THE
LAST
WRITINGS
of

Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange
Translated by
Raymond Smith, O.P., and Rod Gorton

NEW CITY PRESS - NEW YORK - LONDON

Published in the United States, 1969,
Città Nuova Editrice. Printed in Italy.
of this book may be reproduced in any
of brief quotations in a review, without

Nihil

obstat:

by New City Press, ©
by
All rights reserved. No part
form, except for the inclusion
permission from the publisher.

Martinus S. Rushford, Ph.D.
Censor Librorum

Imprimatur: f Franciscus Ioannes Mugavero, D.D.
Episcopus Bruklyniensis
Bruklyni die VII Maii 1969

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-77’439

PREFACE

Like Christ, Vatican II came to fulfill not to destroy.
Although the retreat conferences that comprise this book
are pre-Vatican II and from time to time quite evidently so,
the spiritual depth of their author rises above the changing
mood of the world and captures to a great extent the
fresh emphasis of the Church on various aspects of her
infinitely rich reality.
Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange is well known to the
English reading audience from his books on theology and
particularly those on the spiritual life. What is offered now
is a retreat preached by Father Garrigou to his Dominican
brethren. Consequently one will encounter frequent references
to Dominican saints as well as Dominican life along with
some of those delightful, if no doubt apocryphal, stories
that grow in a religious family. Yet, the universality and
oneness of the spiritual life shine forth and all Christians,
not only religious, will find in the following pages considerable
help from the doctrine and exhortations of this renowned
father of those seeking greater holiness.
One might have anticipated constant references to the
Summa of St. Thomas but instead Father Garrigou over­
whelmingly gives preference to holy Scripture as the source
for his thoughts. Whenever possible we have employed the

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THE LAST WRITINGS

Jerusalem Bible translation, except in cases where Father
Garrigou was adapting the text, paraphrasing, or where the
change in words would obscure the points under discussion.
A retreat is not a carefully annotated treatise. Hence,
hyperbole is validly used and only a purist would take issue
with some of Father Garrigou’s assertions which are less
precise than we normally expected from him. In other words,
the genre of retreat conference is not that of the scientific
theologian proposing or defending a thesis.
We are deeply indebted to Father Raymond Spiazzi,
Ο. P., for the availability of this posthumous work of
Father Garrigou. In his preface to the Italian edition, Father
Spiazzi tells how he obtained permission to publish the
retreat.
“ We remember the day when one of us during recreation
asked our dear and venerated master and confrere, the
author of this book: * Father Master, why don’t you publish
your spiritual exercises, which have done so much good
for us? ’ Father Garrigou-Lagrange with a look that
revealed the profound mixture of simplicity, intelligence
and humor of his soul answered: ' I do not think that I
should publish them because, first of all, I still want to
use them in my preaching.’ ... In any case we obtained
his permission for a future publication of his exercises,
‘after his death,’ and that was sufficient.”
We hope that this final work from Father Garrigou
will find acceptance with his many admirers and, perhaps,
make him new friends. The retreat is full of optimism and
spiritual joy, qualities so real in Father Garrigou himself
and so desperately needed today. Father Garrigou-Lagrange
was too existentially aware of God’s role in man’s salvation

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PREFACE

to take a grim appraisal of the world situation too literally.
He preferred to see man’s ascent to God in terms of the
good news of Christ. The hardships of life will always be
present no matter how much technology improves the
physical living conditions of mankind. Only God can reach
the heart of man. We trust that this retreat of Father
Garrigou touches the hearts of all who read it and meditate
upon it. He felt that all the People of God were called to
holiness, to everlasting union with God through love.
This message is Father Garrigou’s last will and testament.

Raymond Smith, Ο. P.
St. Dominic’s Priory
Washington, D.C.

CONTENTS

Preface.................................................................... vii

Our Theme.....................................................

1

I.

The Goal: Glory and Grace..............................
3
The Reply of the World..............................
3
The Reply of Reason......................................
6
The Answer of Revelation...............................
7
The Way to Glory......................................
8
Fundamental Identity of the Life of Grace with
the Life of Glory....................................................... 10
The Holy Spirit in Us............................................... 12

II.

Sin............................................................................. 15
The Obstacle.............................................................. 15
Malice of Sin.............................................................. 17
Venial Sin.............................................................. 22
Consequences of Venial Sin
....
23
Purgatory..................................................................... 25
Mastery......................................................................26

III. The Redemptive Power of Christ
...
29
Redemptive Omnipotence....................................... 29
The Personality of the Incarnate Word .
.
31
The Charity of Christ............................................... 35
The Mystical Body...................................................... 37
IV. The Love of God...................................................... 41
The First Commandment....................................... 41

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THELAST WRITINGS

Natural Love, Supernatural Love ...
The Love of God for Us........................... 44
The Response of the Saints
....
Our Response.......................................... 50

42

48

V.

Fraternal Charity...................................................... 53
Why the Love of God Ought to Extend Also
to Our Neighbor...........................................54
How to Practice FraternalCharity
. .
.
58

VI.

Mortification.................................................. 65
Necessity of Mortification............................ 68
Sublime Loftiness of theSupernatural End
Ways of Mortification............................74
Effects of Mortification............................ 77

71

Humility.......................................................... 81
Humility with Respect to God....
Humility with Respect to One’sNeighbor
.
The Levels of Humility............................ 90

82
88

VII.

VIII. Poverty.......................................................... 93
The Religious State: State of Consecration
that Presupposes Separation....
The Religious Value of Poverty ...

IX.

Chastity........................................................ 105
Separation................................................. 105
Consecration................................................. 110

X.

Obedience................................................. 117
Separation................................................. 120
Consecration................................................. 126

XI.

The Cross................................................. 131
Crosses of Sensibility.................................. 133
Crosses of the Spirit.......................... 136
How to Carry the Cross.......................... 141

93
96

CONTENTS

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

The Efficacy of Prayer........................... 145
Necessity of Prayer................................... 145
Mental Prayer and Mortification .
.
.
Efficacy of Prayer................................... 146
The Source of the Efficacy ofPrayer
.
.

Mental Prayer.......................................... 155
What is Mental Prayer?........................... 155
The Various Degrees................................... 160
The Object.................................................. 161
How to Go about Mental Prayer .
.
.
The Effects.................................................. 165

xiii

146

148

162

Perseverance in Mental Prayer
.
.
.
Necessity of This Perseverance .
.
.
.
To Trust.................................................. 169
To Allow Oneself to Be Led .
.
.
.

167
167

Docility to the Holy Spirit
.
.
.
.
The Movement of the Spirit .
.
.
.
That Voice.................................................. 183
To Follow the Voice of the Spirit .
.
.

179
179

188

Zeal for the Glory of Godand the Salvation
of Souls..........................................................191
The Motive........................................... 191
The Extension.......................................... 195
How Is This Zeal to Be Exercised? .
.

197

176

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin .
.
. 201
Why We Should Have a Great Devotion to
the Holy Virgin.................................................... 202
How to Practice This Devotion .
.
. 208
The Fruits of This Devotion . .
.
. 211

XVIII. Union with God.................................................... 215
What is This Union?..................................... 215
Means to Obtain It............................................. 219
Conclusion............................................................ 223

OUR THEME

At the outset of this retreat we wish to introduce the
subject of our discussions. The fundamental theme will be
progress in the spiritual life. The points to be developed
are: the goal: glory and supernatural life in heaven; the
obstacles: evil, sin and its consequences; the source: Our
Lord and His redemptive work. Next we consider the
spiritual growth of charity in terms of its two great
movements: death to sin: by means of mortification, the
practice of the three vows, and the acceptance of one’s
cross; and configuration to Christ: by means of prayer,
docility to the Spirit of Christ, zeal for the glory of God
and the salvation of souls, and devotion to Mary. Lastly we
treat of union with God.
In considering these themes may the Lord grant us
a spirit of recollection, supernatural attention, sincerity,
generosity and prayer. May the Holy Spirit inspire us all
with the ardent desire for perfection, grant the author
the faculty of treating his subject in a manner that is not
too unworthy, and enable readers to penetrate the profound
sense of words repeated and heard thousands of times.
Finally, may the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of total
self-giving in a perfect act of charity.

CHAPTER

I

The Goal: Glory and Grace
They are the ones He chose specially
long ago and conformed to become true
images of His Son, so that His Son might
be the eldest of many brothers.—Romans
8, 29

In order to understand what spiritual progress should
be, we first must examine the end to which it tends. St. Paul
expresses the idea in the text cited above, namely, a config­
uration or conformity to the Word of God. We have often
been reminded of this divine doctrine but it is so sublime
that we can never pretend to understand it sufficiently.
Consequently, if we wish to penetrate its profound meaning
we must gradually rise above ourselves. In attempting to
determine our ultimate goal we shall proceed by exclusion,
setting aside the lesser things that the spirit of the world
proposes to us, until, after the necessary ascent, we arrive
at a true formulation of our supreme end.
The Reply of the World

Why were we made? The world answers: “We were
made for enjoyment, for pleasure, the pleasure of the body,
the senses, the imagination, the intellect, and the heart.”
Enjoyment! This is to be the end, the rule, the motive of
our activity. Such is the principle of paganism and every
day it is becoming more and more that of the present

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THE LAST WRITINGS

world. At times it is a temptation for Christians also, even
for us religious.
Evidently such an answer to the problem of life cannot
be accepted by the unfortunate of this world who justly
feel provoked to anger and exasperation. What sense does
it really have for other men? This ideal or norm of life in
reality makes man a slave of the events that procure or
take away his pleasures; a slave of his passions and his
very desires; a slave of jealousy and anger that rise within
him against his own will itself; a slave of other men who
can snatch away the miserable goods that form his happiness.
By attempting to place himself at the center of all and to
reduce all to himself, the man ruled by pleasure becomes
the slave of all. He finds only disillusionment and disgust
in the miserable, fleeting possessions that he has made his
ultimate end. Moreover, he destroys within himself the
very dignity of his manhood because animal-like he lives
only for his body. With death he will lose everything and
what is worse often he does not take into account the
terrible punishments that await him.
Some persons have sought to live this way even in the
religious life. Common life became for them a torment,
the religious observances an insupportable yoke. They
suffered their whole life and, seeking pleasure everywhere,
they lost their souls.

Then the world corrects its maxim and says to us:
“ The goal of man is an ordered and well conceived quest
for his own interests, a thing not accomplished without
work, effort and sacrifice.” To acquire for oneself a position
in the world! Who would dare to deny that at times this
is also a temptation for us? It happens that certain religious
work long years to gain a position in the community and
to attain some dignity. Everything they do is subordinated
to such an objective. The drive is always present and it

THE GOAL:

GLORY AND GRACE

5

would end up having mastery if God did not restore these
religious to the right road with an opportune humiliation.
Such an attitude comes from the coldest and most arid
egoism. Yet the egoist is not happy. He knows only his
pleasures and personal satisfactions but has destroyed the
more noble aspirations of the heart. Everyone avoids him
so that his end is sad and solitary. If he thinks about
another life, every hope seems denied him. He has lived
only for the world and now he must leave the world.

Not even this maxim is satisfactory and so the world
proposes a third: the respect of one’s own dignity, that is,
fulfilling one’s individual and social duties. Such is the
Stoic reply which stems from human pride. Man is made
in order to develop his own intellectual and moral person­
ality. In recent years, under the influence of Modernism
we have seen this doctrine upheld even in religious circles.
The passive virtues of humility, obedience, and patience
have been quite depreciated, while the active and social
virtues that affirm personal initiative have been exalted.
This attitude contains a misapprehension. The man who
pretends to love the good through the love of both his own
dignity and his personal judgment concerning the good of
his own personality, in reality does not love the good but
rather adores himself and believes himself to be a god.
If he truly loved the good he would certainly love even
more than himself and above everything else the source of
every good and of all justice, that is, the Good that is God.
Pride is always something hard and cold. The person
that more or less consciously refuses to humble himself, to
obey, to rise above himself to the love of God is not able
to find happiness, which does not, in fact, exist in any finite
good. Perhaps this person recklessly spends himself in
external works both for the pleasure of spreading his ideas
and of dominating. One day or other this life has to end
and for those lacking charity death appears as something

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THE LAST WRITINGS

absurd that comes to destroy in an instant the moral edifice
constructed with the efforts of a lifetime.
The Reply of Reason

To know and to love God. The light of reason alone
shows us that the ultimate end of man consists in knowing
God and loving Him above all things. If we had been
created in a purely natural state, with an immortal soul but
without grace, our ultimate end would be precisely that of
knowing and loving God. However, like the great pagan
philosophers, we would have known Him only through
the perfections that exist in His creatures. God would have
been for us only the first cause of the universe, the supreme
intellect that governs creation. We would have loved Him
as the author of nature, with a love that exists between
inferior and superior. There would not have been any
intimacy, only admiration, respect, gratitude, without that
gentle and simple familiarity that is in the soul of the sons
of God. We would have been the servants not the sons
of God.
Such a natural ultimate end is in itself something
sublime, and could be pursued and possessed by all. Further­
more, the possession of God on the part of one would
neither impede another’s possession nor generate the least
jealousy. It consists of a knowledge that cannot produce
satiety, in a love that cannot exhaust the heart. This natural
knowledge of God would leave unanswered many mysteries
concerning the manner in which the divine perfections are
interrelated, for example, the most inexorable justice with
the most gentle mercy. The human intellect could do nothing
less than exclaim: “ Oh! If only I could see this God,
source of all truth and goodness! If only it were given to
me to contemplate this flaming sun from which the life of
creation comes, the light of intelligence, and the energy
of the will! ”

THE GOAL:

GLORY AND GRACE

7

The Answer of Revelation
Our true end, according to revelation, is to know God
as He knows Himself, to see Him face to face as He sees
Himself, directly and not through creatures. God was in
no way obliged to grant us participation in His intimate
life but He could do so and through pure mercy wished
to do so.
“We teach,” says St. Paul, " what Scripture calls: ' the
things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things
beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for
those who love Him ’ " (I Cor. 2, 9). What the great men
of this world and the masters of human wisdom have not
known, “ these are the very things that God has revealed
to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit reaches the depths
of everything, even the depths of God ” (ibid. 2, 10).
St. John writes: “ And eternal life is this: to know You,
the only true God ” (17, 3), and " My dear people, we are
already the children of God but what we are to be in the
future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that
when it is revealed we shall be like Him because we shall
see Him as He really is ” (I John 3, 2). “ For me,” explains
the Psalmist, “ the reward of virtue is to see your face, and,
on waking, to gaze my fill on your likeness ” (17, 15).
This face to face vision of God is infinitely superior to
the most sublime philosophy. We are destined to contem­
plate all the divine perfections, concentrated and harmonized
in their first principle, to understand how one and the
same love gives life to the most gentle mercy and the most
inflexible justice, thus uniting in itself seemingly opposite
attributes. We are destined to see how this love is identified
with pure wisdom; how it embraces nothing that is not
infinitely wise, and how all wisdom is changed into love.
We are called to see this love that is identified with the
Supreme Good that has been loved from eternity, to see
divine Wisdom that is identified with the First Truth that

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THE LAST WRITINGS

has always been known. We are called to contemplate this
eminent simplicity of God, this absolute pureness, the
epitome of all perfections.
Who will be able to tell the joy that such a vision will
produce if even now we are already entranced by the reflec­
tion of God’s perfections scattered as they are in some
small measure among His creatures, by the enchantment
of the sensible world, by the harmony of colors and sounds,
and still more by the splendor of souls as revealed in His
saints?
Finally, we are called to see the infinite fecundity of
this Divine Nature which subsists in Three Persons; to
contemplate face to face the eternal generation of the
Word, splendor of the Father and image of His substance
(Heb. 1, 3); to see the ineffable Spiration of the Holy
Spirit, this torrent of spiritual flame, the mutual love of
Father and Son, which, from all eternity, unites them in a
most absolute reciprocal self-giving.
Such a vision will produce in us a love of God so
strong, so absolute that nothing can ever destroy it nor
even diminish it. It will produce a love built on admira­
tion, respect, and gratitude, but above all on friendship,
with the simplicity and familiarity that this love presup­
poses. Through such a love we will enjoy above all else
that God is God, that He is infinitely holy, infinitely
merciful, infinitely just. It is a love that will make us adhere
to all the decrees of His Providence in view of His glory,
urging us to subject ourselves to what pleases Him so that
He may reign eternally in us. Everlasting life for us will
be to know God as He knows Himself, to love Him as He
loves Himself.
The Way to Glory

Looking at this more thoroughly makes evident that
such a knowledge and love cannot be realized in us unless

THE GOAL:

GLORY AND GRACE

9

God first deifies us in a certain manner in the depths of
our soul. In the natural order man is capable of intellectual
knowledge and of an illumined love superior to sensate
love only because he possesses a spiritual soul. The situation
is the same in the supernatural order where we are incapable
of divine knowledge and divine love unless we first receive
something of the very nature of God, unless our soul is
deified in some way, that is to say, transformed in God.
The blessed in heaven can participate in the divine operations,
in the very life of God, precisely because they have received
this nature from Him, just as a son receives his nature
from his father.
From all eternity God necessarily generates a Son similar
to Himself, the Word. He communicates to Him His nature
without dividing or multiplying it; He makes Him God of
God, Light of Light, the splendor of His substance. Purely
gratuitously, He has wished to have other sons in time,
adopted sons through a sonship that is not only moral but
real since the love of God for His creature adds a new
perfection. He has loved us, and this creative love has
made us participate in the very principle of His intimate
life. “ They are the ones He chose specially long ago and
intended to become true images of His Son, so that His
Son might be the eldest of many brothers,” says St. Paul
(Rom. 8, 29). In this is found precisely the essence of the
glory that God reserves for those He loves: " the things
that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond
the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who
love Him " (I Cor. 2, 9).
The elect will become part of the very family of God
as they enter into the circle of the Holy Trinity. In
them the Father will generate His Word; the Father and
the Son will issue forth Love. Charity will assimilate them
to the Holy Spirit and meanwhile the vision will assimilate
them to the Word, who in turn will make them similar
to the Father whose expression He is. At that time we

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THE LAST WRITINGS

will be able to say truly that we know and love the Trinity
that dwells in us as in a temple of glory, and we shall
be in the Trinity, at the summit of Being, Thought, and Love.
This is the glory, this is the goal to which our spiritual
progress tends — configuration to the Word of God.

Fundamental Identity of the Life of Grace
with the Life of Glory
The spiritual life is able to tend to such an exalted
end only because it presupposes in us the seed of glory,
that is, a supernatural spiritual life which is basically iden­
tified with everlasting life.
The acorn could not become an oak unless it were of
the same species and had essentially the same life as the
grown tree; the child could not become a man unless it
already possessed a human nature, even though in an
imperfect state. In the same way the Christian on earth
could not become one of the blessed in heaven unless he
had previously received the divine life. To understand
thoroughly the essence of the acorn, it is necessary to
consider this essence in its perfect state in an oak tree.
In the same way if we wish to understand the essence of
the life of grace in us, we must consider it as an embryonic
form of everlasting life, as the very seed of glory, semen
gloriae. Fundamentally, it is the same divine life but two
differences are to be noted. Here below we can know God
only obscurely through faith and not in the direct light of
vision. Moreover, through the inconstancy of our free will we
can lose supernatural life, while in heaven it is impossible
to be lost. Except for these two differences it is a question
of the same divine life. The Holy Spirit already spoke
through the mouth of Ezekiel (36, 25-26): “ I shall pour
clean water over you and you will be cleansed .... I shall
give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you.” To the
Samaritan woman, Jesus spoke: “ But anyone who drinks

THE GOAL:

GLORY AND GRACE

11

the water that I shall give will never be thirsty again: the
water that I shall give will turn into a spring inside him,
welling up to eternal life ” (Jn. 4, 14). “ If any man is
thirsty, let him come to me! Let the man come and drink
who believes in Me! As scripture says: From his breast
shall flow fountains of living water ” (Jn. 7, 37-38). “ Mine
is not a kingdom of this world ” (Jn. 18, 36); “ For, you
must know, the Kingdom of God is among you” (Lk. 17, 21).
Like the grain of mustard seed, the leaven that ferments
the dough, or the treasure hidden in the field, the kingdom
outwardly does not make a striking appearance. Yet the
life of grace is basically identical with that in heaven.
Jesus said so.
Without doubt while on earth we cannot see God with
clarity of vision and yet truly it is He whom we attain
with our faith because we believe His word that already
reveals to us the profundity of God. “ Now instead of the
spirit of the world, we have received the Spirit that comes
from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that He
has given us. Therefore we teach, not in the way in which
philosophy is taught, but in the way that the Spirit teaches
us: we teach spiritual things spiritually. An unspiritual
person is one who does not accept anything of the Spirit
of God: he sees it all as nonsense; it is beyond his under­
standing because it can only be understood by means of the
Spirit ” (I Cor. 2, 12-14). " Only faith can guarantee the
blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the
realities that at present remain unseen ” (Heb. 11, 1).
Certainly supernatural life, grace, can be lost but that
comes from the fact that we can go astray and fail. Grace,
however, the charity in us, is in itself absolutely incorrup­
tible, like spring water that can be preserved for an inde­
termined period of time provided its container does not
break, or like an indestructible force that would never cease
working so long as the instruments it makes use of do
not refuse to work. “ For love is strong as Death,” says

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THE LAST WRITINGS

the Song of Songs (8, 6). Love is strong, like death, and
nothing can resist it. Its ardor is the blaze of fire, the
flame of Yahweh. “ Love no flood can quench, no torrents
drown " {ibid. 8, 7). It triumphs over persecutions, over
the most terrible tortures and the powers of hell. We too
will be invincible if we allow ourselves to be penetrated
by this love. No created force will be able to overcome us.
This love, then, is identical with that of heaven. It
presupposes that we have been “ born not out of human
stock or urge of the flesh or will of man but of God
Himself ” (Jn. 1, 13); that we are the sons and friends
of God and not merely His servants; that we participate
even in this life in the very nature and infinite life of
God (cf. I Pet. 1, 9). We treat of an adopted yet real
sonship, because the gratuitous love of God is essentially
active in relation to us, making us similar to Him, just
and holy in His eyes, worthy of life everlasting.

The Holy Spirit in Us
Now we can understand why revelation teaches us that
in our present state the Holy Spirit dwells in us. It is certain
that in heaven the whole Trinity dwells in the soul of
the blessed as in a temple of glory in which it is known
and loved. On the other hand, it is not said that the Word
dwells in us here below, inasmuch as He is not yet mani­
fested to us as the Word, as the Splendor of the Father.
Likewise we do not say that the Father, the Principle of
the Son, dwells in us, but we do say this of the Holy
Spirit, of Substantial Love. Through this Love God has
made us His sons. In fact, in our present state, charity,
identical with that of heaven, assimilates us to the Holy
Spirit and the Holy Spirit, principle of our charity, is as
the heart of our heart, the vivifying source that renews
and sanctifies our life. He consoles us in the pains of exile,
continually draws us more towards the everlasting life of

THE GOAL:

GLORY AND GRACE

13

the Word, always conforming us more to the Son who,
in turn, will assimilate us definitely to the Father in heaven.
Consequently, the Holy Spirit dwells in us and makes
us feel His presence. We perceive the Holy Spirit with an
experiential knowledge wholly permeated with the love
which proceeds from the gift of wisdom. The Holy Spirit
is with us as friend with friend, a strong friend who never
abandons us but always cares for our moral wounds,
fortifying and elevating us: Comforter, Vivifier, Renewer,
Sanctifier.
In this way God dwells in infants whereas He did not
dwell in the greatest pagan philosophers. He delights in
making His presence felt in the hearts of the most humble
Christians, while He does not make Himself felt to the
theologian infatuated with his abstract and speculative
science.
Behold the mustard seed in us! If we only understood
the gift of God! If we only understood, as St. Paul tells
us (cf. I Cor. 13, 2) that it is superior to the gift of
prophecy, to the gift of miracles, to the science of angels!
Miracles and prophecies are only signs that permit man to
recognize the word of God, whereas grace, charity, makes
it possible for God Himself to live in us and make us live
with His love, thereby disposing us immediately to everlast­
ing life. Since it is the principle of all merit, every work
that does not proceed from it is dead, fruitless for salvation.
It is the progress, the development of this seed, that we
must study, already knowing the goal to which it tends.
We shall begin by considering the obstacles that could com­
promise or completely impede its growth.
Lord, make us understand the infinite value of ever­
lasting life which You have placed in us. Infuse in our
heart a deep hatred of evil that could make us lose it.
Teach us in a practical way how it ought to grow in us,
that we may become like to You and merit to be called
Your brothers and friends in the kingdom of heaven.

CHAPTER

II

Sin
Yahweh loves those who repudiate evil.—
Psalm 97, 10

We have seen what the ultimate end of life is, the goal
of the spiritual progress of man, namely, configuration to
the Word, participation in the intimate life of the only and
eternal Son, in the glory of vision. Now we have to examine
what separates us from this end, what not only hinders us
from attaining it but hurls us into an abyss of miseries as
inexpressible as the glory of which it deprives us.
The Obstacle

What diverts us from our ultimate end is sin. Fittingly
we ask ourselves: do we have the divine hatred of sin?
Do we try our utmost to understand that such a hatred,
which has created hell, proceeds necessarily from the love
owed God, and that such a hatred must be profound, intense,
and without limits as is this love itself?
To hate evil requires knowing it. Yet, too often we have
only a verbal and superficial knowledge of it. We teach
children the following catechism definition: “ Sin is disobe­
dience to the law of God; if grave it causes death to the
soul making it deserve everlasting death. All the evils of
this world are nothing by comparison with a single mortal
sin.”
The world does not believe this doctrine which comes
from God, does not believe that sin is the worst evil of

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all. For the world the true evils are diseases, tuberculosis,
paralysis, infirmities of every kind, poverty, and ruin. Pride,
on the contrary, is not an evil in the eyes of the world;
rather, it is even necessary for attaining success. A life given
over to pleasure or laziness is not an evil for those rich
enough to lead this type of existence. Forgetfulness of God
is not an evil. God, in fact, according to the world, is
completely indifferent to our adoration and services, infi­
nitely above our miseries. We, say the worldly, do not wish
to offend God. We seek only our own pleasure. Moreover,
the violence of passion and the circumstances of life excuse
us from sin. In this way the world ends by denying the
very existence of sin.
Does not this spirit of the world exercise its influence
even on us, making us sometimes say of deliberate venial
sin what the world says of mortal sin? In explaining the
catechism answer it does not seem too extreme to say that
mortal sin is similar to those diseases that strike the body’s
vital parts such as the head or the heart while venial sin
is similar to the diseases that paralyze the members and
organs not absolutely indispensable to life, such as the eyes
and the ears.
He who commits a mortal sin separates himself totally
from the principle of supernatural life which is God. He is
cut off from his ultimate end, committing, as it were,
suicide in the supernatural order. He who falls into venial
sin impedes the action of God from exercising itself freely
on him, and little by little ruins his supernatural health
just as the alcoholic ruins the health of his body. Without
completely abandoning the way that leads to God, we
nevertheless retard our journey and dissipate our energies
by futile delays instead of going straight ahead with speed.
This deliberate venial sin may be vanity, slander, lying,
sloth, and sensuousness. Some religious commit such sins
with extreme ease on every occasion. They have read in
spiritual writers that venial sin is a worse evil than any

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17

physical evil but they have inadequately grasped its signif­
icance, forming for themselves a very superficial concept
of it. Thus they feel little hatred for such evil. When they
commit it they do not really repent. They fall into the
malaise of lukewarmness which has many degrees. It is a
kind of swamp where there is a continual meeting of the
pure air descending from above and the unhealthy fumes
coming from the nether world. We shall try to find the
profound sense of the Lord’s doctrine on sin and to hate
it as God demands by trying to understand its malice along
with the seriousness of its consequences.

Malice of Sin
Sin is essentially a disobedience to the law of God.
What does it mean to disobey God? Sacred Scripture teaches
us that sin is foolishness, a vileness, the worst type of
ingratitude, injustice, and outrage. Sin is an offence whose
gravity is, in a certain sense, infinite. All this is true,
saving the proportion, whether said of mortal sin or delib­
erate venial sin. We should ask the Lord to help us
thoroughly understand this.
Sin is first of all foolishness. St. Paul does not hesitate
to affirm that those the world considers wise are fools in
the eyes of God. The wisdom of the world that excuses
and justifies unbelief, pride, sloth, and lust is foolishness.
“ Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God ”
(I Cor. 3, 19). Considering that God has deigned with
infinite goodness to show us the way that leads to
happiness — “ learn to know Me, love Me and serve Me,
and you will attain life everlasting ” — are we not also
foolish if we refuse to follow? We were created to answer
“ yes ” to the divine call and instead we say “no.” Thus,
while God wishes to draw us to Himself, we put ourselves
at a distance from Him.

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The worldly person rushes to his pleasures of the
moment. He compares and contrasts his miserable goods
with God and in practice, by his life and his manner of
acting, he does not hesitate to affirm that such nonsense
is worth more than God, more than His friendship and
everlasting life. How many times he says: “ God forbids
it but I will do it anyway! ” It is as if he were to say:
“ Sensuality is worth more than God; money, revenge,
honors are worth more than He; my judgment more than His,
my little capricious will more than the infinitly holy will
of the Most High.” We place our childish whim in opposi­
tion to the will of God and it conquers. Is this not without
doubt foolishness? It is the foolishness of an instant but
it can become habitual and then produce a darkening or
complete blinding of the spirit. This will be such a blinding
that the transient good is preferred without hesitation to
the eternal good, the poisoned fruit to the bread of life,
while the sinner finally loses the consciousness of doing
evil. The sinners “ have . . . eyes, but never see, ears, but
never hear ” (Ps. 135, 16-17) and " drink iniquity like
water! ” (Job 15, 16).
A deliberate venial sin committed by a soul consecrated
to God is, in its own way, foolishness, “ stultitia.” The
word “ stultitia ” as used by Sacred Scripture has a meaning
in the supernatural order that is opposite to that of wisdom,
of the gift of wisdom, just as the word " misery ” expresses
the perfect antithesis of supernatural beatitude. Wisdom,
in fact, judges all things in relation to God and to the
salvation of souls, while foolishness judges all, even God,
in relation to ourselves and what is from our baser nature,
namely, the petty envies and personal ambitions, the quest
for comforts and momentary satisfactions.
A rash judgment, a hard word that wounds and separates
the soul of a confrere from us is foolishness in the eyes of
God and produces, without exaggeration, a momentary loss
of the habit of faith just as an attack of madness results

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19

in the loss of the use of reason. Instead of seeing the soul
of our neighbor in the light of faith and of the Holy Spirit
dwelling within him, he is seen in a natural and merely
sensible light which reveals to us an aspect of his temper­
ament opposed to our own. Such opposition, often physical
and material, becomes the supreme norm of our judgment.
This is an aberration in the eyes of God which merits the
name of foolishness. The natural and impassioned judgment
has darkened our supernatural judgment which is the correct
one, just as in an insane person the imagination takes the
place of reason. We entered the convent to help build up
the Mystical Body of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem, the
city of souls, and instead we have worked to divide and ruin
souls.
God has said to you: “ My son, faithfully observe all
of your rule, not just a part. Be submissive to your supe­
riors who represent Me. Be humble, charitable, and I
promise you sanctity, habitual prayer, a constant and indis­
soluble union with My Son who died for love of you,
with My Son who tenderly seeks your soul and wishes
your whole soul for Himself. I will make your soul His
spouse, and this spiritual marriage will be so intimate that
the earthly union, in comparison, will only be a symbol
and a shadow.” This is what God promises. Yet, we say,
not with words but with deeds: " Lord, I don’t want the
sanctity You offer me, I don’t want habitual union with
Christ. Let me live in mediocrity, in triviality, in lukewarm­
ness; it is better for me.”
This is deliberate venial sin, true foolishness in the
supernatural order. Such foolishness can become habitual,
ending with the darkening of the spirit which induces us
to see only the exterior, material, wearisome, irritating side
of the exercises of religious life. Little by little it causes
us to lose the understanding of the divine. The warnings
that divine Providence sends us pass unobserved and like
the worldly we also “ have eyes and do not see, ears and

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do not hear,” and even without being aware of it we
drink in like water venial iniquity that is very real.

Sin is not only foolishness, an evil of our intelligence. It
is also and above all, vileness, a profound evil of our will.
Indeed, however great his blindness may be, the conscience
of the sinner is aware that the act he is about to accomplish
is contrary to the law of God, to his own interest, to that
which is better and nobler in himself, to right reason, to
the light of faith, and to charity. He gives way before the
temptation and no longer troubles himself to will the good.
How many times do sinners say to us, " Yes, I am well
aware that I sacrifice the greater part of my time, my
energies, my health and my possessions to this blameworthy
passion. My will is enfeebled and I am losing my dignity
and character. I know it is foolishness but I can’t do
otherwise. ”
We also hear this reply sometimes in monasteries: “ I
can’t do otherwise. Do you want me to be like a son under
a superior who doesn’t appreciate anything that I earnestly
do, who doesn’t like me, and who has no concern for me?
I cannot! Do you want me to love as a brother this religious
who has been jealous of me and has sought by all means
to humiliate me? I cannot! There are repugnances that
cannot be conquered.”
" I cannot! " Rather we should say " I don’t want to;
my will is too weak.” If we truly wanted to, we would
pray, asking God for the grace to triumph over the obstacles
that hinder us from fulfilling our duty. God could not refuse
us this grace because it is absolutely impossible that God
would refuse us what is necessary for our salvation. “ I
cannot! ” To what purpose then is Communion, absolution,
and the example of the saints?
I conclude with the most absolute certainty that we
can but we do not want to by reason of our cowardice.
The pusillanimous fear the light, they seek the darkness.

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21

In fact, their cowardice itself increases the darkness. The
lukewarm religious does not want to grasp the greatness
of the religious ideal because he does not want to carry it
out. “ He refused to understand that he should live right.”
Sin is not only a foolishness and vileness, but considered
in relation to God it is also the blackest ingratitude, the
greatest injustice, and the gravest outrage. God is a father
who has given us all: existence, life, intelligence, a con­
science to distinguish good from evil, a will to choose the
good, and a heart to love it. To show us His love He gave
us His Son, who died for us on the Cross; he restored
us again to grace making us His friends; He has called us
with a special vocation to live even here on earth in the
intimacy of His love; and He calls us daily to Communion
and surrounds us with a thousand interior graces. Instead
of thanking Him, we put ourselves at a distance. We even
come to the point of deliberately despising the graces He
offers us, even His friendship itself. Sometimes we forget
that we have received all from Him. Instead we boast of
our intelligence and puny talents; we deliberately prefer
ourselves to others; we abandon ourselves to a friendship
that is based too much on feelings, thereby offending
the divine friendship and saddening our adored Friend.
This wound inflicted on the heart of Our Lord leaves us
cold and indifferent. What kind of gratitude is this?

It is also injustice because the gifts that God gives
us remain His. God, the Creator, has full rights over our
life. As supreme overlord He has the right of possession
over our mind and our heart, and this right, more absolute
than any of our property rights, remains binding even if
we forget it. He possesses this right in such an absolute
manner that He would cease to be God if He renounced it.
For example, He has the right to demand that we do not
tell conventional lies, slander anyone, or commit even a
small breach of modesty; but we wish to possess this right.

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All eternity would be insufficient to repair our injustice
toward God.
Every injustice relative to God contains a special malice;
it is an injury and an outrage. This slander and this
rash judgment is an outrage towards the Holy Spirit who
dwells within us; this impatient and angry word, this
insubordination to our superior who is the Lord’s represen­
tative is an outrage towards the Lord. In a certain sense
the injury is infinite since it is raised against the infinite
majesty of God, because it refuses to recognize His absolute
and eternal rights, preferring a momentary satisfaction to
Him. Since God is present everywhere, we outrage Him
to His face, as when a son insults his mother to her face.
Even more, it is not only an affront before Him but in
Him that we perpetrate since it is God who sustains us
and conserves us in being. We therefore turn our intelli­
gence and our heart against Him while He continues to
give us the power of thinking, living, willing and speaking.
Venial Sin

Only the saints could tell us all the evil that a deliberate
venial sin contains. Yet not even they grasp all its signif­
icance, all its repercussions with respect to God, to Jesus,
and to the soul.
One says venial sin, small sin, light sin. We should
watch that we do not fall into this error. The smallest
venial sin is a greater evil than all sufferings, all disgraces,
all ruins, and all purely physical evils. All the saints affirm
this. It is such a great evil that the disorder caused by
venial sin, as St. Thomas says, is in a certain sense
greater than the disorder generated by original sin (cf. II
Sent. d. 33, a. 1 ad 2).
Certainly venial sin does not have the loss of God as its
consequence. Nevertheless, it is more serious than the sin
of nature in the sense that by it we act personally against

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23

God, we offend Him deliberately, thus meriting not His
hatred but His anger—which makes no compromises with
evil.
Foolishness, vileness, ingratitude, outrage, such is sin,
whatever kind of sin, mortal or venial. What we have said
should be sufficient to make us hate it, make us understand
how much God Himself detests it, and how much His
infinitely delicate love is wounded by it. The sin of a
religious takes on a greater seriousness and is something
like the sin of the angel or that of Judas since it is
committed with full knowledge.
Consequences of Venial Sin
To penetrate more fully the seriousness of venial sin,
especially if it is deliberate, we must consider its conse­
quences, that is, see all the evil it produces in our souls
at the present time and what it prepares for the future, its
consequences here below and after death.
In the present, in the very instant in which it is
committed, venial sin deprives the soul of a precious grace.
In that instant, grace was offered us to make progress in
perfection, to be charitable, fervent, and industrious. If
we had corresponded, our merit would have increased and
for all eternity we would have contemplated God more
intensely face to face. We would have loved Him more.
Now this grace has been lost by our neglect, our laziness,
and our limited charity.
You will say, “ But I can find the moment, the occasion
to gain back the good that I lost.” On the contrary, the
answer is “ no.” You will not be able to recover the quarter
hour you wasted. Not even God, with all His power,
would be able to restore it. This grace, a thousand times
more precious than the universe, has been lost forever.
It is true that the sanctifying grace in you has not been
diminished, that it remains in the same degree. Venial sin,

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however, limits its freedom of action and can prepare
its ruin.
Venial sin does not destroy charity but paralyzes its
action and growth, makes it cold, and hinders its emergence.
It does not kill the soul, but it leaves it without force and
energy for the good. It diminishes the fervor of divine
love, darkens the eyes of the soul and obscures the vision
of God, just as partial paralysis without taking away life
sometimes hinders considerably the body’s freedom of
movement.
Venial sin often deprives us of precious graces in the
future. Is it that henceforth God will be less kind and less
communicative? No, we are the ones who change. The
graces that we refuse through our fault return to the bosom
of God, or to be more exact, they are poured out again
upon other souls. Our talent will be given to others who
know how to bear fruit. The divine lights, therefore, become
less vivid to us, the invitations of grace less frequent, less
intense, and less victorious.
If today we have lost time in vain conversation, or
permitted ourselves to get angry without cause, then tomor­
row God will deprive us of His light at the time of prayer.
The lights and energy that would have sanctified us will
be taken away because of our deliberate and repeated venial
faults. For example, if we deliberately and repeatedly
adhere to rash judgment, our charity slowly loses its vitality.
Sometimes repeated venial sins drag us indirectly into mortal
sin. While the graces become more rare, the evil inclinations
get the upper hand and sanctifying grace that dwells in
the soul slowly loses its liberty. The intelligence is oppressed
by darkness, the will debilitated, the heart hardened and
we become more and more engulfed in lukewarmness. The
temptations of the enemy continually become more and
more serious and frequent. We become separated from a
person as a result of constant rash judgments. One day or

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25

another envy and jealousy will assume such proportions
that charity will suffer gravely.
“ We meet in this dwelling place,” says St. Theresa,
“ some poisonous snakes that can cause death. In these
swamps there are fevers that incredibly weaken the soul
and are able to cause its death.” Indeed, we fall into a
dangerous stupor of lukewarmness and in such a state mortal
sin can surprise us. We can commit it almost without
taking notice. Of the lukewarm it is written: “ I know all
about you: how you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you
were one or the other, but since you are neither, but only
lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth " (Rev. 3, 15,
16). (Concerning the lukewarmness of religious, cf. St.
Catherine of Siena in Dialogue, " Tract on Obedience,"
chap. 162 from 1 to 5.)
Although we realize that divine mercy may hold us
back on the more or less conscious descent leading to
mortal sin, still, venial sin, not expiated here below, has
some consequences after death that are as fearful as they are
inescapable, that is, a purgatory possibly very long and
terrible.
Purgatory
Purgatory is the temporary privation of the greatest
good, the vision of God. It is the state of abandonment
in which the soul, immersed in the darkest night, is deprived
of contact with any creature whatsoever, suspended, as it
were, between heaven and earth, between the earth it
has left behind and the heaven to which it has not yet
been admitted. The faculties of knowing and loving are
deprived of any object, while one seeks in vain to cling
to something.
The great mystics have described for us the terrible
passive purifications of the senses and of the spirit through
which God separates the soul from every creature, denying

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it every consolation, human help, and sensible devotion.
He leaves the soul only the virtues, namely, faith with all
its darkness, hope against every hope, and a suffering love
nourished only by the very suffering that it heroically
supports.
St. John of the Cross affirms that these purifications
preparing the saints for the highest contemplation are more
terrible than a thousand deaths. In reality, the soul without
an exceptional grace would not have the strength to
survive.
Purgatory will be like that. If our soul is stained with
sin, it must necessarily be purified either here below or
after death. We can believe that purgatory will be relatively
severe for the souls that have committed only indeliberate
venial sins that caught them off guard. How terrible and
long will it be for the souls that sinned venially with full
advertence and culpable negligence. Perhaps with their lips
they never dare to say so, but their actions and life speak
more openly than their mouth, crying out: “lam offending
God. I know that I am wounding His love, abusing the
blood of my Savior, and squandering the graces of absolu­
tion and Communion and many more. Such is the price of
satisfying for an instant my egoism, my self-love, my
sensuality, my vanity.” What retribution will be paid in
purgatory for this seductive aspect of our wretched
satisfactions!

