have read, I have rea­
soned, I have willed, but I could not accept it; and one
day, without knowing why, at the corner of a street, beside
my hearth, I changed, I believed . . . and what took place
within me at the moment of my final conversion is abso­
lutely different from what preceded it, . . . You remember
the two disciples who were going to Emmaus.’”5
Infused faith, therefore, is like a higher spiritual sense,
like an infused sense of music which makes one hear the
heavenly harmony of divine revelation. And so, in truth,
"faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evi­
dence of things that appear not” (Hebr. 11:1). In this
way we see how its firm certainty, which excludes every
deliberate doubt, is, in spite of its obscurity, far above that
moral certainty which one normally gains from a study of
apologetics.
From this it follows that the loss of infused faith is the
cause of very great unhappiness. Faith, however, is lost
only by a mortal sin directly contrary to faith itself. A sin
against the external profession of one’s faith—Peter’s sin,
for example, during the passion of our divine Lord—
would not be sufficient.
Even in the state of mortal sin this faith remains very
firm, but in that case it is called informis or dead—i.e., not
enlivened by charity. Thus, for example, works of mercy
performed in that dead state are called "dead works.”
When faith is informed by charity it is called a living
faith, and when it is perfected by the inspiration of the

Interior Life and Infused Faith

21

gifts of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, it is
called faith illuminated by the gifts, a faith which is pene­
trating and discerning, the contemplation of things divine.
We find a confirmation of this doctrine in the passive
purification of the spirit, in which we see the profundity
of the formal motives of faith, hope, and charity, in that
these motives are so infinitely above every other secondary
motive, such as the harmony of supernatural mysteries
with natural truth and the aspirations of man’s heart. This
harmony is no longer apparent; it is hidden in a mist, and
the motives of the three theological virtues appear as three
great stars in the night of the spirit. It would not be of
much use then to read a good book of apologetics; but
one has to pray to obtain the actual grace needed amid
the vehement temptations of this passive purification for
an acceptance which is very firm and very meritorious. The
soul finds at last its immutable refuge in the authority of
God who reveals.
We have said enough of the supernaturalness and infal­
lible certainty of infused faith. Now we shall speak of
the spirit of faith or the supernatural spirit.
NOTES TO CHAPTER

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

1

S.T., 2-2, q. 2, a. 2.
Ibid., q. 4, a. 5; see q. 4, a. 8.
See Ibid., q. 6, a. 1.
Ibid., q. 2, a. 2; see q. 4, a. 8.
Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, 17« Conference de Notre Dame.

CHAPTER 2

The Spirit of Faith and Signs
of Its Presence

A spirit of faith is that inclination to consider and judge
reality in a supernatural way under the light of faith.
This is necessary if we are to live in a Christlike manner,
exactly in the same way as it is necessary to judge according
to a properly adjusted reason if one is to live a reasonable
life and not a life governed completely by the sensual side
of our nature.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul gives us very
beautiful examples of this spirit of faith: “By faith, Abra­
ham . . . offered Isaac: and he that had received the prom­
ises offered up his only-begotten son . . . Accounting that
God is able to raise up even from the dead. ... By faith,
[Moses] left Egypt, not fearing the fierceness of the king:
for he endured, as seeing him that is invisible. ... By
faith, [the Israelites] passed through the Red Sea, as by
dry land: which the Egyptians attempting, were swallowed
up. By faith, the prophets conquered kingdoms, wrought
justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the
sword. . . . They were stoned, they were cast asunder, they
were tempted, they were put to death by the sword. . . .
23

24

Priesthood and Perfection

Of whom the world was not worthy” (11:17ff). All these
died in faith and yet they had not seen the promised Christ.
What should we, who have lived after Christ, establish as
our goal? "Laying aside every weight and sin which
surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed
to us, looking on Jesus the author and finisher of faith,
who, having joy set before him, endured the cross, despis­
ing the shame, and now sitteth at the right hand of the
throne of God” (Hebr. 12:1-2).
In order to live in a spirit of faith, everything and every­
body, God, ourselves, our neighbor, the ordinary details of
our daily life, must be viewed, as St. Thomas says, "with
the eye of God.”
1. God considered in a spirit of faith

Otherwise we shall see God not as He really is, but in
the light of our own disordered passions and prejudices.
If that is the case, we shall not be listening to God in our
prayers, but to ourselves. We shall imagine that sensible
consolation is a sign of progress and that a period of sen­
sible aridity is an indication that we have fallen back. This
will give rise to a completely false idea of God.
If, on the contrary, we look on God in a spirit of faith,
we shall not see Him in the light of our own disordered
passions, but mirrored, rather, in the mysteries of the life
and death of our divine Lord, in the victory which the
crucified Christ won over the devil, over sin, over death;
we shall see Him mirrored in the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, in the wonderful life of the Church, in the
communion of saints—the Church militant, suffering and
triumphant.

Spirit of Faith and Signs of Its Presence

25

But if we are to reach that vision, we must cut away
from the eye of faith that covering of self-love which pre­
vents the contemplation of divine things. When the eye is
veiled, only the shadows of the mysteries and their diffi­
culties are seen. This shows how necessary it is to mortify
our personal judgment and our personal will—that is,
a will which is not in harmony with the divine will, a
will which obscures many things in our mind: for we judge
as our inclinations lead us to judge. By this progressive
purification, we shall gain a deeper vision of the sublimity
of God, His goodness, the very tender mercy of Christ,
the beauty of the Church and religious life.

2. Considering ourselves in a spirit of faith
If we view ourselves only by the light of natural reason,
we shall see our natural qualities only and exaggerate and
enlarge them. Then, inevitably, when we realize the lim­
itations of these qualities, we shall become timid and
depressed. This fluctuation of feeling is very common.
Rarely, however, do we consider the wonderful super­
natural treasure which we carry within us—the life of
grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the
fruits of Holy Communion, the greatness of our vocation
in which all the actual graces that we need to climb to
the heights of perfection are offered to us. We should ask
God to give us that realization of the meaning of our
priestly vocation which we shall have immediately after
death at the moment of our particular judgment.
If we view our soul by the light of faith, we shall grad­
ually come to see our predominant failing, our lack of a
supernatural spirit, our levity of mind, and that vanity

26

Priesthood and Perfection

which makes us speak and judge in a purely human way.
Thus we shall see clearly what has come from God and
what has come from our own weakness; we shall be able
to distinguish the light from the shadows.

3. Considering our neighbor in a spirit of faith

Often we consider him only by the light of a natural
reason blinded by our prejudices, pride, ambition, jealousy.
We approve in him whatever is pleasing to us, whatever
is useful, whatever is due to us from him; and we dis­
approve in him whatever is displeasing to us. Occasionally
we disapprove those things in which he shows himself
superior to us. And then our self-love prompts us to belittle
him and make rash judgments about him.
On the other hand, if we consider our neighbor in the
light of faith we shall see in him what has come from
God. The authority of a superior, for example, will be the
authority of God which we should obey without criticism
or discussion, promptly, and with our whole heart. Simi­
larly, we shall see in those people who are naturally dis­
pleasing to us souls redeemed by Christ and nearer, per­
haps, to the heart of Christ than we are ourselves. Then
our supernatural vision will penetrate beneath the cover­
ing of flesh and blood which hides the soul from our view.
Then we shall realize that two immortal souls are never
associated by accident, that one at least, by giving example,
should be a spiritual advantage to the other. We should
ask God that we may recognize good and saintly people—
those, particularly, with whom we live and whom we
often ignore.
If we consider those naturally pleasing to us in the light

Spirit of Faith and Signs of Its Presence

27

of faith, we shall see their supernatural virtues, and this
will raise our affection for them to a higher plane. We
shall also see defects, which, perhaps, we can charitably
bring to their notice so that they may reach even greater
perfection.

4. Life's events considered in a spirit of faith
Each day’s events should be considered in the light of
faith, both those that bring us joy and those that cause
us sorrow. Every event of life can be examined in three
basic ways: (1) materially; (2) rationally; and (3) supernaturally. The first is the crudest. The second is that fol­
lowed by those whose intellects lack the gift of faith. The
third is fitting for Christians. Fundamental to it is this
question: Does a particular event contribute to or work
against the glory of God and the salvation of souls?
It is under this last aspect that we should look on war,
civil strife, and divisions among Catholics, so that they
may not grow greater. But in order to see this supernatural
aspect of things, or to see how God’s providence is working
in them, a Christian man must live in God and must not be
ruled by considerations lower than God. It is even good,
if a man is to be free from too great a love for things of a
lower order, that he should sometimes be deprived—or even
despoiled—of them: "If we are to see the stars, the sun
must not be shining.” Similarly, a Christian king who
has lost his kingdom—Louis XVI of France, for example,
before his death—will have a better vision of the kingdom
of God than he had while on his throne.
By living in this spirit of faith, saints have grown to
despise themselves and love humiliations, in order that

28

Priesthood and Perfection

they might more perfectly resemble Christ, who for our sal­
vation was humiliated, despised, crucified. And so, as St.
Augustine says, the love of God has built a city of God in
which the saints love God so much that they despise them­
selves; but disordered love has built another city in which
the wicked love themselves so much that they despise God.
A person who lives in this spirit of faith will certainly
develop a deep, penetrating, practical faith which will
infect others and be a protection against the errors of mod­
ern times. The words of St. John (I John 5:4) will then
be verified: "This is the victory which overcometh the
world: our faith.”

CHAPTER 3

Evidences of a Supernatural Spirit1

1. The pearl of great price

This supernatural spirit is a way of thinking, judging,
loving, wishing, acting. It appears on every page of the
Gospel. St. Matthew, for example, tells us about the busi­
nessman who was looking for good pearls: When he had
found one pearl of great price, he went his way and sold
all that he had, and bought it (Matt. 13:46). This pre­
cious pearl is a symbol of the supernatural spirit. In the
same chapter of St. Matthew we read: The kingdom of
heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field, which a
man having found, hid it and for joy thereof goeth and
selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field (Matt.
13:44). Similarly, St. Paul says (Col. 3:2): "mind the
things which are above, not the things that are on earth."
This supernatural spirit, in other words, is a spirit of faith,
confidence in God, and love of God and one’s neighbor.
The signs of this faith are the effects which it produces—
“by the fruit the tree is known" (Matt. 12:33)—humility,
mortification, piety, and the three theological virtues.12 A
supernatural man is described by St. Paul as “a new man”
29

30

Priesthood and Perfection

(Eph. 4:23-24): “And be renewed in the spirit of your
mind: and put on the new man, who according to God is
created in justice and holiness of truth.”

The principal signs of a supernatural spirit of faith are:

A joy in reading Sacred Scripture, the Word of God.
These writings contain a very beautiful variety, from the
simple narratives in the book of Job to the sublime thought
of the fourth Gospel and the Epistles of St. Paul. The
language of Sacred Scripture, because it is the Word of
God, our adopted Father, is like the mother tongue of
Christians. If the Christian becomes familiar with the
words of Sacred Scripture, human eloquence, even the
greatest, will become less and less attractive because it does
not contain the words of eternal life, the words of salva­
tion. One single sentence from Sacred Scripture can nour­
ish the soul, illuminate it, strengthen it in adversity. Sacred
Scripture is something far superior to a simple exposition
of dogma, subdivided into special tracts: it is an ocean of
revealed truth in which we can taste in advance the joys
of eternal life.
Respect for religious authority. Often the purely “nat­
ural” man will see in the authority of a superior only a
restriction rendered necessary by the demands of public
order. The "natural” man will not realize that his depend­
ence on a superior will contribute toward his eternal sal­
vation. For that reason, he will limit this authority as much
as possible and he will act as the State does toward eccle­
siastical authority, as if the authority of the Church were

Evidences of a Supernatural Spirit

31

demanded only by the needs of public order, and not some­
thing excellent in itself even for our present life.
But the Christian who has a truly supernatural spirit
will take a higher view of things. He will realize that the
authority of his superior participates in the authority of
God Himself, and obedience will be something profitable
and enhancing. He will obey not merely the formal com­
mands of his superiors but even their desires and coun­
sels: his dependence on them will be a joy. In this way he
will be, as it were, raised above himself, realizing that to
serve God is to reign. That is why St. Paul says: "Now,
therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners: but you
are fellow citizens with the saints and the domestics of
God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and proph­
ets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone”
(Eph. 2:19-20). It is a magnificent obedience which
brings with it great security.
A desire for the sacraments, like the desire of the stag
which pants after the fountains of water. The "super­
natural” man will see in the sacraments not merely a relig­
ious ceremonial but real sources of grace, through which
the infinite merits of Christ are applied to our soul. His
is not merely a belief in their efficacy; he has experienced
it directly. Promptly and with avidity he uses those sacred
sources of grace, so that his weekly confession and Holy
Communion produce each time a greater and greater fruit.
He realizes that each Communion should be substantially
more fervent and fruitful than the preceding one, because
each new Communion not merely preserves what charity

32

Priesthood and Perfection

he has, but increases it. Consequently he disposes himself
for a more fruitful reception on the following day, not­
withstanding whatever decrease there may be in his “sen­
sible devotion,” something purely accidental.
The love of the "supernatural” man for our divine
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is not a cold “intellectual”
love, like that complacency which often follows on one’s
thought of a thing, or on an ideal which the mind has
formed. But from the real presence of our divine Lord a
real “fellowship” will be formed: a union firm and inti­
mate, with Jesus Christ. Every action of the day will then
be affected by this life-giving presence. It is a life with
God, the very life of God and our divine Lord pulsating
within us.
This supernatural spirit makes one particularly sensitive
to the value of holy water and other sacramentals. Indul­
gences will be valued as precious gifts from heaven, the
reason being that this supernatural life makes one realize
the gravity of sin, the demands of divine justice, the infi­
nite value of the merits of Christ, and the value of the
merits of our Lady and the saints. In this way, we are
built up spiritually from day to day.

An appreciation of liturgical prayer, in that we more
and more realize that it is the great prayer of the Church,
the song of Christ’s Spouse accompanying the unbloody
continuation of Christ’s sacrifice and prayer. Liturgical
prayer has a special value in obtaining those efficacious
graces we need. Indeed, the sharing in liturgical prayer is
itself a grace; it is like a light which penetrates, for an
hour, our mind. To say the Divine Office chorally in the

Evidences of a Supernatural Spirit

33

presence of the Blessed Sacrament is much better than
saying it privately outside choir. One better appreciates the
variety which the Divine Office provides, its wonderful
simplicity which, when viewed against the background of
fleeting time, forms, as it were, the prelude to eternity.
The Office said in this way will feed our own private
prayer, a prayer which in itself is another indication of the
supernatural spirit. It is interesting to remember that relig­
ious orders in the 13th century had no special time allotted
for mental prayer, but after Matins and Lauds the religious
would freely spend some time in that mental prayer for
which liturgical prayer, said in a spirit of faith, had dis­
posed him. It was only when the religious no longer spon­
taneously devoted himself to mental prayer that it was
found necessary to set aside a special hour for it each day.
As a result, it was often less intimate, less on fire, more
mechanical, and it was reduced to a discursive meditation
from a book, performed at the beginning of each day. Grad­
ually for "mental prayer” the word "meditation" was sub­
stituted, though the term “mental prayer” is still popular
in the contemplative orders.

A desire for mortification. The fifth indication of a
spirit of faith is a desire for mortification. Our human
nature is, of course, God’s handiwork and it has very pre­
cious qualities of intellect and will. But our human nature
is a fallen one. We have to battle against the “concupis­
cence of the flesh, of the eyes, and the pride of life,” the
sources of the seven capital sins, and through them the
source of all sin. Our judgments, therefore, are colored
by inclinations which need correcting. Such correction is

34

Priesthood and Perfection

wrought by grace precisely as it is the grace of Christ, mak­
ing us resemble Christ who sorrowed for our sins. This grace
also draws one to mortify oneself. The ‘‘supernatural” man
always remembers, as St. Paul says, that “the flesh pulls
against the spirit,” and his supernatural life develops in
him a hatred of everything that is unordered, undisci­
plined. His supernatural life shows itself in a spirit of
sacrifice and, destroying whatever is unruly, brings peace,
“the tranquillity of order.” Nothing is more conducive to
peace than a spirit of sacrifice.
Forgetfulness of oneself. Many saints who achieved
great things during their lifetime used with confidence
those powers which God had given them. Innumerable
names could be mentioned: St. Paul, St. John Chrysostom,
St. Augustine, St. Dominic, St. Thomas, St. Ignatius, St.
Francis Xavier. Yet when we read their lives, we find that
they distrusted themselves, that they constantly attacked in
themselves any love of self and, a very subtle enemy, pride.
In humility as in other virtues, they greatly surpass us. By
their life of self-denial they understood in a very practical
way that full development of personality is achieved only
when one can say: “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in
me." They lost, as it were, their own personality only to
substitute that of Christ, achieving what one might call a
superior “impersonality,” with a will and an intellect higher
than their own, so that they judged of things with the
mind of God and loved with His will—somewhat as in
Christ, although the comparison is deficient, there was no
human personality, but only the personality of the Divine
Word. What is on the ontological level in Christ is veri-

Evidences of a Supernatural Spirit

35

fied on a “moral” level in the saints. They live, not in
themselves, but in God; not for themselves, but entirely
forgetful of self, for God and for souls. That is the real
test of charity and of the supernatural spirit in a man:
they “put off the old man who is corrupted according to
the desire of error” (Eph. 4:22). In the saint are verified
the words of St Paul: “our old man is crucified with him,
that the body of sin may be destroyed to the end that we
may serve sin no longer” (Rom. 6:6).
2. Practical conclusions

In conclusion, we shall say a word about how we should
in practice live in this supernatziral spirit, not only in ordi­
nary, foreseen circumstances, but in unexpected situations
also, and in those matters which have not been determined,
but are left to our choice. There is no doubt, of course, that
actions which are sacred—the celebration of, or assisting
at, Mass, for example—should be performed in a super­
natural way. Nor is there any doubt that temptations which
clearly lead to sin should be resisted.
But between these two extremes, between the perform­
ance of sacred things in a sacred way and the avoidance
of evil, there is a whole range of actions which are left to
our own personal choice. It is these things which sepa­
rate men one from the other, because each person’s choice
will be determined by each person’s own heart. The Ven­
erable Fr. Cormier, for example, points out that for some
people worldliness becomes “propriety," weakness becomes
“moderation," pride becomes “honor,” and they describe
as “prudent” what is really self-centered opportunism or
utilitarianism. Occasionally, they even call "conscience”

36

Priesthood and Perfection

something actually opposed to Christian conscience. When
asked For something that is really very good, they answer:
“In conscience I cannot do it”; and so they regard as "con­
science” a pattern of life which they have selected because
it is convenient or because it avoids what is disagreeable.
Fr. Cormier gives this example: “If a person who is nor­
mally moved by a spirit of piety, humility, and mortifica­
tion, does something which in reality is, or appears to be,
somewhat extreme, there is an uproar against him as if it
were an abuse that cannot be tolerated, something unbear­
ably out of order, provocative, injurious.”
On the other hand, many people when faced with those
things which are left to their choice remember the words
of St. Paul: “look to the things which are above, not
those which are below.” The saints have spoken in this
way. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, without
which they did nothing of importance, they have often
acted in a manner surpassing ordinary prudence. Our
divine Lord, particularly, acted far beyond ordinary pru­
dence; and when He first foretold His passion, Peter said
to Him: "Lord, be it far from thee, this shall not be unto
thee.” And Jesus replied: "Thou art a scandal unto me,
because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but
the things that are of men” (Matt. 16:22, 23).
When we are caught unawares, when there is no time
to reflect and choose the proper way of acting, nature
reveals itself with all its selfishness. But on these occasions
a supernatural spirit can also show itself. In a sudden dan­
ger, for example, the generous man will often rush to help
those who are in need. Even if they have come from dis-

Evidences of a Supernatural Spirit

37

tant parts and do not speak the same language, the friends
of God will always recognize each other.
In practice, therefore, what conclusions should we draw
—for the priest particularly—about the supernatural spirit?
We should work with great energy to have this spirit.
We should consider, therefore, not the small good which
has already been achieved, but all that still remains to be
accomplished. St. Paul says: "forgetting the things that
are behind and stretching forth myself to those that are
before” (Phil. 3:13). We should not congratulate ourselves
too much on the progress which we have already made,
but we should consider rather what yet remains to be
accomplished.
We should say to ourselves: For me, to live is Christ,
and to die is gain (Phil. 1:21). St. Thomas pointed out
that some people live for hunting, some for soldiering,
others for intellectual study—but the Christian lives for
Christ, because Christ is the object of his faith, his
thoughts, his desires, his affective and effective love. His
conversation is with Christ. We should say: “Imprint, O
Lord, in my heart a living love for You.”
Happy is the man whose supernatural life has been
renewed, “who is rooted and founded in charity. He has
renounced himself and created things and depends only
on God. He finds his happiness, therefore, in divine things
only. God can reign without any obstacle in his heart, and
gradually he becomes assimilated to Christ. His ministry,
therefore, will be fruitful in spite of whatever difficulties
come his way. When he has worked, studied, written,
preached, the Holy Spirit will make his ministry fruitful.

38

Priesthood and Perfection

If his faith is great he will succeed, even though he is a
priest of only mediocre ability.
What a great joy it is to the priest who has reached this
stage at the end of his life. It is not impossible, because
"God does not order us to do impossible things; when He
orders us to do anything, He wants us to do what we can
and to ask His help for whatever is beyond our power.” It
is certain that God has called us to sanctity, because He
has called us to heaven where there are only saints. That
is true of all Christians: a fortiori it is true of priests who
share in the priesthood of Christ.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

1. A large portion of this section is taken from the “Spiritual
Exercises" of H. M. Cormier, O.P.
2. See Pius XI, Encyclical of December 20, 1935: Ad Catholici
Sacerdotii.

CHAPTER 4

The General Obligation

of Christians to Seek Perfection

1. Introduction
We are not concerned with that lowest form of perfec­
tion which excludes mortal sins only, nor even with that
middle grade of perfection which excludes mortal sins and
deliberate venial sins. We are speaking of perfection in
the proper sense of the word, which rules out deliberate
imperfections and a careless way of living. And we are not
speaking of the invitation to perfection strictly so called,
because there is no doubt about this: all are invited to be
fully perfect.
The question is whether all Christians have a general
obligation to seek perfection in charity. We are not dealing
therefore with that special obligation—the violation of
which would, as it does in the religious state, involve a
special sin—but with a general obligation.
A difficulty arises when we wish to harmonize certain
statements of our divine Lord which at first sight seem
to be opposed.
On the one hand, Christ said to the rich young man
(Matt. 19:21): “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou
39

40

Priesthood and Perfection

hast and give to the poor . . . And come follow me.” The
words: ‘‘If thou wilt be perfect," seem to express a counsel,
not an obligation. Not all Christians, therefore, are bound
to seek perfection. It seems obligatory only for those who
have already promised to follow the evangelical counsel.1
Yet, on the other hand, Christ said to all (Matt. 5:48):
‘‘Be you perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.”
In his Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew, discus­
sing these words of our Lord, St. Thomas says: “Clerics
more than lay people are bound to the perfection of an
excellent life; but to the perfection of charity all are bound.”
Moreover, St. Thomas proves2 that perfection consists
essentially not in the counsels, but in the precepts, because
the first precept has no limitation: “Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole
soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind”
(Luke 10:27). According to St. Thomas, therefore, the
perfection of charity falls under a precept, as an end which
must be attained.
St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and St. Francis de Sales hold
that all must seek the perfection of charity, each one accord­
ing to his condition. In this way, the perfection of charity,
as an end, falls under precept.
How can we harmonize those words of our divine Lord:
"If thou wilt to be perfect . . .” and “Be you perfect”? ’
We may summarize our conclusion in four propositions:
1. All Christians are strictly bound to love God in
appreciation above all things.
2. In virtue of the first precept all are bound to strive
toward the perfection of charity, but each according to his

Obligation of Christians to Seek Perfection

41

condition, one in married life, another as a religious laybrother, another as a secular priest.
3. Nobody is obliged actually to have perfect charity.
4. Not all are obliged to strive for it immediately and
explicitly by following the counsels.

2. The obligation to love God above all things
It is the command of our divine Lord: “Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy
whole soul and with they whole mind. This is the greatest
and the first commandment” (Matt. 22: 37-39; cf. Deut.
6:5; Luke 10:27; Mark 12:30).
Everybody, therefore, must love God at least in apprecia­
tion or in estimation (amor aestimationis), if not in inten­
sity, above all things, and more than he loves himself. And
as St. Thomas says: “He who in any way whatsoever
reaches the perfection of divine love observes this precept.
The lowest degree of this love exists when nothing is loved
more than God, or opposed to God, or equally with God; he
who does not reach this degree of perfection in no way
fulfils the precept.”4
As Fr. Earthier points out,5 this divine precept condemns
many of the so-called modern "freedoms”—freedom of
conscience, freedom of worship, absolute freedom of the
press, of teaching—which give the same rights to truth
and falsehood, good and evil, as if God the Supreme
Truth and the Supreme Good had not a very strict and
inalienable right to the obedience of our intellect and will,
the right to be loved above all things. To admit these
liberties, therefore, and to defend them without any limit

42

Priesthood and Perfection

and without any subordination to God, is to turn oneself
away from God and act against God. As a matter of fact,
to be neutral in practice between liberalism and Catholicism
is to love something equally with God. The love of God,
even in its lowest degree, ought to rule all our affections, so
that, in St. Thomas’s formula: “nothing [may be loved]
more than God, or opposed to God, or equally with God;
he who does not reach this degree of perfection in no way
fulfils the precept.”
He who wishes to avoid every mortal sin already loves
God in estimation above all things. Thus, the good Chris­
tian mother, although she may have a more intense love
for her son whom she sees and touches, in estimation
(aestimative) loves God more than her son.
3. Seeking perfection in love

All Christians must strive after the perfection of charity,
each one according to his condition in life.6
This statement seems exaggerated to some Christians
who wrongly think that only priests or religious are bound
to advance in charity. Others admit this proposition in
theory only, but do not realize what is means in practice.
Let us see: A. The scriptural basis for this proposition;
B. How it can be proved theologically.
A. The above proposition is expressed in so many words
in various parts of Sacred Scripture. We may quote the
following examples: “Be you perfect as also your heavenly
Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). “He that is just, let him
be justified still” (Apoc. 22:11). Similarly in various parts
of the New Testament which are referred to in the Con­
cordance under the word cresco: “Grow in grace and in

Obligation of Christians to Seek Perfection

43

the love of God” (2 Pet. 3:18). “Laying aside all malice
. . . that thereby you may grow unto salvation” (1 Pet.
2:1-2). "Doing the truth in charity, we may in all things
grow up in him who is the head, even Christ” (Eph. 4:15).
“Being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the
knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10). "Wherefore leaving the
word of the beginning of Christ, let us go on to things more
perfect” (Hebr. 6:1).
From these various quotations from Sacred Scripture, St.
Thomas deduces: "As far as progress toward perfection is
concerned, one should always strive to reach a state of
perfection.”7 And he puts himself an objection: Perfection
consists in the counsels, because it is said (Matt. 19:21):
"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast ...”
But not all are bound to observe the counsels. How, there­
fore, can St. Paul say: "we are drawn to perfection”?
St. Thomas answers this difficulty: "Perfection is two­
fold: exterior, which consists in exterior (imperated) acts.
These are the 'signs’ of interior acts—virginity, for example,
or voluntary poverty. Not all are bound to this type of
perfection. The second is interior perfection, which consists
in the love of God and one’s neighbor, to which St. Paul
refers in the first Epistle to the Colossians (3:14) ‘have
charity, which is the bond of perfection.’ Not all are bound
to have this perfection, the perfection of charity, but all are
hound to strive toward it because if one does not wish to
love God more, one does not do what charity demands."
That is why St. Thomas quotes the words of St. Bernard:
"in the ways of God, not to advance is to fall back."
Similarly, in his commentary on verse 12, c. 19, of St.
Matthew’s Gospel: “he who can hear, let him take heed,”

44

Priesthood and Perfection

St. Thomas says : “he who does not always wish to be better
is not free from blame.”
B. The above proposition can be proved theologically
in two ways: (a) from the precept of charity; (b) from the
state of charity of those on the way to heaven.
(a) . From the precept of charity." The first precept has
no limitation: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul and with all thy
strength and with all thy mind.” It follows, therefore, that
the perfection of charity is the end which we are com­
manded to reach. From this we may deduce, says St.
Thomas that “all, both lay and religious, are bound to do,
in some degree, whatever good they can.” ’ The words of
Ecclesiastes are addressed to everybody in general : “What­
soever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly” (9:10). One
way of fulfilling this precept is by avoiding sin, by doing
what one is able to do according to the condition of one’s
state, as long as there is no contempt for the doing of better
things—a contempt which would lock one’s soul against
spiritual progress.
The entire third article of q. 184, 2-2, should be read
carefully, because what we shall now say is implicitly con­
tained in it.
(b) . From the state of charity of one who is on the way
to heaven. Just as grace is the seed of glory, so the charity
of a person in this life is meant to blossom out into the
charity of heaven. "Charity,” said St. Thomas,10 "is per­
fected when it is strengthened.” This supernatural life of
charity is first in a state of infancy, then of adolescence,
finally in a state of manhood. This development is essen­
tially connected with the idea of a path, because otherwise

