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Taken from: HOLY
ABANDONMENT
Rt. Rev. Dom
Vitalis
Lehodey, O.C.R.
Original
Pub.
1934, Dublin
THIRD
PART
ON THE OBJECT OF HOLY ABANDONMENT
CHAPTER VIII
ON
ABANDONMENT IN
THE SPIRITUAL
VARIETIES OF THE COMMON WAY:
FAILURES AND
FAULTS
ARTICLE IV.------OUR
OWN FAULTS
Let us
speak now
of our own actual faults. And first of all, though we should always be
most zealous in the avoidance of sin, we must nevertheless maintain
ourselves in peaceful resignation to the order of Providence. For, as
St. Francis de Sales remarks, "whilst God hates sin with a sovereign
hatred, He yet in His wisdom permits it, in order to allow His rational
creatures to act according to their natures, and to render the good
more commendable for that, having the power to transgress the law, they
do not actually transgress it. Let us therefore adore and bless this
holy permission. But because Providence, though permitting sin, hates
it infinitely, we, too, must detest and hate it. We must desire with
all the ardour of which we are capable that the evil permitted------in
this sense------should
not be committed. Consequently we should employ every possible means to
prevent its birth, its growth, and its dominion. Let us imitate Our
Lord, Who never ceases exhorting, promising, threatening, forbidding,
commanding, inspiring within us, in order to turn our wills from evil
without depriving them of their liberty." 21
If we persevere without flagging in prayer, vigilance, and fighting,
our faults as we advance will become less frequent, less voluntary, and
more easily repaired; and our souls will be established in a
progressive purity. However, apart from a very special grace, such as
was bestowed on the Blessed Virgin, it is impossible in this life to
avoid all venial sins. The Saints themselves have acknowledged as much.
Whenever we have the misfortune to commit a fault, "let us do what we
can to repair it: Our Lord assured Carpus that He was ready, if
necessary, to suffer death again in order to deliver one single soul
from sin. But our repentance should be strong, resolute, constant,
tranquil, not turbulent, uneasy, or despondent." 22
"It is not because I have been preserved from mortal sin," says St.
Therese of the Child Jesus, "that I raise myself to God in confidence
and love. Ah, no! I feel that even if I had on my conscience all the
crimes that could possibly be committed, I should still lose nothing of
my confidence. I should simply go, my heart breaking with repentant
sorrow, and throw myself into the arms of my Saviour. I know how He
cherished the poor prodigal son. I have heard His words to St.
Magdalen, and to the woman taken in adultery, and to the Samaritan
woman. No, nothing could shake my confidence, because I know the love
and compassion of Him on Whom I rely. I know that all the sins of the
world would be instantly lost in the infinity of His mercy, as a drop
of water thrown into a blazing furnace." 23
Let us not, therefore, imitate those to whom a peaceful repentance
seems always a paradox. Is there not a golden mean between the
indifference dreaded by their spirit of faith and the chagrin and
despondency which throw them into impatience? We cannot be too much on
our guard against the agitation excited in us by our sins. Instead of
being a remedy, it is a new evil. Furthermore, bad as our faults may be
in themselves, they become still worse in their consequences, when they
give rise to uneasiness, discouragement, or perhaps even despair. On
the contrary, peace in repentance is a thing very desirable. "St.
Catherine of Sienna committed certain faults. When in consequence she
afflicted herself before the Lord, He made her understand that by a
repentance, simple, prompt, fervent, and trustful, she pleased Him more
than if she had never transgressed at all. All the Saints had their
shortcomings. Some amongst them, as David and St. Peter, were great
sinners, and perhaps they would never have become great Saints if they
had not first been great sinners. As St. Paul teaches us: all things
co-operate into good for the elect------even their sins,
adds St. Augustine." 24
There is, indeed, an art of utilising our faults. The great secret is
to accept humbly, not, of course, the fault itself or the injury done
to God, but the interior humiliation and the confusion inflicted on our
self-love, so as to establish ourselves in humility, confident and
peaceful. Is not pride the principal cause of our failings? Now, it is
a powerful remedy against this pest to accept the shame as something we
have only too well deserved. We can escape easily enough from other
kinds of humiliation by persuading ourselves that they are unjust. But
how avoid the confusion and the cruel lesson of our own faults? They
exhibit in full light both our native depravity and our cowardice in
the combat. Humiliations, properly accepted, lead to humility.
