CHAPTER X: SEVEN INTERIOR EXERCISES WITH THEIR SEVERAL OBJECTS.
SEVEN INTERIOR EXERCISES WITH THEIR SEVERAL OBJECTS.
§ 1. The Presence of God.
§ 2. The Diesel Trimly.
§ 3. The Attributes or Perfections of God.
§ 4. Continual prayer.
§ 5. Spiritual reading.
§ 6. Variety of exercises.
§ 7. The Sacred Humanity of Christ. __________________________________________________________________
§ 1. The Presence of God.
RECALL and turn thy mind frequently to the Lord thy God, and walk reverently before Him, who is everywhere by the presence of His majesty and the greatness of His power. For He Himself saith by His Prophet, "I fill heaven and earth" (Jerem. xxiii. 24). He is everywhere present; but no place contains Him, no place encloses Him. He is everywhere whole and undivided; yet He is uncontaminated by any uncleanness. Sensible defilement is not attributed to objects of sense as they are conceived by the mind, but as they are perceived by the senses. Nothing is unclean to God except sin, by which He cannot be defiled, as the sun's rays are not corrupted by shining in filthy places.
If thou enquirest, where was God before He created the world? 1 answer, that He was with Himself, He was in Himself, and now, after the creation of the world, He is in Himself. God, therefore, who is everywhere, penetrates all creatures, and by His simple and occult Essence is nearer to them than they are to themselves. From Him it comes that all things are, since all created things depend upon Him, and with out Him all things are nothing, and speedily relapse into nothingness unless they are preserved by Him. All things are in God, who sustains and rules them by His power. Wherefore St. Paul saith in the Acts of the Apostles, that "in God we live, and move, and be" (Acts xvii. 28). Moreover, all things are in God ideally; for the ideas, or intelligible forms of all things, were from eternity in the mind and knowledge of God, and therein they abide, fixed and unchangeable; and, being one with God, are life in Him, whose being is life; and God Himself, or the Divine Essence, is the one idea and one pattern of all things, intellectually representing all things. Hence, when St. John the Evangelist had said that all things were made by the Eternal Word of God, and without Him nothing was made, he added: "that which was made was life in Him" (St. John i. 3, 4). [7]
As we have said, God is in all things. He is in a most noble manner in rational creatures, stamped with His image, although He be far removed from the perception of the impious. For every wicked man is removed from God by dissimilitude, as every pious man approaches Him by likeness. Therefore God is present to the good by the saving bestowal of His grace; to the citizens of heaven He is present by the bright manifestation of His glory; to the lost by the congruous execution of His justice. Happy is that soul which, sincerely loving God, in this exile knows how to contemplate His presence (with the help of His grace) by the free, bright, serene, and simple perception of the mind! __________________________________________________________________
[7] Many of the early Fathers followed the reading given above, and they explained the words of the Evangelist, as follows. All created things, before they came into being, existed, not in themselves, but in God; just as a house, before it is built, exists in the mind of the architect who has designed it. And since, by reason of God's simplicity, whatever is in God is God and is life, therefore all created things, as they exist ideally in God, are life. __________________________________________________________________
2. The Blessed Trinity.
When the thought of the adorable Trinity enters thy mind, make not to thyself three gods, after the manner of the heathen; but believe, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are One God, who is the illimitable fulness of being, life, power, holiness, wisdom, goodness, sweetness, beauty, wealth, nobility, bliss, glory, and every perfection. Believe, I say, that the Three Uncreated Persons are One Godhead, One Substance or Being, infinitely transcending all creatures, immense, dependent on none, needing no one, subsisting by Itself, sufficing to Itself, supremely glorious, beautiful, and joyful, supremely tranquil, worthy of love, and perfect, superessential and most simple, which no bodily eye can see, and no human intellect can comprehend. Venerate the Unity of substance in the Trinity of Persons, and the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of substance. The One and Undivided Essence is Three Persons, and the Three Persons are the One and Undivided Essence. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are wholly One as regards the substance, while yet there is great distinction between the Persons. There is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost; but there is not one Essence of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost: for there is one substance, one nature, one Divinity, one majesty, of the Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost. As we confess that the Unbegotten Father is perfect and immutable God, or that the whole and true Divinity is in the Father; so we ought to confess that the Son, begotten of the Father, is perfect and immutable God; and that the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, who is the Love of the Father and the Son, is perfect and immutable God. But yet the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not three gods, but one perfect and immutable God, one Lord, one eternal, one al mighty, one Beginning of all created things. Whatsoever one Person is as to substance, such is also each of the other Persons. Assuredly whatever is in one Person, that is entirely in each of the others; nor has any one less than the three together, nor have the three together more than each one alone.