Obligation of Christians to Seek Perfection

45

the path would no longer be a means of reaching the
destination, but would be the destination itself. In the
Gospel of St. Matthew we read: "broad is the path that
leads to destruction, and narrow the path that leads to life”;
to walk spiritually is to advance. Similarly in the Gospel,
charity is compared to a seed or a grain of mustard which
must grow, or it is compared to talents. We read in Mat­
thew’s Gospel of the master who said of him who had
received one talent, but had hidden it in the earth: "Take
ye away therefore the talent from him and give it him
that hath ten talents. For to every one that hath shall be
given, and he shall abound: but from him that hath not,
that also which he seemeth to have shall be taken away”
(25:28-29).
This is true, in different ways, of the beginner, the
advanced, and even of the perfect—of whom St. Thomas
says: "the nearer they approach the end, the more ought
they to grow.”11

4. Solving some difficulties

One may raise an objection: The conclusion does not
follow, because St. Thomas himself says: “He does not
break a precept who has not reached the middle grades
of perfection, as long as he has set foot on even the lowest
grade.”12 Therefore not all Christians are bound to have
a charity greater than what they actually have.
We can answer this objection by considering the precepts
themselves.’3
1. The perfection of charity falls under the precept of
charity not as its subject (materia), but as the end to be
attained. If this were not so, the precept would be limited

46

Priesthood and Perfection

and what is outside that limit would be a matter of counsel
only. This however, is not true, as the wording of the
precept shows.14 Therefore, for everybody the perfection
of charity is commanded not as something to be reached
immediately, but as an end toward which each one, accord­
ing to his condition, should strive.
2. If one were to make no attempt to increase in charity
one would not make any act of charity at all. This would
be against the precept, because all Christians are bound to
avoid sin, venial as well as mortal, and this cannot be done
without meritorious acts by which the soul either disposes
itself to advance or else actually increases in charity. On
Sunday at least, all Christians ought to hear Mass, and
perform some acts of charity and religion toward God.
3. Finally, the precept of charity is the end of all the
other precepts which are concerned with means to the end.
All Christians, however, ought to fulfil these secondary
precepts, with charity as their end, and this cannot be done
without merit and the disposition to advance. The precept
that we must have charity—at least ordinary charity—
implies the precept that we must strive for greater charity.
At this point another objection may be raised. A person
who merely makes remiss acts of charity does not sin, but
merits, and yet according to St. Thomas he makes no
progress.
Answer: “In the way of God, one advances not only
when charity is increased by acts of charity but also when
the soul is disposed for this increase.”15 This happens in
the case of remiss acts, in so far as they are meritorious; but
in that they are remiss they cannot sufficiently oppose
inordinate passions, and under that aspect, therefore, they

Obligation of Christians to Seek Perfection

47

dispose for sin. Thus “not to advance is to fall back.” To
impede the progress of charity would be to sin against the
precept of charity.
5. Further clarification
Nobody is hound to have extraordinary charity, the
charity of the perfect.'6 It is sufficient that the beginner
should aim at the charity of the proficient, and the pro­
ficient should aim at the charity of the perfect, each one
according to his condition. Moreover, in every spiritual
age there are many grades. It is certainly necessary for
salvation that each one should die in the state of grace,
even in its lowest degree. This is clearly stated by St.
Thomas,” when he says that the perfection which is
necessary for salvation is that which excludes all mortal
sin. Again he writes: “There is another perfection which
is of supererogation, when one adheres to God in an extra­
ordinary way, and this is done by removing the heart from
temporal things”18—that is, by effectively observing the
three counsels. The counsels do not bind as the precepts do.
All Christians are not hound to strive explicitly—that is
hy using the properly proportioned means—for the perfec­
tion of charity. Nor are all individually and immediately
invited.19 But they ought to avoid all deliberate venial sins
and increase in charity; and if they did this they would
be called not only remotely but proximately, even efficaci­
ously, to high perfection.
St. Thomas, indeed, teaches that the perfection of charity
falls under precept, in that it is an end toward which one
ought to strive in some degree, by increasing in charity.20
It is not, however, necessary that each and every one should

48

Priesthood and Perfection

strive explicitly toward it, by using means which are
immediately proportioned to heroic virtues, even though all
ought to, if occasion demands, suffer martyrdom rather than
call their faith into doubt.
Similarly, St. Thomas teaches that the gifts of the Holy
Spirit are necessary for salvation, but he does not say this
about the higher grades of the gifts nor of the act of infused
contemplation.21 All Christians should strive not toward
the effective practice of the three counsels, but toward the
spirit of the counsels—that is, toward a spirit of mortifica­
tion.
Thus our main conclusion is clear: All Christians, each
one according to his condition, are bound to strive for
greater charity, acting always for the supernatural motive
of charity, as St. Paul says: (Col. 3:17): "Whatsoever you
do in word or in work, do all in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
Those, however, who sin against this precept do not
commit a special sin against perfection, because the obliga­
tion is a general, and not a special, one.

6. Christians and the counsels
Is each individual Christian invited to follow, according
to his condition, any of the counsels? Yes, each individual
is invited. Indeed, it is very difficult to observe all the pre­
cepts if one does not follow at least some of the counsels,
in keeping with one’s condition in life. These counsels help
one avoid the imperfections which immediately dispose
one to venial sin and help one seek for the good in keeping
with his position in life. Thus some prayers which are not
of precept are very useful. “It is very rare to find a Christian

Obligation of Christians to Seek Perfection

49

faithful to all the secondary precepts if he neglects all
practice of the evangelical counsels.”22
Is each individual Christian invited to keep the three
general counsels? No, he is not, because not all are called
to the religious life. But each one should strive to have
the spirit of the counsels, i.e., the spirit of mortification. For
our divine Lord says: “All men take not this word, but
they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who were
bom so from their mothers’ womb: and there are eunuchs
who are made so by men : and there are eunuchs who have
made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He
that can take it, let him take it” (Matt. 19:11-12). In his
commentary on this text, St. Thomas says: “It is true that
it is fitting that some should not marry, but this is not true
for all, because not all have that virtue which will enable
them to abstain. But it is fitting for those who have that
virtue, because to some it is given, not through any work
of their own but through the gift of grace, according to
what is said in the Book of Wisdom (8:21): 'I knew
that I could not otherwise be continent except God gave
it.’ That man should be able to live in the flesh and yet
not of the flesh is not man’s work but God’s.”23 It is
evident, therefore, as St. Thomas says in the same text in
his commentary on St. Matthew, that all men are bound,
each according to his condition, “to aspire to better things,
so that he who does not always wish to be better is not
without blame” (cf. Rom. 6:3-13).
From the main conclusion of this Chapter: All Christians
are hound to strive after greater charity, each according to
his condition, we may derive certain corollaries:
1. On the path to God, not to advance is to fall back.

I

50

Priesthood and Perfection

One must advance—just as a child must grow physically
if he is not to become stunted and deformed. The carriage
which delays too long at its stopping-places will be late.
2. Progress in charity should gradually become more
rapid. "The closer a naturally moving body (like a stone
falling) gets to its goal, the faster is its speed. But grace
works like nature. The closer, therefore, those in grace
approach their end, the more ought they to grow.”24 In
another work, L'amour de Dieu et la Croix de Jésus, t. I,
150-162, we have explained this corollary at greater length,
and applied it to Holy Communion and to our Lady’s
progress in charity during her lifetime.
3. Even though perfect charity is the object of a precept
(that is, it falls under a precept as its end), great actual
graces are offered to us, proportioned to this end, because
God does not ask the impossible. Thus Christ has said:
Be you perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt.
5:48). Similarly, St. Paul says: “This is the will of God,
your sanctification” (I Thess 4:3). "God chose us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and unspotted in his sight in charity” (Eph. 1:4).
Therefore we ought to hope for that goal, and we should
not say: it is against humility to aspire to such heights.
Perfect charity, therefore—like that in the transforming
union which is the perfect disposition for the beatific vision
—is the normal term of progress in charity, or baptismal
grace.
We have sufficiently indicated, therefore, that Christian
perfection consists essentially in the observance of the
precepts, and that the perfection of charity falls under the
supreme precept, not as its subject matter—something to

Obligation of Christians to Seek Perfection

51

be immediately achieved—but as its term, toward which
all must strive, each one according to his condition, one
person in the married state, another as a priest, another as
a religious.25
Christian perfection, therefore, only accidentally and
instrumentally consists in the evangelical counsels strictly
so-called; they are means by which one may more easily and
speedily rise to sanctity. But a person in the married state
can, without the effective practice of the counsels, be a saint,
as long as he has the spirit of the counsels and is prepared to
observe them if it were necessary—to keep absolute chastity,
for example, after the death of a wife, or poverty in the
case of financial ruin.
As a complement to this doctrine, it should be noted that
when we compare counsel with precept and say that the
counsel concerns “a greater good” this does not mean a good
greater than what is prescribed by the precept, because
even very great charity falls under a precept (as its term),
and martyrdom can, if occasion demands, be of precept also.
A “greater good” means greater than the corresponding
legitimate activity. In other words:
—poverty consecrated to God is better than the legitimate
use of riches.
—absolute chastity dedicated to God is better than the
legitimate use of matrimony.
—religious obedience is better than the legitimate exer­
cise of our freedom.
This doctrine is confirmed by the division of counsels
made by St. Thomas.28

52

Priesthood and Perfection
NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

1. See S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 3, ad 1.
2. See Ibid., corpus.
3. See Cajetan’s commentary on 2-2, q. 184, a. 3; G. L. Passerini, De Statibus Hominum; Barthier, De la Perfection
chrétienne et de la Perfection religieuse; P. A. Weiss, O.P.,
Apologie des Christentums, vol. 5, index "Vollkommenheit”
Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Christian Perfection and Contempla­
tion and The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life.
4. S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 3, ad 2.
5. Barthier, op. cit., vol. I, p. 218.
6. See Ibid., pp. 315, 419; Passerini, op. cit., p. 758, number 13.
7. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Hebr. 6:2.
8. See S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 3.
9. Ibid., q. 186, a. 2, ad 2.
10. Ibid., q. 24, a. 9.
11. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Hebr. 10:12.
12. S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 3, ad 2.
13. See Barthier, op. cit., vol. I, p. 317.
14. See S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 3.
15. Ibid., q. 24, a. 6, ad 3.
16. See Barthier, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 279 ff.
17. See S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 2.
18. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Phil. 3:12.
19. See Barthier, op. cit., vol. I, p. 284; St. Thomas Aquinas, In
Hebr. 6:11.
20. See S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 3.
21. See Ibid., 1-2, q. 68, a. 2.
22. Barthier, op. cit., vol. II, p. 219.
23. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Matt. 1911-12; see S.T., 1-2, q. 108,
a. 4, ad 1.
24. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Hebr. 10:25.
25. See S.T., 2-2, q. 183, a. 3.
26. See Ibid, 1-2, q. 108, a. 4.

CHAPTER 5

The Obligation of Religious to

Seek Perfection

1. Introduction
We are speaking of religious as such, even though they
have not received any sacred orders—lay brothers, for
example, or sisters, or nuns. In Chapter 6, we will discuss
priests in particular. We are speaking, too, of perfection,
properly so called, as distinct from that lowest form of
perfection which excludes mortal sins only, and that
medium perfection which excludes mortal sins and fully
deliberate venial sins, but not a lukewarm way of acting.
We are dealing, therefore, with that higher perfection of
the perfect which excludes deliberate imperfections and a
careless way of acting or receiving the sacraments. Such
perfection implies the observance of the counsels and works
of supererogation. We are discussing a special, and not a
general, obligation. There is a notable distinction between
them, because, as we have said, all Christians have a general
obligation of striving after greater charity, and because this
obligation is a general one its violation is not a special sin
53

54

Priesthood and Perfection

distinct from those sins which spring from a violation of
the precepts. We now ask: Is there for religious a special
obligation of striving after perfection strictly so called, so
that its violation would be a special sin?
The normal answer to this question is: Religious, by
virtue of their profession, are bound to strive after perfec­
tion strictly so called, by using the general means—the
three counsels and the corresponding vows of obedience,
poverty and chastity—and those special means which are
the rules of each one’s Order or Institute.
To explain this doctrine, we shall consider this special
obligation in relation to: (1) its basis, or efficient cause;
(2) its nature, or formal cause; (3) its purpose, or final
cause; (4) its subject matter, or the general and particular
means for achieving this purpose; (5) its excellence.2

2. Basis of this obligation

The basis of this special obligation is the religious pro­
fession by which one embraces the religious state, a state
of perfection. "One is in a state of perfection, properly so
called, not because one has made an act of perfect charity,
but because one has bound oneself perpetually, with a
certain solemnity, to those things which are of perfection.
It can happen, of course, that some do not observe that to
which they have bound themselves, and others observe that
to which they have not bound themselves. . . . Therefore
it is quite possible that some of those not in a state of
perfection are perfect and others are in a state of perfection
without however being perfect.”1

Obligation of Religious to Seek Perfection

55

“State of perfection,” however, is sometimes used not in
a juridical or canonical, but in a spiritual sense. Thus St.
John of the Cross speaks of the "state of perfection” in a
spiritual sense, as being a stable perfection.
Similarly, St. Thomas says: “By an interior spiritual
growth one reaches a state of perfection in the eyes of God;
but canonically one reaches a state of perfection only by a
change in those things that are exterior.”2 In another
passage he says: "A perpetual obligation, taken with a
certain solemnity, to observe those things which are of
perfection is essential for the [juridical] state of perfection.
Religious and bishops have both these essentials. Religious,
in order to give themselves more freely to God, bind them­
selves by vow to abstain from certain temporal things which
they might otherwise lawfully use. Similarly, bishops, by
assuming the pastoral office, which implies ‘that the pastor
lay down his life for his sheep,’ bind themselves to those
things which are of perfection.”3
Thus, religious are in a state for the acquisition of per­
fection, and bishops are juridically in a state for the exercise
of perfection.
According to modern legislation, simple vows are suf­
ficient to constitute the religious state. This was stated by
Gregory XIII.
The supreme precept must always be kept in mind. It
glorifies, enlarges, intensifies, and enlivens religious life,
which must of its very nature observe charity or love for
God and neighbor. Religious life is wholly guided by the
three theological virtues, and the reason is simple. Those
three virtues constitute the life of a Christian and are in

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Priesthood and Perfection

themselves of a higher order than the three religious vows
which constitute the characteristic element of the religious
life.

3. Nature of this obligation
It is a special obligation to strive after perfection. “[Reli­
gious] men enter a state of perfection, not as it were pro­
fessing themselves to be perfect, but professing that they
will strive for perfection. St. Paul says, therefore, in his
Epistle to the Philippians (3:12): ‘Not as though I had
already attained, or were already perfect; but I follow after,
if I may by any means apprehend . . . ’ The person, there­
fore, who enters a state of perfection does not lie or simulate,
if he is not already perfect, but he does so by withdrawing
his intention of striving for perfection.”4 St. Thomas also
says: “It is not necessary that the person in a religious state
should already be perfect, but that he should strive after
perfection.”5 If a religious revokes his intention of striving
after perfection, he sins, not only against the general obliga­
tion binding all Christians to advance in charity but also
against a special obligation. The religious, however, is not
bound actually to reach perfection in this life.
Would it be a mortal sin for a religious to withdraw his
intention of tending toward perfection? (cf. 2-2, q. 184,
a 9). It would be a mortal sin in either of the following
two cases: («) If a religious, or even a simple Christian,
were to despise the pursuit of perfection; (l·) If in some
grave matter he were to break his religious vows. Such an
act implies a withdrawal of the intention to strive after

Obligation of Religious to Seek Perfection

57

perfection. The transgression of external observances is not
a mortal sin unless done through contempt of the rule, or
unless there is a formal precept either specially made by
the Superior or contained in the Rule.
Some rules, like the Rule of the Order of Preachers, do
not bind either under mortal or venial sin, but only to the
penalty prescribed. This is true of the transgression of the
rule as such; but in fact (or per accidens') there will often
be a sin of negligence. When the rule is not observed the
reason may be an excessive attachment to something created
—like the rich young man who did not reply when our
Lord called him, because he was too much attached to
temporal things.6 Moreover, it rarely happens that a reli­
gious can keep his vows if he neglects in practice the
various observances of his Institute, just as it very rarely
happens that the ordinary Christian can keep all the
precepts if he neglects to practice any of the counsels.
Is the obligation which a religious has of tending to
perfection distinct from the obligation of keeping the three
vows? And does the obligation bind under pain of mortal
sin? Several theologians hold that this obligation is distinct
from the obligation of the three vows, and that it binds
under pain of mortal sin. The Thomistic teaching is that
which is defended by the Salmanticenses, who quote
Cajetan and others in its favor. This teaching is: It is an
obligation binding under pain of mortal sin, but not distinct
from the obligation to observe the three vows.
(a) “A religious is bound under pain of mortal sin to
strive for perfection, because this is the substantial and
principal obligation of his state.” And why? “Such an

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Priesthood and Perfection

obligation consists in a certain continuous movement
toward perfection, so that a religious can never stop in
this movement and progress, nor can he ever say that he
has gone far enough. He must always aspire to higher
things; in the path toward God not to advance is to fall
back.
“A religious, however, is not for that reason bound to
strive after perfection by every work of supererogation—
i.e., by all the works recommended by the counsels—but
by those means only which are prescribed in the rules of
his religious institute; he has not bound himself to any
other perfection. Consequently, this obligation is not dis­
tinct from the obligation of keeping his vows and observing
the rule of his profession; it is the same obligation or is
included in it. There are not, therefore, two distinct sins.
A religious cannot strive toward perfection in a more
perfect way than by a careful observance of those things
which are proper to his state. They are the most suitable
means for reaching his goal, and they lead to the height of
perfection. Perfection does not consist, for example, in
extraordinary penances.
(b) “When does a religious sin mortally against his
obligation of striving after perfection?—(1) When he
breaks the vows in some serious matter; (2) When through
formal contempt he neglects the counsels which lead to
perfection; (3) When he breaks the rule precisely in order
to impede perfection; (4) When he firmly makes up his
mind not to bother about perfection, saying that it is quite
sufficient to remain in a lower state—for example, if a
religious were to say: ‘It is sufficient to remain in my
present state of mediocrity’; (5) When by his bad example

Obligation of Religious to Seek Perfection

59

he induces others to lead a depraved life or relax the rule—
i.e., in a grave matter.” ’
4. Purpose of this obligation

It is quite clear from St. Thomas that the fullness of
perfection which is the purpose of this obligation is found
only in intimate union with God through the virtues and
the gifts. This is perfection strictly so called, consisting in
perfect union with God and one’s neighbor, through the
imitation of Christ—the perfect fulfilment of the first
precept to which are subordinated the evangelical counsels.
St. Thomas says: “Religious bind themselves by vow
to abstain from worldly things which they might [other­
wise] quite legitimately use, in order more freely to devote
themselves to the things of God. In this dedication consists
the perfection of the present life. That is why Dionysius says
QEccl. Hier, vi) of religious: Some call them θιράτπνται.,
i.e., servants of God, on account of their pure service and
bondage, others call them μονάχοι, on account of the
indivisible and single minded life which by their being
wrapped in [contemplating] indivisible things unites them
in a Godlike union and a perfection beloved of God.” *
St. Thomas says also that perfection consists essentially
in the precept of charity to which are subordinated the
other precepts and counsels.® And in another text he says:
“The religious state is a kind of holocaust by which one
gives oneself and what one possesses to God.”10
The religious should reach this perfection of charity by
the imitation of Christ, because Christ is the way, the
truth, and the life. As man, Christ was completely with­
drawn from the spirit of the world and completely united

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Priesthood and Perfection

to God, totally consecrated in His human nature, and in
all His faculties and actions, to God. Thus it is said par­
ticularly of religious: "You are dead, and your life is hidden
with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). St. Thomas comments:
“Do not taste the things of this world, because you have
died to the world; your life is hidden in Christ, because
Christ, being in the glory of the Father, is hidden for us:
and so the life which is given to us through Him is hidden
with Him in the glory of God the Father: according to what
is said : 'How great is the multitude of your sweetness which
you have hidden from those who fear you, etc.’ (Ps.
30:20): ‘To the conqueror I will give a hidden manna’
(Apoc. 2:7).”"—This life hidden in Christ is found
perfectly, however, only in the mystical life.
Every religious life, therefore—whether active or con­
templative—can of itself lead the perfectly faithful soul to
intimate union with God and sanctity, so that it can enter
heaven immediately after death.
In the active life, the genus “religious life” is of greater
dignity than that which makes it specifically different—
those things which are directed to external works of
mercy. Every religious life, whether active or contemplative,
leads directly to the perfect fulfilment of the first precept
to which are subordinated the counsels and the Rule.12
And so, in order that this purpose of religious life may
appear in a more concrete and complete way, one should
say that Christ wishes to restore in it, as far as possible,
the triple harmony which existed in the state of original
justice, and which has been restored in Him and in the
Blessed Virgin Mary.
In the state of original justice there were:

Obligation of Religious to Seek Perfection

61

(a) Perfect harmony between God and the soul, which was
completely subordinated to Him through the three theologi­
cal virtues, the corresponding gifts and humble obedience;
(h) Perfect harmony between soul and body, by the per­
fect subordination of the passions to reason and will, and
by the subordination of the body to the soul, particularly
through perfect chastity;
(c) Perfect harmony between man and external things
which were meant to help man. In this way, harmony
decended from God to the lowest things.
After original sin, which destroyed the highest harmony,
and consequently the other two, in their place came the
concupiscence of the eyes, the concupiscence of the flesh,
and the pride of life—that is, the immoderate desire of
external things; there came also the immoderate desire of
carnal pleasure and the use of one’s liberty without humble
subjection to God.
To restore this triple harmony, Christ gave three counsels
concerning a greater good, counsels to abstain from the
use of lawful things in order more easily to avoid any excess,
using the world and yet not using it. These three counsels
are: (a) The counsel of poverty, by which one surrenders
the dominion over, or at least the use of, exterior goods, and
consecrates them to God; (h) the counsel of absolute
chastity, by which one renounces and consecrates body and
heart to God; (c) the counsel of obedience, by which one
surrenders the use of one’s own will and consecrates it to
God. These three virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience
are subordinated to the virtue of religion, from which
the vow proceeds. In this way, the triple harmony of the
state of original justice is, as far as possible, restored:

immoderate desire for external
riches.

3. Concupiscence of the eyes; the

3. Between man as a whole and
external things which ought to
serve him: perfect poverty.

perfect chastity.

2. Concupiscence of the flesh; the
immoderate desire for carnal
pleasure.

The pride of life, the source of
disobedience.

1.

Between God and the soul:
perfect obedience.

2. Between the soul and the body:

1.

Triple
Concupiscence

Triple Harmony of
Original Justice

Religious obedience consecrated
to God.

3. Religious poverty.

2. Religious chastity.

1.

Three Vows:

62
Priesthood and Perfection

Obligation of Religious to Seek Perfection

63

5. The three vows
The means of perfection in the religious life are:
(«) The evangelical counsels of obedience poverty, and
chastity, which are the general means—sure, very useful,
though not absolutely necessary—of reaching perfect
charity;
(l·) the rules of one’s Institute, which are the special
means adapted to the particular end of this or that religious
order.
When we speak of the counsels, it must be remembered
that the three vows are essential to the religious state. These
three counsels are given by our divine Lord: "If thou wilt
be perfect, go, sell what thou hast and give to the poor . . .
and come follow me” (Matt. 19:21): “there are eunuchs
who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven” (Matt. 19:12).
The religious state consists in the exercise of those things
which lead to the perfection of charity. Two things, there­
fore, are necessary: separation and consecration: (1) Man
must separate himself from those things which may prevent
him from giving his entire affection to God (the negative
aspect); (2) Man must offer himself to God in holocaust,
or perfect sacrifice (the positive aspect).
Three things can prevent one from giving one’s entire
affection to God :

—greed for external goods, or a seeking after them,
which is removed by the vow of poverty;
—a desire for sensible pleasures and the care of wife and
children, which is removed by the vow of chastity;

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Priesthood and Perfection

—the disorder of the human will, which is removed by
the vow of obedience.

Similarly three things are appropriately offered to God
so that the sacrifice may be perfect:
—external goods, offered through the vow of poverty;
—the good of the body, offered through the vow of
chastity;
—the good of one’s will, offered in the vow of obedience.

These three vows, therefore, are essential to the religious
state,
—both as it is a state of separation from the world,
—and as it is a state of consecration to God.13

The acts of the three religious virtues are offered to God
in the higher virtue of religion, the virtue to which vows
pertain and whose proper object is the worship of God.
This life, therefore, is truly a perfect sacrifice, in imitation
of the life of Christ; and the religious who sins against the
vows of religion commits a sacrilege.
The virtue of religion is commanded by charity; con­
sequently all religion acts, whether they pertain to poverty,
chastity or obedience, are directed through the virtue of
religion to growth in charity and its perfection.
It is more meritorious to do something through a vow
than without a vow: (1) because it thus gains the merit
of a higher virtue, the virtue of religion; (2) because man
thus offers to God not only the act but also the power to
make it; (3) because by a vow the will becomes more
firmly fixed on what is good and so has greater merit.14

Obligation of Religious to Seek Perfection

6.

65

Excellence of religious life

The excellence of religious life appears in its relation
to the theological virtues, by which we are united to God.
Poverty, whereby we abandon all human help, leads us
to a perfect hope, grounded on divine help. Hope, there­
fore, gives life to the vow of poverty.
Chastity, whereby we renounce legitimate sense pleasures
and the strength of married love, leads us to a perfect love
of God. As a consequence, charity vitalizes the vow of
chastity.
Obedience, by which we renounce our own will and
judgment, leads us to the perfect life of faith, a life in
which all we are and have is confidently placed in the
hands of God. We may then say that faith is what makes
alive the vow of obedience. The religious must obey his
superiors as he would obey our divine Lord; he looks upon
the rules of his community as rules given by God Himself;
by his ready obedience he becomes like Abraham, the father
of those who believe, who obeyed God by preparing to
sacrifice his only son Isaac.
As you can see, there is an intimate relation between the
three religious virtues and the three theological virtues, in
that hope is like the soul of poverty; faith, the soul of
obedience; and charity, the soul of chastity.
The excellence of religious life when compared with the
ordinary Christian life may be judged under three head­
ings: (1) In relation to God, Christ, and the Church; (2)
In relation to the religious himself; (3) In relation to one's
neighbor.
(1) The religious life is a state which gives more glory

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Priesthood and Perfection

to God, because it offers to God a perfect sacrifice or
holocaust. The glory of God requires a clear knowledge of
God and praise of Him (clara Dei notitia cum laude). But
God is more perfectly known and praised in the religious
life, in which are fully verified the words of the Lord’s
prayer "hallowed be thy name.”
The religious life shows forth better the virtue of Christ,
and the redemption or restoration which He brings us.
The religious life helps considerably in manifesting
brilliantly and continually the sanctity of the Church,
which is one of its "notes.”
(2) Religious life is more secure, more free from sin—
free, that is, from the concupiscence of the flesh, the con­
cupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life.” The vows
impose a new obligation, but they help more than they
burden.10
It is a more meritorious life, because he who fulfils the
counsels advances more in charity, the principle of merit.
It is a life more holy and more Godlike, because it unites
the soul more closely to God.
(3) The religious life is more useful than a secular one
because of the example which it gives and the prayers and
satisfaction which religious ought to offer for others; it is
also more useful because of various works of mercy, both
spiritual and corporal.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 5

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

S.T., 2-2, q. 184,3.4.
Ibid., ad 1.
Ibid., a. 5.
Ibid., ad 2.
Ibid., q. 186, a. 1, ad 3. The second article of this question

Obligations of Religious to Seek Perfection

6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

16.