Humility, in its turn, by constantly reminding us of the lost time we
have to redeem and the faults we have to expiate, nourishes compunction
of heart, stimulates our spiritual activity, and teaches us to be
merciful to others.
On this point, De Caussade has some very wise reflections: "God permits
our little infidelities in order to convince us more intimately of our
weakness, and to make us die gradually to this unhappy self-esteem,
this presumption, and this secret confidence in ourselves which prevent
us from acquiring true humility of heart. We know well that nothing can
be more agreeable to God than a complete contempt of self, accompanied
with absolute confidence in Him alone. The God of goodness does us,
consequently, a singular favour when He obliges us to drink, often
against our wills, this bitter chalice so dreaded by our self-love and
our corrupt nature. Without that, we should never be cured of our
secret presumption, and our proud self-confidence. We should never
understand how all the evil in us comes necessarily from ourselves, and
all the good from God alone. A million personal experiences of another
kind would be required to give us an habitual hold on this double
truth. And the number should be doubled where the vices of pride and
presumption, hidden in the soul, have acquired greater vigour and
struck deeper root. These faults are therefore very salutary, inasmuch
as they serve to keep us always little and confounded before the Divine
Majesty, always distrustful of ourselves, always annihilated in our own
eyes. Nothing, indeed, is easier than to avail ourselves of each of our
infidelities in order to acquire a new degree of humility and to dig
deeper in our hearts, so to speak, the necessary foundation of all true
sanctity. Should we not admire and bless the infinite goodness of God
Who can thus draw our greatest advantage from our very short-comings?
And for this He only requires that we should not love our shortcomings,
that we should gently humble ourselves on their account, that we should
rise again with unwearied constancy after each of our falls, and that
we should assiduously labour to correct them." 25
With regard to the penal consequences of our sins, if God wills that we
cannot lawfully escape them, we must accept them with humble conformity
to His good-pleasure. It may be, for example, the shame we feel before
our brethren, or the loss of our reputation, or the harm done to our
health. Perhaps our negligence, our indiscretions, our detractions, our
displays of ill-temper, or our peevish character, has brought upon us
unpleasantnesses, humiliations, mortifications, prejudice to our
interests. Our faults will leave behind them an evil legacy of trouble,
preoccupation of mind, and painful anxiety. Now, God has not willed the
fault, but He does will the consequences of it. He makes us suffer in
order to cure us. He punishes us in time so that He may not have to
punish us in eternity. "Lord," let us say to Him, "I have richly
deserved this chastisement. Thou hast permitted it, even in a sense
positively willed it. May Thy holy will be done! I adore it and humbly
submit to its ordinances." Let us thus humble ourselves, yet without
trouble, bitterness, disquietude, or discouragement, remembering that
God, whilst hating the fault, employs it nevertheless as a useful
instrument to keep us in abjection and self-contempt.
