> [[prologue-chau-soul|← Previous]] | [[chau-soul-apostolate-toc|TOC]] | [[part-two-chau-soul|Next →]] # Part One – The Soul of the Apostolate ## Active Works and the Interior Life: What They Mean ### 1. God Wants Good Works And, Therefore, He Wants Zealous Action Sovereign liberality is inseparable from the divine Nature. God is infinite goodness. Goodness seeks nothing except to give itself and to communicate the riches which it enjoys. The mortal life of Our Lord was nothing else but a continual manifestation of this inexhaustible liberality. The Gospel shows us the Redeemer scattering along His way the treasures of love of a Heart eager to draw all men to truth and to life. This apostolic flame has been passed on by Jesus to His Church, which is the gift of His love, which diffuses His life, manifests His truth, and shines with the splendour of His sanctity. Burning with the selfsame love, the Mystic Spouse of Christ carries on, down through the ages, the apostolic work of her divine Model. How admirable the plan, the universal law laid down by Providence, that it is through men, that men are to find out the way to salvation.4 Jesus Christ alone has shed the Blood that redeems the world. Alone, too, He might have put its power to work, and acted upon souls directly, as He does in the Holy Eucharist. But He wanted to have others cooperate in the distribution of His graces. Why? No doubt His divine Majesty demanded that it be so, but His loving affection for men urged Him no less. And if it is seemly for the most exalted king to govern, more often than not, through ministers, what condescension it is for God to deign to give poor creatures a share in His work and in His glory! Born, upon the Cross, from the pierced side of the Saviour, the Church, by its apostolic ministry, carries on the bountiful and redeeming action of the man-God. This ministry, willed by Jesus Christ, becomes the essential factor in the diffusion of the Church among all nations, and the ordinary instrument of its great achievements. In the front rank of this apostolate, stands the clergy, with its hierarchy forming the main body of the army of Christ, a clergy distinguished by so many holy, zealous bishops and priests, and covered with honour and glory by the recent canonization of the saint who was Curé of Ars. Next to the official clergy, have risen, since the beginnings of Christianity, companies of volunteers, shock troops, whose continued and abundant growth will always be one of the clearest signs of the vitality of the Church. First of all, in the earliest centuries, came the contemplative orders, whose ceaseless prayer and fierce penances were such a powerful aid in the conversion of the pagan world. In the Middle Ages, the preaching orders sprang up, with the mendicant and military orders, and those vowed to the ransom of captives in the powers of infidels. Finally, modern times have seen the birth of crowds of teaching institutes, missionary societies, congregations of all sorts, whose mission is to spread abroad every kind of spiritual and material good. Then, too, at every stage of her history, the Church has received valuable help from the whole body of the faithful, like those fervent Catholics, whose name today is legion, tireless workers, ardent souls who know how to unite their forces and to devote, without stint, to the cause of our common mother, their time, abilities, and fortune, often sacrificing their liberty or their very lives. A wonderful and encouraging sight, indeed, this providential harvest of works springing up just when they are most needed and in precisely the way that the situation seems #### Footnotes 4 _Ad communem legem id pertinet qua Deus providentissimis, uti homines plerumque fere per homines_ _salvandos decrevit... ut nimirum, quemadmodum Chrysostomus ait, per homines a Deo discamus_. (Letter of Pope Leo XIII to Cardinal Gibbons, January 22, 1899.) \-13 to demand! Church history clearly proves that each new need, each new emergency to be faced, has invariably meant the appearance of the institution that the circumstances required. And so, in our own day, we see a multitude of works that were scarcely even heard of, a generation ago, rise up in opposition to evils of the most serious kind: Catechism classes for first communicants and converts, as well as for abandoned children, all types of Catholic societies, sodalities, and confraternities, laymen’s retreats for young and old of both sexes, Apostleship of Prayer, the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, Catholic action in student and military circles, Catholic press association and other works of both general and local usefulness. All these forms of apostolate are called into being by the spirit that burned in the soul of St. Paul: “But I most gladly will spend and be spent for your souls,”5 the spirit that wishes to spread abroad, everywhere, the benefits of the Blood of Christ. May these humble pages go out to the soldiers of Christ, who, consumed as they are with zeal and ardour for their noble mission, might be exposed, because of the very activity they display, to the danger of not being, above all, men of interior life! For such men, when the day comes for this deficiency in their lives, to be punished, by failures no one seems able to explain and by serious spiritual collapse, may well be tempted to give up the fight and retire, in discouragement, behind the lines. The thoughts developed in this book have helped us, ourselves, to fight against an excessive exteriorization through good works. May they help others, also, to escape such a mishap, and lead the stream of their courageous action into better channels. May they show that we must never leave the God of works, for the works of God, and that St. Paul’s: “Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel”6 does not entitle us to forget: “What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?”7 May these modest pages also reach those fathers and mothers of families who do not consider the Introduction to the Devout Life out of date, Christian husbands and wives who feel obligated to an apostolate towards one another as well as towards their children, in order to form them in the love and imitation of the Saviour. For then they will better understand the need not only of a pious, but of an interior life, if their zeal is to have any success, and if they are to fill their homes with the unction of the spirit of Jesus Christ, and with that unchanging peace which in the face of every trial will always be a characteristic of the truly Christian family. ### 2. God Wills That the Life-principle of Our Work Be Christ Himself Science is proud of its immense success, and justly so. And yet there is one thing which always has been, and always will be, impossible to it: to create life, to produce, from a chemical laboratory, a grain of corn, a larva. The wholesale discomfiture of the defenders ofs pontaneous generation shows us, clearly enough, how little there is in these claims. Go reserves for Himself the power of creating life. In the vegetable and animal order, living beings can grow and multiply: but still, their fecundity only operates under definite conditions laid down by the Creator. But as soon as there is question of intellectual life, God reserves this to Himself, and He is the One who directly creates the reasoning soul. And yet there is one other realm which he guards even more jealously still, that of Supernatural life; which flows from the divine life communicated to the humanity of the Incarnate Word. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. Per Ipsum et cum Ipso et in Ipso.8 #### Footnotes 5 _Ego autem libentissime impendam et superimpenar ipse pro animabus vestries_. (II Cor. xii: 15. 6 _Vae mihi si non evangelizavero_. (I Cor. ix: 16.) 7 _Quid prodest homini si mundum universum Iucretur, animae vero suae detrimentum patiatur?_ (Matt. xvi:26.) 