The practice of the love of Jesus Christ - 103

"Charity endureth all things"

HE THAT LOVES JESUS CHRIST WITH A STRONG LOVE DOES NOT CEASE TO LOVE HIM IN THE MIDST OF TEMPTATIONS AND DESOLATIONS

I. It is an excellent practice also, in the moment of temptation, to make the Sign of the Cross on the forehead and breast. It is also of great service to reveal the temptation to our spiritual director. St. Philip Neri used to say that a temptation made known is half-conquered. Here it will be well to remark, what is unanimously admitted by all Theologians, even of the rigorist school, that persons who have during a considerable period of time been leading virtuous lives, and living habitually in the fear of God, whenever they are in doubt, and are not certain whether they have given consent to a grievous sin, ought to be perfectly assured that they have not lost the Divine grace; for it is morally impossible that the will, confirmed in her good purposes for a considerable lapse of time, should on a sudden undergo such a total change as at once to consent to a mortal sin without clearly knowing it. The reason of it is that mortal sin is so horrible a monster that it cannot possibly enter a soul by which it has long been held in abhorence, without her being fully aware of it. We have proved this at length in our Moral Theology. St. Teresa says: No one is lost without knowing it; and no one is deceived without the will to be deceived.

II. Wherefore, with regard to certain souls of delicate conscience, and solidly rooted in virtue, but at the same time timid and molested with temptations (especially if they be against faith or chastity), the director will find it sometimes expedient to forbid them to reveal or mention their temptations at all, for if they have to mention them, they are led to consider how such thoughts got into their minds, and whether they paused to dispute with them, or took any complacency in them, or gave any consent to them; and so, by this too great reflection, those evil imaginations make a still deeper impression on their minds and disturb them the more. And I find that St. Jane de Chantal acted precisely in this manner. She relates of herself that she was for several years assailed by the most violent storms of temptation, but had never spoken of them in confession, since she was not conscious of ever having yielded to them; and in this she had only followed faithfully the rule received from her director. She says: "I never had a full conviction of having consented"; these words give us to understand that the temptations did produce in her some agitation from scruples; but in spite of these she resumed her tranquillity on the strength of the obedience imposed by her confessor, not to confess similar doubts. With this exception, it will be generally found an admirable means of quelling the violence of temptations to lay them open to our director, as we have said above.