Mastery
The means of escape from this state of lukewarmness
are: a good retreat; a spiritual direction that is supernatural,
wise, warmhearted and energetic; a great cross; or a great
humiliation that makes us return inward, showing us the
things of this world and the things of eternity under the
right light. A great cross can illumine our pettiness, our
poverty, and our misery. Finally there is prayer. The

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27

lukewarm, impoverished, despoiled soul always has the
grace to pray. Only the damned are deprived of this.
“ Do not harden your hearts! ” Jesus calls to us all: “ Come
to Me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will
give you rest ” (Mt. 11, 28). Our Lord has such a desire
to pardon! He revealed this to St. Jerome: “ Jerome, give
Me your sins that I may pardon you. ” Yet, “ many are
called, but few are chosen ” (Mt. 22, 14) because not all
pass through the narrow gate (Mt. 7, 13). (See St. Catherine
of Siena, Dialogue, “ Means to Escape from Lukewarmness,"
1, chap. 162; and The Imitation of Christ, “ Corruption
of Nature,” III, chap. 55).
If we have the good fortune of being fervent, we should
pray ardently for the lukewarm souls who habitually pray
little and so badly. We should beseech Jesus not to permit
us to descend into those unhealthy regions that border on
the depths, but rather to make us always penetrate farther
into the fertile valleys and to elevate us little by little
toward those summits to which our destiny as sons of God
and as religious call us.

CHAPTER

III

The Redemptive Power
of Christ
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.—
Jn. 14, 6

This is the love I mean·, not our love
for God, but God's love for us when
He sent His Son to be the sacrifice that
takes our sins away.—I Jn. 4, 10

The power that must support us is the redemptive
action of Christ. “ This is the love I mean: not our love
for God, but God’s love for us when He sent His Son to
be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.” Having reflected
on the goal of the spiritual life, configuration to the Word
in the light of glory, we considered what is essentially
opposed to this progress and can always threaten and
compromise it. Sin. Now we will see what that power is
by which we can triumph over both sin and the inclination
to evil that is the fruit of sin; that power with which we
can raise ourselves above human limitations and attain the
divine end to which Divine Providence and Mercy have
destined us.

Redemptive Omnipotence
The power upon which rests the spiritual life of all
souls striving to be freed from evil and raised up to God
is the redemptive action of Christ, His ever active and

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efficacious love directed to the Father and to us. He Himself
told us: “ As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, but
must remain part of the vine, neither can you unless you
remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches ”
(Jn. 15, 4-5). The branches can live only if they are united
to the vine and receive the sap from it. “ Come to Me, all
of you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give
you rest ” (Mt. 11, 28) — that is, burdened under the
weight of your faults and sufferings. “ And when I am
lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men to Myself "
(Jn. 12, 32).
Life itself teaches us that the strength of a soul in the
midst of trial and temptations comes from its practical and
experiential consciousness of the infinite value of Redemption,
of the omnipotent efficacy of Christ’s death on the Cross.
In the confessional one day a poor woman was explaining
to the priest the moral anguish in which she found herself.
She was abandoned by her husband, her sons, and by all;
she was seriously calumniated by those on whom she should
have been able to rely; she was sick and tormented by
hunger. The priest, seeing that he was dealing with a true
Christian, said to her directly: " Our Lord suffered more
than you, for love of you. ” That poor woman, with full
conviction, exclaimed: “ That’s true, it’s really true! ” She
again found her strength and was able to continue on
her way.
According to the definition of the Church, the redemptive
act of Christ has an infinite value and efficacy. It makes
satisfaction for any guilt whatsoever, repairs fully any offense
against God, even though its gravity is infinite. It satisfies
for all the sins of men, and still more. It compensates
for all the rebellions against God, all the apostasies, all the
acts of despair and presumption, all the feelings of hatred,
and all kinds of crime. It merits all graces for even the
most degraded souls, provided they are not stubbornly fixed

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REDEMPTIVE

POWER

OF

CHRIST

31

in evil. It is impossible to think of a limit to the efficacy
of the redemptive act.
The redemptive omnipotence of the act of Christ, who
immolated Himself upon the Cross, derives from the fact
that it is a perfect act of charity performed by a divine
Person; the perfect act of the Incarnate Word. It is a
supernatural act of charity towards God which makes Him
forget all offenses. Such an act of charity performed by the
Incarnate Word attains, by reason of the divine personality
of the Word, an infinite efficacy to make satisfaction, to
expiate, and to merit.
The catechism teaches this doctrine to children. But do
we ourselves comprehend it? Has it become for us a doctrine
of life and everyday experience? It is easy to say that the
act of charity of Christ attains, by reason of the divine
personality, an infinite value and efficacy, but, do we seek
to understand fully in our meditation and prayer this simple
phrase that children know by memory yet whose profound
meaning surpasses the understanding of angels?

The Personality of the Incarnate Word

The personality of the Incarnate Word. What do these
words mean? Many errors on the meaning of this word,
personality, circulate throughout the world. Today many
talk in a pompous way about the development of their
personality, but, in reality, they are developing only some
natural gifts that permit them to be distinguished from other
persons, gifts which make their pride grow daily. They
believe that to practice renunciation and the so-called passive
virtues of humility, obedience, patience, and meekness, that
is, to follow Christian morality in its totality, constitutes
the annihilation of one’s personality.
They have never seriously meditated in prayer on what
constitutes the true worth of personality and the fact that
it realizes its highest development in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

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We shall dwell a bit on this thought and strive to raise
ourselves up gradually from the ordinary display of personal­
ity to manifestations of the personality of Jesus. This
is the personality which had in itself the total explanation of
its redemptive power.
Personality is what distinguishes man from inferior
beings such as animals, plants, and stones. In us personality
is the principle of our reason and liberty, a principle that
assures us independence with respect to the material world,
and thanks to which we shall be able to subsist after the
disintegration of our body. It is a principle that permits
us to act with autonomy and freedom in our present state,
enabling us to resist the attraction of merely sensible goods
according to the judgment of our intelligence and the choice
of our freedom.
Although all men are persons, they do not thereby have
an equal personality. Many live almost exclusively under
the tyranny of their senses and passions without managing
to rise above the level of animal life. Their judgments and
actions are not determined by their own personal conviction;
rather, they accept without examination the ideas of their
surroundings, their newspaper, their political party. While
they refuse, in full conscience, to obey their legitimate
superiors, they passively subject themselves to the preju­
dices of a group and they allow themselves to be enticed
by the most fantastic promises. They fail to escape the
attraction of the moment and, having lost control of them­
selves, permit themselves to be urged on like an animal,
consequently falling into the power of the first one to
approach them. This is the lowest level of personality.
Personality can be gradually elevated as the activity of
our spirit and will frees itself from the purely sensible life.
This can be accomplished in the measure that we learn to
control the influences exercised upon us instead of passively
submitting to them. Finally, personality can be elevated
insofar as we learn to decide and choose with full freedom,

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REDEMPTIVE

POWER OF

CHRIST

35

instead of responding instinctively to the attraction that
solicits us.
In this development of personality, however, there lies
a grave danger. Since personality is measured by the
independence of the being who acts, some believe that
the highest development of personality consists in absolute
independence. They consider this independence not only
in relation to the lower levels of reality, to which we must
never allow ourselves to be enslaved, but also in relation
to our superiors and God himself. The true names for
this false personality are insubordination, rebellion, unbe­
lief, and atheism. It derives essentially from pride and is
found fully realized in the devil.
The Mystery of the Incarnation teaches us, on the contrary,
that the human personality develops in the measure that
the soul, elevating itself above the merely sensible world,
places itself in closer dependence on what constitutes the
true life of the spirit. That means closer dependence on
truth and grace, and, in the ultimate analysis, on God.
While the great philosophers scarcely caught a glimpse
of this, the saints truly grasped the way to the full
development of our personality. It consists in losing in some
way our own personality in the personality of God who
alone possesses personality in the perfect sense of the word.
He alone is absolutely independent in His being and actions,
that is, He alone is independent of all creation.
Hence the saints at the level of knowledge and love made
strenuous efforts to substitute the personality of God for
their own, to die to themselves so that God might reign
in them. They were armed with a holy hatred of their own
ego. They sought to make God the principle of their actions,
no longer acting according to the rules of the world or
their own limited judgment, but according to God’s ideas
and rules as received through faith. They sought to substitute
the divine will for their own, and to act no longer for
themselves but for God, loving Him not as themselves

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but infinitely more than themselves and more than any
other thing whatsoever. They understood that God had
to become for them another ego more intimate than their
own. They had to realize that God was more “ them ” then
they themselves because He is preeminently Being. Therefore,
they made strong efforts to renounce their personality and
every attitude of independence before God; they sought
to make of themselves something divine. Consequently, they
developed the most forceful personality conceivable. They
obtained in some way what God possesses by nature,
namely independence from every created thing, not only in
the corporeal world but also in the world of intelligence.
“ The saints have their empire, their glory, their victory,
their splendor, and they have no need of carnal or spiritual
splendors; knowledge of human science adds nothing to
their perfection in the supernatural order. (Being a genius
in mathematics adds nothing to a saint.) They are seen by
God and the angels, not by men and inquiring spirits.
God is sufficient for them! ” (Pascal).
The saint, once he has come to substitute in some
measure the personality of God for his own, can exclaim
with St. Paul: " I have been crucified with Christ, and I
live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ
who lives in me " (Gal. 2, 19-20). Is it he then who lives
henceforth or is it God who lives in him? In the order
of the operations of knowing and loving the saint has
substituted, as it were, the divine ego for his own ego, but
in the order of being his ego remains distinct from God.
In this respect Christ, the Man-God, appears as an
unreachable goal to which sanctity still strives to draw
near. In Him it is no longer only in the order of knowledge
and love that the human ego makes room for a divine Person,
but also in the order of being itself, the root of operations.
One must properly say of Jesus that He has absolutely no
human personality but exists and subsists entirely in the

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power of the very personality of the Word with which He
constitutes one unique being. This, then, is the ultimate
reason for this prodigious personality of whom history has
never given another example and never will. Here is the
ultimate reason for the infinite majesty of this unique and
exceptional ego that belongs to Christ.
" The Father and I are one ” (Jn. 10, 30). " I am the
Way, the Truth and the Life ” (Jn. 14, 6). " Come to Me,
all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give
you rest” (Mt. 11, 28). I shall pour new strength into
your weary souls and I shall raise up your dead souls.
“ If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me! Let the man
come and drink who believes in Me! As Scripture says:
From his breast shall flow fountains of living water ” (Jn.
7, 37-38). " Everyone who believes has eternal life .... And
I will raise him up at the last day ” (Jn. 6, 47, 44). " Anyone
who prefers father or mother to Me is not worthy of Me ”
(Mt. 10, 37).
This ego of Christ is the ego of the Incarnate Word. Just
as in us the soul and the body belong to the same person,
so in Him the humanity and the divinity belong to the same
person, that of the Word.
The Charity of Christ

What then will be the value of an act of charity of
Christ if already an act of charity performed by the most
humble Christian is superior to the intuitions of a genius,
and if an act of charity performed by the saints produces
such great wonders in the souls of those around them!
What will be the value of an act of charity of Christ, act
of the human will that belongs to the Word! The smallest
act of charity of Christ is sufficient to redeem humanty and
repair all rebellions because the smallest meritorious act
of the Word has an infinite value.

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We know what this act of charity of Jesus was. It is
already true that " a man can have no greater love than
to lay down his life for his friends ” (Jn. 15, 13). But Our
Lord has given His life for His enemies and for those of
His Father. At Gethsemane He saw all the past and future
sins including those of His executioners; He saw His
abandonment by His own followers, the persecutions, the
apostasies, and the hatreds; He saw the infinite gravity of
the offense to God. In His human soul He suffered for all
the evil and all the insults made to God His Father in
proportion to His love for Him and for us. He suffered
in the way an older brother suffers when he sees his father
offended by younger brothers whom the father had always
tried to lead to the good.
Jesus took upon Himself the responsibility for all the
sins of men, and He began to suffer for them as if it had
been He who had committed them, as if He were impious,
rebellious, frenzied, cowardly, ungrateful, and sacrilegious.
He felt the divine anger and divine curse weigh on His
soul while hell with supreme fury broke loose against Him.
The horror of evil and all vices together seemed for an
instant to suffocate Him. A cry burst from His lips on the
Cross: “ My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?
(Mt. 27, 46).
In this darkness, in this abandonment, Our Lord per­
formed His greatest act of love. In the midst of this anguish
He loved His Father above everything and He loved us
even to the giving of His life for our salvation, only grieving
that a greater number were not saved. This act of love
makes abundant satisfaction for all hatreds. The obedience
that it involves compensates for all rebellions in the eyes of
God. The humiliations of the Passion redeem all acts of
pride. The gentleness of Him crucified repairs all acts of
anger and His sufferings pay for all sensuality.

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The Mystical Body

This act of charity of the Incarnate Word has saved the
world. This act can still save us today and sustain all souls.
“ Christ, as we know, having been raised from the dead
will never die again " (Rom 6, 9), " since He is living
forever to intercede for all who come to God through Him ”
(Heb. 7, 25). His act of love continues to defend us against
all the seductions of the world and the devil.
Who can doubt the infinite efficacy of the love of Christ
and His omnipotence against evil? “ With God on our side
who can be against us? ” (Rom. 8, 13). " Nothing therefore
can come between us and the love of Christ, even if we are
troubled or worried, or being persecuted, or lacking food
or clothes, or being threatened or even attacked .... For
I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no
prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any
power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever
come between us and the love of God made visible in
Christ Jesus Our Lord ” (Rom. 8, 35-39).
This redemptive work of Christ eagerly awaits being
poured out abundantly over us. Christ is the head of
humanity and the life of grace flows from Him into mankind
in the same way as in the human body the stimulus of the
nerves is transmitted from the head to the members, and in
the tree the sap flows from the trunk into the branches.
The souls united to Christ through faith and charity
form, in fact, a body that is aptly called “ The Mystical
Body ” of Christ. It is a reality more genuine than the
human body. Just as the life of the spirit is greater and
more real than the life of the senses, which is, as it were,
only a shadow of the former, so, in its turn and to a greater
extent, the supernatural life is more true and more real
than the human body or even the natural life of the pure
spirit.

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The bonds that unite the members of the Mystical
Body to one another and to Jesus Christ are consequently
the supernatural bonds of a reality so eminent that only
God can accomplish it and completely understand it.
The principal act of the Mystical Body of the Lord is
the oblation of the sacrifice of the Mass. The priest offers
the sacrifice in the name of the faithful, but it is principally
Christ Who offers Himself through the priest. It is always
the same and unique oblation of the sacrifice of the Cross
that is repeated in unbloody form, an act ever alive in the
heart of Christ who does not cease interceding and offering
Himself to His Father for us. I would even say, under
this aspect, that Christ continues to suffer for us, as the
devotion to the Sacred Heart says, to suffer in His members
and in His saints, as a mother suffers in her son when she
sees him in pain. The sacrifice of the Cross continues, then,
in a mysterious but real way in the sacrifice of the Mass,
and it is this act of oblation of the Son to His Father
that sustains the world.
Life is poured out into the Mystical Body by means
of the sacraments: by means of absolution that raises the
dead members to life; through the Eucharist that conserves
the life of grace and renews the fervor that venial sin has
weakened; and finally by means of all the interior inspi­
rations and all the actual graces with which the Lord favors
us. It is a fountain of divine life that flows from Him to
us, streaming forth into everlasting life. How many times
we have noticed this power of Christ: in our individual
lives, through absolution and Communion; and in the social
life of the Church, always rising from the worst persecutions
younger and stronger!
Hence, we should have confidence in this redemptive
power of Christ on which the whole supernatural life
must be founded. We should listen to His invitation:
" Come to Me . . . and I will give you rest." " In baptism I
gave you a pure and shining soul,” He seems to say to us,

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“ and see how spoiled is the one you have; but, come to
Me and I shall refashion it. Come to Me, all you who
have darkened your intelligence and lost sight of the ideal,
and I shall enlighten you. Come to Me, you who have a
conscience that has gone astray and I shall set it straight.
Come to Me, you who have a weak will, and I shall
strengthen it for you; and you who have a stubborn heart,
come and I shall teach it anew the joy and love of God.”
Jesus Christ has the power to lead us to our ultimate
end and He alone can configure us to the Word of God
because He is the Word. Knowing our sins, He wishes
not only to heal us but through His blood to raise us up
higher. “ However great the number of sins committed,
grace was even greater” (Rom. 5, 21).
In His revelations to St. Margaret Mary He laments
the coldness of some souls consecrated to Him. We should
permit Him to work in us, allow Him to assimilate us to
Himself, and ask Him to teach us in a practical way to
cooperate with His action and to travel the way that He
Himself has outlined for us.

CHAPTER

IV

The Love of God
We are to love, then, because God loved
us first.—I Jn. 4, 19

We have examined what the aim of the spiritual life
is, what obstacles oppose it, and what is the divine power
upon which it is based. Now we shall consider what our
cooperation with the action of God ought to be, what the
spiritual life is, and what the general laws are that regulate
its development. Reason and faith describe this for us.
The First Commandment
Our cooperation requires conforming our will to that of
God and observing His commandments. The first of these,
the beginning and end of all the others (to which also all
the counsels of the religious life are subordinated), consists
in the love of God: “You shall love Yahweh your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
strength ” (Deut. 6, 5).
Charity is called the bond of perfection, vinculum perfec­
tionis (cf. Col. 3, 14), because it unites our soul to God,
our ultimate end, and makes all our forces and all our
actions converge toward Him. Since it must lead us to our
ultimate end, it must command all the other virtues, subor­
dinating them to this end.
“ It is the principle as well as General of the Army
of virtues,” says St. Francis de Sales, “ and to it we must
attribute all the deeds through which we attain victory.”

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Hence, without charity we are nothing: “ If I have all
the eloquence of men or of angels ... if I have the gift
of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and
knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fullness,
to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing
at all ” (I Cor. 13, 1 if.). Without charity our will is not
conformed to that of God, while charity, true charity,
suffices for all because it embraces all the other virtues
which are subordinate to it. In this sense St. Augustine
could say: “ Love, and do what you wish.” If you really
love, what you do will be good.
We ought to meditate upon the nature of charity and
see how this supernatural love of God can become the
principle of our whole life and can set us on the way to
glory, to configuration to the Word, and to perfect posses­
sion of God.
Natural Love, Supernatural Love

Natural reason and experience can tell us what love is
not; only faith can reveal to us what it is. Ordinary reason
and experience show us that our heart here below is unable
to find anything that can fully satisfy it. When we believe
that we have found happiness in a created good, in a
position that we have desired for a long time, in a new
science, in a very intimate and elevated friendship, very
soon we realize that it is a case of a limited good and,
therefore, insufficient for a nature like ours that can conceive
of an unlimited, total, absolute good which it naturally
desires.
The profound boredom which worldly persons experience
and drag with themselves to every part of the world is a
sign that their heart was made for a good infinitely higher
than anything they are seeking. The continual need of
change that pushes them first toward one creature and
then another, each of which they abandon in turn after

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having enjoyed its pleasure, is a sign that God alone can
fill the infinite emptiness of their heart.
According to a rigorous philosophic principle, our will
possesses an infinite profundity, so that finite goods, in­
capable of reaching to its depths, are hardly even able to
skim its surface. God alone can satisfy our needs and give
us that fountain of living water about which Our Lord
spoke to the Samaritan woman and which alone can truly
quench our thirst. For this reason St. Catherine of Siena
says to us: “ Do you want a friendship that will be lasting?
Do you wish to quench your thirst continually from this
cup? Let it always be filled at the fountain of living water;
otherwise you will soon empty it and it will no longer
be able to satisfy your thirst.”
Common reason and experience show us the possibility
and necessity of loving God. They even tell us that this
love ought to be the principle of every human life, just as
the love of art is the principle of the artist’s life, as love
of science is the principle of the scientist’s life, as love of
country is the principle of the soldier’s life, of his hard
labor and of the sacrifices that he imposes on himself.
But love of art, science, and country is not sufficient to
satisfy the heart of man, who can conceive of the absolute
good, aspire to it, and feel that he should subordinate his
whole life to it.
Consequently there is a natural love of God which reason
by itself can teach us and which was also extolled by the
great pagan philosophers. But this natural love of God is
infinitely far from Christian charity which is essentially
supernatural. Supernatural love is a love of friendship for
God which ordinary reason cannot grasp.
In fact, the spiritualistic philosophers, outside Christianity,
do not hesitate to affirm that they are indeed able to have
feelings of ideal admiration, gratitude, and respect for God.
Yet, according to them it is impossible to love with a love
of friendship a being whom we have never seen, a being so

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superior that he is by his nature invisible and incomprenhensible, a being to whom we owe all things but for whom
we can do nothing. Friendship presupposes that the person
who is loved is seen. Furthermore, it demands a certain
equality, a certain common life, the reciprocal revealing of
one’s most intimate thoughts and the possibility of one doing
good for the other. Between God and us such a love of
friendship cannot be realized. So speaks reason left to itself.
Revelation. What reason cannot discover, Christ has
revealed to us. St. Paul says that He has shown us God’s
excess of love for us and taught us that our love ought
to be a response and be modeled on the very love God has
for us. “ We are to love, then, because God loved us first ”
(I Jn. 4, 19). We must meditate together on what God’s
love for us has been, on what has been the response of the
saints, and on what our response should be.

The Love of God for Us
God’s love for us is said to be excessive and foolish.
St. Paul defines God’s love for us as an “ excess ” since it
infinitely exceeds and surpasses what reason can comprehend
and the heart can desire. Relative to us, it is excessive but
not in itself. St. Paul also calls it, and without exaggeration,
“ foolishness ” because this love has in some way overturned
the natural relationship of God toward the creature. In
Christ He died in place of the creature who had become His
enemy. Such a thing is inconceivable foolishness for natural
reason. Aptly then is it defined as “ the foolishness of the
cross ” and such " foolishness " is reparation for that other
foolishness which is sin.
We should meditate upon this excess of love. True love
whereby another being is loved, not only for one’s own
self-interest but for the other being itself, is not only a
passive love but is also active. It is not a simple emotional
satisfaction that is born at the sight of a pleasing object,

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but rather an effective and operating love whereby the good
of the loved person is willed.
This active love consists in going outside of self and
one’s own egoism to be carried toward the being whose good
is willed; in uniting oneself to this being by a communion
of will and sentiment; and in dedicating oneself to the other
being, in giving oneself to it in order to elevate it, make
it better and more beautiful.
Hence, the mother bends over her baby, forgetting about
herself and all her preoccupations, to dedicate herself entirely
to this little being who lives solely because of her. Then she
takes him, embraces him, presses him to herself as if she
wished to form one single being with him. She dedicates
herself to him, dayand night, and she gives him food of
body and soul that he may grow and become gradually
opened to the life of reason and grace.
This type of true love enables us to catch a glimpse of
what has been God’s excess of love for us. The charity of
God for us is a love essentially active and effective. How
could it be simple emotional satisfaction since all that God
finds pleasing in us comes from Him and cannot be given
to us except through gratuitous love? The love of God,
far from supposing lovableness in those it loves, creates
it in them through pure benevolence.
God has no need of us. He was infinitely happy without
us because He Himself is the infinite good. He created us
through pure benevolent love and through pure love He
gives us at every moment all that is necessary for our
physical, intellectual, and moral life. His love for us goes
beyond the exigencies of human nature and anything it
could conceive and desire, elevating it to the supernatural
order, allowing it to participate through grace in His intimate
life.
Yet, man did not know how to worthily appraise the
infinite value of this divine life. In his blindness he under­
valued it, even to the point of sinfully preferring an infinitely

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inferior life. Therefore, through his own fault he fell
headlong from the supernatural heights to which divine
mercy had elevated him.
But see how God’s love comes to look for man even
in his ruin and misery. It is here that this foolishness,
which overturns in a certain sense the natural existing
relationship between the Creator and His creature, begins.
We were fallen, but God wished to stoop down over
us, to descend to our level, just as a mother stoops down
toward her baby. He was divested of His glory, of His
infinite majesty. He did not wish to appear in the natural
splendor of His magnificence as upon Sinai. He wished, as
it were, to make Himself nothing. As St. Paul says, " He
emptied Himself ” to bring Himself down to our level. He
took a body and a soul like ours, divesting Himself of all
glory and choosing the most humble condition among men.
He wished to be born the son of a laborer and to place
Himself in the number of the poorest so that all might
be able to come to Him without fear.
In abasing Himself and uniting Himself to us by assuming
our nature, God wished to share in our life itself. Conse­
quently, He fulfilled our duties, suffered our pains, expe­
rienced our weariness, perspired with our sweat, shed our
tears, embraced us and desired our happiness more than we
can ourselves. Even more, the Word of God wished to
wash our feet.
Finally, He desired to accomplish the total gift of self
by dying on the Cross for us. After having undergone the
worst humiliations, He shed His blood in the midst of
atrocious sufferings. This He did to restore our inheritance
and make us, in some way, equal to Himself. He elevated
us to the order of the supernatural, divine, and eternal life
which in our blindness we had despised and lost.
Yes, St. Paul can speak of an “ excess of love ” because
the natural relationships between the Creator and the
creature are exceeded. He can speak of " foolishness " since

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the natural relationships of the Creator toward His creature
are, in a certain sense, reversed. God, offended, dies for
the culpable creature who despises and flees from Him!
Something of this “ foolishness ” can be glimpsed from the
example of certain Christian mothers who, in the excess of
their love, offer themselves as victims for a son who insults
and dishonors them.
The rationalists are not wrong in saying that reason, left
to itself, cannot comprehend. In fact, one is dealing with
a foolishness that nature cannot conceive, which to the
rationalists seems unworthy of God. One is dealing with an
abyss of supernatural love in which reason is lost; only
faith can admit it, only the gaze of the saints can penetrate
it. Yet, only in heaven by the light of the Beatific Vision
will the infinitely superior harmony of this mystery ever
be completely unveiled.
But the light of faith is still not wholly sufficient. The
light of experience and of vision are necessary. Theology
itself, with the light of faith alone cannot demonstrate the
expediency of the Cross. Theology is hardly able to attempt
an interpretation of certain exclamations of Our Lord as:
“ My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Our Lord has loved us still more, if such can be said.
Indeed, at the moment He left us and deprived us of His
sensible presence He declared His wish of remaining with
us even to the end of time and of giving Himself to us
in a more intimate and complete way. It was not sufficient
for Him to have abased Himself to the level of the Incar­
nation; He wished to abase Himself even to the level of
the Eucharist, to empty Himself to the point of disappear­
ing under the appearances of bread and wine. Although
He foresaw in the smallest details all the profanations that
would take place, He chose to remain just as docile in the
hands of the sacrilegious priest as in the hands of the
saintly priest. It was not sufficient for Him to unite Himself
to us to become our life; He wished also to unite Himself

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to us, to each of us, body and soul, in Communion. It was
not sufficient to shed His blood for us; He wished to give
us His body for food, He wished to be eaten by us that
He might be able to transform and assimilate us still more
to Himself. Such is the excess of God’s love for us, but
this love demands a response.
The Response of the Saints

The response that the saints have given is this. They
have done their utmost to love God with a love identical to
His. God’s love is a love that is essentially active and
effective, a love that acts and creates. The saints were not
content with a simple emotional satisfaction, with a
wonderful admiration, or with that superficial enthusiasm
that is born from the idea of the divine perfections. They
understood the saying of Jesus: “ It is not those who say
to me, * Lord, Lord ’, who will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but the person who does the will of My Father in
heaven " (Mt. 7, 21). They did not measure their charity
on the basis of the sweetness of sensible devotion; instead,
they loved God with a profound love of the will, which
subsists even in the midst of desolations and aridity. This
is a profound love which is nourished, as St. Catherine of
Siena says, not only from the milk of spiritual consolations
but also from the hard bread of tribulations. Here was love
through which they desired first and foremost the glory of
God and His kingdom. The saints were consumed with a
thirst for justice and the kingdom of God.
The love of the operating will endeavored to reproduce
in its entirety the love of God. God had stooped down
toward us, in the excess of His love, abasing Himself even
to our level; He had descended quite lower than we, even to
the point of taking upon Himself the gravest humiliations.
The saints understood that they, in their turn, should humble
themselves before God, because God had reversed His role.

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They wanted to humble themselves, to descend from the
throne of their own self-love, and to seek the last place and
that obligation of service that God had chosen for Himself
on earth.
We have seen a king like St. Louis kneel with his
forehead in the dust before the gates of the cities of Palestine
and beseech God not to permit a curse to fall on those
cities because of sins. We have seen some saints, such as
St. Benedict Labre, take as much care to remain with those
who insulted him as he did in fleeing those who praised
him.
Just as God emptied Himself and renounced His glory
in order to live our life, so the saints wished to die to the
purely natural life of senses, of self-love and egoism, to
allow themselves to be penetrated by divine life. Just as
the higher a building is to be raised, so much deeper the
foundation must be, they understood that the more abun­
dantly divine grace was to fill them, so much the deeper
the selflessness that humility had to hollow out in them.
After being so humiliated the saints attained the deepest
union with God. Just as God had willed to take a human
way of acting, so they willed to acquire a divine way of
acting. They retired into solitude to live in continual recol­
lection. When they were unable to separate themselves
physically from the world, they constructed for themselves,
as St. Catherine of Siena did, a cell in the most intimate
part of their heart, to live there in constant union with
God.
Who can tell us what the object of love was for
St. Dominic or Thomas Aquinas in those nights of penance
and prayer passed in tears at the foot of the altar? It was
God, preferred above all, loved more than all, with
undivided heart, yet with no exclusions — for this love
embraced, elevated, and intensified all legitimate affections.
In the fire of charity these affections became an ardent and
consuming thirst for the salvation of souls.

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Finally, as God offered Himself for us on the Cross, so
the saints offered themselves to God, even to the point of
martyrdom so that His will might be accomplished, that
His kingdom might be established in souls, and that He
might be glorified. And when (as in the case of St. Dominic)
they were unable to obtain martyrdom though ardently
desiring it, they still experienced a daily death, though no
less heroic, of labors, of pains and of continual tribulations.
As God gave Himself to them as food, in the same way,
they responded to His love and let themselves be consumed
body and soul by Him, making themselves “ food ” of God.
St. Dominic, St. Catherine, St. Peter Martyr, St. Rose
of Lima, St. Catherine of Ricci, St. Pius V, St. Louis Ber­
trand, and all the saints tell us the same thing through their
lives, namely, that the ardent charity that burned in their
hearts consumed them little by little, for this is the law
of love. Love, which is as strong as death, makes us die to
ourselves that we may be born to another life. There nothing
is opposed any longer to the devouring flame because one
is immersed in that fire of charity which is God. Such is the
response of the saints to God’s love.

Our Response
“ Behold that heart which has so loved men that it
spared nothing, even exhausting itself and consuming itself
to attest its love to them. And yet from the greatest part
of them I receive only ingratitude as shown by contempt,
irreverence, sacrileges, and coldness that they have for Me
and My Sacrament of Love. But what gives Me more pain
is that it is a question of souls consecrated to Me "
(St. Margaret Mary Alacoque).1

1 “ And for this reason I am asking you that the first Friday after
the octave of the most Holy Sacrament be dedicated to a particular feast
to honor my Heart, making to it a reparation of love with honorable

THE LOVE OF GOD

51

Of these four words, contempt, irreverence, sacrilege,
and coldness, I fear that the last one is addressed to us.
Coldness! The warmth of charity is not a sensible warmth.
It is a wholly spiritual fire which continues to flame in
the midst of the desolations and aridity with which God
purifies our sensibility. But this love must be operative.
It is certain that all of us, like all Christians, must respond
with love to God’s love because charity is a precept, not
a counsel. Yet, is our love effective and operative or is
it a self-satisfying, passive thing? Does it persist despite
aridity and the desolations necessary to purify our sensi­
bility? Are we disposed to go outside ourselves, to bend
ourselves toward Our Lord, to humble ourselves as He
humbled Himself? Are we dying to the sensible and natural
life in order to live the life of Christ? Do we accept the
daily sacrifice which the common life demands? Is our
love like that of the saints?
The quality of our charity is not measured by the
sweetness of a sensible devotion. The infallible signs of
progress in charity are the hatred of sin and the configuration
to Christ by means of progress in all the virtues and gifts
of the Holy Spirit. If we do not wish to die to sin, if we
do not wish to mortify ourselves, we do not love the Lord
and we live the religious life in vain.
In religious communities, from what do disobedience,
the harshness of judgment, the antipathies that are not
overcome and the divisions derive? They are derived from
not wishing to die to self. And yet we did not enter religious
life except to die to self. In fact, only if we know how to
die to ourselves will Christ be able to grow in us.

amends, receiving Holy Communion that day to repair the indignities that
it has received when exposed on the altars. I promise you that my Heart
will be enlarged to make abundant graces descend upon those who render
it this honor and endeavor to have the feast accomplish its purpose. ”

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If this happens then not only the natural acquired
virtues that the world can recognize will make themselves
known in our life, but also those infinitely superior virtues
which are the Christian virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
These include the spirit of faith which is nourished by
thoughts of God; confident hope which relies exclusively
on God; charity which unites us always more intimately to
Him despite sadness, interior pains and tribulations of
every kind and asks only the possibility of being poured
out for one’s neighbor; Christian prudence which is always
much opposed to the prudence of the flesh; justice in dealing
with our neighbor, which stops us from formulating even
the smallest rash judgment about the soul of one of our
confreres; fortitude which never draws back from the work
fixed by God and patiently bears trials; and temperance
which gradually makes the instinctive movements of our
senses and of our heart docile, penetrating them with the
divine life. Thus we shall also acquire, like the saints, a
divine way of acting. The spirit of wisdom, understanding,
science, counsel, piety, fortitude, and fear will penetrate us
more and more.
Then we shall not desire other than to give ourselves
to God until death. Our love will find new nourishment in
the daily labors and sacrifices of the common life. If our
body is slowly consumed, we should remember that God
is hungry for us. Just as He gave Himself to us as food,
we ought to give ourselves to Him so that He may transform
us into Himself and take us from this poor life here below,
which is a death in comparison to the life that awaits us
in heaven.

CHAPTER V

Fraternal Charity
1 have given them the glory You gave to
Me, that they may be one as We are
one.—Jn. 17, 22

When our soul is purified by mortification and renun­
ciation, the supernatural light that is given us in prayer
increases the love of God in us and permits us to accomplish,
in a manner more and more perfect, the first precept of
the Law: “ You shall love the Lord, your God, with all
your soul, with all your heart, with all your mind, with
all your strength.” But there is a second precept which
derives necessarily from the first: “ You must love your
neighbor as yourself ” (Mt. 22, 34 ff.).
Love of neighbor is presented to us by Our Lord as a
necessary consequence and sign of our love of God: “ Just
as I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this
love you have for one another, everyone will know that
you are My disciples ” (Jn. 13, 34-35). St. John has written:
“ Anyone who says, ' I love God ’, and hates his brother,
is a liar ” (I Jn. 4, 20).
One day Our Lord wanted to make Blessed Henry
Suso, who had asked to be shown a truly perfect man,
understand this truth. Blessed Henry had this vision. In the
middle of a vast plain he saw a cross and at its foot a man
of meek aspect and with a kind and gentle look; a little
bit farther on there were two groups of men, very different
among themselves, who were trying in vain to reach him.
This man represented Christ and all those who have attained

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union with Christ, characterizing themselves by their mild­
ness and gentleness. One of the two groups represented
the intellectuals who contemplate and admire the truth,
but do not put it into practice as perfection demands.
The other group represented all those men who give them­
selves to all the practices taught by the authors on spiritual­
ity and to the greatest mortifications. Neither of the two
groups could reach Christ, and for the same reason. Those
who passed their life in contemplation, or rather in specula­
tion, without putting these truths into practice, judged and
condemned others without mercy; while those who made a
profession of mortification condemned without mercy those
who did not follow their way. These religious did not
reach Christ because they did not love one another, and
their lack of charity showed itself in the harshness of
their judgment. Henry Suso gave thanks for this lesson
and, though well advanced in perfection, beat his breast
for having lacked fraternal charity and for having severely
judged his confreres.
We ought to meditate on this great obligation of charity
toward our neighbor. If we are lacking in it so many times
or permit ourselves to develop an excessive affection other
than that demanded of us by the Lord, it is because we
do not understand in a practical way that fraternal charity
is nothing other than the extension of the love that we
ought to have for God. This love, essentially supernatural
and theological, must extend to all our brothers. Therefore
we should consider (1) why the love of God ought to
extend to our neighbor and (2) how to practice fraternal
charity.

Why the Love of God Ought to Extend
Also to Our Neighbor
We must recognize that our nature leads us to love those
who do us good, and to hate those who do us evil, while

FRATERNAL CHARITY

55

leaving us indifferent toward the others. Before the coming
of Christ, the Pharisees taught (Mt. 5, 43): “ You must
love your neighbor but they added: “ Hate your enemy.”
Our Lord says: “ Love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of our
Father in heaven, for He causes His sun to rise on bad men
as well as good, and His rain to fall on honest and dishonest
men alike. For if you love those who love you, what right
have you to claim any credit? Even the tax collectors do
as much, do they not? And if you save your greetings for
your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Even
the pagans do as much, do they not? You must therefore
be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect ” (Mt. 5,
44-48).
The fraternal charity demanded of us does not belong
to the natural order like the fraternity that can exist
between pagans; rather, it is essentially of the supernatural
order. Natural love makes us love our neighbor for the
benefits that we have received from him or for his good
qualities. Charity, on the other hand, makes us love our
neighbor for God, because he is a son of God or is called
to become one.
Is it possible for us to love men with the same love
with which we love God? Even with the same divine love?
The strictest theology responds with a “ yes,” and explains
this to us with a very simple example. He who deeply loves
a friend, also loves the sons because he loves their father;
and he loves the sons with a true love which, in case of
need, he also tries to demonstrate.
Therefore, if all men are sons of God or at least called
to become so, we ought to love them all, and love them
in the measure that we love our common Father. To love
our neighbor in a supernatural way it is sufficient to look
at him with the eyes of faith and to remember that, though
he differs from us in condition and character, he is still
born, like us, not only of flesh, of blood, and of the will

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of man, but of God (Jn. 1, 13). Or, at least, he is called
to be born to the life of God, to participate in the divine
nature and eternal beatitude. Hence both of us belong to
the same family of God. How, then, can I not love him if
I truly love God? But if I do not love him, yet pretend
to love God, I certainly am lying (I Jn. 4, 20). If, on the
other hand, I love him with this love, it is a sign that I
love God since the love of God is the same love that is
directed to the true supernatural reality of my neighbor.
In other words, I love him because he is a son of God
and a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, because the
Holy Spirit dwells or wishes to dwell in him. I love him
because he is destined to become, like me, a living stone of
the heavenly Jerusalem and, perhaps, a more precious and
better worked stone. I love in him the realization of the
divine idea that rules his destiny, and I can love him with
a divine love because I love him for the glory that he
will eternally give to God.
Sometimes the worldly will object: “ But does this really
mean loving man? Is this not rather loving only God and
Christ in him? Man ought to be loved for himself.” First
of all, it might be mentioned that man as man cannot
claim the right to a divine love. In reality, however,
charity loves not only God in man but also man in God
and for God because it loves what man ought to become,
namely, an eternal part of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Moreover, charity does all in its power so that man may
be able to attain his true destiny. Also it loves what he
already is through grace. If he does not have grace, charity
loves his nature, not insofar as it is hostile to grace in
consequence of original sin but insofar as it is capable of
receiving grace. Charity loves man in himself, with the
same love with which it loves God. Ultimately it loves
him for God, for the glory he is called to give Him.
If this is so, it follows that we ought to love all men.
All are, in fact, neighbors similar to ourselves, because all

FRATERNAL CHARITY

57

are created to the image of God and called to be part of
His family and enjoy the same glory. Therefore, it is clear
that we ought to love those also who are naturally indif­
ferent to us, and even our enemies, because they do not
cease, by this reason, from being sons of God or at least
called to be such. Moreover, we ought to be disposed to
help our enemies, at least if we should see them in a situa­
tion where they are reduced to a condition of extreme
necessity and in urgent need of our help. This is a precept.
When it is not a case of extreme need, Our Lord counsels
us to help them.
Our charity should not know limits; it cannot exclude
anyone on earth, in purgatory, or in heaven. It stops only
before hell. In fact, only the damned cannot be loved by
charity because they no longer have the capacity of becom­
ing sons of God, and, since they hate Him eternally and
have neither the capacity nor the desire to be lifted up, they
can no longer draw our compassion. Except for the unques­
tionable case of the damned, we ought to exercise our
charity toward all, because charity knows no other limits
than those of the very love in the heart of God.
We ought to love our neighbor as ourselves, that is,
not for self-interest or pleasure, but desiring for him, as
for ourselves, grace and glory which will be the glory of
God. We should not, however, love him more than our­
selves. We must prefer our own salvation to that of others.
We cannot put ourselves at a distance from God to save
our neighbor, although we may die for his salvation. Indeed,
sometimes we have the obligation to do so, as when he is
entrusted to us.
Charity, far from destroying natural love, raises it to
the infinite, since it respects the natural order as it came
from the hands of God. First of all, we ought to love
God above every other thing, then our souls, then our
neighbor, and lastly, our body. God wishes to reign in
our heart, but He does not intend thereby to exclude all

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other affection that can be subordinated to that given to
Him. On the contrary, He elevates it, making it grow
daily in proportion to our progress in charity.
This fraternal charity should be like the love of God,
not only affective but effective. It is enough to remember
the example of the saints. St. Dominic sold his books to
feed the poor and wished to sell himself as a slave to ransom
a prisoner. The lives of the saints, like that of Our Lord,
were a continual act of fraternal charity. Like their Master,
they loved their brothers even to the cross, even to
martyrdom. They took the saying of the Lord literally:
" Love one another as I have loved you." To announce
the Gospel to their brothers they faced the worst sufferings.