The Father is from Himself. He is His own eternal Essence, and He receives nothing from any other; the Son is not from Himself, but from the Father alone, and whatever He hath, He hath from the Father; moreover, the Holy Ghost is not from Himself, but from the Father and the Son, and whatsoever He hath, He hath from the Father and the Son. The Father communicates Himself wholly to the Son; for He gives Him His whole Divine Essence or the fulness of His whole Divinity, and, with the Son, as one principle, He gives to the Holy Ghost the same fulness of the i Divinity. Yet there is no before or after in the glorious Trinity, no greater or loss; but the three Divine Persons, whose substance is one and the same, are co-eternal and supremely equal, and supremely alike, and abide mutually each one in each other. In the Father is the whole Son and the whole Holy Ghost; in the Son is the whole Father and the whole Holy Ghost; in the Holy Ghost is the whole Father and the whole Son. Although to the Father be attributed power, and to the Son wisdom, and to the Holy Ghost goodness; yet the power, and the wisdom, and the goodness of the three Persons is one and the same. The Person of the Son assumed a human nature, but not the Person of the Father, nor the Person of the Holy Ghost; yet the Incarnation of the Son was the work of the whole Trinity. For as the Essence of the three Persons is one, so their operation is one, and their will one and the same.
The image of the Holy Trinity shines forth beautifully in the soul of man. For, like the angelic spirits, the rational soul has three very excellent natural powers, namely, memory, intellect, and will; which God bestowed upon it, that it might with the memory remember Him, with the intellect know Him, and with the will choose and love Him, and enjoy Him. Now, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are One God, or One Divine Substance; so those three superior and spiritual powers of the soul are one mind, or one essence of the soul. The three eternal and inseparable Persons of the Divinity operate inseparably; and the aforesaid three powers of the soul being also inseparable operate inseparably. The memory does not recall or reflect upon anything without the intellect and the will; nor does the intellect know anything without the memory and the will; nor can the will choose or love anything without the memory and the intellect. These three powers of the soul are the spiritual senses; for sight is attributed to the faculty of intellect, hearing to that of memory; smelling, taste, and touch to that of the affections or of love, that is to say, the will. But as the spirit is more excellent than the body, so those senses are more perfect and more worthy than the bodily senses. Moreover when a soul, being raised above its natural powers, has deserved to find God in its simple essence and most secret depths, and to be united to Him without any medium, it sees, hears, tastes, and touches what no words can express.
Thou must not discourse otherwise than cautiously of the mystery of the Most High Trinity; for it is as impossible to explain it as it is for a man standing on the earth to reach heaven with his hand. For who can say or even understand, that the Father most clearly contemplating His eternal Essence, and perfectly knowing Himself, utters His Word, or begets His Son consubstantial, co-eternal, and co-equal with Himself? For that knowledge of Himself is in eternity the generation of His Son. Or who can comprehend, that the Holy Spirit proceeds and emanates from the Father and the Son, with whom also He is consubstantial, co-eternal and co-equal? These things sur pass all human understanding.
In order, however, that a sensible similitude may strengthen in thee the faith by which thou must believe the Son to be eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal, as the Father, from whom they proceed and derive their origin, is eternal consider that light and heat also proceed from fire or name, and yet are not posterior in time to the fire. For from the very moment that fire exists, it gives both light and heat; nor could fire ever exist without light and heat, so that if fire were eternal its light would also be eternal and its heat eternal. In like manner the light and heat proceeding from the sun are coeval with the sun.
