CHAPTER 12 The Way of Perfection Teaches that the true lover of God must care little for life and honour. |
We now come to some other little things
which are also of very great importance,
though they will appear trifling.
All this seems a great task,
and so it is,
for it means warring against ourselves.
But once we begin to work,
God, too,
works in our souls and
bestows such favours on them
that the most we can do in this life
seems to us very little.
And we nuns are doing everything we can, by
giving up our freedom
for the love of God and
entrusting it to another, and
in putting up with so many trials
--fasts, silence, enclosure, service in choir--
that however much we may want
to indulge ourselves
we can do so only occasionally:
perhaps, in all the convents I have seen,
I am the only nun guilty of self-indulgence.
Why, then,
do we shrink from interior mortification,
since this is the means
by which every other kind of mortification
may become much
more meritorious and perfect,
so that it can then be practised
with greater tranquillity and ease?
This, as I have said,
is acquired
by gradual progress and
by never indulging
our own will and desire,
our own will and desire,
even in small things,
until we have succeeded
in subduing the body to the spirit.
I repeat that
this consists mainly or entirely
in our ceasing to care
about ourselves
and our own pleasures,
and our own pleasures,
for the least
that anyone who is beginning
to serve the Lord truly
can offer Him
is his life.
Once he has surrendered his will to Him,
what has he to fear?
It is evident
that if he is
a true religious and
a real man of prayer
and aspires to the enjoyment
of Divine consolations,
he must not [turn back or] shrink
from desiring to die and suffer martyrdom
for His sake.
And do you not know, sisters,
that the life of a good religious,
who wishes to be
among the closest friends of God,
is one long martyrdom?
I say "long",
for, by comparison with decapitation,
which is over very quickly,
it may well be termed so,
though life itself is short
and some lives are short in the extreme.
How do we know
but that ours will be so short
that it may end only one hour or one moment
after the time of our resolving
to render our entire service to God?
This would be quite possible;
and so we must not set store by anything
that comes to an end,
least of all by life,
since not a day of it is secure.
Who,
if he thought that each hour
might be his last,
would not spend it in labour?
Believe me,
it is safest to think that this is so;
by so doing we shall learn
to subdue our wills in everything;
for if, as I have said,
you are very careful about your prayer,
you will soon find yourselves
gradually reaching the summit of the mountain
without knowing how.
But how harsh it sounds to say
that we must take pleasure in nothing,
unless we also say
what consolations and delights this renunciation
brings in its train, and
what a great gain it is, even in this life!
What security it gives us!
Here, as you all practise this,
you have done the principal part;
each of you encourages [38]
and helps the rest; and
each of you must try to outstrip her sisters.
Be very careful about your interior thoughts,
especially if they have to do with precedence.
May God, by His Passion,
keep us from
expressing, or
dwelling upon,
such thoughts as these:
"But I am her senior [in the Order]";
"But I am older";
"But I have worked harder";
"But that other sister is being better treated
than I am".
If these thoughts come,
you must quickly check them;
if you allow yourselves to
dwell on them, or
introduce them into your conversation,
they will spread like the plague
and in religious houses
they may give rise to great abuses.
Remember,
I know a great deal about this.
If you have a prioress
who allows such things, however trifling,
you must believe
that God has permitted her to be given to you
because of your sins and
that she will be the beginning of your ruin.
Cry to Him, and let your whole prayer be
that He may come to your aid
by sending you
either a religious or a person given to prayer;
for, if anyone prays with the resolve
to enjoy the favours and consolations
which God bestows in prayer,
it is always well
that he should have this detachment.
You may
ask why I lay such stress on this, and
think that I am being too severe about it, and
say that God grants consolations
to persons less completely detached than that.
I quite believe He does;
for, in His infinite wisdom,
He sees that this will enable Him
to lead them
to leave everything for His sake.
to leave everything for His sake.
I do not mean,
by "leaving" everything,
entering the religious life,
for there may be obstacles to this, and
the soul that is perfect
can be detached and humble anywhere.