How to Practice Fraternal Charity
The occasions that could tempt us to be lacking in
fraternal charity are always present, even in a monastery
or convent. The souls that one must live with are certainly
chosen souls, but only to a certain point.
Whenever persons see each other from morning to night
throughout the years, in the most varied states of mind and
conditions — in sickness and in health, in pain and in
joy — one cannot help but notice that together with his
many virtues, his confrere also carries some true moral
infirmities. A monastery is not yet heaven; it is only the
novitiate of heaven, a school of perfection. Even if all the
defects would disappear, the occasions for bruises and little
conflicts would still exist because of the diversity of feeling,
character, education, and because of the nervous tension
that derives from such an intense life. They would exist
also by reason of the fact that, while Our Lord seeks to
unite, the devil seeks to divide.
Providence intentionally permits the existence of many
occasions so that we may humble ourselves and practice
fraternal charity. “ It is in weakness that virtue is made

FRATERNAL CHARITY

59

perfect ” (II Cor. 12, 9). Our own miseries humble us,
those of our neighbor make us practice virtue. Only in
heaven will the causes of discord completely disappear
because there all the blessed will see in God, in His beatific
light, what they should desire and do.
Here below, even the saints sometimes can be found
disagreeing and inflexibly defending their own opposite
points of view with the conviction that it is a question of
the will of God. It so happened with St. Philip Neri and
St. Charles Borromeo that they could not agree concerning
the Oratorians of Milan. Thus, one had to recall his Oratorians to Rome, while the other instituted the Oblates of
Mary at Milan.
In the midst of such difficulties as well as ever-recurring
new ones, how can one practice fraternal charity? Two
things are necessary: (1) to look upon one’s neighbor with
the eyes of faith, that is, to discover in him the supernatural
being that we ought to love; and (2) to love him by
bearing with him, making ourselves useful and asking God
for the union of hearts.
First of all, we must look at our neighbor with the
eyes of faith. Just as the love of God is born from faith
in Him, so it is with charity toward our neighbor. It is
necessary, therefore, to look at our neighbor with the gaze
of faith in order to discover in him that supernatural reality
which we ought to love. Since that which is divine in him
is sometimes deeply hidden from our view — not by faults
that are grave in the eyes of God, but by defects of
temperament that irritate us and that subsist despite
virtue — in order to see the divine in him, we must have
a pure and attentive eye. We will see it, if we deserve to
see it.
Just as the living water of prayer is not given except
after the purification of renunciation, in the same way it
is not granted us to see God in souls until we have

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become detached from ourselves. This is so, not only that
we may see the beauty of a soul despite the differences
of character, but also that we may simply be able to think
to ourselves every time we come in contact with another:
“ This is a soul loved by God, in whom the Holy Spirit
dwells; he or she is a member of the Mystical Body of
Christ, called with me to the same beatitude, and, perhaps,
to a level higher than mine.”
This treats of a very simple thought, and yet, what
Our Lord wants of us is found here. Jesus does not expect
us to deceive ourselves in judging our neighbor. In fact, it is
only supernatural benevolence that will enable us to see
everything correctly. Rash judgment is, however, all too
often set in opposition to this way of acting. The most
frequent reproach that Our Lord directs towards us for
lack of charity to our neighbor is concerned explicitly with
rash judgment: " Do not judge " (Mt. 7, 1). Rash judgment
is essentially evil-minded. It is the decision of a judge who
attributes to himself a jurisdiction that he does not have
over the soul of his brothers. It is the verdict of a bribed
judge, implacable, without mercy, who knows only how
to condemn.
We see a slight indication of evil and immediately we
affirm that evil exists in an evident way. We see two and
affirm four. All this stems from egoism and pride. Let it
be noted, further, that if it is a question of grave matter
we commit a mortal sin.1
Our Lord is very severe in dealing with those who form
rash judgments because they commit a double fault, against
justice and against charity. They attribute to themselves a

1 St. Thomas says, “If we cannot avoid the suspicion, we should at
least refrain our judgments, that is, not formulate decisive and irrevocable
judgments ” (S. T. II II, Q. 60, a. 3). Cajetan and many others think
that rash suspicion, when limited to doubt or opinion, is not in itself a
mortal sin. Banez, Medina, Billuart are of the contrary opinion.

FRATERNAL CHARITY

61

jurisdiction which they do not possess. In order to judge
one should possess the testimony of a trial, but when it is
a question of judging the interior intentions of our neighbor,
we cannot have the testimony of a trial. In this case the
only judge is God, who sees into the intimate part of the
conscience, speaks to it, knows its ignorance, its errors, its
difficulties, its temptations, its good will and its repentances.
Some persons pretend to know better than ourselves
what we should say to God, and they set themselves up
as our judges. " Without being aware of it,” says St. Cather­
ine of Siena, " we wish to dictate laws to the Holy Spirit
and impose our way on other souls; often our judgment
is mistaken, and what is worse in the eyes of God, whatever
may be the appearances of the benevolence that we seek
to demonstrate, this judgment is evil-minded and comes
from our egoism and pride.” Instead of seeing our neighbor
as a son of God, called to the same beatitude as ourselves,
we see in him a rival, whom we want to overturn and
abase.
We should pay attention and beat our breasts, because
Our Lord said: “ Do not judge, and you will not be judged;
because the judgments you give are the judgments you will
get ” (Mt. 7, 1-2). And how can we dare act like judges?
Do we wish to take the speck from the eye of our brother,
while we have a beam in our own? (Mt. 7, 3). And who
can tell us that we might not fall this evening into a much
graver offence than what we are condemning?
But, someone may say, if the evil is evident, does God
then ask us to deceive ourselves? St. Catherine of Siena
responds: “ We must not see it to judge it and to murmur,
but to have compassion and to assume its weight before
God, according to the example of Our Lord.” This is
charity. If we restrain our rash judgment, we will accustom
ourselves to seeing our neighbor with the eyes of faith,
with a pure eye which is the very eye of God, and we
will see in our neighbor the temple of the Holy Spirit,

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or, at least, the soul which He wants to approach and in
which He wants to dwell.

It is not sufficient, however, to contemplate in the light
of faith the supernatural being of our neighbor. We must
also love him, bear with him, make ourselves useful, and
desire a union of our hearts.
First of all it is necessary to bear the defects of our
neighbor. What afflicts the saints to a great degree are the
offences made to God, while what afflicts us more and
makes us lose our patience are external defects, which often
are a small thing in the eyes of God. We endure some
sinners without any difficulty, while certain virtuous persons
make us exercise an enormous patience.
God wills that we bear with one another in charity.
" Bear with one another charitably ” (Eph. 4, 2). He does
not want us to be scandalized or irritated with the evil He
permits. He does not want our zeal to be transformed into
impatience or bitterness. And He does not want us to
complain about others, coming to the point of being
persuaded that the ideal is in us or at least that we love
it while others do not. In short, He does not want us to
pray the prayer of the Pharisee.
We should bear with one another without being scandal­
ized by the evil that God permits in order to draw a
greater good out of it. The art of God consists in drawing
good from evil. It is precisely the scandal of evil that has
made partially sterile so many attempted efforts to carry
out reforms in the Church and in religious orders. We
should support one another. Indeed, we should do something
more. As St. Paul says (Gal. 6, 2), “ You should carry
each other’s troubles, ” just as Our Lord carried the burdens
of us all on His shoulders.
Perfection, however, does not consist only of bearing
with one another but also in returning good for evil. Before
all else we must give good example which edifies and we

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63

must pray. When we are tempted to judge our neighbor
severely, to be scandalized or irritated, we should pray and
light will shine in us and in the soul for whom we are
praying. We will draw the blessings of God upon him.
We should also pray for all the members of the community
and for our superiors. Finally we should place ourselves at
the service of all with humility and discretion. Then, with
the aid of prayer, the union of hearts as well as the desire
of Our Lord will be realized: “ That they may be one as
We are one ” (Jn. 17, 22).
In the first centuries this union characterized the life
of the Church in the world. An intimate union existed
between the Hebrew convert, the Greek, and the Roman;
between the ignorant and the wise; between the rich and
the poor. All formed one single family, that of the sons
of God, and earthly goods were held in common. The
disciples of Christ were truly recognized by the sign that
He Himself had given them. The pagans were forced to
exclaim: " Look how they love one another!
With the propagation of the Church into the whole
world, this profound union and intimate communion could
no longer be maintained in the measure of earlier times.
God wished, however, that such an example be preserved
in the midst of men. This is one of the reasons for the
institution of monasteries. Unity forms the truth, the
goodness, and the beauty of a monastery. A disunited
community is a living lie, according to the saying of
St. John (I Jn. 4, 20): “ Anyone who says, ' I love God’,
and hates his brother, is a liar.”
In a monastery all is in common to manifest externally
the union of hearts: the same dwelling, the same habit,
the same rule, the same food, the same prayer in the same
church, and, above all, the same Communion at the Sacred
Table where all are nourished by the same body of Christ.
But if the souls are not united, all is a lie before God,
before men to whom they are proposed as an example, and

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also, before themselves. A disunited community is sterile,
and it wounds the heart of God, who takes away His
blessings.
If, on the other hand, with silence, abnegation, the
spirit of faith and charity, all the hearts are united, then all
the souls are truly like the members of one same body.
Each acts for all and all act for each. There is only one life,
only one soul. It is no exaggeration to say “ only one
soul,” because the Holy Spirit, Who vivifies all these souls,
really inspires them and makes them act. Not in vain did
Our Lord say: “ That they may be one as We are one ”
(Jn. 17, 22).
The Father and the Son are one through unity of nature,
of thought, and of love. All Their activity has its termination
in Their common and reciprocal love: in the Holy Spirit.
So too in a fervent and united community, the souls ought
to be entirely one through the unity of supernatural life,
thought, and love. Their bond ought to be the same one
that unites Father and Son, the common Spirit, that animates
all of them.
O Soul of the Mystical Body, who vivifies the humanity
of Christ, the head, and every one of His members, reveal
to us the profound life and unity of this Body that is
glorious in heaven, suffers in purgatory, and struggles here
below. Make us understand that even now we belong to
the family of the saints and the family of God, and, despite
the diversity of character, have us love one another as
Christ loved us. Amen.

CHAPTER

VI

Mortification
If anyone wants to be a follower of Mine,
let him renounce himself and take up his
cross and follow Me.—Mt. 16, 24
We always bear about in our body the
mortification of Jesus, so that the life
also of Jesus may be made manifest in
our body.—II Cor. 4, 10; of. Comm, of
St. Thomas

We have seen that our spiritual progress depends on our
cooperation, which consists first of all in charity. Hence,
we have the obligation of responding with love to God’s
love. We have already considered that this charity is not
to be measured by the sensible satisfaction that sometimes
accompanies devotion, but by two essential signs: death to
sin and configuration to Christ through the increase of the
Christian virtues. These are the two manifestations of pro­
gress in charity which we are to study now.
First of all Our Lord demands death to sin when He
says: “ If anyone wants to be a follower of Mine, let him
renounce himself and take up his cross.” “ Let him renounce
himself ” is the law of mortification that we must impose
on ourselves. “ Let him carry his cross ” is the obligation
to bear patiently the trials Our Lord Himself imposes on
us to purify us.
To make us understand that renunciation is not an
end but rather a means that leads to light and an ever
more ardent charity, the masters of the spiritual life have

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reserved the name “ active purification ” for mortification
and that of “ passive purification ” for all the crosses that
are sent us by God. Now I should like to talk to you in
general about mortifications or “ active purification.” After­
wards we shall study it in greater detail, insisting on the
spirit of the three vows of religion which regulate in a
stable way mortification in our life.
In recent years, Naturalism, under the name of Mod­
ernism, attempted to depreciate mortification and in partic­
ular the religious vows, presenting them as a hindrance
to the free development of the religious personality. They
ask why we speak so much of mortification if Christianity
is primarily a doctrine of life. Why speak so much of
renunciation if Christianity is to engage the whole of human
activity, instead of destroying it? Why speak so much of
obedience if Christianity is a doctrine of liberty?
Why not appreciate our natural activity? Is it that our
nature is not good? Was it not created by God? Our
passions themselves as St. Thomas teaches, following
Aristotle, are neither good nor bad. They are forces to be
used. It is not necessary to mortify them but only moderate
and regulate them. Why fight our own judgment and our
will so much? This means falling into scruples and placing
ourselves in such a state of slavery and dependence that
we destroy all initiative, personality, and liberty within
ourselves. It means belittling and degrading man under the
pretext of divinizing him. Why condemn the life of the
world since it is in this life that God has placed us and
which we must lead?
The value of religious life is to be measured from its
influence on social life. For it to exercise this influence it
must not be hindered by an excessive preoccupation about
renunciation, mortification, poverty, and obedience. On the
contrary, we must allow free development to our spirit
of initiative and all our natural aspirations. This will permit
us to understand the men of our age and to come into

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67

contact with the world, which we must not so much
combat as improve.
This preceding doctrine has been taught for some years
in several religious circles. But, as always, the tree is
judged by its fruit. We have seen that these innovating
apostles, wishing excessively to please the world, instead
of converting it allowed themselves to be converted by it;
instead of assimilating souls to Christ, they let themselves
be assimilated by the world, and little by little the salt
became insipid.
We have all observed the consequences of this attitude.
We have seen these apostles deny the effects of original sin
and, something even more grave, slowly forget the infinite
malice of sin as an offense against God. They have considered
sin only insofar as it is an evil for man, a visible and
palpable evil here below in society. Then they began to
ignore the gravity of the sins of the spirit: unbelief,
indocility toward the Holy See, presumption, and pride.
In certain circles the gravest sin of all was considered to
be abstention from social works, and, whatever might be
its motive, it was always imputed to egoism. Meanwhile,
true religion, and particularly the contemplative life, came
to be considered as the destiny of all the unfit, of those
incapable of any exterior activity. These apostles of a new
kind, after having misunderstood the infinite gravity of sin,
slowly came to forget the sublime loftiness of the supernatu­
ral end to which we are called. Instead of speaking to us
about heaven, about the vision of God, about configuration
to the Word, they began to propose to us a vague moral ideal
which, though colored by religion, seemed to disregard a
future life and suppress the radical opposition between
paradise and hell. Thus this new doctrine manifests its
principle: Naturalism, the denial of the supernatural.

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Necessity of Mortification

It is clear that these innovations have nothing in common
with the doctrine of Our Lord and the Apostles, nor with
the life of Christ and the saints. Our Lord did not come
into this world for enjoyment and to perform a human work,
but to do the will of His Father and realize the divine work
of redemption which He accomplished by dying on the
Cross. This was the aim of His whole life.
The saints have imitated Him. Let it suffice to recall the
flagellations of St. Dominic; the mortifications of St. Cather­
ine of Siena who, to conquer herself, forced herself to
drink the blood of the wounds of the cancerous; what
St. Antoninus did when he threw the key to his peniten­
tial shirt of iron into the Arno River so that he could no
longer take it off. Remember St. Rose of Lima, Blessed
Henry Suso, St. Louis Bertrand, and closer to us, Father
Lacordaire. Did they give up the law of mortification?
Our Lord said: “ If anyone wishes to follow Me, let
him deny himself.” And again: “ In order to sprout and
reproduce, the grain of wheat must die ”; “ He who refuses
to die to himself and loves his soul in a manner that is
too sensate, will lose it ”; “ What does it benefit a man to
gain the universe, the esteem of the world and fame, if
he then loses his soul? ”
St. Paul·, original sin and its consequences. St. Paul does
not only say that we must regulate and moderate our
passions, but adds that we must punish our body to reduce
it to servitude (I Cor. 9, 27). In our members is a law
contrary to reason, that is, the flesh has desires in opposition
to those of the spirit. He goes still further: " You cannot
belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent
passions and desires ” (Gal. 5, 24). The flesh or, as the
Apostle says, " the old man " is not only the body. It is
the whole man with his physical and moral life as born
from Adam.

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This natural man always remains in us here below, even
after the grace of Christ has raised us up again, healed us,
and has begun in us the work of deification, that is, of
configuration to the Word. This natural man does not
represent pure human nature as it came from the hands
of God, but the erring nature oriented toward the earth,
hungry for its own goods, desirous of its pleasures. It is
man dominated by his immense unconscious egoism, dream­
ing of ultimate happiness here below. He is the so-called
" go-getter " who desires only status. We find him repre­
sented everywhere, in all ranks, even among those who
make profession of renunciation and humility.
This “ old man ” always lives in our nature devoid
of grace. We must mortify him, reducing him in practice
to impotence and sterility, not permitting him to bear his
fruit, namely, sin. We live two lives, two contradictory
lives, hostile and incompatible. One of the two must
disappear that the other may develop.
It is true that our passions by their nature are neither
good nor evil. They are forces to utilize, not destroy. Yet,
after original sin our nature is inclined to evil, and it is
this persistent inclination that we must definitely kill,
mortify. In this Christian temperance differs from the purely
natural temperance that the world knows. From this it can
be deduced that if the dogma of original sin and its conse­
quences forms an essential part of the doctrine of Christian­
ity, then mortification is also an essential part.

Actual sin and its consequences. It is not only the con­
sequences of original sin that impose mortification on us,
but also actual sin and its consequences. Repeated actual
sin generates vices. Although absolution, in restoring grace,
gives us back the supernatural virtues opposed to these vices,
these virtues are almost inoperative in us because their
very unfolding and development remain so impeded by the
bad dispositions that the vices leave behind, bad dispositions

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that remain in the temperament and often are almost
unnoticed.
Not only must we moderate and regulate these conse­
quences of sin but also destroy them since they constitute
one of the most dangerous ferments that we carry within
ourselves. Naturalism pays little attention to this because
it ignores both the infinite gravity of sin as an offense
against God and sin’s profound consequences for the
interior life of the soul in this life and the next. Since
Naturalism is essentially superficial, it is content to establish
a shallow harmony between spirit and body, between pride,
egoism, and love of duty. It is not concerned with extirpat­
ing the remnants of sin which are a continual source of
innumerable venial sins: sensuality, sloth, laxity, slander,
calumny, rash judgments, pride, unbelief, presumption, and
forgetfulness of God.
When venial sin is considered as something insignificant,
when “ it is drunk in like water,” how can one be concerned
with mortification or renunciation? If, on the other hand,
sin is considered as the greatest of all evils, then mortifi­
cation, which is basically none other than death to sin,
must be an essential part of Christianity. Therefore, the
true Christian understands that his first duty is that of doing
penance, that is, detesting sin, feeling regret for it, avoiding
it, and expiating it. This part of mortification is evidently
necessary for all. Moreover, the Christian must practice
humility, recognizing that alone, without the help of God,
he can do nothing for his own salvation; that all he has
from himself is infinitely inferior to what other souls have
through grace. Hence, he must despise himself, that is,
despise all in himself that is not from God but which is
instead a deformation of the divine work.
Further, as the saints say and as St. Catherine of Siena
continually repeated, the Christian must hate himself for
love of divine justice. In other words, he must hate all
in himself that is not from God and that injures the natural

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71

rights God has over his thought, his heart, his body, and
his soul. He ought to be armed with a holy hatred for the
remnants of sin that remain in him, and, as St. Paul says,
crucify the flesh with its concupiscences.
Such are the rigorous laws against sin in the Gospel
doctrine, unknown to the pagan world and the greatest
philosophers. This asceticism, preached by John the Baptist
even prior to Our Lord to prepare souls for His coming,
is an essential part of Christianity.

Sublime Loftiness of the Supernatural End
There is, however, another reason for mortification
that is also unknown to Naturalism. It is the sublime
loftiness of the supernatural end to which Our Lord calls
us. It compels us to detach ourselves from all that is
earthly, all that makes us tend toward purely human
works; it obliges us to fight against all the tendencies of
the spirit and the heart that would absorb totally the
soul’s activity to the serious damage of the life of grace.
Our Lord imposed mortification on us the day on
which in the Sermon on the Mount, He proclaimed the
incomparable superiority of the New Law, the Law of
Love, over the Old Law and that which was purely natural:
“ If your virtue goes no deeper than that of the Scribes and
Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven ’’
(Mt. 5, 20).
Mortification of all the feelings of anger, antipathy, and
hatred. “ You have learnt how it was said to our ancestors:
' You must not kill’. . . But I say this to you: anyone
who is angry with his brother will answer for it before
the court... So then, if you are bringing your offering
to the altar and there remember that your brother has
something against you, leave your offering there before
the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother first . . . "
(Mt. 5, 21-24).

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Mortification of the senses and of the heart. “ You have
learnt how it was said: ‘ You must not commit adultery. ’
But I say this to you: if a man looks at a woman lustfully,
he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye should cause you to sin, tear it out and
throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one
part of you than to have your whole body thrown into hell.
And if your right hand should cause you to sin, cut it off
and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose
one part of you than to have your whole body go to hell "
(Mt. 5, 27-30).
Our Lord next prohibits divorce, thus imposing morti­
fication in Christian marriage. When the partners cease to
please one another they are, nevertheless, obliged to remain
united, a mortification sometimes harsher than that of the
cloister.
When it comes to the actual duties of charity, Jesus
imposes a mortification of the heart, of one’s judgment,
and one’s will on a level which the greatest philosophers
never knew, and which many Christians, even good ones,
ignore. It transforms the practice of the virtue of justice,
absorbing it into charity. In our dealings with our brothers
we must think not only of their rights and ours, but we
must always be concerned with their soul, doing all possible
to make it better, yielding, always yielding so that their
soul may be illumined.
" You have learnt how it was said: ‘ Eye for eye
and tooth for tooth. ’ But I say this to you: offer the
wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits
you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well; if
a man takes you to law and would have your tunic, let
him have your cloak as well. And if anyone orders you to
go one mile, go two miles with him. Give to anyone who
asks, and if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn away.
You have learnt how it was said: ' You must love your
neighbor ’ and hate your enemy. But I say this to you:

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73

love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you;
in this way you will be sons of your Father in Heaven,
for He causes His sun to rise on bad men as well as good,
and His rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike.
For if you love those who love you, what right have you
to claim any credit? Even the tax collectors do as much,
do they not? " (Mt. 5, 38-46).
Why, then, this mortification of the senses, of the
passions, of the heart? Why this mortification of one’s will
and judgment with the practice of Christian justice and
charity? Because it is a question of being raised to a life
infinitely higher than the natural life. You are not to be as
the pagans. “ You must therefore be perfect just as your
heavenly Father is perfect " (Mt. 5, 48). Take care not to
accomplish purely human works. You would receive here
below only an exclusively human reward. Take care not
to practice virtue to gain the esteem of men. You would
receive your recompense here below but you would not
have any in heaven (cf. Mt. 6, 1).
The life which we must attain is the fife of the resurrected
Christ, that is, a life which has passed through death. That
life implies, not a superficial harmony, but that profound
harmony between body and soul, between the soul and
God, which was the privilege of the state of original justice
and will be granted in the state of glory. We should be
distrustful of a superficial harmony that is attained without
any hard renunciation or mortification; it only seems real.
Within us opposing principles struggle without our know­
ledge. An egoism and an unconscious pride are developed
which, in certain circumstances, can be the source of very
serious offences, capable of dividing and killing the soul.
We should be most distrustful of that superficial harmony
because, unless we acquire here below a profound harmony
(supposing that we avoid mortal sin) we shall have to
acquire it later, and through constraint, in purgatory. Those
who do not want to experience mortification here below

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will be forced to experience it in the next life. These,
then are the two principal motives for mortification: the
consequences of sin and the elevation to a supernatural end.
In other words, we must practice mortification out of hatred
for sin and for the love of God, our ultimate end.
Ways of Mortification

Knowing why we should mortify ourselves is not enough.
We must also know how to mortify ourselves.
All the treatises on asceticism distinguish between ex­
terior and interior mortification. Both are necessary. In fact,
the mortification of the senses — of sight, hearing, taste,
smell, and touch, the doors through which temptation can
penetrate — would be of no help unless there were also
mortifications of the imagination and the memory. The
imagination leads us to empty fantasies with which the
devil can make a fool of us, and the memory reminds us
more often of the faults of our neighbor than of his merits.
We must mortify our hearts. The Lord is not pleased
with a divided heart. He wants to reign in us. This certainly
does not exclude or forbid other affections; indeed, it’s just
the opposite. But every affection must be subordinated to
His love, if it is to be truly supernatural and helpful for
eternal salvation.
Furthermore, we must mortify our own judgment, often
defiled by prejudices and often a source of stubbornness,
extravagant ideas, and singularity of conduct. Above all,
we have to mortify our own will and egoism, which make
us prisoners of our own selves. This is the worst type of
slavery, often unconscious and therefore the more dangerous.
It retards any progress toward God and renders our best
actions defective. It is necessary to make this egoism die
because we are not the center and the end of ourselves;
we must conform our will so perfectly to the divine will
that they can never be separated.

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Among all these tendencies that put us at a distance
from the love of God, it is important to discern the one
which for us constitutes the gravest danger, our predom­
inant fault. Against this our efforts must be directed.
Let’s suppose that we have done all possible to mortify
our senses, our passions, and our heart, and that we have
made a firm resolution to give ourselves completely to the
interior fife. But then, how many defects still exist in us
and what a distance separates us from the religious ideal!
To make ourselves aware of them, it would be necessary
to read often the description St. John of the Cross gives of
the defects of those who are beginning to dedicate them­
selves to the interior life. He finds in them the seven capital
sins applied in a spiritual way, defects that can easily be
reduced to two, spiritual sensuality and spiritual pride.
Spiritual sensuality, under which the Saint lists greed,
lust, avarice, and spiritual sloth, consists of allowing oneself
to be led astray by the sensible consolation poured into the
soul at the beginning of the interior life. Many, misled by
the attractiveness of consolations, seek these delightful
affections rather than purity of heart and true devotion.
They read all the books that treat this subject, spending
more time on this than on performing meritorious acts.
Under the pretext of a spiritual purpose, they have friend­
ships with some people, much less for the glory of God
than for the pleasure of talking about their feelings. They
are never content with the gifts of God. And if the
exercises of piety do not bring them consolations, they
either abandon prayer out of laziness or, to regain what
they have lost, they exhaust themselves by the weight
of their penances, which they perform without discretion,
without rule, and without obedience. Thus they have put
themselves in a state of exhaustion in which they are prone
to all sorts of temptations.
Is it necessary, then, to reject sensible devotion? Not
at all! It is useful for our spiritual progress, especially in

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the beginning. Our Lord gives us the milk of consolation
before nourishing us with the hard bread of tribulation.
Yet, this sensible devotion is to be loved only as a means,
not for itself but for God; and loved in the measure that
it is useful for our eternal salvation. Therefore, we should
not bewail excessively when Our Lord decides to deprive
us of it.
Another defect of beginners (and how many among us
always remain beginners!) is spiritual pride, a secret pride
that comes from the fact that we reflect too much on our
own fervor, being complacent in our selves and our actions,
and easily induced to speak of spiritual things, making
ourselves masters rather than disciples. We judge others
and condemn them in our heart because they do not
practice devotion in the same way we do. And so, in the
end, we are acting like the Pharisee who became proud of
Lis good works and despised the publican. " Often the devil
incites these beginners to fervor, and inspires in them the
desire to undertake some good works in order to feed their
presumption.
“ This spiritual pride generates spiritual envy. The soul
becomes saddened and is bothered by the good of those
who surpass it in virtue. It can scarcely bear seeing them
praised, and seeks to neutralize, as much as possible, the
effect of the praises that are so liberally bestowed on them.
The soul would like to be preferred to all.
" How contrary all this is to charity, which instead
always takes joy in the spiritual good of those who are
superior to us, inducing us to imitate them and not to be
bothered by their superiority ” (St. John of the Cross, The
Dark Night).
Here there is ample matter for mortification. We must
be convinced that we shall have to fight to the end, because
only in heaven will all these seeds of sin die.
The spirit of mortification was taught by Our Lord
■when He said: “ When you fast do not put on a gloomy

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77

look as the hypocrites do: they pull long faces to let men
know they are fasting. I tell you solemnly, they have had
their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head
and wash your face, so that no one will know you are
fasting except your Father who sees all that is done in
secret; and your Father who sees all that is done in
secret will reward you ” (Mt. 6, 16-18). Our mortification
should be joyous because it should be inspired primarily
by the love of God. It is, in fact, for Him — to go
toward Him — that we wish to destroy all seeds of sin in
us. Every act of mortification, therefore, should be as a step
of love toward God.
If we, then, elevate ourselves still more, love becomes
adoration, and the manifestation of adoration owed to
God is sacrifice, Christian mortification. What we contem­
plate in the saints is their sacrifice offered in union with the
sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross and on the altar. The
flagellations of our own St. Dominic, for his sins and those
of the faithful to whom he had to preach, were a sacrifice
of expiation and also a propitiatory sacrifice to draw the
grace of God upon souls. Above all, they were a sacrifice
of adoration whereby the Saint reduced himself to nothing
before God to acknowledge more fully that He is “ He
Who is ” and that we, by ourselves, are nothing.

Effects of Mortification
Contrary to what Naturalism affirms, mortification leads
to life — to the true life that comes to us from God and
Christ and not from our fallen nature, our disordered
passions, or from our pride. Christian mortification, far
from debasing our personality, exalts it to such a point
that it renders us independent of the world, its maxims,
its theories, its fashions, its foolishness, and its snares.
It exalts our soul above everything that is created, permit­

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ting us to depend only on ourselves and on God. In the
measure that it makes our dependence on God closer, it
develops our personality, rendering it more like the divine
personality of Christ. What personality is more marvelous
than that of the saints? It goes beyond the limits of time
and space, and after the passing of centuries it imposes
itself on the admiration of the crowds without the help
of any human means but solely through the superiority
of wisdom and charity.
Mortification, then, does not constrain but liberates,
because it alone sets us free from the slavery of our passions
and public opinion, and, above all, from the slavery of
egoism. This last is the worst type of slavery, the most
difficult to destroy. More than any other it paralyzes our
efforts toward the good. Mortification, furthermore, far
from suffocating holy initiative and holy boldness, incites
them since it teaches us not to rely upon ourselves but
upon God. If there is a fruitful social endeavor, it is
certainly that of the saints, always nourished by holy hatred
of self. Who can even measure the social influence exerted
by such a humble daughter of St. Dominic as was St. Cath­
erine of Siena? Humility, abnegation, and renunciation
hollowed out in her an abyss. Divine grace filled this up and
she desired nothing other than to overflow on every side as
an inexhaustible fountain of living water. Rivers of living
water poured out from within her, because she was no
longer Catherine of Siena. Her heart, her judgment, and
her will had given way to the heart, judgment, and will
of Christ.
Therefore, we should love mortification, meditate often
on its motives — the consequences of sin in us and the
sublime loftiness of the supernatural end to which Our
Lord calls us. We should put it into practice without
compromise, especially as regards our predominant fault.
We should do this always with joy, with the interior joy

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of love, and always in the spirit of adoration. We should
learn to immolate ourselves every day so that Our Lord
may live in us and grant us to be other Christs who cause
souls to be born to the divine life.
May the Lord and the saints help us in this hard work
which alone leads to true life!

CHAPTER

VII

Humility
The Son of Man came not to be served
but to serve, and to give His life as a
ransom for many.—Mt. 20, 28

Since we are speaking primarily about the moral virtues
that have a special affinity with the theological virtues and
the life of union with God, it is necessary to reflect on
what humility should be in those who wish to become
proficient. The importance and nature of this Christian
virtue demonstrate to us the gap that separates the acquired
virtues described by pagan philosophers from the infused
virtues of which the Gospel speaks.
Throughout the entire Christian tradition this virtue
has been considered the foundation of the spiritual life.
It is the foundation insofar as it separates us from pride
which, according to Sacred Scripture, is the principle of all
sin because it separates us from God. Often humility has
been compared to the foundation that must be excavated
in order to construct a building. The higher the desired
building, the deeper the foundation has to be. The two
outstanding columns of the temple to be raised are faith
and hope, while charity is the dome.
Certainly humility should repress pride under all its
forms, including intellectual and spiritual pride. Yet, the
principal and most elevated act of humility is not precisely
the actual repression of acts of pride. In fact, it is clear
that in Our Lord and in the Blessed Virgin there was never
a movement of pride to repress. There was in them,

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however, the uninterrupted, eminent practice of the virtue
of humility. What, then, is the distinctive act of humility
with respect to God and neighbor?
Humility with Respect to God

The distinctive act of humility consists in bowing down
toward the ground (from the Latin “ humus ” from which
the name of this virtue is derived). To speak without
employing a metaphor, this unique act consists in abasing
oneself before God and before that which is of God in
all creatures. To abase ourselves before the Most High
means to recognize our inferiority, our smallness, and our
indigence not only theoretically but also practically. Even
in the state of innocence we would have been conscious
of this but after sin we become aware also of our state
of misery.
Thus, humility is united to obedience and to religion.
Yet, it differs from them. Obedience regards the authority
of God and His precepts, while religion respects His ex­
cellence and the cult due Him. Humility, in making us
bow down toward the ground, acknowledges our smallness
and poverty, and in this way glorifies the grandeur of
God. It sings His glory as did the Archangel St. Michael
when he said: “ Who is like God?
The interior soul experiences a holy joy in reducing
itself to nothing, so to speak, before God so that it may
recognize in a practical way that He alone is great and that
in comparison to His majesty all human grandeur is empty
of truth, like a lie. Humility conceived in this manner is
founded upon truth, especially on this truth, namely, that
there is an infinite distance between the Creator and the
creature. The more we realize this distance in a living and
concrete way, the humbler we are. However elevated a
creature may be, this chasm always remains infinite; and
the more we elevate ourselves, the more evident this

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becomes. Hence, the most elevated is the humblest because
he is the most illumined. The Virgin Mary is the most
humble of all the saints, while Our Lord is much humbler
than His Mother.
The affinity of humility with the theological virtues
can be seen by taking into consideration its twofold
dogmatic foundation which was unknown to pagan philos­
ophers. It is based, first of all, on the mystery of creation
“ ex nihilo ” which the philosophers of antiquity did not
know, at least not explicitly, yet which reason can know
with its natural powers. We were created from nothing.
This is the foundation of humility according to the light
of right reason. Under this aspect it is a question of acquired
humility. Here we are concerned particularly with infused
humility. Such humility is based on the mystery of grace,
on the need for actual grace in order to perform the least
act helpful for salvation. This mystery surpasses the natural
powers of reason and is known only by faith. Our Lord
expressed it in these words: “ Cut off from Me you can
do nothing ” (Jn. 15, 5) — in the order of salvation.
From this certain consequences flow relative to ( 1 ) God,
the Creator, (2) His Providence, (3) His goodness insofar
as it is the source of grace, and (4) His goodness insofar
as it causes forgiveness of our sins.

(1) First of all, regarding God, the Creator, we ought
to acknowledge not only abstractly, but practically and con­
cretely, that we by ourselves are nothing. “ My substance
is as nothing before You, O Lord! ” (Ps. 39, 6); “ What
do you have that was not given to you? ” (I Cor. 4, 7).
We were created from nothing by a " fiat ” of God, who is
sovereignly free, and we are held in existence by His
benevolent love, without which we would be annihilated
in an instant. Although after creation there are diverse
beings, nevertheless, reality, perfection, wisdom, and love
are not increased because infinite wisdom and the fullness

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of divine perfection already existed even prior to creation.
Besides, if all that comes from God were taken away
from our most perfect free act, nothing, strictly speaking,
would remain any longer, since this act is not produced
in part by us and in part by God. Rather, the whole is
from God insofar as He is its first cause, and the whole
is ours insofar as we are the second cause. In the same
way, the fruit of the tree is wholly from God as the first
cause and wholly from the tree as the second cause. This
must be acknowledged also in practice. Without God,
Creator and Conserver of all things, we would be non­
existent.

(2) In the same way, without God the supreme provider,
without His Providence that “ directs all things,” our life
would be totally lacking in direction. Consequently, we
ought to receive with humility both the general direction
of His precepts to attain eternal life, and the particular
direction which the Most High has chosen from eternity
for each of us. This particular direction is manifested to us
by our superiors — the intermediaries between God and
us, to whose counsels we should have recourse — and
by events, as well as by the inspirations of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, we should humbly accept the position, perhaps
very modest, that God has willed for each of us from
all eternity.
Thus it is that in the religious life, according to the
divine will, some ought to be like the branches of a tree,
others like the blossoms, and still others like the roots
hidden under the soil. Actually the roots, even if hidden,
are more useful than the other parts since they draw from
the soil the substance which makes the sap that is necessary
for the nourishment of the tree. If all the roots were taken
away the tree would die, while on the other hand it
would not die if all the branches and blossoms were
removed.

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85

Humility, which induces the believer and the religious
to accept willingly a hidden position, is very fruitful not
only for themselves but also for others. In His life of
sorrows, the Savior humbly sought the last place, permitted
Barabbas to be preferred to Himself, and chose the oppro­
brium of the Cross. Precisely for this reason in the building
of the kingdom of God Christ became the cornerstone.
“ Jesus said to them, ' Have you never read in the scrip­
tures: It was the stone rejected by the builders that became
the keystone. This was the Lord’s doing and it is wonderful
to see.’ ” (Mt. 21, 42). St. Paul writes to the Ephesians:
“ So you are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are
citizens like all the saints, and part of God’s household.
You are part of a building that has the apostles and prophets
for its foundations, and Christ Jesus Himself for its main
cornerstone ” (Eph. 2, 19-20). Such is solid humility,
marvelously fruitful, which even in the most hidden places
sings the glory of God. It is necessary, therefore, to receive
humbly from God the special direction that He has chosen
for us, even though it has to lead us to a profound immo­
lation. It is God who " gives life and death. ” He leads
us from one extreme to another. He humbles us and exalts
us as He wishes (cf. I Kgs. 2, 7). This is one of the most
beautiful leitmotifs of the Bible.
(3) Since we are unable to take the least step forward,
or accomplish the least salvific or meritorious act without
the help of actual grace, and we especially need it to perse­
vere to the end, we should humbly ask for this grace.
Even if we possessed an elevated degree of sanctifying
grace and charity, ten talents for example, we would still
have need of actual grace for the least salvific act. Particularly
we have need of the great gift of final perseverance for a
happy death. We should humbly and confidently ask for
this every day in the Hail Mary.

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With St. Paul, Christian humility joyfully says: “ Not
that we are qualified in ourselves to claim anything as our
own work: all our qualifications come from God ” (II Cor.
3, 5) and " It is for that reason that I want you to under­
stand that on the one hand no one can be speaking under
the influence of the Holy Spirit and say, ' Curse Jesus ’,
and on the other hand, no one can say, * Jesus is Lord ’
unless he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit ”
(I Cor. 12, 3).
In a word, humility ought to acknowledge in a practical
way and more each day the grandeur of God, creator and
provider of all things, the author of grace. This humility,
which recognizes our indigence, must be found in all the
just. It must also be found in the innocent man.

