MARKS OF PROGRESS IN PERFECTION.
Our Blessed Father, who did not like people to be too introspective and self-tormenting, said that they should, however, walk as it is written of the Maccabees, Caute et ordinate;[1] that is, with circumspection and order, or, to use a common expression, "bridle in hand." And one of the best proofs of our advancement in virtue is, he said, a love of correction and reproof; for it is a sign of a good digestion easily to assimilate tough and coarse food. In the same way it is a mark of spiritual health and inward vigour to be able to say with the Psalmist, The just man shall correct me in mercy and shall reprove me.[2]
It is a great proof of our hating vice, and of the faults which we commit, proceeding rather from inadvertence and frailty, than from malice and deliberate intention, that we welcome the warnings which make us think on our ways, and turn back our feet (that is to say, our affections) into the testimonies of God, by which is meant the divine law.
An old philosopher said that to want to get well is part of the sick man's cure. The desire to keep well is a sign of health. He who loves correction necessarily desires the virtue contrary to the fault for which he is reproved, and therefore profits by the warnings given him to escape the vice from which his fault proceeded.
A sick person who is really anxious to recover his health takes without hesitation the remedies prescribed by the physician, however sharp, bitter, and painful they may be. He who aims at perfection, which is the full health, and true holiness of the soul, finds nothing difficult that helps him to arrive at that end. Justice and judgment, that is to say correction, establish in him the seat of perfect wisdom. In a word, better are the wounds of a friend (like those of a surgeon who probes only to heal) than the deceitful kisses of a flatterer, an enemy.[3]
[Footnote 1: 1 Mach. vi. 4.]
[Footnote 2: Psalm cxl. 5.]
[Footnote 3: Prov. xxvii. 6.]
UPON THE PERFECTION AIMED AT IN RELIGIOUS HOUSES.
Our Blessed Father was speaking to me one day on the subject of exterior perfection, and on the discontent expressed by certain Religions, who, in their particular order, had not found the strictness and severity of rule they desired. He said: "These good people seem to me to be knocking their heads against a stone wall. Christian perfection does not consist in eating fish, wearing serge, sleeping on straw, stripping oneself of one's possessions, keeping strict vigils, and such like austerities. For, were this so, pagans would be the more perfect than Christians, since many of them voluntarily sleep on the bare ground, do not eat a morsel of meat throughout the whole year, are ragged, naked, shivering, living for the most part only on bread and water, and on that bread of suffering, too, which is far harder and heavier than the blackest of crusts. If perfection consisted in exterior observances such as these, they would have to go back in perfection were they to enter even the most strictly reformed of our Religious Houses, for in none is a life led nearly so austere as theirs.
"The question then is in what does the essential perfection of a Christian life consist? It must surely in the first place include the assiduous practice of charity, for exterior mortifications without charity are of no account. St. Paul, we know, reckons martyrdom itself as nothing, unless quickened by charity.
"I do not exactly know what standard of perfection they who insist so much upon exterior mortification wish to set up.