8 _Liturgy_. \-14 === The Incarnation and Redemption establish Jesus as the Source, and the only Source, of this divine life which all men are called upon to share. The essential activity of the Church consists in spreading this life through the Sacraments, Prayer, Preaching, and all other works connected with these. God does nothing except through His Son. “All things were made through Him and without Him was made nothing that was made.”9 True as this is in the natural order, how much more so is it in the supernatural order, when it is a question of imparting His inner life, and causing men to share in His own nature, making them children of God. “I am come that they may have life. In Him was life. I am the life.”10 What precision there is in these words! And what light, in the parable of the vine and the branches, in which the Master develops this truth! With what insistence he strives to impress upon the minds of the Apostles the fundamental principle that HE ALONE, JESUS, IS THE LIFE, and the consequence that, in order to share in that life and communicate it to others, they must be grafted on to the God-man. Men, called to the honour of working with the Saviour in transmitting this divine life to souls, ought to consider themselves mere channels, whose function it is to draw from this one and only source. Failure, on the part of the apostle, to realize this principle, and the illusion that he could produce the slightest trace of supernatural life without borrowing every bit of it from Jesus Christ, would lead us to believe that his ignorance of theology was equalled only by his stupid self-conceit. If the apostle, while recognizing in theory that the Redeemer is the primary cause of all divine life, were to forget this truth in his actions and, blinded by insane presumption, were to insult Jesus Christ by relying on his own powers, it would be a lesser disorder than the preceding, but one just as insufferable in the sight of God. To reject the truth, or to ignore it in one’s actions, always constitutes an intellectual disorder in doctrine or in practice. It is the denial of a principle on which our conduct ought to be based. Obviously, the disorder will be still further aggravated if the clear light of truth is obscured and obstructed, in the heart of the active laborer, by his opposition, through sin or voluntary lukewarmness, to the God of all light. Now for a man, in his practical conduct, to go about his active works as if Jesus were not his one and only life-principle, is what Cardinal Mermillod has called the “HERESY OFGOOD WORKS.” He uses this expression to stigmatize the apostle who so far forgets himself as to overlook his secondary and subordinate role, and look only to his own personal activity and talents as a basis for apostolic success. Is this not, in practice, a denial of a great part of the Tract on Grace? This conclusion is one that appalls us, at first sight. And yet a little thought will show us that it is only too true. HERESY IN GOOD WORKS! Feverish activity taking the place of God; grace ignored; human pride trying to thrust Jesus from His throne; supernatural life, the power of prayer, the economy of our redemption relegated, at least in practice, to the realm of pure theory: all this portrays no merely imaginary situation, but one which the diagnosis of souls shows to be very common though in various degrees, in this age of naturalism, when men judge, above all, by appearances, and act as though success were primarily a matter of skilful organisation. Even setting aside revelation altogether, the plain light of sane philosophy makes it impossible for us not to pity a man who, for all his remarkable gifts, refuses to recognise God as the principle of the marvellous talents that all observe in him. 9 _0mnia per Ipsum facta sunt, et sine Ipso factum est nihil quod factum est._ (Joan. i:3.) 10 _Veni ut vitam babeant. In Ipso vita erat. Ego sum vita._ (Joan. x: 10; i:4; xiv: 6.) \-15 What would be the feelings of a Catholic, thoroughly instructed in his religion, at the sight of an apostle who would boast, at least implicitly, that he could do without God in communicating to souls even the smallest degree of divine life? “He is crazy!” we would say, if we heard an apostolic worker using such words as these: “My God, just do not raise any obstacle to my work, just keep out of my way, and I guarantee to produce the best results!” Our feelings would be a mere reflection of the aversion excited in God by the spectacle of such disorder: by the spectacle of presumption carrying its pride to such limits as to wish to impart supernatural life, to produce faith, to put an end to sin, incite men to virtue, and without attributing these effects to the direct, unfailing, universal, and overwhelming action of the Blood of God, the price, the cause, and the means of all grace and of all spiritual life. Therefore, God owes it to the Humanity of His Son to make fools of these false Christs by paralyzing the works of their pride, or by allowing them to pass away as a momentary mirage. Setting aside everything that works upon souls ex opere operato, God owes it to the Redeemer to withdraw from the apostle who is inflated with his own importance, all His best gifts, and to reserve these for the branch that humbly recognises that all its life-sap comes from the Divine stock. Otherwise, if He were to bless with deep and lasting results the work filled with the poison of this virus we have called the Heresy of Good Works God might seem to be encouraging this abuse and favouring its contagious spread. ### 3. What Is the Interior Life? In this book the words life of prayer, contemplative life will be applied, as they are in the Imitation of Christ to the state of those souls who have dedicated themselves to a Christian life which is at the same time out of the common, and accessible to all, and, in substance, obligatory for all.11 Without embarking upon a study of asceticism, let us at least remind the reader that EVERYONE is obliged to accept the following principles as absolutely certain, and base his inner life upon them. FIRST TRUTH. Supernatural life is the life of Jesus Christ Himself in my soul, by Faith, Hope, and Charity; for Jesus is the meritorious, exemplary, and final cause of sanctifying grace, and, as Word, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is its efficient cause in our souls. The presence of Our Lord by this supernatural life is not the real presence proper to Holy Communion, but a presence of vital action like that of the action of the head or heart upon the members of the body. This action lies deep within us, and God ordinarily hides it from the soul in order to increase the merit of our faith. And so, as a rule, my natural faculties have no feeling of this action going on within me, which, however, I am formally obliged to believe by faith. This action is divine, yet it does not interfere with my free will, and makes use of all secondary causes, events, persons, and things, to teach me the will of God and to offer me an opportunity of acquiring or increasing my share in the divine life. 11 Although we are not here concerned with the phenomena that accompany certain extraordinary states of union with God, we are firmly persuaded that God, quite apart from such phenomena, frequently grants special graces of prayer to generous souls who thirst after a life of intimacy with Him. \-16 --- This life, begun in Baptism by the state of grace, perfected at Confirmation, recovered by Penance and enriched by the Holy Eucharist, is my Christian life. SECOND TRUTH. By this life, Jesus Christ imparts to me His Spirit. In this way, He becomes the principle of a superior activity which raises me up, provided I do not obstruct it, to think, judge, love, will, suffer, labour with Him, by Him, in Him, and like Him. My outward acts become the manifestations of this life of Jesus in me. And thus I tend to realise the ideal of the INTERIOR LIFE that was formulated by St. Paul when he said: “I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Christian life, piety, interior life, sanctity: in all these we find no essential difference. They are only different degrees of one and the same love. They are the half-light, the dawning, the rising, and the zenith of the same sun. Whenever the expression “interior life” is used in this book, the reference is not so much to habitual interior life, which we may call the “principal” or “capital” of the divine life deposited in us, by sanctifying grace, as to the actual interior life, which invests this capital and puts it to work in the activity of our soul, and in our fidelity to actual graces. Thus I can define it as the state of activity of a soul which strives against its natural inclinations in order to REGULATE them, and endeavours to acquire the HABIT of judging and directing its movements IN ALL THINGS according to the light of the Gospel and the example of Our Lord. Hence: a twofold movement. By the first, the soul withdraws from all that is opposed to the supernatural life in created things, and seeks at all times to be recollected: _aversio a_ _creaturis_. By the second, the soul tends upwards to God, and unites itself with Him: _conversio ad Deum_. The soul wishes in this way to be faithful to the grace which Our Lord offers to it at every moment. In a word, it