(4) After sin, however, we must acknowledge not only
our indigence, but also our misery: the misery of our
wretched and egoistic heart, of our inconstant will, of our
irregular, violent, and capricious character; the misery of
our spirit, which commits unpardonable forgetfulness and
falls into contradictions that it can and ought to avoid;
and the misery of pride and concupiscence, which leads to
indifference concerning the glory of God and the salvation
of souls.
This misery is less than nothingness itself since it consti­
tutes a disorder, sometimes throwing our soul into a state
of abjection that renders it worthy of contempt. The
Miserere of the Divine Office often reminds us of these
great truths:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your
great goodness; and according to the greatness of Your
compassion, wipe out my offence.
Thoroughly wash me from my guilt, and of my
sin cleanse me.
For I acknowledge my offense, and my sin is
before me always.

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Indeed, in guilt was I born, and in sin my mother
conceived me.
Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be purified;
wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
Turn away Your face from my sins, and blot out
all my guilt.
A clean heart give me, O God, and a steadfast
spirit renew in me.
Give me back the joy of your salvation, and Your
holy Spirit take not from me (Ps. 51, 3 ff.).
Yet who can detect his own failings? Absolve me
from those that are hidden (Ps. 19, 13).
How much different this abasement through true humility
from that cowardliness born of human respect and spiritual
sloth! Pusillanimity, contrary to magnanimity, flees from
necessary work. Humility, far from being opposed to grandeur
of soul, is intimately united to it. Thus the true Christian
ought to aim at great things, worthy of a great heart.
Yet, he should aim humbly and, if necessary, run the
course of great humiliations. He must learn to say often:
“ Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your Name give
glory.”
The pusillanimous is he who refuses to do what he can
and ought to do. He can also sin mortally when he refuses
to do what is obligatory. Humility, on the Contran', bows
man before God, to put him in his true place. It does not
abase us before God except to enable Him to act more
freely in us. Far from being discouraged the humble soul
places itself in the hands of God, and if by means of it
the Lord does great things, it does not boast, just as the
ax in the hands of the woodsman does not boast, nor the
harp in the hands of the artist. It says with the Holy
Virgin: “ Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to
me according to Your word! ”

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Humility with Respect to One’s Neighbor

On this subject, St. Thomas, in a manner as simple as
it is profound, says: “ Each one ought to acknowledge that,
in what he possesses through himself, he is inferior to all
that every other person has received from God.” Every
man of himself has nothing other than his indigence, defec­
tability, and deficiency. He ought to acknowledge, not only
theoretically but also practically that all he has from himself
is inferior to all that every other person has from God, both
in the order of nature and that of grace.
The holy Doctor adds concisely: “ The truly humble man
considers himself inferior to others not because of external
acts, but because he fears he may be accomplishing even
the good he does through hidden pride.” For this reason
the Psalmist says: “ Yet who can detect his own failings?
Absolve me from those that are hidden.” Or better,
“ Purify me, Lord, from my hidden faults.” Moreover,
St. Augustine says: “ Believe that other persons, though
in a hidden way, are better than you, although you seem
to be morally superior to them.”
Again with St. Augustine we must say: “ There is not
a sin committed by another which I could not commit
because of my frailty; and if I have not committed it, it
is because God in His mercy has not permitted it and has
kept me in the good.” Sacred Scripture says (Ps. 51):
“ Lord, create in me a clean heart and a steadfast spirit;
convert me to You, and I shall be converted; have mercy
on me, a sinner, because I am weak and poor.” St. Thomas
writes: “ Since the love of God for us is the cause of all
good, no one would be better than another if he were not
loved more by God ” (S. T. q. 20, a. 3).
“ What do you have that was not given to you? ”
(I Cor. 4, 7) This induces the saints to say to themselves
on seeing a criminal condemned to death: “ If this man
had received the same graces that I have received for so

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many years, perhaps he would have been less unfaithful
than I; and if God had permitted in my life the mistakes
that He permitted in his, he would be in my place and
I in his.”
“ What do you have that was not given to you? ” This
is the true foundation of Christian humility. All pride
should be smashed under this divine saying! The humility
of the saints thus becomes more and more profound,
because they come to know better and better their own
frailty in contrast to the grandeur and goodness of God.
We must always aim toward this humility of the saints.
But we should not employ the formulas that they used
until we are profoundly convinced of their truth; otherwise,
it would result in a false humility which would be, in
comparison to the true, what rhinestones are in comparison
to a diamond.
Humility toward one’s neighbor, thus characterized by
St. Thomas, differs immensely from human respect and
pusillanimity. Human respect is the fear of the opinion
and the anger of the wicked; this fear separates us from
God. Cowardliness flees necessary work; it withdraws
before great things that are to be accomplished and inclines
toward pettiness. Humility bows us in a noble way before
God and before what is divine in our neighbor.
The humble man does not give way to the power of
the wicked, and in this he differs, says St. Thomas, from
the ambitious man who abases himself more than required
for attaining what he wants, and abases himself slavishly to
attain power. Humility does not flee great things. On the
contrary, it reinforces magnanimity, making the latter aim
humbly toward elevated things. Humility and magnanimity
are two complementary virtues that sustain one another
like the two arches of a vault. These two virtues appeared
splendidly in Our Lord when He said: “ The Son of Man
came not to be served but to serve [this is humility], and
to give His life as a ransom for many [this is magnanimity

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with its zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of
souls] " (Mt. 20, 28).
It was not possible for Our Savior to aim at anything
higher or to tend toward it with greater humility. He
wished to give us eternal life, and to accomplish this He
chose the way of humiliation, the Passion, and the Cross.
In due proportion, these same two apparently contra­
dictory virtues are united in the saints. Thus, the humble
John the Baptist did not fear the anger of Herod when
he said to him: “ What you are doing is not lawful ”
(cf. Mt. 14, 4 and Mk. 6, 18). The apostles in their humility
have no fear of the opinion of men and are magnanimous
even to martyrdom. There is something similar in all the
saints. The more humble they are, the stronger they are
and the less they fear human opinions however much they
are to be feared. Such is the humble Vincent de Paul,
fearless before the Jansenist pride, which he denounced in
order to conserve for souls the grace of frequent Communion.

The Levels of Humility
Without humility it is impossible to have the perfection
of charity. Then, what, practically speaking, do we have to
do to attain the perfection of humility? Above all it is
necessary to maintain the correct attitude with respect to
praise and reproach.
Regarding praise, we must not commend ourselves.
This would be to soil ourselves, as the proverb says: “ He
who acclaims himself, stains himself. ’’ Those who praise
themselves find that they are never praised enough by others.
We must not seek praises for we would make ourselves
ridiculous and lose the merit of our good works. Finally,
we must not be complacent with praises when we receive
them. We could lose if not all the merit of our good actions,
at least the flower of merit.

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Concerning reproaches, we ought to accept patiently
those we deserve, especially when superiors with the right
and duty make them. If one becomes sulky, the benefit of
this just correction is lost. Sometimes, it is also fitting to
accept patiently a reproach that is hardly merited or totally
undeserved. St. Thomas, when a novice, was unjustly
corrected for an error in Latin while reading in the refectory.
He corrected himself as he was told, but during recreation
his surprised confreres asked him: “ You were right, you
read well; why did you correct yourself? ” And St. Thomas
replied: “ Before God it is better to make an error in
grammar than to be lacking in obedience and humility.”
Finally, it is good to ask for the love of contempt,
remembering the example of the saints. When Our Lord
asked St. John of the Cross: “ What do you want as a
reward? ” he answered: “To be despised and to suffer for
your love.” His prayer was heard. A few days later, in a
very sorrowful episode, he was treated as an unworthy
religious and in such a manner that is hard to imagine.
St. Francis of Assisi said to Brother Leo: “ If, arriving
late at night at the convent gate, the brother porter does
not wish to open up for us, but takes us to be thieves and
beats us with a stick leaving us all night in the rain
and cold, it is then that we ought to say: ' What perfect
joy! What joy, O Lord, to suffer for You and to become a
little like You.’ ” The saints raised themselves to this
point!
St. Anselm has excellently described the levels of
humility:

(1) to acknowledge that under certain aspects we are
worthy of contempt;
(2) to accept being so;
(3) to confess that we are so;
(4) to wish that our neighbor believe this;
(5) to bear it patiently when this is said of us;

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(6) to accept, without reserve, being treated as a person
worthy of contempt;
(7) to wish to be treated in this way.
These superior levels are described in all the books on
piety, but, as St. Theresa says, " They are a gift of God;
they are supernatural goods. ” They suppose a certain infused
contemplation of the humility of Our Lord, who was cru­
cified for us, and a living desire in us to become similar
to Him.
It is certainly fitting to aim at this sublime perfection.
Yet, few are the souls that attain it. Before attaining it the
interior soul has many occasions to remember the words of
Jesus, so simple and profound but truly imitable, at least
in a relative way: “ The Son of Man came not to be served
but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
This is the deepest humility, united to the noblest grandeur
of soul.
One of the most beautiful formulas in which humility
and magnanimity are reconciled is this one taken from the
works of St. Thomas. “ The servant of God ought always
to consider himself a beginner and always to tend toward
a more perfect and holier life, without ever stopping.”

CHAPTER VIII

Poverty
Happy are the poor in spirit; theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.—Mt. 5, 3
And everyone who has left houses, broth­
ers, sisters, father, mother, children or
land for the sake of My name will be
repaid a hundred times, and also inherit
eternal life.—Mt. 19, 29

We have seen what mortification is in general. Now it
is necessary to examine how it is organized in a permanent
way in the religious state through the practice of the
three vows.
The objections of Naturalism against Christian morti­
fication naturally extend also to the religious vows. Accord­
ing to the naturalists, the vows are a hindrance, an impov­
erishment that condemns one to inactivity. This objection
considers only the externals of the religious state, namely,
that which has the prime purpose of protecting the heart
of the state of consecration. Since its essence is wholly of the
supernatural order, this escapes the notice of Naturalism.
The Religious State: State of Consecration
that Presupposes Separation

If the religious life is considered only from the outside,
it appears as a state of separation from the world, and it
may indeed seem to be something very negative. Yet, if
we observe it in its intimate being, or better, in its essence,

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we see that it is a state of consecration, of giving of self,
and of belonging to God. Naturalism sees only the sepa­
ration and cannot grasp the reason for it. It cannot see
why this separation is required for the consecration which
it safeguards. Consequently, it is very important to under­
stand well the relationship existing between these two
aspects, negative and positive, of the religious life.

Our Lord was consecrated and therefore separated. The
religious state is the school of sanctity, the school of the
imitation of Our Lord, who from His very birth was
essentially and exclusively consecrated to God, consecrated
in His nature itself. All His acts, even the most indifferent,
proceeded from His divine personality and were referred
to God through His love for His Father.
The soul of Our Lord is the domain where the kingdom
of God develops in all its fullness. Since Our Lord belongs
exclusively to God, He cannot belong to the world. He was
separated from the world, that is, separated from sin, from
earthly goods, from honors and daily worldly affairs
(poverty); separated from pleasures, free from the needs
of family life (chastity), so that even at the age of twelve
He declared that He had to concern Himself with His
Father’s business; finally, He was separated from Himself,
from His own will since He was not living for any other
motive than to do the will of His Father, “ to obey even
to death, and to death on the Cross ” (obedience).
For us the contrary is true. Jesus, coming from above, is
consecrated even from His birth. This transcendence separates
Him. The religious, on the other hand, who makes profession
of imitating Our Lord, comes from below, that is, from the
world and from sin. Hence, he must first of all separate
himself from the world that he may be able to consecrate
himself to God and belong to Him alone.

Triple separation and triple consecration. For the reli­
gious soul to belong wholly to God, a triple separation and

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a triple consecration are necessary: separation and consecra­
tion of his external goods, separation and consecration of
his body, and separation and consecration of his liberty.
Only in this way will the harmony of the state of original
justice be reestablished, insofar as this is possible here
below. In the state of original justice there was a perfect
harmony between the body and the external goods destined
to serve the body, between the soul and the body destined
to serve the soul, and finally, between God and the soul
destined to serve God.
Original sin and sin in general disturb this triple harmony.
Instead of making use of external goods, our body is led
to make itself a slave of them, to accumulate riches. The
miser becomes a slave of his treasure, the rich man a slave
of his wealth and business, which absorb him entirely. Such
is concupiscence of the eyes, never having enough of glitter
and shine. After sin, the soul has the tendency to make itself
a slave of the body, instead of using it. Such is the concu­
piscence of the flesh. Human liberty, carried to pride,
refuses to be subject to God and to serve Him, thus
becoming a slave of its own caprices. This is pride of life.
The purpose of the three vows is precisely to reestablish
the original harmony. The vow of poverty separates us
from external goods, consecrating them to God so that they
may no longer be an obstacle, but rather a means. The
vow of chastity separates us, so to speak, from our body,
consecrating it to God so that it may no longer be an
obstacle but a means for the life of the soul. The vow of
obedience separates us from our will, from our liberty,
consecrating it to God so that it may be fully subject
to Him.
When we have abandoned to God our goods, our body,
and our liberty, He transforms them so they can no longer
be an occasion of disorder. He gives them back to us as
the means to salvation. Fittingly we affirm of religious:
“ All belongs to you; but you belong to Christ, and Christ

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to God ” (cf. I Cor. 3, 22). This is the reason for the
three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
When these three virtues are subordinated to the virtue
of religion, which has for its object the internal and external
cult owed to God, the practice of poverty, chastity, and
obedience becomes an act of religion. It is the oblation of
ourselves to God, an oblation which, when total, merits
the name of sacrifice and holocaust.
The religious soul, to make certain that it will not
turn back but will persevere in the practice of these virtues,
namely, poverty, chastity, obedience, and religion, binds
itself to God with the three vows. These become a triple
contract between God and us through which we obligate
ourselves, for a certain time or even to death, to practice
these virtues. Through such a contract, God obligates
Himself, providing we are faithful, to give us what is
necessary to lead us to sanctity. The vow is a means, a
bulwark of virtue which extends much farther than the vow
itself. Indeed, the virtue not only embraces what is obligatory
in the religious life, but involves the sensitivity and
generosity that constitute its perfection.
The vow, especially the perpetual vow, makes us become
forever the property of God. It gives us, body and soul,
to God. It gives to God our works, our prayer, our time,
and our smallest actions. In return, God pledges to give
Himself completely to us.

The Religious Value of Poverty
We will now consider religious poverty, the virtue of
poverty that is essentially subordinated to the virtue of
religion and which, under this aspect, merits the name of
holy poverty. Religious poverty implies, as do all the
religious virtues, a separation or renunciation together with
a consecration.

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Separation. Religious poverty implies essentially the
renunciation of both property and of the free use of external
goods for the love of God. If the motive of this renunciation
or separation is not the love of God, one cannot speak of
holy poverty, but at the most, of a philosophical poverty
that disdains external goods through indifference, or in
order to escape being bothered with them, or sometimes
out of pride.
The renunciation demanded by holy poverty is not the
privation of external goods. Hardship and misery are not
holy poverty. We do not renounce external goods any more
than we do our body or our liberty. We do renounce
ownership and free use of these goods. Holy poverty forbids
us to be attached to them with our heart. We should use
these goods with a certain indifference, almost without being
aware of them. We must always be ready to part with the
objects we are using, including objects of piety. They
remain only a means to our devotion whereas they could
become obstacles if we become too attached to them.
Besides the actual ownership of goods, holy poverty
forbids our free use of them. We should not use them,
loan them, or give them away except with the explicit
or, at least, the tacit permission of our superiors. We ought
to limit ourselves to what is strictly necessary and avoid
the superfluous. What is more comfortable becomes super­
fluous whenever what is less comfortable is sufficient. The
best way of knowing what is necessary and what is not, is
to conform ourselves to what is given to all — nothing
more — unless there is a special reason, which, however,
is always left to the judgment of the superior.
Holy poverty obliges us, moreover, to bear with patience
and for the love of God, the accidental privation of some­
thing necessary when divine Providence permits this privation
to test our patience and our trust. We should remember that
rarely do we do, for the love of God, what very often is
done in the world by the poor. They sometimes lack everr

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bread to nourish themselves, clothing, heat, time to relax,
doctors and medicine for their health. We should acquire
some strength to bear difficulties without complaining. If
not, how could the practice of poverty be a mortification?
How could it produce in us that religious strength and
that joy, even in the midst of difficulties and privations,
that Our Lord wishes to see in us so that we may be
His image?
We ought to remember the extent to which Jesus was
detached from the goods of this world. He was born in a
stable and died on a cross. Nothing belonged to Him, not
even the house he lived in at Nazareth. That belonged to
His Mother, who died after Him. During His ministry
He had nothing of His own, not even a place on which
to rest His head. When they wished to proclaim Him king,
He fled. The only glory that He sought was that of His
Father. This glory, however, He sought, He wanted, and
He demanded. We ought to be detached like Our Lord,
like the saints, like our saintly Father Dominic who did
not have even a personal cell or a bed on which to rest.
Consecration. Holy poverty does not involve only the
renunciation of ownership and use of external goods. It
assumes also the consecration of these goods to God.
When we have turned them over to God, He concedes us
the use of these goods on condition that we use them only
for our salvation, for the salvation of souls, and for His
greater glory. We can have beautiful convents, and especially
beautiful churches, and still be practicing holy poverty.
We possess these convents and churches for God, not for
ourselves; they are not ours, but God’s. Blessed Angelico
was not lacking in poverty when he decorated the cells for
the religious of Saint Mark’s in Florence with frescoes that
represented Our Lord’s life.
In our monasteries we stand around Our Lord, not
as beggars, but as sons. He gives us abundantly what is

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needed for soul and body. At the Sacred Table He gives
Himself to us to nourish our souls. In the refectory He
takes care that we have food to replenish the body.
And what is " necessary ” is not identical for all religious
orders. The Lord distributes to each according to the nature
and needs of its apostolate.
We can cease to be poor in two ways: by diverting these
goods from their ultimate end, or by lacking trust in divine
Providence. And these things we do to the extent that we
make the goods of God serve our personal interests, outside
any religious purpose. We also cease to be poor when we
dissipate the goods of God, when we allow them to be
damaged or lost, and when we waste time in dreaming or
chatting — for our time belongs to God. The truly poor
religious is hard working; and his work is that established
by his rule, not anything else.
We are likewise wanting in holy poverty if, in moments
when privation begins to make itself felt, we are lacking
trust in divine Providence. In taking the vow of poverty,
we signed an agreement with God and we have His signature.
He has obligated Himself to provide us with what is
necessary if we remain faithful to our duty, the specific
purpose of our Order.
We should remember our father, St. Dominic. The
brethren came to tell him: “ Nothing more remains to eat.”
“ Go to the refectory,” said the man of God, and the
angels descended from heaven to serve the religious. It
could not have been otherwise. Our Lord has given His
word, and Dominic and his brethren had not been lacking
in theirs. St. Agnes of Montepulciano, prioress at twenty
years of age, found herself without any resources. Yet, she
loved holy poverty, and knew how to surmount the difficulty
despite the greatest privations. She had trust in the word
of God. The Lord left her temporarily without anything
only to test her love.

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Why then should we be anxious? The Lord said to
all Christians: " That is why I am telling you not to worry
about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your
body and how you are to clothe it. Surely life means more
than food, and the body more than clothing! Look at the
birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into
barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not
worth much more than they are? ... So do not worry; do
not say, ' What are we to eat? What are we to drink? How
are we to be clothed? ’ It is the pagans who set their hearts
on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need
them all. Set your hearts on His kingdom first, and on His
righteousness, and all these other things will be given you
as well ’’ (Mt. 6, 25-33). If Jesus has made this infallible
promise to all Christians, what will He not do for His
religious who have placed their lives in His hands?
St. Theresa has written: “ The less we have, the less
anxious I am. Our Lord knows very well that I experience
more displeasure when the alms go beyond what is necessary
than when something is lacking. And still I cannot say that
we have been in need, such is the readiness of our adorable
Master to come and help us ” {The Way of Perfection,
chap. 2).
We should strive to have this marvelous supernatural
and divine trust. In moments of necessity we should never
omit the prayers Our Lord demands that we perform,
in order to do material works that He does not want.
We should never transform the monastery into a workshop
to procure our necessities nor should we seek to attract
alms solely by human means.
We should strive to be faithful to the Lord in the ob­
servance of our rule and He, likewise, will be faithful to
us. Just as God gave His word to St. Dominic, St. Agnes,
and St. Theresa, so He has also given His word to us.
Our Lord has said: “ Happy are the poor in spirit; theirs

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is the kingdom of Heaven.” He does not say “ will be,”
but “ is.”
Such is holy poverty under its two aspects, negative
and positive, of separation and consecration. External goods
are no longer an obstacle since they no longer absorb us,
no longer preoccupy us. We use them to maintain the life
of our body, for the salvation of souls, and for the glory
of God.
Thus, in a monastery, by means of holy poverty, material
goods themselves render a cult to God, the ultimate end
of all creation. Original harmony is reestablished. Freeing
us from a thousand temporal concerns, holy poverty permits
us to think about God and souls, to run along the road
of perfection, and to live only for God and souls. Who
can say what the fruitfulness of holy poverty will be under
this aspect? It is enough to visit some convents dedicated
to the help of the poor and the sick, or to teaching.
Still there is another fruitfulness that is purely spiritual.
Holy poverty teaches us to practice many virtues, such
as patience, humility, meekness. Above all, if we are
docile, it communicates to us the spirit of detachment in
such fullness that we are motivated to practice it not only
in regard to material goods, but also in regard to the
spiritual goods of intellect, heart, and soul.
The goods of intelligence are the various forms of
knowledge; the goods of the heart are the affections; and
the goods of the soul are spiritual consolations and our
merits. Holy poverty teaches us not to consider as our
own property the knowledge and small capacities we may
have, because all this belongs to God. We ought to be
detached from them; otherwise, this private possession
that we have usurped will make us fall into pride.
We ought to consecrate to God our intellectual work,
that is, to study what God wills, when He wills, as He
wills, solely for His service, for His cult, for His glory.

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The life of the saints tells us clearly enough how pleased
Our Lord is to pour His light on souls detached from
their own personal ideas. We might recall, for example,
how much the insights of a St. Catherine of Siena surpass
the highest theological contemplation.
Holy poverty teaches us to be detached from our affec­
tions. If, on the contrary, we wish to remain attached to
them, they will bring about a great waste of time that
we owe to God and to souls. These affections will be for
us a danger of falling into sentimentalism or into still
graver faults. We must consecrate our affections to God
and place them under the supernatural influence of the
virtues of charity and religion. Then they will grow and
Our Lord will reveal to us all the treasures of a friendship
that is truly supernatural. Holy poverty also teaches us to
be content when we are not loved by some confreres or
superiors. Is not the love of Jesus sufficient?
Poverty of spirit detaches us from the goods of the
soul, that is, from spiritual consolations. It teaches us not
to seek them for themselves as an end — a very dangerous
thing — since in so doing we offer a weapon to the devil.
They ought to be desired only for God, as a means. One
ought to accept being deprived of them when the Lord
deems it necessary.
Poverty of spirit teaches us not to envy the graces
given to other souls, and not to wish to become saints
immediately without passing through the grades of inter­
mediate trials. It teaches us to thank God when He takes
from us the esteem of men and keeps us in humility by
leaving us in our miseries. Further, it teaches us to despoil
ourselves of our merits and to offer them to Our Lord and
to the Holy Virgin for the salvation of needy souls. In this
case, by despoiling ourselves we shall receive more than
we give; indeed, we shall receive the hundredfold.
Finally, this voluntary " Kenosis " prepares us for what
God wishes to perform in us to ready us for the life in

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heaven; to prepare us for that emptying of all that is
human in us, for that interior crucifixion, for that nakedness
of soul which for the saints begins and ends here below,
while for the others it is accomplished in purgatory.
May the Lord grant that we dispose our soul to the
work of a wholly divine purification which He alone can
accomplish in us!

CHAPTER

IX

Chastity
Happy the pure in heart·, they shall see
God.—Mt. 5, 8

We have considered how holy poverty consists of the
renunciation of external goods and in the consecration of
these goods to the service of God. Religious chastity involves
these two elements also: supernatural detachment from
the pleasures of the body and the consecration of our body
to God so that it may be a faithful servant in the work
of our salvation, of the salvation of souls, and of the glory
of God.
As for this separation and this consecration we ought to
meditate particularly on the following aspects:
(1) The aim of this renunciation is to flee the servitude
of the senses in order to be united to God, a thing that
would not be necessary in the state of innocence.
(2) This renunciation consists in giving up ownership
and free use of one’s body.
(3) The principle of this renunciation is the grace deriv­
ing from mortification.

Separation

(1) The aim of this renunciation of matrimony and the
pleasures of the senses is to flee the enslavement of the
senses in order to unite ourselves to God. The unbeliever
cannot understand this renunciation since he sees it as a
negative perfection and unnatural. He holds the qualities
of the mother of a family much superior to those of a

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woman religious. In reality, this renunciation became a
perfection only in consequence of original sin. It had
no reason for existence in the state of innocence (5.T. I,
q. 98, a. 2 ad 3), because in that state the body was
perfectly subject to the soul, the passions perfectly docile
to right reason, and the pleasures of the senses did not
have that immoderate ardor that throws the soul into
uneasiness and agitation and weighs it down, thus diverting
it from contemplation of divine things.
Only as a consequence
of originalsin is virginity to
be preferred to matrimony (S.T. II-II, q. 152, a. 4; and
definition of the Council of Trent, sess.24,can. 10 against
Calvin and Luther). The observance of absolute chastity
in the religious life tends precisely, by means of the
privation of the pleasures of the senses, to reestablish the
original harmony of soul and body, and to render the
body so docile that the soul no longer experiences any
agitation and can fully live its spiritual life.
“ This absolute chastity,” says St. Thomas, “ cannot be
practiced by all; but if it is necessary that some embrace
the marriage state to assure the corporeal conservation of
the human race, it is fitting that others abstain from it
to devote themselves to the contemplation of divine things
and thus contribute to the beauty and salvation of the
whole human race " (cf. S.T. II-II, q. 152, a. 2 ad 1).
The renunciation that religious chastity demands is, there­
fore, essentially related to our state of fallen nature. It is
because the furnace of concupiscence remains in us after
sin that God invites us to chastity.
Furthermore, the motive of this renunciation is the love
of God. Detachment from the pleasures of the body through
insensibility or through philosophic disdain does not
constitute holy chastity. Some philosophers have abstained
from the pleasures of the flesh to devote themselves to
study (as St. Catherine of Siena notes) but we, instead,
ought to do this for love of God.

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(2) O£ what does this renunciation consist? It is not
in separating ourselves from our body, but in giving up
its ownership and its free use. By religious profession our
body belongs to God; it becomes His. The profanation
of this body, then, would be a sacrilege, just as in marriage
the body of one spouse belongs to the other and its profa­
nation would be adultery. We may no longer make free
use of our body. We ought even to renounce every affec­
tion of our heart that is extraneous to the love of God.
This is something indispensable.
(3) How are we to attain this renunciation? It is a
gift of God, a supernatural infused virtue. Yet, God does
not preserve it in us without our help. He wishes our
cooperation, and calls for a twofold mortification, that
of the flesh and that of the heart.
Without the mortification of the flesh it is impossible
to practice holy chastity. For this reason our Constitutions
prescribe fasting, abstinence, and vigils. We should not
deprive ourselves of these obligatory helps. It is the least
we can do.
But the mortification of the flesh is absolutely insufficient
without mortification of the heart. In this regard the saints
have given us the most beneficial warnings. Blessed Angela
of Foligno writes: “ Every affection of the heart is dangerous,
even that which we have for God, if it is not what it
should be. Love is the center where all good is contained
and the center where all evil is contained. Nothing on
earth, neither creature nor dominion, is so terrible as love,
because no power penetrates the soul, the mind, the heart
as it does. If this force is not regulated, the soul rushes
frivolously into all snares, and its love is its ruin. I am not
speaking only of a love that is absolutely sinful, where the
danger of going to hell escapes no one. I am also speaking
of the love of God and neighbor when it is not what it
ought to be. When the love of God is not accompanied by

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discernment and mortification of the heart, it leads to death
and to illusion. Whoever loves God in order to be preserved
from some accidental suffering or to taste some spiritual
sweetness, does not love in the right order. He loves himself
first, and then God ” (chap. 64).
He thus abuses what is most holy — God and His
gifts — and he offers support to all the temptations of
the devil. The spiritual joys that he seeks for themselves
stir up the passions sleeping in his heart of flesh. In this
way, instead of taking the road that leads to the summits,
where St. Catherine of Siena and St. Theresa lived, he
slides inevitably down the descent, where Madame Guyon
and other false mystics who ended up even more miserably
let themselves be dragged. The worst corruption is that of
the well-endowed soul. (The corruption of the best is the
worst!) There is nothing more elevated than true mysticism,
nothing worse than the false.
The spiritual love of one’s neighbor or one’s friend is
also extremely dangerous unless it is accompanied by a
profound discretion and mortification of the heart. Other­
wise, it becomes useless, harmful, and carnal. The soul
that has made the vow of chastity has become the property
of God. It ought, therefore, to reserve for Him this heart
that no longer belongs to self, and forbid all affection
extraneous to charity. Instead, it sometimes wastes the
time owed to God in useless conversations and dangerous
dreams. If the person loved is wounded with the same arrow,
the danger increases. “ The hearts are attached, one to the
other, and wisdom is not in them,” says Blessed Angela
of Foligno.
The day will come when these souls will be left blinded
and will no longer see any evil in the most dangerous
of liberties. They are sliding, and sometimes it is only at the
bottom of the abyss, after the offence, that they wake up
and open their eyes.

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St. Theresa, in a celebrated chapter (chap. 4) of her Way
of Perfection, says that certain particular friendships are
a true plague that, little by little, kills fervor and destroys
normal life. Such a plague generates profound divisions in
the common life and compromises salvation. Many vocations
are lost in the novitiate, or sometimes later, through an
attachment that is too natural and too sensible, which,
becoming stronger and stronger, separates one more and
more from God.
Is all spiritual friendship, then, to be condemned? Not
at all! It would be like condemning in totality the whole
mystical life, with the pretext that there is a false mysticism.
Spiritual friendship and true mysticism are those accom­
panied by discretion and mortification of the heart. Some
friendships are truly a grace and a help that comes from
God. Models of such friendships are that of St. Catherine
of Siena and Blessed Raymond of Capua, a profound and
supernatural friendship, full of self-denial, as is evident to
us from the splendid letters that have been preserved;
and that of St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross. “ When
reciprocal love is directed to serving the Lord, it can be
recognized by the effects. In such a friendship there is
no passion, and nothing other is sought than to encourage
each other to conquer further passions. I would like to
see many of these friendships between religious in large
monasteries. But for this small house (of Avila) where we
are, and in which we can be only thirteen, all the religious
ought to be friends; all ought to love one another with
warmth and to help each other ” (St. Theresa, Way of Perfec­
tion, chap. 4).
These friendships, highly exalted and highly useful, are
the fruit of mortification of the heart, which is their true
guardian, and which, preventing them from deviating, permits
them to grow until they become blended with charity.
" Only those who have acquired the knowledge and
the power of separating themselves immediately from

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anything, when they want to, can come together without
fear ” (Angela of Foligno, chap. 64).
Such is the renunciation and the twofold mortification of
the flesh and heart that holy chastity imposes on us. Thus,
it is especially a separation.
Consecration
As we have said, holy chastity is also a consecration of
our body and heart to God. The effect of this consecration
is:
(1) to make the body more similar to the soul;
(2) to make the soul more and more similar to God;
(3) to unite the soul to God with the bonds of a true
marriage, in comparison to which the marriage of earth is
only a symbol and shadow.

(1) First of all, a body living only for the soul becomes
more similar to it, just as a friend takes on, little by little,
the habits and tastes of his friend. What is the soul?
It is a spiritual substance which we have never seen. Allow
me to cite what one of the better preachers of our
Order writes on this subject. “To see a soul it would be
necessary to have the purely intellectual sight of the angels.
We do know, however, that it must be absolutely simple,
of a radiant beauty much superior to all sensible beauties,
and serene and incorruptible.”
The soul must be simple because it is not composed of
extended parts like the body. It must be beautiful because
it is pure, without admixture of matter; beautiful like
beautiful doctrines, beautiful ideas, and beautiful actions,
because the soul’s intellectual and sensible faculties are
its adequate and harmonious expression. The soul must
be serene because it is immaterial, and therefore not
disquieted by that which, being made of matter, is subject
to movement, agitation, turbulence. Finally, it must be

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incorruptible, because it is simple. What is lacking in parts
cannot be decomposed or corrupted.
Even the body through purity becomes in its own way
simple, beautiful, calm, and incorruptible: simple as the
veil of a virgin, simple as the attitude of a small child.
Only two beings, by reason of their purity, are simple,
the baby and the saint. The former is because he does not
know evil; the latter because he has forgotten it by the
effort of overcoming it.
The body, by means of purity, becomes beautiful because
all that is pure is beautiful. The sky is beautiful when it
is clear; the diamond is beautiful because it is pure, allow­
ing itself to be penetrated by light; the human body is
beautiful when it is pure, allowing itself to be penetrated
by the soul whose reflection and expression it becomes.
What makes the faces reproduced by Blessed Angelico so
beautiful, if not their purity wherein the whole soul is
transparent? Vice, on the other hand, disfigures.
With purity the body becomes calm. When purity is
lost, noise and all that is showy and clamorous are sought.
When one is converted, calm, solitude and recollection are
sought. The attitude of a virgin is calm; that of the worldly
person is noisy and agitated.
Finally, with purity the body becomes in its own way
incorruptible. Purity preserves the body, while vice withers
it, destroying and killing it. In the state of innocence, the
body would have had the privilege of incorruptibility which
the soul has by its nature. Still, purity leaves behind itself
a trace of this original privilege. The body of some saints
after death often remains incorrupt and gives off a delight­
ful fragrance.
The purest bodies — those of Our Lord and of the
Blessed Virgin — did not have to know the corruption of
the grave. The body of our holy father Dominic was found
intact and it gave off a most pleasing fragrance when his

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grave was opened. The body of St. Catherine of Alexandria,
the philosopher, was carried by angels to Mount Sinai after
her martyrdom.

(2) Chastity produces in the soul another superior effect.
It makes the soul similar to God and unites it to Him with
the bond of a true marriage.
We first note that the principal attributes of God are:
power, which belongs more particularly to the Father;
light, which belongs in a special way to the Son, the Word
of God and Splendor of the Father; and love, which
belongs more particularly to the Holy Spirit, the expression
of the common love of the Father and the Son. We can
see that with holy chastity the soul becomes powerful,
strong, and luminous, participating in the divine Love in
a manner so intimate that it truly becomes the bride of
the Incarnate Word, the beloved daughter of the Father
of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
With chastity the soul becomes powerful and strong.
Suffice it to recall the courage of the Christian virgins who
desired martyrdom, as did St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, St. Cathe­
rine, St. Lucy. They displayed a courage so superhuman
that it terrified their executioners — an obvious miracle,
and show of God’s power. By means of chastity the soul
becomes luminous: " Happy the pure in heart; they shall
see God.” The great seers — St. John, St. Paul, St. Thomas
Aquinas — were virgins. St. Thomas Aquinas, freed forever
at eighteen from the temptations of the flesh, consecrated
his whole life to the contemplation of divine truths.
Often what theologians have not seen has been anti­
cipated and intuited by Christian virgins, such as St. Cather­
ine of Siena and St. Therese of Jesus, through the clear­
sightedness of their love. Frequently the theologian stops
at the truth of God. The apostle goes beyond the truth to
delight in the divine goodness also. Meanwhile, the contem­
plative virgin goes beyond the truth and the goodness to

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the beauty of God itself which is as the brightness and
splendor of all His perfections taken together.
Of what value is the purely sensible beauty of even
the most harmonious features in comparison with the spir­
itual beauty of a sublime doctrine or a heroic life? What
is there here below more beautiful than the life of a saint?
And yet the beauty of a saint is still partial and limited.
St. Dominic excels for his love of God and neighbor,
St. Thomas for his wisdom, St. Antoninus for his pru­
dence, St. Peter Martyr for his faith, St. Vincent Ferrer
for his love of divine justice, and St. Louis Bertrand for
his gift of fear of God.
What a marvel to be able to contemplate the supreme
harmony of all the divine attributes, the sublime accord
between the most inexorable justice and the most tender
mercy realized in that eminent quality of love so sublime
that it is the source of these qualities which, in appearance,
seem very contradictory! Here below we see contrasts.
Chastity, however, makes the soul so luminous that it
can intuit the most exalted harmony. Consequently, it is
not surprising that the most outstanding words on how
justice and mercy are to be reconciled were written by a
soul that had rehabilitated itself through heroic chastity
in the midst of the most terrible temptations, Blessed Angela
of Foligno, who writes: “ Nothing destroys harmony for
me. I see the goodness of God in one saint and in all
the saints, just as in one damned soul and in all the
damned ” (chap. 24). Heaven shows forth the diffusion of
God’s goodness and love; hell expresses His sacrosanct
rights. Yet, it is always His goodness that is given and
affirmed.

(3) Finally, the Christian virgin understands all the
beauty of Jesus, and follows Him in all the acts of His
life, from the manger to the Cross, as well as in His presentday work in souls. " In what splendor He has manifested

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Himself to the eyes of the heart that see wisdom! Jesus did
not reign, nor amaze the world with His discoveries. That is
not His way of sanctity. On the contrary, He was humble
and holy, holy before God, terrible in front of the devil,
without stain of sin! ” (Pascal).
The Christian virgin, more than any other person, knows
the secrets which unite on the Cross the most heroic
strength and the tenderest passion, the most profound
anguish and the most sublime serenity, the overflowing
of sorrow and the most perfect happiness. All these beauties
charm the Bride of the Canticle of Canticles. This spectacle
of the Cross gives birth to a love stronger than death.
It is really holy chastity that enables the consecrated
soul to love the Lord with the love of a bride. The soul
is thus united to Him with the bonds of a marriage.
Earthly marriage is only a symbol and shadow in compar­
ison to these bonds, for the true realities are those of
the life of the spirit.
The value of earthly marriage derives from a union that
is holy, strong, sweet and at the same time fruitful. Notice
how all these perfections are magnified to the infinite in
spiritual marriage! If earthly marriage is holy it is because,
as St. Paul says, it is the image of the intimate and myste­
rious union that exists between Our Lord and His Church
(cf. Eph. 5, 23). It cannot be its image unless it implies,
not only the union of bodies, but also that of the souls of
the two spouses. The spiritual marriage between Our Lord
and the soul consecrated to Him is holy in itself because it
unites us to the fountain of all sanctity, and helps give
the Church its character of holiness. By this, the Church
is distinguished from all other societies.
If earthly marriage is strong, it is because it is an
indissoluble and reciprocal contract that supposes rights,
duties and reciprocal services. Spiritual marriage is also
indissoluble through rights — not only until death, but
for eternity — and it implies such a reciprocity of rights

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I HT

115

that the consecrated soul can saystoi the Lord: fl My'Beloved
is!miner-and I anarhik" )(Ganto2/H6)inAilàttleÎ creature.dan
speak df‘ an infinite God: as;if the: Almighty belonged to-it
alone. It: hasi a right ? to God’sfiioye; one·, r can say almost
to His services,. !for God has given it His heart and it has
become His collaborator. The religious nun is the collab­
orator of the Lord in! establishing His kingdom in souls;
By her life she demonstrates in a practical way the truth of
the^doctriheiofirrJesuso.’She preaches :by>! her .example/ and
with an eloquence in a way. that words cannot equal. .πυι·.:
If earthly màrtiàge^âsriu.VeEyjra/ffi'Z tiniibn,! itvîk because
Of theintimacy., that is assumed: ydth the revelation of
the most secret thoughts; and by the: perfect communion
of ideas,? feelings, and wishes.·?·But see how much this
intimacy is surpassed by the Union :between. Out/Lord and
Hie'brides! Our Lord hides nothing from the. faithful sOul.
'! There arc a thousand things'-that it knows, sees, senses;
feèls and is abler:to. do-—** things Ithatr it alone vis? able to
seb, kiiobnfisensejsffeeljsiinjdvibbzcapable ôfjho io tonori " m.
- The Eucharist truly reveals itsélf as the daily testimony
ofi 'this love; and unipnv of'bodies- dnd souls. “ Th© holÿ isoiid
shares with Our Lord alLHi's sentiments, stiffersi.·with· Him
all His: upains, shares His ijoys, participates 'in: all His
ambitions, His^tijBalOTBiei; !ahd,/ifrimedessrarj); His. angers.1?
Like Magdalen, it washes His feet and anoints them with
perfume. The will is fully one with that of Christ. It has
a burning zeal for the salvation of souls and thoroughly
understands all the force of these words of the Bridgroom:
" I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it
were blazing already! " (Lk. 12, 49).
Finally, the fruitfulness of earthly marriage procures
for God faithful servants and sons. But the bride of Our
Lord, freed through holy chastity from all the exigencies
of family life, becomes also a mother in the plan of the
propagation of souls. This soul gives itself to the poor,
the sick, and the needy souls whom it raises to the super­

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natural life by its mortification, prayers, abnegation, coun­
sels, and exhortations. To convert sinners, preserve the
just, fashion the saints, it is for this that the soul labors
without rest, instructing the spirit and assisting the body.
Is it not to this faithful bride, above all, to this mother
who gives herself totally that Our Lord will say: “ I was
thirsty and you gave Me to drink; I was hungry and you
gave Me to eat; I was naked and you covered Me; sick
and you visited Me; in prison and you came to Me. Amen,
amen, I say to you, he who renders these services to the
least of My brethren, renders them to Me ”?
This is the spiritual maternity which we all achieve if
we are simply faithful to the grace of our state. Is this not
the hundredfold, even here below, promised by Our Lord
to those who leave all to follow Him?
Sons and daughters of St. Dominic, we ought to love
this sublime virtue in a special way. It is a privilege of
Christianity, as Father Lacordaire says, and, we can add,
an “ honor of our Order,” which has been called by the
Supreme Pontiffs, " Ordo Lilium,” the Order of Lilies.
St. Dominic, so pure and so luminous, who carries a lily
in his hand and a star on his forehead, at the hour of his
death left us this last exhortation: " Let us be pure, and
we shall pass through the world illuminating it.”