As that incomprehensible Generation and Procession in the Most Holy Trinity never had a beginning, neither will they ever have an end, for if they had ever had a beginning, or if they should ever come to an end, there would have been, or there would be some change in the Divinity, which is absolutely impossible, for the Divine Nature and Substance are unchangeable. Since each Divine Person is infinitely perfect, and each one most clearly beholds and fully comprehends the other, these same three Persons delight in each other with a most joyful, ardent, and utterly infinite love. But it is better to have some experience within of so great a mystery, than with the mouth to speak of it in many words. In these things which thy reason and intellect cannot comprehend, do thou give thyself to humility alone, keeping the entire faith, and simply believing what the Catholic Church believes. __________________________________________________________________
§ 3. The Attributes of God.
Contemplate with all the devotion of thy mind the goodness, the sweetness, the beauty, the loving-kindness, the mercy, the charity, the faithfulness of the Lord thy God, and His other perfections, which are utterly immense and incomprehensible. If thou wishest to aspire to Jesus by loving ejaculations, thou mayest with thy lips or in thy heart say these or the like words: "O good Jesus, would that I were pure and innocent before Thee! O that I might please Thee by true humility and perfect resignation of myself! O my most beloved, and most dear! O sweetness of my heart, the life of my soul! O my pure joy, and my chaste delight! O Lord, my God, what do I desire beside Thee? Thou sufficest me; Thou art my only and most joyful good! I desire to embrace Thee in the arms of my soul! O do Thou enkindle in me the fire of Thy love, and let it consume me. Grant that I may love Thee with my whole heart, with all my soul, and all my strength, according to Thy gracious will," &c.
Be not, however, more vehement in these things than is fitting, but keep carefully within the bounds of discretion, lest thou shouldst injure thy head, and over-burden and destroy thy body. But when it happens to thee to feel some pain from thy spiritual exercises, offer it to God to His eternal praise, and be patient. If any one, without taking into account his strength, strives with violent and unseasonable efforts incessantly to concentrate his thoughts on interior objects, and to raise his mind to God, he does not suffer God to repose within him. Evil thoughts should indeed be repelled by salutary ones, and the eyes of the heart ought to be lovingly, calmly, and simply turned to God everywhere present. As one who is parched with thirst cannot easily forget his thirst, so one who exceedingly loves God, must of necessity be often mindful of Him, if he is not impeded by other thoughts. For where that is which we love and care for, thither turn of themselves the eyes and the thoughts. Each one should prudently consider the measure of grace he has received from God, since the Holy Spirit variously distributes His gifts. __________________________________________________________________
4. Prayer.
By these words of the Gospel "We ought always to pray, and not to faint" (St. Luke xviii. 1), and by those of St. Paul, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. v. 17), we are not commanded to continue the exercise of prayer without any cessation, for this is not within the power of human frailty; but we are admonished not to abandon prayer so far as to fail to give certain hours to it diligently every day. And assuredly, a man of good-will, who always acts rightly, and refers all his works to the honour of God, is ever praying. __________________________________________________________________
5. Spiritual reading.
When thou attendest as is meet to spiritual reading, or doest anything else rightly to the praise of God, thou dost often reap not less, yea even more, fruit from it than if thou hadst prayed. For not only prayer, but also any salutary words read or listened to for the glory of God, and any other pious actions and thoughts, wonderfully adorn the soul. The mind of a good man receives indeed many and great bone-fits from spiritual teaching; for it is thereby kept pure, and lays aside its ignorance, and is made tranquil, and is illuminated, nourished, excited, and strengthened, and receives exceeding adornment. Be thou therefore ready and willing to read, or to hear the Word of God and all wholesome doctrine, by whomsoever it may be uttered, and however simply it may be spoken or written; but execrate the corrupt and pestilent doctrine of heretics. Even though any one may not be able exactly to understand, nor to keep in his memory the pious things which he reads or hears to the praise of God; nevertheless such things are of great profit to his soul. It is certain that while he reads or hears good things, a man loses not his time; but he, no doubt, does lose his time if he has not a pure and right intention while he reads even the best things. __________________________________________________________________
§ 6. Variety of exercises.