67

should be read. It is certain that the religious is bound by the
three evangelical counsels, but only to those exercises of the
counsels prescribed by his own religious rule.
See St. Thomas Aquinas, In Matt. 19:21.
The Salmanticenses, Theologia Moralis, t. 4, De Statu Reli­
gioso, pp. 4 ff.
S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 5.
See Ibid., a. 3.
Ibid., q. 186, a. 7.
St. Thomas Aquinas, In Col. 3:3.
See S.T., 2-2, q. 152, a. 4.
See Ibid., q. 186, a. 7.
See Ibid., q. 88, a. 6.
See Earthier, De la Perfection chrétienne et de la Perfection
religieuse, vol. II, pp. 202, 245.
See S.T., 2-2, q. 186, a. 10.

i

CHAPTER 6

Priestly Perfection

Our problem can best be stated by a simple exposition
of some opposing opinions. There are at least three differ­
ent theories, which at first sight seem absolutely opposed
to each other; but because they consider different aspects
of priestly life they can, I think, be harmonized in a
higher synthesis and in line with the teaching of St.
Thomas.
FIRST THEORY

A secular priest is not bound to strive for perfection
strictly so called because he is not in the state of perfec­
tion to be acquired—and in this he differs from the
religious who has made profession. Nor is he in the state
of perfection to be exercised—and in this he differs from
a bishop.
This is the theory of many secular priests who consider
the priestly life more as canonists than as ascetics and
mystics: Because we are not religious, we are not bound,
as religious are, to evangelical perfection, austerity, or a
life of prayer. Thus, occasionally, very good priests, hearing
this theory which they think to be true, imagine that they
cannot reach perfection unless they leave their ministry
69

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Priesthood and Perfection

and enter a monastery. Even some religious say the secular
priest is not really bound to strive for perfection, because
he is not in a state of perfection; indeed it is very difficult
for him to reach perfection if he does not enter a religious
order.1 It would mean that priests would have to neglect
the sanctification of their flock in order to work out their
own sanctification.
SECOND THEORY

All priests, even “secular” priests, are really bound, by
reason of their ordination and the duties connected with
the real and mystical body of Christ, to strive after perfec­
tion strictly so called. Indeed, it would be very fitting that
the "secular” priest become a religious, take three vows
and live in community—like the ancient canons regular,
attached to parishes—so that in a sanctified way he may
exercise his priesthood. A priest should not be "secular”:
this term is admitted by the Church, but it did not come
from the Church nor does it express the priestly spirit.
Thus, according to Dom Gréa, it is not fitting that a
priest should be a “secular,” but it is very fitting that he
should be a regular.2 Cardinal Mercier says something
similar: “Secular priests—Oh! that horrible phrase, secular
priest.”3 It may be admitted, however, that he is called
"secular” not by reason of his spirit, but by reason of his
occupations which are materially in the world. Cardinal
Mercier prefers the expression “diocesan priest” or “diocesan
clergy” to the expression “secular clergy.”
THIRD THEORY

In virtue of his ordination and office, a secular priest
should not merely strive after perfection; he should actually

Priestly Perfection

71

be in (or at least participate in) that state of perfection "to
be exercised,” which is proper to bishops. Indeed, he would
not become more perfect by entering a religious order; for,
by virtue of his ordination and office, he is already greater
than a religious who has not been ordained. He is already
a religious not of St. Dominic or St. Ignatius, but of Christ.
Thus Dionysius says in his Ecclesiastica Hierarchia (c. 6):
“a monastic order should follow priestly orders and by
imitating them rise to divine things.”4
Some even maintain, as St. Thomas points out: ‘‘It is
more difficult for a parish priest or an archdeacon to live
well than a religious. Parish priests or archdeacons, there­
fore, are of more perfect virtue than religious”5—priests as
well as lay brothers.
St. Thomas answers this objection by making a distinc­
tion: “A difficulty which arises from the difficulty of a work
increases the perfection of a virtue, and this is true of reli­
gious life; but a difficulty caused by external obstacles . . .
sometimes lessens the perfection of virtue—for example,
when one does not love the virtue sufficiently well to wish
to overcome the obstacles to virtue; sometimes, how’ever, it
is a sign of more perfect virtue; for example, when one does
not forsake virtue although one is hindered by obstacles
which are involuntary or unavoidable.”6

THOMISTIC SOLUTION

These three theories present three different aspects of the
priestly life. Considering all three aspects in the light of
St. Thomas’s teaching, we may say:
(a) A “secular" or diocesan priest is not, strictly speak­
ing, in any state of perfection, and because of the vows of

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Priesthood and Perfection

poverty and obedience he would gain additional merit
were he to become a religious.’
(l·') However, in virtue of his ordination and office,
which require greater interior sanctity than is required by
the religious state, he ought to strive for perfection strictly
so called.’
Our first proposition agrees with the first theory which
considers priestly life in an external way; from a canonical
point of view a secular priest is not in “a state of perfection.”
Our second proposition agrees in certain aspects with
the second and third theories and contains whatever truth
is in them.
According to this doctrine, which we will immediately
explain, a secular priest has a “special obligation” to strive
after perfection strictly so called, which excludes—as far as
human frailty allows—not only mortal sins but also
deliberate venial sins and deliberate imperfections. This
obligation, according to our solution, is not distinct from
the obligation of fulfiling worthily and in a holy manner
the various offices of priestly life: the celebration of Mass,
the recitation of the office, the hearing of confessions, and
in general the sanctification of souls. This special obliga­
tion is contracted by the reception of minor and major
orders. And in virtue of the supreme precept these duties
must be carried out with increasing perfection.

PROOF OF FIRST PROPOSITION

A secular priest is not, strictly speaking, in a state of
perfection.
A “state of perfection,” as St. Thomas shows, is not a

Priestly Perfection

73

purely interior and invisible state, like the state of grace;
but "one enters a state of perfection ... by improving in
those things which are done outwardly.”9 And it should be
distinguished from a perfect state, like the state of grace,
which can be merely interior. From this St. Thomas
deduces: "A perpetual obligation, made with a certain
solemnity, to observe those things which are of perfection is
essential to the [juridical] state of perfection. Religious and
bishops have both these essentials. Religious, in order to
give themselves more freely to God, in which consists the
perfection of this life, bind themselves by vow to abstain
from certain temporal actions which they might otherwise
quite lawfully use . . . Similarly, bishops in assuming the
pastoral office, which implies that the pastor lay down his
life for his sheep (cf. John 10:15), bind themselves to
those things which are of perfection.”10 St. Thomas shows,
with Dionysius, that “bishops have the office of perfecters,
whereas religious have the obligation of being perfected;
one is active, the other passive. Thus it is clear that the
state of perfection is higher in bishops than in religious.”11
Thus, theologians generally distinguish the state for acquir­
ing perfection in which religious are constituted, and the
state of acqtiired perfection, perfection to be exercised and
communicated, which pertains to bishops.
But, as St. Thomas shows, secular priests (“parish priests
and archdeacons”) are not, strictly speaking, in a state of
perfection :
(a) They are not, strictly speaking, in a state for acquir­
ing perfection, because, as St. Thomas points out: “By the
reception of a sacred order, one receives the power to per­
form certain sacred acts; one is not thereby bound to those

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Priesthood and Perfection

things which are of perfection, except to the extent that
in the Western Church the reception of a sacred order
(subdiaconate) implies a vow of chastity, which is one of
those things pertaining to perfection. It is clear, there­
fore, that by the reception of a sacred order, one is not
thereby placed in a state of perfection strictly so called,
although interior perfection is required in order that one
may worthily exercise such an order.”12
But it can be said with C. Vivès that, by the vow of
chastity, a priest of the Western Church is secundum quid
in a state of perfection;” Suarez says that he is “in the
beginning of the state of perfection.”14 He is forbidden to
engage in business.
(b) Strictly speaking, is the secular priest in the state
of perfection which is directed to the perfection of others?
St. Thomas answers: "Similarly, from the point of view of
the care of souls which they [priests and archdeacons] take
upon themselves, they are not placed in a state of perfec­
tion. For they are not bound, by this very fact, under the
obligation of a perpetual vow to retain the care of souls;
they can surrender it, either by entering a religious order,
even without their bishop’s permission (cf. Decret. 19, 9,
2, 1), or may with their bishop’s permission resign their
archdeaconry or parish and accept a simple prebend with­
out the care of souls, which would not be lawful if they
were in a state of perfection. . . .
“Bishops, however, because they are in the state of per­
fection, cannot set aside their episcopal care without the
permission of the Supreme Pontiff, who can alone dispense
from perpetual vows, and then only for definite reasons.

Priestly Perfection

75

It is clear, therefore, that not all prelates are in a state of
perfection, but only bishops.”15
The secular priest, therefore, would have more merit if
he became a religious—the special merit, that is, which
proceeds from the vow of poverty and obedience. Thus St.
Thomas shows that the religious priest who has the care
of souls is by reason of his ordination and office [the care
of souls] equal to the parish priest; and he is superior to
him by reason of his “state”—the goodness of a [perpetual]
religious state, in which the religious pledges his whole
life to the pursuit of perfection. "And therefore the relig­
ious state is to the office of parish priest as a holocaust is
to sacrifice—a sacrifice being less than a holocaust.”
“But this comparison," says the holy Doctor, “must be
understood in the light of the deed itself (secundum genus
operis), for it sometimes happens that the charity of the
doer (secundum caritatem operantis), causes a work, in
itself not so great as to become more meritorious—that is, by
reason of the greater charity with which it is performed.”
Thus a secular priest like the saintly Curé d’Ars can be
much more perfect than many religious and bishops.
“But if,” adds St. Thomas, "we compare the difficulty
of living well in religious life and in an office which brings
with it the care of souls, the latter is more difficult on
account of external dangers. And this is true even though
religious life is more difficult in itself on account of the
rigors of regular observance.”16 St. Thomas says also: "The
difficulty caused by outward obstacles sometimes lessens
the perfection of virtue—for example, when one does not
love the virtue sufficiently well to wish to overcome the

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Priesthood and Perfection

obstacles to the virtue. . . . Sometimes, however, it is a
sign of more perfect virtue; for example, when one does
not forsake virtue, although one is hindered by obstacles
which are involuntary or unavoidable.”17
Thus, from the canonical point of view, a secular priest
is not, strictly speaking, in a state of perfection, neither the
state for the acquisition of perfection nor the state of exer­
cising it.
Proof of second proposition

A secular priest, because of his ordination and office,
should strive for perfection strictly so called. Indeed greater
interior sanctity is required to celebrate Mass and sanctify
souls than is required by a religious lay brother or nun.
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour,
wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any
more but to be cast out and to be trodden on by men. You
are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13).
This conclusion may be proved in three ways: A. From
the nature of priestly ordination; B. From the duties of a
priest toward the sacramental body of Christ; C. From his
duties toward the mystical body of Christ.
A. Priestly ordination: In the Roman Pontifical, in the
rite for the ordination of a priest, we read: "The Lord
chose seventy-two, in order to teach [us] that both in word
and deed the ministers of His Church should, in faith
and love, be perfect—grounded, that is, in a twofold love
of God and neighbor.”18 This is evident:
(a) from what is required before ordination;
(b) from its effects on the soul;
(c) from its consequences.

Priestly Perfection

77

(a) A state of grace, suitability, and a goodness of life
higher than that for entrance to religious life are required
for ordination to the priesthood. St. Thomas says: “Sacred
orders presuppose sanctity, but the religious state is a means
of reaching sanctity. Thus the weight of orders is to be
placed on a framework already seasoned by sanctity; but
the weight of religious life seasons the framework, men,
drawing them from the dampness of vice.”19 This doctrine
is found also in St. Gregory and Dionysius (Eccl. Hier.,
C. 5) in texts quoted by St. Thomas. According to them,
says Fr. Barthier, it seems that the illuminative state is the
degree of charity fitting for the reception of the priesthood,
so that the priest already purified from sin may be able to
illuminate others. On the other hand, to enter religious
life, the purgative stage is sufficient. For the episcopacy,
one should be in the unitive state, because a bishop must
be already perfect and perfecting others.20 In the Supple­
ment, St. Thomas quotes Dionysius: "The power of a
priest extends to purifying and illuminating only; the epis­
copal power extends to these also, but to perfecting others
as well.”21
(b) The effects of ordination are the priestly character
and sacramental grace. But the priestly character is a certain
participation in the priesthood of Christ Himself; it is in­
delible, making one a priest forever.22 The priest, therefore,
ought to live as the worthy minister of Christ. In order to
do this be receives sacramental grace at ordination. For, as
St. Thomas says in the Supplement: "The works of God
are perfect. And therefore to him to whom God gives any
power, He gives also that help which enables him to use
that power worthily. . . . Just as sanctifying grace is neces-

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Priesthood and Perfection

sary in order that a man may worthily receive the sacra­
ments, sanctifying grace is also necessary that he may
worthily dispense the sacraments ..."23 And in the same
article we read: “To exercise an order in a fitting way, any
goodness at all is not sufficient, but a surpassing goodness
is required. Why? That those whom ordination has placed
over others in a sacramental way may also surpass others
in holiness. For the reception of an order, therefore, it is
necessary to have grace sufficient for one to be worthily
numbered among the ordinary faithful of Christ; but in
the actual reception of an order there is given a more ample
gift of grace, so that one becomes capable of doing greater
things.” 24 These words of the Supplement are not directly
from the pen of St. Thomas, but we find something sim­
ilar in a work authentically his: “Those who enter the
divine ministry take on a royal dignity and should be
perfect in virtue.”25 These words are found also in the
Pontifical.
God, in calling anyone to a higher office, gives him the
means to fulfill the obligations of that office; and the priest
by reason of his ordination has the right, unless he fails to
merit it, to new actual graces so that he may in a fitting
way exercise the duties of his priesthood. “Sacramental
grace adds to ordinary habitual grace and the virtues and
gifts a certain divine help to work out the effect of the
sacrament.”26 Sacramental grace is a new, intrinsic modi­
fication, a special impulse of habitual grace, with the right
to receive actual help when needed. That is the teaching
of John of St. Thomas, Contenson, and Billuart.
Priestly ordination is something more noble than relig­
ious profession in that it gives a certain participation in the

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79

priesthood of Christ not given to a simple religious. The
cleric declares at his ordination: “The Lord is the portion
of my inheritance and of my chalice; it is You who will
restore to me my inheritance.”
(c) A consequence of ordination is, as we read in the
Pontifical, a special obligation of striving after a higher per­
fection. The bishop says at the close of the ceremony:
“Beloved sons, consider carefully the order which you
have received and the burden which has been laid on your
shoulders; strive to live in a holy and devout manner, and
to please Almighty God, so that you may acquire His
grace, which He, in His mercy, may deign to bestow on
you.” A priest should sanctify himself so that the sacra­
mental grace of orders may always bear more fruit in him.
As we have said above, all Christians are bound, while
they are in this world, to strive for greater charity. A
fortiori, the priest is similarly bound, so that he may with
greater perfection carry out the precept: “Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with thy whole heart . . .” To priests
in particular Christ says: “Be you perfect,” and "To him
who hath it shall be given, and he shall abound” (Matt.
13:12). “You are the light of the world and the salt of
the earth” (cf. Matt. 5:13-14).
Thus we read in the Imitation of Christ, in the section
on the priestly state: “Behold you have become a priest,
consecrated in order to celebrate; see that in due course
you faithfully and devoutly offer sacrifice to God, and
show yourself blameless. You have not lightened your load,
but you have bound yourself to a heavier one and to the
chain of discipline; and you are bound to a greater perfec­
tion in charity. A priest should be adorned with every vir-

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Priesthood and Perfection

tue and he should be an example of good living to others.”
Thus the responsibility of a priest is very great, so much so
that many saints were afraid to receive priestly ordination.
*

*

¥

*

B—By reason of his duties toward the sacramental body
of Christ the obligation of a priest to strive after perfec­
tion becomes even more clear.
(a) The priest, when celebrating Mass, represents Christ;
he is another Christ. Christ, however, offered Himself as
victim for us. In order, therefore, for the minister to be con­
scious of his office, in order that he may celebrate Mass
worthily and in a holy manner, he must personally unite
himself in mind and heart to the supreme priest and holiest
victim. It would be hypocrisy, at least indirectly willed
through negligence, if he were to approach the altar with­
out the firm will to advance in charity. Each day he should
with greater sanctity say in the name of Christ: "For this
is My Body. This is the chalice of My Blood.” And in each
Mass the priest should receive Eucharistic Communion
devoutly, so that his charity may increase more and more.
Normally, therefore, each of his Eucharistic Communions
should be substantially more fervent and more fruitful,
because each Communion should not only preserve his
charity but also increase it, thereby disposing him to receive
the Body of Christ more worthily on the following day.
This is true even for the simple faithful: a fortiori is it
true for the priest.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that St. Thomas says:
"Interior perfection is needed for one to exercise these acts
(of orders) worthily,”28 and: "Greater interior sanctity is

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81

needed for that very noble ministry in which Christ Him­
self is served in the sacrament of the altar, than is needed
for the religious state. As Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier.
c. 6), the monastic order should follow priestly sacred orders
and like them ascend to divine things. Thus a cleric in
sacred orders would, other things being equal, sin more
grievously if he should do anything against sanctity than
a religious who is not in sacred orders, although the lay
religious is bound to regular observances to which those
in sacred orders are not bound.”29
(b) As far as the consecration of the Eucharist is con­
cerned, a simple priest is not lower than a bishop.30 And
the episcopacy is not, according to St. Thomas, a special
sacrament but an extension of the priesthood.
The sanctity necessary, or at least obviously fitting, for
the celebration of Mass is well explained in the Imitation
of Christ: "The priest in sacred vestments represents Christ
so that humbly and supplicatingly he can ask God both
for himself and for all the people. He has in front of him
and behind him the sign of the Lord’s cross, as a continual
reminder of the passion of Christ. In front, he bears the
cross on his chasuble, so that he may diligently see and
strive fervently to follow the footsteps of Christ. He is
signed with the cross behind him so that he may patiently
bear for God whatever unpleasant things are inflicted upon
him by others.”
(c) This is confirmed by the official prayer of the
Church, to which clerics are bound upon becoming sub­
deacons. This official prayer must be said worthily, atten­
tively, and with devotion, so as to illuminate the intellect
and inflame the affection. The Divine Office accompanies

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Priesthood and Perfection

the celebration of Mass, and is, in a sense, the continuation
of the prayer of Christ, just as the sacrifice of the Mass
continues the sacrifice of the cross. It is the chant of the
Spouse of Christ, and a conversation with Christ. Accord­
ing to theologians, the obligation to recite the canonical
hours each day is of ecclesiastical law. But even prior to
this law, a cleric is, by reason of his ecclesiastical state,
bound to pray more often than a lay person; and the daily
recitation of the Divine Office is something appropriate to
his state. The custom of canonical prayer flourished in the
Church from the time of the Apostles and is hinted at in
the Epistle to the Ephesians (5:19): "Speaking to your­
selves in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, sing­
ing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord.”
Toward the end of the fourth century, this custom of
reciting daily the canonical hours seems to have been of
precept. The importance of this prayer is clear from the
fact that all clerics are bound under pain of mortal sin to
the recitation, in private at least, of the canonical hours.
To satisfy this obligation, literal attention (to the meaning
of the words) or spiritual attention (to God and what we
ask for) is best, and toward this all should strive; but
presupposing the intention to pray to and worship God,
an intention that perseveres at least virtually, a superficial
internal attention to the words is sufficient.
As the just man, therefore, lives by faith, so the priest
ought to live spiritually by the celebration of Mass and the
recitation of the canonical hours. The Mass should be
tbe Thabor of the whole priestly life, from which flow the
rivers of living water.

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83

C—The duties of a priest toward the mystical body
of Christ.
These reveal, even more clearly, the obligation of striv­
ing after perfection.
By sanctifying souls, the secular priest shares in that
care of souls originally entrusted to the bishop.3’ He must
be the bishop’s helper. Although the parish priest is not
constituted in a state of perfection by his care of souls,
still in order to sanctify souls he must have some perfection.
The Council of Trent advised: “Nothing better instructs
others in piety and the worship of God than the life and
example of those who dedicate themselves to the divine
ministry. . . . To them, as to a mirror, others direct their
gaze, and in them find a source for imitation. It is very
fitting, therefore, that clerics called to the service of God
should so direct their life and habits that in dress, gesture,
walk, word and in everything else, they show nothing
except what is serious, moderate and religious.” A priest is
not bound to poverty, but he should have no affection for
worldly things, and he should even freely give what he
has to the poor; he must be obedient to his bishop and
make himself a servant of the faithful, in spite of every
difficulty and even occasionally in spite of calumnies.
The need for this acquired perfection is obvious in
preaching, in the direction of souls, and in the hearing of
confessions.
In order to preach the word of God effectively the priest
must have a certain contemplation of divine things, as
that will enable him to preach out of an abundant love
for God. He needs contemplation if his work as preacher

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Priesthood and Perfection

is to accomplish its object.32 As St. Thomas says: “That
active life in which one, by preaching and teaching, gives
to others the insights he has gained through contempla­
tion . . . presupposes an abundance of contemplation.”33
In this the priest should be the true light of the world and
the salt of the earth.
Similarly, a certain perfection is necessary to hear con­
fessions, because of the dangers of this ministry and in
order that the confessor may prudently, wisely, and with
charity lead souls to greater purity, faith, hope, and char­
ity. To him, also, souls may come in search of higher direc­
tion so that they may follow more faithfully the inspira­
tion of the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion. For all these reasons, the secular and dioc­
esan priest should be more perfect than the simple relig­
ious. As St. Thomas says: “greater interior sanctity is
required for the priestly office.”34 The simple religious is
bound only to seek for perfection, but every priest is
bound to have a certain perfection already. Every priest,
if he is to be faithful to the grace of his ordination, should
say with St. Paul: “I most gladly will spend and be spent
myself for your souls” (2 Cor. 12:15).
A. practical question: Is it sufficient, in conscience, for
a priest to have a firm purpose, in itself efficacious, of worth­
ily fulfilling all the duties of the priestly life—even, if
occasion demand, those which are most perfect and heroic
—or must he already have a certain personal perfection?
We may answer, with Suarez and Cardinal Vives:
Although some personal perfection is very fitting and mor­
ally necessary for the proper and worthy exercise of the
duty to sanctify others, it is not, however, strictly neces-

•3

Fr. Chevrier opened a catechism school for neglected poor people, and there were only three conditions for admittance: to have
nothing, to know nothing, to be of use for nothing.

"I have given you an example that as I have done you also shall do”

T H E PRIEST, ANOTHER CHRIST

Venerable P. Chevrier, a priest of Lyons and a friend of the Curé d ’Ars, often gave the following table to his disciples;

Priestly Perfection
85

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Priesthood and Perfection

sary that the priest should first have this perfection. It is
sufficient that this perfection should exist in the resolution,
in itself efficacious, to carry out worthily his obligations as
a priest.
In other words, the priest’s obligation of tending toward
perfection is not distinct from the obligation of fulfilling
properly his priestly obligations—just as it does not differ,
in the case of a religious, from his obligation to observe his
vows. Therefore, a priest only sins against this obligation
of tending to perfection when he neglects the special obli­
gations of his office.
The means for reaching this priestly perfection are
meditation and mental prayer, spiritual reading, the study
of Sacred Scripture with an eye to one’s spiritual life,
visits to the Blessed Sacrament, weekly confession, and
annual retreat. All these are necessary in order that the
priest may know not only the letter but the spirit of the
Gospel, which he must preach from the abundance of his
heart.35 The custom of living a common life, associations
of priests whose object is spiritual perfection, and mem­
bership in Third Orders are praiseworthy.3®

Practical Conclusion
A priest, therefore, can make a sacrifice of his life by
celebrating Mass in the spirit of a formula suggested by
St. Pius X and supplemented, with respect to the four
ends of sacrifice, by Blessed Peter Eymard.
“Whatever be the kind of death Your providence has
reserved for me, O Lord, I accept it with my whole heart
from Your hands, with all its sorrows, penalties and anxie­
ties, as the way of reaching You. And by this acceptance,

Priestly Perfection

87

in union with the unbloody sacrifice of Your Son, I offer
You in anticipation the personal sacrifice of my life, for
the four purposes of sacrifice.
“In a spirit of adoration of Your Majesty, O Lord of life
and death, who brings one to the extremity of death and
leads one back to eternal life.
"In a spirit of reparation, for all my sins, hidden and
known, and for the punishment due to them.
"In a spirit of supplication, to obtain all the graces use­
ful for my salvation and for the apostolate, especially final
perseverance which is the grace of graces.
“In a spirit of thanksgiving for benefits received, for the
Incarnation, Redemption, Eucharist, my Christian and
priestly vocation, so that my death may be the beginning
of eternal thanksgiving.”
In order that this sacrifice may be more perfect, and
that it may be a preparation for the supreme sacrifice at
the moment of death, a priest should ask for the following
graces :
“Lord, grant that I may realize what my Christian and
priestly vocation demands of me, somewhat in the way in
which I shall see it immediately after my death, in the
particular judgment. In Your mercy, grant me the grace to
fulfill with love whatever You expect of me for the salva­
tion of those souls whom I ought to help, and to suffer
with generosity whatever sorrow You have permitted from
eternity for my sanctification before I eventually reach
You in heaven.
“I ask, in particular, that I may work with zeal for the
salvation of all those souls whom, in accordance with Your
will, I ought to help. For that purpose I join the personal

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Priesthood and Perfection

sacrifice of my life with the unbloody sacrifice of Your
Son, superabundant and of infinite value, and with the
immense merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Amen.”
NOTES TO CHAPTER 6

1. See Cardinal Mercier, La vie intérieure, appel aux âmes
sacerdotales, p. 163, for this first opinion. He writes: “Reli­
gious, in love with their Order or Congregation, do not always
appreciate properly other Orders or the place of the ‘secular’
clergy in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. A venerable priest once
said to me: ‘They have more compassion for us than esteem.’
Religious should not say, almost emphatically: 'But we have
the sense of Christ.’ Not only should they avoid egoism, but
they should avoid also any exaggerated esprit de corps."
2. Dom Gréa, L'Eglise, livre iv, c. 12.
3. Mercier, op. cit., p. 155.
4. Text quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 8.
See Mercier, op. cit., p. 192.
5. S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 8, 6th objection.
6. Ibid., ad 6.
7. See Ibid., a. 6.
8. See Ibid., a. 8.
9. Ibid., a. 4, ad 1.
10. Ibid., a. 5.
11. Ibid., a. 7.
12. Ibid., a. 6.
13. Vivès, Theologia Ascetica, pp. 60, 74.
14. Suarez, De Virtute et Statu Religionis, bk. 1, c. 17, n. 4.
15. S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 6.
16. Ibid., a. 8.
17. Ibid., ad 6.
18. See St. Thomas, IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2; Mercier, op cit. pp. 140,
167, 200.
19. S.T., Suppl., q. 36, a. 1 and 3; 2-2, q. 189, a. 1, ad 3.
20. See Ibid., 2-2, q. 184, a. 7 and 8.
21. Ibid., Suppl., q. 36, a. 1.
22. See Ibid., q. 35, a. 2; 3, q. 63, a. 3.
23. Ibid., Suppl., q. 35, a. 1.

Priestly Perfection
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.

89

Ibid., ad 3.
St. Thomas Aquinas, IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2.
S.T., 3, q. 62, a. 2.
See St. Thomas Aquinas, In Hebr. 10:25.
S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 6.
Ibid., a. 8.
See Ibid., Suppl. q. 40, a. 4 and 5.
See Ibid., 2-2, q. 184, a. 6, ad 3.
See Mercier, op. cit., pp. 196, 217.
S.T., 3, q. 40, a. 1, ad 2.
Ibid., 2-2, q. 184, a. 8.
See Pius XI, Encyclical of December 20, 1935: Ad Catholici
Sacerdotio.
36. Those interested in the ascetical life of a priest should read
Cardinal Bona’s excellent treatise, De Sacrificio Missae, ρρ· 28,
75, 179, 325, 326, 402.