CHAPTER X

Obedience
Be obedient to the men who are called
your masters in this world... as you are
obedient to Christ.—Eph. 6, 5; cf. Heb.
13, 28

The speech of the obedient will always
be heard.—Prov. 21, 28
Explain to me how to keep your precepts,
that I may meditate on your marvels.—
Ps. 119, 27

After having considered how the harmony between the
body and external goods is reestablished here below by
means of holy poverty, and how the harmony between
soul and body is reestablished by holy chastity, it remains
for us to see how holy obedience reestablishes the harmony
between our soul and God, which was disturbed by sin.
This third disorder, which is called by Sacred Scripture
“ the pride of life,” is the love of absolute independence,
the refusal to acknowledge an authority superior to ourselves.
It is the gravest of all disorders, graver than concu­
piscence of the eyes and of the flesh, graver than avarice
and excessive love of riches and luxury. We are dealing, in
fact, with a disturbance and perversion of the superior
parts of the soul and its most elevated faculties, reason
and will, which command all the rest. “ The corruption of
the best is the worst.” For the worst corruption is that
which perverts the most exalted and profound that is
in us. This is the spiritual disorder that exists in the devil,

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j^hokafl khbW héither avarice nor lust, but who refuses to
serve and obey God, insisting, “ I will not serve! ”
Such a love of absolute independence disturbs our
judgment, hinders us in understanding ot^r duty, àpU perWfts
the will under the pretence of making^ ts* fréè, 5èqual vo
God and independent like Him. This is, evidently, the
great aim of the modern world which rebels against the
Church. While it agrees to fight against avarice, seeking
to - better the lot of the' poor and to repress its own
cdàtser1 'instifict^it wisKès1, Nevertheless, to do all it does
by itself, without thy help of God. The world intends,
ffiaimy, id’ db^ygg^^rJ^algne^ lââM ^nc^t God.
Although the modern world may be described as rationali^ip, it disobeys reason rather than obey God. Ihts
pretended absolute independency : pushes it into all types
of slavery and the worst type of tyranny: that of rebellious
passions and unjust laws passed without any recourse to
conscience. Such legislation is aimed at the self-interest of
th!e patty^ih dpowstfj ^àiûSt’d vfeiHb^there remains no
possibility of vindication since absolute and eternal justice
is3îëjêéted-;:aiïd‘l the'J tights'<if God are repudia^dlffi
«'^General obedience' to tfie-cotnfnandments'-'df-God -and
His Church is the sole- efficacious remedy for this anarchy
and ftyraKh j^Man'* must understand* bfcât hOôdphélfigwhfe'
CfeatOr/ffias sdvërèign* right over him'; he must understand
that-'his'iihtëlligërtce and his* will Were ‘dréâted- only1'to
kfimv; >4®vej ’ândwsetVéi'tGdd,· fàndidd’W’^obtainiètërndl
lifenaad f^eilitv4miiadk7O2ib lie io laaveig adr ai il
•yji We :rhuSt acknowledge/1 then, that the Lord is! out
Master and that; it is -Oür duty to ^obeÿ Him'. Besides, His
law does not produce' violence hut proceeds - from; His love
and produces lové. It is true folly to rebel against that
which’ '^Oiïé>l:£eil'lead us todia^iiless! nrn<» tfeidw .Iliv/ bns
'This general obedience frees ùs already from the main
slavery dfinfhb1 >woild!.- Hebf^0]iol»yS^Godvunderstknds{
thenb that in the final analysis he cannot : and must^not

OBEDIENCE

1

:

ί)19

obey i. any otber'.thanGodhand His/representatives,· spiritual
and;(temporal. How ebuld/zhe really , obey men: who'iare his
equals;? He clearly. ! sees that be must never, bbey a Human
law; that is contrary to the law of God, and that a human
lai# has'no-authority .except .insofar as! it is babed· oh;divine
lawisahd;<sprin^s}(frompit3viJngnn adj vino jubianoo ot bad?; /
mButotM^generàlibbediénce is insufficient for some souls.
The/comiriandments, <xf God and; rhe Church lay ' dbwn : for
us thé. wày . that leads rtb heaven, but there are different
ways,, more or less perfect,· bf practicing! the commandments
of thé Lofd,hof loving Him- with all out heart and of
loving our neighbor. These commandments lay down only
the general/butline,/precisely: that they may be applicable
to allb However, when an individual, soûl seeks to ;know
exactly what Godijdemands of :it·. in lw determined
circumstance, the matter is not so simple. One runs the
risk of being mistaken and letting oneself be invaded by
the spirit of the world, by its prejudices and maxims.
It5Wtrfild''bëfia<^4SMtfI^f^ié2?r']OÙ?d]Jÿrâ came in person
tb:ildll tis: Heré'-iÿ’-p’^isel^'^ïiàt Ί Wâfft bf’^bü’Hoday
at südî dtPffiour, and what I w'â’hHbf^you tomorrow; âM
this is what you
tid^fhjiarc yourself for on the day
âftër
Ά Abyd^kôffièrimes the Lord has even done
this with certaifi hints':", to St. Catherine of Siena,'Jfér
example, He directly gave His orders and He Himself
.Josifjfe pirn no qsJapni vlbaJesqpi KErLmaiZiio anrionteJ .!c
guided her in all the particulars of her life.,,.
to Έΰ; srfûoi bsrrriQinçb,ion κι qoinw.lSru zi ΙΙινζ-ιρκ '·’ c->r-lv
what Our Lord did directly with some saints,, He
moil ku K'JifiJJiœàÿ rtoidw. job οπΤ ,πικ ίο χπυοκ5π3 κΓιΤ.οον/
reb810us by weans of their superiors. In
mailing the vow of obedience, the religious makes a contract
with the Lord: ,“oj^ tjie orders of my superiors that will
not be contrary to Your holy laws I shall consider as an
order given by You, as by a divine word. ” The Lord
responds: “You will have in exchange the holy liberty of
the.sons of God, you will be freed from all slavery of the
Wbrld. ” In briefj this is the meaning of holy' obedience.

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THE LAST WRITINGS

Such obedience has been strongly criticized by Naturalism,
even more than the other vows. Naturalism has main­
tained that the cause of all our weaknesses is lack of
personality; but this attitude betrays a false concept of
religious obedience. To maintain its thesis, Naturalism has
wished to consider only the negative aspect of holy obedience,
that is, the separation it demands. If it had considered what
it has that is positive, that is, the consecration that assures
full conformity of our will to the will of God, then it
would have recognized both that there is no personality
more wonderful than that of the saints, and that this is
the fruit of their obedience.
To comprehend well the true nature of holy obedience,
it must be considered, as with the other vows, under its
two aspects of separation and consecration.

Separation

Holy poverty and holy chastity involve, as we have said,
the mortification of the body, the senses, and the heart.
Holy obedience involves above all the mortification of one’s
own will and one’s own judgment. Thus, it can be rightly
affirmed that the three vows organize in a permanent way
both the interior and exterior mortifications.
We know well the dangers deriving from our self-will.
St. Catherine of Siena has repeatedly insisted on this subject.
One’s self-will is that which is not conformed to the will of
God. It is the source of sin, the act which separates us from
God. St. Bernard says that if self-will is suppressed, hell
will no longer have reason to exist. But self-will is dangerous
especially because it can ruin all our actions. What is best
in us becomes reprehensible when it is mixed with that
will which seeks itself as an end instead of subordinating
itself to God.
If God finds self-will present in an act of mortification,
for example in fasting, it is not accepted by Him; if He

OBEDIENCE

121

sees self-will as the basis of a sacrifice, the sacrifice is none
other than a lie and an abomination to Him. Such is the
value of every act done out of pride — work done that it
may be seen by the eyes of men. Now we can see that the
vow of obedience assures the mortification of this dangerous
will that diverts us from salvation.
In the religious life, it is not enough to obey exteriorly,
with an obedience of action; the adhesion of the will is
required. It is necessary to subject our will to that of the
superior (cf. Bourdaloue). In fact, exterior obedience or
obedience of action without the adhering of the will is only
a slavish obedience, that of a slave, of a servant who is
only obligated to do exteriorly what is commanded him.
Our obedience ought to be the obedience of a son and a
friend. “ I no longer call you servants, but friends. ” Indeed,
we did not enter the monastery to place ourselves under
an external discipline, as in a barracks; we came to conform
our will to the will of God.
“ An obedience that is merely external, without the sub­
jection of the will, has no value in the eyes of God. It is
the letter, the body of obedience but this body is only a
corpse if the spirit does not give it life ” (Bourdaloue).
Exterior obedience, or obedience of action, is none other
than servitude if adhesion of the will is lacking. It does
not become a virtue unless it is directed by the will in free
submission to the will of God. When an order that is
repugnant to our nature is received, external obedience
becomes a virtue if our will freely immolates itself to the
will of God. St. Gregory was able to say that this sacrifice
is greater than all those of the Old Law, because at that
time only victims were immolated while now we immolate
our will.
This submission of the will ought to be manifested ex­
ternally in three ways: it ought to be prompt, universal,
and without distinction of person.

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THE LAS T TRIHNGS

ai It ought ito.beiproOT/i/.'This derives from thé honor and
dignity rbf him who commands. The higher the dignity of
Him who'commands, the greater· the offense < caused by
slowness in carrying out/the: orders; Obedience; to be perfect;
ought to/anticipate, in a Certain sense,: .the order and respond
promptly to it.
.noimvhss moTi <n atiavib Jfirb lliw
Once, when, the provincials of our order asked the religious
of their convents to depart for the missions, all wished to
?j Hiyz snl io.notaaoDE prit inoit» 10,920910000 ne nw
depart though knowing that they would be going to meet
death. Those who were able to go wept with joy, and those
who, because of their duties, could not,, cried because
thev
r--------L_tey
/Ino ai.lILw 941.V io <>ariâclbs urlj, iuüïjiv/,norm ία ·. ·
were,hindered front following their brethren .jn giving tçsti?i onw Jarr/tu?. ajo juvela “ io Jerfi .990910900 rRr/sls ε
moqy with their blood.
,
., ,
.
.Obedience ought .to be universal and without limits,—
both m great and in little things, however easy or difficult
.Tponbnl τ?5ποΐΤΓΐυα ,?mnwi9i ijov. Imo 15'
. ,
thev mav pe, whether practical or, m some way, impractical.
“'What'I am subtracting from the act, “ you might say,
^'is'nothing.'” And, in fact, it is nothing considered in itself.
But, as constituent part of an order given by God it becomes
respectable and holv. If vou do not dp iV you are taking
away a part of the sacrifice that ought to be offered in its
totality to God, and God, as Isaias savs . hates in a special
.( ηυοίβριυοα ) uni n 9’hg ion £ : Jnioâ urii, h tfeepo»
wav the sacrilegious robbery of part of a holocaust
(Isa. 61. 8). On the other hand, He will have His faithful
servant who obeyed in little things enter into heaven:
“ You have shown you can be faithful in small things, I
will.irust you with greater; come and join in your master’s
happiness " (Mt. 25,' 2.1 ).
Obedience should be made without distinction of person.
In other words, it is necessary to obey all superiors, whoever
they. rilay be — lovable Or less lovable, prudent or impulsive,
holv or less perfect — because through the word of the
one or of another it is always God who speaks. We have
macte-thé :vo^v to Obey GOd, not créature!
To obey a person because he is congenial to us, and not
to do this when he ceases to be, is ho longer obedience

OBEDIENCE Γ 2 Λ

IU Γ

123

to God, and is not at all meritorious. The saints, who
nevet- .neglect .the Imortification of their own will·, tell us?
“/Tremble· when your superior cbmmanddwhat agrees with
ybur /nature, because it could happen η that the principal
motive of your act vis its natural attraction^. and then the
fruit of obedience is lost. ” < ■ dguona ton ai ii jaahaq
n it is/useless, ih fact, to follow our own desires;, it is
necessity, to, adhere to the will of our superior, that is, to
the will df God. We should rejoicè, then, when what is
commanded us is contrary to bur. nature, because 'then thé
sacrificetof ouirwill is much more certain, much purer, and
m'ore./ekcellenr. So. let us prefer a superior who opposes
us, and tests us, a superior/firinriand/severe^ td another
more moderate and. more indulgent. St. John of the Cross,
gfav.ély/ill and neatly dying;/ hhd the possibility of choosing
between two monasteries. Inboneathe prior was hisfriendj
in theoothérya bitter enemy. John of the Cross chose the
latiér/?Cértainly/ itljisi not necessary to act like this great
saint, but we all ought to be scrupulously careful so as not
to lose the mérit of obedience.
bnad tarbo arb no ,11
«uimrhjf sbrneone by .every sort of solicitation and secret
fntrigue» induces his superiorto do what he wishes and, to
confer on him a certain officg,yhis is not done ip obedience,”
says St. Bernard, “ because in such a case it is not you who
are obeying a superior, but a superior who is obeying you.
Both will have to answer before God, even if you should
succeed in your office because God does not judge on the
basis of your .success, but on the basis of your conformity
to His will. ” " Concern over success. ” says Bourdaloue with
reject to this question, “ is a concern that ought to be left
^ui^ne'Providence;:j$frat ought to bé ofœndèfrTto us is
feWlW^uty, that is. to obey.”
ai 11 .brtild ad or Jtfguo aanaibado ,?.aY " rbnoqaai alii
io Interior submission of the will, however, is not enough.
It is still necessary to sacrifice one’s own judgment, one’s
reason, the highest part of oneself. And it is only thus that

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THE LAST WRITINGS

our sacrifice merits the name of holocaust. The holocaust
was the most perfect sacrifice because the totality of the
victim was offered to God: all was consumed in the fire,
even to total destruction. The same must happen in the
interior sacrifice of holy obedience. For obedience to be
perfect, it is not enough to submit the will; it is also
necessary to submit one’s judgment to that of one’s legiti­
mately constituted superior who commands rightly. Without
this submission of judgment, obedience runs the risk of
losing all the qualities required to constitute its value. It
runs the risk of being neither generous, nor prompt, nor
universal. In addition, it loses sight of the fact that basically
it is God who is commanding.
If this submission of our own judgment is refused, the
spirit of criticism will not delay in making us completely
lose the merit of our acts and, at the same time, in intro­
ducing the spirit of division into the community. If someone
assumes the right of censoring all that does not please him,
it is certain that for him there can be no true obedience.
If, on the other hand, a religious obeys solely because it
seems that the given order is reasonable — if he submits
because of human reasons — he or she is certainly not
performing an act of obedience. Similarly, one would not
be making an act of faith in admitting the existence of
God as a result of a rational demonstration.
Holy obedience (I do not say all types of obedience,
but holy obedience) involves the submission of will and
judgment to the will and judgment of God as expressed
by our superior. “ Then, ” you may say, “ obedience ought
to be blind. But how can we renounce those lights that
make us rational beings? ” The masters of the spiritual
life respond: “ Yes, obedience ought to be blind. It is
enough to be certain that the given order is not sinful, or
contrary to the divine law or the expressed order of a
higher authority. We have made this contract with God:

OBEDIENCE

125

All that is commanded me by my legitimate superior and
is not contrary to your law, I oblige myself to consider as
a divine word, as a divine order. ”
To satisfy the legitimate needs of reason, it is enough
to be assured that the order comes from God. Once this is
established, holy obedience ought to be blind like that
of Abraham who, at the Lord’s command, prepared to
immolate his son, Isaac. “ Religious obedience is sufficient
for salvation when it submits itself to the rule {secundum
regulam) in obligatory things, and it is perfect when it
submits in things permitted; it would be imprudent if it
induced our soul to submit to illicit things ” (5. T. II-II,
q. 104, a. 5 ad 3).
The same is true for holy obedience as for supernatural
faith. Supernatural faith is, in a certain sense, blind; it is
enough to know that the obscure mystery proposed to us
comes from God. It is a happy blindness, immensely superior
to clearness of reason, because this night of faith and humble
obedience diffuses its own light—that of the gifts of wisdom
and understanding. “ And night is my illumination in my
delight.” The obedient religious can say: " This night
becomes for me a light wholly divine and fills me with joy,
giving me certainty that I am fulfilling the will of God.”
" But,” say others, " sometimes it happens that what is
commanded us is absurd and obviously imprudent, com­
mitting us to work evidently destined for failure.” It can
be answered: “You are unaware of many reasons that can
motivate the given order; sometimes there are a hundred
matters pertaining to the general welfare about which you
know nothing; you are not in a position to judge, since you
do not have the grace of state as do your superiors. Moreover,
it may be that your superior wishes to and ought to test the
quality of your obedience. Finally, it may be that the given
order, considered in itself, is imprudent and comes from
a prejudice or defect of our superior; yet, it is still not
contrary to divine law.” Does this order, then, come from

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THE LAST W.RITINGS

God? Yes, certainly; God often leaves defects in superiors
to kebp:them humble and; io iest'the:subjects. tine, k,·
The thing commanded, considered , in itself, may be im­
prudent and .inopportune^ but holy- obedience does ' not
eommand 'ÿ0u?to :approve of it as such, or tb continue to
have it practiced if later you become superiors. Judge,
then, the'thing commanded for what it is in itself. However,
convitioe yourself: -also that it is commanded you by God,
and tell youâelf that at that moment it is for you what is
better, more reasonable; indeed the only reasonable thing
to îiojnabtnqmi od bluow ri jbtunimeq zgoitb ni sfimdua
. JI -They command ybu, perhaps,: to interrupt your prayer to
do some manual work that could also be donedatbtj as
happened; often to St; Margaret Mary. But, it is the Voice
of God·: that , is speaking. There is hothing better for you.
Your superior can make a mistake, but ybu will never make
a mistake: you will immolate not only yotir will, but also
your judgment. This is what God commands you. Do not
be anxious about success; it is tip to divine Providence to
take; care of that^iiand it will not. fail to do so.
- br
: Finally, if there (is some inconvenience thdd is notable
and, above all, seemingly contrary to· the general welfare,
ybu are not forbidden humbly : to . submit your difficulties to
your superior. Open your soul to him after you have prayed,
reflected and purified your intention. This simplicity enhances
your obedience. If ydur superior persists; do not doubt that
the better thing for you is to obey. Such is Ithc- twofold
mortification of will and judgment that holy obedience
involves; ’ fui
;ninialieq arrtlsm
uov eonta .aghuj 01 noilieoq is ni ion eis uov ;gntdion vzond
tuoy ob ac eiEta lo aoeig edi averl Jon ob
st!) lael oi idguo bus 01 eadaivz roiiequ?. inov lerli t>d vum li
But this twofold mortification has as its end the conse­
cration of out will and judgment to God, their identification
jin-s<Mne way with the will and judgment of God, and our
consequent liberation from all the slaveries bf the world.

0 B EDIESWET ?. A J Ή IS 'i

827

Gertdinlÿ gehèral obedience, by conforming our will to that
of (God, frees us.Ætom the obligation . of submitting to
unjust lawsy (enables us to Ireign over our passions, over
the worlds whose maxims and vain attractions wé despise,
and over the devil, whose temptation's! we-dfepulsé.
<_ ;r q
lcr! And if > is true to say of obedience in général that
fjrto serve God.is to.reign,” with greater reason this can be
said!,©£.religious < obedience. ; Religious (obedience, assuring
the full conformity of our will· to the divine will, perfectly
frees us from all thé slaveries of the world; It especially
frees us;from ourselves and from our passions and.prejudices.
These would hinder our freedom to direct ourselves toward
the truly good things, to make us free as God Himself,
dependent on Him alone! and ■ independent of all else.
jr! A Catholic orator once' said that the vow of obedience
isA thë Tâborof.’the will, the glôrious manifestation of a
humdn freedom identified Wiith (divide freedom. Our Lord
did not intend anything other than this when He promised
us;“ the holy freedom of r thé. sons of/God, ” the freedom
to run on .the path !bf the good add along the . road of
perfection for which liberty is made. The vow is, therefore,/a
sovereignly ! free act of love for thé good, and of contempt
and hatred for all that.is contrary, to thei goodtea ii / :■ !-' o:
St Catherine of> Siena says that the truly obedient are
the children (.that Jesps spoke; of when He :saidyo“, Let; the
little bnes come 'itorI Me, because ) theirs,. is the kingdom, of
heaven." Whoever does·.'not humble himself as ua! child in
the simplicity :of obedience will not enter the kingdom of
heaven; he will remain a slave of his passions, a slave of
the.· world; ofi the /devil,.'of . his will ; and. of his prejudices;
Together dwith this iJibethfionyiholyrobediencie offers us
thfe- joyi ofnbeing ajblé/ to! ιί say even here below: “ I am
doing all that God wills,/and can do nothing better. " It is
theGjoy ©f<>doing one’s I .duty eveni/in the smallest acts.
The value of each act is great, so that even recreation and

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THE LAST WRITINGS

sleep are sanctified, since they are commanded by God and
we take them only for the love of God. What is there
more secure than obedience? Even the Psalmist exclaims:
“ Yes, I love Your commandments more than gold, than
purest gold ” (Ps. 119, 127).
Besides the joy of feeling ourselves on the path that
leads to God, holy obedience gives us the strength and
boldness of the saints. And in this case also, the hundredfold
is received; our will, for having renounced itself, has become
strong from the very strength of God. Modernism speaks
of initiative, but forgets that the true initiative, that which
bears fruit in the supernatural order, is born of obedience.
The obedient religious applies himself to learning what
God wishes from him. Once he finds out, nothing stops him.
He can attempt what is humanly impossible because the
grace of God is with him. Hence our blessed father St. Domi­
nic sent his sons to all parts of the world, saying to them:
" Go on foot, without money, without anxieties for
tomorrow, begging your food; and I promise you that,
despite difficulties and want, you will never lack what is
necessary.”
How many times the divine power has miraculously come
to place itself at the service of obedience! The Lord was
pleased to recall these examples to St. Catherine of Siena:
“ Have you not read in Sacred Scripture that many, not
to transgress the order of God, threw themselves in flames,
and the flames did them no harm? So it was with the three
children thrown in the furnace, and so with many others
I could mention. The water became solid under the feet of
St. Maurus when, out of obedience, he went to save a
religious who was drowning. He did not think of himself.
He thought, in the light of faith, of performing an order
he had received. He went over the water as if he were
walking on land, and he saved the religious ” (Dial.
chap. 165).

OBEDIENCE

129

Finally, obedience, conforming our judgment to the
judgment of God, makes us wiser than the wisest of the
world. The Psalmist can say: “ How much subtler than my
teachers, through my meditating on Your decrees! How
much more perceptive than the elders, as a result of my
respecting Your precepts! ” (Ps. 119, 98 ff.) The humble
novice in his obedience is more intelligent and prudent
than the so-called incredulous who confide in themselves.
Obedience frees us at the same time from the influence of
the judgments of men and liberates us from our prejudices,
from our scruples, and from our bewilderment. If our
conduct is criticized, with all security and humility we can
let others say what they wish. God is with us.
It is certainly possible to compare holy obedience to the
Holy Eucharist. In the one as well as in the other, the Word
is certainly present, hidden under earthly or human appear­
ances: in the Eucharist, hidden under the species of bread
and wine; in the order of our superior, hidden under the
appearance of a human person. In the one case as in the
other, the Word comes to enlighten us, to strengthen us, to
draw us tenderly to Himself and assimilate us to Himself.
We should learn to obey in the light of faith, just as
we receive Holy Communion in the light of faith. We should
learn to see God always in the person of our superiors, to
recognize the signal of God in the bell that calls us. Thus,
day by day, our will will die and eventually lose itself in
the will of God that is infinitely holy, free, strong, and
blessed. Day by day our judgment will also die and give way
to that spirit of wisdom, understanding, and counsel that
little by little transforms our meditation into contemplation
and nourishes our charity with a food more and more divine.
Thus, through mortification and renunciation we will
attain the light of union with God. The daily practice of
the religious life will lead us to the goal of all spiritual life:
toward a more and more intimate contemplation and an
increasingly ardent love for God.

ǣI

33!4aiaaao

adi oi inarngbuj wo gnirrnoinoa .aanaibado ,vileniH
adj io izaziw adj nfidi iaziw ?.u zadsrn ,boO io inarngbuj
ym fifidj laliduz daum vzoH “ :vez nfia jzirnlfizT adT .bhovz
vzoH Izaaiaab luoY no gniifiiibarn ym dguoidi .ziadaEaj
ym io lluzai e ze .ziabla adj nsdr aviiqaaiaq aiom daum
aidmud adT (.Ή 8Ç ,<?! I .zT) " iziqaaaiq iuo Y gnilaaqaai
tnabuiq bnc magillalni aiom zi aanaibado zid ni aaivon
.zavlazmadj ni abdnoa odw zuolubaiani ballsa-oz adj nsdi
io aanaulini adj moii arnil ornez adj je zu zaaii aanaibadO
.zaaibujaiq iuo rrioii zu zaifiiadil bus nara io zlnarngbuj adj
•juo il .inarrnabliwad iuo moil bus .zalquiaz iuo mod
nsa aw ylilirnurl brte yriiuaaz lb: dliw .basiailiia zi laubnoa
.zu dliw zi boO .dziw yadl JEdw ysz ziadjo Jal
adj oj aanaibado ylod ausqmoa oj aldizzoq ylnisliaa zi rl
bioW adj <iadlo adi ni ze Haw ze ano adj nl .iziiedauH yloH
-usaqqB nfirnud io yldiiea rabnu nabbid jnazaiq ylnieliaa zi
bfiaid io zaiaaqz adj labnu nabbid ,iziifidau3 adi ni .-zaanjs
adi labnu nabbid .loiiaquz iuo io lobio ad) oi jaaivz bne
adj ni ze azEa ano adj ni .noziaq nemud b io aanfiisaqqfi
oj ,zu nadjgnauz oj ,zu naidgilna oj zamoa bioVZ adi ,iodlo
.ilazmiH oj zu aJElimizzB bnu ilazrniH oj yhabnai zu v/eib
ze lzu( (dlifii io Jdgil adj ni yado OJ γπεοΙ bluodz aW
bluodz aW .djifil io jdgil adj ni noinummoD χΙοΗ aviaaat avz
oi .zioiiaquz iuo io noziaq adi ni z^ewIe boO aaz 01 mnal
,zudT .zu zllfia Indi Had adj ni boO io Inngiz adj asingoaai
ni ilazji azol vIlEiunava bnc aib llivz Ilivz iuo /(fib '(d yeb
bnfi .gnoilz ,aaii ,'(lod vlaiinrlni zi ifidi boO io Ilivz adj
ysvz avig bnc aib ozlfi Hivz mamgbuj -iuo vfib yd veG .bazzald
Indi laznuoa bnn ,gnibnfiiz-xabnu .mobzivz io ihiqz indi oi
noiJfilqmajnoa omi noiimibam juo ζγπιοϊζπβιι aluil yd ahiii
.anivib aiorn bnfi aiom booi e dliw yliicda iuo zadziiuon bns
Hivz aw noiifiianunai bns noiinarlinom dguoid) ,zudT
io aaiiauiq ylinb adT .boO rbivz noinu io idgil adj nifiiJis
:aiil IfiuJiiiqz Hfi io Ifiog adi oj zu beal Ilivz aiil znoigilai adj
ns bnfi noiJElqmalnoa alt-mimi aiom bnfi aiom s bifiwoj
.boO io! avol inabifi vlgnizeaiani

CHAPTER

XI

The Cross
If anyone wants to be a follower of Mine,
let him renounce himself and take up
his cross and follow Me.—Mt. 16, 24

We have reflected on the necessity of active mortification
in our life and on the value of mortification organized in a
permanent way in the religious life through the practice of
the three vows. Our Lord alluded to this when He said:
“ Let him renounce himself
but He also added: " and
take up his cross.” It is not enough, then to deny ourselves
and mortify ourselves. We must also carry patiently the
cross that the Lord gives us for purifying ourselves and
saving souls.
That which we call “ the cross ” in Christian terminology
(by analogy with the sufferings and death of our divine
Master) are the physical and moral sufferings of daily life
which arise from our relationship to the exterior world and
to those around us. They are especially those sent to us
directly by God in order to purify us and save souls. Like
the Cross imposed on Jesus by His Father, they are the
price of our salvation. “ He was humbler yet, even to accept­
ing death, death on a cross ” (Phil. 2, 8).
The necessity of the cross in Christian life is due to the
fact that we carry somewhere within ourselves the seeds of
a profound evil, but we do not know exactly where these
principles of death are to be found. Even when we are
mortified and have made every effort to be regular and
fervent in the religious life, a great number of unconscious

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THE LAST WRITINGS

defects remain in us: spiritual sensuality and spiritual pride,
attachment to one’s own judgment and will, etc. All of these
hinder us from being what we ought to be — living images
of Jesus Christ. What an abyss between a religious who
is simply ordinary and one who is a saint! This abyss is
bridged by the cross born in patience.
Our Lord knows better than we where evil is harbored
within us. Wishing to heal us, He sends us His messengers
to admonish us, and He Himself sets the iron to our
wounds to extract all the sources of corruption from them.
Even if we were not sick, He would send the cross to
detach us from affections that are certainly legitimate, but
which hinder us from becoming totally supernatural.
Finally, He sends us the cross that we may be of help
to Him as instruments of redemption. If we wish to save
souls, we must use the same means that Our Lord used.
Christ appeared to St. Rose of Lima on the day of her
investiture under the guise of a sculptor and asked her
to help Him work a block of marble. The saint replied
that she knew only how to weave and cook. Then Our Lord
let her understand that that block of marble, still unformed
and rough, was she herself, and that she ought to have
patience and let herself be worked and smoothed so as to
become the image of her divine Master, a precious stone
in the eternal city of souls.
The necessity of the cross is proportionate to the level
of glory to which God wishes to lead us. Some people that
we wrongly and with a sense of compassion call “ tor­
mented souls,” live in the midst of almost continual sufferings
because Our Lord wishes to lead them much higher than
others that are not tormented but easily contented. “ The
more God loves us,” say all the saints, “ the heavier the
crosses that He sends us.”
Patience is the virtue of the saints (cf. St. Theresa
and Tauler). " Life to me, of course, is Christ, but then
death would bring me something more ” (Phil. 1, 21).

THE CROSS

133

The spiritual life does not acquire a definite intensity
without a profound death, which God alone can produce
in us.
To bear the cross patiently we must have an understand­
ing of it and see its purpose. Hence, it is not useless to
know the different ways by which God tries individuals
to purify them. There are some crosses that have for their
purpose the purification of our sensibility and its complete
submission to the spirit. Such crosses are frequent and
common to many persons, especially to beginners. There
are others that are heavier and have for their purpose
the full purification of our spirit and its submission to
God. These are given only to a small number already
advanced in the interior life.

Crosses of Sensibility

One of the greatest imperfections of beginners is spiritual
sensuality and spiritual pride. We are attached inordinately
to the sensible sweetness that we find in devotion, seeking
it as an end and not as a simple means of going to God.
We boast of our perfection and judge others very severely.
We put on airs like masters, while we remain only poor
beginners.
Our Lord finds it necessary to wean us, to take away
the milk of sensible consolations in order to give us a more
substantial food, a more spiritual food. Our sensibility
then finds only aridity and desolation. And thus we become
also more humble, no longer judging others with such
severity, and not putting on airs like masters.
This aridity should never throw us into discouragement,
for if it is accompanied by detachment from the world
and by habitual recollection of God, it is a proof, says
St. John of the Cross, that it does not come from our
lukewarmness. Rather, it is a gain for us: “ For me to
live is Christ, and to die is gain.” This cross teaches us

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to serve God for Himself, with unselfishness, and it pre­
serves us from the illusions of the devil.
To purify our sensibility, God dispenses other crosses
also. He can send us sicknesses, deprive us of a friendship
that perhaps absorbed us beyond measure, take away certain
honors, or an office, for example, that seemed due us.
But above all He despoils us of the goods on which we
had concentrated our affection, and mercifully comes to
ask us for this part of our love that we had not thought of
giving Him. When this emptying is insufficient, He mercifully
permits little or great persecutions on the part of men, and
the temptations of the devil.
Yet what are the little crosses we have to carry in
comparison to those of the saints? We should recall our
great St. Peter Martyr who was visited in his cell by
some saintly women. For this he was accused in the chapter
of an infamous offense which he had not committed.
The saint did not wish to reveal the heavenly graces with
which he was favored and so he listened to the severe
reproach of his prior without speaking a word. He was
banished from the priory in Bologna and relegated to lesi
in the zone of Le Marche. The infamy weighed heavily
upon him, gravely dishonoring him. The saint complained
to the Lord. One day, prostrate at the foot of his crucifix,
with his eyes flooded with tears, he exclaimed: “ My Jesus,
You know my innocence. How can You permit such a
false accusation to dishonor my reputation? " The voice from
the crucifix answered: “Was I not abandoned to oppro­
brium and overwhelmed with insults despite My innocence?
Learn from My example to bear the harshest calumnies!
From that day onward, St. Peter Martyr understood through
experience the mystery of the Cross and all its splendors.
From that humiliation, which was a visit from God, he
learned much more than from the heavenly favors of those
holy visitors who were the cause of that humiliation.

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When what we are and what we have done for the
community is not acknowledged, when our good intentions
are misunderstood, we should remember St. Benedict Labre.
A coadjutor of the Society of Jesus who was struck by
the fervor of that poor man of Christ, wished to meet and
talk with him, but the latter withdrew himself. Every
testimony of sympathy wounded the humility of his soul.
On the other hand, when some urchins threw refuse upon
him and treated him as a fool, he slowed his pace and
even stopped, to savor this mortification. At times certain
young ruffians were not content with insults. One day two
of them threw him to the ground and, after pulling his
beard and hair, trampled on him and spat in his face.
The saint did not seek to defend himself or free himself.
Some passers-by, becoming indignant, drove off the young
delinquents. " He is a fool,” they said. “ Why shouldn’t
we have fun with him? ” “ You are the fools,” a woman
courageously replied. “ He is a saint. ” The poor man of
Christ had become a fool, a fool of the divine foolishness
of the Cross, which is supreme wisdom in the eyes of God.
The crosses that we have to bear are much lighter,
because we are not called to such an exalted level of
sanctity. We ought to have the humility of not asking God
for crosses superior to our strength, but of bearing patiently
those the Lord sends us, those He asks us to bear. Jesus
has said to all: “ If you wish to follow Me, deny yourself
and carry your cross.”
The cross that purifies our sensibility by elevating it
and subjecting it more and more perfectly to the spirit,
helps us to know ourselves better. It reveals to us our
unworthiness and weakness, teaches us to despise ourselves
and consider ourselves, as St. Paul suggests, inferior to
others. It teaches us, also, to know God better, no longer
through sensible consolations but through tribulations. As
a result, it is no longer the Jesus of the manger, but He
on the Cross, who reveals Himself to us through our own

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experience. Thus we begin truly to love God, who is
purely spiritual, and the exigencies of His love, which is
purely spiritual. Doing this our whole being becomes
spiritualized.
Crosses of the Spirit

There are other still heavier crosses that weigh only on
those individuals much advanced in the interior life. These
are crosses that it is good to know about — not that we
may ask the Lord for them, but that we may see how
far we are from the summits of love and how foolish our
spiritual pride is when it wishes to make us believe that
we are advanced in the way of perfection.
The Holy Spirit Himself has judged it useful to reveal
these terrible crosses to all in the incomparable book of
Job. These alone enable us to comprehend the sense of
certain exclamations of Our Lord on Calvary. From such
crosses we also learn what kind of sufferings await us in
purgatory.
The purpose of these crosses is not so much to spiri­
tualize our sensibility, as to supernaturalize our spirit.
These crosses serve to detach the spirit from itself and
to subject it to God in such a way that it is transformed,
so to speak, into Him in the same way that wood,
becoming prey to the fire, warms and illumines like the
fire (St. John of the Cross). These crosses of the spirit,
sent directly by God, make the superior part of the soul
suffer. The means God uses to purify us is a supernatural
light, so living and so intense that the eyes of the soul,
still not strong enough to bear it, are dazzled and blinded
by it, experiencing an acute suffering from it, as happens
to the owl that is dazzled and blinded by too much sunlight.
But this mysterious divine light, though it is blinding,
makes one see. First of all it makes the soul see what it
is in reality, showing it the unsuspected depths of its

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misery. Then, in contrast, it reveals God in His transcendence
and infinite purity. This revelation is in a manner so entirely
new, though very obscure, that the soul seems bedazzled,
no longer seeing the relationship between this knowledge
and that which it formerly enjoyed. Although it is elevated
by its labors toward the light, it seems to the person that
it is more and more engulfed by the night.
Now we shall see how Our Lord purifies, in this painful
ascent, the humility of the saints, their faith, their hope,
and their charity, that is, the virtues proper to the higher
degrees of the soul and spirit. In this way we shall discover
how superficial and imperfect our humility, faith, hope,
and charity still are.
God teaches humility directly to the saints, revealing
Himself to them, showing them the abyss that separates
them from Him. We should also learn humility by contem­
plating the life of the saints and measuring the abyss that
separates us from them.
Humility is the basis of the whole spiritual edifice. In
order that a structure may be solid and lasting, it is necessary
that the foundation be very deep. The foundation stone
of the whole spiritual edifice is faith. Almost all of us are
now content to place this stone on the ground and to
build on top of it; but this is not enough — the edifice
will not endure. At times we understand very clearly that
it is necessary to excavate deeply; and yet we are content
to hardly scratch the surface, so that after some years in
the religious life the edifice is barely more solid than at
the beginning, and a storm is enough to destroy the whole.
Consequently, it is necessary to excavate deeply. Humility
does this.
When Our Lord wishes to build a tall spiritual edifice
in a person, He Himself looks to the excavating, and to
such a depth that we do not even suspect. The dazzling
supernatural light with which God blinds the individual
reveals to it its miseries, its weaknesses, and its poverty.

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It sees that in itself it is nothing, and that by itself it
can do nothing but err, sin, and return to nothingness.
Blessed Angela of Foligno saw herself as an abyss of sin.
At the same time the soul feels unable to do anything
whatsoever for its own salvation. It has the impression
that all it undertakes fails, while others are succeeding.
It seems to it that, instead of advancing, it is going
backwards.
One day St. Benedict Labre began his confession with
these words: “ Father, I am a great sinner; help me make
a good confession.” The confessor, who did not know him,
believed that he was dealing with a contrite sinner and
began to encourage him. But in all that Benedict Labre
said to him, he found no sin. He thought that the man
did not know how to make a confession and so he asked
a few questions on the Decalogue; but the very profound
answers he received made him understand that he had a
saint before him.
St. Dominic scourged himself every night for his sins.
These saints, however much Our Lord eventually exalted
them, did not become proud; they experienced their own
misery.
After having taught His saints by means of the cross
to become meek and humble of heart, in His likeness, the
Lord began to purify their faith. Faith is the virtue that
consists in believing whatever God has revealed solely
because God has revealed it. In fact, this is precisely the
reason why we do believe even though there are also many
other secondary motives that make the act of faith easier.
For instance, we believe also because we experience in
ourselves the action of God through the consolations He
gives us and through the progress He has us make, or
because the things we undertake for Him succeed, or
because we see the harmony of the dogmas with one another
and with the great natural truths.

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But let us suppose that God takes from us all these
secondary motives so that we no longer experience His
action in us. We feel nothing but aridity and desolation and
we succeed in nothing we undertake, as happened to St.
Dominic at Fanjeaux. Let us suppose that the harmony of
doctrine disappears and gives way to a profound obscurity.
Nothing remains any longer except the single motive of
belief: God has spoken it and confirmed it with His
miracles.
In this way Our Lord tries the faith of His saints to
purify it. The supernatural lights that He sends and with
which He renders the dogmas luminous in an unexpected
way, blinds them. Since they were formerly accustomed to
believe in a rather superficial way, they now feel bewildered
and even come to ask themselves whether they have not
lost their faith. On this point Our Lord also permits temp­
tations of the devil.
Blessed Henry Suso had to undergo a temptation of this
type for ten years. St. Vincent de Paul, who offered himself
to save the soul of a poor priest, was so tempted on this
point that he asked himself whether he would not end up
by denying his faith. No longer successful in discerning
whether he consented or not to the temptation, he put a
pin in his sleeve, saying: “ When I make the external action
of drawing out this pin, I shall no longer believe.” In the
meantime, in the purity of his clouded faith and despite
all the difficulties and objections, he believed with all his
strength because of this one motive: “ God has spoken it.”
He thus completed the painful immolation of his intelligence
to the obscure divine word, and this act introduced him
to a new world. Is it not necessary that the sun go down
in order that the stars may be seen? In the same way, the
habitual light of our reason must be extinguished so that
pure faith may become the resplendent night that Sacred
Scripture speaks of: " And night is my illumination in my
delights.”

