I won’t be posting these here every day, so please join the Yahoo group (below) if you’re interested in reading these daily. Thank you!
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore Jesus Christ in the period of His adolescence, increasing in wisdom and in grace; that is to say, giving exteriorly more and more dazzling signs of His interior wisdom and grace (Luke 2:52), in order to teach us that we ought always to increase in virtue always to go forward without ever making a pause. Let us thank Him for so useful a lesson, and let us endeavor to put it into practice.
FIRST POINT
Whatever may be the Degree of Virtue to which we have Attained, we should always Look upon Ourselves as being very Far from being what we ought to Become
I, do not believe, St. Paul said, that I have attained perfection. Forgetting the good I have been able to do, and advancing towards that which it still remains for me to do, I strive to reach the goal (Philipp. 3:13,14). This should be our model. We ought never to think that we have done enough for our salvation. We must forget the good we have done, and have no more remembrance of it than as though we had never done it, because the recollection of it would produce in us pride and negligence. The good which it remains for us to do we must always keep before our eyes, in order always to labor at it. The debtor, as long as he has not paid his whole debt, is not rendered tranquil by the thought that he has paid a portion of it. He thinks constantly on what it remains for him to pay, and he neglects no means of doing so. The traveler does not halt on his journey under the pretext that he has performed part of it; he continues his road until he has reached his destination. The athlete, who knows that the prize of the race is only to be gained on reaching the goal, always presses forward until he has attained it. The man engaged in business never fails to make use of opportunities for making profits under the pretext that he has already gained large sums. We ought also to reason thus in regard to our salvation, and the more charity there is in our heart, the better we shall understand that we have neither loved nor served our great God sufficiently; the more miseries to be cured we shall discover in ourselves, the more defects to be corrected, the more we shall see, in the interior paths, immense distances to be traversed; in the examples set us by Jesus Christ and the saints, models from which we are far distant; in our accounts with God, fearful debts to pay for innumerable graces received and for slight penance performed. Is it thus that we reason?
SECOND POINT
To Cease to Advance in Virtue is to go Back
Such is the maxim of all the masters or doctors of the spiritual life. He who does not advance goes back (St. Bernard, Serm. 2, in Purif.) where there is no progress there is relapse (Ibid.); to cease to desire to be better is to cease to desire to be good (Ibid.); not to rise in virtue is to descend. A man placed in the midst of a rapid river, if he ceases for one single moment to act and to endeavor to make head against the current, will soon be carried away by the waves. Our evil nature is the river which ceaselessly tends to drag us down towards what is evil; consequently there is no salvation except on condition of incessant efforts to advance in a contrary sense. We cannot say: I will remain just what I am, neither better nor worse. It is i
mpossible; man never remains in the same state (Job 14:2; either he makes an effort to become better, and then each effort is an act of virtue which tends to perfect him, or he languishes without doing anything to advance, and this languor is of itself a falling away (St. Bernard, Ep. 254). It is a guilty abuse of grace. “The earth,” says St. Paul, “that drinketh in the rain which cometh often upon it, but bringeth forth thorns and briars, is reprobate, and very near unto a curse.” (Heb. 6:7,8). The earth St. Paul speaks of is evidently our soul, upon which the graces of God do not cease to rain down; and not to profit by them is evidently to attract anathemas towards ourselves. It is therefore very true that not to advance is to go back; that not to rise is to descend; there is no middle course. Now, is it not a great misfortune to turn back after having journeyed onward for a long time? If Our Lord declared him to be unfit for the kingdom of heaven who only looked back (Luke 9:62), how will it be with us who turn back? Let us here examine our conscience. Do we not go back in the path of virtue instead of advancing? Let us endeavor to comprehend how dangerous it is for our salvation.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