CHAPTER 7

The Episcopal State

fullness of the priesthood

This question is of importance, not only in itself but also
in its relation to other questions. From a consideration of
episcopal perfection, several authors determine what ought
to be the perfection of a priest, and what is needed for
perfection in general. But if these authors have not a
correct notion of episcopal perfection, they cannot accu­
rately solve these other questions.1
Is the episcopate an order distinct from the priesthood
and a distinct sacrament, giving a distinct character? Or
is it an extension of the priesthood and its most perfect
complement? Some (St. Robert Bellarmine, for example)
say that the episcopate is a distinct sacrament. Others (St.
Thomas, St. Bonaventure, St. Albert the Great, Scotus)
say: It is only an extension and complement of the priest­
hood. St. Thomas presents the following arguments:
(a) The Sacrament of Orders is intended principally
for the consecration of the Eucharist, for the Sacrifice of
the Mass.2 But as far as the consecration of the Eucharist
is concerned, a bishop or even the Supreme Pontiff himself
has not greater power than that of a priest. Nothing is
greater among the sacraments and in divine worship than
91

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Priesthood and Perfection

the consecration of the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is
the end of the other sacraments, in that it contains the
Author of grace.
(b) The episcopacy adds to the simple priesthood the
power of ordaining, confirming, and governing a diocese.
Thus the episcopacy, in what it adds to the simple priest­
hood, very probably is not an order distinct from the priest­
hood, but is its extension and most perfect complement.
By divine institution, therefore, the bishop is superior to
priests as such—not merely in jurisdiction but also in the
power of orders, because a bishop can ordain and confirm.
This is confirmed by the Council of Trent, for in its
list of orders it names only seven, and omits the epis­
copacy.3 Moreover, he who is not a priest cannot validly
become a bishop; on the other hand, he who has not val­
idly received the diaconate, but only the subdiaconate, can
validly be made a priest.
Objection. An objection may be raised that episcopal
consecration must give a special character because it gives
special spiritual power of ordaining and confirming.
Answer. For this special power, it is sufficient that the
episcopacy should be an intrinsic complement of the Sacra­
ment of Orders. Thus, by episcopal consecration, a special
character is not conferred, but the priestly character is
extended in a real and physical way to higher functions,
just as in the ordination of a priest the priestly character
of consecrating is extended to the power of absolving by
the words: “Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall
forgive they are forgiven.”
In order to confer grace, it is sufficient that the episco­
pacy should be (like sacramental penance after absolu-

The Episcopal State

93

tion) the intrinsic complement of the priesthood. Very
probably the episcopacy is not an Order strictly so called,
nor a sacrament distinct from the priesthood, but the full­
ness of the priesthood.
Episcopal consecration not only extends the priestly
character to new functions: ordaining, confirming, conse­
crating churches and chalices, ruling a diocese; it gives
also a notable .increase of the sacramental grace of Order.
This is necessary that the bishop may fulfill his functions
not only validly but worthily and with ever greater worthi­
ness; this sacramental grace is a permanent modality of
habitual grace, giving the right to ever new and higher
actual graces, so that the bishop may always better and
more worthily exercise his powers.
Thus he should live more and more in that sacramental
grace, so that it may grow to completion in him; without
this he cannot be perfect. This grace, therefore, is simul­
taneously personal and social, just like capital grace in
Christ. As does charity, it perfects the person himself and
his relation with his neighbor. A bishop receives at least
five talents which must increase and multiply. The episco­
pacy, therefore, is truly the plenitude of the priesthood.
Episcopal perfection can only be reached by aspiring to
greater unity with Christ and with the whole Christian
episcopacy under the direction of the Supreme Pontiff in
the mystical body of Christ. This unity of the episcopacy
is its strength.
The bishop ought to hope for all things from the recep­
tion of sacramental grace, by cooperating with it. He will
in this way become more and more conscious of the maj­
esty of Christ’s priesthood. The bishop is simultaneously,

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Priesthood and Perfection

as the successor of the Apostles, a teacher, the pastor of
his flock, and a leader who rules his diocese or his church.
He has, therefore, the three powers of teaching, sanctify­
ing, ruling; and he must in case of persecution give his
life for the defense of his flock.
2. State of perfection
Let us see (1) on what points theologians agree, and
(2) on what points they disagree about the perfection
required in a bishop.
The common teaching of theologians, among them St.
Thomas,4 is clear on two points: (a) Bishops are really in
a state of perfection. This state requires a perpetual obliga­
tion, made with some solemnity, to observe those things
which are of perfection. But when bishops assume their
pastoral office, which implies that the pastor lay down his
life for his sheep; they bind themselves to those things
which are of perfection. In addition to this profession there
is also a solemn consecration, (h) It is certain that the
episcopal state is more perfect than the religious. St. Thomas
writes: “In the order of perfection . . . bishops are in the
position of perfecters, whereas religious are in the position
of being perfected themselves; the former is active, the
latter passive.”5 Passerini says that according to St. Thomas
the episcopal state is the active state of those who perfect
others, but the religious state is the passive state of those
who are being perfected themselves.6 The bishop ordains
priests and governs his flock. And, as St. Thomas says,7 a
bishop "would be taking a backward step” if he wanted to
enter a religious order while he was still useful to his flock.

The Episcopal State

95

These two conclusions are generally admitted by all. But
there is a dispute about one point: The episcopal state is
not only a state for the perfection of others, but should
it not be called also a state for the exercise of perfection—
in this sense that it essentially presupposes that perfection
has been already acquired, already in fact possessed? In
other words: Is the bishop supposed to be already perfect—
perfect in the strict and not merely in the broad sense of
the word?
There are two opposing opinions:
(a) The first opinion is held by Suarez and several
others. They answer in the affirmative, and say that a bishop
is bound to possess and to exercise perfection. Why?
Because the episcopal state is greater than the religious state,
which is only a state for acquiring perfection. A bishop
should not only purify and illuminate others; he should
also lead them to perfection.
St. Thomas, however, does not say exactly that a bishop
is in the state of perfection which we may call “already
acquired,” and "to be exercised.” He sayss that he is in the
active state of one who perfects others, holding, as it were,
a professorship of perfection, and that “the episcopal state
is not directed to the attainment of perfection but rather to
the end that, in virtue of the perfection which he has
already acquired, he may govern others.”0
(b~) A second theory is held by Passerini and several
others.10 They answer, no: the episcopal state does not
demand that one should be already perfect, in the strict
meaning of the word, but that one should have the inten­
tion of reaching this perfection.

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Priesthood and Perfection

The reason is simple. Were the first position true, the
high idea of perfection, strictly so-called, which excludes all
deliberate venial sins and deliberate imperfections, would
have to be lowered; or else it would be difficult to find
bishops to satisfy this condition.11
Passerini even rejects the distinction between a state for
acquiring perfection and a state for exercising perfection—
at least in the sense in which Suarez used these terms.
Why? Because, says Passerini, either we are speaking of
ordinary perfection, in a less exact sense of the word, which
excludes mortal sins—and in this case, every state is for
the exercise of perfection; or else we are speaking of per­
fection in the strict sense of the word, which excludes all
deliberate venial sins—and in this case a bishop is not
bound to possess it already, because there are few who have
reached it.
Passerini adds: "A bishop who is not perfect, indeed,
even an evil one, does not cease to be in a state of perfec­
tion,”12 just as a bad religious does not cease to be in the
religious state. On the other hand, religious who are
engaged in the apostolic life exercise or communicate
perfection.
This question, as it has been put here, is of some
importance in ascetical and mystical theology in determin­
ing what exactly is necessary for perfection in the strict
sense of the word. Some—Suarez, for example—do not
seem to have a very high conception of this perfection; for
Suarez it does not require great charity. And among several
arguments for proving their thesis they say: bishops are in
the state of perfection which has been acquired and is to

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97

be exercised, and they fulfill their obligations. Passerini,
on the other hand, seems to have a higher conception of
perfection in the strict sense of the word.

3. Clarifying the issue

The solution will appear more clearly if we put the
question this way: Is it sufficient that a bishop should have
a firm and efficacious intention of worthily fulfilling all the
duties of his office, even those which demand heroism
should the need ever arise; or is he also bound in conscience
to be already perfect in the strict meaning of the word?
Our solution of the problem is based on a distinction
between that perfection required in conscience before
accepting the episcopacy and a higher and very appropriate
perfection toward which a bishop should strive.”
Our thesis, which agrees with Passerini’s, may be
stated in this way: (.A) Before accepting the episcopate,
one is not bound in conscience to be already strictly per­
fect; (B) A bishop, however, by reason of his office and
state is more strictly bound than a religious to strive for
perfection, and by holier means; (C) Moreover, it is veryfitting and appropriate, in order that he may worthily fulfill
all the duties of his pastoral office, that he should already
be perfect in the strict meaning of the word.
(A) Before accepting the episcopacy, one is not bound
in conscience to be already strictly perfect.

It is sufficient that the bishop-elect have an efficacious
intention of worthily fulfilling all the duties of the epis­

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Priesthood and Perfection

copal life, even those which are most perfect, and if the
occasion arises, those which call for heroism.
We find this teaching in St. Thomas, where he is an­
swering this objection: “There are many prelates [bishops,
as is clear from the text] and religious who have not the
interior perfection of charity. If, therefore, all religious
and prelates are in the state of perfection, it follows that all
of them who are not perfect are in mortal sin, because they
are deceivers and liars.”—St. Thomas answers, both for
bishops and for religious: "Men enter the state of perfec­
tion because they profess, not that they are perfect, but
that they will strive for perfection. St. Paul, therefore, says
in his Epistle to the Philippians (3:12): ‘Not as though
I had already attained, or were already perfect; but I follow
after, if I may by any means apprehend.’ And further on
(3:15) he adds: ‘Let us therefore, as many as are perfect,
be thus minded.’ A man, therefore, who takes up the state
of perfection is not guilty of lying or deceit through not
being perfect, but through revoking the intention of reach­
ing perfection.” 14
A bishop, therefore, is not bound in conscience to be
already perfect, in the strict sense of the word. Such per­
fection can be equated with the perfection of charity,
implying that one clings always to God and always acts
deliberately from charity, by rooting out deliberate venial
sins and voluntary imperfections. In the Epistle to the
Hebrews (5:2—3) there is this reference to a bishop:
"Because he himself also is compassed with infirmity, and
therefore he ought, as for the people, so also for himself,
to offer for sins.”
Passerini, therefore, is correct.—We find a confirmation

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of this first part of our thesis in the teaching of St. Thomas.
“Whether he that is appointed to the episcopate ought to
be better than others?” In his reply, St. Thomas quotes
the Decretals: “It is sufficient to choose a good man, and
it is not necessary to choose the better man.” And in
explanation he says: “He who has to choose or appoint one
as a bishop is not bound to select one who is best in him­
self, that is, according to charity, but one who is best for
governing the Church, that is, one who is able to instruct,
defend and govern the Church peacefully. . . . On the
part of the person appointed, it is not necessary that he
should consider himself better than others; this would be
proud and presumptuous, but it is sufficient that he should
see nothing in himself which would make it unlawful for
him to take up office as prelate.” 15
St. Thomas also says: “There is nothing to prevent one
who does not excel in the grace of holiness from being
more suited to the office of governing”10—as St. Paul says
(I Cor. 12:4-6): “There are diversities of graces ... of
ministries ... of operations.”

( B) A bishop, however, by reason of his office and state,
is more strictly obliged than a religious to strive
for perfection strictly so called; and he is bound to
use holier means.”
Perfection consists in the perfect observance of the pre­
cept of charity, a precept which has no limitations. A
bishop, therefore, like a religious, should aim at perfection,
which, as a final cause, has no limitations. From this point
of view, as Passerini has well said, there is no distinction
to be made in states of perfection. But:

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Priesthood and Perfection

(a) A bishop has a greater obligation than a religious
of striving for perfection. Why? Because the duties of his
pastoral office demand a greater interior sanctity, if the
bishop is not to hinder the salvation of his flock and the
sanctification of their souls. This obligation is even greater
for a bishop than it is for a religious who is engaged in the
apostolic life. There are two reasons for this: the bishop’s
care of his flock is primary and more universal, and he
cannot set it aside; moreover, he is the supreme and prin­
cipal teacher and minister of orders. As St. Peter says (I
Pet. 5:3), he is the "pattern” of his flock. A bishop, there­
fore, would sin more grievously than a religious if he acts
against perfection.
(l·) States differ by reason of the means which are used
to reach perfection; and in this the episcopacy excels. For
among those works which are of counsel, some are more
perfect of their very nature. Among these is that care of
souls which is so great that one pours out one’s life to
achieve it. A bishop is bound to this in virtue of his state,
and this means of reaching perfection is in itself superior to
the exercise of religious obedience and poverty. Charity
toward one’s neighbor is the greatest effect of the love of
God and the greatest sign of progress in charity toward
God. “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34);
fraternal charity is the thermometer of the interior life.
As Passerini says:18 “To have the principal care of
souls, and to join with it a contempt of the goods of the
body, one’s own reputation and life, is a state which far
surpasses all others in perfection; and it is for this reason
that a bishop is in a state more perfect than that of any
religious whatsoever.” And he adds: 10 “This, indeed, is

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the mind of St. Thomas, who proves that the episcopal
state is more perfect than the religious state, not because
bishops are actually perfect, but because they are more per­
fect in that their duty of perfecting others is certainly in
itself and of its very nature sublime and more excellent
than poverty, virginity and obedience; and it is a more
effective means of reaching perfection. In no other state, as
the Martyrology proves, are so many saints to be found.”
An Objection: But religious, because of their poverty and
obedience, seem to be more perfect.20
Answer: Although a bishop is not bound to use poverty
as a means for reaching perfection, yet “bishops especially
are bound to despise all things for the honor of God and
the spiritual welfare of their flock when it is necessary
for them to do so, either by giving to the poor of their
flock or by suffering, with joy being stripped of their goods.”
And St. Thomas says: “Poverty is not perfection, but a
means to perfection; and it does not follow that where
there is greater poverty there is greater perfection. The
highest perfection, indeed, is compatible with great
wealth.”21
And even though a bishop has not a vow of obedience,
he is bound to give an outstanding example of obedience
to the Pope, and to be in a sense a servant of the servants
of God. This is often more difficult and more severe than
religious obedience.
Passerini asks:22 Is the episcopal state superior to the
religious state joined to the apostolic life as practiced by
members of the Order of Preachers, for example, or the
Society of Jesus, who are engaged in the apostolate even
with great personal danger to life, as on the missions? Is a

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Priesthood and Perfection

bishop superior to doctors in theology,23 who teach many
other priests? Is he superior to regular prelates who have
office for life, like Abbots and Generals who have charge
of an entire Order and who have besides the burden of the
care of souls the burden of the vows and regular
observance?
With Passerini, we may answer this question as follows:
The immediate purpose and object of the episcopal state
is far superior to the purpose of the religious state, even
when the latter binds itself to works of charity, and this
is true for three reasons:
(a) A more universal sphere of action: Only a bishop
can confer all the sacraments, consecrate churches and oils
used in the Sacraments of Baptism and Extreme Unction;
only he has a vote in defining truths of faith; and in virtue
of his office he may be called in Council to discuss those
things which concern the ruling of the Church. These
things are not within the province of religious.
(h) In their manner of acting: Religious, in their care
of souls, are the assistants of the bishop.
(c) A more serious obligation: Religious have not the
same obligation as bishops of giving their lives for the
spiritual welfare of the faithful.

(C) In order that a bishop may worthily and conscien­
tiously fulfill all the duties of his pastoral office, it is
very fitting and helpful that he should be already
perfect, in the strict meaning of the word (cf. 2 Tim.
1:3-14}.
A bishop must not only purify and illuminate others, but
he must also lead them to perfection. He must direct priests

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103

and govern them; he is the father of the faithful of his
diocese, no matter what their standing may be; even
exempt religious are his sons. Moreover, he frequently has
to make heroic acts of virtue in order to safeguard the
spiritual salvation of his flock, and he must be prepared to
endure even greater and more difficult things for them. In
order to fulfill all these duties worthily, it will be very
helpful for him to give himself to prayer, so that he may
live deeply by faith and charity and speak to his flock from
the abundance of holy love. (Witness the lives of St.
Charles Borromeo, St. Francis de Sales and St. Alphonsus.)
It is not necessary that a bishop should surpass everybody
in all things: otherwise a man without the virtue of
virginity could never become a bishop. He should, how­
ever, excel in those things which affect the ruling of his
flock. That is why it is fitting that only one who is perfect
should be made a bishop.
Understood in this way, our thesis does not lower our
exalted idea of perfection strictly so called, nor is it
derogatory to the episcopal state. And this appears to be
the teaching of St. Thomas.
4. Some practical questions
Is it lawful to desire the office of the bishop? 24

It seems that it is lawful, because St. Paul says in his
first Epistle to Timothy (3:1): "If a man desires the office
of a bishop, he desireth a good work.” It is lawful and
praiseworthy to desire a good work.
St. Augustine says, however, that it is “unbecoming to
desire” the episcopal office.2S As to lawfulness, some authors

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Priesthood and Perfection

equate this desire with the desire for contemplation and
mystical union.
Let us see how St. Thomas answers this question. He
says that to desire the episcopal state because of its high
dignity or honor is unlawful; but to desire it in order to do
good to one’s neighbor is in itself praiseworthy and virtuous.
This was particularly true in the early Church in times of
persecutions, because bishops often had to endure very
great sufferings. But because the episcopacy is a very exalted
dignity, unless there is an urgent reason, it seems pre­
sumptuous for one to desire the office of a bishop. That
is why some take a vow not to accept the episcopal office
except under obedience or unless charity makes it necessary.
One can, however, without presumption desire the office
of a bishop if “the object of his desire is the good work and
not the first place in dignity.”
This desire is not of the same kind as the desire for
mystical union, because there is no very great external
dignity connected necessarily with this union; on the
contrary, it usually involves a very painful purification.
Would it be lawful to refuse absolutely an appointment
to the episcopate? 26
St. Thomas answers that it would not be lawful: “Just
as it is a sign of an inordinate will that a man of his own
choice should seek to be appointed to rule over others, so
too is it a sign of an inordinate will if in direct opposition
to the will of his superiors he definitely refuses this office
of governing others. The reasons are: it is opposed to the
love which one should have for one’s neighbor, for whose
good one should offer oneself as place and time demand,

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105

and secondly, it is contrary to humility by which a man
submits himself to the orders of his Superiors." 27

May a bishop give up his episcopal office in order to enter
a religious order? 28
He can do so only with the permission of the Supreme
Pontiff, and the reason must be that he can no longer work
for the salvation of his subjects—either because of his age,
for example, or his infirmity, or because of some scandal

\

?

or defection among his subjects.
Why? “The perfection of the episcopal state requires
that a man binds himself, for the love of God, to work for
the salvation of his neighbor. He is bound, therefore, to
retain this pastoral care as long as he is able to procure the
spiritual welfare of those who have been entrusted to him.
He ought not to neglect this, either for the quiet of divine
contemplation, or to avoid any hardship, or to acquire any
gain whatsoever."28 Moreover: “So long as a bishop can be
useful to the salvation of his neighbor, he would be back­
sliding if he wished to enter the religious state to busy him­
self only with his own salvation."30
Therefore, as St. Thomas says, in a time of persecution,
“when the salvation of his subjects demands the personal
presence of the pastor, the pastor should not withdraw
himself personally from his flock, either because of some
temporal advantage, or because of some danger threatening
his person. The good shepherd is bound to lay down his
life for his sheep.”31

5. Priestly ministry in the world today

Christ said to His Apostles (Matt. 10:16-17): "Behold
I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore

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Priesthood and Perfection

wise as serpents and simple as doves. But beware of men.
For they will deliver you up in councils and they will
scourge you in their synagogues.” And in Luke (10:3) He
says: "Behold I send you as lambs among wolves.”
Similarly in the first Epistle of St. John (5:19) we are
told what is the spirit of the world as opposed to the spirit
of Christ: “the whole world is seated in wickedness”; and:
"for all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the
flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life”
(2:16).
St. Paul says (Eph. 6:11-13): “Put you on the armour
of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of
the devil. For our wrestling is not only against flesh and
blood, but against principalities and powers, against the
rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of
wickedness in the high places. Therefore, take unto you the
armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil
day, and to stand in all things perfect.”
In his commentary on Matthew, St. Thomas says: "Why
did God in this way wish to send the Apostles into danger?
He did so in order to show His power, because if He had
sent armed men, their success would be attributed to their
violence and not to the power of God. Therefore, He sent
poor men. It was a great thing that through poor, depised,
and unarmed men, so many were converted to the Lord.”32
In his commentary on Ephesians, St. Thomas notes
that the principal weapons against the wickedness of the
devil are the three theological virtues: the shield of faith,
the hope of reaching our final goal, which is like the helmet
of salvation, and the love of God and of souls which is
connected with humility and the spirit of adoration.”

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107

But I would like to speak particularly of the corruption
of the world which we have to evangelize, a world influ­
enced by almost twenty centuries of Christianity. Today,
for very many, the great ideals of Christianity have been
lowered and they have taken on a completely different
meaning. Many, like Chesterton,34 have spoken about great
ideas gone mad. This began particularly with Jean Jacques
Rousseau, whose teaching has rightly been called Chris­
tianity corrupted.35 The worst corruption is that of the best.
In classical antiquity, there was indeed a great opposition
between the spiritualism of Plato and Aristotle and the
materialism of Epicurus. But the mind had not yet reached
the heights of Christianity, and the more penetrating
philosophers spoke only of wisdom or of some rational love
of the Supreme Good; the Stoics spoke about a universal
fraternity among all men.
With the coming of Christianity, the human mind was
raised to a supernatural life, with a very certain faith in
God, a very strong hope in Him, and with charity toward
the heavenly Father and toward all His adopted sons.
For three centuries, martyrs died for the Christian faith,
and the blood of martyrs was the seed of Christians. The
teaching of the Fathers was brought to its perfection by St.
Augustine. Sacred theology reached its peak in the 13th
century.
Then, in the 14th century, a decline began with the rise
of Nominalism, and in the 15th and 16th centuries with
Protestantism, the rejection of the infallibility of the
Church, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacrament of
Penance and the need for good works. This decline became
more rapid among the unbelieving philosophers of the 18th

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Priesthood and Perfection

century. Voltaire and Rousseau, with the French Revolu­
tion and its spirit of naturalism as interpreted by the deists,
maintained: God, if He exists, does not care about individ­
uals but only about universal laws. As a result sin is not an
offense against God but against a constantly evolving reason.
What previously seemed to us to be theft is no longer theft;
perhaps individual property is itself a theft, as the socialists
say.
The spirit of naturalism and rationalism denies all the
supernatural mysteries of the Blessed Trinity, Incarnation,
Redemption, and rejects the Eucharist and other sacra­
ments. It denies the life of grace, which is the seed of
glory, eternal life; it also denies the opposition between
heaven and hell.
At one time, liberalism wished to remain suspended
halfway in this fall from Catholicism to serious error. But
liberalism reached no conclusions; it did not affirm or deny,
but fluctuated. And so when a decision has to be taken and
one must act, liberalism gives way to radicalism, then to
socialism and finally to materialistic communism which
denies property, the family, the fatherland and religion.
We still have the remnants of an ideology, which began
with J. J. Rousseau and in which we find a corrupted ver­
sion of Christianity in keeping with the spirit of naturalism.
It denies all the supernatural mysteries. And instead of faith
in God, hope in God and charity toward God we have a
faith in humanity, a hope in humanity, a love of humanity.
Humanity is deified and takes the place of God. They
always speak, therefore, about the progress of humanity, as
if a scientific, economic, moral and spiritual progress were
always taking place, as if humanity of itself, without any
higher help, was causing this progress.

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109

But we have seen in the recent World War, along with
material progress in knowledge and the means of destruc­
tion, a frightful moral collapse, economic decline and
misery.
And so this new ideology which has been given the place
of Christian faith is composed of great ideals gone mad.
Like the increasing speed of a falling stone, this fall is
deeper and swifter because it began at a greater height.
The present position, therefore, is worse than that before
the time of Christ. It is not the ignorance of a child, but the
madness of an old, and at one time very cultured, man. It
is not surprising, therefore, that modern philosophers like
Kant, Fichte and Hegel, whose way of thinking was ration­
alistic, have been great intellectual monstrosities. This
movement had already begun with Spinoza who denied the
freedom of God, creation, providence, the justice of God
and His mercy, all merit and demerit.
This is the foolishness and the madness of which St.
Paul spoke (1 Cor. 3:19): “For the wisdom of this world
is foolishness with God.” Wisdom judges everything—even
the smallest things—both speculatively and practically, in
view of the highest cause and ultimate end; but foolishness
or madness judges everything, even the highest thing, by
that which is lowest, and in the place of God it puts the
concupiscence of the flesh and of the eyes, or the pride of
life.3'
NOTES TO CHAPTER 7

1. See 2 Tim. 1:3-14; Council of Trent, sess. 23, c. 4, 6, 7;
Pontificale Romanum: consecratio episcopalis: St. Thomas
Aquinas, S.T., 2-2, q. 184 articles 4,5,7,8; q. 185, a. 8; q.
186, a. 3, ad 6; q. 188, a. 1, ad 3; Passerini, De Statibus
Hominum (commentary on 2-2, q. 184 articles 5 to 7), p. 73;
Suarez, De Statu Perfectionis, lib. 1, c. 15 and 16.

110
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Priesthood and Perfection

See S.T., Suppl., q. 37, aa. 2 and 4.
See Denzinger, 958.
See S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 5.
Ibid., a. 7.
Passerini, op. cit., p. 72, n. 10.
S.T., 2-2, q. 185, a. 4, ad 1.
Ibid., a. 8.
Ibid., q. 186, a. 3, ad 5.
Passerini, op cit., pp. 70, 73.
See Passerini, op. cit., p. 73, n. 18. St. Thomas Aquinas says:
“The state of perfection is twofold, that of prelates and that of
religious. But the term is used equivocally, because the reli­
gious state is for the acquisition of perfection, whereas the
state of being a prelate is not for the acquisition of perfection
for oneself, but for communicating it, already acquired, to
others” (In Matt. 19:21). A bishop is to a religious as a
teacher is to pupil.
It is said that St. Thomas was once asked: "Who should be
elected Master-General?” His answer was: “He who is more
prudent should be elected Superior; he who is more learned
should teach us; he who is more holy should pray for us.”
12. Passerini, op. cit., p. 72, n. 15.
13. See St. Thomas Aquinas, In Matt., 19:21.
14. S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 5, ad 2.
15. Ibid., q. 185, a. 3.
16. Ibid., ad 3.
17. See Passerini, op. cit., p. 74. St. Thomas, S.T., 2-2 q. 185.
a. 3, ad 2, writes: "A bishop should aim at showing himself
to be more excellent than others in both knowledge and
holiness.”
18. Passerini, op. cit., p. 93, summary number 6.
19. Ibid., p. 94.
20. See S.T., 2-2, q. 184, a. 7, ad 1.
21. Ibid., q. 185, a. 6, ad 1.
22. Passerini, op. cit., p. 95.
23. With reference to doctors in theology, St. Thomas says that
they, next to bishops, "are like the principal master-workmen
who examine and teach how others ought to work out the
salvation of their souls. In itself, therefore, it is better and
more meritorious to teach sacred doctrine, if it is done with

The Episcopal State

24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.

1 1 1

a good intention, than to look after the salvation of this or that
particular soul, as the Apostle says, 'Christ sent me not to
baptize, but to preach the gospel’ (I Cor. 1:17)” (.Quod. I.,
a. 14).
See S.T., 2-2, q. 185, a. 1.
St. Augustine, The City of God, XIX, 19.
See S.T., 2-2, q. 185, a. 4.
Ibid., a. 2.
See Ibid., a. 4.
Ibid.
Ibid., ad 1.
Ibid., a. 6.
St. Thomas Aquinas, In Matt. 10:16.
St. Thomas Aquinas, In Eph. 6:12.
G. K. Chesterton, Heretics.
Jacques Maritain, Three Reformers.
See S.T., 2-2, q. 46, "De Stultitia."

CHAPTER 8

The Beatitudes Measure

Priestly Perfection

In ascetical books, Christian perfection is often discussed
in an exceedingly dry and abstract manner. About all we
find is an enumeration of the virtues which it requires and
an insistence on the perfection of charity. But what this
perfection of charity consists in, and how it differs from the
charity of beginners and those who are more proficient, is
not shown in a sufficiently concrete and vivid way.
The greatness and majesty of Christian perfection will
appear in a very concrete and living way if we bear in mind
the first sermon of our divine Lord on the beatitudes
(Matt. 5 and Luke 6).
At the outset Christ begins to speak of happiness, because
all men naturally desire to be happy; but they often wander
aimlessly, seeking this happiness where it is not to be found
—in sensible pleasures, in riches, in honors, in power, and
are easily deceived by the concupiscence of the flesh, by the
concupiscence of the eyes, and by the pride of life. Christ,
on the other hand, shows where true happiness is to be
found, in its beginning in this life and in its perfection
after death.
113

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Priesthood and Perfection

Similarly, St. Thomas begins his exposition of moral
theology with his tract on man’s final end and happiness,
because the end is first in the order of intention, although
last in the order of execution.
Spiritual theology must insist on the greatness of Chris­
tian perfection, by describing it not only theoretically and
in the abstract but in a concrete and living way, in the
very words of our Lord. Such a method will show how
intimately contemplation on the mysteries of faith and
intimate union with God belong to Christian perfection,
and will clearly distinguish Christian perfection from the
charity of beginners and the more advanced.
This is particularly necessary when we are considering
the perfection toward which a priest, as distinct from the
ordinary faithful, should strive.
St. Augustine has given us an interesting and illuminat­
ing insight in his work, The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.
There he notes that in St. Luke’s Gospel (6:20) four
beatitudes are mentioned, and eight in St. Matthew’s
Gospel (5). There are four beatitudes missing in St. Luke’s
Gospel—blessed are the meek, the merciful, the clean of
heart, the peacemakers.
St. Augustine remarks: “Jesus first ascended the moun­
tain and made this address to His disciples. Afterwards,
when He had come down, He found that a crowd had
gathered, and He preached to them also, recapitulating
many things which He had said.”
It seems, therefore, that this sermon in its depth and full­
ness was directed to the Apostles and is consequently of
special value for priests.
In each beatitude our Lord mentions the meritorious

The Beatitudes Measure Perfection

11 5

act and its reward—beginning in this life and perfected
after death. These meritorious acts, according to St.
Augustine and St. Thomas, are acts of perfect virtues, per­
formed with the aid of the gifts—an act of the virtue of
fortitude, for example, aided by the gift of fortitude, the
virtue of meekness aided by the gift of piety, of prudence
aided by the gift of counsel—the initial reward already
points to a union with God which shall later be consum­
mated in heaven. There is no way more concrete, therefore,
to describe Christian perfection toward which priests par­
ticularly should strive so that they may be able to guide
the faithful toward it.