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After the purification of faith follows that of hope.
Hope is the virtue that makes us desire to attain and
possess God by trusting in His help. In reality, to attain
heaven and to live our religious life we trust in God —
that is the principal motive of hope. But we also trust
in ourselves, in our virtues, in the success of our works,
in our friends and in the help of our superiors. Yet, if
God suddenly took away from us these human helps — our
friends, affections, the esteem of our superiors — if He
revealed to us our miseries and our weakness, would we
still hope in Him?
We should recall the example of St. John the Baptist,
who, having announced the coming of the kingdom of God,
was abandoned by all in his prison and saw the triumph of
the wicked. Do you think that he did not have to fight
against discouragement? St. John of the Cross almost aban­
doned the work of reforming Carmel when in his prison
he asked himself whether in the final analysis his persecutors
were not right in opposing him. Blessed Angela of Foligno
asked herself whether she had not given way to the temp­
tation of despair.
The saints hoped against every human hope because of
this one motive: God is infinitely powerful and good. It is
not He who abandons us first; He always wishes to raise
us up again from our offences when our soul cries to Him.
Thus Jesus purifies in the crucible of pain the hope of
His most intimate friends.
After hope it is charity’s turn. Charity is the supreme
virtue which makes us love God for Himself alone, because
He is infinitely good and because He loved us first (cf. I
Jn. 4, 10). This is the principal motive for which we love
God. Yet, we also find many other secondary motives.
For example, He gives us what we ask for, draws us to
Himself, and makes the work undertaken for Him succeed.
But if we had to love God in desolation, in obscurity,
in the privation of all sensible and spiritual consolations;

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if we had to continue to love Him effectively, to accomplish
all our duties and persevere in prayer only because He is
infinitely good and died for us on the Cross, would we
have the strength to make this sublime act of charity?
When nothing any longer arises for the soul except bitter­
ness, both from God and from men; when one is reduced
to the same state as Our Lord when He exclaimed on the
Cross, “ My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? ”
then it is that the soul’s act of love saves the world and it
becomes, in a certain sense, co-redemptrix like the Sorrowful
Mother. What incomparable grandeur of the saints, and
how far we are from these summits!
Consider the sailor’s wife who does not stop thinking
of her husband although he no longer sends any word that
he is alive. She continues to love him in her sorrow as
if he were present, not wishing to love anyone else, bring­
ing up her children to love their father. If we admire her,
how much more ought we to admire and love the bride
of Christ who — like St. Rose of Lima, St. Theresa,
St. Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi — remains fifteen or twenty
years waiting for Jesus Christ to return to her soul, never
ceasing to think of Him and to love Him with a love as
strong as it is sorrowful. And all for the single motive that
Jesus is infinitely good and died for us on the Cross!

How to Carry the Cross

From what we have said, we can develop the doctrine
on the way to carry the cross. You, holy ones, brides of
Christ, bring us to understand this mystery of the cross
and the place it ought to occupy in our life.
We know that we should not ask the Lord for crosses
that He judges inopportune to send us because of our
weakness. We know that we should not despise the small
crosses, since the great ones can make us proud. We know
that it is not enough to admire the crosses of the saints,

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and also that there is nothing more unsupportable than
to put on airs of being martyrs when in reality we are not.
We should, then, dismiss these deplorable illusions.
We should no longer complain of suffering from the faults
of others when we make others suffer even more. We should
learn to bear the crosses that the Lord sends us: not those
that are pleasing to us, but those pleasing to Him. We
must teach ourselves to bear them with resignation, love,
and gratitude.
With resignation. It is indeed necessary to suffer.
Modern progress, which seeks to suppress the cross like
those “ enemies of the cross ” of whom St. Paul speaks
(Phil. 3, 18), will never attain what it desires. Even if it
did manage to diminish pain in the physical order, what
can it do in the moral order? It is necessary to suffer. If we
vex ourselves like the bad thief, our irritation will only
increase our suffering. Our Lord asks us to allow Him to
work — to allow Him to work to reproduce His image
in us.
With love. Our Lord does not ask us to love suffering
in itself, but to love it as a means of salvation, just as a
very bitter medicine that will give us back our health can
be loved. We are not asked to feel this love in a sensible
way, but to give proof of it by persevering, despite tribu­
lations, in the practice of our religious duties, especially
prayer. Jesus expects us to turn to him with ardent prayer,
because He has already decided to hear us and to lead us
much higher than we ourselves could desire. Therefore,
we should love the cross for the love of souls and gladly
accept being associated with Our Lord in His work of
redemption.
With gratitude. The cross is necessary for us. The Lord
tries us only because He loves us, because He wishes to
assimilate us to Himself, to spiritualize our sensibility, to
supernaturalize our spirit, to give us a more exalted know­

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ledge of ourselves and of Him, and also to give us a
stronger love.
The active life is necessary but the cross is even more
needed because through the cross our passive purification,
under the action of God, is accomplished — and the action
of God is much more fruitful than our own. Together with
humility, the cross develops in us the three virtues which
are properly divine and are the heart of the Christian life:
faith, hope, and charity. The cross makes our soul similar
to the soul of Christ, and therefore similar to God.
Sometimes this effect of the cross is so sublime that it
is reflected in the human body. St. Benedict Labre was
passing through the streets of Rome one day when an
artist, who had visited all the museums of Italy without
finding what he was searching for, stopped him. He begged
the saint to follow him and led him to his room. There,
after he had painted the resemblance of the poor man of
Christ, the artist knelt down, kissed his hands and
exclaimed, “ You have the face of Christ!
On another occasion, the poor saint was seen enveloped
by a brilliant light. Emanating from his face were rays
that shone with such a splendor that he seemed to be
on fire. Such was the fruit of the cross in the soul of this
saint. For such crosses the angels envy us, being unable to
give God this testimony of love. The cross leads all
Christians to the true light of God, the prelude to heaven:
Per crucem ad lucem.

CHAPTER XII

The Efficacy of Prayer
The Father will give you anything you
ask Him in My name.—Jn. 15, 17

After we considered the necessity of mortification and
the cross, both to purify us from all affection for things
of the world and for ourselves, and also to spiritualize
our sensibility and supernaturalize our spirit, we then exam­
ined how the cross purifies our humility, our faith, our
hope, and our charity.
This purification is essentially destined to make us know
and love God better. By means of this knowledge and love
union with God is realized. In fact, Our Lord, after having
told us, “ If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny
himself, take up his cross and follow Me," added, “ Whoever
follows Me does not walk in darkness, but will have the
light of life.”

Necessity of Prayer

This knowledge and this love of God are attained in
an immediate way in the diverse forms of prayer, especially
in mental prayer. In order to possess a living faith that
operates through charity, in order to ignite and increase
that fire of charity with which we must enflame ourselves,
communication with God is indispensable. We enter into
this communication with God through habitual meditation
on religious truths and by means of mental prayer.
Indeed, we know only that which we thoroughly

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examine and meditate upon. Since we love only what we
know, we continue to love only the things that we do not
cease to think about. Time and distance weaken and
eventually extinguish the most intense affections. If we never
think of God, if our spirit remains far from Him, we shall
no longer love Him.
What kind of attraction can be offered a believer by
the beauty of the truths of our faith — such as the Most
Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Eucha­
rist, the holiness of the Blessed Virgin — if he knows
these truths only superficially and has never seriously
meditated on them and savored them in depth?

Mental Prayer and Mortification
We should note that mortification prepares for mental
prayer, and that the latter, in its turn, facilitates mortifica­
tion. Therefore, prayer and mortification influence one
another. Mortification and patience prepare for prayer
through the purification and detachment they produce in
us. They enable the person to take flight toward God, and
this flight is prayer itself.
At the same time, prayer enables us to carry our cross
in the light. It reminds us of the reason for this cross,
makes us carry it with love, and obtains from God the
grace of resignation. Thus, prayer and mortification give each
other reciprocal help. Prayer is superior, however, just as
union with God is superior to detachment from the world.
Indeed, we detach ourselves from the world to unite
ourselves with God, but we do not seek union with God to
detach ourselves from the world.

Efficacy of Prayer
We must move on, now, to speak of the efficacy of
prayer and the source of this efficacy. In the first place, we
ask ourselves: Do we truly believe in the efficacy of prayer?

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147

This is certainly a question that concerns all people without
distinction. It touches not only those that are beginning
and those that have realized great progress, but also those
in the state of mortal sin because the sinner, even if he
has lost sanctifying grace and hence can no longer merit,
can, nevertheless, pray. Merit that has a right to compen­
sation refers to divine justice; 1 prayer, on the other hand,
is directed to divine mercy which often hears and lifts up,
without any merit, the individuals fallen into the state of
spiritual death.
From the profound abyss into which he has fallen, the
most miserable man can send up towards God’s mercy that
cry which is called prayer. The beggar, who possesses only
his poverty, can pray in the name of his misery and, if he
places all his heart in this supplication, he compels mercy
to bow down toward him because the abyss of misery calls
to the abyss of mercy. The soul rises again, and God is
glorified.
We should recall the conversion of Mary Magdalen.
Also remember the prayer of Daniel for Israel: “ Lord!
We have sinned, we have committed iniquity; departing
from You we merit all Your punishments. But for the
glory of Your name, pardon us, O Lord! ” (Dan. 3, 28-35)
The psalms are full of these supplications: “ Help us, God
our savior, . . . blot out our sins, rescue us ” (Ps. 79, 9).
“ You, my refuge and shield, I put my hope in your
word ” (Ps. 119, 114).
Do we believe in the power of prayer? When temptation
threatens to make us fall, when the light is extinguished
in us, when the cross is difficult to carry, do we have
recourse to prayer as Our Lord taught us? Or does it
happen that we doubt — if not in theory at least in practice
— the efficacy of prayer? And yet we well know the promise
1 Merit de condigno is based on justice, merit de congruo is based on
jure amicabili, that is, on the rights of friendship.

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of Our Lord: " Ask and it will be given to you ” (Mt.
7, 7). We know the common teaching of the theologians.
True prayer, by which we ask with trusting humility and
perseverance the graces necessary for our salvation, is
infallibly efficacious (cf. S. T. II-II, q. 83, a. 15).
We know this doctrine; and yet, at times, it seems
to us that we have truly prayed without being heard. We
believe, or rather, we see the power of a machine, but
we do not believe enough in the efficacy of prayer. From
its results we see the power of that intellectual force that
is science, and there is nothing very mysterious in it. In
fact, we know where this force comes from, where it is
directed and what human effects it produces. When we
are dealing with prayer, however, we believe too weakly in
its efficacy because we do not know whence it comes and
we forget where it is directed. We ought to remember,
then, what the source of the efficacy of prayer is and
what the end is to which it tends, or rather, which it
must attain.
The Source of the Efficacy of Prayer
The sources of rivers are found at high altitudes. The
waters from the skies and the melting waters of snow and
glaciers feed its course. In the beginning, before it fertilizes
the valleys and goes on to rush into the sea, a river is a
torrent that descends from the heights. This is a symbol of
how highly exalted is the source of the efficacy of prayer.
Sometimes we erroneously believe that prayer is a force
which has its first principle in us, and that prayer consti­
tutes a means by which we are able to try to sway the
will of God. Then our thoughts immediately strike against
the following difficulty, often enunciated by unbelievers
(in particular by the deists of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries): no one is able to move the will of God, no
one can change it. Without doubt God is the goodness

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that asks nothing other than to give itself, the mercy that
is always ready to come to the aid of him who suffers.
But God is also the perfectly immutable being, and His
will is immutable. No one can boast of having illumined
God, or of having changed His decrees. “ I am the Lord
and I do not change " (Mai. 3, 6). Under the decrees of
Providence the order of things and events is firmly and
gently established from all eternity (cf. Num. 23, 19, and
Jas. 1, 17).
Yes, all this is true. Yet, one should not, for this reason,
fall into fatalism and conclude that prayer can do nothing
and that what is to happen will happen according to fate,
whether we pray or not. “ Ask, and it will be given to you;
search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be
opened to you " (Mt. 7, 7). This saying of the Gospel
stands, and the interior life must search its meaning more
and more. Thus, prayer is not a force that has its first
principle in us; it is not an attempt of the human being to
compel God to change His providential decrees. If some­
times we speak in this way, it is only by way of metaphor,
and a human manner of expressing ourselves. In reality,
the will of God is absolutely immutable. But it is precisely
in this superior immutability that the source of the infallible
efficacy of prayer is found.
Basically, it is the simplest thing. Despite the mystery
of grace with which it is surrounded, we find here one
of the most attractive and beautiful chiaroscuros. First of
all, let us note what is clear. True prayer is infallibly
efficacious because God, who cannot contradict Himself,
has so decreed (S.T. II-II, q. 83, a. 2). The contemplation
of the saints underlines all this.
The conception of a God who had not willed and
foreseen from all eternity the prayers that we would direct
to Him is just as childish as that of a God who would
change His designs, disposing Himself according to our
will. All has been foreseen (or at least permitted) from

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the beginning by a providential decree: not only what is
to occur, but also the manner in which it is to happen
and the causes that are to produce the events. For the
material harvest the Lord has prepared the seed, the rain
to help its germination and the sun to ripen the fruits of
the earth. The same happens with the spiritual harvest.
He has prepared the spiritual seed, the divine graces
necessary for sanctification and salvation.
In each order, from the lowest to the most sublime,
God prepares the causes that are to produce His determined
effects. And prayer is one of these causes, destined to
produce a particular effect, which is that of obtaining for
us the gifts of God. All creatures exist solely by reason of
the gifts of God, but the intellectual creature is the only
one that can recognize this. Existence, health, physical
strength, light of the intellect, moral energy, success in our
undertakings, all these are gifts of God. But above all, grace,
which leads us to our salvific good, makes us accomplish it
and gives us the means to persevere, is a gift of God.
Grace — and even more the Holy Spirit, who has been
sent to us and is the fountain of living water — is the
preeminent gift of which Jesus spoke addressing the Samar­
itan woman: “ If you only knew the gift of God, and
who it is who says to you, ' Give Me to drink, ’ you,
perhaps, would have asked of Him, and He would have
given you living water, springing up unto life everlasting ”
(Jn. 4, 10-14). The intellectual creature is the only one
capable of realizing that it can live neither naturally nor
supernaturally except through the gift of God. Why should
we be surprised, then, if divine Providence has willed that
man ask for graces? In this matter, as in all things, God
wills the final effect first of all; then He disposes the
means and causes that are to produce it. Having decided
to give, He decides that we ought to pray in order to
receive, just as a good father of a family, who has decided

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151

to give his children some pleasure, wants them to ask him
for it.
Note that the gift of God is the result, while prayer is
the means whereby it is obtained. St. Gregory the Great
says that men must dispose themselves to receive what
Almighty God has decided from eternity to give them.
This is why Jesus, wishing to convert the Samaritan woman,
disposes her to pray by saying to her: “If you knew the
gift of God! ” And just as He concedes to Magdalen an
actual grace that is very strong yet very gentle, disposing
her to repentance and prayer, so He acts in the same way
with Zaccheus and the good thief.
Therefore, it is just as necessary to pray to gain the
help of God which we need in order to do good and to
persevere in it, as it is to sow in order to have grain. To
those who say: “ Whether we pray or whether we don’t
pray, what is to happen will happen, ” we must respond:
“ To speak in such a way is just as senseless as to say,
' Whether we sow or whether we don’t sow with summer
we shall have grain.’ ” Providence establishes not only the
results but also the means we must use. It differs from
fate inasmuch as it respects human liberty by giving grace
as gentle as it is efficacious. Hence, an actual grace must
be received in order to pray; but this is offered to all, and
only he who voluntarily refuses it remains deprived of it.2

2 To every adult, even a great sinner, the efficacious grace to pray is
offered. Every man receives from time to time the actual grace that renders
prayer really possible. In this sufficient grace there is offered an efficacious
help, just as in the blossom there is fruit. But if a man resists this so-called
sufficient grace, he merits being deprived of efficacious grace which would
enable him to pray effectively. Here is presented the mystery of resistance
to grace, an evil deriving solely from our weakness; but the non-resistance,
which is a good, comes primarily from God, the first source of every
good. And since the love of God for us is the cause of every good, no one
would be better than another if he were not loved more by God. “ What
do you have that you have not received? ” (I Cor. 4,7; cf. S.T. I, q. 20,
a. 3 and 4). Our Lord has said, “ Without me you can do nothing [in

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Therefore, prayer is necessary to obtain the help of
God just as the seed is necessary for a harvest. Still there
is this consideration: the best seed, if lacking favorable
external conditions, can remain unproductive — and thou­
sands of seeds are lost in this way — yet humble and
confident prayer, by which we ask for ourselves what is
necessary for salvation, is never lost. We know that it is
already heard by the very fact that it obtains for us the
grace to continue in prayer.
This efficacy of properly said prayer is infallibly guar­
anteed us by Our Lord: " So I say to you: Ask, and it
will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock,
and the door will be opened to you. For the one who
asks always receives; the one who searches always finds;
the one who knocks will always have the door opened to
him. What father among you would hand his son a stone
when he asked for bread? Or hand him a snake instead of
a fish? Or hand him a scorpion if he asked for an egg?
If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children
what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? ” (Lk. 11,
9-13).
To His apostles He also said: “ I tell you most solemnly,
anything you ask for from the Father He will grant in
My name. Until now you have not asked for anything in
My name. Ask and you will receive, and so your joy
will be complete ” (Jn. 16, 23-24).
The souls dedicated to prayer, even more than others,
must live this doctrine which is elementary for every
Christian. Hence, we must have confidence in the efficacy
the order of salvation] (Jn. 15, 5). This is all the more reason to pray
to him to grant us the grace, as he recommends to us. If, then, after
having sincerely prayed with humility, confidence and perseverance, we
did not obtain the helps necessary for our salvation, there would be a
contradiction in God himself and in his promises. These, however, are
immutable and upon them the infallible efficacy of right prayer is based.

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153

of prayer! This is not merely a human force that has its
first principle in us; rather, the source of its efficacy is
in God and in the infinite merits of the Savior. It descends
from an eternal decree of love and reascends to divine
mercy.
When we pray, it is certainly not a question of per­
suading God, of moving Him to change His providential
dispositions; it is only a question of lifting our will to His
heights, to will with Him in time what He has decided to
give us from eternity. Prayer, far from tending to lower
the Most High toward us, is rather an " elevation of the
soul toward God, ” as the Fathers say. When we pray
and are heard, it seems to us that the will of God has
yielded toward us. It is our will, however, that is raised
toward Him, in such a manner that we are disposed to
will in time what God wills for us from eternity. From
this follows that, far from being opposed to the divine
directives, prayer cooperates with them. We are, therefore,
two in willing, instead of one alone.
And when, for example, we have prayed much to obtain
a conversion, and have been heard, we can rightly say that
without doubt it is God who has converted this person,
but He has deigned to associate me with Himself in this;
from all eternity He had decided to have me pray to obtain
this grace. Thus, we cooperate in our salvation by asking
for the graces necessary to attain it. Among these graces
there are some, like that of final perseverance, that cannot
be merited3 but are obtained by prayer that is humble,
trusting and persevering.
Certainly, efficacious grace, which protects us from
mortal sin and keeps us in the state of grace, cannot be
merited, for it would be like meriting the very principle
3 The grace of final perseverance is, in fact, the state of grace that
continues to death. It is to be noted, however, that the state of grace,
being the principle of merit, cannot be merited (cf. S.T. I-II, q. 114, a. 9).

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of merit (the continual state of grace). But, it can be
obtained by prayer. Thus, the actual and efficacious grace
that is instrumental for a living contemplation, though it
cannot, properly speaking, be merited “ de condigno, ”
is obtained by prayer. “ And so I prayed, and understanding
was given me; I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came
to me ” (Wis. 7,7).
Also, when it is a question of our obtaining a grace
of conversion for a person who may offer resistance, the
more numerous we are who pray, each persevering in his
prayer, the more we can hope to obtain this grace.
Hence, prayer cooperates powerfully in the plan of
divine Providence. It can obtain anything whatsoever, on
condition that we ask God first and foremost to love Him
more and more: “ Your heavenly Father knows you need
them all. Set your hearts on His kingdom first, and on His
righteousness, and all these other things will be given you
as well ” (Mt. 6, 33).
If we do not obtain temporal goods, it means that they
are not necessary for our salvation. But if our prayer is
correctly made, we shall obtain in their place an even more
precious grace for " the Lord is near to all who call upon
Him, to all who call upon Him in truth ” (Ps. 145, 18).
And the prayer of petition, if it is truly an elevation of the
soul toward God, disposes us to a more intimate prayer
of adoration, reparation, thanksgiving, and to the prayer
of union.

CHAPTER XIII

Mental Prayer
I am the light of the world; anyone who
follows Me will not be walking in the
dark; he will have the light of life.—
Jn. 8, 12

Still happier those who hear the word
of God and keep it.—Lk. 11, 28

After having considered the efficacy of prayer and its
foundation, we now examine the essence of mental prayer,
its various degrees, its object, what its preparation ought
to be, and what its effects are.
What is Mental Prayer?

The Fathers and all the masters of the spiritual life
say that mental prayer is the elevation of the soul to God.
Of this elevation it is easier to say what it is not, rather
than what it is. To know what it is, it must be experienced.
Indeed, we are not treating here simply of that elevation of
soul required for all vocal prayers and absolutely necessary
for all believers in order to be saved. “ Mental prayer implies
a much deeper consideration of the mysteries of faith. It is
not indispensable for salvation, but surely very useful, and
more or less indispensable with respect to the grade of
perfection to which we are called ” (Maynard 1-12).
This mental prayer has always existed in the Church.
Neither St. Theresa nor St. Ignatius introduced it. However,
since in that era men no longer applied themselves spon­
taneously to mental prayer, it was necessary to make it

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obligatory and establish a determined time in the community
for this purpose. Consequently different methods of mental
prayer arose. As regards our Order, the duration of mental
prayer was fixed by the General Chapter of 1515. But
mental prayer itself had already been the practice for a
long time.
The history of our Order recounts that a poor lay
brother, who had become ill, did not recognize the priory
of St. James when he returned because, as he said, he no
longer saw the brethren in mental prayer before the altars.
St. Thomas passed part of his nights in mental prayer.
St. Albert composed a treatise on this subject. The life
of our blessed father St. Dominic was a continuous mental
prayer, day and night, whether in the priory or on the
road.
From their foundation, the Carmelite and Cistercian
Orders were dedicated to mental prayer. And what would
characterize the interior life that was hidden in the cata­
combs in those souls ready for martyrdom during the first
ages of the Church? How would we describe the life of
Mary Magdalen after her conversion? and the life of
St. John? of St. Paul and all the apostles? and the life
of the Blessed Virgin? They were lives of contemplation and
mental prayer.
Our Lord, who enjoyed the Beatific Vision, gave us
an example when He felt the need of separating Himself
from the apostles to retire into solitude. If He has recom­
mended public prayer, He has also said: “ And when you
pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their
prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street
corners for people to see them. I tell you solemnly, they
have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your
private room and, when you have shut your door, pray
to your Father who is in that secret place, and your
Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward
you ” (Mt. 6, 5-6).

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Even before the coming of Our Lord, were there not
individuals that knew interior prayer? Without it, how
are we to understand the Psalms, the Book of Wisdom,
the Canticle of Canticles? How can we believe that these
divine books remained without being understood by all
the people of the Old Testament? Mental prayer, then,
implies a much deeper consideration of the mysteries of
faith than vocal prayer. This consideration differs essentially
from a simple study of the truth, from a philosophical or
theological reflection.
It does not have ordinary knowledge as its end, but
rather supernatural knowledge and love of the truth. Indeed,
it is not only a question of an elevation of the intelligence,
but of the elevation of the whole being toward God. It is
a flight in which love contributes as much as intelligence.
Actually love is the very principle and end of mental
prayer.
" There are speculative souls, ” says Massoulié (cf. May­
nard), " curious about the things of God, who are not,
however, souls of mental prayer. If in their considerations
they experience a pleasure that surpasses all the pleasures
of the senses, this pleasure often derives solely from know­
ledge and not from charity. They are moved more by the
love of knowledge than by the love of God, whom they
wish to penetrate. Therefore, this pleasure often increases
their pride and only serves to make them more filled with
themselves.”
St. Thomas made a distinction in his life between study
and mental prayer. Although his studies proceeded from
charity and were supernaturally fruitful, he felt the need
of interrupting them, abandoning Aristotle and the tracts
of the Fathers, to go and kneel before the altar and speak
to God. Often he was taken unawares in tears during his
prayer. If he had been only a scholar, he would not have
been able to write the Office of the Most Blessed Sacrament
as well as his commentaries on Aristotle. He himself, in

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bis Summa, has clearly distinguished speculation from
mental prayer or contemplation.
Speculation or study does not proceed necessarily from
charity and does not terminate necessarily in the love of
God: we can give ourselves to the study of theology
without having charity. On the other hand, mental prayer
or contemplation proceeds essentially from charity and
terminates in an act of love of God.
It is through love that we seek to contemplate God, and
the contemplation of the beauty and goodness of God
increases our love. It is even necessary to say that here
below contemplation is as a means to the end, in relation
to love, since here below the love of God is more perfect
than our knowledge of God. Indeed, love pushes us toward
God, while knowledge of God draws God, in a certain
way, into us and reduces Him, so to speak, to our
proportions.
The goodness and beauty of God are infinitely superior
to anything we can imagine. Thus, we can love Him more
than we can know Him, and until we see Him face to
face, love is more perfect than knowledge.
Finally, the purpose of contemplation here below is the
act of love to which it leads. “ Terminus et finis vitae
contemplativae habetur in affectu ” (S.T. II-II, q. 180, a. 7
ad 1). Mental prayer has for its purpose the stirring up
of the fire of charity. " In my thoughts, a fire blazed forth "
(Ps. 39, 4).

Acts of the three theological virtues and of the gift of
wisdom. Mental prayer, in order to be the elevation of
the whole person to God, must proceed from the three
theological virtues: from faith, insofar as it is knowledge,
and from hope and charity insofar as they are an act of love.
But in mental prayer, or at least at the end of mental
prayer, knowledge and love ought to blend in a certain
way into a single act. They should merge into a loving

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knowledge of God, into a look of love directed toward
our Father who is in heaven, toward His infinite perfec­
tions, toward Our Lord. This look of love in us proceeds
from the most perfect of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, from
the spirit of love that dwells in us, and from the gift of
wisdom.
The Holy Spirit has us utter inexpressible moans and
makes us cry out: “ Abba, Father! ” — the only word
that children know to say to him who has given them life,
who protects, instructs, and loves them. He allows us to
consider something of divine truth (of the Most Holy
Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the Redemption) by means
of a taste, a touch, an intimate experience accompanied by
the most absolute certainty. He reveals to us the hidden
sense of the Gospel: “ Taste and see that the Lord is
sweet ” (Ps. 34, 9).
Under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, the will loves,
with all its strength, the divine object which faith reveals
to it. The intelligence judges experimentally something of
the goodness of this object by means of the influence which
the latter exercises on the will, which in turn, conforming
itself to the object, becomes rectified. Even here below the
dogmas of the Incarnation and Redemption fulfill and surpass
our most legitimate and highest aspirations. By means of
the dogmas, it is really God who makes Himself felt in
us in the obscurity of our faith and is with us as a friend
with a friend, no longer in purely speculative and abstract
truths (as in a tract of theology), but as a living Person
and source of life.
“ Still happier those who hear the word of God and
keep it! ” says Our Lord to the poor woman who exlaims:
“ Happy the womb that bore You and the breasts You
sucked! ” (Lk. 11, 28). If the Virgin is happy, it is not
because she formed the body of the Savior but because
she, in a certain way, first conceived Him in her spirit

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by means of prayer, and because she was united to Him
by the most intimate knowledge and most ardent love.
This mental prayer, this gaze of love, is the repose of
the person in God, a repose that presupposes the hard
work of mortification and crowns it. As St. Cyril of Alex­
andria said, " It is the respite of the soul immersed in
the beauty of God through contemplation, experiencing
His love by means of charity.

The Various Degrees
In mental prayer we have as many degrees as there are
in the gift of wisdom, which increases with the growth of
charity. Some simple persons without instruction, and the
Christian virgins in particular, often have the gift of wisdom
in a much more exalted way than theologians.
We can distinguish three degrees. In the first degree of
mental prayer are found those who have begun the spiritual
life and feel a repugnance for evil and attraction for good.
In the second are those who are making progress through
renunciation and mortification. In the third are those who
are perfectly emptied of themselves, whose purified virtues
reach heroism.
“ Generally, the perfect are called to a contemplation
that is neither acquired nor maintained except by the assid­
uous exercise of meditation and in consequence of a passive
contemplation that does not depend on human activity but
only on divine goodness, which of itself works in us ”
(Maynard 11-10). St. Theresa (Way oj Perfection, chap. 19)
distinguishes these two contemplations by comparing the
passive prayer to a fountain of spring water and the active
prayer to water that has already run for some time on the
ground and has lost its clearness, mixing itself with the
mud that is carried along. In fact, in passive prayer the
fountain of spring water is the Holy Spirit, who offers
Himself immediately to us, works in us and separates us

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from the world with the knowledge He gives us. On the
other hand, in active contemplation, which is the fruit of
our meditation, there is the imperfection of our human
acts mixed like mud in the water of grace and divine truth.
Thus, when we rouse ourselves to a contempt of the world,
this consideration, since it still remains human, fastens our
thoughts on objects which basically still please us (St.
Theresa, ibid.).
Nothing like this remains in passive prayer. God snatches
us from the world, draws us to Himself and, in an instant,
gives us a vision of all things here below that is much clearer
than we could acquire by many years of assiduous meditation
(St. Theresa, ibid.·, cf. also Catherine of Siena, Dial. chap.
100). In reality, in this state the mastery of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit over the virtues and over the human way of
acting is realized: it represents the adult stage of the spiritual
life.
But in this living spring water there are so many
different levels! (Maynard, II, pp. 192-256). They vary
from that of a soul who attains passive prayer for himself
alone, to those souls overflowing with divine life, as a St.
Dominic, who attain it for a whole religious order, and
finally to that unique soul, the Holy Virgin, who sustains
all of us by her prayer.
These eminent degrees of the gift of wisdom and of
loving knowledge are entirely independent of any visions,
supernatural words or revelations, which do not presuppose
the state of grace as being necessary and which are not
themselves necessary to the full development of charity,
but are given, rather, as with the grace of miracles, to
cooperate in the sanctification and salvation of other souls.

The Object

What is the object of mental prayer? In the first place,
it is obviously the One and Triune God and all that revela­

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tion makes known of His nature and infinite perfections.
Then, in a particular way, it is Our Lord Jesus Christ, who
is the indispensable way for all to be lifted up to God,
even for those who are already much advanced in the
spiritual life. Further, it is His Passion and Death on the
Cross, contemplated in the light of the divine attributes of
justice and mercy which illumine Our Lord’s sacrifice. We
especially cite the spectacle of the Cross, which nourishes
charity, since this is the greatest proof of love that God has
given us: “ God loved the world so much that He gave
His only Son ” (Jn. 3, 16). Since no one goes to the Father
except through the Son, without Our Lord one may have
a philosophic, abstract knowledge but not that supernatural,
experimental, affective knowledge which is the heart of
mental prayer.
A secondary object of mental prayer is creatures, insofar
as they manifest God to us. Among all the creatures we refer
to those in which the image of God appears more clearly:
the souls of the saints and the Mystical Body of Christ.
Another object of mental prayer is our life, which ought
to be guided by the will of God to produce in us the image
of our divine model, Jesus Christ. He is the image, the
splendor of the Father and the manifestation of His nature
(cf. Heb. 1, 3).
We have examined mental prayer, its principle, end,
degrees, and object. Now we will consider its practice.

How to Go about Mental Prayer
Venerable Louis of Granada says that many believe that
mental prayer is like any art; hence, to be perfect, it is
enough to learn its method and apply it mechanically. Their
illusion derives from the fact that certain modern authors,
after setting down a method of mental prayer, lead us to
believe that these rules, if observed conscientiously, can
.take the place of divine grace. This, however, is a very

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naturalistic concept of mental prayer. Without doubt the
methods of mental prayer are useful and often necessary,
especially for beginners; but mental prayer depends essen­
tially on the grace of God and the action of the Holy
Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit’s word that we hear in ourselves
and which we prepare ourselves to receive primarily by
practicing humility and conforming to the will of God.
Others fall into the opposite excess. They disregard all
methods and all preparation and then they complain that,
when they wish to recollect themselves and put themselves
in the presence of God, they find nothing except emptiness
and darkness.
Remote preparation. Mental prayer presupposes a remote
preparation and a proximate preparation. Remote prepara­
tion is none other than mortification of our passions and
the detachment from the world and from ourselves through
humility. It is clear that if our spirit is preoccupied with
pleasures and affairs of the world, if our soul is agitated by
passions, by affections that are too human, or by jealousy,
we are not disposed to mental prayer. If we are habitually
preoccupied with ourselves, if we ignore humility, how can
we let ourselves be penetrated by God and hear His voice?
Without mortification and humility the methods of mental
prayer are worthless.
The best remote preparation is the diligent practice of
the three vows—which detach the soul from pleasures,
from the things of the world and from self—together with
patience in bearing the crosses that mortify us. If you are
faithful today in avoiding venial sin, gossip and vain
conversations, tomorrow God will also be faithful and will
let you hear His word in mental prayer.
Proximate preparation. Proximate preparation must dis­
pose the intelligence and will. It is necessary to dispose our
intellect with the selection of a determined subject. “ He
who wishes for too much, attains nothing.” Unless our

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attention is fixed on something precise, we run the risk of
not thinking of anything.
It would be preferable to choose a subject from the life
of Our Lord since He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
He is the expression and beauty of God which has been
given us. He is our model for as long as we are wayfarers
on this earth. In Him is epitomized the sum total of faith,
dogma, and morals. St. Theresa counsels us to meditate on
the life of Jesus according to the cycle of the liturgical year,
uniting our prayer to that of the universal Church and
that of Our Lord, who does not cease interceding for
His Church. Let us not meditate on the joy of the Epiphany
on Good Friday! Finally, when we consider the life of
Our Lord we should take time to meditate preferably on
the virtues that are opposed to our predominant fault,
those we put in practice less than the others. Above all
we should learn from Him to be meek and humble of
heart, precisely as He Himself has taught us.
Once the subject has been chosen, it is necessary to
prepare our will by prayer. For mental prayer it is not enough,
as we have said, to speculate; it is also necessary to love,
to make our will conform to the divine will. Only prayer
can obtain for us this grace of conformity, thus placing us
in the presence of God.
After having prayed, we must meditate on the chosen
subject. Whether it is a virtue of Our Lord or a fact from
His life, we must follow in our meditation the order indicated
to us in the Our Father. This means that we think first of
God and then of ourselves. We contemplate the glory of
God in the virtues of the divine Master, the kingdom of
God they procure, and the fulfillment of the will of God.
We might pause a moment in our mental prayer at the
climactic point of the Our Father to let our intelligence give
to the will the time to love, to savor God in Our Lord,
to take joy in His glory. We should listen to Him if He
wishes to speak to us—if we have merited that He speak

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to us. We should remain thus as long as our love is
awake, and then, let us descend to ask for our daily bread
and the strength to put into practice the example that we
have meditated on, as well as the strength to resist temp­
tation. We should pardon others and ask pardon for the
past. Then, we ought to make a resolution for the future,
not a vague one, however, that would remain inefficacious,
but a precise one, based on the meditated subject as it
relates to our life.
If meditation according to this manner, though very
simple, is nonetheless not possible to us, if we are not
able to repulse distractions or recollect ourselves sufficiently
to meditate, or if we find only aridity and desolation, we
should undertake prayer of the heart. This consists simply
in willing to remain in the presence of God in order to love
Him more than ourselves, in abandoning ourselves to the
divine will, in being happy in our nothingness and
acknowledging that God is infinitely above all that we can
possibly imagine.
This affective mental prayer is one of the most fruitful
if the soul is humble and generous. It is distinguished from
lazy inertia by the vigilance of love—this remains the
essential act of mental prayer. In a certain sense, this prayer
is easier than the other forms because not all souls are
capable of remaining in profound reasoning, but almost all
can easily produce affective movements while meditating on
the Our Father and the manner in which they put it into
practice in their lives. Every Christian is capable of reentering
thus into himself if he mortifies and denies himself.
The Effects

Now we shall speak of the effects of mental prayer. The
impetratory effect of prayer is, as we know, to obtain infal­
libly the grace necessary to salvation when we ask for it
with humility, trust and perseverance. If God did not listen

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to this true prayer He would be contradicting Himself, for
He commands us to save ourselves, admonishes us that
grace is indispensable to be saved, and tells us to pray to
obtain this grace. Hence, if He did not listen to true prayer,
which He Himself inspires and commands, He would no
longer be God.
Mental prayer, however, does not have only an impetratory effect. It develops in us all the virtues, and especially
the three virtues which together with humility are the
heart of the Christian life: faith, hope, and charity. We
should give ourselves courageously, then, to mental prayer
so that our faith may not be simply that superficial and
verbal knowledge that stops at formulas, but rather that
which penetrates the intimate sense of the divine word.
We should give ourselves to mental prayer so that we may
learn to hope in God alone, instead of trusting in ourselves
and counting on others. We ought to give ourselves to
mental prayer so that we may love God with the love He
wants, with the love He showed us on the Cross and
continues to show us in the Eucharist.
We should give ourselves to mental prayer so that we
may extend our love for God to all the souls loved by God,
to those who make us suffer as well as those who please us.
We should pray for all souls—that will be an apostolate
more fruitful than a sermon without love. We ought to
pray, like St. Catherine of Siena, in the name of Our Lord
and of all the souls that make up His Mystical Body. Like
her, we should take up in our soul all these souls and place
them in the heart of God. We ought, like her, to make
catholic acts, that is, universal acts of contrition, of faith,
hope, and charity. In this way our mental prayer will lose
itself in the prayer of Christ Himself, always living; and He
will carry us to God on the wings of the Spirit of Love.