lives, united to Jesus, and carries out in actuality the principle: “He that liveth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit.”12 THIRD TRUTH. I would be depriving myself of one of the most effective means of acquiring this interior life if I failed to strive after a precise and certain faith in the active presence of Jesus within me, and if I did not try to make this presence within me, not merely a living, but an extremely vital reality, and one which penetrated more and more into all the life of my faculties. When Jesus, in this manner, becomes my light, my ideal, my counsel, my support, my refuge, my strength, my healer, my consolation, my joy, my love, in a word, my life, I shall acquire all the virtues. Then alone will I be able to utter, with sincerity, the wonderful prayer of St. Bonaventure which the Church gives me for my thanksgiving after Mass: _Transfige dulcissime Domine Jesu_. FOURTH TRUTH. In proportion to the intensity of my love for God, my supernatural life may increase at every moment by a new infusion of the grace of the active presence of Jesus in me; an infusion produced: 1\. By each meritorious act (virtue, work, suffering under all its varying forms, such as privation of creatures, physical or moral pain, humiliation, self-denial; prayer, Mass, acts of devotion to Our Lady, etc.). 2\. By the Sacraments especially the Eucharist. It is certain, then (and here is a consequence that overwhelms me with its sublimity and its depth, but above all, fills me with courage and with joy) that, by every event, person or thing, Thou Jesus, Thou Thyself, dost present Thyself, objectively, to me, at every instant of the day. Thou dost hide Thy wisdom and Thy love beneath these appearances and dost request my co-operation to increase Thy life in myself. 12 Joan. xv: 5. \-17 --- O my soul, at every instant Jesus presents Himself to you by the GRACE OF THE PRESENT MOMENT — every time there is a prayer to say, a Mass to celebrate or to hear, reading to be done, or acts of patience, of zeal, of renunciation, of struggle, confidence, or love to be produced. Would you dare look the other way, or try to avoid His gaze? FIFTH TRUTH. The triple concupiscence caused by original sin and increased by every one of my actual sins establishes elements of death that militate against the life of Jesus in me. Now in exact proportion as these elements develop in me, they diminish the exercise of that life. Alas! They may even go so far as to destroy it outright. Nevertheless, inclinations and feelings contrary to that life, and temptations, even violent and prolonged can do it no harm whatever as long as my will resists them. And then (what a consoling truth!) like any other elements in the spiritual combat, they serve only to augment that life, in proportion to my own zeal. SIXTH TRUTH. If I am not faithful in the use of certain means, my intelligence will become blind and my will too weak to cooperate with Jesus in the increase, or even in the maintenance of His life in me. And the result will be a progressive diminution of that life: I shall find myself slipping into tepidity of the will.13 Through dissipation, cowardice, selfdelusion, or blindness, I tend to compromise with venial sin. But therefore my whole salvation is in danger, since I am paving the way to mortal sin. Were I to have the misfortune to fall into this tepidity (and a fortiori if I were to go lower still), I would have to make every effort to get out of it. 1. I would have to revive the fear of God in my soul by imagining myself, as vividly as possible, face to face with my last end, with death, with the judgment of God, with hell, eternity, sin, and so forth. 2. And to revive compunction by the sweet science of Thy wounds, O my merciful Redeemer. Going, in spirit, to Calvary, I would throw myself down at Thy holy feet and let Thy living Blood run down upon my head and heart to wash away my blindness, melt the ice in my soul, and drive away the torpor of my will. SEVENTH TRUTH. I must seriously fear that I do not have the degree of interior life that Jesus demands of me: 1. If I cease to increase my thirst to live in Jesus, that thirst which gives me both the desire to please God in all things, and the fear of displeasing Him in any way whatever. But I necessarily cease to increase this thirst if I no longer make use of the means for doing so: morning mental-prayer, Mass, Sacraments, and Office, general and particular examinations of conscience, and spiritual reading; or if, while not altogether abandoning them, I draw no profit from them, through my own fault. 2\. If I do not have that minimum of recollection which will allow me, during my work, to watch over my heart and keep it pure and generous enough not to silence the voice of Our Lord when He warns me of the elements of death, as soon as they show themselves, and urges me to fight them. Now I cannot possibly retain this minimum if I make no use of 13 This tepidity is clearly distinct from the dryness and even disgust which fervent souls experience in spite of themselves. For in that case, no sooner are the venial faults that escape us, through weakness committed, than we fight back, and detest them, and consequently show no evidence of tepidity of the will. But the soul that is poisoned with this kind of tepidity manifests two opposing wills: one good, the other bad. One hot, the other cold. On one hand, it wants salvation, and therefore it avoids evident mortal sin; on the other hand it does not want what is demanded by the love of God. On the contrary, it wants all the comforts of a free and easy life, and that is why it allows itself to commit deliberate venial sins. When this tepidity is not resisted, the very fact goes to show that there is in the soul a partial, though not total, bad will. That is to say, one part of the will says to God: "On such and such a point I do not want to cease displeasing You." (Father Desurmont, C. SS. R, Le Retour Continuel à Dieu.) \-18 --- the means that will secure it: liturgical life, aspirations, especially in the form of supplication, spiritual communion, practice of the presence of God, and so on. Without this, my life will soon be crawling with venial sins, perhaps without my being aware of it, self-delusion will throw up the smoke screen of a seeming piety that is more speculative than practical, or of my ambition for good works, to hide this state from me, or even to conceal a condition more appalling still! And yet my blindness will be imputed to me as sin since, by failing to foster the recollection indispensable to it, I shall have fomented and encouraged its very cause. EIGHTH TRUTH. My interior life will be no better than my custody of my heart. “Before all things keep a guard over thy heart, for from it springs forth life.”14 This custody of the heart is simply a HABITUAL or at least frequent anxiety to preserve all my acts, as they arise, from everything that might spoil their motive or their execution. It is a peaceful, unexcited anxiety, without any trace of strain, yet powerful because it is based on childlike confidence in God. It is the work of the heart and the will, rather than of the mind, which has to remain free to carry out its duties. Far from being an impediment to activity, the custody of the heart perfects it, by ordering it to the Spirit of God, and adjusting it to the duties of our state of life. It is an exercise that can be carried on at any hour. It is a quick glance, from the heart, over present actions and a peaceful attention to all the various phases of an action, as we perform it. It is carrying out exactly the precept, “_Age quod agis_.” The soul, like an alert sentry, keeps watch over every movement of its heart, over everything that is going on within it: all its impressions, intentions, passions, inclinations; in a word, all its interior and exterior acts, all its thoughts, words, and deeds. Custody of the heart demands a certain amount of recollection: there is no place for it in a soul given to dissipation. By frequently following this practice, we will gradually acquire the habit of it. _Quo_ _vadam et ad quid?