An
approach
to
good

A
drawing
away from
evil

Blessed are they who
suffer persecution

All the gifts and per­
fect virtues

Blessed are the
peacemakers

Gift of wisdom

Blessed are the clean
of heart

Gift of understanding

Blessed are the
merciful

Gift of counsel

Blessed are they who
hunger and thirst
after justice

Gift of fortitude

Blessed are they who
weep

Gift of knowledge

Blessed are the meek

Gift of piety

Blessed are the poor

Gift of fear.

St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, explains these
eight beatitudes in his commentary on St. Matthew and in
the Summa (1-2, q. 69).
Both Matthew and Luke list the beatitudes in an

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Priesthood and Perfection

ascending order, beginning with the beatitude of poverty
and rising to the beatitude of those who suffer persecution.
In Isaias (11:2), however, the list descends from the
supreme gift of wisdom to the lowest, the gift of fear.
Similarly, the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer begin with
the higher ones: from “Hallowed be Thy name” to “But
deliver us from evil.” St. Augustine calls this to our atten­
tion in order to make more obvious the correlation between
the beatitudes and the gifts.
St. Thomas points out that, in ascending order, the first
three beatitudes imply a drawing away from evil (blessed
are the poor, the meek, and those who weep); the others
imply an approach to what is good and best. Among these
the beatitudes of the active life are first listed: “blessed are
those who hunger and thirst after justice” and “blessed are
the merciful.” The beatitudes of the contemplative life
come next : “blessed are the clean of heart” and “blessed are
the peacemakers.” Finally, there is the chief beatitude,
"blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’s sake.”
It is the summit of Christian perfection and is most strik­
ingly shown by martyrs.
St. Thomas presents an excellent exposition of these
eight steps on the road to perfection both in his commentary
on St. Matthew’s Gospel and in the Summa.1
While the world says: "Happiness consist in an abun­
dance of material goods, sense pleasure, and honors,” Jesus
says: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. This beatitude proceeds from humility and from
the gift of fear, and it is opposed to greed, jealousy, and the
pride of life. All who aspire to perfection must aim at a
spirit of evangelical poverty. If they have riches, they should

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117

likewise possess a spirit of mortification; particularly is this
true of priests. One can have perfect charity without the
effective practice of the counsels, but never without their
spirit.
Similarly, while the world says: "Happy are those who
have power over others,” Jesus says: Blessed are the meek,
for they shall possess the land. In other words, blessed are
they who do not become angry, who do not seek revenge
against their opponents, or power over others, but power
over their own irascible passions so that their soul may
become entirely peaceful. This beatitude springs from
meekness and the gift of piety, because this gift makes us
consider God as a father, and men as brothers whom we
must regard with gentleness.
Similarly, while the world says: “Happy are those who
find consolation in luxuries or in vanities,” Jesus says:
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall he comforted.
In other words, blessed are they who weep over their own
sins and realize that the only true evil is mortal sin, the
death of the soul. These find a consolation which is
infinitely superior to the delights of the world. They use
their concupiscible appetites very moderately in a spirit of
penance and in the light of the gift of knowledge by which
they realize the vanity of earthly things and the gravity
of sin (cf. 2-2, q. 9, a. 4). Knowledge is an understanding
of things, not in the light of their first cause, but through
dependent and deficient secondary causes. The priest must
be penitent and must welcome penitents, moving them to
a true and lasting sorrow for their sins.
The first three beatitudes imply a drawing away from
evil, as in the purgative way. The two following ones imply

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an approach to good and they are part of the active life;
they are in the proficient stage.
Pride says: “Happy is he who lives and acts just as he
pleases, who is subject to nobody, who is in charge of others
and dominates over them.” Jesus says, on the contrary,
Blessed are they who hunger and thrist after justice, for
they shall have their fill. According to St. Augustine and
St. Thomas, this beatitude coresponds to the gift of
fortitude, which helps us overcome difficulties and keeps
alive in us, for the duration of our lives, a burning love for
justice and perfection. As we grow older we see that hunger
and thirst after justice are not merely a warm feeling or a
burning of the soul which soon passes away and is
conquered.
But the love of justice ought to be united, as it is in
God, to a love of mercy. And so another beatitude follows
immediately: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy. In other words, blessed are they who do not oppress
those who are subject to them, and who are good counsel­
lors to those who are in trouble; to them God will be mer­
ciful. This beatitude, according to St. Augustine and St.
Thomas, corresponds to the gift of counsel, because mercy
inclines one to give good counsel to those who are in
trouble, and when the mind hesitates between the path of
justice and the path of mercy, the Holy Spirit inclines it
to mercy by which the sinner is helped to return to justice.
The sixth and seventh beatitudes are connected with
the contemplative life. St. Luke does not mention them;
and very probably they were preached not to the people,
but to the disciples.
While many philosophers were saying that happiness

The Beatitudes Measure Perfection

119

consists in speculating about truth and were caring very
little about purity of heart, Jesus said: Blessed are the
clean of heart, for they shall see God. In other words, by
heart-to-heart talk with God they already receive in this
life an understanding of divine things, a contemplation of
the mysteries of salvation, which enables them to preach
out of the abundance of the heart. According to St. Augus­
tine and St. Thomas, this beatitude of cleanliness of heart
corresponds to the gift of understanding, which allows us
to penetrate divine things. In this way, living faith be­
comes penetrating; it understands mysteries and in partic­
ular the superiority of the last end compared with other
ends: how God, infinite Love, is immensely superior to the
objects of concupiscence and pride. This is the contempla­
tion which was the source of the Apostles’ fruitful
preaching.
Then: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall he
called the children of God. These are the truly wise and
happy, not because they are peacemakers in a human way,
but because they see all things in relation to God. They
worry not, but find true peace, preserve it and communi­
cate it to others who are worried. This peace is the tran­
quility of order which springs from the gift of wisdom,
because this gift connaturally judges everything in relation
to God. By it we know, almost by experiencing it, that evil
comes only because it is permitted by God for a greater
good. Peace is thus preserved, and these peacemakers
reconcile men who are divided among themselves. They
are makers of peace, like great pastors or bishops.2
Finally, the eighth beatitude is the most perfect of all,
because it expresses perseverance in spite of unjust trials:

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Priesthood and Perfection

Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’ sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This meritorious act
springs from all the virtues and gifts, particularly from
heroic patience in persecution by which the soul is finally
purified, so that a super-human happiness is found even
in those torments. These sublime words were never heard
before, and they are a sign of supernatural wisdom and
mortification. Referring to these words, St. John Chryso­
stom says: “He who seeks only the glory of God is not
afraid of being defeated in the sight of men.”
Theirs is the kingdom of heaven, the joy of contempla­
tion and union with God even amid persecutions.
This is a vivid and concrete description of the greatness
of Christian perfection; as grace surpasses nature, it is
immensely superior to merely human perfection of which

The Correlation of the Virtues and Gifts

Theo­
logical
Virtues

Cardinal
Virtues

Faith

Gift of wisdom

Blessed are the
peacemakers

Hope

Gift of under­
standing

Blessed are the
clean of heart

Charity

Gift of knowl­
edge

Blessed are they
who weep

Prudence

Gift of counsel

Blessed are the
merciful

Gift of piety
Justice
(religion)

Blessed are the
meek

Fortitude

Gift of fortitude

Blessed are they
who hunger and
thirst after justice

Temper­
ance

Gift of fear

Blessed are the
poor.

The Beatitudes Measure Perfection

121

the wise Greeks spoke. And those words throw light on
the proposition in which the whole sermon on the Mount
is summed up : Be you, therefore, perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect. Have that perfection which is super­
natural, not merely angelic but divine, whose goal is to see
God, as He sees Himself, immediately, and to love Him
forever.
Priests in particular should strive after this perfection.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 8

1. See, in particular, S.T., 1-2, q. 63, a. 3.
2. See ibid., 2-2, q. 45.

CHAPTER 9

Interior Life of the Priest

1. Introduction
It is the aim of Spiritual Theology to unite, with a prac­
tical view, teaching which is to be found in various theo­
logical tracts of St. Thomas.
There are many Christians who, though accepting in
general the redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ, yet
fail to give sufficient thought to their own personal sancti­
fication and salvation. The early Christians, on the con­
trary, were most zealous and generous in their striving
after personal holiness. Influenced by practical naturalism,
many men and women of today, including Christians, no
longer appreciate the sterling worth of a temperate and
personal Christian life and seem to think that the achieve­
ments of our modem civilization are of more lasting value
than that nobility of soul which was the possession of our
Christian forefathers. Indeed the terrifying breakdown of
the modem world is due precisely to the fact that it is no
longer profoundly or properly Christian. It is important to
emphasize in a practical way the value of redemption, not
only for mankind in general but for the individual and
humble follower of Jesus Christ, thereby encouraging all
to greater personal generosity.
123

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Priesthood and Perfection

This has been discussed in various ways by St. Bernard,
St. John of the Cross, St. Francis de Sales, and recently for
priests by Cardinal Mercier in La Vie Intérieure, Appel
aux Ames Sacerdotales, and by my grand-uncle Canon
Maurice Garrigou, who during the French Revolution
accomplished much in the province of Toulouse. I quote
from his principal writing on the interior life, published
in the Revue d' Ascétique et de Mystique, 1937, pp. 124—
140: "Considérations sur la Vie Intérieure."
2. Erroneous ideas
Some think that the interior life is a state of soul in
which sensible feeling plays a dominant part, a “sentimen­
talism” which emphasizes a sickly shadow of love which
is wholly or partly absent from the will. Effective charity
is thus sacrificed to affective charity, which in turn is adul­
terated and confused with sensible devotion. Shortlived as
a fire in chaff, this state of soul gives way to one of spir­
itual sloth from which it is difficult to escape. In short,
these souls erroneously believe that they possess an interior
life which they are far from having and they simulate some­
thing they could not have experienced.
Others, on the contrary, have such an elevated concept
of the spiritual life that they make it a thing extraordinary,
reserved, a privilege for the few, unattainable by the many.
Accordingly, these rest content with a lifeless and mechan­
ical round of spiritual exercises and seek in outward activ­
ity the life for which they yearn. As will later be appar­
ent, both these views have false notions of the goal to be
achieved and the principal means of attaining it. There are,

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125

indeed, other erroneous views of the interior life, but they
can be reduced to the two which we have just mentioned.
This is how Cardinal Mercier speaks of them: "Some
would have the perfect interior life to be the exclusive
possession of privileged souls. Others despair of attaining
it because of some sin of frailty, whereas the chief obstacle
for them is not their weakness, but their pride. Then there
are inexperienced souls who confuse imaginary perfection
with that real and concrete perfection which the Gospel
bids us, in accordance with God’s will, seek here and now.
Others would seem to believe that perfection is inseparable
from some particular natural ability which they themselves
do not possess They do not realize that the indispensable
condition for the life of union is humility, which is founded
on supernatural charity and strengthened by our Holy
Communion.”
3. True interior life

What then is the true interior life? The great spiritual
writers reply: The interior life is a life of intimate union
with God, achieved by perfect self-denial and by constant
recollection and prayer. This doctrine, taught and devel­
oped by St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St.
Thomas, the Imitation of Christ, St. John of the Cross, St.
Francis de Sales, has strong scriptural foundation, in par­
ticular these words of St. Paul: "Therefore if you be risen
with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ
is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that
are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you
are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When

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Priesthood and Perfection

Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall
appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:1—3). “But above all
these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection”
(Ibid., 3:14). That is: you are dead with reference to a
life of sin, but your new life is a hidden one, the life of
sanctifying grace which with charity is the seed of glory.
Hence every just man, every soul in sanctifying grace, must
develop an interior life so conceived that he can say with
St. Paul: “For I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me”
(Gal. 2:20). For this new life infused into the soul by
baptism and nourished by the Eucharist is the life of Christ,
Head of the Mystical Body of which I am a member. We
must live more and more by virtue of this higher life so
that Christ may be more living within us than we ourselves;
so that through Him and with Him we think, pray, desire,
suffer and work—indeed, so that His life may be extended
to and prolonged in ours. In brief, our life is hidden in
God with Christ, who desires unceasingly to live in us as
in His members: “I am the true vine, you are the branches”
(John 15:3). This is clearly the teaching of revelation
upon the true nature of the interior life as viewed from
the goal of that life, namely intimate union with God
through Christ. Book II, chapter 1, of the Imitation should
be read as a commentary on this doctrine. There the author
speaks of the internal conversation of the soul with God,
and goes on to explain the words of our Lord: "If any­
one love me, he will keep my word. And we will come to
him and will make our abode with him” (John 14:23)—
‘we’ i.e., the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
To avoid all danger of illusion, however, the distance

Interior Life of the Priest

1 27

between the two terms of this spiritual ascent must always
be kept in mind. Father Maurice Garrigou writes: "We
live, but it is we ourselves rather than Christ that lives
within us, because vanity, flightiness of thought, incon­
stancy, dissipation, the bewitching of vanity that obscures
good things’ (Wisdom 4:12) and inordinate love of self all
get the better of us and hinder in us the growth of the love
of God and our neighbor. Frequently we live not interiorly,
but exteriorly in the regions of imagination and sensibility;
and our soul is so confused that the very source of our
being remains unknown to us. And yet the center of our
being should be the dwelling-place of the Most Holy Trin­
ity. In this way only can the Kingdom of Christ be estab­
lished within us so that He may be for us the life-giving
Vine and the Head of His members. This interior life,
however, remains for us as strange as that of a far-off
country.”

4. Growth in true interior life
(A) Perfect self-denial
To reach the desired goal, two means are vitally neces­
sary: perfect self-denial, and a constant and prayerful recol­
lection in God. The same truth is expressed more formally
in the statement that union with God is achieved by the
purgative way in which self-denial plays a considerable
part, and the illuminative way which is characterized by
constant recollection and quasi-continual prayer. To each
of these two means great attention must be paid, as well
as due consideration for the situation and circumstances in

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Priesthood and Perfection

which each individual person will find himself. Self-denial,
according to St. Basil, is a parting from that self-will not
conformed to the divine will. It is a mysterious dying to
all inordinate inclinations, says St. John of the Cross. This
voluntary emptying calms the tumult of our passions and
creates in the soul that peace and tranquility which is the
foundation of the interior life. But we will be deceiving
ourselves if we think that our passions are dead when they
are but quieted; what is cast forth returns promptly and
what is quenched is easily set afire again. We must be on
our guard against dalliance with the initial suggestion of
sin. Self-denial is a voluntary dying to the world, to vanity,
pride, attachment to one’s own opinions and impulses. It is
opposed to any self-complacency in the virtues or talents
which God has granted to us and is indeed, in the words
of St. Paul, “a daily dying” to the lower life in order that
we may receive the higher. By this voluntary renunciation
or expropriation, the soul, no longer moved by inordinate
self-love, is rendered entirely docile to the Holy Spirit, and
full scope is given to His gifts. Previously, these gifts were
like sails fastened to the mast of a ship; now they are
unfurled and filled by the wind. The mind follows the
inclination of a heart which has been renewed, because
everyone judges according to his inclination; and these
inclinations are now those of a heart purified and inflamed
by the love of God, and it is toward God that the flame
consistently rises. Thus the soul that has been freed from
the hindrance of self-love and egoism finds its rest 'heartto-heart” in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is there attentive
to every divine inspiration and God speaks, as it were,
spiritually to such a soul by the inspiration of the seven

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129

gifts which are in the soul of every just man. So "the
Spirit himself giveth testimony that we are the sons of
God” (Rom. 8:16).
I B) Constant and prayerful recollection

Self-abnegation thus understood in a practical and con­
crete way leads to that habitual recollection which is the
second necessary means toward union with God. Incon­
stant souls who are one day recollected and the following
day given to outward things, thus losing great graces, do
not arrive at the goal. They never seem to grasp the mean­
ing of the Psalmist: “Taste and see how sweet is the Lord”
(Ps. 33). This is the recollection which our Lord speaks
of when He says: "We ought always to pray and not to
faint” (Luke 18:1). It is the interior prayer of desire which
is ever ascending before the throne of God, the breathing-in
by the soul, so to speak, of the actual grace which sustains
us spiritually just as the air we breathe into our lungs
clears and renews the blood stream. The illuminative way
consists in this almost continuous prayer of recollection and
docility to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Hence the
words of the Imitation are very appropriate: "Many are
found to desire contemplation, but they are not careful to
practice those things which are required for its attain­
ment.” Again: "Unless a man be disengaged from all
things created, he cannot freely attend to things divine.
And this is the reason why there are found so few contem­
plative persons, because there are few who know how to
separate themselves entirely from perishable creatures. For
this a great grace is required, such as may elevate the soul
and lift her above herself. And unless a man be elevated

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Priesthood and Perfection

in spirit and freed from attachment to all creatures and
wholly united to God, whatever he knows and whatever
he has is of no great importance. Far more noble is that
learning which flows from above, from the divine influence,
than that which is laboriously acquired by the industry of
man.” That a priest should be able to preach the divine
word from the abundance of his heart is certainly much
more noble and necessary. "A good man out of a good
treasure bringeth forth good things” (Matt. 12:35)—and
this good treasure will not remain idle.

5. Perfect self-denial and continual recollection lead
to intimate union with God
Perfect self-denial and continual recollection, which are
in no way incompatible with an active life, lead the Chris­
tian soul, in particular the soul of a priest, toward union
with God—that is, to true joy and youth, and to the unitive life of the perfect which is the treasure from which
the priest draws forth good things. It is founded upon a
lively faith enlightened by the gifts of the Holy Spirit and
upon a charity which is both affective and effective. Faith
of this kind, enlightened by the gifts of Understanding
and Wisdom, usually acquires a cognitio sapida et pene­
trans "a penetrating and savouring knowledge” of divine
things; and this leads to a special act of charity called
"infused,” as it proceeds not only from infused charity
but also from a particular inspiration. This act, however,
remains human, free, and meritorious, made by the soul
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus in a very
real sense “the Spirit gives testimony that we are the sons
of God”; by the gift of Piety He fills us with the love of

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131

children for their Father. This intimate union with God
proceeds in the normal development of things from the
three theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
all of which are in the soul of every man in the state of
grace, and increase step by step with charity and should
continue to increase until we have drawn the last breath.
A priest must desire, humbly yet confidently and eag­
erly, this intimate union with God and Jesus Christ, in
order that he may be united with Christ the supreme priest
and truly nourish the souls of his flock. In every prayer,
humility and confidence should be united. Otherwise a
priest cannot become another Christ.
Elevated though it be, this intimate union is not de jure
extraordinary, a fact which marks it off from graces which,
properly speaking, are extraordinary, such as the gift of
prophecy, knowledge of hearts, stigmatization, the gift of
tongues.
The unitive life fulfills in various ways those words of
St. Paul: "I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ . . . that he would grant you, according to
the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his Spirit
with might unto the inward man: that Christ may dwell
by faith in your hearts: that, being rooted and founded
in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the
saints, what is the breadth and length and height and
depth, to know also the charity of Christ, which surpassed;
all knowledge: that you may be filled unto all the fulness
of God” (Eph. 3:14-19). “So that,” comments St. Thomas,
“you may participate perfectly in all God’s gifts, namely in
the plenitude of virtue and afterwards in that of beatitude
which is the effect of charity.”

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Priesthood and Perfection

But all this does not mean that in the unitive life the
soul has no longer any crosses to bear. On the contrary, the
soul now begins to read with an understanding which daily
grows deeper the lesson of the cross, and fired with the
love of Christ crucified she desires to have some share in
His sorrows. I “now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill
up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ
in my flesh for his body, which is the Church” (Col. 1:24).
Thus it is that Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, leads
certain of His members to a life of reparation for the salva­
tion of others. Just as the supreme Cause bestows on crea­
tures the dignity of causality, so likewise does Christ our
Redeemer bestow on many of His members the dignity of
a life of reparation. These privileged souls make reparation
in Christ and through Christ and with Christ, so that the
merits of His passion, which of itself is all sufficient and
of infinite value, may be applied to their own souls and to
the souls of others. To be effective of salvation, these merits
lack nothing but their full application to our own souls and
the souls of all sinners.
6. Answering the call of Christ

There is a danger that we do not sufficiently answer
this call of Christ. The call to intimate union with God
corresponds, for the priest, not only to the counsel but to
the precept and obligation to strive after the perfection of
charity. Nor is it only, as we have said, a general obligation
based on the supreme precept to love God and our neigh­
bor, but a special obligation based on priestly ordination
and on the priestly office. It is serious, therefore, not to
answer this cal). Christ calls His priests to intimate union

Interior Life of the Priest

133

with Himself. He calls them in many ways: externally
through the Gospel and through lectures given during
spiritual exercises; interiorly by special graces. If a priest
does not answer this call, if he does not come, if he does
not hear, if he even draws back, then there is danger that
Christ will no longer call him in the same way, nor in the
same way will He "knock at the gate of our heart.” “Behold
I stand at the gate and knock. If any man shall hear my
voice and open to me the door, I will come in to him and
will sup with him: and he with me” (Apoc. 3:20). The
proximately sufficient graces which the soul has resisted
will then become more rare, and there will perhaps remain
graces which are only remotely sufficient for intimate union
with God. This has happened because the priest “has not
known the time of the visitation of the Lord.” He should
then say to himself: “I am a priest and souls need my min­
istry.” As St. Augustine said : “God does not order us to do
impossible things, but in ordering us He admonishes us to
do what we can and ask His help for whatever is outside
our power.” I must pray, therefore, with humility, confi­
dence, perseverance, and Christ will hear me again so that
I may work with fruit in His vineyard. To me also has it
been said: “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened
and I will refresh you.”
The priest ought then to continue his ascent until he
reaches the summit to which he was called on the day of
his ordination, and he should do so particularly because
the souls of his flock need it. And he should not break
his journey until he has reached the end.
This teaching is based on the Gospels, on the Epistles of
St. Paul, and on what St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. John

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Priesthood and Perfection

of the Cross, and St. Francis de Sales later taught about
the greatness of the supreme precept, the charity of those
in via which should always increase until death, and their
teaching on the seven gifts which are connected with char­
ity and which as infused habits grow normally with the
growth of charity. It is based also on the fact that in order
for a priest to preach from the abundance of his heart he
must have a living faith illuminated by the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, and both affective and effective charity which
can be communicated for the salvation of souls.
In short, that a priest may be another Christ he must
have in his soul the fire of charity—a zeal for the glory of
God and the salvation of souls—which will imply an almost
constant communion with God about the ministry which
is to be carried out in His name. This is not merely prob­
able, but certain.
As a complement to what has been said about the need
for a perfect self-denial and recollection in order for a
priest to reach perfection, we shall speak now about the
interrelation of the virtues and their progressive purifi­
cation in view of perfection. Here we shall show more
clearly the harmony between the teaching of St. Thomas
on the virtues and on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the
teaching of the great spiritual writers like St. John of the
Cross, St. Francis de Sales and others.

CHAPTER 10

Virtues of the Priestly Life

1. Harmony of the virtues

In modem times, when faced with great international
disturbance, many people speak of a new world and a new
order; but they do not sufficiently realize what the Church
has often pointed out: that there must be a link between
progress and tradition, that we cannot be sure of a worthy
and peaceful future unless we build it upon what is best
in the past. The new must be based on the old; if not, the
new world will be without a foundation and will pass away
without bearing any fruit; if it despises the past, it too will
be despised after it has labored in vain to achieve some­
thing worthwhile.
It is often said that in every living organism there must
be a force which assimilates new food and a force which
conserves, and that there must be an equilibrium between
these two forces. The organism will die if there is no new
assimilation; and death, through a loss of strength, will be
the outcome, if the food which is assimilated is not con­
served. If an automobile is to run properly it must have
power and brakes.
In the Church and in every society there must be an
135

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Priesthood and Perfection

equilibrium between the progressive and the conserv­
ing force. If there is no progress, as in the Eastern schis­
matic churches, there will be the immobility of death; if
there is no conserving tradition, as in liberal Protestantism
and in that type of socialism which leads to materialistic
communism and atheism, there will be the instability of
constant change. In the latter case, the descent without
any brake becomes very dangerous.
In order to preserve an equilibrium of forces, both in
individual life and in the life of the community, it is not
enough for us Christians to have a natural dynamism, such
as democratic aspirations. These aspirations are, of course,
some help against dictatorship and totalitarianism, but
without Christian traditions they are clearly insufficient to
preserve the equilibrium of which we have spoken.
On the other hand, this equilibrium is preserved by the
Holy Spirit through the interrelation of the virtues. It is
of this precious fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:22)
that I would now like to speak.
First of all, it must be remembered that sins are not
connected one with another. As St. Thomas points out,1
all mortal sins are a turning away from God, and therefore
one cannot be remitted without another; they are not,
however, connected. Actually, they are often contrary to
one another, for example greed and prodigality, cowardice
and rashness. Evil things therefore are opposed to one
another and eventually destroy one another.
On the other hand all virtues have the same goal and
therefore, especially in their perfect form, are connected
one with the other in prudence and charity.
Virtues in an imperfect form—that is, when they are

Virtues of the Priestly Life

137

only insecure and unstable dispositions—are not connected.
They are of three kinds.
(a) Natural temperament. One who by natural tem­
perament is brave is often not gentle.
(T) Acquired disposition. The soldier who has learned
to be brave in battle and is such not through love of the
virtue, but through desire for glory, is often sensual. At
times this sensuality prevents him from fulfilling his mili­
tary duties.
(c) True virtues in process of formation. Even when
true virtues are being formed, but are still dispositions
which are easily moved, they are not yet connected. One
can be in the process of acquiring the virtue of justice and
yet not be chaste.
Moreover, as long as the soul remains in the state
of mortal sin, those acquired virtues which were in the
process of formation are not connected. In such a case,
the soul is turned away from its ultimate end and is there­
fore ill-prepared to fulfill its obligations, even those of the
natural order.
But when the Holy Spirit comes into the soul through
charity, the true acquired virtues w'hich were in process of
formation are strengthened, and if sufficiently firm, solid,
and stable, are connected one with another. A fortiori,
infused virtues are connected with charity, as properties
flowing from sanctifying grace.2
Aristotle’s dictum that true prudence cannot exist with­
out the moral virtues and that the latter cannot exist with­
out prudence, their director, finds its experimental proof in
the life of the just man. Prudence, in truth, is the "chari­
oteer of the virtues,” the "right way of doing things.”

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Priesthood and Perfection

The principal reason for this connection of the virtues
is: Each person considers that end agreeable which is in
harmony with his affections. The ambitious man finds
agreeable whatever is favorable to his ambition, the mild
man whatever is comformable with mildness.
In practice, each person judges according to his own
inclinations of will and emotion. If, therefore, these incli­
nations are not rectified by virtues, the practical judgment
will not be right. At times this judgment may appear pru­
dent because of a certain perspicacity, expertness or astute­
ness, but it will not be truly prudent, because in it there
will be a defect either of justice or patience or temperance
or mildness or simplicity; perhaps there will be a certain
duplicity, haste, or laziness.
The Holy Spirit, therefore, when He comes into the
soul, connects through prudence and charity the infused
virtues, and even the acquired virtues—if previously there
has been sufficient exercise to acquire them. Thus, all vir­
tues grow together, says St. Thomas, "like the five fingers
of a hand.”3
Moreover, the Holy Spirit has linked up the virtues and
the gifts, for, as St. Thomas shows,4 the seven gifts are
linked up with charity in that the Holy Spirit and the
seven gifts are given when charity is infused into the soul.
This is true of every person in the state of grace, depend­
ing upon the degree of charity which he possesses. This
harmony is wonderful, particularly in the case of those who
are near perfection. Thus, chastity is helped in time of
temptation by the gift of fear, “Fix my flesh, O Lord, in
your fear”; fortitude by the gift of fortitude, especially
when one is faced with martyrdom; justice toward God—
or religion, which gives God the worship due him—

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is helped, particularly in time of involuntary aridity, by
the gift of piety, from which springs a filial affection for
God. When one is faced with complex situations, or unfore­
seen difficulties, prudence is assisted by the gift of counsel.
Faith, assisted by the gift of understanding, penetrates the
mysteries of salvation. Similarly, hope is assisted against
presumption by the gift of fear, and under the inspiration
of the gift of knowledge it realizes the vanity of created
things and the gravity of sin. Thus through hope we more
ardently desire to possess God and His grace. Finally, charity
is assisted by the gift of wisdom by which we sec all things
in God as their supreme cause and ultimate end; thus, we
see that all good things proceed from Him, and that evil
only comes when divine providence permits it for a higher
good which we see so clearly that we shall cooperate in
achieving it. This produces peace; and, according to St.
Augustine, the gift of wisdom corresponds to the happiness
of those who are at peace.
However, since intellectual gifts are both speculative and
practical, they will appear in some just people in a con­
templative form, in others in a practical form, more directly
related, as in the case of St. Vincent de Paul, to action.
This wonderful harmony or interrelation of the virtues
and gifts is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. In the Epistle to
the Galatians we read: "The fruit of the Holy Ghost is
charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longa­
nimity, meekness, faith, modesty, continence, chastity.’’

