Interior mortification - 2

The human soul is a garden in which useless and noxious herbs constantly spring up: we must, therefore, by the practice of holy mortification, continually hold the mattock in our hands to root them up and banish them from our hearts; otherwise our souls will become a wild, uncultivated waste, covered with briars and thorns. Conquer yourself! was an expression always on the lips of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and the text of his familiar discourses to his Religious. Conquer self-love and break down your own will. Few, he would say, of those who practise mental prayer become Saints, because few of them endeavour to overcome themselves. "Of a hundred persons," says the Saint, "devoted to prayer, more than ninety are self-willed." Hence he preferred a single act of mortification of self-will to long prayer accompanied with many spiritual consolations. "What does it avail," says Gilbert, "to close the gates if famine—the internal enemy—produce general affliction?" What does it profit us to mortify the exterior senses and to perform exercises of devotion while at the same time we cherish in our hearts rancour, ambition, attachment to self-will and to self-esteem, or any other passion which brings ruin on the soul?

St. Francis Borgia says that prayer introduces the love of God into the soul, but mortification prepares a place for it by banishing from the heart earthly affections—the most powerful obstacles to charity. Whoever goes for water to the fountain must cleanse the vessel of any earth it may contain; otherwise he will bring back mire instead of water. "Prayer without mortification," says Father Balthasar Alvarez, "is either an illusion, or lasts but for a short time." And St. Ignatius asserts that a mortified Christian acquires a more perfect union with God in a quarter of an hour's prayer, than an unmortified soul does by praying for several hours. Hence, whenever he heard that any one spent a great deal of time in mental prayer, he said: "It is a sign that he practises great mortification."

There are some religious souls who perform a great many exercises of devotion, who practise frequent Communion, long meditations, fasting, and other corporal austerities, but make no effort to overcome certain little passions—for example, certain resentments, aversions, curiosity, and certain dangerous affections. They will not submit to any contradiction; they will not give up attachment to certain persons, or subject their will to the commands of obedience, or to the holy will of God. What progress can they make in perfection? Unhappy souls! They will be always imperfect: always out of the way of sanctity. "They," says St. Augustine, "run well, but out of the way." They imagine that they run well because they practise the works of piety their own self-will suggests; but they shall be forever out of the way of perfection, which consists in conquering self. "Thou shalt advance," says the devout Thomas a Kempis, "in proportion to the violence thou shalt have offered to thyself." I do not mean to censure vocal prayer, or acts of penance, or the other spiritual works. But, because all exercises of devotion are but the means of practising virtue, the soul should seek in them only the conquest of its passions. Hence, in our Communions, Meditations, Visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and other similar exercises, we ought always to beseech Almighty God to give us strength to practise humility, mortification, obedience, and conformity to His holy will. In every Christian it is a defect to act from a motive of self-satisfaction. But in those who make a particular profession of perfection and mortification, it is a much greater fault. "God," says Lactantius, "calls to life by labour; the devil, to death by delights." The Lord brings His servants to eternal life by mortification; but the devil leads sinners to everlasting death by pleasure and self-indulgence.