_ Where am I going and why? What would Jesus do? How would He act in my place? What advice would He give me? What does He want from me, at this moment? Such are the questions that spring up spontaneously in the soul that is hungry for interior life. For the soul that goes to Jesus through Mary, this custody of the heart takes on a still more affectionate quality, and recourse to this dear Mother becomes a continual need for his heart. NINTH TRUTH. Jesus Christ reigns in a soul that aspires to imitate Him seriously, wholly, lovingly. This imitation has two degrees: 1. The soul strives to become indifferent to creatures, considered in themselves whether they suit its tastes or not. Following the example of Jesus, it seeks no other rule, in this, but the will of God: “I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.”15 2. The soul shows more readiness in doing things that are contrary to its nature, and repugnant to it. And thus it carries out the agendo contra that St. Ignatius speaks of in his famous meditation on the reign of Christ. It is acting against natural inclination in order to tend, by preference, to what imitates the poverty of the Saviour, and His love for sufferings and humiliations. “For Christ did not please Himself.”16 Following the expression of St. Paul, the soul then truly knows our Lord: “You have learned Christ.”17 TENTH TRUTH. No matter what my condition may be, if I am only willing to pray and become faithful to grace, Jesus offers me every means of returning to an inner life that 14 _Omni custodia serva cor tuum, quia ex ipso vita procedit_. (Prov. iv: 23.) 15 _Descendi de coelo non ut faciam voluntatem meam sed ejus qui misit me_. (Joan. xi: 38.) 16 _Christus non sibi placuit_. (Rom. xv: 3.) 17 _Didicistis Christum_. (Ephes. iv: 20.) \-19 --- will restore to me my intimacy with Him, and will enable me to develop His life in myself. And then, as this life gains ground within me, my soul will not cease to possess joy, even in the thick of trials, and the words of Isaias will be fulfilled in me: “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall speedily arise, and thy justice shall go before thy face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather thee up. Thou shalt call, and the Lord shall hear, thou shalt cry and He shall say: ‘Here I am.’ And the Lord will give thee rest continually, and will fill thy soul with brightness and will deliver thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of water whose waters do not fail.”18 ELEVENTH TRUTH. If God calls me to apply my activity not only to my own sanctification, but also to good works, I must establish this firm conviction, before everything else, in my mind: Jesus has got to be, and wishes to be, the life of these works. My efforts, by themselves, are nothing, absolutely nothing. “Without Me you can do nothing.”19 They will only be useful, and blessed by God, if by means of a genuine interior life I unite them constantly to the life-giving action of Jesus. But then they will become allpowerful: “I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me.”20 But should they spring from pride and self-satisfaction, from confidence in my own talents, from the desire to shine, they will be rejected by God: for would it not be a sacrilegious madness for me to steal, from God, a little of His glory in order to decorate and beautify myself? This conviction, far from robbing me of all initiative, will be my strength. And it will make me really feel the need to pray that I may obtain humility, which is such a treasure for my soul, since it is a guarantee of God’s help and of success in my labours. Once I am really convinced of the importance of this principle, I will make a serious examination of myself, when I am on retreat, to find out: 1) if my conviction of the nothingness of my own activity, left to itself, and of its power when united to that of Jesus, is not getting a little tarnished; 2) if I am ruthless in stamping out all self-satisfaction and vanity, all self-admiration in my apostolate; 3) if I continue unwaveringly to distrust myself; 4) and if I am praying to God to preserve me from pride, which is the first and foremost obstacle to His assistance. This Credo of the interior life, once it has become for my soul the whole foundation of its existence, guarantees to it, even here below, a participation in the joys of heaven. The interior life is the life of the elect. It fits in with the end God had in view when He created us.21 It answers the end of the Incarnation: ‘God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we may live by Him.”22 It is a state of complete happiness: “The end of human creatures is union with God; and in this their happiness consists.”23 In this happiness, if thorns are seen from the outside, yet roses bloom within: but with the ‘joys of the world it is just the reverse. “How pitiable they are, the poor people out in the world,” the Curé of Ars used to say, “they wear, over their shoulders, a mantle lined with thorns; they cannot make a move without being pierced. But true Christians have a mantle lined with soft fur.” _Crucem vident, unuctionem non vident_.24 --- 18 Is. lviii: 8, 9, 11. 19 _Sine me nibil potestis farere_. (Joan. xv: 5.) 20 Phil. iv:13 21 Man was created for the contemplation of his Creator, in order that he might ever seek the vision of Him and dwell in the stability of His love. (St. Gregory the Great, _Moralia_, viii, 12.) 22 1 Joan. iv: 9. 23 St Thomas Aquinas. 24 They see the cross, but do not see the consolations. (Said by St. Bernard, of those who took scandal at the austerity of the Cistercian life.) \-20 --- Heavenly state! The soul becomes a living heaven.25 Then, like St. Margaret Mary, it can sing: _Je possede en tout temps et je porte en tout lieu Et le Dieu de mon coeur et le_ _Coeur de mon Dieu_. (I ever possess, and take with me everywhere, the God of my heart and the Heart of my God.) It is the beginning of eternal bliss, _Inchoatio quaedam beatitudinis_. 26 Grace is the seed of Heaven. ### 4. Ignorance and Neglect of This Interior Life St. Gregory the Great, who was as skilful an administrator and as zealous an apostle as he was great in contemplation, sums up in two words, _Secum vivebat_ (He lived with himself), the state of soul of St. Benedict, when, at Subiaco, he was laying the foundation for that Rule which was to become one of the most powerful apostolic instruments God has ever used upon this earth. But we are forced to say exactly the contrary of the great majority of our contemporaries. To live with oneself, within oneself; to desire self-control, and not allow oneself to be dominated by exterior things; to reduce the imagination, the feelings, and even the intelligence and memory to the position of servants of the will and to make this will conform, without ceasing, with the will of God: all this is a program that is less and less welcome to a century of excitement that has seen the birth of a new ideal: the love of action for action’s sake. Any pretext will serve, if we can only escape this discipline of our faculties: business, family problems, health, good reputation, patriotism, the honour of one’s congregation, and the pretended glory of God, all vie with one another in preventing us from living within ourselves. This sort of frenzy for exterior life finally succeeds in gaining over us an attraction which we can no longer resist. Is there any reason to be surprised, then, that the interior life is neglected? “Neglected” is putting it mildly. It is often enough despised and turned to ridicule by the very people who ought to be the first to appreciate its advantages and its necessity. This situation even called forth the celebrated letter of Leo XIII to Cardinal Gibbons,27 in protest against the disastrous consequences of an exclusive admiration for active works. Priests are so anxious to avoid the effort required to live an interior life that they reach the point of overlooking the value of living with Christ, in Christ and through Christ, and of forgetting that everything, in the plan of Redemption, is based on the Eucharistic life as much as it is upon the rock of Peter. The unconscious preoccupation of these partisans of a spirituality that is all noise and fanfare, is to thrust what is essential into the background. True, the Church has not yet become for them a Protestant chapel; the Tabernacle is not yet empty. But in their eyes, the Eucharistic life can hardly be adapted to the needs of modern civilisation, still less can it suffice for its needs. The interior life, which is a necessary consequence of the Eucharistic life, has had its day. For the people steeped in these theories, and their number is legion, Holy Communion has lost the true meaning which the early Christians were able to see in it. They believe in the Eucharist, yes; but they no longer see in it something absolutely necessary, both to their works and to themselves. We must not be astonished, then, that since they have 25 Ever be mindful of God, and your mind will become His heaven. (St. Ephrem.) The mind is the paradise of the soul wherein, while it meditates upon heavenly things, it rejoices as though in a paradise of delights. (Hugh of St. Victor.) 