Some think that they are not making any progress in the service of God unless they feel sensible devotion and interior joy continually, forgetting that the road to heaven is not carpeted with rose leaves but rather bristling with thorns. Does not the divine oracle tell us that through much tribulation we must enter the Kingdom of Heaven? And that it is only taken by those who do violence to themselves? Our Blessed Father writes thus to a soul that was making the above mistake:
"Live wholly for God, and for the sake of the love which He has borne to you, do you bear with yourself in all your miseries. In fact, the being a good servant of God does not mean the being always spiritually consoled, the always feeling sweet and calm, the never feeling aversion or repugnance to what is good. If this were so, neither St. Paul, nor St. Angela, nor St. Catherine of Siena, could have served God well. To be a servant of God is to be charitable towards our neighbour, to have, in the superior part of our soul, an unswerving resolution to follow the will of God, joined to the deepest humility and a simple confidence in Him; however many times we fall, always to rise up again; in fine, to be patient with ourselves in our miseries, and with others in their imperfections."
Another error into which good people fall is that of always wanting to find out whether or not they are in a state of grace. If you tranquillize them on this point, then they begin to torment themselves as to the exact amount of progress they have made, and are actually making, in this happy state of grace, as though their progress were in any way their own work. They quite forget that though one may plant and another water, it is God who gives the increase.
In order to cure this spiritual malady, which borders very closely upon presumption, he gives in another of his letters the following wise counsel:
"Remember that all that is past is nothing, and that every day we should say with David: Now only am I beginning to love my God truly. Do much for God, and do nothing without love, let this be your aim, eat and drink for this."
THAT DEVOTION DOES NOT ALWAYS SPRING FROM CHARITY.
"Do not deceive yourself," he once said to me, "people may be very devout, and at the same time very wicked." "But," I said, "they are then surely not devout, but hypocrites!" "No, no," he answered, "I am speaking of true devotion." As I was quite unable to solve this riddle, I begged him to explain it to me, which he did most kindly, and, if I can trust my memory, more or less as follows:
"Devotion is of itself and of its own nature a moral and acquired virtue, not one that is supernatural and infused, otherwise it would be a theological virtue, which it is not. It is then a virtue, subordinate to that which is called Religion, and according to some is only one of its acts;[1] as religion again is subordinate to one of the four cardinal virtues, namely justice. Now you know that all the moral virtues, and even the theological ones of faith and hope, are compatible with mortal sin, although become, as it were, shapeless and dead, being without charity, which is their form, their soul, their very life. For, if one can have faith so great as to be able to move mountains, without charity, and yet, precisely because charity is absent, be utterly worthless and wicked; if it is possible to be a true prophet and yet a bad man, as were Saul, Balaam, and Caiphas; to work miracles as Judas is believed to have done, and yet to be sinful as he was; if we can give all our goods to the poor, and suffer martyrdom by fire, without having charity, much more may we be devout without being charitable, since devotion is a virtue less estimable in its nature than those which we have mentioned. You must not then think it strange when I tell you that it is possible to be devout and yet wicked, since we may have faith, mercy, patience, and constancy to the extent of which I have spoken, and yet, with all that be stained with many deadly vices, such as pride, envy, hatred, intemperance, and the like."
"What then," I asked, "is a truly devout man?" He answered: "I tell you again that, though in sin, one may be truly devout. But such devotion, though a virtue, is dead, not living," I rejoined: "But how can this dead devotion be real?" "In the same way," he replied, "as a dead body is a real body, soulless though it be." I rejoined: "But a dead body is not really a man." He answered: "It is not a true man, whole and perfect, but it is the true body of a man, and the body of a true man though dead. Thus, devotion without charity is true, though dead and imperfect. It is true devotion dead and shapeless, but not true devotion living and fully formed. It is only necessary to draw a distinction between the words, true, and complete or perfect, which is done so clearly by St. Thomas,[2] in order to find the solution of your difficulty. He who possesses devotion without charity has true, but not perfect or complete devotion; in him who has charity, devotion is not only true but perfect. By charity he becomes good, and by devotion devout; losing charity he loses supernatural goodness and becomes sinful or bad, but does not necessarily cease to be devout. This is why I told you that one could be devout and yet wicked. So also by mortal sin we do not necessarily lose faith or hope, except we deliberately make an act of unbelief or of despair."
He had expressed a somewhat similar idea in the first chapter of his
Philothea, though I had not then noticed it. These are his words: