CHAPTER XII
THE RETURN FROM CAPTIVITY
We may set before ourselves the methods of warfare that lead to spiritual victory; we may study them with all care and prayer; but the weakness of our nature being what it is, we must not expect to go through life without meeting defeat at the hands of the enemy. Even the Saints have not been immune from sin. When St. Paul spoke of sinners, he added, "Of whom I am chief."[[1]] St. John not only said, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," but he added those terrible words, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar."[[2]]
A most necessary part, therefore, of our instruction in the school of the soldier is concerning the course we are to follow when we find we have fallen; how we are to find our way back from the captivity; by what means we are to renew our allegiance to our divine Leader.
We all know that the necessary thing is Repentance, but it is not everyone who understands what repentance is. In its essence repentance is not an emotion; it is not a mere attitude of mind; it is a work, a serious work, and in many instances a hard work. In this chapter we do not purpose using any special method, scholastic or otherwise, of showing what this work is, or how it should be accomplished. In a simple, perhaps informal way, we shall, as the Holy Ghost may guide us, consider some of the aspects of the interior spirit we must cultivate if, after a fall, we would by true repentance come back to our loving Father.
I. Hastening to Repent
It will help us if we recall one of the principles we thought of in the beginning of our study, when we were considering the terms and conditions of the warfare. We learned then that any fall into sin, in the measure of its seriousness, means, "not an idle, passive confinement in some spiritual prison, but an active enlistment in the armies of hell to fight against our Lord Jesus Christ."
When we think of this, we shall understand that the first consideration must be the speed with which we must hasten to release ourselves from the horrid bondage into which we have fallen. Two reasons for this haste suggest themselves.
(1) First of all, the soul that desires to love will make all speed in order that God's Name may be relieved of the dishonour that befalls it when one of His family, one called by His name, signed and sealed as His soldier, renounces Him and gives in his allegiance to the Devil. We can brook no delay in such a matter. How keenly sensitive is human honour in like affairs! Let us not think that the divine honour is a duller thing than that indefinable possession men guard as the most sacred of all their moral treasures.