The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of discipline and mortification has precisely the same basis as the physical advice--an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. We are exposed to temptation constantly, and we need to recognise the fact and prepare ourselves to meet it; and the best preparation is the preparation of self-discipline for the purpose of keeping rebellious nature under control. Good farming does not consist in pulling up weeds; it consists in the choice and preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be sown; it looks primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the elimination of the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God is sown; its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on, not the weeds.
Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of the powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to do. And one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach our passions obedience, to subject them to the control of the enlightened will. If they are accustomed to obey they are not very likely to get out of hand in some time of crisis. If they are broken in to the dominion of spiritual motive, they will instinctively seek that motive whenever they are incited to act. Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual denial to ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity. I do not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane person recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane principle as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of going without something for a day or two, or staying from places of amusement for a time, or of abandoning for a while this or that luxury?
The principle is of course the ascetic principle of self-mastery. It is best brought before us by the familiar practice of fasting, which is very mildly recommended to us in its lowest terms in the table in the Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its value is not the value of going without this or that, but the value of self-mastery. The very fact that our appetites rebel at the notion shows their undisciplined character. The child at the table begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on sound reasons of hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate temptation to the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save that he preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of fasting is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such food as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man gains the mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows himself the child of God.
The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much farther than these surface matters of a physical nature that have been cited. It applies in particular to the disposition of time and the ruling of daily actions. The introduction of a definite order into the day actually seems to increase the time at one's disposal. I know, I can hear you saying: "If you were the head of a family, and had children to look after, you would not talk that way. You would know something of the practical difficulties of life." But indeed I am quite familiar with the situation. And if I were so situated I am certain that I should feel all the more need of order. Families are disorderly because we let them be; because we do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A school or a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it were permitted to be. Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order if you will let it. That is precisely the reason for the insistence on the ascetic principle--this tendency of life to get out of order; that is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the whole Catholic insistence on discipline. Time can be controlled; and, notwithstanding American experience, children can be controlled; and control means the rescuing of the life from disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a level of order and sanity and possible sanctity.
We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of life except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our life an element of foresight. An undisciplined and untried strength is an unknown quantity. The man who expects to meet temptation when it occurs without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure. I do not believe that there is any other so great a source of spiritual weakness and disaster as the going out to meet life without preceding discipline, thus subjecting the powers of our nature to trials for which we have not fitted them. Self-control, self-discipline, ascetic practice, are indispensible to a successful Christian life.
O STAR of starrès, with thy streamès clear,
Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide,
O lusty Living, most pleasant t'appear,
Whose brightè beames the cloudès may not hide:
O Way of Life to them that go or ride,
Haven from tempest, surest up t'arrive,
O me have mercy for thy Joyès five.
O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel
With joy thee gret that may not be numb'rèd,
Or half the bliss who couldè write or tell,
When th' Holy Ghost to thee was obumbrèd,
Wherethrough the fiendès were utterly encombrèd?
O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth,
That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.
John Lydgate of Bury,
XV Cent.
From Chaucerian and Other
Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat,
1894.