2. Exemplified in Christ
In Jesus Christ, particularly, this wonderful harmony
appears; for in Him the virtues, even those that appear
opposed to each other, such as meekness and fortitude, are

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united in a most intimate manner. Our divine Lord had
all the virtues in a heroic degree. In Him the most ardent
love of God and an immense mercy toward sinners are
wondrously blended; in Him are united a love of truth and
justice and the greatest compassion for sinners, a compas­
sion for those who tortured Him, for whom He prayed
at the moment of His crucifixion, fulfilling most beautifully
the words of the Psalmist: "Mercy and truth have met each
other: justice and peace have kissed” (Ps. 84:11).
In Christ we find profound humility joined to great
dignity and great-heartedness; the fortitude of a martyr to
the meekness of the crucified; the highest wisdom to perfect
prudence.
This sublime harmony of the heroic virtues in Christ,
and the fact that it endured to the very end of His life
is a “moral miracle,” as apologists have pointed out: a
miracle confirming Christ’s claim to be divine.
Something similar, although of a less heroic degree, is
found in the lives of true martyrs. According to St.
Thomas5 and Benedict XIVe we can distinguish true
martyrs from false ones by observing how the virtues are
joined in them. Like our divine Lord and St. Stephen,
true martyrs are at the same time brave, humble, and gentle;
they pray for their persecutors. False martyrs are different:
their fanaticism is a certain blind obstinacy which avoids
discussion, rules out wisdom, prudence, modesty, humility,
and meekness. As apologists have shown, the constancy of
martyrs is a direct result of God’s action, manifested by the
surpassing beauty of virtues, so varied and different, joined
together in splendid unity.

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Conclusion
In our day men must do penance for their sins and for
the "works of the flesh”—"sensuality, the service of
(modern) idols, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths,
quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies.”
We must ask the Holy Spirit to give us those fruits of
His which are "charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity,
goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency,
chastity.” We must pray and strive daily to reach that
unity of the virtues in charity, "which is patient, kind . . .
which suffers all things, believes all things, hopes for all
things, endures all things.”
Only in this way will be preserved, in our own individual
life and in the collective life of religious Orders and the
Church, the conservative force and the progressive force.
And what is best in the past will be preserved as a founda­
tion for a worthy and fruitful future, so that it shall really
be a beginning of life eternal.

3. Application of doctrine to priestly perfection

“The Spirit of truth will teach you all truth” (John
16:13), but "try the spirits if they be of God” (1 John
4:1).
I would like now, in a practical way, to make some
applications of the doctrine of the connection of the virtues
and gifts, so that we may understand better the nature
of priestly and religious perfection.
In modern times, particularly, there is need for a renewal
of the interior life. For this renewal, two qualities are
necessary: a unity of mind, so that the intellect can see,

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amid such great complexity, what should be preserved from
tradition and what progress should be made; and a living
flame of charity in the heart, so that charity may be not
only "affective" but "effective” as well.
Every false mysticism thinks that it can give this unity
of mind and ardor of heart. Even the mysticism of com­
munism, although materialistic and atheistic, says that it
can give these two qualities; but in reality it leads to
tyranny and universal slavery.
And it is clear that these two qualities cannot be supplied
by those aspirations which gradually substitute for true
faith, hope, and the love of God, a faith and hope in
humanity and a merely theoretical love of humanity. These
are great ideas gone mad, as Chesterton said.
For us to have a unity of mind in the intellect and in the
heart a love of God and one’s neighbor, there must be this
connection of the virtues, of faith, hope, charity, the moral
virtues and the gifts.
This connection is very different from that romantic
sentimentalism which is not interested in the virtues; it
helps one immensely in the examination of one’s conscience
and in true spiritual progress.
Without this connection a priest cannot unite all the
qualities necessary for him, qualities urgently needed today.
In the life of a priest there must be a conservation of
what is true in Christian tradition and a progress in true
charity toward his neighbor, a charity which promotes
greater distributive and social justice and does away with
excessive inequality of circumstances.
To bring this about, a spirit of liturgical prayer, especially
in the celebration of Mass, and a true devotion to the

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Eucharist are most helpful. The Eucharist contains the
best of the past—the passion of Christ, of which the
Eucharist is a memorial and an application—and the best
of the future—progress in charity as the beginning of
eternal life. It is not enough to know what Christ once
said, historically; one must know His influence now in the
life of the Church. For the Eucharist contains "Christ who
is always alive to intercede for us,” Christ who actually
offers the Masses daily celebrated. Thus a living devotion
to the Eucharist harmonizes beautifully what is best in the
past and what is best in the future, with a view of reaching
eternal life.
Thus also are united in the priestly life an interior life
and an external apostlate. If prayer is neglected, the apostolate becomes too external, sterile, no longer vital because
separated from its living source; it becomes almost
mechanical. In order to be lifegiving and fruitful, it must
proceed "from the abundance of the heart.”
For this interior life to become the “soul of the apostolate,” there must be increasing self-denial and habitual
recollection, which lead to a living faith illuminated by the
gifts of intellect and wisdom, a spirit of prayer or filial piety
tou’ard God, and a practical charity. In this way alone can
the priest truly become the salt of the earth and the life
of the world.
He must also unite in himself a firm faith, without any
indulgence for error, and a great mercy toward those who
have gone astray. His faith would suffer if he had that kind
of liberalism which leads to indifference, and he would
fail in mercy if he had a rigorism like that of the Jansenists.
His life, therefore, should be a summit between and above

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these two opposing deviations. But this summit cannot
be reached unless the virtues are united to a very high
degree.
A priest must also unite simplicity and a prudence which
attends to particular things—"the prudence of a serpent
and the simplicity of a dove.” He would fail in simplicity
and be guilty of duplicity, were he to become utilitarian in
outlook or an opportunist. On the other hand, he would
not be truly prudent, were his simplicity too ingenuous,
were he not to recognize a real evil which must be avoided,
were he unable to discern the attacks of evil people who
abuse the simplicity of the good. Thus, particularly in
difficult times, a high degree of prudence without utilitar­
ianism must be linked to a deep simplicity without any
naivety. This is impossible without an intimate union of
the virtues, and even of the gifts.
A priest must also unite meekness with the firmness of
justice and strength. He must be firm without being rigid,
possessing commutative, distributive, and social justice,
and even equity or epikeia which looks to the spirit rather
than to the letter of the law, especially when the exact
observance of the law would be a cause of great injury.
On the other hand, the meekness of a priest must not
become an inept weakness and an indulgence toward those
who are evil; otherwise the good would suffer through the
excessive daring of the wicked. This also demands a linking
up of the virtues in an elevated degree.
The priest must also unite true humility and dignity or
magnanimity, always striving to do great things. These two
virtues are not opposed but complementary; they help each
other like the two slopes of an arch which support a build-

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145

ing. Magnanimity prevents humility from degenerating into
cowardice, and humility prevents magnanimity from degen­
erating into pride and ambition. Pride is an inordinate love
of one’s own excellence, but magnanimity strives mod­
erately after great things, things worthy of great honor,
but it does not do so greedily. Rather, it despises honors
in comparing them with the great thing after which it
strives with courage and calmness.
Finally, a priest must have absolute and perfect chastity.
But he cannot be cold of heart, because he must have com­
passion for those who are in trouble and sympathize with
them.
All these demand the linking up of the virtues in a very
high degree. May this, by the help of the Holy Spirit, be
achieved in us. We should pray for it. “Ask and you shall
receive”: this should be asked for in the name of the Lord
Jesus.
In practice, one must insist particularly on the initmate
union of humble obedience and fraternal charity. As St.
Francis de Sales says, humble obedience, w'hich preserves
what is best in tradition, is like the root of a tree which
penetrates the ground to draw nourishment from it; but
fraternal charity is like the high, fruitful branches. The
harmony of these two vitrues in the soul of a just man
resembles the union of these two parts of a tree.
If the deeper roots and higher branches function properly
the tree is at its best. Similarly in a human soul, or in a
community, if humble obedience and fraternal charity
grow, that soul or that community is good. And if ever
anything is wanting in prudence or energy, then God will
supply it by the gifts of counsel and fortitude.

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This teaching is full of consolation. Fortunately, sins are
not interconnected; frequently they are opposed one to
another. But the virtues, and even the gifts, are connected
in charity. Thus in Communion, for example, there can­
not be any increase in charity without an increase also in
the other infused virtues and in the seven gifts; virtues,
like “the five fingers of a child’s hand, all grow together.”
Conclusion

Gradually, through the interconnection and growth of
both the acquired and infused virtues, the priest will
acquire that spiritual character corresponding to his high
vocation. This is evident in the lives of saintly priests and
religious, particularly in the lives of the founders of reli­
gious orders.
Thus, in spite of great difficulties and worries, there is
preserved—I will not call it optimism because a natural
optimism of temperament is not sufficient; nor conventional
optimism, which remains external and superficial—but
something greater than optimism: a confidence in God, an
infused and strengthened hope, and a true charity, affective
and effective, toward all, particularly toward those who
are unhappy, poor and in need of help.
By humble, devoted and persevering prayer, we obtain
from the Holy Spirit the two qualities of mind which are
so necessary, a unity of spirit which in such a great com­
plexity judges accurately according to the Spirit of God and
not merely according to the spirit of one’s nature, and a
living flame of increasing love. In this way, the spirit of
tradition and true progress are harmonized, so that the

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present time, made fruitful by the past, may produce fruit
in the future, the real prelude in us to life eternal.
NOTES TO CHAPTER

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

1 0

See S.T., 1-2, q. 73, a. 1.
See Ibid., q. 65, aa. 1 and 2.
Ibid., q. 66, a. 2.
See Ibid., q. 68, a. 5.
See St. Thomas Aquinas, Quod. IV, a. 9.
See Benedict XIV, De Servorum Dei Beatificatione, III, 21.

—

CHAPTER 1 1

Purification of Virtues Is Necessary

for Priestly Perfection

1. Introduction

After having considered, in the light of priestly perfec­
tion, the interrelation of the virtues, we shall now consider
the progressive purification of virtues.
St. John of the Cross discussed this question at some
length. In the Dark Night of the Soul he begins by dealing
with the defects of beginners. These are, in particular, a
kind of spiritual greed, which is an immoderate desire for
sensible consolation (sentimentalism, as it is called nowa­
days), and a certain unconscious, secret spiritual pride. In
time of aridity, these are followed by spiritual laziness or
acedia. Thus the capital sins reappear, but are now centered
on things of piety. This is an indication that the virtues
have not been sufficiently purified from a mixture of selflove; they are not yet sufficiently strong, and they need to
be purified—St. John of the Cross, however, does not speak
of the defects which arise later in our ministry of souls.
In order to speak in a practical way for our own time, I
shall briefly discuss the failings of young priests and
149

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religious, as far as external activity is concerned, as they
have been noted without any exaggeration, even with great
benevolence, by many spiritual directors.

2. Defects of young priests

Superiors have a grave obligation in conscience to pre­
pare young priests for contact with the real world, so that
they will not lose part of their interior life soon after their
ordination. On the contrary, they should be perfected in it
to work diligently for the salvation of souls.
I will tell you what the Superior General of a certain
Congregation, a good and very experienced man, wrote
to me.
The difficulties to be overcome should be carefully noted.
There is a great difference between the life of recollection
in a seminary or convent and in the public life of the
ministry. And often, young priests and religious, although
studious and pious, are really immature and altogether too
naïve when they begin their ministry. As a result there is
a grave fear that the serious difficulties of their life in the
ministry will be too much for them and will produce sad
results.
Generally speaking, young priests, precisely because of
their youth, are not prudent; being in the state of grace
they have a certain infused prudence, but they often lack
acquired prudence or else they have it only in its initial
stages, in embryo. A good young priest is inclined to be
indiscreetly zealous; he has too much confidence in him­
self, although often not conscious of it, and he may even

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secretly live somewhat naturalistically, contusing natural
ambitions with the pure desire of doing good.
At times, a young priest may even think that he already
knows the spiritual ways of the Lord, and in a secret
spiritual pride he thinks that he can lead souls to a high
perfection. In this case the danger is more serious, because
the young priest has no doubts about himself, but gives his
decisions with great confidence and puts great trust in
himself; when it is perhaps too late he will see the mistakes
he has made.
What follows, therefore?—The indiscreet zeal and the
consolations which he often receives in his first assignment
drive the young priest completely to the ministry and he
says with ardor: “Lord, give me souls.” Then by degrees
he comes to regard the time of prayer, study, and recollec­
tion almost as time lost; it is easy to see what follows.
His ministry becomes sterile; instead of sanctifying him and
his flock, his activities actually block real progress.
Furthermore, young priests are now living in an age
which feels the need to love and be loved. Saints know their
own weakness; they do not trust themselves, but do what
obedience dictates to them. Generally speaking, young
priests are not like that. They are daring; they despise
danger and trust in themselves; their cocksureness is
lamentable.
They need, therefore, a special preparation for the
realities of life. Directors must insist particularly on the
need for a truly interior life, so that the priest may be
able to give and not lose in his work for souls.
Directors must emphatically point out that external min­

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istry cannot take the place of prayer. In our work for souls,
we must give, but we cannot always be giving; we must
also receive from God, and it is in prayer that we receive
light and love and strength.
Directors must also note also the dangers of preaching,
hearing confessions, spiritual direction, random visits, and
even direction which is given in private letters on matters
of conscience. Otherwise, an imprudent young priest would
unconsciously and gradually lose his true and holy liberty
of spirit and union with Jesus Christ. He would spend
much time in trivialities and in affections, spiritual in
appearance, which do not help either the director or the
person being directed to advance spiritually.
Because of these different dangers, the junior priests in
some Orders and Congregations are first given work in a
ministry within the convent itself and only gradually and
slowly is the external ministry entrusted to them. More­
over, they remain for some time under the care of a senior
Father, who with wisdom and kindness leads them to full
maturity and complete priestly formation. In the judgment
of major Superiors, this practical problem is of great impor­
tance for the true formation of a priestly conscience. In
their spiritual exercises, preachers and confessors should
deal with this question gently but firmly.
From all this, it is evident that young priests still need
a great purification and strengthening of the virtues.
Because of the mixture of inordinate self-love, these virtues
are still very imperfect and weak, in that the soul seeking
God seeks itself and its own satisfaction to a great degree.
This is not yet very evident in the novitiate or seminary
but it appears openly in the beginning of one’s ministry,

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153

with that natural activity which is not sufficiently sanctified
and directed toward God. It has been that "novices have
the appearance of holiness but are not really so; young
priests have neither the appearance of holiness nor holiness
itself; and if they do not make progress, they become use­
less and sterile in their apostolate.”
3. How the virtues are purified

St. Thomas discusses this question when he deals with
the purgative virtues and the virtues of a purified soul,1 and
St. John of the Cross, in the Dark Night of the Soul
especially, deals at length with both the active and passive
purification of the spirit and the senses.
Theologically, this purification consists in the exercise
of each virtue, infused as well as acquired, more and more
in line with its formal motive, and not because of some
lower motive which is associated with it. In this way, each
virtue is purified from anything which weakens it to a
greater or lesser degree. Humility, for example, is freed
from every kind of cowardice and false humility; religion
and piety from all sentimentality and spiritual greed;
fortitude from all rashness and over-confidence in oneself;
gentleness from every weakness and over indulgence;
prudence not only from imprudence and negligence but
from all utilitarianism and opportunism as well. In this
way the soul finds equilibrium and harmony between and
above the opposing deviations—of rigorism and liberalism,
for example—and so there is a perfect harmony between a
very strong faith in the face of error and a great charity
toward the erring.
Every virtue is specified by its own proper object and

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formal motive. It follows that virtue is purified by looking
more and more to this formal object. This is particularly
important in causes for beatification, because it brings more
clearly to light the heroic nature of the different virtues and
the spirit in which their actions are performed.
Virtues are purified in the same way as gold is purified
from its defects in a furnace, a comparison often used in
Sacred Scripture. “As gold is tried in the furnace, so the
Lord trieth the hearts” (Prov. 17:3). “The trial of your
faith, much more precious than gold which is tried by fire”
(1 Peter 1:7). Thus gradually, one believes entirely
because of the authority of God who reveals; one hopes
entirely because of all All-powerful helper; and one loves
God because of His infinitely lovable goodness alone, with­
out any inordinate desire for personal consolation. Similarly,
Jesus says: "I am the true vine and my Father is the hus­
bandman. Every branch in me . . . that bears fruit, he will
purge it that it will bring forth more fruit” (John 15:1-2).
This text refers to the passive purification which comes
from God Himself, not that which we take on ourselves
in mortification:“If thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out
and cast it from thee” (Matt. 5:29).
We shall deal with this question by considering the
cardinal virtues in particular, rising from the lower to the
higher, and noting how the gifts of the Holy Spirit help
the virtues in this progressive purification. In this way, by
considering the formal object of each virtue and then their
interrelation, we shall see how the heroic nature of their
virtues should be described in the lives of the servants of
God.
The virtue of temperance—and chastity in particular—

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155

is specified by a special object which is good in itself, a
moderation of the passions of the concupiscible appetite.
In the case of acquired chastity, this moderation is in line
with right reason and acquired prudence; in the case of
infused chastity reason is illuminated by faith and infused
prudence.
Infused chastity, therefore, is specified by a higher formal
object than acquired chastity, and the latter is a disposition
for the former somewhat in the same way as the nimble­
ness of a harpist’s hands is a disposition for the art which
is in his practical intellect. Acquired chastity gives external
ease in the exercise of infused chastity.
In order to purify chastity from every imperfection, not
only must the soul be freed from every sensuality that is
more or less disordered and from any dangerous friendship;
it must also be freed from that insensibility of the heart
which is not virtue, although it has the appearance of one.
This insensibility is opposed to that feeling of compassion
which one ought to be capable of having.
Similarly, acquired and infused meekness are purified not
only when the soul is freed from anger, but also when it
is freed from that inept weakness and indulgence which is

a false meekness.
In the same way, humility, which prostrates us before the
greatness of God, ought to remove not only pride but that
false humility also which is a hidden cowardice. In this
way, humility is harmonized with magnanimity, a virtue
which reasonably and in a Christian way seeks after great
things when God wills it. They more and more appear as
complementary virtues mutually helpful like the two
curves of an arch which support a building. Each virtue is

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more and more purified according as it is more and more
directed toward its formal object.
Similarly fortitude has its special object, good in itself,
in that it is a virtue which moderates the movements of the
soul when faced with anything that is frightening. It is
a firmness which enables the soul, by bearing and fighting
adversity, to follow the dictates of right reason. Acquired
fortitude is regulated by the dictates of right reason; infused
fortitude by the dictates of right reason illuminated by faith
and infused prudence.
It is not sufficient, therefore, to remove all inordinate,
irrational, and unchristian fear. In time of persecution, for
example, one must avoid not only weakness and cowardice
but also rashness, obstinacy, the hardness of fanaticism, and
rigorism of every kind, all of which are opposed to the virtue
of meekness.
Fortitude is gradually perfected as its formal motive over­
comes more and more the two vices opposed to it and to
each other: cowardice and rashness. The gift of fortitude
has a part to play in the purification of the infused virtue
of fortitude, since it enables us to have full confidence that
we shall avoid every danger and thereby carry out any diffi­
cult task we have taken upon ourselves. The gift of forti­
tude completely excludes inordinate fear and surpasses
infused fortitude just as the latter surpasses acquired for­
titude. All three, however, find unity in action in a way
analogous to the unity in action of a violinist’s manual
dexterity, virtue of art, and musical inspiration.
The rights of others are the object of the virtue of jus­
tice, whereby we are prompted to give each person his due.
The formal object of justice is the right of another which

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157

we recognize to be something inviolably his. Our recogni­
tion of such a right may spring from natural causes alone,
and in that instance the virtue of justice is one naturally
acquired by us. If such a recognition, however, springs
from our human reason fortified by the light of faith, the
virtue will be that not of acquired, but of infused, justice.
If we are to be perfect, we must possess commutative,
distributive, and legal justice. Commutative justice regu­
lates our relations to other individuals; distributive, the rela­
tions of superior and inferior; legal, the relations of the
individual to the community. Distributive justice is of spe­
cial importance to one in authority, such as a father in
a family or a superior in a community. All who exercise
authority have the obligation to distribute rights and duties
impartially and to reward or punish fairly. Legal justice
urges us to obey all laws pertaining to the common good
of the society in which we live.
In addition to the three types of justice described in the
preceding paragraph, there is another virtue closely allied
to justice and essential for its perfection. It can, in fact, be
called another species of justice. This virtue, equity or
epikeia, whereby we consider not only the letter of the
law but its spirit and the intention of the lawgiver as well,
steers us clear of legal formalism, excessive rigorism, and
unreasoning stubbornness. It tempers justice with kindness
and is, in fact, demanded of us by charity. Even before
the time of our Lord, Aristotle had noted the necessity of
justice and equity or epikeia. How much more, then, must
we, who are followers of Christ, possess the virtue of jus­
tice to the highest degree and temper it by equity.
We must also remove every flaw and imperfection from

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the virtue of prudence, which is the "charioteer of the vir­
tues,” the right way of doing things, of acting. Again, pru­
dence may be either a purely natural, acquired virtue, or
it may be an infused virtue, whose corresponding gift is
that of counsel. In either case all efforts must be made to
perfect it. If we are to exercise the virtue of prudence per­
fectly we must possess all the moral virtues. Prudence cen­
ters upon the thousand and one practical judgments we
must make each day, and it is quite obvious that such judg­
ments cannot be good, just, meek, temperate, humble, and
firm if we lack the other virtues. Our judgments are always
colored by our will and feelings, and it is the job of the
moral virtues to purge our will and feelings of the dross of
vice which distorts our grasp of reality.
Imprudence of any kind, whether the result of negli­
gence or haste or stubbornness, must naturally be cut out
of our hearts. Anything that smacks of utilitarianism and
opportunism, of selfish love or militant hatred, demands
stamping out, particularly in a priest, and even more so in
superiors who have the duty to guide others along the road
to perfection.
In like manner we must perfect religion, or the virtue
whereby we give God the worship and adoration that is
His because of His supreme majesty as Creator and Lord.
Religion, as a purely natural virtue, is regulated by reason;
as an infused virtue, by faith and prudence. It has for its
corresponding gift that of piety, whereby the Holy Spirit
enables us to look upon God not only as Creator and Lord
but as our Father as well.
From the virtue of religion we must cut away all irréli­
gion, spiritual laziness, superstition, sentimentalism. The

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159

last named vice is an insidious one. It pretends to love God,
but in reality it finds its source in egoism, which makes
God merely a means to our own self-glorification. The puri­
fication of the virtue of religion must be not only active, on
our part, but passive as well. St. John of the Cross, in the
first two books of The Dark Night of the Soul, has given
the classic explanation of this passive purification. We can­
not emphasize too much that, particularly for a priest, the
passive purification of the soul is not something unnatural,
but rather the normal way to holiness.
4. Passive purification of the soul
St. John of the Cross explains the need for passive puri­
fication by considering the defects of beginners, defects in
large measure remnants of the seven capital sins. Such
defects, in the mind of St. John, are deviations from the
road to perfection. In beginners there is often a spiritual
greed or an immoderate desire for sensible consolation in
prayer. In addition, the following defects are found: spir­
itual pride or a “better-than-thou ” attitude; spiritual lazi­
ness, which follows in the wake of dryness; spiritual envy;
anger; uncontrolled indignation; dejection or moodiness.
About this time beginners abandon the interior life and
throw themselves into an immoderate zeal for study,
prompted by ambition or curiosity, or give themselves over
to external activity, an activity purely natural and utterly
foreign to that carried out in an apostolic, Christlike
manner.
These defects can be reduced to two: spiritual sensuality
and spiritual pride. From them springs spiritual laziness
when sensible consolations are absent.

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St. John of the Cross shows that beginners who have
actively and generously fought against these defects are
often passively purified by God. He writes: “Into this dark
night souls begin to enter when God draws them forth
from the state of beginners—which is the state of those
that meditate on the spiritual road—and begins to set them
in the state of progressives—which is that of those who
are already contemplatives—to the end that, after passing
through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which
is that of the Divine union of the soul with God.”2 Again :
"The night of the sense is common and comes to many:
these are the beginners.”3
Three signs which indicate the passive purification of
the soul are given by St. John of the Cross. These are:
( 1 ) “When a soul finds no pleasure or consolation in the
things of God, it also fails to find it in any thing created;
for, as God sets the soul in this dark night to the end that
He may quench and purge its sensual desire, He allows it
not to find attraction or sweetness in anything whatsoever.”4
The aridity the soul then feels does not proceed from neg­
ligence or spiritual laziness. In such a state the soul sees
vividly the vanity of worldly things; by the gift of knowl­
edge it grasps a richer understanding of the deficiency of
secondary causes and the gravity of sin. Melancholy may,
perhaps, be the cause of such aridity of soul. But any doubt
as to its cause can be solved by other signs and even from
the fact that the individual in question is often in perfect
health.
(2) “Memory is ordinarily centered upon God, with
painful care and solicitude, thinking that it is not serving
God, but is backsliding, because it finds itself without

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161

sweetness in the things of God.”5 Such is an indication
that the person has not been "backsliding.” Ardent desire
for God and proper attention to obligations, in spite of all
sensible dryness in prayer, show that melancholy is not the
cause of such a condition. At such a time one does not
shorten the time given over to prayer under any pretext for
study or active works. At this period the Holy Spirit aids
and comforts the soul by His gift of fear, a filial fear of
offending God by sin. The ardent love for God is evidence
of the gifts of piety and fortitude which strengthen one
to continue prayer despite all dryness and desolation.
(3) "The soul can no longer meditate or reflect in the
imaginative sphere of sense as it was wont, however much
it may of itself endeavor to do so. For God now begins to
communicate Himself to it, no longer through sense . . .
but by pure spirit, into which consecutive reflections enter
not . . . He communicates Himself to it by an act of simple
contemplation.”8 Here appears the influence of the gift of
knowledge which makes us realize our dependence on God:
"without me you can do nothing,” and the gift of piety which
gives us a lively affection for God as our Father. Despite
great dryness of senses, the soul, if truly generous, is purged
of sentimentalism and reaches a more spiritual knowledge
of God and of itself and a more ready love for God’s serv­
ice. In this way the virtue of religion is purified and
becomes a true devotion of the will, utterly independent
of sensible devotion.
During this passive purification of the senses God often
allows strong temptations against chastity and patience to
arise so that we may, by resisting them, gain great increase
of virtue. Feeble resistance is of no avail; heroic generosity

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is demanded. By means of this passive purification the
higher facilities of the soul obtain full mastery of the lower.
After this passive purification of the senses the soul
reaches the stage of proficients, the illuminative way or
the way of infused contemplation. This way is described
by St. John of the Cross in the fourteenth chapter of the
first book of The Dark Night of the Soul. This contempla­
tion proceeds from a living faith strengthened by the gifts
of understanding and wisdom. Faith becomes penetrating
and discerning, and the soul usually advances for several
years in this way. But the defects of proficients still remain.
Of them St. John declares: "But there still remain in the
spirit the strains of the old man. . . . These souls have like­
wise the hebetudo mentis and the natural roughness which
every man contracts through sin, and the distraction and
outward clinging of the spirit.”7 They may even have a
natural harshness, rooted in self-love, for their neighbor.
Thus perfect justice is absent as well as the perfect spirit of
faith, confidence in God, and charity; many other defects
also remain, such as love for power by guiding or teaching
others. The higher faculties of the soul are not yet com­
pletely subjected to God, perfectly docile to the Holy Spirit
and His gifts.
An active purification must take place, along with a
passive one, so that the virtues which are in the higher
faculties of the soul—humility and the three theological
virtues—can be purified from everything imperfect.
St. John of the Cross writes: "The stains of the old man
[must] be removed with the soap and strong lye of the
purgation of this night.”8
If we continue to be generous, God brings about this

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163

purification by an infused light, the gift of understanding,
whereby we see and almost experience God's might and
majesty and our own misery. Even in spiritual aridity we
can have a progressive contemplation of God and our own
misery, which are, as St. Catherine of Siena says, the high­
est and lowest points of a circle which is continually grow­
ing larger. From this we experience the painful presence
of the purifying God.
In this way does God purify humility, faith, hope, and
charity, so that the formal motive of these virtues more and
more predominates over any lower motive. We shall briefly
explain this matter.
Humility is the basic virtue inasmuch as it removes the
impediment of pride. As such, it may be compared to the
excavations which are necessary before constructing a build­
ing: the bigger the building, the deeper must be these exca­
vations. It may also be compared to the root of a tree: the
higher the tree, the deeper must its root penetrate the
ground. To a certain degree reflection on our part will give
us a consciousness of our own weakness, but many illu­
sions will remain, illusions springing from our own judg­
ment or from secret pride. When God wants to do away
with these illusions, He shows us our own weakness and
misery by the gift of knowledge and understanding, thereby
helping us to root out all false humility and nourish true
humility. Purified in such a way we can make a good con­
fession, not a perfunctory one, but one utterly sincere and
frank. When severe divine punishment comes, we can say:
“I have certainly deserved this.” The humble man bows
down as nothing before the infinite majesty of God: ‘‘My
substance is as nothing before You.”