26 St. Thomas Aquinas, 2a, 2ae, q. 180, a. 4. 27 The Apostolic Letter _Testem Benevolentiae_, January 22, 1833, addressed to his Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, on “True and False Americanism in Religion.”, \-21 --- lost nearly all ability to converse intimately with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, as with a friend, they have come to consider the interior life as a memory of the Middle Ages. To tell the truth, to hear these mighty men of works talking about their exploits, one might imagine that God Almighty, to Whom it is child’s play to create worlds, and before Whom the universe is dust and nothingness, cannot get along without their cooperation. Imperceptibly, a number of the faithful, and even of priests and religious, follow this cult of action to the point of making it a kind of dogma which inspires their attitude and all their actions, and leads them to throw themselves without restraint into a life of extroversion. “The Church, the diocese, the parish, the congregation, the work has need of me,” we can almost hear them say, “God finds me pretty useful.” And if no one dares come right out with such a piece of stupidity, nevertheless there exists, deep down in the heart, the presumption on which it is based and the lack of faith which fomented it. Neurasthenics are often ordered to give up all work, and to do so for long periods at a time. The remedy is, to them, unbearable, precisely because their sickness keeps them in a state of feverish excitement, which, having become a sort of second nature, drive them mercilessly on to pour out their energy and their motions and thus to aggravate their disease. That is how it often is with the man of active works, when he has to consider the interior life. He disdains, or, rather, he detests it all the more because it is the only remedy to his morbid state. Rather than live a life of prayer he will do his best to stupefy himself under an ever-increasing avalanche of badly managed enterprises, and thus to set aside all hope of cure. Full steam ahead! And while the helmsman is admiring the rapidity of his progress, God sees that, since the pilot does not know his job, the ship is off the course and is in danger of being wrecked. What Our Lord is looking for, above all, is adorers in spirit a, But these activistic heretics, for their part, imagine that they are giving greater glory to God in aiming above all at external results. This state of mind is the explanation why, in our day, in spite of the appreciation still shown for schools, dispensaries, missions, and hospitals, devotion to God in its interior form, by penance and prayer, is less and less understood. No longer able to believe in the value of immolation that nobody sees, your activist will not be content merely to treat as slackers and visionaries those who give themselves, in the cloister, to prayer and penance with an ardour, for souls equal to that of the most tireless missionary; but he will also roar with laughter ar those active workers who consider it indispensable to snatch a few minutes from even the most useful occupations, in order to go and purify and rekindle their energy before the Tabernacle and to obtain from its Divine Guest, better results for their work. ### 5. Reply to a First Objection: Is the Interior Life Lazy? This book is addressed to such active workers as are animated with a burning desire to spend themselves, but who are liable to neglect the necessary measures to keep their devoted work fruitful for souls, without wreaking havoc on their own inner life. It is not our object to wake up those pretended apostles who make a fetish of repose; nor to galvanise those souls whose egotism deludes them into thinking that laziness will foster piety; nor to shake up the apathy of those lazy, sleepy drones who will accept certain works, in the hope of material advantage or of honour provided their quietude and ideal of tranquillity are in no way disturbed. Such a task would require a special volume. Leaving to others, then, the job of bringing home to this apathetic brood the responsibilities of an existence that God willed to be active and which the devil, in collusion with nature, makes barren by inaction and lack of ambition, let us return to those beloved and respected colleagues for whom these pages are destined. \-22 --- There is no metaphor capable of giving any idea of the infinite intensity of the activity going on in the bosom of Almighty God. Such is the inner life of the Father, that it engenders a Divine Person. From the interior life of the Father and Son proceeds the Holy Spirit. The inner life that was communicated to the apostles in the Cenacle at once aroused them to zealous action. To anyone who knows anything about it and who does not contrive to disfigure the truth, this interior life is a principle of devoted and self-sacrificing action. But even if it did not reveal itself by outward manifestations, the life of prayer is, intimately and of itself, a source of activity beyond compare. Nothing could be more false than to consider it as a sort of oasis, offering itself as a refuge to those who want to let their life flow by in tranquil ease. The mere fact that it is the shortest road to the Kingdom of Heaven means that the text: “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away,”28 is applicable in a most special manner, to the life of prayer. Dom Sebastian Wyart29 was familiar with the labours of the ascetic as well as with the trials of army life, the cares of the student, and the responsibilities inseparable from the office of a superior, and he used to say that there were three kinds of works: 1\. The almost exclusively physical work of those who live by manual labour, by a craft, or in the army. And he declares that, no matter what one may think about it, this kind of work is the easiest of the three. 2\. The intellectual toil of the scholar, the thinker, in his often arduous pursuit of truth; that of the writer, of the professor, who put everything they have into the effort to communicate all they know to others; of the diplomat, the financier, the engineer and so on, as well as the intellectual labour required of a general during a battle if he is to foresee and direct everything and make the proper decisions. This labour in itself is, he said, far more difficult than the first kind, for there is a saying that “the blade wears out its sheath.” 3\. Finally, there is the labour of the interior life. And he did not hesitate to declare that of the three, this kind, when it is taken seriously, is by far the most exacting.30 But at the same time, it is this kind that offers us the most satisfaction here on earth. It is likewise the most important. It goes to make up not so much a man’s profession as the man himself. How many there are who can boast of great courage in the first two types of labour, which lead to wealth and fame, but who, when it comes to the effort to acquire virtue, are totally deficient in ambition, energy, or courage. A man who is determined to acquire an interior life must take, for his ideal, unremitting domination of self and complete control over his environment, in order to act inall things solely for the glory of God. To achieve this aim, he must strive, under allcircumstances, to keep united with Jesus Christ and thus to keep his eye on the end he has inview, and to evaluate everything according to the standard of the Gospel. Quo vadam, et adquid? he keeps saying, with St. Ignatius.31 And so, everything in him, intelligence and will, aswell as memory, feelings, imagination, and senses, depends on principle. But to achieve thisresult, what an effort it will cost him! Whether he is mortifying himself or permitting himselfsome legitimate enjoyment, whether he is thinking or acting, at work or at rest, loving what isgood or turning away in repugnance from what is evil, whether he is moved by desire or by 28 Matt. xi: 12. 29 Having served as an officer in the Papal zouaves defending Rome under Pius IX, he made profession as a Trappist at N. D. du Mont, in northern France. When the various Trappist congregations were united as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, Fr. Sebastian was elected first Abbot-General of the Order, andheld this position for twelve years until his death in 1904. 30 _Major labor est resistere vitiis et passionibus quam corporalibus insudare laboribus_. (St. Gregory the Great.)Greater effort is required to resist our vices and passions than to toil in manual labour. 