“The wise man, bent on safeguarding his salvation, watches always to destroy his vices; he girds his loins—and his belly—with the girdle of perfect mortification. Truly that takes place when the itching palate is suppressed, when the pert tongue is held in silence, the ear is shut off from distractions and the eye from unpermitted sights; when the hand is held from cruel striking, and the foot from vainly roving; when the heart is withstood, that it may not envy another’s felicity, nor through avarice covet what is not its own, nor through anger sever itself from fraternal love, nor vaunt itself arrogantly above its fellows, nor yield to the ticklings of lust, nor immoderately sink itself in grief or abandon itself wantonly to joy. Since, then, the human mind has not the power to remain entirely empty, and unoccupied with the love of something, it is girt around with a wall of the virtues.
“In this way, then, our mind begins to be at rest in its Author and to taste the sweetness of that intimacy. At once it rejects whatever it deems contrary to the divine law, shrinks from what does not agree with the rule of supernal righteousness. Hence true mortification is born; hence it comes that man kissing the Cross of his Redeemer seems dead to the world. No longer he delights in silly fables, nor is content to waste his time with idle talk. But he is free for psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; he seeks seclusion, he longs for a hiding-place; he avoids the monastery’s conversation-rooms and rejoices in nooks and corners; and that he may the more freely attend to the contemplation of his Creator, so far as he may he declines colloquy with men.”[448]
“In fine,” says Damiani, in another treatise, “our entire conversion, and renunciation of the world, aims at nothing else than rest. This rest is won through the man’s prior discipline in the toils of strife, in order that when the tumult of disturbance ceases, his mind, through the grace of contemplation, may be translated to gaze upon the face of truth. But since one attains to this rest only through labour and conflict, how can one reach it who has not gone down into the strife? By what right can one enter the halls of the King who has not traversed the arena before the doors?”[449]
“It further behoves each brother who with his whole heart has abandoned the world, to unlearn and forget forever whatever is injurious. He should not be disputatious as to cookery, nor clever in the petty matters of the town; nor an adept in rhetoric’s jinglings, or in jokes or wordplay. He should love fasts and cherish penury; he should flee the sight of man, restrain himself under the censorship of silence, withdraw from affairs, keep his mouth from idle talk, and seek the hiding-place of his soul, and in such hiding be on fire to see the face of his Creator. Let him pant for tears, and implore God for them by daily prayer.”
With this last sentence Damiani makes his transition to the emotional side of the Christian vita contemplativa. He will now pour himself out in a rhapsody of praise of tears, which purify and refresh the soul, and open it to the love of God.
“From the fire of divine love rises the grace of contrition (gratia compunctionis), and again from the contrition of tears (ex compunctione lacrymarum) the ardour of celestial yearning is increased. The one hangs from the other, and each promotes the other; while the contrition of tears flows from the love of God, through tears again our soul burns more fervidly toward the love of God. In this reciprocal and alternating action, the soul is purged of the filth of its offence.”[450]
Elsewhere Damiani suggests how the hermit may acquire the “grace of tears”:
“Seclude thyself from the turmoil of secular affairs and often even from talk with thy brethren. Cut off the cares and anxieties of mundane action; clear them away as a heap of rubbish which stops the fountain’s flow. As water in a cavern of the earth wells up from the abyss, so sadness (tristitia) wells in a human heart from contemplation of the profundity of God’s Judgment, and yet will not flow forth in tears if checked by the clods of earthly hindrance. Sadness is the material of tears. But in order that the veins of this fount may flow more abundantly, do thou clear away all obstacles of secular business—and other matters also, as I know from experience. Even spiritual zeal in the punishment of delinquents, and the labour of preaching, and like matters, holy as they are and commanded by divine authority, nevertheless are certainly obstacles to tears.
“So if you would attain the grace of tears, you must even curb the exercise of spiritual duties, eliminate malice, anger, and hatred, and the other pests from your heart. And do not let your own accusing conscience dry up the dew of tears with the aridity of fear. Indeed the confidence of holiness (sanctitatis fiducia) and a conscience bearing witness to its own innocence, waters the pure soul with the celestial rivulets of grace, softens the hardness of the impure heart, and opens the floodgates of weeping.”[451]
“Many are the ways,” says Damiani in words sounding like a final reflection upon the solitary life—“many are the ways by which one comes to God; diverse are the orders in the society of the faithful; but among them all there is no way so straight, so sure, so unimpeded, so free from obstacles which trip one’s feet, as this holy life. It eliminates occasions for sin; it cultivates the greatest number of virtues by which God may be pleased; and thus, as it removes the opportunities of delinquency, it lays upon good conduct the added strength of necessity’s insistence.”[452]