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Faith is similarly purified. It is an infused virtue by
which we believe, on God’s authority, the mysteries which
He has revealed. But our faith often rises very little above
the natural virtues of religion, or rests too much in for­
mulae, in the letter by which supernatural mysteries are
expressed and in the external aspect of the mysteries of
the Incarnation, Redemption and Eucharist. It does not
penetrate them sufficiently. In a similar way we believe in
eternal life and the eternity of punishment. Though our
belief is based on the authority of God revealing, we are
helped by various secondary motives upon which we insist
too much—because, for example, others in our society also
believe, or because we see how these mysteries are in har­
mony with the natural truths of religion and with our nat­
ural aspirations.
Would our faith remain firm if strong temptations rose
up against it, if God at the same time showed us the pro­
fundity of the mysteries, for example, the greatness of His
infinite justice toward the damned and the gratuitous
nature of eternal predestination, the freedom with which
He gives the gift of final perseverance? Would our faith
remain firm during a great aridity of soul if we had no con­
solation and could not feel the conformity of our faith with
our aspirations?
The formal motive of theological faith would still
remain: God has revealed all these mysteries and they are
to be believed as infallibly true on His authority. In this
way the faith of saints was often purified and proved—
when the Apostles, for example, saw Jesus betrayed,
scourged, crowned with thorns, condemned to death on the
cross, crucified. On Calvary, also, the faith of our Lady,

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165

St. John and St. Mary Magdalen, was proved. Similarly,
the holy martyrs suffered long torments, and many saints—
Blessed Henry Suso, for example, for ten years, and St.
Vincent de Paul0 for four—endured great internal tempta­
tions against faith. Many saints resisted similar tempta­
tions in this way by asking for an actual efficacious grace
to overcome them, and thus they made heroic acts of faith
based on its formal object alone: God has revealed these
mysteries to be believed on His authority. At the end of
this crucifixion, their faith was completely purified: it was
stronger, truly contemplative, and no longer consisted in
formulæ or in the external aspect of the mysteries, but it
penetrated them. Thus saints live by faith and the super­
natural life was for them, in the end, almost the only true
life.
Hope needs a similar purification. It is an infused virtue
by which we expect, with certain confidence, eternal life
to be obtained with divine assistance. Because of His mercy
and all-powerful help we ought to expect the possession of
God. We do, indeed, hope in this way; but in the begin­
ning of our spiritual life our infused hope is not easily
distinguished from that human hope by which we expect
certain temporal goods which perhaps may injure us. And
although the formal motive of hope is the hope of God,
we place too much trust in the human assistance of our
protectors and friends, in our virtues, in our work which
is proceeding quite satisfactorily.
But if God took away all the temporal goods which we
expected, and at the same time our secondary motives of
confidence, the help of our friends, the esteem of our
superiors, if He showed us our weakness rather than our

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strength, if at the same time temptations rose against hope,
would our hope remain firm, because of that one motive:
“God does not order us to do impossible things and He
does not abandon the person who calls on Him; He is
always the merciful God and the all-powerful helper”? In
this way, the hope of saints has been purified. For example,
the devil used to say to St. Catherine of Siena: “Of what
use are all your mortifications? If you have been predes­
tined you will be saved without them; if you have not
been predestined even with them you will be damned."
And then the devil left her. Sometimes, similar tempta­
tions come in one’s last agony, and that is why we should
pray very much for those who are in agony, by saying the
special prayers for the visitation of the sick and the com­
mendation of a soul to God.
Finally, charity is purified in a similar way. It is a vir­
tue by which we love God for Himself, as a friend, to be
loved above all things by reason of His infinite goodness.
For God’s sake we love our neighbor so that he may glor­
ify God now and forever. We do indeed love God and
our neighbor in this way, but often with a very notable
mixture of imperfection, springing from a love of ourselves.
We even love God because of the consolation which we
receive from Him, and our neighbor because of the grati­
tude he shows us, or because of the various ways in which
he can be useful to us.
When God wishes to lead the souls of His children to
pure love, for several months He gradually removes all con­
solation, not only sensible but spiritual also. Similarly, He
permits indifference and sometimes even ingratitude on the
part of our neighbor. It seems that we can do no good.

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167

Then God must be loved for the true motive—because He
is infinitely good in Himself, infinitely better than all the
benefits which He bestows. And our neighbor must simi­
larly be loved for God’s sake, because he is a son of God
or can yet become a son of God.
Thus the charity of St. Thérèse of the Infant Jesus was
purified at the end of her life from every mixture of selflove. The sweetness of the love of God is then united to
fortitude of soul which perseveres in dryness, even is spir­
itual. This leads to the love of the cross in a life of repara­
tion for the conversion of sinners, after the example of the
suffering Christ and His sorrowing Mother.
5. Conclusion
From all this, it appears clearly enough that virtues are
purified when their proper object, with their own formal
motive, dominates more and more. Thus the three formal
motives of the three theological virtues appear in the night
of the spirit as three stars of the first magnitude. These are:
the First Truth or the Authority of God revealing; Mercy
and Omnipotence helping us; and Infinite Goodness to be
loved above everything else.
This passive purification is, as St. John of the Cross says,
required for the full perfection of the Christian life, and
it leads to an infused contemplation of the mysteries of
faith and intimate union with God.
It is evident that in the lives of the servants of God we
generally find two periods, like two tunnels, the dark night
of the senses and the dark night of the spirit. Sometimes,
it is difficult to say historically how souls who were tried in
this darkness overcame strong temptations. But if they have

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passed out from the first night with a sufficiently clear
heroicity of virtue, and if they have left the second night
with an even more manifest heroism, it is a sign that they
have not lost their way in these nights; or if they have lost
it at any moment—like Peter during the passion when he
denied our Lord—Providence has raised them up so that
they might continue the ascent generously to the end. The
obscurity of these two periods, therefore, is not an objec­
tion against, but rather becomes an argument for, heroism,
because we have heroism only when there has been a bat­
tle and victory over great temptations, which, in these two
periods particularly, are caused by the devil. The soul con­
quers him only when it has passed through these two storms
and acquired merit in proportion. Thus, in the causes for
beatification the interior sufferings of servants of God can
be brought to light, so that there will arise a greater under­
standing of how these sufferings lead in a wonderful way
to purification and sanctity, according to the words of St.
Paul: To them that love God, all things work together
unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called
to he saints (Rom. 8:28).
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1

1. See S.T., 1-2, q. 61, a. 5.
2. St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, Book 1,
Chapter 1, in Volume I of The Complete Works of St. John
of the Cross, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers, (revised
ed., Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1953), p. 300. All
references to the works of St. John are to the Peers’ translation.
3. Ibid., p. 349.
4. Ibid., p. 352.
5. Ibid., p. 352.
6. Ibid., p. 355.

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169

7. Ibid., p. 376.
8. Ibid., p. 376.
9. St. Vincent de Paul generously accepted a special trial in
order to free a certain professor of theology from strong tempta­
tions against the faith. And then he himself was strongly
tempted for four years in the same way. The temptations
against faith were so great that he wrote the creed on a chart
which he put on his breast, underneath his clothes. When
the temptations became exceptionally strong, St. Vincent would
lay the creed next his heart as a profession of faith. For four
years he made heroic acts of this virtue and eventually it was
very much strengthened and purified from every imperfection.
Thus his faith became more contemplative, penetrating, and
discerning; even amid the disturbances of life in the world he
preserved a great interior life, which radiated and reached that
rare contemplation of the Mystical Body of Christ, in which
he constantly saw Jesus in abandoned children, in captives, in
those who were in prison.

CHAPTER 12

Priestly Mental Prayer

1. Introduction

Prayer in general is the elevation of the mind to God,
by which we ask Him for those things which are useful
or necessary for salvation.1 Vocal prayer ought to lead to
mental prayer which is like an intimate conversation or
colloquy with God.
Normally, mental prayer advances as the soul makes
progress in the interior life. In the purgative way the soul,
in order to avoid sin, must make many considerations and
reflections to reach firm resolutions which, strictly speaking,
under the direction of faith, are part of the virtue of
prudence.
Then, when the passions are more under control and are
almost calm, prayer becomes more affective, and the virtue
of religion, with the gift of piety, predominates, and special
attention is given to the four purposes of sacrifice—adora­
tion, reparation, petition and thanksgiving.
Finally, the soul reaches the state of contemplative
prayer, which may be called theological prayer in that it
proceeds particularly from the theological virtues, with the
corresponding gifts of understanding and wisdom. At this
171

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stage, the soul "aims principally that it inhere in God and
take its delight in Him.”2

2. Discursive prayer
The method of discursive prayer has been very well
described by St. Francis de Sales.’ It is divided into three
parts:
The first part is the preparation for prayer, when the
soul puts itself in the presence of God, humbly asks His
help and puts before itself the subject of the meditation—
the passion of our divine Lord, death, the particular judg­
ment after death, hell, purgatory, heaven, the obligations
of religion, or the obligations of the Christian state which
must be fulfilled.
The second part is the meditation or consideration
strictly so called of the subject which has been chosen.
The passion of our divine Lord, for example, is consid­
ered not only as an historic reality but as something super­
natural as well, with its main practical consequences as far
as we are concerned. Similarly we may meditate on death
or the judgment of God. The soul ponders on the sub­
ject which has been considered and then speaks to itself
about it.
The third part consists in the affections and resolutions.
In other words, the soul should not only speak with itself
by thinking over the subject of the meditation, but it
should also talk to God, directing toward Him its desire,
its affective and effective charity, more firmly moving itself
to the mortification of the passions and the imitation of
Christ. Prudence, which guides one’s life, will indicate
what resolutions should be taken.

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173

The conclusion of mental prayer consists in thanking
God and asking for the grace to keep one’s resolutions.
It is in this way that those who begin well make discur­
sive prayer, for which many considerations and reflections
are needed, so that the soul is gradually raised above sen­
sible things and gives itself more generously to God. Some
make their meditation by slowly reading the Gospel or the
Imitation of Christ; others by hearing Mass, or considering
its various parts; others again by slowly saying the Rosary
and meditating on its mysteries; others by putting their
whole heart into a slow recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
3. Affective prayer
In this, the considerations are shorter, and affections pre­
dominate in the form of adoration, thanksgiving, contri­
tion, and desire or petition. It is not surprising, therefore,
that Blessed Julian Eymard4 should insist on the four ends
of sacrifice: adoration, thanksgiving, reparation, and prayer
for divine help. In this prayer there appears particularly the
virtue of religion with the gift of piety, from which springs
a filial affection toward God as Father. Because the virtue
of religion and the gift of piety are in the will, it is not
surprising that this prayer should be called affective.
Affective prayer in line with the purposes of sacrifice is
normally done in this way:
Adoration begins while the soul puts itself in the pres­
ence of God. In other words, the soul adores the infinite
excellence of God and His goodness which is the source
of all graces, and it adores even the humanity of Christ,
present in the Eucharist, and immolated in an unbloody
manner in the Mass. Adoration, therefore, daily becomes

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higher and more profound; the words of St. Thomas are
verified: “Adoration consists mainly in an interior rever­
ence for God”5 by acknowledging His infinite excellence
in a practical way and admitting that of ourselves we are
nothing.
Next follows a thanksgiving for all the benefits which
God has given us—creation, elevation to the order of
grace, the Incarnation and Redemption, the Eucharist,
and those favors which we have received personally, both
before our birth in having been born into a Christian fam­
ily and the favors which we have received since then.
Reparation for sins normally comes next. The soul asks
forgiveness and the grace of deeper contrition so that the
stains of sin and bad dispositions, particularly the inordinate
love of oneself and egoism, the root of the concupiscence
of the eyes, the concupiscence of the flesh, the pride of life
and the seven capital sins may be removed. This rep­
aration remedies the love of oneself which is at the base of
the will as an evil root which impedes the growth of the
good root, charity. In this exercise, the virtues of humility
and penance, in addition to the virtue of religion, are
exercised.
Finally there is the petition for those graces which we
need individually if we are to persevere to the end—a
petition, even, for the salvation of all souls. In this way,
Jesus Himself prays, interceding for us always, particularly
in the Mass at which He is the principal priest.
Since the virtue of religion is commanded by charity, in
the end of this prayer charity prevails—affective charity
toward God the Father and toward Jesus Christ. But
affective charity is not alone; there is also a love conform-

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175

ing itself with the divine will and a zeal or ardor of char­
ity toward God who is so little loved by men, and a vivid
desire for the extension of His kingdom, the salvation of
souls, and the conversion of sinners. A spirit of sacrifice
animates this prayer according to the four purposes of
sacrifice.
Several authors do not distinguish affective prayer from
contemplation, which they distinguish from discursive
meditation.6 In affective prayer, “discourse” or reasoning is
very short; affection and the ardor of love predominate. We
have there a certain contemplation which may be called
acquired when it does not proceed from a special inspira­
tion of the Holy Spirit. St. Teresa speaks of this prayer and
calls it active recollection.’ There are often sensible con­
solations in this prayer. St. Teresa distinguishes them from
the spiritual pleasure of infused contemplation, when she
says: “In short, [sensible consolations] arise from nature and
end in God. Spiritual joys, on the contrary, arise from
God.’”
Moreover, in affective prayer the soul explicitly seeks
its own perfection, whereas in infused contemplation it is
more united to God and does not think explicitly of its
own perfection, but desires rather the glory of God and
Christ. Some souls in affective prayer have a very ardent
devotion to the Eucharist.9
At first sight it seems that this zeal points to mystical
prayer, or mystical contemplation; but Father Libermann
does not think that this is true, because such zeal is found
even in those who have not passed through the dryness of
the passive purification of the senses, where, according to
St. John of the Cross, infused contemplation begins. In

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those souls which have not been passively purified, grace
works on the surface of the soul, in the sensitive part, but
does not penetrate more deeply. This zeal, therefore, is more
vehement than solid, firm, or stable. But the contrary is
true in the case of real contemplatives. Such is clearly seen
when beginners are faced with trials and do not bear them
with generosity if sensible consolations are taken away.
Later on, after a long aridity of the senses endured with
faith and confidence, they will be braver and more con­
stant. Then when they are at prayer, ordinary grace, less
vehement but more intense, will penetrate to the depths
of the soul, pouring in light and love by which they will
be more intimately united to God, and their prayer will
then be contemplative, strictly speaking, and mystical, as
Saudreau has well pointed out.10
Who are the souls who do not advance in prayer, even
though they are in the state of grace and fulfill their strict
obligations?
Spiritual writers say that they are the souls who only do
for God whatever is obligatory, nothing more, but neglect
mortification or self-denial, continue to love useless read­
ing, walking for the pure pleasure of it and other super­
fluities like tobacco—while it would be much better to give
the price of it in alms to the poor. Similarly, they are those
who look for the good opinion of men, who freely do their
own will and even impose it on others: in short, all those
who, in the absence of self-denial, are held back by a kind
of chain and have not that liberty of spirit which will make
them love the will of God in all things. It is not surprising
that during prayer they will then remain in tepid aridity
and cannot understand how much mortified souls love inti-

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177

mate prayer, and what great peace and strength they can
find in conversation with God.

4. Theological prayer
Theological prayer disposes one for infused contempla­
tion. This prayer begins in humility and religion, and
afterwards proceeds from faith, hope, and charity, and
ends in contemplation which arises from the gifts of under­
standing and wisdom found in all just people.
Theological prayer begins in an act of humility, the
fundamental virtue which removes pride. Every prayer
must be humble, said with a consciousness of our own
inadequacy. This act of humility is side by side with an
act of adoration of God, present in the Eucharist and in
the soul of the just. “We have this treasure, but in vessels
easily broken.”
This prayer, since it is the elevation of the soul to God,
proceeds from faith. We must make an act of faith, simple,
profound, continuous, and as far as possible centered on
the mysteries of the life of Christ or the divine perfections.
Often, some words from the Gospel or the Psalms are
sufficient. This simple act of faith is now beyond the dis­
cursive stage. The soul simply says: I believe.
Here already there is a certain beginning of contempla­
tion, for the soul already sees from afar the living fountain
of water leaping up into eternal life.
From this act of faith proceeds naturally an act of hope,
for the soul immediately longs for this living fountain pro­
posed to it by faith: "As the hart panteth after the foun­
tains of water, so my soul paneth after thee, O God” (Ps.
41:2). The soul hopes for God, puts its trust in God as a

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benefactor, and asks His help in order to reach this living
fountain. Then it says not only I believe, but I hope, I
desire, I eagerly long for Thee. St. Thomas explains this
very well when he says: “Through faith, the intellect sees
that which we love and for which we hope.”12 It is neces­
sary, therefore, that in the order of generation faith precede
hope and charity. Similarly man loves that which he has
already apprehended as good for him. Because a man hopes
that he will be able to achieve some good, through some­
body, he regards the person in whom he hopes as a certain
good for him. From hope in somebody, therefore, man pro­
ceeds to love him. And thus in the order of generation,
where acts are concerned, hope precedes charity—but the
opposite is true in the order of perfection.
In this way, therefore, following an act of hope in God
as benefactor, there rises an act of affective charity by
which we love God as benefactor not only on account of
the good things which He gives us but also for His own
sake, because in Himself He is infinitely better than His
gifts. Sensible affection can be present, in an inferior way,
along with this affection of charity, but it is not necessary
and is taken away in times of aridity and temptation, at
which times, however, the act of charity can be more
intense. What is necessary, therefore, is the affection which
is spiritual, supernatural, deep, profound, tranquil—much
more secure and fruitful than the sensible emotions. This
act of charity is, for example, thus expressed: Grant, O
Lord, that I do not lie when I tell You of my love; grant
that it be sincere and true.
But this affective charity must become effective. We
should not only say “Lord I love You,” but “In all things

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179

I wish to do Your will." In this way, the resolution is not
only general but particular also, dealing with a definite
inclination which must be conquered. It should be noted
that the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer correspond
to the three theological virtues. Our Father . . . may Thy
name be sanctified, glorified (through faith), may Thy
kingdom come (this is an object of hope), may Thy will

be done (through affective and effective charity).
Finally, in prayer, the knowledge of faith and the love
of hope and charity are united, under the inspiration of
the gift of wisdom, in the simple and effective intuition of
divine goodness. And thus infused contemplation begins.
Just as an artist contemplates sensible nature, or a child
contemplates and looks with affection at the face of its
mother, so the Christian soul in prayer contemplates accord­
ing to the words of the Psalmist: “Taste and see, because
the Lord is sweet." The just soul, therefore, arrives at an
almost experimental knowledge of God. It has not an imme­
diate experience of God Himself, but it knows God almost
experimentally through the filial affection which the spe­
cial inspiration of the Holy Spirit has aroused in us, accord­
ing to the words of St. Paul: “The Spirit himself giveth
testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God” (Rom.
8:16). In his commentary, St. Thomas says: “He gives
this testimony ‘through filial affection’ which He arouses in
us by a special inspiration; it is an ‘infused act of charity,’
and with some degree of moral certainty we distinguish
this filial affection from the natural act which is more or
less similar and in which sentiment is present, without
sufficient conformity to the will of God.”13
Mental prayer ordered in this way is an elevation of the

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mind to God, proceeding in the beginning from humility
and religion, then from the three theological virtues, and
finally in a more or less mysterious way from the gifts of
wisdom and understanding.
In this prayer, therefore, knowledge and love are more
and more united in that effective love of God inspired by
the Holy Spirit. It is like the breathing of the soul, breath­
ing in truth and grace, and breathing forth love. It is a
kind of spiritual communion prolonged for half-an-hour.
Discursive prayer, and then affective prayer, gradually dis­
pose the soul for it, just as it in its turn disposes for higher
contemplation, that passive recollection and passive prayer
of quiet of which St. Teresa speaks in the Fourth Mansion.
This theological prayer reconciles the simplicity of
ancient authors with the method, sometimes too compli­
cated, of the modern. And it can be applied to various
subjects which have to be considered, and especially to a
consideration of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, as is
explained by St. Teresa in The Way of Perfection.
In this way are understood much better the three degrees
of prayer discussed by St. Thomas. He speaks of: (1) direct
movement; (2) oblique movement in a spiral form, and
(3) circular movement.14
Direct movement rises from sensible things to God and
considers God in the mirror of sensible things—in nature,
for example, or in parables.
Oblique movement rises in the form of a spiral, just
like a twisting path up a mountain—when, for example,
through the joyful, sorrowful, or glorious mysteries of the
Rosary the soul rises to the contemplation of God consid­
ered in the mirror of intelligible truths.

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181

Circular movement, like the flight of an eagle or
swallow in the heights of the air, has really no beginning
or end, and so differs from a process of reasoning. It is a
simple intuition of the goodness of God, the radiation of
which is felt in the same way as an eagle, flying in a circle,
feels the radiation of the sun.
Good prayer gradually transforms character and makes
the soul like Christ. It understands the words: “Learn of
me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find
rest for your souls.”
NOTES TO CHAPTER 12

1. See S.T., 2-2, q. 83, a. 1.
2. Ibid., q. 24, a. 9.
3. St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II,
c. 1.
4. Blessed Julian Eymard, Meditazioni per Esercizi Spirituali ai
Piedi di Gesu in Sacramento, vol. 3, pp. 82-88.
5. S.T., 2-2, q. 84, a. 2, ad 2.
6. See P. Meynard, O.P., Traité de la Vie Intérieure, vol. I, p.
168; Saudreau, Degrés de la Vie Spirituelle, vol. I, p. 269.
7. See St. Teresa of Jesus, The Way of Perfection, Chapters 28
and 29.
8. St. Teresa of Jesus, The Interior Castle, translated by a Bene­
dictine of Stanbrook Abbey, (Westminster, Md.: The Newman
Press, 1948), Fourth Mansion, chapter 1, p. 52. See St. John
of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, stanza three (in vol­
ume III of The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross,
translated and edited by E. Allison Peers).
9. See Saudreau, op. cit., vol. I, p. 275 for a quotation from
Venerable Francis Libermann on this point.
10. Saudreau, op. cit., vol. I, p. 277.
11. For example, see Saudreau, op. cit., vol. I, p. 291.
12. S.T., 1-2, q. 62, a. 4.
13. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Rom. 8:16.
14. See S.T., 2-2 q. 180, a. 6.

CHAPTER 13

Eucharistic Worship and Priestly
Perfection

1. Eucharistic worship and the interior life

It is usually said that the Eucharist nourishes the inte­
rior life of every Christian because it is the food of faith,
hope, charity, religion, and the other virtues.
It is the food of faith, because it is, in a sense, the crown
of the mysteries of faith, because it presupposes the mys­
tery of the redemptive Incarnation of the Son of God, and
therefore the mystery of the Trinity, and the mystery of
the elevation of the human race to the life of grace. The
Eucharist is also the pledge of eternal life. Thus a single
miracle which confirms the truth of the Eucharist by that
very fact confirms also all the other mysteries which are
presupposed by the Eucharist.
The Eucharist nourishes hope, because hope trusts in
the divine help of grace. But the Eucharist contains not
only grace but the author of grace also, and so it is the
greatest of all the sacraments.
The Eucharist nourishes charity, because Holy Com­
munion unites us to Christ and increases both affective
and effective charity toward God and toward our neigh183

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Priesthood and Perfection

bor. The Eucharist is therefore the bond of charity uniting
the various members of each Christian family, poor and
rich, the wise and ignorant, in the same holy table. It
unites all Christian peoples. In this way, two principles
are verified: good of its very nature diffuses itself; and the
greater this good is, the more fully and abundantly does it
diffuse itself. Several people cannot at the same time fully
possess material goods. But spiritual goods can at the same
time be possessed by several people. They are then even
more possessed by each person, and if any one person
wished to exclude others he would lose charity and simul­
taneously the possession of the spiritual good. We can all
at the same time, therefore, possess the same truth, the
same virtue, the same Christ substantially present in the
Eucharist, and the same God present obscurely in our
souls.
The Eucharist nourishes religion, because the greatest
act of religion is sacrifice, an act which at the same time is
internal, external, and public. But the Eucharistic sacrifice
is the sacramental continuation of the boundlessly rich
sacrifice of the cross. Why? Because the principal priest,
Christ, cannot be more united to God, or more holy, or
more united to His people who form His Mystical Body, or
more united to the victim, because He offers Himself. And,
finally, both victim and principal offerer are of infinite
value.
2. The Eucharist and priestly perfection

We may summarize the teaching of Blessed Julian
Eymard under three headings :1
A. The Priesthood and the Spirit of Christ

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185

B. Eucharistic Worship and Priestly Perfection
(a) The Four Ends of Sacrifice
(b) The Eucharistic Christ, Model of All Virtues
(c) Prayer to the Eucharistic Heart of Christ
C. The Eucharistic Vocation
(A) The Priesthood and the Spirit of Christ.

A priest must offer the unbloody sacrifice of infinite
value, absolve penitents, give them birth, as it were, in the
life of grace, and lead them to eternal life; in particular,
he must bring the Gospel to the poor. For this, he must
have purity, humility, meekness, and burning love for the
glory of God and the salvation of souls. He must follow
the example of the Apostles who, when they ordained dea­
cons to minister the works of mercy, said : But we will give
ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the
word (Acts 6:4). If prayer is absent, external work will be
valueless. Moreover, the priest must say with St. John the
Baptist: He must increase, hut 1 must decrease.
To achieve this purpose, he must live in the spirit of
Christ: "He who adheres to the Lord is of one spirit with
him” (I Cor. 6:17). "If any man have not the spirit of
Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9). But this spirit is the
spirit of truth: “For this I came into the world, to give testi­
mony of the truth” (John 18:37). “You are the light of the
world” (Matt. 5:14). "You shall be witnesses of me” (Acts
1:8). This spirit is the spirit of love who manifests him­
self through meekness ("Learn of me for I am meek and
humble of heart” [Matt. 11:29]), and through zeal, even
unto death (’’Christ loved me and gave himself for me”
[Gal. 2:20]). This spirit, therefore, is the spirit of sacrifice:

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Priesthood and Perfection

"He who loves his father and mother more than me is not
worthy of me”; "He who does not take his cross and fol­
low me is not worthy of me.” But that sacrifice will reap
a hundredfold reward. “To him that overcometh, I will
give the hidden manna” (Apoc. 2:17).
{B ) Eucharistic Worship and Priestly Perfection.

The worship of latria is given to God by a worthy cele­
bration of the Sacrifice of the Mass, which ought to be
celebrated each day with greater faith, greater hope, and
greater devotion. It is given also by Eucharistic Communion,
and even by visiting the Blessed Sacrament, in an adora­
tion of reparation, supplication, and thanksgiving.
On earth there is no other worship which is greater,
holier, more liturgical, or any worship in which are better
exercised toward Christ, hidden under the species, the
virtues of faith, hope, charity, religion, humility, and the
corresponding virtues of the Holy Spirit—all of which con­
stitute priestly perfection.
All, even those who are weak and imperfect, can and
should aspire to this perfection, so that they may become
true adorers of Christ present in the Eucharist. To reach
a place of distinction in society—to be, for example, an
advocate, doctor, professor, priest—one must work hard.
But the most modest priests and simple faithful can wor­
ship God in the Eucharist. If they are truly humble they
can make great progress in it, as our divine Lord said:
“Come to me all you who labour and are burdened, and
I will refresh you.” Holy Communion nourishes a person’s
soul so that he can avoid sin, resist the temptations of the
flesh and of the devil, and love God increasingly “with his

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187

whole heart and with his whole soul, with all his strength
and with his whole mind.” The seven gifts and docility to
the Holy Spirit are also increased with this progress in
charity through communion and adoration.
Two things in particular should be considered, (a) The
four ends of sacrifice, and (T) the virtues of which Jesus
gives us an example in the Blessed Eucharist.
(a) The Four Ends of Sacrifice.

