CXIII. A Soul\u00a0hesitating between God and Evil – Warnings, Menaces, Entreaties<\/p>\n
Soreze, Oct. 4, 1860<\/p>\n
My dear Friend,<\/p>\n
I\u00a0AM very sorry I shall not see you before the end\u00a0of October. Your visit would have given me\u00a0real pleasure, and have afforded me an opportunity\u00a0of talking to you about your soul and its wants. The\u00a0ennui, the sadness, and disgust you experience are\u00a0quite natural in your state of mind and body. You\u00a0have not to work for a living, and thus you are deprived of the ambition and necessity which urge on\u00a0the greater part of mankind. All your time is before\u00a0you, with unvarying pleasures which cannot eternally\u00a0be filling up the twenty-four hours of the day. On\u00a0the other hand, you have not got vice for a distraction.\u00a0Not that it would be a remedy for you : on the contrary, you would experience in it a poignant bitterness\u00a0which would disgust you with yourself.<\/p>\n
Vice is so infamous in its pleasures, and at the same\u00a0time so short-lived a resource, that it beguiles a few\u00a0moments only at the price of the most crushing remorse. But it would at least, you may say, give you\u00a0a shock like what \u00a0drunkenness gives to those who\u00a0endeavor to forget their misfortunes in it. This\u00a0shameful and dearly purchased shock you cannot\u00a0have. God has shown Himself to you too clearly to\u00a0admit of the possibility of your abandoning yourself\u00a0for any length of time to the delirium of your imagination and your senses. You would be so vile in\u00a0your own eyes, so branded, so tortured with remorse\u00a0that experience would appear to you harder than\u00a0everything else. God loves you, He has taken possession of you, He will not let you go. He will visit\u00a0your faults with a chastisement by the side of which\u00a0the most cruel punishment of your body would dwindle\u00a0away to nothing. Consequently this door is shut to\u00a0you. You may dream of vile pleasures, but you will\u00a0never give yourself up to them without frightful remorse.<\/p>\n
Still if vice is painful, and as it were, impossible\u00a0to you, you are not in possession of the joy and peace\u00a0of virtue. You are lukewarm and languid in God’s\u00a0service. Prayer, communion, penance, pious reading,\u00a0all that sustains and enraptures the soul is almost\u00a0unknown to you. In these matters you have no\u00a0regular habits, you live upon fugitive impressions,\u00a0going to confession and communion now and then, to\u00a0mass on Sundays, keeping the abstinence days of the Church, but not loving Jesus Christ tenderly, as your\u00a0best friend, ready at every instant to press Him to\u00a0your heart, to give Him your life, to suffer for Him\u00a0in your body every opprobrium and every kind of\u00a0pain, to be scourged and crucified for Him like He\u00a0was for you. The Crucified One does not speak to\u00a0your soul, and counterbalance in it those shameful\u00a0desires. What then remains to you ? A void. You\u00a0are wandering in a dark and chilly tomb, haunted by\u00a0frightful apparitions, ready to grasp at them as you\u00a0would at immortal realities. Jesus Christ stops you,\u00a0He reminds you of Himself, He says to you, I love\u00a0you, I died for you ; if you only knew the happiness\u00a0of loving Me!<\/p>\n
My poor friend, such is your state. It will only cease by your giving yourself to God. To this end it\u00a0is not necessary to become a priest or a monk. No.\u00a0A man may love God tenderly and ardently in every\u00a0position. But you must mill it ; and in order thereto\u00a0lay down an inviolable rule of your relations with\u00a0Him. Daily prayer, morning and evening ; monthly\u00a0confession and communion, practices of penance and\u00a0humility, which by humbling you, by chastening your\u00a0mind and senses, will naturally increase your love.\u00a0For love springs out of sacrifice, and especially out\u00a0of the sacrifice of pride. You are vain, my dear\u00a0friend. You like show; you like your horse and\u00a0your groom\u00a0;\u00a0you wish to be considered a fine young\u00a0fellow and to be looked at\u00a0;\u00a0you are proud of your\u00a0nobility\u00a0;\u00a0you are, in fine, a little animal filled with\u00a0a variety of different kinds of pride, so natural to you\u00a0that perhaps you do not even notice them. Consesequently no one has more need than yourself of voluntary and involuntary humiliation.<\/p>\n
See how I talk to you. Alas ! it is because I love\u00a0you, and would willingly suffer much to give you the\u00a0love of God. You are naturally cold, and still there\u00a0are resources in your heart. Your friendship for me\u00a0is one of them ; but you must make use of it in the\u00a0supernatural order, and give me a detailed account of\u00a0all that goes on within you. What a time since you\u00a0have come to confession to me ! Already you have\u00a0begun to find this disclosure difficult, even to me,\u00a0your friend. Come then and see me as soon as possible, and keep me well informed of your interior\u00a0state. I no longer know an iota of what you do for God or against Him.<\/p>\n
Adieu, my very dear child, I embrace and love you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CXIII. A Soul\u00a0hesitating between God and Evil – Warnings, Menaces, Entreaties Soreze, Oct. 4, 1860 My dear Friend, I\u00a0AM very sorry I shall not see you before the end\u00a0of October. Your visit would have given me\u00a0real pleasure, and have afforded me an opportunity\u00a0of talking to you about your soul and its wants. The\u00a0ennui, the sadness, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[11,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dominican","category-lacordaire"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6hA2G-4P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewklusman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}