It will find detachment harder in the world,
however, for worldly trappings
will be a great impediment to it.
Still, believe me in this:
questions of honour and desires for property
can arise within convents
as well as outside them,
and the more temptations of this kind
are removed from us,
the more we are to blame
if we yield to them.
Though persons who do so
may have spent years
in prayer,
or rather
in meditation
(for perfect prayer eventually destroys
[all] these attachments),
they will never
make great progress or
come to enjoy the real fruit of prayer.
Ask yourselves, sisters,
if these things,
which seem so insignificant,
mean anything to you,
for the only reason you are here
is that you may detach yourselves from them.
Nobody honours you any the more
for having them
and they lose you advantages
which might have gained you more honour;
the result is
that you get both dishonour and loss
at the same time.
Let each of you ask herself
how much humility she has
and she will see what progress she has made.
If she is really humble,
I do not think the devil will dare to tempt her
to take even the slightest interest
in matters of precedence,
for he is so shrewd
that he is afraid of the blow
she would strike him.
If a humble soul is tempted
in this way by the devil,
that virtue cannot fail to bring her
more fortitude and greater profit.
For clearly the temptation will cause her
to look into her life,
to compare the services
she has rendered the Lord
with what she owes Him and
with the marvellous way
in which He abased Himself
to give us an example of humility, and
to think over her sins and remember
where she deserves to be
on account of them.
Exercises like this
bring the soul such profit
that on the following day
Satan will not dare to come back again
lest he should get his head broken.
Take this advice from me and
do not forget it:
you should see to it
that your sisters profit by your temptations,
not only interiorly
(where it would be very wrong
if they did not),
but exteriorly as well.
If you want to
avenge yourself on the devil and
free yourselves more quickly from temptation,
- ask the superior,
as soon as a temptation comes to you,
to give you some lowly office to do, or
- do some such thing, as best you can,
on our own initiative,
- studying as you do it
how to bend your will
to perform tasks you dislike.
The Lord will show you ways
of doing so and
this will soon rid you of the temptation.
God deliver us from people
who wish to serve Him
yet who are mindful of their own honour.
Reflect how little they gain from this;
for, as I have said,
the very act of desiring honour
robs us of it,
especially in matters of precedence:
there is no poison in the world
which is so fatal to perfection.
You will say
that these are little things which
- have to do with human nature and
- are not worth troubling about;
do not trifle with them,
for in religious houses
they spread like foam on water,
and there is no small matter
so extremely dangerous
as are
- punctiliousness about honour and
- sensitiveness to insult.
Do you know one reason,
apart from many others,
why this is so? [39]
It may have its root,
perhaps, in some trivial slight
--hardly anything, in fact--
and the devil will then
induce someone else to consider it important,
so that she will think it a real charity
to tell you about it and
to ask how you can allow yourself
to be insulted so;
and she will pray
that God may give you patience and
that you may offer it to Him,
for even a saint could not bear more.
The devil is simply putting his deceitfulness
into this other person's mouth;
and, though you yourself are quite ready
to bear the slight,
you are tempted to vainglory
because you have not resisted something else
as perfectly as you should.
This human nature of ours
is so wretchedly weak
that, even while we are telling ourselves
that there is nothing for us
to make a fuss about,
we
imagine we are doing something virtuous, and
begin to feel sorry for ourselves,
particularly when we see
that other people are sorry for us too.
In this way the soul begins to lose
the occasions of merit
which it had gained;
it becomes weaker;
and thus a door is opened to the devil
by which he can enter
on some other occasion
with a temptation worse than the last.
It may even happen that,
when you yourself are prepared
to suffer an insult,
your sisters come and ask you
if you are a beast of burden,
and say you ought to be
more sensitive about things.
Oh, my sisters, for the love of God,
never let charity move you
to show pity for another
in anything to do with these fancied insults,
for that is like the pity shown to holy Job
by his wife and friends.
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Foot Notes: [38] Lit.: "awakens." [39] Lit.: "Do you know why, apart from other things?" |
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End of Chapter 12 |