We should not persist too long in any one exercise, lest it should cause weariness, and engender sloth; but we should meetly vary our exercises. If exterior tears are wanting to thee in thy prayers or meditations and holy exercises, let it not disturb thee; for one who desires to plea.-e God is not destitute of interior tears; and though, his eyes may not weep, yet his heart weeps. For the tears which thou Last not, offer to God the Father the tears of Christ. There are some who would do well generally to avoid great sensible compunction, lest it should derange the health of the body and disturb the serenity of the mind.
Give thyself to God and to divine and spiritual things, with a cheerful, free and simple heart, and without inordinate anxiety and too great stretch and application of the intellect. Seek the honour of God in thy pious exercises, rather than thy own good or thy own pleasure. Abandon utterly all faulty self-will; and be ever ready to interrupt or to leave thy private exercises, when thou art aware that God so wills it, or that any just reason requires it. Some are to be found who have taken upon themselves to read certain prayers every day; and if they are obliged to relinquish them by business and pressing necessity, or by holy obedience, they entirely lose their peace and tranquillity; but this sort of self-will is to be avoided. The Fathers also say that in prayer we ought not to make use of singular and remarkable gestures in the presence of others, such as striking the breast hard and frequently, sighing aloud, lifting up the hands, &c. Some are apt to pray more fervently sitting than kneeling; others say their prayers better standing or walking; do them follow the practice that thou findest to suit thee best, but so as in all things to observe discretion, and to be careful lest thou scandalise any one. Vocal as well as mental prayer rightly offered is very pleasing to God. __________________________________________________________________
§ 7. The Sacred Humanity of Christ.
Remember, I pray thee, what thy sweet Jesus (who is thy God, thy Lord, thy Father, and thy Brother) has done for thee, and devoutly give Him thanks. He was made man for thee. He was always and everywhere mindful of thee, and had thee before the eyes of His mind, doing and suffering all things willingly for thy salvation. Behold, and in thy measure imitate, His humility, resignation, patience, charity, gentleness, modesty, continence, sobriety, and the other holy virtues which shine forth most perfectly in Him. The Life of Christ is a most excellent book, common to the learned and unlearned, to the perfect and to the imperfect who desire to please God. He who studies this book well, becomes extremely wise, and easily obtains the forgiveness of sins, the mortification of evil passions, enlightenment of mind, peace and tranquillity of conscience, and firm confidence in God with sincere love of Him. Even if all the writings that are in the whole world were to perish, the Life and Passion of Christ would abundantly suffice to teach all virtue and truth to every Christian Consider and receive each thing that Jesus did and endured, as if He had done and endured it for thee alone. Nor are these things of less advantage to thee than if thou alone hadst been redeemed by Christ. And if thou alone hadst been to be redeemed, t would for thee alone most readily have been incarnate have suffered and died; so greatly does He thirst for thy salvation, and so ardently does He love thee.
Keep His worshipful Passion hidden like a precious pearl in the casket of thy heart, and reflect upon it with a grateful mind. Behold, thy Lord out of His excessive charity willed to undergo unworthy and cruel things, that He might satisfy for thy sins and redeem thee. Fill thy mind with sweet images of His Passion, and plant in the midst of thy heart the flowering tree of our Lord's Cross. Choose for the most dear Spouse of thy soul the same Lord Jesus crucified and pierced with wounds, and lovingly contemplate and embrace Him. For out of His roseate and life-giving Wounds now mellifluous streams of graces. He who is able to apply the lips of his soul to His open Side and to dwell there, and who has reached the depths of His Heart, he assuredly tastes the wine of eternal life, and perceives how sweet a paradise Jesus is. It can neither be written, nor comprehended in thought, how much fruit a humble man of good-will gains from pious meditation on the Passion of our Lord. Although he may with but moderate affection read or meditate on any point of the Life and Passion of Christ, he cannot but derive great benefit from it; as he who handles flour must of necessity have his fingers sprinkled with it. But he who contemplates the same Passion of our Lord with many tears, but yet neglects true humility, patience, resignation, and charity, will certainly reap little or no fruit from his meditation.
