1. ACTIVE WORKS, A MEANS OF SANCTIFICATION FOR INTERIOR SOULS, BECOME, FOR OTHERS, A MENACE TO THEIR SALVATION
A. A MEANS OF SANCTIFICATION
- Our Lord categorically demands that those whom He associates with His apostolate should not only persevere in their virtue, but make progress in it. Proof will be found on any page of St. Paul's epistles to Titus and Timothy, and the words addressed in the Apocalypse to the Bishops of Asia.
- The gift of the spirit of prayer...is a sign of the superabundance of charity in a soul. The sacrifices exacted from us by active works draw so much supernatural value from the glory they give to God and from their effects in the sanctification of souls, and acquire from these sources such great wealth of merits, that a man vowed to the active life can, if he wills, rise himself each day a further degree in charity and union with God, that is to say, in sanctity.
- Our union with God, says St. John of the Cross, resides in the union of our will with His, and is measured entirely by that union.
(This is reminiscent of St. Ignatius' prayer 'Suscipe' and of the words of St. Paul in Galatians 2:20)
- The proof of love is in works of self-denial, and this proof of devotion is something God demands of all His workers. "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep," is the form of charity which Our Lord demands of the apostles...
- St. Francis of Assisi did not believe he could be a friend of Christ unless his charity devoted itself to the salvation of souls. Non se amicum Christi reputabat nisi animas foveret quas ille redemit.
- A very active and energetic man, invited by us, at the beginning of a retreat, to look into his conscience and seek out the principal cause of his unhappiness, gave a perfect diagnosis in this answer which may seem at first incomprehensible: "My self-sacrifice is what has ruined me!..they are filling me with all disgust for interior life, and leading me over the edge of the abyss."
- St. Bernard was warning Pope Bl. Eugenius III against just such a danger as this when he wrote: "I fear, lest in the midst of your occupations without number, you may lose hope of ever getting through with them, and allow your heart to harden. It would be very prudent of you to withdraw from such occupations, even if it be only for a little while, rather than let them get the better of you, and, little by little, lead you where you do not want to go. And where, you will ask, is that? To indifference."
2. THE ACTIVE WORKER WHO HAS NO INTERIOR LIFE
- Perhaps he is not yet tepid, but he is bound to become so. When a man is tepid, with a tepidity that is not merely in the feelings, or due to weakness, but residing in the will, that man has resigned himself to consent habitually to levity and neglect, or at any rate to cease fighting them. He has come to terms with deliberate venial sin, and by that very fact, he has robbed his soul of its assurance of eternal salvation. Indeed, he is disposing and even leading it on to mortal sin."
- Let us go back to the seed of corruption fostered in our nature by concupiscence, and the fight to the death that is ever waged against us by your enemies, within as well as without. Let us go back to the dangers that threaten us on every side. With this in mind, let us consider what happens to a soul that enters upon the apostolate without being sufficiently forewarned and forearmed against its dangers.
Fr. (or Mr.) So-and-So feels within himself a growing desire to consecrate himself to good works. He has no experience whatsoever. But his liking for the apostolate [means] he has a certain amount of fire...Let us imagine him to be correct in his conduct, a man of piety and even to devotion; but his piety is more in the feelings than in the will, and his devotion is not the light reflected by a soul resolute in seeking nothing but the g ood pleasure of God, but a pious routine, the result of praiseworthy habits. Mental prayer, if indeed he practices it at all, is for him a species of day-dreaming, and his spiritual reading is governed by curiosity, without any real influence on his conduct. Perhaps the devil even eggs him on...to dabble in treatises on the lofty and extraordinary paths of union with God, and these fill him with admiration and enthusiasm. All in all, there is little genuine inner life, if any at all...
There are countless appeals to his naive curiosity, unnumbered occasions of falling into sin from which we may suppose he has hitherto been protected by the peaceful atmosphere of his home, his seminary, his community, or his novitiate - or at least by the guidance of an experienced director.
Not only is there an increasing dissipation, or the ever growing danger of a curiosity that has to find out all about everything; not only more and more displays of impatience or injured feelings, of vanity or jealousy, presumption or dejection, partiality or detraction, but there is also a progressive development of the weaknesses of his soul and of all the more or less subtle forms of sensuality. And all these foes are preparing to force an unrelenting battle upon this soul so ill-prepared for such violent and unceasing attacks. And it therefore falls victim to frequent wounds!
It is a wonder when there is any resistance at all on the part of a soul whose piety is so superficial...the devil is wide awake, on the look-out for his anticipated prey. And far from disturbing this sense of satisfaction, he does all in his power to encourage it.