The first end of sacrifice is adoration. Holocaust is
directed to adoration as the principal object of sacrifice.
Men often forget to adore God: they adore their bodies,
riches, progress in knowledge, reason or themselves. And
so we have society-worship, state-worship, and rationalism.
Christ the Saviour is often abandoned by men, not only
by unbelievers or those who are indifferent but even by
ungrateful believers, sometimes even by His own ministers
who seem to love Him not as sons, but as mercenaries,
because of some reward; they seem to love Him not for His
own sake but for themselves. Their adoration does not
spring from charity—because there is so little charity.
In some parishes, Christ, present in the Eucharist, is
alone almost for the entire week, whereas He could be a
daily source of grace. At times none of the faithful come
to Mass except on Sunday, and there is never a visit made
to the Blessed Sacrament. This reveals not only small char­
ity but small faith and hope also, because these virtues are
normally manifested in the virtue of religion which they
command.
Adoration of Christ the Saviour, present in the Eucha­
rist, is therefore very much to be commended. In itself,

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this adoration repairs many ingratitudes, great indifference
and lack of care for our salvation.
The second end of the sacrifice of the Eucharist is
thanksgiving for all the favors which God has given us,
for creation and the elevation of the human race to the
order of grace and glory, for the redemptive Incarnation,
for the institution of the Blessed Eucharist itself, and for
all the graces which flow from it, for the unnumbered
Masses and Communions which for a thousand years have
strengthened souls.
Many men, never thinking of these benefits, are
supremely ungrateful. Since the gift is so valuable and
universal, the ingratitude for it is all the greater. Normally
children show some gratitude to their parents, and yet
many men show no gratitude to God, the source of all
good things.
Because this ingratitude is collective, and not individual
only, the thanksgiving also should be collective and public.
This is the second end of the Eucharist, and the one from
which it has taken its name. The Eucharist brings to our
mind all the very great benefits which God has given to us,
and which are presupposed by the Eucharist—the Incar­
nation and the Redemption—and it continually applies to
our souls the blessings of the Redemption. As St. John
Fisher, the English martyr, used to say: The Mass is like
a spiritual sun which warms us and illuminates us every
day. These new gifts of the Mass and Holy Communion
call for a new expression of thanks. The essential purpose
of the worship of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus is to thank
God for the institution of the Blessed Eucharist. This
institution clearly demands a special expression of thanks.

Eucharistic Worship and Priestly Perfection

189

The phrase “Eucharistic Heart of Jesus” signifies particu­
larly the Heart of Jesus, who has given us the Blessed
Eucharist and each day gives it to us again.
The third end of sacrifice is reparation for sins com­
mitted against God and particularly for those sacrileges
carried out under the inspiration of the devil. Only God
knows the monstrosity of certain sacrileges almost equal to
that of Judas. To atone for these abominations, the Mass
should be worthily celebrated and the Eucharist should be
adored in public.
In this way, the external glory which is denied to God
and to Christ by these sins is restored. This reparation gives
Christ that accidental joy which many deny Him. And it
reminds us of what St. Veronica did during the passion
when she wiped the face of the Lord with the handker­
chief in which remained the image of Christ.
This public reparation, therefore, will prevent great
public castigations by God which the world, because of its
sin, deserves. At the same time we ask mercy for sinners
that they may return to the way of salvation and to peni­
tence. Among those who perfectly understand this pur­
pose of sacrifice, some offer themselves as victims and they
particularly help to remove the terrible castigations of God.
We read in the Canticle of Tobias (13:5): “He has
chastised us for our iniquities, and he will save us for
his own mercy.” Reparation through Eucharistic worship
obtains this mercy. In this worship is continued the repa­
ration offered on the sacrifice of the cross.
The fourth end of sacrifice is supplication, to obtain
the divine help and those graces necessary for salvation—
in particular the grace of final perseverance, something

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Priesthood and Perfection

wholly unmerited, but a pure gift which can be obtained
through the prayer of petition and especially through the
supreme prayer contained in the oblation of the Sacrifice
of the Mass. There we have a continuation of “the inter­
cession of Christ who lives always to intercede for us." And
we ought to unite ourselves with His intercession, just as
we unite ourselves with His adoration, reparation, and
thanksgiving. In this way, the value of our actions will be
considerably increased.
Christ’s intercession in the Blessed Eucharist continues
even after Mass has ended. We must join wholeheartedly
our Saviour’s prayer by praying for ourselves, for the
Church, for her pastors, for peace, for the conversion of
sinners and unbelievers, and for the salvation of all men.
Among those who have a firm grasp of this end of
sacrifice some are of the more contemplative kind, Mary
Magdalens at the feed of the Saviour; others are consumed
with a fiery and zealous love, like St. Paul; others resem­
ble our Lady in the supper room after the Ascension of
her Son, persevering in prayer and asking God’s help for
the Church.
The consideration we have just made of the four ends
of sacrifice serves a practical purpose. By it we see that
adoration involves contemplating God in eternity; thanks­
giving, a glance to the past and heartfelt gratitude for bene­
fits received; reparation, sorrow for the sins we have com­
mitted and a resolution to make amends; petition and
supplication, an eye to the future by asking God’s help.
Eucharistic worship, so conceived, unites us intimately
to Christ the priest, to His infinitely redemptive adoration,
to His intercession, and to His thanksgiving.

Eucharistic Worship and Priestly Perfection

191

(b) The Eucharist Christ, Model of All Virtues.

Here we must first note a few facts of theology. Christ,
present in the Eucharist, is Christ the King gloriously reign­
ing in heaven, Christ who is no longer in this world, who
suffers not nor increases merit, Christ who yet exercises
those virtues that will remain in heaven. The Eucharistic
Christ adores, intercedes for us, makes thanksgiving and
reparation; He realizes what is being done on earth and is
conscious, therefore, of the Eucharistic worship which
gives Him external glory and of all the sacrileges which
rob Him of His due.
We must remember, with St. Thomas,2 that neither
faith nor hope remain in heaven. The Beatific Vision takes
the place of faith, and the possession of God, a possession
never to be lost, that of hope. Charity, however, remains,
and with it all the moral virtues and the gifts of the Holy
Spirit. In short, the formal nature or proper ordering of
the moral virtues endures; the material element disappears:
“there will no longer be any place for concupiscence, or
the pleasures of food, or those of sex; nor shall there be
fear or daring in the face of dangers of death, nor shall
there be that distribution and communication of things
which we have in this life.”3
Against this background we may easily understand what
Blessed Julian Eymard says when he distinguishes what is
strictly true and what is metaphorically true. In the Eucha­
rist, strictly speaking, Jesus no longer has an external life;
He no longer visits those who are sick; He no longer
preaches. He remains in the tabernacle "as a prisoner of
love,” of His own will, and He does not see with bodily
eyes those things surrounding the Eucharist. But 11c knows

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Priesthood and Perfection

all these things in a most perfect way in heaven because
of His infused knowledge and the Beatific Vision. In the
Eucharist, Christ has a great and perfect interior life; He
teaches us solitude, silence, recollection. Christ wishes to
give us an example of many virtues: of charity toward His
Father and our neighbor; of religion, for He is always
adoring His Father, giving thanks to Him and interceding
for us; of humility and obedience, for He is perfectly sub­
ject to the will of His Father; of meekness, for He is
completely free from anger and hate.
The interior life of Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist is, as
Blessed Julian Eymard emphasizes, a life of love, love for
His Father to whom He continually offers His actions, His
sacramental state, His passion, now a thing of the past,
but daily remembered in the Mass. His life is one of love
for all men, as He wills their salvation. His heart is the
center of all hearts.
The Blessed Virgin Mary had this Eucharistic devotion
in an excellent degree. Her heart was drawn to the Taber­
nacle as iron to a magnet. Because some saints had the
miraculous privilege of preserving uncorrupted in them­
selves until their next communion the sacramental species,
we should not deny this privilege to our Lady.
With these as his principles Blessed Julian Eymard
rightly speaks of Eucharistic humility, Eucharistic poverty,
Eucharistic faith, Eucharistic charity. He says: “In the
Eucharist the divinity, glory, power and even the humanity
of Christ are hidden; Jesus is in a very poor state. He works
continually for the sanctification of souls, but silently and
mysteriously. . . . The soul intimately united to Christ
present in the Eucharist has an intense interior life of love,

Eucharistic Worship and Priestly Perfection

193

but remains externally poor, meek, humble. Interiorly he
sometimes rejoices, but he does not show his joy externally.
His life is hidden with Christ in God. . . . The virtues of
his soul must be sublime and perfect and their form simple
and ordinary; in short, their perfection should be like the
glow under the ashes.”'· The heart of Christ is, therefore,
a burning furnace of charity hidden quietly under the
sacramental species.
In addition to humility, Christ, present in the Eucharist,
exercises a charity that is consoling, patient, kind. It con­
soles, in particular, the poor and the afflicted; it is patient
in waiting for us; it is kind toward all. It helps all, even
the most wretched and most violent enemies of Christ,
back to God. Jesus remains in the Eucharist even as a
Victim of love, offered in an unbloody way in the Mass.
In this way He draws many faithful souls to a life of
reparation.

(cj Prayer to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
All these thoughts are beautifully expressed in the
litanies of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, litanies resembl­
ing ladders, beginning with the state of humiliation in
which Christ lives in the Eucharist and ending with that
deep and intimate union with God to which generous souls
are called.
The following prayer is particularly suitable for adoring
the Blessed Sacrament:
Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, loving companion of our exile,
I adore you.
Eucharistic Heart of Jesus,

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Priesthood and Perfection

Solitary Heart, humiliated Heart, abandoned Heart,
Forgotten Heart, despised Heart, outraged Heart.
Heart, repudiated by men,
Heart, the lover of our hearts,
Heart, seeking to be loved,
Heart, patiently waiting for us,
Heart, ready to hear us,
Heart, wishing to be asked favors,
Heart, eternal source of graces,
Silent Heart, wishing to speak to souls,
Heart, consoling refuge of the hidden life,
Heart, master of the secrets of union with God,
Heart of Him who sleeps but is always awake,
Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, have pity on us.
Jesus, Victim, I wish to console you,
I unite myself to you, I immolate myself with you,
I annihilate myself before you,
I wish to forget myself in order to think of you,
To be forgotten and despised, for love of you,
To be understood and loved by you alone.
I will be silent in order to listen to you and I will leave
myself to love myself in you.
Grant that in this way I may ease your thirst for my salva­
tion, your burning thirst for my sanctification, and that,
purified, I may love you purely and truly.
I do not wish to weary you any more by having you wait
for me; take me, I give myself to you.
I give over to you all my work: my soul, that you may
illuminate it; my heart, that you may direct it; my will,
that you may fix it; my misery, that you may help it; my
soul and my body, that you may nourish them.

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195

Eucharistic Heart of my Jesus, whose blood is the life of
my soul, grant that I may no longer live, but that you
may live alone in me. Amen.
(200 days’ indulgence for each recitation, Leo XIII,
Feb.6,1899)
(C) The Eucharistic Vocation.
From Christ, really present in the Blessed Eucharist,
come actual efficacious graces which perfect the soul. After
His resurrection, Christ said to Peter, in order to have him
make amends for his denial: “'Simon, son of John, lovest
thou me?’ He said to him: ‘Yea, Lord, thou knowest that
I love thee!’” (John 21:16). Then Christ said to him:
“Feed my lambs; feed my sheep,” and foretold his
martyrdom. This prophecy was made at the same time
as He gave the grace of enduring martyrdom to Peter.
Christ, present in the Eucharist, has a similar influence,
but in a hidden way, an influence which inspires efficacious
and persevering love.
Faith is often proved by trials. Blessed Julian Eymard,
for example, was looking for vocations. None came, and
the one boy with him had gone away. When Blessed
Julian noted this, he remained before the Blessed Sacra­
ment and said: “Lord, I will remain here on my knees
until my son returns.” Three or four hours later he
returned. Many excellent boys then came to him, so that
his Congregation flourished not only in France, Italy, and
other parts of Europe, but even in North and Central
America. It is by testing faith that a soul is led to perfection.
Who are particularly called to sanctity in this way?
They are those who have received a Eucharistic voca­

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Priesthood and Perfection

tion. Jesus says: "Nobody comes to me, except the Father,
who hath sent me, draw him” (John 6:44). The Father
draws all to sanctity, but not always in the same way. All
Christians, priests in particular, are called indeed to
Eucharistic worship, but from among them some are
specially called.
What, according to Blessed Julian Eymard, is a
Eucharistic vocation?
It is a calling through a special grace, gentle and strong
at the same time, as if the Lord were to say: "Come to My
sanctuary.” If there is no resistance, this attraction gradually
gains dominance.
If one answers this call faithfully, he finds peace, he
finds his ideal home, one made specially for him, and his
own spiritual food: “I have found the place of my rest.”
Books, spiritual direction, are no longer of sufficient help,
and he needs profound prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.
Finally, this attraction of grace leads a person to give
himself completely to the service of the Eucharist so that
he may be a true adorer of Jesus Christ present in the
Sacrament. And he does this not only that he may be saved,
that he may acquire virtue; he does it not only to save souls
but to answer the invitation of the Saviour: "True adorers
shall adore the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father
also seeketh such to adore him” (John 4:23).
What St. Thomas, with other writers, called divine con­
templation is included in this idea of adoration, because
this contemplation proceeds from living faith illuminated
by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and it imperates the virtue
of religion, whose highest act is sacrifice, in particular, the
sacrifice of adoration.

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197

Eucharistic worship, therefore, profoundly conceived,
leads to a true priestly perfection by which the priest, under
the continual influence of the Eucharistic Christ, becomes
in truth another Christ.
Many, by walking along this road, have in fact become
saints. We, therefore, must humbly and confidently look
to the same goal, daily asking special and efficacious grace
for this purpose, so that we may give more glory to God
and save more souls.
NOTES TO CHAPTER

13

1. Sec Blessed Julian Eymard, Meditazioni per Esercizi Sp‘r‘tua^
ai Piedi di Gesti in Sacramento, vol. 3.
2. See S.T., 1-2, q. 67.
3. Ibid., a. 1.
4. Blessed Julian Eymard, op. cit., pp. 94-95.

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For further reading

Albert the Great, St.: Commentarii in Joannem, in Diony­
sium; Mariale; De sacrificio Missae.
Aquinas, Thomas, St. : Summa Theologiae, particularly the
Secunda-Secundae, qq. 184-185. English translation:
The Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, literally trans­
lated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province,
complete in three volumes. New York: Benziger
Brothers Inc., 1947.
Commentarii in Joannem, in Epistolam ad Hebraeos,
in Epistolam ad Timotheum, in Epistolam ad Titum.
Augustine, St.: Commentarii in Joannem, in Epistolam ad
Hebraeos, in Epistolam ad Timotheum, in Epistolam
ad Titum; De Communi Vita Clericorum; De Sermone
Domini in monte. English translation of the last-named
work: St. Augustine, The Lord's Sermon on the
Mount, translated by John J. Jepson, S.S., Ph.D. Vol­
ume 5 of the Ancient Christian Writers. Westminster,
Md.: The Newman Press, 1948.
Bellarmine, Robert, St. : De Clericis.
Bernard, St.: De Consideratione; De Diligendo Deo.
Bona, Giovanni Cardinal: De Sacrificio Missae.

Bossuet, Jacques: Explication de la doctrine de I'Eglise sur
la Messe.

Condren, Charles de: L'idée du Sacerdoce et du Sacrifice
de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ.
199

200

Priesthood and Perfection

Cormier, Η. Μ. (O.P.): Trois retraites progressives.
Ephrem, St.: De Sacerdotio.

Eymard, Blessed Julian: Meditazioni per Esercizi Spirituali
ai Piedi di Gesu in Sacramento, 3 volumes.

John Chrysostom, St.: De Sacerdotio.
John of the Cross, St.: The Complete Works of St. John of
the Cross, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers,
Three Volumes. Westminster, Md.: The Newman
Press, revised edition, 1953.
Gregory the Great, St.: Liber regulae pastoralis. English
translation: St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, trans­
lated by Henry Davis, S.J., B.A. Volume 11 of the
Ancient Christian Writers. Westminster, Md.: The
Newman Press, 1950.

Manning, Henry Edward Cardinal: The Eternal Priest­
hood. Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1944.

Mercier, Desire Felicien Cardinal: La vie intérieure: appel
aux âmes sacerdotales, 1919.

Montfort, Grignion de, St.: True Devotion to the Blessed
Virgin Mary, translated from the French by Frederick
William Faber, D.D. Bayshore, New York: The
Montfort Fathers’ Publications, revised edition 1950.
Olier, Jean Jacques: Traité des Saints Orders; Vie interiéure
de la Sainte Vierge.
Passerini, Giuseppe L. : De Statibus Hominum.

For Further Reading

201

Peter Damian, St.: Opusculum 24, Contra clericos regulares
proprietarios; Opusculum 26, De communi vita canon­
icorum.
Pius XI, Pope: Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, Encyclical of
December 20, 1935. Translated into English under
the title: The Catholic Priesthood. Washington: The
National Catholic Welfare Council, 1936.

Teresa of Jesus, St.: The Complete Works of St. Teresa of
]esus, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers, Three
Volumes. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1946; The
Interior Castle, translated by a Benedictine of Stanbrook Abbey. Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press,
1948; The Way of Perfection, translated by Alice
Alexander. Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press,
1948.

Index

Act(s), meritorious, and gifts of
the Holy Spirit, 115
Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, 11
Adoration, 187—188
L'Amour de Dieu et la Croix de
Jésus, 50
Augustine of Hippo, St.
Lord's Sermon on the Mount,
noted regarding the beati­
tudes, 114
on love of God, 28
quoted on doing God’s will,
12-13
Authority (religion) respect for,
30-31

Barthier, Fr., on love of God, 4142
Beatitudes
and priestly perfection, 113-121
chart of, 115
Bible, reading of, 30
Bishops
and religious, obligation to per­
fection, 99-102
choice of, St. Thomas Aquinas
on, 99
possession of perfection essential,
102-103
see also Episcopacy

Catholic Action, remedy for dechristianization, 6-7
203

Charity
and obligation for Christians,
49-51
as end of other precepts, 46
extraordinary, 47
increase in, 46
perfection of, 45-48
purification of, 166-167
remiss acts of, 46—47
Chastity, 65
purification of, 154—155
Chevrier, P., chart on the priest,
another Christ, 85
Christ. See Jesus Christ
Christianity, state of, 105-109
Christians
and obligation of charity, 49-51
and the counsels, 48-51
obligation to seek perfection, 3952
Clergy, secular
and state of perfection, 72-76
obligation to strive toward per­
fection, 76-86
Communism, 2
Conscience, need for examination
of, 10
Contemplation, 175—176
infused, 179
Cormier, Η. Μ., O.P., on living
the supernatural spirit, 35-36
Cortes, Donoso, and dechristianization, 4
Counsels, evangelical. See Evangel­
ical counsels

204

Priesthood and Perfection

Dark Night of the Soul, 162
on purification of virtues, 149150, 153, 159
Dechristianization
effects on everyday life, 3-6
remedies for, 6-9
De Revelatione, 17
Dionysius
Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, quoted
on priestly perfection, 71
quoted on dedication by religious
to perfection, 59
Divine Office, as continuation of
Mass, 81-82

195-197
on four ends of sacrifice, 173
on the Eucharist and priestly
perfection, 184-197
prayer for priests celebrating
Mass, 86-88

Faith
and morals, study of, remedy for
dechristianization, 7-9
definition of, 18-19
infallibility of, 17-18
infused
and interior life, 15-21
certainty of, 15-16
Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, 71
knowledge of, schools of thought
Epikeia, 157
on, 15ff.
Episcopacy
living, 20-21
and religious state, perfection in,
loss of, 20
99-102
motive
Passerini on, 100-101
supernatural nature, 18
definition and obligations, 91-94
Thomistic arguments for, 17lawful to desire
21
St. Augustine on, 103
need for, 1-3
St. Paul on, 103
purification of, 164-165
St. Thomas on, 104
signs of, 23-27, 29
perfection in, 94—103
spirit of
Passerini on, 95-97
and consideration of our
St. Thomas on, 94-95, 98
neighbor, 26-27
Suarez on, 95-96
and God, 24-25
refusal of appointment to, 104and life’s events, 27-28
105
and ourselves, 25-26
St. Thomas on, 91-92
supernatural nature of, 18-21
superiority to religious state, Pas­
supernatural spirit of, signs of,
serini on, 101-102
30-35
three powers, 94
Forgetfulness of oneself, 34-35
withdrawal from, 105
Fortitude, purification of, 156
see also Bishops
Equity, 157
Eucharist, and priestly perfection, Garrigou, Maurice, Canon, quoted
on interior life, 124—134 passim
184-197
God
Christ in, 191-193
considered in spirit of faith, 24Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, prayer
25
to, 193-195
existence of, 5
Evangelical counsels, 61—64
idea of, in dechristianization,
and Christians, 48—51
4-5
Eymard, Pierre Julian, Blessed
obligation to love, 41-42
and the Eucharist, 191-193,

Index
union with
and recollection, 130-132
and self-denial, 130-132
Grace, sacramental, 78
Gréa, Dom, on secular clergy, 70
Holy Ghost. See Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
gifts and virtues, 136-147
necessity of, 48
Humility, purification of, 155-156,
163, 165-166
Imitation of Christ, quoted on
priestly state, 79-80
Independent ethic, naturalistic sys­
tem, 4
Jesus Christ
and the priesthood, 185-186
call of, to priests, 132-134
Eucharistic Heart, prayer to,
193-195
harmony of virtues and gifts ex­
emplified in, 139-141
in the Eucharist, 191-193
model of all virtues, 191—193
John, St., quoted on faith, 28
John Fisher, St., quoted on the
Mass, 188-189
John of the Cross, St.
and passive purification of the
soul, 159-162
Dark Night of the Soul, on puri­
fication of virtues, 149-150,
153, 159
Justice
commutative, 157
distributive, 157
legal, 157
original
harmony in, 60-61
chart, 62
purification of, 156-157

Lacordaire, Jean Baptiste, on faith,
19-20
Lay ethic, naturalistic system, 4
Liberalism (religion), 2

205

Life
events of, and spirit of faith,
27-28
examination of, 27
modem, errors of, 1-3
unitive, 130-132
Liturgy, 142
appreciation of, 32-33
Lord's Sermon on the Mount, 114
Louis XVI, of France, and loss of
kingdom, mentioned, 27
Man, supernatural, 29-30
Martyrs, harmony of virtues and
gifts in, 140
Mass, celebration of, 9-10
Matthew, St., on kingdom of
heaven, 29
Meekness, purification, 155
Mercier, Desire Felicien, Cardinal
La Vie Intérieure, Appel aux
âmes Sacerdotales, 124
on secular clergy, 70
on the interior life, 125
Modernists, on certainty of faith,
16
Mortification, desire for, 33-34
Mystical Body of Christ, and duties
of priests toward, 83-86
Naturalism, 108-109
Neighbor, consideration of, and the
spirit of faith, 26-27
Nominalists, and the motive of
faith, 15
Obedience (vow), 65
Order of Preachers, rule cited, 57
Ordination
effects of, 77-79
priestly, 76-80
requirements for, 77
special obligation of, 79

Paul,
on
on
on

St.
charity, 50
interior life, 125-126
perfection in religious life, 98

206

Priesthood and Perfection

on receiving the word of God, Pius X, St., Pope, prayer for priests
celebrating Mass, 86—88
17-18
Pius XI, Pope, Ad Catholici
on religious authority, 31
Sacerdotii, 11
on spirit of faith, examples on,
Poverty (vow), 65
23-24
St. Thomas Aquinas on, 101
on striving after perfection, 56
Passerini, Giuseppe L.
Prayer
episcopate, perfection of, 94—97
affective, 173-177
religious state, perfection of,
contemplative, 171
100-101
definition of, 171
superiority of episcopate to re­
degrees of, St. Thomas Aquinas
ligious state, 101-102
on, 180-181
Pelagians, teaching on infused
discursive, 172-173
faith, mentioned, 19
importance of, 82
Perfection
liturgical. See Liturgy
Christian, 50-51
mental, 171-181
exterior, 43
need for, 10
theological, 171, 177-181
in charity
scriptural basis, 42-44
Priest(s)
theological proof, 44—45
another Christ (table), 85
in religious life
duty to communicate faith, 13
means of, 63-64
interior life of, 123-134
obstacles against, 63-64
learning of, 11—12
interior, 43
ministry in world, 105-109
obligation for religious to seek,
necessity to answer call of Christ,
53-67
132-134
basis of obligation, 54—56
perfection of
excellence of religious life,
and duties toward Mystical
65-66
Body, 83-86
nature of obligation, 56-59
and duties toward sacramental
purpose of, 59-67
body of Christ, 80-82
three vows, 63-64
Council of Trent on, 83
obligation of bishops and re­
preparation of, 9-12
ligious to, 99-102
young, defects of, 150-153
obligation to seek, 39-52
Priesthood
priesdy, 69-89
fullness of, 91-109
and Eucharistic worship,
interior life and external aposto183- 197
late, 143-147
theories on, 69-71
spirit of Christ in, 185-186
priestly
virtues in, 135-147
and purification of virtues, Profession, religious, and perfec­
149-168
tion, 54-56
and the beatitudes, 113-121
Protestantism, in Germany and
and the Eucharist, 184—197
England, 2-3
Blessed Julian Eymard on,
Prudence, purification, 157-158
184- 197
religious. See Religious life
Radicalism, 2
Pius IX, Pope, Syllabus of, 4

Index
Recollection
and union with God, 130-132
in interior life, 129-130
Religion, purification of, 158-159
Religious, obligation to perfection,
53-67
Religious life
and sin, 56-59
excellence of, 65-66
Thomistic teaching on, 57-59
Religious state and espiscopate, per­
fection in, 99-102
Reparation. See Satisfaction

Sacramentels and supernatural
spirit, 32
Sacraments, desire for, 31-32
Sacred Scripture. See Bible.
Sacrifice
ends of, 187-191
perfect, 64
Salmanticenses and pursuit of per­
fection, 57
Satisfaction, 189
Self-denial
in interior life, 127-129
union with God and, 130-132
Society, dechristianization of, 1-3
Soul
active purification of, 162-168
passive purification, 159-168
John of the Cross on, 159-162
Spirit, supernatural
evidences of, 29-38
authority, religious respect for,
30-31
forgetfulness of oneself, 34—35
liturgical prayer, 32-33
mortification, desire for, 3334
pearl of great price, 29-30
sacraments, desire for, 31-32
in daily life, 35-38
Spiritual life
and Eucharistic worship, 183—
184
and external apostolate in priest­
hood, 143—147

207

and infused faith, 15-21
definition of, 125
erroneous ideas on, 124—125
growth in, 127-130
need for, 7-12
of the priest, 123-134
St. Paul on, 125-126
true. 125-127
Study and piety, union of, 13-14
Suarez, Francis
on motive of faith, 16-17
on perfection in the episcopate,
95, 96
Supplication, 189-190
Syllabus (Pius IX), 4

Teresa, St.
on contemplation, 175
Way of Perfection, and the
Lord’s Prayer, 180
Thanksgiving, 188-189
Thomas Aquinas, St.
definition of apostolic life, 9
on adoration, 174
on charity, 44
on choice of a bishop, 99
on contemplation, 6
on episcopate, 91-92
on faith, 19
on infused contemplation, 179
on infused faith, 17
on interior perfection for priestly
duties, 80-81
on love of God, 41
on motive for Christians, 37
on perfection, 40, 43-44
in episcopate, 94-95, 98
necessary for salvation, 47
state of, in religion, 55
striving for, 43—44, 56
on poverty, 101
on prayer, degrees of, 180-181
on religious state, 59
on secular clergy, perfection of,
71-76
on theological virtues as weapons
against the Devil, 106
on things of this world, 60

208

Priesthood and Perfection

on virtue, perfection of, 71
teaching on gifts of the Holy
Spirit, 48
Thomists
on motive of faith, 16-21

Unitive life. See Life, unitive
La Vie Intérieure, Appel aux âmes
Sacerdotales, 124
Vincent de Paul, St., and tempta­
tions against faith, 169n
Virtues
and gifts of the Holy Ghost,
136-147
correlation (chart), 120
harmony of, 135—139
kinds. 136-137

of priesthood, 135-147
purification and priestly perfec­
tion, 149-168
purification of, 153-159
religious, 64
theological, 65
Virtues and gifts, harmony of
exemplified in Christ, 139-141
in martyrs, 140
in priestly perfection, 141-146
Vocation, Eucharistic, 195-197
Vows
meritorious, 64
three, 63-64
Worship, Eucharistic, 195-197
and priestly perfection, 186-195
and the interior life, 183-184

Λ

IN

NOTE

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This book is set in Fairfield, a Linotype face, created by Rudolph
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