ADVICE UPON HAVING A DIRECTOR.
I asked him one day who was his Director. Taking from his pocket the Spiritual Combat, he said: "You see my Director in this book, which, from my earliest youth, has, with the help of God, taught me and been my master in spiritual matters and in the interior life. When I was a student at Padua, a Theatine Father instructed and gave me advice from it, and following its directions all has been well with me. It was written by a very holy member of that celebrated congregation, the author concealing his own name under that of his Orders which makes use of the book almost in the same way as the Jesuits make use of the Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola."
I reminded him that in his Philothea[1] he recommends people to have a living Director. "That is true," he answered, "but have you not noticed that I say he must be chosen out of ten thousand?[2] Because there is scarcely one in a thousand to be found having all the qualities necessary for this office, or who, if he has them, displays them constantly and perseveringly; men being so variable that they never remain in one state, as Holy Scripture assures us."[3]
I asked him if we must then run uncertainly and pursue our way without guidance. He answered: "We must seek it among the dead; among those who are no longer subject to passion or change, and who have ceased to be swayed by human interests. As an Emperor of old said that his most faithful counsellors were the dead, meaning books, so we may say that our safest spiritual directors are books of piety."
"But what," I asked, "are those who cannot read to do?" "They," he replied, "must have good books read to them by people in whom they can have absolute confidence. Besides, such simple souls as these do not, as a rule, trouble themselves much about methods of devotion, or, if they do, God for the most part bestows on them such graces as to make it plain that He Himself is their Teacher, and that they are truly Theodidacts, or taught by God."
"Must we then," I asked, "give up all spiritual guides?" "By no means," he answered, "for besides the fact that we are bound to obey the law of God coming to us through our Superiors, both spiritual and temporal, we must also defer most humbly to our Confessors, to whom we lay bare the secrets of our conscience. Then, when we find difficulties in the books which we have chosen for our guidance, difficulties which, as we read, we cannot settle to our satisfaction, we must consult those who are well versed in mystic language, or rather, I should say, in spiritual matters, and listen humbly to their opinion. We must not, however, always consult the same man; for, besides the fact that Holy Scripture warns us that there is safety where there is much counsel,[4] we must remember that if we always consulted the same living oracle, he would in time become superior to the dead one; that he would make himself a supplanter, a second Jacob, pushing aside the book which we had chosen for our guide, and assuming dominion and mastery over both dead and living, that is, over the book and the reader who had chosen it for his direction. To prevent this encroachment, I had almost said this unfelt and imperceptibly increasing tyranny, it is well when we meet with difficulties to consult several persons, following the advice given by the Holy Ghost through the Apostle St. Paul not to make ourselves the slaves of men, having been delivered and redeemed at so great a price, even that of the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ."[5]
In answer to my remark that I very much preferred as a book The Imitation of Christ to the Spiritual Combat, he said that they were both the works of writers truly animated by the Spirit of God, that they were indeed different in many respects, but that it might be said of each of them as it is of the Saints: There was not found the like to him.[6]
He added that in such matters comparisons were always more or less odious; that beauty, however it might vary, was always beauty; that the book of the Imitation had in some respects great advantages over the Combat, but that the latter had also some advantages over the Imitation. Among these he mentioned with special commendation its arrangement and that it goes deeper into things and more thoroughly to the root of the matter. He concluded by saying that we should do well to read the one and not neglect the other, for that both books were so short that to do this would not put us to much expenditure of time or trouble.
He valued the Imitation, he said, greatly for its brevity and conciseness as an aid to prayer and contemplation, but the Combat as a help in active and practical life.
[Footnote 1: Book 1. c. 10.]
[Footnote 2: This hyperbole of St. Francis is sometimes pushed to excess,
It is a question, too, if M. Camus always understood him rightly. [ED.]
[Footnote 3: Job xiv. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Prov. xi. 14.]
[Footnote 5: 1 Cor. vii. 23.]
[Footnote 6: Eccle. xliv. 20.]