CHAPTER XIV

Perseverance
in Mental Prayer
If you only knew what God is offering ...
you would have been the one to ask,
and He would have given you living
water.—Jn. 4, 10
If any man is thirsty, let him come to
Me! Let the man come and drink who
believes in Me! As scripture says·. From
his breast shall flow fountains of living
water.— Jn. 7, 37-38

We have said that mental prayer is the elevation of the
whole being to God. In it knowledge and love must be
merged into a gaze of love that is none other than the
contemplation of God and of Our Savior and model, Jesus
Christ. We have also considered how we ought to prepare
ourselves for mental prayer and how, if it is impossible to
apply ourselves to that which is properly called meditation,
we ought to replace it with prayer of the heart.
Necessity of This Perseverance

Now we must speak of perseverance in mental prayer.
St. Theresa tells us in fact that in mental prayer perseverance
is the trait most necessary (Interior Castle, II Mansion,
chap. I). With it we cannot help but gain much; without
it we can lose all. We must engage in battle against
ourselves, against our spiritual sloth and against the devil

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who wants to throw us into discouragement. How many
souls, deprived of the sweetness they tasted at the
beginning, have turned back after having put their hand
to the plow! What is more, some souls that were very
advanced have fallen backwards.
St. Catherine of Genoa, who from the age of thirteen
had given herself to mental prayer and had made great
progress, became discouraged after five years of suffering.
She abandoned the interior life and for five years led the
life of a worldly woman. But one day she observed with
anguish the frightful emptiness of her soul and felt the
desire that a holy life be reborn in her. Without warning,
God had called her to Himself, striking her as He did St.
Paul on the way to Damascus. After fourteen years of
terrible penance that is almost beyond description, she
received the certainty of having fully satisfied divine justice.
She used to say: “ If I were to turn back, I would wish
that my eyes be plucked out, and I would find that this
would still not suffice ” (Hello, Physiognomy of the Saints).
Other souls that have fought the battle a long time,
become discouraged when they are at last only a few steps
from the fountain of living water, and they fall back again.
Without mental prayer they no longer have the strength to
bear their cross, and therefore they return to an easy and
superficial life. Others could be saved in this lax existence
but these souls run the great risk of being lost because
their faculties, which are extremely powerful, will push
them to excesses. Excess was permitted and demanded of
them when it was a question of the love of God, but every
other excess will drag them into the abyss. Souls made for
great things carry within themselves a grave risk. Since
a mediocre life is not possible for them, they take sides
without any half-measures—with God or against God.
Thus it is that the angels can know only ardent charity
or irrémissible mortal sin—venial sin is impossible for them.
They see perfectly and bind themselves totally in all their

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acts. Angels or devils, the holiest or the worst, these are
the only alternatives for pure spirits. It is, therefore, a
great danger for a soul that has once given itself to mental
prayer not to persevere in it, or to participate in it only in
a material way and without any drive of love. The abandon­
ment of the life of mental prayer can be the beginning of
its ruin.
To persevere in mental prayer it is necessary, first, to
trust in the Lord, who calls all souls to the fountain of
living water and hence offers them the grace to overcome
their obstacles. Secondly, we must allow ourselves to be
led humbly through the way He has chosen for us,
conforming our will fully to His.
To Trust

First of all we must trust in the Lord. To fall backwards
in the face of difficulties, such as distraction or aridity,
and thus become discouraged means both to lack in the
virtue of hope recommended to us by the Lord and also
to doubt in the goodness and power of God. Some souls,
to excuse their discouragement, their laziness and their
cowardice, will say: “ One must not fall into presumption.
Mental prayer was made only for some souls, not for me.
God is not calling me to that height; it would be presumption
to pretend that He is.” Thus, with the pretext of avoiding
presumption we are lacking in hope and put the responsibility
for our spiritual inertia on God.
To combat discouragement and to stir up hope within
ourselves, we should seek to understand thoroughly this
truth that is insufficiently stressed: God calls all souls to
the fountain of living water of mental prayer after a period
of time, more or less long and after trials that can be more
or less painful. When I speak of living water, I do not mean
visions or revelations. I am speaking of that affective gaze
of love that enables the soul to quench its thirst at the very

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fountain of life which is the Holy Spirit present in us. I
am referring to that elevated degree of the gift of wisdom
through which God works in us without our human activity,
to make Himself felt by us. The word of God that is tasted
through the diligent effort of meditation and through our
own human activity, is, on the other hand, like water mixed
with mud.
The greater number of past authors on spirituality,
especially those of the Dominican School basing themselves
on the authority of St. Thomas, maintain that all souls are
called to this living water. (Maynard Π, N. 75; Arintero,
Mystical Evolution, pp. 447-510). They are called to the
fountain of mental prayer, if not to pour it out over a
great number of souls as did the saints, then at least to the
extent required to attain what is necessary for the perfection
of their own personal charity. To establish this truth we
must bring out the testimony of Sacred Scripture, especially
the words of Our Lord, and find the precise meaning in
the light of sound theological conclusions.
The testimony of Sacred Scripture is very clear. Already
in the Old Testament the Book of Wisdom invites all souls
without distinction: “ Look forward, therefore, to my words;
yearn for them, and they will instruct you. Wisdom is bright,
and does not grow dim. By those who love her she is readily
seen, and found by those who look for her. Quick to
anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself known to
them. Watch for her early and you will have no trouble . . . .
I reckoned no priceless stone to be her peer, for compared
with her, all gold is a pinch of sand, and beside her silver
ranks as mud .... In her company all good things came to
me! ” (Wis. 6, 11-14; 7, 9-11). The same invitation is
found in Psalm 34: “ Taste and see how sweet the Lord
is, ” and in Proverbs (8, 17 and 35): " I love those
who love me; those who seek me eagerly shall find me . ..
for the man who finds me finds life, he will win favor from

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Yahweh.” In Isaiah it is predicted that “ Your sons will
all be taught by Yahweh. The prosperity of your sons will
be great ” (Isa. 54, 13).
Our Lord explains these words of the Old Testament.
He compares Himself to the good shepherd (Jn. 10, 1) who
leads his sheep to pasture, calling each one by name. They
follow him because they hear his voice and recognize it.
In the same way Our Lord leads our souls to the eternal
pastures, that we may be nourished not only by bread, but
by the word of God, by the mystery of the kingdom of
heaven. At the center of these eternal pastures is found
the fountain of living water about which Jesus spoke to the
sinful Samaritan woman in spite of her mistakes. “ If you
only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying
to you: Give Me a drink, you would have been the one to
ask, and He would have given you living water ” (Jn. 4, 10).
At Jerusalem on one of the great feast days, Jesus stood
at the foot of the temple and cried out to all, not just to
some privileged ones: “ If any man is thirsty, let him come
to Me! Let the man come and drink who believes in Me!
As scripture says (Isa. 58, 11): From his breast shall flow
fountains of living water ” (Jn. 7, 37-38).
This fountain of living water (Jons vivus) — as Our
Lord will later explain — is the Holy Spirit, the Counselor
whom He sends, who teaches all things and enables us
to penetrate the intimate sense of the Gospel. This Holy
Spirit, the principle of the seven gifts, dwells in us through
charity, as St. Paul says. Consequently, the Holy Spirit is
found in every soul that is in the state of grace. Certainly it
is not in order to remain inactive that the Spirit dwells there.
It is not to be silent that the Divine Counselor lives in us.
On the contrary, the Holy Spirit does not cease to speak
to souls, as the author of the Imitation (HI, chap. 3) says,
but many are deaf to His voice because they are listening
to the voice of the world or to themselves. The Holy Spirit
is in the soul and operates there in proportion to the growth

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of charity. And He says, not only to privileged souls but
to all: “ Love the Lord your God with your whole heart,
and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, and
with your whole strength ” (cf. Deut. 6, 5; Mk. 12, 30).
Do not set limits for your love!
Evidently, then, according to the testimony of the Lord,
all souls are called to nourish themselves in the eternal
pastures, to quench their thirst at the fountain of the living
water of mental prayer and to be interiorly instructed by
the Spirit of God. It is our fault if there are “ many called
and few chosen. ” The fault lies in our lack of humility and
love. If we were more humble and more devoutly intent
on having the kingdom of God in us, then wisdom, which
hides itself from the prudent and the wise, would be revealed
to us and no one could accuse us of presumption.
Theology makes the teachings in Sacred Scripture still
more precise (cf. S.T. I-II, q. 68, a. 1 and 2). St. Thomas
explains that with regard to heaven, our supernatural end,
the moral virtues are not sufficient; nor are the theological
virtues of faith, hope, and charity. They are insufficient
because they still operate in a human mode, submitting
themselves to the manner of acting of our human faculties,
which is restricted and limited like the human being himself.1
So it is that faith reveals God to us in a manner that is too
abstract, too obscure, and in formulas that are too narrow.
So it is that the initiatives of hope and charity, as long as
they are tempered by prudence—even though it is Christian
prudence—do not go beyond a certain measure, a happy
medium that still remains human.
This mixture of the divine and the human in the super­
natural virtues leaves us in a state of inferiority. Hence,

1 Through the
in the order related
needs to be moved
(S.T. I-II, q. 68, a.

theological and moral virtues man is not perfected
to his ultimate end in such a way that he no longer
by a certain superior inspiration of the Holy Spirit
2 ad 2).

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through them we are not sufficiently equipped to attain our
supernatural end. We must, in fact, attain it not only by
supernatural acts, but by supernatural acts performed supernaturally—by an impetus that can come only from God.
St. Thomas says that by the virtues alone we find ourselves
before our supernatural end like beginners left to themselves.
The beginner, who still does not know his trade well, knows
what is to be done but does not know how to do it as it
should be done. For this reason it is necessary that the master
who is training him take hold of his hand and himself guide
the work so that it may be presentable.
Thus our mental prayer remains too human to truly taste
the word of God. As long as it remains only the fruit of
diligent meditation, we, as St. Theresa says, drink only a
water mixed with mud that runs along the ground; this is
the human mode of our activity (Way of Perfection, chap.
19). To drink at the fountain of living water, it is necessary
that the Holy Spirit directly intervene, take possession of our
intelligence and will and communicate to them His divine
manner of thinking and loving. “ With our mouth He utters
inexpressible sounds. ” Only this divine manner of acting is
worthy of God, who must be known not as an abstract
truth but as a living truth. He must be infinitely loved.
As long as we remain here below, we will always be
beginners. Therefore, if we wish our mental prayer and our
works to be perfect it is necessary that the Holy Spirit
intervene habitually. And consequently it is necessary to
admit, besides the virtues, the permanent action of the gifts
of the Holy Spirit which make us docile to His action, to
His inspirations, and to His direction. The first of these
gifts is that of wisdom.
With only the ordinary exercise of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit we can attain even now the adult stage of the
supernatural life and become good disciples of the Holy
Spirit, habitually docile to the voice of the Master, always
ready to hear His voice. St. Paul says: “ Everyone moved

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by the Spirit is a son of God .... And if we are children
we are heirs as well ” (Rom. 8, 14 and 17). In the Psalms
it is written: “ May your good Spirit guide me on the right
way in the land of the saints ” (Ps. 143, 10). This means,
St. Thomas concludes, that no one can obtain this celestial
inheritance unless he is moved and led by the Holy Spirit.
If we observe that the gift of wisdom increases with
charity and that charity increases with humility, denial of
self, and conformity to the will of God, then we must
necessarily conclude that, since all men are called to grow
in charity, they are consequently called to grow in wisdom
to the extent of surpassing their human manner of thinking.
This is exactly what Our Lord calls “ drinking at the fountain
of living water. ” For this reason, after having said, " If
anyone wants to be a follower of Mine, let him renounce
himself and take up his cross and follow Me " (Mt. 16, 24),
He adds, “ Anyone who follows Me will not be walking in
the dark; he will have the light of life " (Jn. 8, 12).
Therefore, all men are called to this light of life after
the necessary purifications, which can be more or less painful,
more or less lengthy, according to their imperfections and
according to the degree of divine life to which God predes­
tines them. He submits to longer trials those He wishes to
bring to a greater height, but He calls all, after the necessary
purifications, to taste His word of life.
The dogma of Purgatory, also, confirms this conclusion
when it teaches us that there are certain purifications
absolutely indispensable for all souls before they can enter
heaven. Hence, if one does not undergo these purifications
with merit in this life, he necessarily undergoes them in the
next, but without merit or progress in charity. Consequently,
there is no presumption in desiring this living water of mental
prayer, just as there is none in desiring daily Communion,
although the Jansenists said the contrary. Our Lord does
not cease to call the little ones and to thank His Father for
having revealed to them what He hides from the prudent

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and the wise. If we truly desire it, the sense of the divine
certainly will be given us.
It would be presumption, however, to desire the living
water immediately, without going through the intermediate
stages, without the will to become more detached from the
world and from self, without the will to become more
humble, without the will to pledge oneself totally to confor­
mity with God’s will. It would be the kind of presumption
one might commit in receiving Holy Communion daily
without desiring to correct oneself. That would be falling
into what St. John of the Cross calls “ spiritual greed":
seeking spiritual consolations for themselves and not for
God. It is not the consolation which we should seek and
love, but God, who gives the consolation to those who
truly love Him for Himself.
It would be presumption to desire the more exalted
degrees God reserves for the saints, who, like St. Dominic,
are predestined to exercise a great influence on His Mystical
Body. Like the publican of the Gospel (Lk. 18, 13) and all
the saints, we ought to stand in the last place, conform our
will in all things to that of God, desire His kingdom and
think of Him. Then, it will be He who thinks of us and
makes us grow continually to the degree to which He has
decided to lead us.
It would be presumption to desire and to ask for visions
and revelations rather than the living water, that is, the
light of life and the intimate sense of the words of our
divine Master. Visions and revelations are extraordinary
favors which do not necessarily suppose the state of grace
and are not at all needed for a superior development of
charity. Like miracles, they have a utility that is rather
external (that is, for one’s neighbor) and if they are not
accompanied by a profound humility, they can also become
dangerous, not in themselves, but incidentally. The danger
arises inasmuch as they may make their recipients become
complacent with themselves and may lead them to illusions

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(cf. Arintero). But to ask for the meaning of the divine is
not a presumption. On the contrary, it is necessary to desire
it with ardor. “ Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you
shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.”
We should conclude then, that we must never become
discouraged before difficulties that we meet in mental prayer,
be they distractions or aridity. Our Lord, who calls us to
the goal, also offers us the graces necessary to triumph over
these obstacles. We must, however, look to see whether
these difficulties come from our lukewarmness or are a trial
sent by the Lord to purify us. " They come from our
lukewarmness,” says St. John of the Cross, “ if, not having
a taste for the things of God, we instead have a taste for
the things of the world; and if we do not have a true desire
of serving God and making progress in perfection. On the
contrary, if we are detached from the world and truly
desirous of serving God in a perfect way, these difficulties
are a trial willed by God.”
If the obstacles come from our lukewarmness, it is a sign
that the deficiency lies in our remote preparation for mental
prayer. In that case we must give ourselves generously to
a more perfect practice of mortification, of humility, and of
the three vows. If it is a question of a trial, however, we
must wait patiently and with loving resignation. If meditation
is impossible for us, we should undertake the prayer of
conformity to the will of God which consists in willing to
remain in that state, to serve Him and to acknowledge
that He is infinitely above all that we could possibly meditate.
We should not lose courage. That hour is not lost because,
despite the impotence of our thought, love was awakened and
this is what is essential.

To Allow Oneself to Be Led
We must also allow ourselves to be led through the way
that the Lord has chosen for us. To attain the living waters

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it is not enough to hope in Our Lord; we must also allow
ourselves to be led with docility through the way He has
outlined for us. There is a great way, common to all souls
without exception: humility and conformity to the will
of God. All ought to pray like the publican and hold them­
selves in the last place. It has been said for all that God
exalts the humble and humbles the proud; the mysteries of
God, hidden from the wise and the prudent, are revealed to
the little ones.
This is the only way that leads to the living waters.
Yet, along this way there are some rocky places where it
is difficult to walk, while in other places it is smoother and
covered with new grass; one part of the road is scorched
by the sun, while the other part is shady.
The Good Shepherd leads His sheep as He thinks best.
He leaves some souls in the difficult passes for a long time
to make them stronger because He has the intention of lead­
ing them to a greater height. St. Theresa remained fourteen
years unable to meditate except by reading; even this was
wearisome for her. During his apostolic voyages, Blessed
Diego of Cadiz, although he exerted a profound influence on
souls, did not find anything except dryness, confusion, and
filial fear in his daily three hours of mental prayer; only very
rarely did he feel and taste the sweetness of the divine
charity which burned in him.
If Our Lord raises the Marys instead of the Marthas to
contemplation, He also reserves for them, in the midst of
their contemplation, some crosses that are much more painful.
Without suffering as much, the Marthas, too, attain the
living waters; even if they do not attain them with as much
abundance, nonetheless, they quench their thirst and are
satiated in proportion to their desire.
There are some individuals that arrive at contemplation
very late, says St. Theresa, and sometimes they can pray
only vocally. Yet, a truly humble person ought to be content
with the road along which Our Lord leads it; it then enjoys

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divine wisdom and the light of life, even if not always fully
conscious of it.
We cannot better condense this doctrine, nor better
penetrate it and convince ourselves that it is truly the tradi­
tional doctrine of the whole Church than by reading The
Imitation of Christ (III, chap. 3), on the necessity of
listening to the word of God with humility, and by reading
the following prayer to implore the grace of devotion:
“ Speak, O Lord, because your servant listens. You alone have
the words of eternal life; make them descend like dew so
that my soul may not become like earth without water. "

CHAPTER XV

Docility to the Holy Spirit
The Lord Yahweh has opened my ear.
For my part, I made no resistance, neither
did I turn away.—Isa. 50, 5

We have said that, if we persevere in mental prayer, we
shall finally hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, who gives us
the sense of divine things and prompts us on to works
of salvation. At this point, we will consider docility to the
Holy Spirit and the means that can enable us to distinguish
His voice from those which could lead us into error.
The Movement of the Spirit

Docility to the Holy Spirit is necessary for the salvation
of every Christian soul: “ Everyone moved by the Spirit is
a son of God ” (Rom 8, 14), and " Your good Spirit will
guide me on level ground ” (Ps. 143, 10). Without the
movement and direction of the Holy Spirit we cannot arrive
at this goal; the supernatural virtues, even if guided by
Christian prudence, are insufficient. This prudence, however
supernatural it may be, still retains a human mode that is
too timid to walk befittingly in the ways of Our Lord.
We must hasten toward divine things in a divine manner,
not in a human way. Only the Holy Spirit, by His movement
and immediate direction can give us this divine impetus.
Since we are beginners, the Holy Spirit must take possession
of our intelligence and our will in order that we may
accomplish the divine works in a divine manner.

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Our Lord said to us: “I shall ask the Father, and He
will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, that
Spirit of truth whom the world can never receive since it
neither sees nor knows Him; but you know Him, because
He is with you, He is in you. I will not leave you orphans "
(Jn. 14, 16-18).
The divine Spirit, whom the Apostles received at Pentecost
and whom all Christians receive through confirmation, is the
soul of the Church, the soul of the Mystical Body of which
Christ is the head. The head cannot communicate an influx
to the members by way of the nerves if it and the members
are not animated by the same spirit. There is only one soul
for the whole body; it is whole in the entire body and whole
in every part, though it is more eminently in the head since
it is there that it exercises its most elevated operations.
The same occurs in the Mystical Body. The head is the
soul of Christ, the members are the souls in the state of
grace, and the vital influx is constituted by the actual
graces, the inspirations and attractions that move us to
accomplish the good. The one soul of this whole spiritual
body is the Holy Spirit, and, just as our will directs our
head and by means of it the other members of our body,
so the Holy Spirit moves the soul of Christ and by means
of it our souls.
During sleep our head and members live their respective
lives without the intervention of our will; but when we
are awake the matter is quite different. Thus it is that, as
long as our supernatural life is still drowsy and unconscious,
we act in a human mode, according to our human way of
being. But when it becomes more conscious, more active,
and we feel a kind of divine impetus, it is the Holy Spirit,
the Spirit of Christ, moving us by means of His gifts.
Some authors say that the action of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit is reserved solely to the practice of heroic
virtues, and that in the practice of the ordinary virtues

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these gifts remain inactive. Instead, many others, especially
among the Thomists, think that even though the influence
of these gifts is predominant in the heroic virtues, it
extends, nevertheless, to an infinite number of practical
cases in daily Christian life. They cite, for example, when
there is need for a greater readiness to tame the passions
and to resist the temptations of the devil and the world,
especially, when the infirmity and weakness of the subject
requires a more complete and efficacious help, a principle
of action more elevated than the ordinary virtue.
All persons, therefore, ought to show themselves docile
to the action of the Holy Spirit within them; all those in
the state of grace have the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and
these gifts are not in them to remain inactive. We must be
docile to the Holy Spirit by practicing all the virtues. He is
our master for contemplation and action, in all the events
and circumstances of our life. Faith, hope and charity are
rendered more active, particularly through the gifts of under­
standing, knowledge, and wisdom. Prudence is animated by
the gift of counsel; justice and religion by the gift of piety;
fortitude by the gift of the same name; and temperance by
the gift of fear of the Lord. The gift of fear of the Lord
helps in the fight against the attraction of prohibited plea­
sures and inspires the mortifications of a St. Louis Bertrand
and a St. Rose of Lima, and the preaching of a St. Vincent
Ferrer.
The gift of fortitude reanimates our courage in time of
danger, sustaining St. Peter Martyr in his office and John
of Gorcum in his torment; giving strength to St. Catherine
de’ Ricci when she was commanded to spit on her vision,
and enabling her to bear heroically the prejudices of the
community against her.
The gift of piety makes us better able to understand
and practice our religious duties and it inspires us with an
affection for God that is wholly filial. This gift is revealed

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to us especially in the life of a St. Agnes of Montepulciano
or a St. Pius V.
The gift of counsel directs us in the particularly difficult
circumstances of life and surpasses our prudence. It was in
this gift that St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, excelled.
The gift of knowledge enables us to judge correctly
human things when they are opposed to the divine; it shows
us their vanity. It makes us feel, above all, the infinite
gravity of sin as an offense to God and a damage to the
soul. It is this gift of knowledge which made St. Dominic
cry when he exclaimed during his prayers: “ Lord, Lord,
why are there sinners? ” The profound thought of moral
miseries caused the saint a deep sadness that often made
him weep in the pulpit.
The gift of understanding enables us to comprehend the
truths of faith and grasp their meaning hidden under the
letter; it penetrates beyond appearances and makes the
hidden thought burst out. It is the gift of understanding
that illumines the words of Sacred Scripture in the Dia­
logues and Letters of St. Catherine of Siena.
Finally, the gift of wisdom infuses us with such a sense
of God and divine things that it enables us to judge all
things in relation to their first cause and their ultimate end.
It was the gift of wisdom that presided at the composition
of that wonderful synthesis, the Summa of St. Thomas.
In it all, absolutely all, is subordinated to the idea of God,
the point of meeting for every judgment regarding man,
human liberty, and social life. Whatever subject St. Thomas
treats, fundamentally it is always of God that he speaks
because he connects everything to its first cause and its
ultimate reason for existence. And it was the gift of wisdom
that also nourished his mental prayer and dictated to him
the office of the feast of Corpus Christi.
These seven gifts, these seven divine inspirations, are
present in us—even if not in the same measure as they are

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found in the great saints—and it is the same supernatural
quality of light and love that should inspire our life. Hence,
we should be docile to this inspiration, to that voice of
the Spirit, in mental prayer, in work, in the common life,
and in the midst of difficulties that we meet.
That Voice

To be docile to the voice of the Holy Spirit we must
(1) be able to hear it and (2) learn to distinguish it from
all others that could draw us into error. To be able to hear
it, it is necessary that we be recollected, detached from the
world, and practice mortification of our heart, of our will,
and of our judgment. If there is no silence in our soul and
the voice of the world and the passions agitate it, we cannot
hear the interior word of our Master. If we habitually take
pleasure in our own way of seeing things and do not wish
to receive counseling from anyone, we shall hear, above
all else, ourselves, or else a perfidious and dangerous voice
that seeks the way of our heart.
To hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, then, it is necessary
that we obtain silence within ourselves by interior mortifi­
cation and detachment. Even then this voice of the Spirit
remains mysterious, as Our Lord said to Nicodemus: “ The
wind blows wherever it pleases; you hear its sound, but
you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
That is how it is with all who are born of the Spirit ’’
(Jn. 3, 8).1 In fact, this voice begins as an inspiration, as

1 Hello, in regard to St. Catherine of Genoa, says: “ In the life of
the saints, and especially in the life of the contemplative saints, there is a
succession of incomprehensible steps: they hesitate, they vacillate, they
move ahead, they turn back, they change their paths. One has the impression
that they are wasting time. It seems that the mysterious ways through
which they are led never finish. God teaches them humility and makes
them understand their impotence and nothingness ” (Hello, Physiognomy of
the Saints, p. 310).

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an obscure light; but if one perseveres in humility and
conformity to the will of God, it clearly shows its divine
origin to the conscience and, though it remains mysterious,
it becomes the shining night that Sacred Scripture speaks
of: “ And night is my illumination in my delights "
(Ps. 139, 12).
To avoid all illusions we must learn to distinguish the
Spirit of God from two other spirits or inspirations which
at the beginning seem right, but lead to death. St. John
says: “ It is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can
trust; test them " (I Jn. 4, 1). Besides the Spirit of God,
there is also the spirit of the devil, who sometimes transforms
himself into an angel of light. There is also the purely
natural spirit that proceeds from our fallen human nature,
which, with its drives and enthusiasms, is a source of
illusion.
As a rule, it is one of these three spirits that dominates
in a soul: in perverse souls it is the spirit of the devil, in
lukewarm souls the natural spirit. In those that have begun
to give themselves to the interior life, however, the Spirit
of God habitually dominates, although there is still much
interference from the natural spirit and the spirit of evil.
Even in perfect souls God permits certain imperfections—
sometimes more apparent than real—to maintain them in
humility and give them the occasion to practice the opposite
virtues.
It is, therefore, important both to distinguish well which
is the spirit that prompts us to act, and also to understand
in what things we are " of God, " as St. John says, and in
what things we are “ of ourselves.” To distinguish which
spirit is making us act, we must discern the results of its
influence and then compare them with what the Gospel
teaches us about the Christian virtues. Does such an influence
diminish or increase these virtues in us? "A tree is to be
judged by its fruits.” This is not always easy, because the
devil has it in his interest to hide himself. The saints see

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the world filled with devils, and we are continually exposed
to their influence.
The natural spirit (Imit. Ill, chap 54) is an enemy of
mortification. It seeks its own pleasure even in the super­
natural life, and thus falls into spiritual greed (St. John of
the Cross). It stops before the first difficulties it meets on
the road of virtue, complains of the cross, and becomes
irritated. It is indifferent toward the glory of God, toward
his kingdom, and toward the salvation of souls. The spirit
of the devil moves us first to exalt ourselves in pride in
order that it may then throw us into uneasiness and
discouragement. To recognize its influence it is enough to
observe it in relation to mortification, humility and the
three theological virtues.
It does not necessarily separate us from exterior morti­
fications. Instead, it sometimes even moves us to an exterior
mortification that is exaggerated and obviously visible, thus
sustaining our spiritual pride and destroying our health.
But it does not move us at all toward the interior mortification
of our own will and judgment. On the contrary, it makes us
have a great esteem for ourselves, makes us prefer ourselves
to others and makes us boast of receiving divine favors.
(Arintero adds that it makes us prefer our own Order to
other Orders because we are playing a part in it).
This spiritual pride is accompanied by a false humility
that makes us speak ill of ourselves to hinder others from
doing so and to make them believe in our humility. Instead
of nourishing our faith by making us meditate on what is
simple in the Gospel, it draws our attention to what is the
most extraordinary and often completely extraneous to our
vocation. Its scheme for rousing our hope is that of raising
within us the presumption of wishing to be perfect saints
immediately, without passing through the indispensable stages
of detachment. Instead of stirring up our charity, it cultivates
self-love in us; instead of bringing us to love our neighbor,
it brings us to judge him severely, to be scandalized by his

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faults and to condemn him. It imitates the zeal of charity
by inspiring us with a discontented zeal that always wishes to
reprove others and to correct them, instead of correcting
ourselves.
All this, instead of generating peace, gives birth to
division and hatred. We dare no longer to talk together
because we could not stand being contradicted; we no longer
see anything but ourselves and we adore ourselves on the
pedestal on which we have placed ourselves.
If we commit an offense that is too obvious to hide, we
fall into anxiety, discouragement and blindness, and the
devil, who prior to the sin hindered us from seeing the
danger, now exaggerates the difficulties in returning to God.
After having lifted us up to a proud height, Satan throws us
down into spiritual desolation, modeling us to his image just
as Our Lord wishes to model us to His.
Therefore, let us be alert! If we feel a great devotion,
and yet come from our prayers with a greater amount of
self-love, if we have something contrary to our superiors and
are not simple in dealing with our spiritual director, then
the spirit of evil is in us.
The signs of the Spirit of God, however, are absolutely
the opposite. This spirit, also, leads us to exterior mortifi­
cation, yet, in this sense differs from the natural spirit: it
promotes an exterior mortification regulated by discretion
and obedience which does not tend to make us attract notice
or ruin our health. This Spirit of God makes us realize that
exterior mortification amounts to very little without a
corresponding mortification of the heart, the will, and the
judgment—and in this it differs from the spirit of the devil.
It inspires in us a true humility which prohibits us from
preferring ourselves to others, does not fear contempt, and
keeps silent about its divine favors (which, however, it does
not negate or deny, but for which it gives all glory to God).
It nurtures our faith with what is simple and sublime
in the Gospel, in conformity with our vocation; it induces

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us to meditate on the Gospel, aiding us with the traditional
interpretation of the Fathers, without having recourse to
hazardous and superficial novelties destined to be soon for­
gotten. It makes us readily submit to the Supreme Pontiff,
to the bishops, our superiors, and our spiritual director. It
increases in us the spirit of faith, which makes us see Our
Lord in all our legitimate superiors.
It revives our hope without leading us into presumption.
It awakens in us a desire for the living waters of mental
prayer while keeping us conscious of the fact that this is
to be had by passing through successive stages, and that
the way along which we must travel is that of humility and
the cross.
It increases the fervor of our charity; it infuses zeal for
the glory of God and a complete forgetfulness of ourselves.
It makes us desire that the name of God be hallowed, that
His kingdom come, that His will be done; and it helps us
forget ourselves, leaving the care of ourselves to God, while
we think of Him before all else. It gives us love of neighbor,
hinders us from making rash judgments about him and of
being scandalized by his mistakes. It rouses in us a zeal for
the salvation of souls; a zeal, however, that has no bitterness
but instead is mild, full of meekness, profoundly humble,
discrete, patient, submissive in obedience; a zeal that edifies,
above all, by example and prayer and not with inopportune
warnings. And this Spirit strengthens our patience in time
of trials.
Finally, through all these means the Spirit of God gives
us joy and interior peace, peace with ourselves and with
others. While the spirit of the devil builds us up to an
immense pride so that we may then be thrown down into
despair, the Spirit of God, if we fall, speaks to us of the
mercy of our Father instead of exaggerating the difficulties
of repentance.
All these signs are described by the Apostle St. Paul
(Gal. 5, 22-23). In general, they can be reduced to two:

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simple humility and docility to one’s superior and spiritual
director. “ But we are children of God, and those who
know God listen to us; those who are not of God refuse
to listen to us. This is how we can tell the spirit of truth
from the spirit of falsehood ” (I Jn. 4, 6).
If it is no longer a question of the general inspiration of
our life, but of a particular act, we must take into account
what St. Ignatius and St. John of the Cross say: " It is a
sign that it is God who visits the soul when no natural
cause has brought us to the profound consolation by which
the soul feels itself unexpectedly pervaded.” (The devil can
give only superficial joy since he cannot act directly on the
intelligence and the will, but only on the imagination and
sensibility). We must distinguish with much care, however,
the first moment from those which follow, even though the
soul may still feel the ardor and the heavenly favors it has
received. In the period of time that follows it often happens
that—whether by habit or by our personal way of judging
and seeing, or by the inspiration of good or bad inclination—
we conceive certain thoughts and form some projects that
do not come directly from God. They ought to be first
examined with care before they obtain our assent and are
put into execution. Hence the necessity again of having
recourse to our spiritual director. This made St. Theresa
say that the more a soul progresses the more need it has for
an enlightened director to distinguish the inspirations of
the Holy Spirit that lead it.
To Follow the Voice of the Spirit

When we have recognized the voice of the Holy Spirit,
and our superiors and directors have said that we must go
forward, we ought no longer to have any hesitation. “ The
Lord Yahweh has opened my ear. For my part, I made no
resistance ” (Isa. 50, 5). In this way the saints went ahead,
despite their trials and the judgments of the world. They

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knew that God was with them. Thus Abraham, the father
of believers, left his country on the order of God, to go to
an unknown country in which, humanly speaking, he could
not hope for any hospitality.
Thus St. Paul, on taking leave of the faithful at Miletus
said to them: “ And now you see me a prisoner already in
spirit; I am on my way to Jerusalem, but have no idea what
will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit, in
town after town, has made it clear enough that imprisonment
and persecution await me. But life to me is not a thing to
waste words on, provided that when I finish my race I have
carried out the mission the Lord Jesus gave me—and that
was to bear witness to the Good News of God’s grace ”
(Acts 20, 22-24).
Thus when Father Michaelis undertook reform in our
Order, he proceeded very slowly at the beginning and took
all precautions to be certain of what God willed. When he
knew God’s will, no obstacle placed in his way by a human
will could stop him. This man was not guided by his own
spirit, but by the Spirit of God. Consequently, we should
also conduct ourselves in the same way to reform our personal
lives. We should follow the voice of the Holy Spirit as
soon as we recognize it. Indeed, every day we say in the
Invitatory of Matins: “ Today, if you hear His voice, do
not harden your hearts.”
We ought to walk in the way of humility, faith, hope,
and charity in which the Holy Spirit would like to see us
run and fly. We should invoke Him with an ardent prayer:
“ Send forth your Spirit and they will be created, and you
will renew the face of the earth " (Ps. 104, 30). Then,
under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, we will walk like
the artist, who, following his own genius, does not think
of the rules of art, but observes them only because he
possesses their spirit. We will practice all the virtues, even
those that are seemingly most opposed: humility and the

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burning desire of perfection, firmness and meekness, wisdom
that sees all in God and prudence that is preoccupied with
details. In this way we will have the Spirit of Life.
We should often repeat this sublime prayer of the
Church: “ Come, Holy Spirit, and from on high send forth
the ray of Your light.”

CHAPTER XVI

Zeal for the Glory of God
and the Salvation of Souls
I have come to bring fire on the earth,
and how 1 wish it were blazing already!—
Lk. 12, 49

We have seen that love of neighbor is none other than
the extension of love of God. Hence, it is a question of
one and the same love that is supernatural, theological and
essentially divine. In the soul of a religious this love is to
become so intense and so ardent as to merit the name of
zeal. For a soul consecrated to God it is a duty, an
indispensable obligation, to nourish in itself zeal for the
glory of God and the salvation of souls. Always it is a
question, fundamentally, of the same zeal, of the flame
of the one and same love.
The Motive

We ought to make this zeal increase in us (1) because
religious profession imposes the obligation of imitating Our
Lord, and (2) because we belong to an Order founded
essentially for the salvation of souls.

(1) We ought to nourish this zeal if we wish to imitate
Our Lord. The dominant virtue of the Sacred Heart is
evidently charity, but it is an intense and ardent charity
that is likewise a zeal for the glory of God and the salva-

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tion of souls. “ I have come to bring fire on the earth, and
how I wish it were blazing already! ”
Our Lord was able to call His zeal for God His food.
" My food is to do the will of the One who sent Me ”
(Jn. 4, 34), to glorify the Father, to bring it about that
His Name be sanctified, that His kingdom come, that His
will be done. And this will of the Father is precisely the
sanctification of souls that are called to know Him, to love
Him above everything and to glorify Him in receiving
from Him eternal beatitude.
Our Lord was, as it were, devoured by this twofold zeal
for God and for souls during His entire life—particularly
on the Cross—and He still is in the Eucharist. During His
life He manifested the Name of God to men, revealed God
as a Father of all peoples without distinction of class or
nation; He revealed God to us as a light which, coming
into this world, illumines every man and takes pleasure
especially in illuminating the small and the humble; He
revealed God to us as love and mercy, ever looking over
us to heal us. He proclaimed the rights of God as the
foundation of all justice, and in the first place God’s right of
being known, loved and glorified.
He declared that the gravest of all evils was the insult
made to His Father who is infinitely good. This insult,
whose infinite gravity in its total extension into the past
and future He penetrated and felt, was the great suffering
of His life. If sons instinctively suffer because of an offense
made to their father, how much did Our Lord have to
suffer—especially when He saw that this offense came
from us whom He wished to save!
He willed to offer Himself as a victim in our place to
make reparation and obtain for us pardon. On the Cross
He took upon Himself the iniquities of all enemies, His
Own and His Father’s; He suffered for all our sins as if
He had been guilty—He who was devoured by a burning
thirst for the glory of God. And this indescribable suffering

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He offered to His Father for us, making to God a reparation
as great as God Himself. This insult could not cease to
exist until men separated from God had been led back to
Him for their salvation and His glory; for this reason, on
the Cross He had a thirst for our souls, even to the point
of dying for them.
When St. Catherine of Siena asked Him, “ My Lord,
what was your greatest pain, that of the body or that
of desire? " Jesus replied to her with infinite tenderness:
" My child, there can be no comparison between something
finite and something infinite. Consider that the pain of
My body was limited, while My desire for the salvation
of souls was infinite. This burning thirst, this cross of desire,
I felt all My life. It was more painful for Me than all
the pains that I bore in My body. Nevertheless, My soul was
moved with joy seeing the final moment approach, especially
at the supper of Holy Thursday when I said, ' I have
desired ardently to eat this Pasch with you, ’ that is,
sacrifice My body to My Father. I had a great joy, a great
consolation, because I saw the time arrive when this cross
of desire would cease for Me; and the closer I felt Myself
to the flagellation and the other torments of My body,
the more I felt the pain in Me diminish. The pain of the
body made that of desire disappear, because I saw completed
what I had desired. With death on the Cross the pain of
the holy desire ended, but not the desire and the hunger
I have for your salvation. If this love that I have for you
were extinguished, you would no longer exist, since it is
only this love that maintains you in life.”
In the Eucharist there is the same zeal for God and
for mankind. On the altar and in the tabernacle, Jesus
is the most excellent Adorer of the Majesty of His Father.
Thus, even in the smallest village God is adored without
an instant of interruption. Night and day, when the faithful
are working or resting, there is One who does not cease
in rendering to God a cult worthy of Him, because Our

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Lord, always living, does not cease to intercede for us
and to offer Himself as victim to make reparation for our
offenses. In this same Sacrament of love, the Sacred Heart
expresses to us its thirst for our souls. Every day He
offers Himself to us as food, to sanctify us more and more
and to assimilate us to Himself.
“ My delights are among the sons of men ” (Prov. 8, 31).
He asks us for our love as if He had need of us, whereas
it is we who can do nothing without Him. He becomes the
support and consolation of thousands of fervent souls, from
the missionary who exposes himself to death that he might
spread the Gospel, to the humble Christian woman who,
obliged to live in the world and sometimes in very perverse
surroundings, comes to seek every morning in Holy Com­
munion the strength to defend herself from the temptations
that surround her.
Our religious profession enjoins us to imitate this ardent
zeal of Our Lord. St. Catherine of Siena said: “ I should
like to see you suffer so much from hunger for the salva­
tion of souls that you would be able to die for them as
Christ Jesus or, at least, that you might die perfectly to
the world and to yourselves.”

(2) We ought to nourish this zeal also because we belong
to an Order founded essentially for the salvation of men.
We should recall the example of our father, St. Dominic:
his incessant prayer, his nocturnal flagellations and his
continual preaching in the midst of the greatest difficulties
provoked by the heretics.
This ardent zeal made him say to his enemies, from
whom he had unwittingly escaped: “ If you had captured
me, I would have begged you not to kill me with one blow,
but to cut off my members one by one, and after putting
the mutilated pieces before me, to finish by snatching out
my eyes and leaving me immersed in my blood.” The whole
heart of St. Dominic is in this heroic cry, which reminds

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us of the ardor of the great martyr, St. Ignatius of Antioch,
who desired to be chewed and devoured by the wild beasts
for the glory of Jesus Christ. We should recall the zeal
of St. Catherine of Siena for some persons who generally
did not thank her except with insult and slander.
The Extension

We must direct this zeal in a particular way to the
salvation of those in our homeland. In increasing numbers
these people are separated from God and Christ. Without
faith, hope and charity they have no other concern than
pleasures of the world and their fortunes. They drink
iniquity like water with almost no awareness, and they
run with indifference toward damnation. An immense mul­
titude of poor, misled people amuse themselves on the
brink of an abyss that at any moment can swallow them
up for eternity. Meanwhile, some extremely perverse
individuals, with a perversity worse than merely human,
furiously persist with all means to deprive the little ones
of the light of life and the bread of life.
We should often think about this militant Church that
is our mother. The war that is waged against her is hateful,
terrible in its consequences, entirely different from every
other war, without anything human about it. A war of
the spirit, loaded with heavy responsibilities, profound,
terrible and hateful like the sins of the spirit, a war that
is waged in the inner recesses of the heart between Our
Lord and the devil. And therein is found the whole history
of the world.
The Church sees the eternal consequences for those
who wage this war against her, yet she continues to love
them as sons and to pray that God will cure them of their
blindness and stop them on the road to eternal damnation
where their fury drives them. Upon us, fellow religious,

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devolves the task of making reparation by loving our Mother,
the Church, with all our spirit, with the most complete
submission, with all our heart, with all our soul, and with
all our strength.
Our zeal must extend likewise to the Church in purgatory.
This Church is for us truly our neighbor. We ought to
assist the suffering members of Christ and give them relief
because we all belong to the same body. These souls, who
are our brothers and sisters, find themselves in indescribable
torments, suffering both the pain of loss and of the senses.
St. Catherine de’ Ricci suffered this pain of the senses
for a soul for whom she offered herself. A mysterious flame
was lighted in her body. From her head to her feet were
formed blisters filled with boiling water and when these
were absorbed the body of the saint seemed parched with
fire. She remained in her cell which became like an oven,
painfully enduring the heat. This torment lasted forty days
when it suddenly ended.
But the souls of purgatory suffer above all else the
pain of the loss of, or rather the privation of, God. Here
below this privation does not make us suffer because this
is our condition. For the souls in purgatory it is different
because they should already be seeing God. They have
arrived at the end of their voyage, are separated from the
world, are deprived of their consolations, diversions and
every means of being able to merit. All that is in them urges
them toward a God whom they should, but do not, possess.
They find themselves, as it were, suspended between two
worlds. Their life goes on, no longer to merit, but to
suffer. They are completely immersed in suffering, and they
think of nothing else. St Augustine and St. Thomas both
affirm that the smallest of their pains is greater than
all those that can be experienced in this world. Yet,
all these souls are holy, temples of the Holy Spirit, members
of Christ, incapable of sin in the sufferings they bear for
love of divine justice.

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These souls wait for our help, our alms. They no longer
can merit, but we can merit for them. They no longer can
gain indulgences, while we, with a bit of good will and the
spirit of faith, can gain indulgences for them by drawing
from the infinite treasury of the Church, thus hastening their
liberation. These are the motives of our zeal, which should
be extended to all souls.