It is with the same filial and peaceful conformity we must accept the
penal consequences of our simple imprudences. According to De Caussade:
"There is hardly a trial more mortifying to self-love, and consequently
more sanctifying, than that which results from some inculpable
imprudence. It does not cost us nearly as much to accept the
humiliations which come from outside, and which we have not brought
upon ourselves in any way. We resign ourselves also much more easily to
the confusion caused by faults graver in themselves, provided they do
not appear externally. But a simple imprudence which has vexatious
consequences, visible to every eye: this assuredly is the most humbling
of all humiliations. And therefore it gives us an excellent occasion
for dealing the death-blow to self-love. We must never fail to profit
by such an opportunity. What one has to do then is to take one's heart
in both hands, and despite its resistance oblige it to make an act of
complete resignation. That is the moment when it is necessary to say
and to repeat the fiat of
perfect abandonment. We must even force ourselves forward as far as an
act of thanksgiving, and add to our fiat
a Gloria Patri. One single
trial thus accepted will bring the soul farther on the road to
perfection than numerous acts of virtue." 26
St. Francis de Sales "was never impatient with himself, or even with
his own imperfections. The hatred he entertained for his faults was
peaceful, calm, and strong. He considered that we punished ourselves
better by a tranquil and constant repentance than by a repentance that
is bitter, impatient, and choleric; because the latter with its
impetuosity is more in accordance with our inclinations than with the
gravity of the faults. 'As for me,' he said, 'if I had the unhappiness
to fall into great sin, I should not reproach my heart in this fashion:
Are you not utterly miserable and abominable to allow yourself, after
so many resolutions, to be thus carried away by vanity? You should die
of shame, and never again raise up your eyes to Heaven, blind and
impudent as you are, a traitor and a rebel against your God. No, I
should prefer to correct it reasonably and with compassion, like this:
Cheer up, now, poor heart of mine! See! We have fallen into the pit
which we had so firmly resolved to avoid. Well, let us rise again and
quit this place for ever. Let us implore the mercy of God, let us hope
that it will help us to be stronger for the future, and let us humbly
resume our road. Courage! We must be henceforth more vigilant, and God
will assist us. And on this reprehension I would establish a solid and
firm resolution never again to commit that fault, and to employ the
requisite means for carrying out my resolution.' " 27
De Caussade, on his side, counsels us to offer unceasingly this
interior prayer to God: "O Lord, preserve me, I beseech Thee, from all
sin, especially of this or that kind. But as for the pain which serves
to cure my inordinate self-love, the humiliation and confusion, which
wound and should crush my self-esteem, I accept these for as long as
Thou willest, and I thank Thee for them as for a signal favour. Grant,
O Lord, that these bitter remedies may produce their effect, that they
may cure my pride, and help me to acquire true humility, which is the
solid foundation of the interior life and of all perfection." 28
In spite of prayer and our best efforts, new faults will infallibly be
committed. The one remedy is to humble ourselves always more
profoundly, to return to God with the same confidence, and to resume
the fight without ever yielding to discouragement. "If we once learn to
humble ourselves sincerely for our least faults and to rise again
promptly with confidence in God, tranquillity and meekness: that will
be an assured remedy for the past, a powerful support and an
efficacious preservative for the future. But holy abandonment, rightly
understood, should set us free from that impatience which makes us
desire to reach the summit of sanctity at a bound, and only succeeds in
removing us further from it. The only way thereto is the way of
humility; impatience is one of the forms of pride. Let us apply
ourselves with all our power to the correction of our shortcomings; but
let us resign ourselves to the fact that we shall not succeed in
extirpating them all in a single day. Let us ask of God in fervent and
persevering prayer, and with the most filial confidence, to grant us
the decisive grace that will withdraw us completely from ourselves to
make us live henceforward solely in Him; but let us leave it to Him,
with an abandonment equally filial, to determine the day and the hour
when this grace shall be given us." 29
21. Op.
cit., c. vii et viii.
22.
Id.,
op.
cit. I, ix,
c. viii.
23. Histoiré,
c. xi.
24. De Lombez, Paix
inter., 4e P., c. vii.
25. Abandon, 2e
P., iii, 15.
26. Abandon, 2e
P., I, vi; Lettre, 24.
27. Vie, I,v.
28. Op.
cit.,
2e P., I, iii; Lettre,
3.
29. Id., Ibid.,
Lettre. 19.
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