31 Where am I going, and for what? \-23 --- fear, joy or sorrow, fear or hope, whether he feels indignation or is calm; in all things, andalways, he endeavours to keep his course dead ahead, in the direction of God’s good pleasure. At prayer, and especially before the Blessed Sacrament, he isolates himself more completelythan ever from all visible things, that he may come to converse with the invisible God as if hesaw Him. 32 Even in the midst of his apostolic labours he will manage to realise this ideal, which St. Paul admired in Moses. Neither the troubles of life, nor the storms aroused by passion, will succeed in turninghim aside from the line of conduct, he has laid down for himself. But on the other hand, if hedoes weaken for a moment, he pulls himself together at once, and presses forward with evenmore determination than before. What a job! And yet it is not hard to understand how God rewards, even here below, with special joys, those who do not flinch at the effort which this work demands. “Idlers?” Dom Sebastian concludes, “Are these true religious, or these truly interiorand zealous priests idlers? Nonsense! Let the busiest men of affairs in the world come andtake a look at our life, and see how their labours compare with ours!” Who does not know this from experience? There are times when we might be inclinedto prefer long hours in some exhausting occupation to half an hour of serious mental prayer, to an attentive hearing of Mass, or to the careful and intelligent recitation of the Breviary.33 Father Faber expresses his grief in admitting that for some people “the quarter of anhour after Communion is the weariest quarter hour of the day.” When we have to make athree days’ retreat, how unwilling some of us are! To withdraw for three days from a lifewhich, though full of things to be done, is easy, and to live on the supernatural plane, makingthe supernatural sink into every detail of our existence during this retreat; to compel one’smind to see everything, during this time, by the light of faith alone, and one’s heart to forgeteverything in order to seek Christ alone, and His life; to remain face to face with one’s selfand lay bare the infirmities and weaknesses of one’s soul; to throw the soul into the crucible, and turn a deaf ear to all its cries of complaint: all this is a prospect which makes somepeople, otherwise ready to face any fatigue, turn tail and flee when there is no longer aquestion of an expenditure of merely natural energy. And if only three days of such occupation may seem already so exhausting, what doesnature think of the idea of an entire life to be gradually made subject to the rule of the interiorlife? No doubt, in this labour of detachment, grace shoulders a great part of the difficulty, making the yoke sweet and the burden light. But sail, what efforts the soul has to make! Italways costs something to get back on the right road, and return to the rule that “ourconversation is in heaven.”34 St. Thomas explains this very well. Man, he says, is placed inbetween the things of this world and spiritual goods, in which eternal happiness is to befound. The more he clings to one, the more he recedes from the other and vice versa.35 Whenone side of the scale goes down, the other goes up just as much. Now since the disaster of original sin has upset the whole economy of our being, ithas made this double movement of adhesion and recession extremely difficult to carry out. To re-establish order and balance in this “little world,” which is man, and to preserve it by the ###### Footnotes for Page 24 32 Heb. xi: 27 33 “Quotation from Dom Festugière, O. S. B.: “Whatever the difficulties of the active life may be, only the inexperienced will deny the gruelling trials of the interior life. Many active workers, pious men, admit that whatcosts them the most, in their life, is not so much action as their prayers of obligation. It is a relief for them to goto work." 34 Philipp. iii: 20. 35 1a, 2ae, q. 108, a. 4. \-24 --- interior life requires, since the fall, work, suffering, and sacrifice. The building has caved in, and has to be rebuilt and preserved from fresh collapse. By constant vigilance, self-denial, and mortification, we have to tear away fromthoughts of earth a heart made heavy with all the weight of a corrupted nature, gravi corde.36 We have to remake our character, in detail, in all those points in which it is most unlike thephysiognomy of Our Lord’s soul; for instance in its dissipation, bad temper, self-satisfaction, its hardness of heart, egoism, lack of pity and kindness, and so forth. We have to resist theallurement of pleasures that are both sensible and present, for the hope of a spiritualhappiness which we shall only lose from everything that can cause us to love this world. Wehave to take all creatures, desires, longings, concupiscences, exterior goods, self-will, andself-judgment, and offer them up in a holocaust without reserve. What a task! And yet this is only the negative side of the interior life. After this hand-to-hand fightthat made St. Paul37 groan and which Father de Ravignan expressed as follows: “You ask mewhat I did during my novitiate? Well, there were two of us. I threw the other fellow out thewindow, and then I was alone”; after this unremitting fight against an enemy always liable torise from the dead, we must protect, against the slightest movement of return of the naturalspirit, a heart which, purified by penance, is now consumed with the desire to make up for its insults to God. We must devote all our energies to keeping that heart fixed upon the invisiblebeauty of the virtues to be acquired, that we may imitate those of Christ. We must endeavorto maintain, even in the smallest details of life, an absolute confidence in Providence. Andthis is the positive side of the interior life. Anyone can guess the unlimited field of work thatit opens up. This labour is personal, steady, and constant. And yet it is precisely by this work thatthe soul acquires a wonderful facility and an astonishing rapidity in carrying out the duties ofan apostle. This secret belongs to the interior life alone. The immense labours accomplished, in spite of precarious health, by a St. Augustine, a St. John Chrysostom, a St. Bernard, a St. Thomas Aquinas, or a St. Vincent de Paul amazeus. But we are still more astonished to see how these men, in spite of their almost unceasingwork, kept themselves in the most constant union with God. Quenching, more than others, their thirst at the source of life, by contemplation, these saints drew from it the mostunlimited capacity for work. This truth was well expressed by one of our great bishops, overburdened as he waswith work, when he replied to a statesman, himself hard-pressed with his affairs, who askedhim the secret of his constant serenity and of the astonishing results of his enterprises. “To allyour occupations, my dear friend,” said the Bishop, “add half an hour of meditation everymorning. Not only will you get through all your business, but you will find time for stillmore.” Finally, do we not see St. Louis, King of France, finding in the eight or nine hours aday which he was in the habit of devoting to the exercises of the inner life, the secret and thestrength to apply himself with so much attention to the affairs of state and the good of hissubjects that a socialist orator admitted that never, even in our own time, had so much beendone for the working class, as under the reign of this king? ### 6. Reply to Another Objection: Is the Interior Life Selfish? Let us not speak of the lazy man or the spiritual glutton for whom the interior lifeconsists in the delights of a pleasurable idleness, and who are much more avid for theconsolations of God than for the God of consolations. They have only a false piety. But #### Footnotes 36 Ps. iv. 37 Rom. vii: 22-24. \-25 --- anyone who, either offhand or through stubborn conviction, calls the inner life selfish, doesnot understand it any better than they do. We have already said that this life is the pure and abundant source of the mostgenerous works of charity for souls and of charity which seeks to alleviate the sufferings ofthis world. But let us consider the usefulness of this life from another point of view. Was the interior life of Mary and Joseph selfish and sterile? What blasphemy, andwhat absurdity! And yet they are credited with not one external work. The mere influenceupon the world of an intense inner life, the merits of prayers and sacrifices applied for thespread of the benefits of the Redemption were enough to make Mary Queen of the Apostlesand Joseph Patron of the Universal Church.38 “My sister hath left me