How Is This Zeal to Be Exercised?
This zeal is to be exercised according to the example of
Our Lord, of St. Dominic, and of St. Catherine of Siena.
This means, by prayer, by penance, and by the spiritual and
corporal works of mercy which our rule imposes on us.
Today many works of all types are undertaken, but often
the very soul of these works is forgotten: prayer and
penance. Our Lady of Lourdes, in the ninteenth century, a
century so proud of its attainments, found nothing more
necessary to say than: “ Pray and do penance.”
Prayer is the true and most powerful instrument of
action being the first condition and the soul of the apostolic
life. Works without prayer are sterile, because it is grace
that acts on souls and grace is attained by prayer: “ Ask
and you will receive.” The apostolate of prayer must con­
stantly support that of word and of action. The humble
lay sister kneeling at the foot of the Crucifix can obtain
much more by her prayer than a preacher of great talent
who does not pray. Talent by itself does nothing but make
a bit of noise. “ It is only a tinkling cymbal,” as St. Paul
says (I Cor. 13, 1), while prayer, even alone, without skill
and talent, accomplishes wonders and is capable of moving
mountains.
It was revealed to St. Theresa that, by her prayer at
the foot of the Crucifix, she had converted as many souls
as St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of India, who traveled
through the whole world carrying the word of God. We

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should remember that the prayer which St. Stephen, the
first martyr, spoke as he ascended into heaven, offered on
behalf of those stoning him, drew down grace on the soul
of St. Paul who was guarding the cloaks of those fanatics.
We ought to recall the force of the prayer of St. Peter
Martyr when, no longer able to preach, breathing his last
and bathed in his own blood, he ardently prayed for his
executioner. The prayer of St. Peter Martyr converted that
brutal soul, which up to that time had known only the
vilest and most violent passions, into the soul of a saint.
So intense was the light that illuminated the spirit of that
wretched man, so penetrating was the contrition that over­
turned his heart, that he bitterly wept over his crime, asked
for the Dominican habit and spent forty years in the practice
of the most heroic virtues and most rigorous penance. He
edified his confreres and the entire city to such a point
that they all called him “ the blessed one.” He died a saint
and his remains were venerated. This is the force of prayer
for the salvation of souls! Let us pray, then, that the
preaching of our confreres bears good fruit.
That charming, gracious Carmelite, St. Therese of the
Child Jesus, hidden in her monastery, by her prayers made
the apostolate of two missionaries of India fruitful by
preparing souls to receive their word and keep it.
We should also pray for the souls in purgatory, of whom
we spoke earlier. It would be so easy to seek to gain for
them the plenary indulgences on the feast days of our
saints and all the other indulgences that the Church in
her solicitude deigns to concede for the benefit of these
poor souls. The question here is not of accomplishing
“ the heroic act ” of applying all our meritorious acts to
the total benefit of these souls. If we wish to despoil
ourselves in this way, we should think it over thoroughly
and seek counsel, and take into account what we are giving
and what we are renouncing, and what a terrible increase
of pain may be its inevitable consequence. We must be

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assured that this act of generosity does not have its origin
in an enthusiastic imagination, but rather in charity and
the inspiration of God. Hence, it is not fitting to make
such a renunciation without the consent of our spiritual
director.
Some prefer to let Our Lord dispose of their acts of
satisfaction and their merits without first determining how
He should dispose of them. Without coming to this point,
there are so many merits and sacrifices we can offer every
day to hasten the liberation of these souls! In any case,
prayer is always fruitful. Holy persons cannot render it
sterile, as can sinners, who can always refuse to be converted.
In addition to prayer, the zeal of St. Dominic added
penance for those who do no penance and mortification
for those who do not mortify themselves. The perfect, in
imitation of Christ, are to redeem souls with their
blood. As St. Theresa writes: “ The religious who comes
into the convent solely to expiate her sins—I don’t under­
stand what on earth she is doing! ”
In sanctifying ourselves we are to sanctify our brethren
too. A great means of sanctification, together with prayer,
is the cross. When we crucify our body, Our Lord can
spare some poor sick body—sick, perhaps through its own
fault and with little strength left—or the body of a
poor man who needs his health to earn bread for his
children. When we immolate our heart to God, Our Lord
can cure a sick heart that lacks strength to break its chains.
When we immolate our will to God, Our Lord raises up a
dead will. These are the two great means of exercising our
zeal for the salvation of others: prayer and penance.
To these, however, we must add the spiritual and
corporal works of mercy as well as those imposed by our
rule: Christian instruction and education, education given
by example and word. We have the splendid mission of
forming the Christian spirit, of forming hearts and wills
to the love of God and neighbor and—why not say it?—of

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forming and generating Jesus Christ in the souls of chil­
dren, who were loved so much by Our Lord. Thus, later,
they may shine in the world like the small “ city built on
the mountain " of which Our Lord speaks (Mt. 5, 14).
The importance of this mission becomes greater in the
age we are going through today, when almost “ all truth
has vanished from among the sons of man ” (Ps. 12, 2)—the
truths of God, the excess of His love, His indefeasible
rights and the rigor of His justice, the truths regarding
the great duties toward father and mother, toward country,
toward the poor of Christ.
We have the mission of molding these children to
self-denial, to humility, to the spirit of faith and charity.
We have the mission of revealing to them the cult of the
Sacred Heart and of the Blessed Virgin, the mission of
teaching them that the rich man must consider himself
solely an administrator of the goods of God and must help
those who are dying of hunger, instead of aggravating them
with his egoism, his luxury and his insatiable need of
enjoyment. This is the sublime mission, blessed by God,
if we consider that the child is like a spring and as we make
the spring, so will be the stream, that is, the family. Where
will this which we begin reach? Only God knows. This
zeal must always be accompanied by prudence and tempered
by humility and meekness, but without ceasing to be ardent.
Lord, give us this zeal, the dominant virtue of your
Sacred Heart, the virtue of our blessed father St. Dominic.
Teach us to pray ardently for souls that are lost, teach us
to carry the cross for them because You have conceded
us immense graces they have not received. Make our suffer­
ings, supported in union with You, diminish the blindness
of sinners and move their heart. Lord, give us this thirst
for souls even to the point of dying for them, as you died
for them; or, certainly, to the point of truly dying to
ourselves to live eternally in You with these souls!

CHAPTER

XVII

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Son, behold thy Mother.—Jn. 19, 27

We cannot preach a retreat to religious, and above all
to contemplative religious, without dedicating a discourse
to the great devotion we ought to have toward the Mother
of God. Therefore, I should like to speak of the Virgin
Mary, our Mother and our Mediatrix, being inspired above
all by the doctrine of a saint whom we know very well,
St. Louis Grignon de Montfort, author of the book True
Devotion to Mary.
This profitable work was found under a layer of dust
only after the French Revolution. Since then, the book
has been translated into all the major languages. I believe
that this is the book that has contributed most in spreading
the doctrine of the universal mediation of the Blessed
Virgin. This doctrine had existed previously. Father Olier
recalled it and taught it to his first sons, and they in
turn, trained St. Louis Grignon. It was the latter who
received infused contemplation of the mystery of the Blessed
Virgin, and when he wrote on this subject he could
continue at great length because he spoke from the abundance
of his heart. This small tract is a treasure for the Church,
as is indeed its summary, entitled “ The Secret of Mary,”
which the Saint made for a sister religious.
He says first of all that he is concerned with devotion
to Mary and seeks to demonstrate its principal levels and
the heights to which it should reach. He begins with the
observation that the Protestants wished to deny the

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mediation of Mary, while the Jansenists wanted to diminish
it. He comments on some Catholics who had allowed
themselves to be influenced: “ Also among the Catholics
there are some who know the Virgin Mary only in a
speculative way. They fear that in their devotion to the
Holy Virgin they may be trespassing, that they may be
injuring their devotion to Our Lord.” They seem to believe
that Mary is an obstacle to attaining divine union, whereas
in reality she exercises all her influence to lead us to the
most intimate union with her Son.
When we approach the Virgin, we are indeed approach­
ing a person in whom Our Lord was pleased and in
whom the Holy Trinity dwells and reigns most profoundly.
To approach her, means to approach her Son and her
heavenly Father. We will analyze the question, then, by
dividing the subject into the following three points: why
we should have great devotion to Mary; how we should
practice it; and what are its fruits.
Why We Should Have a Great Devotion to the Holy Virgin

Theology tells us that for Mary we ought to have not
only a cult of dulia such as is owed to the saints, but a cult
of hyperdulia. Hyperdulia, in fact, comes immediately after
the cult of latria which is reserved for God, and for the
divine humanity of Our Savior inasmuch as it is united to
the Person of the Word and is the sensible instrument of
His immense love.
But why should we render a cult of hyperdulia to Mary?
If she were only “ full of grace ” and not also the Mother
of God, would there have to be a cult of hyperdulia for
her? The greater part of the theologians respond negatively
and the Congregation of Rites is fully in agreement with
them on this point. Therefore, it is only because she is the
Mother of God that she is owed this cult, and not because
she is full of grace. If she were full of grace without being

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the Mother of God we would not render her a special
cult. Such worship is owed her by reason of her divine
maternity. This latter is of an order that not only surpasses
the natural order, but even the order of grace and glory
because it has recourse to the hypostatic order constituted
by the very mystery of the Incarnation.
Mary is the Mother of Jesus who is God, and for this
reason her motherhood terminates in the very Person of
the Incarnate Word and reaches to the very boundaries of
Divinity. Mary is the Mother of Jesus who is God. Certainly,
she did not give Him His divine nature, but only His
human nature. She is Mother, however, not precisely by
reason of the humanity of Jesus, but by reason of the
Incarnate Word because motherhood terminates not in a
nature, but in the person possessing this nature: in this
case in the very Person of the Word.
The Most Holy Virgin, since she conceived Him corpo­
really and spiritually, is His Mother in two ways: (1) cor­
poreally, since He is flesh of her flesh, and the torch of His
human life was kindled in the womb of the Virgin by the
work of the Holy Spirit; and (2) spiritually, inasmuch as
the formal consent of the Virgin was necessary so that the
Word might be united in her to our nature and the mystery
of the Incarnation be fulfilled in this way. From all eternity
God had decreed to concede to Mary a grace that would
let her say her “ fiat ” to the Incarnation. And she said
it with greatest humility, with faith and courage because
from the book of Isaiah she had learned what the sufferings
of Our Lord would be.
This dignity of the Mother of God, being of the hypo­
static order, surpasses that of all the saints together. Now it
is precisely in view of this motherhood that Mary has
received all the privileges that were conceded to her. God
has bestowed all these privileges on her that she might
be the worthy Mother of Our Lord. She had been predestined,
in the first place, to the divine Motherhood and in view of

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this Motherhood, to a very high degree of grace and
glory—so much so that the initial grace she received at the
instant of her Immaculate Conception already surpassed the
final grace of all the saints together. This follows since, as
the Fathers say, God loved the Holy Virgin as His future
Mother already at the instant of her conception. This love
for her, greater than that which He had for all creatures
and for all the angels together, produced in her a propor­
tionate grace. If, therefore, the Virgin alone was loved
more than all the hierarchies of the angels, then she had
received from the first instant an initial fullness of grace
and charity that surpasses the final grace of all the saints.
To understand this better, we can make use of some
analogies. A most beautiful diamond is worth much more
than many ordinary gems. It is said that the founder of
an Order, in view of the Order he is to found and for
which he has received a special inspiration, is worth more
than all his companions combined. It is said also that
St. Thomas by himself is worth more than all his commen­
tators together, because he received a grace of illumination
that permitted him to see better than others the questions
he solved. He saw them from a point of view that was
higher and in a way more universal; so his authority prevails.
Consequently, we need not be surprised if Pius XI said
that “ the initial fullness of grace in Mary already surpasses
the sum total of grace of all the saints together before their
entrance into glory.”
In the moment in which she received this fullness, Mary
was preserved from original sin because it was necessary
that the perfect Redeemer Jesus Christ exercise a sovereign
redemption, at least with regard to the one soul that would
be most intimately associated with Him in the work of
redemption. If a doctor were to succeed not only in helping
someone recover from a mortal wound, but in preventing
its occurrence, it could be said that he is a savior in the
natural order. In this sense is Our Lord the Savior of His

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Mother. The Holy Virgin was preserved from original sin
because of the merits of her Son, and for the purpose of
becoming His worthy Mother. From that instant, grace, with
charity and the virtues, increased in her soul in magnificent
crescendo until her death.
Just as bodies fall faster the closer they come to earth,
so souls in the state of grace ought to advance faster toward
God the closer they come to Him and are drawn by Him.
This is realized in the saints toward the end of their lives.
But this marvelous law of acceleration is realized above all
in the Holy Virgin because in her there was no longer
anything that could slow down the movement of her ascent
toward God: neither original sin, nor any personal sin,
nor any imperfection of the will. Consequently, in her there
was a marvelous progress, an acceleration more and more
pronounced. Here below, the Virgin by herself had greater
power than all the saints together, so much more that the
saints can do nothing without her help; she is truly the
universal Mediatrix.
The reason why we owe this cult to Mary derives, there­
fore, from the fact that she is the Mother of God, and to
be such she received the fullness of grace and all privileges.
She will always remain, in heaven just as on earth, the
worthy Mother of Our Lord, and Our Lord in heaven
will honor her as His Mother.
Mary is our Mother and universal Mediatrix. She is
our Mother above all because she gives us the Author of
Grace. She is Mater Salvatoris. By that very fact she is
already our Mediatrix since it is through her and her fiat
that Jesus was given to the world as Our Savior, brother
and victim.
She became still more our Mother (and she was proclaimed
such) when she became more perfectly our Co-redemptrix,
uniting herself more intimately than anyone else to the
sacrifice of Jesus. It is taught in the Church today that
all that Jesus merited for us in justice, the Holy Virgin

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merited for us by a merit of fittingness {de congruo). While
Jesus satisfied for us in justice, she satisfied in fittingness,
and by this she became our Mother. She became our Mother
through an act of faith superior to that which the saints
made when they were wayfarers on this earth.
The greatest faith that has ever existed is that of Mary.
Our Lord, in fact, did not have faith but the Beatific Vision.
The greatest act of faith of which Mary was capable took
place on Calvary: she did not cease believing that Jesus
was the Incarnate Word of God, was victorious over the
devil and sin, and that He would conquer death.
She became our Mother, however, not only by this act
of faith, but also by the greatest act of hope performed on
earth. Jesus, of course, did not have to hope, since He
was God Himself.
Finally, she became our Mother through the greatest
act of love that she could make at that moment: she loved
God to the point of offering Him her Son in the midst of
the greatest torments. She felt in her own heart all the
physical and moral sufferings of Our Lord in a measure
corresponding to her love for God whom sinners offend,
for her Son whom sin will crucify and for our souls which
sin ruins and kills. Just as we cannot fathom the fullness
of the Holy Virgin’s charity, so we cannot appreciate the
fullness of her suffering. As Bossuet says, “ one and the
same Cross was sufficient for her and Him since she also
was, we could say, nailed on the Cross of her Son. Here is
the strength of her love: for Him she suffered the same
sufferings.”
In her suffering, she brought us forth to the life of
grace. It was accomplished in that painful moment when
Our Lord said to the Holy Virgin: “ Woman, behold your
son,” committing her to St. John. Since the eighth century
the Church has taught that St. John personified all the souls
that were to be redeemed by the sacrifice of the Cross.
Those words of Christ were certainly not directed to

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St. John alone. They denote in St. John all the souls that
would be redeemed by the Cross. This is their spiritual
sense. These words, as a sacramental word, produce what
they signify: they produce in the soul of the Virgin a
considerable increase of charity and of maternal charity
toward us, while they produced in St. John’s soul a wholly
filial affection, full of respect toward the Mother of God.
From that moment the irradiation of the spiritual
maternity of the Holy Virgin begins. This irradiation will
not cease until the end of the world, because even after
she ascended into heaven she continues to be our Mediatrix,
to intercede for us and concede us all our graces. She does
not cease to pray for us. We have a proof of this in tradi­
tion, as in the Litany of Loreto: “ Health of the Sick ”
and “ Comforter of the Afflicted.” All graces are therefore
transmitted to us through her who obtains them for us.
By the word “ now ” of the Hail Mary, we are seeking
the grace of the present moment, the most necessary of
all graces since the grace of the present moment is the
most useful of all. When we asked for it, we may have
been very distracted, but the Holy Virgin is not. Thus,
when we have received it, we can be certain that it was
through the intercession of Mary. She is the distributor
of all graces including sacramental grace, since she often
sends the confessor to the dying sinner so that attrition
may be transformed into contrition. We should also ask her
to dispose our soul for a worthy Holy Communion.
We thus see that the influence of the Holy Virgin, far
from impeding union with Our Lord, leads us instead to
a more and more profound union with her Son. Conse­
quently, without a very great union with the Holy Virgin,
we cannot attain an intimate union with Our Lord. Among
other things, it would be a lack of humility to slight the
mediators that the good Lord has given us because of our
weakness. Intimacy with the Lord in prayer will be greatly
facilitated by a frequent recourse to the Holy Virgin.

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How io Practice This Devotion

St. Louis Grignon speaks of three levels of this devotion.
It is not strange that he makes such distinctions for all
the infused virtues really increase with the increase of
charity. The first level is that of beginners; the second,
that of those who have made some progress; and the third,
that of the perfect. An increase arises in proportion to the
virtue of religion and the gift of piety.
We will speak, then, of these three levels of this
devotion which ought to exist in all Christians and should
increase with charity. The first level, that of beginners,
consists in praying now and again to the Virgin, honoring
her as the Mother of God, reciting, for example, with great
recollection the Angelus whenever we hear it sounded.
The second level, that of those who have made some
progress, consists of having more perfect sentiments of
veneration, of confidence and of love toward Mary. This
brings one to say the Rosary every day, or at least one of the
three parts of the Rosary, meditating on the joyful, sorrowful,
or glorious mysteries which are for us the way to eternal
life. He who recites the holy Rosary well belongs to a
school of contemplation. (Our Lord manifested Himself to
St. Theresa in the mysteries of His infancy.) If we say
the Rosary well, Our Lord comes to us. Therefore, it is
sufficient to fix our gaze upon Him while our lips repeat
the song of the Hail Marys and our fingers tell the beads.
This produces in our soul an increase of grace in proportion
to our devotion.
The third level of devotion to Mary, that which belongs
to the perfect, consists in being wholly consecrated to Our
Lord through her hands. St. Louis Grignon de Montfort
explains very well what this means: “ This devotion consists
in giving oneself fully to Our Lord through Mary. We
must give her ( 1 ) our body with all its senses and members,
that she preserve it in a perfect purity; (2) our soul with

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all its potencies; (3) our present and future eternal goods;
(4) our interior and spiritual goods which are our merits,
our virtues, and our good works of the past, present and
future.” To understand this offering well, we must clearly
distinguish in our good works what is incommunicable and
what is communicable to other souls.
What is incommunicable in our good works is merit
properly termed de condigno. This constitutes a right in
justice to an increase of charity and to eternal life. These
personal merits are incommunicable. They differ from the
merits of Our Lord in that He, being the constituted head
of humanity, was able to merit for us in strict, rigorous
justice. Consequently, if we offer these merits to the Holy
Virgin, it is not for her to give them to other souls, but
for her to preserve them and make them fruitful. Thus, if
we should have the disgrace of losing them by mortal sin,
she may obtain for us the grace of a fervent contrition which
enables us to regain not only the state of grace but also the
level of grace lost. In that way, if we have lost five talents,
we are able to find five, and not just two or three.
What is communicable in our good works is the merit
of fittingness (de congruo), and in addition their value of
satisfaction or reparation and their value of petition or
prayer.
With a merit of fittingness, founded not on justice but
on the charity or friendship which unites us to God in jure
amicabili, we are able to obtain graces for our neighbor.
Thus a good Christian mother draws graces on her children
by her virtuous life because God considers the intentions
and good works of this generous mother. In the same way,
we can pray for the conversion and spiritual progress of
our neighbor, for hardened sinners, for those in agony, and
for the souls in purgatory. Finally, we can satisfy for others
and expiate for them as Mary did for us at the foot of
the Cross, thus drawing upon them the divine mercy. In
the same way, we are able to earn indulgences for the souls

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in purgatory, to open to them the treasure of merits of
Our Lord Jesus Christ and the saints, and thereby hasten
their liberation.
If we offer to Mary all our pains and tribulations, she
will send us crosses proportionate to our strength, sustained
by grace, to make us collaborators in the salvation of souls.
To whom is it fitting to counsel such a consecration?
There is no point of counseling this to those who would
be doing it out of sentimentality or spiritual pride without
understanding its fuller meaning. On the other hand, it is
fitting to counsel it to persons truly pious and fervent; it
can be counseled at the beginning for brief periods, perhaps
in relation to the feasts of the Virgin, and then for a year.
In this way they will be gradually pervaded by this spirit
of abandonment, and eventually they will be able to make
this act fruitful for their entire lives.
Sometimes an objection is advanced. “ But this means
despoiling ourselves of what is our own and not paying
our debts, a thing that will increase our purgatory.” The
devil made this objection to St. Bridget when she was
disposed to making such an act. Our Lord let her understand
that this objection derives from self-love which forgets
the goodness of Mary: our celestial Mother does not allow
herself to be outdone in generosity. By emptying ourselves
in this way we receive the hundredfold. This generous act
attests to love itself, which already obtains for us the
remission of a part of our purgatory.
Other persons object. “ But as a result, how can we
pray specifically for our relatives and friends if we have once
committed for all time all our merits and prayers to Mary?
To this objection we must reply that the Holy Virgin knows
our obligations in charity toward our relatives and friends,
and when we forget to pray for them according to our
duty, it will be precisely she who remembers them.
Moreover, among our relatives and friends there are some
who have a particular need of prayer. We are often ignorant

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of this, yet the Holy Virgin knows it well. Thus she is
able, even without our awareness, to allow these souls to
benefit from our prayer. For the other persons, meanwhile,
we can always ask her to favor them.
The Fruits of This Devotion

St. Louis Grignon de Montfort affirms that this way
of going to God is easier, and also more meritorious—and
consequently it is a more perfect way, shorter and more
secure. Above all it is, as he says, an easier way: " One can
in truth attain divine union through other ways; but it
will be with many crosses, with more profound annihilation
of self, and with difficulties that we shall overcome with
greater effort. It will be necessary to pass through dark
nights, through pricking thorns and horrible deserts. On the
other hand, through the way of Mary we advance more
gently and calmly. There are found, it is true, great battles
to engage in and great difficulties to overcome; but this
good Mother comes close to her faithful in such a way that
she enlightens them in their darkness, illumines them in
their doubts, sustains them in their battles and difficulties.
Indeed, this purest (virginal) way of finding Jesus Christ is
a way of roses and honey in comparison to other ways.”
This can be observed in the lives of the saints who have
followed this way more specifically, such as St. Ephraim,
St. John of Damascus, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, St. Bernadine of Siena, St. Francis de Sales, and many others.
We know the vision of St. Francis of Assisi. One day he
saw his sons trying to climb up toward Our Lord on a
red-colored ladder, set at a very steep incline; after having
climbed several steps, they fell down. Then Our Lord
showed St. Francis another ladder, of white color and with
a much slighter incline, at whose top stood the Holy Virgin.
Then He said to him: “ Recommend to your sons that they
go up on My Mother’s ladder.”

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It is a more facile way because the Virgin sustains us
with her gentleness; and it is more meritorious because
Mary obtains for us a greater charity, which is the principle
of merit. Indeed the difficulties to overcome are certainly
an occasion of merit; but the principle of merit is in charity,
in love of God, with which we triumph in these very diffi­
culties. We ought to be convinced that Mary merits more
by her more facile acts—as by a simple prayer—than the
martyrs with their torments, since she accomplishes these
simple acts with a love of God that is greater than that with
which the saints accomplish their most heroic acts. Mary’s
way, being more facile, is also more meritorious, shorter,
more perfect, more secure. Walking an easier way, we
advance more quickly. We advance more rapidly by submit­
ting ourselves to the Mother of God than by confiding
excessively in our personal prudence. Under the direction
of her whom the Incarnate Word obeyed, one walks with
giant steps.
This way is also more perfect because, as through Mary
the Word descended perfectly to us without losing anything
of His divinity, in the same way, by means of her the
smallest persons can ascend perfectly to the Most High
without fear. She purifies our good works and increases
their value in presenting them to her Son.
Finally, it is a more secure way because in it we are
preserved to a great degree from the seductions of him
who seeks to deceive us and push us imperceptibly into
grave sin. Moreover, on this way we are better protected
from illusions of foolish fancy and sentimentality. Indeed,
in the interplay of causes that permit the transmission of
divine grace, Mary exercises a salutary influence over our
sensibility, calming and regulating it, in such a manner as
to permit the superior part of the soul to receive more
fruitfully the influence of Our Lord. Moreover, for our
sensibility, Mary is in herself a most pure and most holy
object which elevates our soul toward union with God

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She gives us a great interior liberty and sometimes she
obtains for us immediately—when we ask her with
insistence—a liberation from the deviations of our sensibility
which hinder prayer and intimate union with Our Lord.
The whole influence of Mary as a Mediatrix has as its
purpose to conduct us to intimacy with Jesus, just as He
Himself leads us to His Father. Fittingly we ask this
particular assistance of Mary at Holy Communion that she
may allow us to participate in her profound devotion and
in her love just as if she were giving us her most pure heart
with which to receive worthily Our Lord. And it is fitting
to make our thanksgiving in the same manner.
To conclude, let us repeat here the essence of our
consecration to Jesus through the hand of Mary:
O eternal and uncreated wisdom, O most lovable
and adorable Jesus, true God and true man, I thank
you for having emptied Yourself, taking on the form
of a slave to liberate me from the slavery of the devil.
I run to the intercession of Your most holy Mother
whom You have given me as a Mediatrix, and through
whom I hope to obtain from You contrition and pardon
for my sins, to acquire and preserve wisdom.
I salute you Mary Immaculate, Queen of heaven
and earth, to whose command all that is under God
is submitted.
I salute you, O secure refuge of sinners, whose
mercy fails no one; hear the desire that I have for
divine wisdom and receive the vows and the offerings
that my littleness presents to you.
I, an unfaithful sinner, renew and ratify today into
your hands the promises of my baptism: I renounce
forever Satan, his works and his pomps, and I give
myself entirely to Jesus Christ, Incarnate Wisdom, to
carry behind Him my cross all the days of my life.
And to be more faithful to Him than I have been

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up till today, I choose you, O Mary, for my Mother.
I give and consecrate to you my body and my soul, my
interior and exterior goods, and the value of my actions,
past, present, and future. Present me to your Son,
grant me the grace to obtain the true Wisdom of
God and admit me, for this reason, into the number
of those whom you love, instruct, lead, nourish and
protect.
O faithful Virgin, make of me a perfect disciple,
imitator of Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ, your Son;
make me attain, by your intercession and example,
the fullness of His age on earth and the fullness of
His glory in heaven.

CHAPTER XVIII

Union with God
Shoulder My yoke and learn from Me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and
you will find rest for your souls.—Mt.
11, 29

We have seen what the experiential knowledge of God
in mental prayer is, what love of God and neighbor ought
to be as well as what ought to be our zeal for the glory of
God and for the salvation of souls. The aim of this experien­
tial knowledge and of this love, the end of the interior life
here below, is union with God, a union still imperfect but
which is the principle and pledge of perfect union that awaits
us in heaven. This union is the repose of the soul in God,
who is found and makes Himself always felt in this union,
even in labors and sufferings. We will see what this union
with God is and what the means are to attain it.
What is This Union?

What is this presence of God in us which permits us
to repose in Him? First of all, it is certain that God is
present in us as in all things which He conserves in
existence and to which He gives motion. If the divine
action were to cease to sustain things, they would, in
fact, return to nothingness in the same way that darkness
comes when the sun goes down.
But the Lord speaks of a presence in us wholly special
when he says: “ If anyone loves Me he will keep My

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word, and My Father will love him, and we shall come to
him and make our home with him ” (Jn. 14, 23). If
someone loves Me with a love that is not only affective
but also effective and operative, by keeping My words in
his heart and observing My commandments, the Father
and I will come to him and make our abode with him,
conversing with him as friend to friend. Indeed, it is a
property of love that he who loves is united to the object
loved by him (S.T. I-II, q. 28, a. 1). Love urges one to
seek the presence of the loved one, or at least to converse
with him in one’s thoughts. According to St. Augustine, love
is the good that unites those who love one another. They
are present one to another with a presence that is at least
affective, and much more intimate than the simple union
of bodies. If such is the property of love in general, and
even that of an inferior type of love, what will be the
property of charity, supernatural love, or above all of
charity that attains the summit of perfection?
God, already present in us really and substantially, as
He is in all things whose being He conserves, makes
Himself present in us in a special way when His Spirit
of Love communicates to us divine charity—a participation
of the love that unites the divine Persons among them­
selves. God is present in all the souls in the state of grace,
not only as a cause united to its effect, but He abides
there as in a spiritual temple in which He is known and
loved. God dwells in this spiritual temple even when we
sleep; but He is truly known and loved when the soul
makes an act of faith and charity and when, with the gift
of Wisdom, the Holy Spirit makes Himself felt in the soul
as the life of its life. Every time, then, that a believing
soul merits an increase of grace and charity by its fervor
and generosity, the Holy Spirit becomes still more present
in it with this presence of knowledge and love (S.T. I,
q. 43, a. 6 ad 2).

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Under the influence of a superior light, the soul attains
in this way a sentiment of the presence of God so vivid
and profound that it cannot doubt this divine presence.
Hence it now " feels " God so to speak; and this new
experience becomes for it truly that repose of the soul of
which Our Lord speaks. Though still remaining in the
obscurity of faith, the soul already possesses the beginning
of the happiness of heaven. The soul feels itself penetrated
by God as incandescent iron is penetrated by fire, or as
the air is penetrated by the rays of the sun.
Although this union is never a transformation that
absorbs the soul into God as some false mystics have
pretended, it is true, however, that the soul feels God in its
most intimate recesses. In a certain sense, God is more
intimate to the soul than the soul itself, inasmuch as He
is the interior principle of its whole inner life. This union
which brings the gifts of the Holy Spirit urges from within
the accomplishment of acts that the soul by itself could
not accomplish.
Such a constant union is realized in contemplation, and
though the false mystics say the contrary, it cannot be
permanent: the weakness of our nature often forces us
to interrupt it, at least during sleep (S.T. I-II, q. 3, a.
2 ad 4). In the more perfect souls, God manifests His
presence more continuously: it is a question of a confused
feeling of the presence of God and of a state of perfect
habitual docility to all His inspirations. Uninterrupted union
is not of this world; it is the condition of the saints in
heaven.
This union with God has many degrees, as do charity
and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The most exalted of them
is the spiritual marriage of which Sacred Scripture, the
Fathers, and the great mystics speak; it is a marriage in
comparison to which earthly marriage is only a symbol.
Like earthly marriage, it procures three worthy objectives:
reciprocal fidelity, indissolubility, and the posterity of good

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works. The soul that receives such a great favor, however,
is not at all certain of its own salvation nor of being
preserved from every fall. “ It is secure only,” says St.
Theresa, " when Our Lord leads it by the hand and it
does not offend Him.” “ The bride,” says St. Lawrence
Justinian, “ ought to strive to be faithful and for fear of
backsliding it ought never to believe that it has attained
the summit of perfection.” Spiritual marriage, ratified on
earth by good works, will be consummated only in heaven,
where the continuity and indissolubility of union will be
perfect.
Though it is less perfect, earthly union with God some­
times surpasses that of some blessed ones in heaven: the
apostle St. John had on earth a degree of charity and union
with God which was more exalted than that which a baby,
taken by death immediately after baptism, possesses in
heaven. Even without seeing Him, the apostle St. John
loved God in an intimate manner, just as we are able to
love certain persons living far from us more than those we
see every day.
Concerning this union with God here below, one can
have only moral certitude. As long as he lives on earth,
unless one has a special revelation, he cannot know with
certainty whether he is worthy of love or hate (cf. Eccles.
9, 1). A life, however, is to be judged by its fruits, by the
attraction the soul experiences for divine things, by the
aversion it feels for venial sin, by its progress in humility,
self-denial, obedience, and love of God and neighbor.
Some very imperfect souls, basing themselves on a false
principle of quietude, sometimes believe that they are
in such a state. They are only in a dangerous inertia. What
do they do, and what can they possibly do that is good,
if they can neither merit, nor practice virtue, nor increase
it other than by acts? To prevent every illusion, then, we
must meditate often on the true means to obtain this union.

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Means to Obtain It
The means for obtaining this union are that which the
Sacred Heart teaches us: “ Learn from Me, for I am
meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for
your souls.” Our Lord is pleased to sum up in these two
words, humility of heart and meekness, the whole Christian
life and the whole of perfection.
There is a very profound reason for this: humility is
the root of all Christian virtues, and meekness is its flower.
Certainly charity is the highest virtue, the bond of perfec­
tion, and we ought to strive to nourish in ourselves its
ardor, the zeal of charity. But, we must take care that our
zeal, even though very ardent and intense, is humble and
meek. Only then will we be saints. Humility produces in
us an emptiness that God fills with Himself. Without
humility the virtues are false virtues, exterior, pharisaic,
hypocritical virtues, inspired by self-love and spiritual pride.
At the root of all virtues there ought to be humility:
not only that humility which is exterior and formed with
words, but humility of the heart; not a forced humility
that comes from delusions, displeasures or the fear of not
succeeding, but humility of the heart, willed for the love
of God, born of the knowledge that God alone is great,
while we are nothing. Our Lord surely does not love
humility that is melancholy, sad, or of bad humor, urging
us to set ourselves apart and to remain inactive. Rather,
He loves that humility of heart that is happy to act and
sacrifice self for God.
If humility is the principle of all virtues, meekness,
according to the expression of St. Francis de Sales, is the
flower of charity. In a plant the flower is the part most
visible and beautiful because of the splendor and variety
of its colors. It attracts with the perfume it releases. And
despite its fragility and delicacy, its function is one of the
most important in the plant because it protects and con­

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serves the fruit. The same holds true for meekness in the
case of charity. This is what is most visible and what
attracts and entices us most to the practice of this great
virtue. It is manifested in the smile, the glance, in one’s
bearing, in one’s way of acting and in the choice of
one’s words; it doubles the value of service rendered.
Like the flower, it protects the fruit of charity leading
us to accept counsels and reproaches alike. We may have
the most ardent zeal for our neighbor, but yet, if we are
not meek it seems that we do not love him, and we thus
lose the fruit of our good intentions. Moreover, it will be
impossible to resist certain difficulties that are frequently
encountered in the practice of charity, because it is necessary
to love not only those who are good and are pleasing to
us, but also those whose company is wholly other than
pleasing, a thing that becomes impossible without meekness.
Clearly if humility and meekness are not to be only exterior
virtues but rather virtues of the heart, if one is to be
humble and meek not only in temperament but in super­
natural virtue, and if one is to be such in relation to all,
then a complete abnegation is required, a total abandon­
ment to Providence.
If we wish to practice these virtues in the diverse
circumstances of life, we must contemplate them often in
our two great models: Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin.
We ought to have an ardent devotion for the Blessed Virgin,
the humble and meek Virgin Mary. The nineteenth century
is said to be her century because of her most glorious
apparitions and the definition of her Immaculate Concep­
tion. The twentieth century, which opened with the conse­
cration of the human race to the Sacred Heart, seems to be
the century of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We should earnestly
unite these two devotions as they will teach us the perfection
of charity with humility and meekness.
Humility could not belong to Our Lord other than as
man. It cannot be a divine virtue precisely because it is the

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expression of absolute dependence and submission of the
creature to God. Humility signifies the abasement of the
creature before God and before what is divine in others. Yet,
no one better understood nor more desired this dependence
and submission of his human nature than Our Lord. It is
precisely He, the man greatest in mind and heart, who
wishes to be the standard, the exemplar of humility:
“ Learn from Me for I am meek and humble of heart.”
To make up for our pride and our rebellious wills, Our
Lord abased Himself before His Father, accepting every kind
of humiliation from His judges, from Pilate and from Herod.
He voluntarily took the role of the representative of sinners,
yet He was Sanctity itself. If we consider that sin debases
human nature much lower than human nature itself, and
even lower than nothingness, then no limits can describe
the infinite self-annihilation of Christ. Comprehending the
infinite gravity of sins which He assumed to Himself, He
related them to the infinite grandeur of God, whose rights
had been trampled upon and denied.
This humility that was so profound in Our Lord was
at the same time a humility of the heart, simple as that
of a child. When His disciples asked Him: “ Who is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven? ” Jesus responded by
calling a child and putting him in their midst. “ I tell you
solemnly, unless you change and become like little children
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so, the one
who makes himself as little as this little child is the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven ” (Mt. 18, 1-4).
The meekness of Our Lord is wholly supernatural. It
derives from His zeal for the salvation of souls, and, far
from diminishing His zeal, this meekness protects its fruits
and guarantees its influence. Isaiah had announced Christ
as the model of meekness: " Here is my servant whom I
uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights.
I have endowed him with my spirit that he may bring true
justice to the nations. He does not cry or shout aloud, or

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make his voice heard in the streets. He does not break the
crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame. Faithfully
he brings true justice; he will neither waver, nor be crushed
until true justice is established on earth, for the islands are
awaiting his law ” (Isa. 42, 1-4; cf. Mt. 12, 18-21).
To St. Peter, Jesus replies that it is necessary to pardon
not only seven times, but seventy times seven, that is, always.
Jesus wished to be called the Lamb who takes away the sins
of the world by His sacrifice because the lamb is a symbol
of meekness: when it is immolated, it utters not a sound of
lament. In His baptism, the Holy Spirit hovered above His
head under the form of a dove, another symbol of meekness.
These two virtues, the germ and flower of all the others,
are also found in their highest degree in Mary. She has
been elevated above the angels because she is the model of
humility. “ He has looked upon His lowly handmaid. Yes,
from this day forward all generations will call me blessed ....
He has pulled down princes from their thrones, and exalted
the lowly ” (Lk. 1, 48 and 52). Like her divine Son, she
is an exemplar of meekness, as we sing every day in the
Salve Regina.
The practice of these two virtues, united to a fervent
daily Communion, will make charity, together with the gifts
of the Holy Spirit and union with God, increase in us more
every day. The sacrament of Love—the most excellent of
all—is the sacrament of the most intimate union: it contains
Jesus Christ in person, while the other sacraments contain
only His supernatural power and are ordered to the Eucha­
rist as to their end. Communion is, therefore, the most
perfect act of the interior life, and if we prepare ourselves
for it with humility, zeal, and meekness, we shall find there
the most efficacious means for union with God. While our
body receives the body of Christ, our soul is united to His
soul, our intelligence to His light, our heart to the ever­
burning sun of His love. Our Lord unites Himself to us
to assimilate us to Himself, to make of us other Christs.

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Every Communion that is not sacrilegious and sterile increases
the degree of charity in us. Who then can measure the
effects of daily Communion, above all of fervent daily
Communion?
Conclusion
If in Holy Communion we learn meekness and humility
from the divine Master, together with zeal for the glory of
God and the salvation of souls, we will find refreshment for
our souls according to Jesus’ promise (Mt. 11, 29). We will
find an orderly peace and tranquillity; we will realize a
harmony of soul which, when fully subject to God, will
receive His vivifying influence; there will be a harmony
of body and soul, of the senses and the spirit. We will
find peace and will be able to give it to others.
We should learn by experience. In a moment of distur­
bance and weariness, we ought to strive to practice humility
and meekness; then we will notice how true the words of
Our Lord are. We will find peace in loving. But we cannot
obtain this peace in a stable manner without an unceasing
war against ourselves, against the world, and against the
devil. It is for this reason that Jesus told us that He had
come here below to bring the sword and war. How could
one be meek and humble of heart with everyone without
continually suffering violence, without pardoning others
much, and without placing oneself lower than others?
Consequently, a war exists, but a war at the confines
of the soul—if we can use this expression—while all within,
the heart of the city and the fortress, is secure and remains
tranquil, in peace and calm. “ With God on our side who
can be against us? ” (Rom. 8, 31). If I love God and if I
think that God loves me, what does all the rest matter?
This intimate peace gives abundant compensation for all the
sacrifices it demands, and it is for this reason that Our Lord
adds: “You will find rest for your souls. Yes, My yoke is
easy and My burden light " (Mt. 11, 29-30).

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The Venerable Louis Bloy has left us a picture of the
man who has attained this union and this peace. Among
other things, he said: “ God is often more pleased to dwell
in the heart of one of these humble ones than in many
other hearts that are not so intimately united to Him ’’
(De adhaerendo Deo).
Lord, give us the zeal with which Your Sacred Heart
burns; give us also a profound humility that makes us always
adhere to You more while we become detached from our­
selves; give us the meekness that will make souls accept what
we say to them for the glory of Your Father and for their
own salvation.
Grant us a more intimate union with your Sacred Heart
present in the Eucharist, and guide us toward that wholly
divine configuration that will make us Your brothers for
eternity.