Be not cast down if God does not in this life raise thee to high degrees of contemplation; but beseech Him earnestly to give thee a good, humble, and resigned will, and to keep it in thee to the end; ask of Him that thou mayest ever live according to His gracious good pleasure. And since thou hast not strength wherewith to take a lofty flight, do thou remain under the wings of the most loving eternal Wisdom incarnate for thee, as a little, chicken remains under the wings of the hen. Hide thyself and repose in the sacred Humanity of Christ. This will be indeed to thee, as it were, a secure vessel in the stormy ocean of the present life, in which thou mayest reach the haven of salvation, even though thou mayest not attain to the fuller knowledge of the Divinity here, where doubtless "the body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly habitation presseth down the mind that museth upon many things" (Wisdom ix. 15). But thou wouldst have a clearer perception of the Divinity, if the most High God were to irradiate thy mind with frequent Hashes of light and to transform thee into the divine; brightness.
Thou shouldst however, (as we have elsewhere admonished thee), look upon Christ with the eyes of thy mind not as Man only, but as true God and true Man; look upon Him as the noble gem of divine excellence, and the surpassing flower of human dignity. Albeit thou art unable more perfectly to behold the brilliant rays of the Divinity; thou canst nevertheless believe that the same glorious Divinity dwells in the Humanity and Body of Christ as in a worshipful temple. If thou believest this, and thus considerest the Humanity of Christ, thou wilt not wander far from His Divinity, but wilt sufficiently and profitably remember it.
When for the salvation of the world the only-begotten Son of God was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, He assumed what He was not and remained what He was. For He assumed a body and a reasonable soul; He assumed, I say, complete manhood and remained God. The Divine nature and the human nature (which are very different) were marvellously united. The God head was not changed into flesh (for the Divine nature is unchangeable), but the manhood was assumed into God. Each nature remained whole and unimpaired, with its own properties. Then, therefore, the Eternal Word, the rational soul, and human flesh were united in one Person; so that those three are one Person, one Christ. Because of this admirable union the Most Holy Soul of Christ from the first moment of its creation ever clearly contemplated the glorious Trinity.
Wherefore during the Passion and while Christ hung upon the Cross, He. in the higher portion of His Soul, enjoyed the Beatific vision of the Godhead, as He now enjoys it in heaven; yet at the same time in His Body, and in the lower and sensitive powers of His Soul, He was afflicted with the direst torments. And that His Passion might be more cruel, He permitted not any consolation to overflow from the superior portion of His Soul into the inferior and sensitive portion. Hence seeing Himself on the Cross so afflicted and destitute of consolation, He as man exclaimed:--"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (St. Matth. xxvii. 46). He the Son of the Living God, the Word and Wisdom of the Father, the true and uncreated Light, is everywhere present according to His Divine nature, and is equal to the Father and the Holy Ghost; but, according to his human nature, He is less than the Father and the Holy Ghost, and even than Himself; for that which is created cannot be equal to the Creator. And, indeed, the Manhood of the Lord Jesus is the very gate by which we can enter into His Godhead.
Perchance thou wishest to hear more expressly, when God the Trinity created the Body and Soul of Christ; listen therefore. The instant that the Blessed Virgin Mary, by her humble resignation, gave her consent, saying to the Angel who announced to her the Incarnation of the Son of God, "Behold the hand maid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word" (St. Luke i. 38): the Holy Ghost descended upon her, and in a moment He with the Father and the Son formed, out of the most pure Mood of the same Holy Virgin, a little human Body, perfect and complete in all its members; He created at the same moment a rational soul which at the same instant of time He united to that little Body. The bodies of other infants have their members formed, not at once, but by degrees; and when they are perfected in their mother's womb, God in a moment creates a soul, and in creating it places it in the body.
As we have said, the Humanity of Christ is the way and the gate, by which we reach the Godhead; nor can any one safely aspire to the repose of sublime contemplation and divine union, unless he strives diligently to imitate the most holy virtues of Christ, and by devout meditation to impress upon his mind the beloved image of His Humanity. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________