alone to serve,”39 says (in Martha’s words) the presumptuousidiot who sees nothing but his own exterior works and their result. His stupidity and lack of understanding of the ways of God do not go to such lengthsas to make him suppose that God could not get along without him. And yet he still loves torepeat with Martha, incapable of understanding the excellence of the contemplation of Magdalen, “Speak to her that she help me,”40 and goes so far as to cry out, “To what purposeis this waste?”41 condemning as loss of time the moments that his apostolic colleagues, morespiritual than he, reserve for contemplation, in order to solidify their interior life with God. “And for them do I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified in truth,”42 repliesthe soul that has realised all the implications of the Master’s phrase, “that they also” and who, knowing the value of prayer and sacrifice, unites to the tears and Blood of the Redeemer thetears of his own eyes and the blood of a heart that purifies itself more and more each day. With Jesus, the interior soul hears the voice of the world’s crime rising up to heavenand calling down chastisement upon the guilty; and this soul delays the sentence by the omnipotence of suppliant prayer, which is able to stay the hand of God, just when He is aboutto let loose His thunderbolt. “Those who pray,” said the eminent statesman Donoso Cortes, after his conversion,“do more for the world than those who fight, and if the world is going from bad to worse, it is, because there are more battles than prayers.” “Hands uplifted,” said Bossuet, “rout more battalions than hands that strike.” And in the midst of their desert, the solitaries of the Thebaid often had burning in their hearts the fire that animated St. Francis Xavier. “They seemed to some,” said St. Augustine, “to have abandoned the world more than they should have.” _Videntur nonnullis res humanas plus_ _quam oportet deseruisse_. But, he adds, people forget that their prayers, purified by this complete separation from the world, were all the more powerful and more NECESSARY for a depraved society. A short but fervent prayer will usually do more to bring about a conversion than long discussions of fine speeches. He who prays is in touch with the FIRST cause. He acts directly upon it. And by that very fact he has his hand upon all the secondary causes, since they only receive their efficacy from this superior principle. And so the desired effect is obtained both more surely and more promptly. A single burning prayer of the seraphic St. Theresa (as was learned through a highly creditable revelation) converted ten thousand heretics. And her soul, all on fire for Christ, could not conceive of a contemplative life, an interior life, which would take no interest in the Saviour’s intense anxiety for the redemption of souls. “I would accept Purgatory until the 38 In another chapter, we shall see that it is this interior life which gives works their fruitfulness. 39 Luc. x:40. 40 Luc. x:4. 41 Matth. xxiv:8. 42 Joan. xvii:19. \-26 --- Last Judgment,” she said, “to deliver but one of them. And what do I care how long I suffer, if I can thus set free a single soul, let alone many souls, for the greater glory of God?” Speaking of her nuns, she said: “Bring to bear, my children, your prayers, your disciplines, your fasts, and your desires upon this apostolic object.” This, indeed, is the whole work of the Carmelite, the Trappistine, the Poor Clare. See how they follow the advance of the apostle, supplying him with the overflow of their prayers and penances. All along the line of the Cross’s march, or of the Gospel’s shining progress over the earth, their prayers sweep down from on high upon souls, their divine prey. Better still, it is their secret but active love which awakens the voice of mercy in every part of a world of sinners. No one in this world knows the reason for the conversions of pagans at the very ends of the earth, for the heroic endurance of Christians under persecution, for the heavenly joy of martyred missionaries. All this is invisibly bound up with the prayer of some humble, cloistered nun. Her fingers play upon the keyboard of divine forgiveness and of the eternal lights; her silent and lonely soul presides over the salvation of souls and the conquests of the Church.43 “I want Trappists in this apostolic vicariate,” said Msgr. Favier, Bishop of Peking, “I even desire them to abstain from all exterior ministry in order that nothing may distract them from the work of prayer, penance, and sacred studies. For I well know what a help will be given to our missionaries by the existence of our poor Chinese people.” And later on he declared: “We have succeeded in penetrating into a district hitherto unapproachable. I attribute this fact to our dear Trappists.” “Ten Carmelite nuns, praying,” said a Bishop of Cochin-China to the Governor of Saigon, “will be of greater help to me than twenty missionaries, preaching.” Secular priests, religious, both men and women, vowed to the active, but also to the interior life, share this same power, with the souls in the cloister, over the heart of God. Father Chevier, Don Bosco, Pere Marie Antoine, are striking examples of this. Venerable Anne-Marie Taigi, in her duties as a poor housekeeper, was an apostle, as was St. BenedictJoseph Labre, shunning the beaten track. M. Dupont, the holy man of Tours, Col. Paqueron, and so on, all consumed with the same ardour, were powerful in their works because they were interior souls. And General de Sonis, between battles, found the secret of his apostolate in union with God. Was the life of the Curé d’Ars selfish and sterile? Such a statement would only be worthy of silent contempt. Anyone able to judge in such matters knows that it was precisely the perfection of his intimate union with God that was the reason for the zeal and success of this priest without natural talents, but who, as contemplative as a Carthusian, thirsted for souls with a thirst that his inner life had made unquenchable. And he received from Our Lord, in Whom he lived, as it were, a participation in the divine power to make converts. Was his inner life barren? Let us imagine a St. Vianney in every one of our dioceses. Before ten years, our country would be regenerated, and much more completely regenerated than it could be by any number of enterprises without firm foundation in the interior life, even if they were supported by unlimited funds and by the talent and activity of thousands of apostles. Nowadays, the whole power of hell seems more than ever bent upon fighting the moral power of the Church and suffocating the divine life in souls. Beyond all doubt, our chief reason for hoping that our world will rise triumphant, in the teeth of all these onslaughts, is that at no other time (or so it seems) has there been what we now see: so great a proportion of souls, even among the simple faithful, filled with ardent 43 Lumière et Flamme, P. Léon, O. M. \-27 --- desires to live united with the Heart of Jesus and to extend His Kingdom, by scattering around them the seeds of interior life. Granted that these chosen souls are a tiny minority. But what do numbers matter, where there is intensity of such life? The fact that France got back on her feet after the revolution must be accredited to a priesthood that learned the interior life the hard way, by persecution. But through these men a current of divine life came to enliven a generation which seemed condemned to death by apostasy and an indifference which no human power seemed able to overcome. And yet now, after fifty years of freedom of education in France, after this halfcentury that has beheld the birth of works without number, and during which we have had, in our hands, the youth of the land, and have enjoyed the almost complete support of the various governments, how is it that, in spite of results that appear, outwardly, to be quite striking, we have been unable to form, in our nation, a majority with enough real Christianity in it to fight against the coalition of the followers of Satan? No doubt, the abandonment of the liturgical life and the cessation of its influence upon the faithful have contributed to this impotence. Our spirituality has become narrow, dry, superficial, external, or altogether sentimental; it does not have the penetration and soulstirring power that only the Liturgy, that great source of Christian vitality, can give. But is there not another cause to be traced to the fact that we priests and educators, because we lack an intense inner life, are unable to beget in souls anything more than a surface piety, without