Yet a day comes when the soul scents danger. The guardian angel has had something to say: conscience has registered a protest. Now would be the time to take hold of himself, to examine himself in a calm atmosphere of a retreat, to resolve to draw up a schedule and follow it rigorously...
"Tomorrow! Tomorrow!" he mumbles. "Today it is out of the question. There simply is no time. I have got to go on with this series of sermons, write this article, organize this committee, or that 'charity,' put on this play, go on that trip - or catch up with my mail." How happy he is to reassure himself with all these pretexts! For the mere thought of being left alone, face to face with his own conscience, has become unbearable to him.
And now our friend, up to so recently a man of virtuous habits, is going from weakness to ever greater weakness, and will soon place his foot upon an incline so slippery that he will be utterly unable to keep himself from falling...Things that used to trouble the upright conscience of this man are now despised as vain scruples. He is fond of proclaiming that a man ought to live with the times, meet the enemy on equal terms, and so he praises the active virtues to the skies, expressing nothing but scorn for what he disdainfully calls "the piety of the bygone day." Anyway, his enterprises prosper more than ever. Everybody is talking about them. Each day witnesses some new success. "God is blessing our work," exclaims the deluded man, over whom, tomorrow, perhaps the angels will be weeping for a mortal sin.
Let us pause a moment to look back over the road that has been traveled, and to estimate the depth of the fall:
FIRST STAGE
- The soul began by progressively losing the clarity and power of its convictions about the supernatural life...vanity comes to act as a pedestal to his supposed good intentions. "What else can I do? God has given me the gift of the oratory, and I thank Him for it." The soul seeks itself more than it seeks God. The foreground is completely taken up by reputation, glory, and personal interests. The text, "If I pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ" becomes, to him, something altogether without meaning.
- Tepidity is close at hand, if it has not already begun.
SECOND STAGE
- He gives up spiritual reading. Or else, if he still reads anything at all, he makes no studies. It was alright for the Fathers of the Church to spend the whole week preparing their Sunday sermons! For him, unless his vanity is at stake, he prefers to improvise. Yet his improvisations always hit it off with singular aptness - at least that is what HE thinks! He likes to read magazines rather than books. He has no method. He flutters about from one thing to another like a butterfly. The law of work, that great law of preservation, of morality and of penance, is something he manages to escape by wasting his free time, and by the extreme pains he takes to provide himself with amusements.
"Really," says the devil to him, "you are giving too much time to pious exercises: meditation, office, Mass, work of the ministry. Something has to be cut out!" Invariably he begins with shortening meditation, by making it only irregularly, or perhaps he even gets to the point where, bit by bit, he drops it altogether. The one indispensable requisite for remaining faithful to his meditation - namely, getting up at the right time - is all the more logically abandoned since he has so many good reasons for having gone to bed late the night before.
"Short of a miracle," says St. Alphonsus, "a man who does not practice mental prayer will end up in mortal sin." And St. Vincent de Paul tells us: "A man without metnal prayer is not good for anything; he cannot even renounce the slightest thing. It is merely the life of an animal." St. Theresa of Avila is quoted as having said, "Without mental prayer a person soon becomes either a brute or a devil. If you do not practice mental prayer, you don't need any devil to throw you into hell, you throw yourself in there of your own accord. On the contrary, give me the greatest of all sinners; if he practices mental prayer, be it only for fifteen minutes every day, he will be converted. If he perseveres in it, his eternal salvation is assured."
- [A man without mental prayer] will inevitably fall into tepidity of the will...[Soon] his soul is crawling with venial sins. The ever growing impossibility of vigilance over his heart makes most of these faults pass unnoticed by his conscience. The soul has disposed itself in such a manner that it cannot and will not see.
THIRD STAGE
- He neglects the recitation of the Breviary....the Liturgical life, source of light, joy, strength, merit, and grace for himself and for the faithful, is now nothing more than the occasion of a distasteful task, grudgingly discharged....The obscure and personal but heartfelt sacrifice of praise, of supplication, of thanksgiving, of reparation, no longer means anything to such a man.
The sanctuary of his soul [is] where noise and disorder reign. Exaggerated worry over business and habitual dissipation are enough to multiply his distractions tenfold. And he fights these distractions with less and less vigor. "The Lord is not in the noise." Genuine prayer is no longer to be found in this soul. He prays in a rush, with interruptions that have not the slightest justification; all is done neglectfully, sleepily, with many delays, putting it off until the last minute, at the risk of being finally overcome by sleep.
to be continued...