any powerful ideals or strong convictions? Those of us who are professors: have we not, perhaps, been more ambitious for the distinction of degrees and for the reputation of our colleges than to impart a solid religious instruction to souls? Have we not worn ourselves out on less important things than forming of wills, and imprinting on well-tried characters the stamp of Jesus Christ? And has not the most frequent cause of this mediocrity been the common banality of our inner life? If the priest is a saint (the saying goes), the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than those who beget it in Christ. We would not go so far as to accept this proposition, but we consider that the following words of St. Alphonsus sufficiently well express the came to which we may attribute the responsibility for our present situation: “The good morals and die salvation of the people depend on good pastors. If there is a good priest in charge of the parish, you will soon see devotion flourishing, people frequenting the Sacraments, and honouring the practice of mental prayer. Hence the proverb: like pastor, like parish: _Qualis pastor, talis parochia_. According to this word of Ecclesiasticus (x:2) ‘Those who dwell in the state, take after their ruler’: _Qualis est rector civitatis tales et_ _inhabitantes in ea_.” (Homo Apost., vii: 16.) ### 7. No Conflict Between the Interior Life and the Salvation of Souls But now the extrovert, in search of arguments against the interior life, will complain: how can I dare to curtail my active works? Can I possibly do too much, when the salvation of souls is at stake? Do I not make up for everything in my activity, and amply too, by my sublime self-sacrifice? Work is prayer. Sacrifice excels prayer. And does not St. Gregory call the zeal for souls the most pleasing sacrifice anyone could offer to God? _Nullum sacrificium_ _est Deo magis acceptum quam zelus animarum?_ (Hom. 12, in Ezech.) First of all, let us fix the exact sense of St. Gregory’s words, in the terms of the Angelic Doctor. “To offer sacrifice spiritually to God,” he says, “is to offer Him something that gives Him glory. Now of all goods, the most pleasing that man can offer to God is, undeniably, the salvation of a soul. But everyone must first offer his own soul, according to \-28 --- what is said in Scripture: ‘If you wish to please God, have pity on your own soul.’ When this first sacrifice has been consummated, then will it be permitted us to procure the same joy for others. The more closely a man unites first his own soul, and then that of another, to God, the more acceptable is his sacrifice. But this intimate and generous, as well as humble union, can only be effected by prayer. To apply oneself to a life of prayer, or to lead others to give themselves to it, is, therefore, more pleasing to God than to devote oneself to activity and good works, and lead others to practice these. And so,” the Angelic Doctor concludes, “when St. Gregory affirms that the most pleasing sacrifice to God is the salvation of souls, he does not mean by that to give the active life preference over contemplation, but he is only saying that to offer to God one single soul gives Him infinitely more glory and obtains, for ourselves, much more merit than if we gave Him all that is most precious on this earth.”44 The necessity of the interior life is so far from being an obstacle to zealous activity in generous souls, to whom the clearly recognised will of God makes it a duty to accept the responsibility for such works, that it would be the greatest possible mistake for such persons to renounce this work, or give themselves to it half-heartedly, or even desert the field of battle under pretext of taking greater care of their souls and arriving at a more perfect union with God. In some cases, such a course would lead to grave danger. “Woe unto me,” says St. Paul, “if I preach not the Gospel.”45 Once this reservation has been made, however, we must at once add that it would be an even greater mistake to devote oneself to the conversion of souls while forgetting one’s own salvation. God wants us to love our neighbour as ourselves, but never more than ourselves, that is, never to such an extent that we harm our own souls. And in practice, this is as much as if He demanded that we take more care of our own soul than of those others, since our zeal must be regulated by charity, and “_Prima sibi charitas_”46 is an axiom of theology. “I love Jesus Christ,” said St. Alphonsus Liguori,” and that is why I am on fire with the desire to give Him souls, first of all my own, and then an incalculable number of others.” This is a practical application of St. Bernard’s _Tuus esto ubique_47 and that other principle of the holy abbot of Clairvaux: “No man is truly wise, who is not wise for himself.”48 St. Bernard, who was himself a rare miracle of apostolic zeal, followed this rule. Geoffrey of Auxerre, his secretary, depicts him as: _Totus primum sibi et sic totus omnibus_. “He belonged, first of all, entirely to himself, and thus he belonged entirely to all men.”49 “I do not tell you,” writes the same saint to Pope Bl. Eugenius III, “to withdraw completely from secular operations. I only exhort you not to throw yourself entirely into them. If you are a man belonging to everybody, belong also to yourself. Otherwise what good would it do you to save everybody else, if you were to be lost yourself? Keep something, then, for yourself, and if everyone comes to drink at your fountain, do not deprive yourself of drinking there too. What! Must you alone go thirsty? Always begin with the consideration of yourself. It would be vain for you to lavish care upon others, and neglect yourself. May all your reflections, then, begin with yourself, and end, also with yourself. Be, for yourself, the first and last, and remember that in the business of winning salvation, no one is closer to you than your mother’s only son.”50 Very suggestive is this retreat note of Bishop Dupanloup, of Orleans: “My activities are so crushing that they ruin my health, disturb my piety and yet teach me nothing new. I 44 Summa Theologia, 2a, 2ae, q.182, a2, ad 3. 45 I Cor. ix:16. 46 Charity for oneself first (Charity begins at home). 47 "In all places, belong to yourself." 48 (St. Bernard, _De Consideratione_, ii:3.) 49 Gaufridus, _Vita Bernardi_. 50 St. Bernard loc. cit. \-29 --- have got to control them. God has given me the grace to recognise that the big obstacle to my acquiring a peaceful and fruitful interior life is my natural activity, and my tendency to be carried away by my work. And I have recognised, besides, that this lack of interior life is the source of all my faults, all my troubles, my dryness, my fits of disgust, and my bad health. “I have therefore resolved to direct all my efforts to acquiring this interior life which I so badly need, and I have, with God’s grace, drawn up the following points with that end in view: “1) I will always take more time than is necessary, to do everything. This is the way to avoid being in a hurry and getting excited. “2) Since I invariably have more things to do than time in which to do them, and this prospect preoccupies me and gets me all worked up, I will cease to think about all that I have to do, and only consider the time I have at my disposal. I will make use of that time, without losing a moment of it, beginning with the most important duties; and as regards those that may or may not get done, I shall not worry about them.” A jeweller will prefer the smallest fragment of diamond to several sapphires; and so, in the order established by God, our intimacy with Him gives Him more glory than all possible good, procured by us, for a great number of souls, but to the detriment of our own progress. Our Heavenly Father, “who devotes Himself more to the direction of a soul in which He reigns, than to the natural government of the whole universe and to the civil government of all empires,”51 looks for this harmony in our zeal. He prefers sometimes to let an enterprise go by the board, if He sees it becoming an obstacle to the charity of the soul engaged in it. But as for Satan, he, on the contrary, does not hesitate to encourage a purely superficial success, if he can by this success prevent the apostle from making progress in the interior life: so clearly does his rage guess what it is Our Lord values most highly. To get rid of a diamond, he is quite willing to allow us a few sapphires. 51 P. Lallemant, _Doct. Spirit_. \-30 --- ![[maps/bibliography#^biblio-soa]] > [[prologue-chau-soul|← Previous]] | [[chau-soul-apostolate-toc|TOC]] | [[part-two-chau-soul|Next →]]