One can say that, in this combat, there exist two
wills within us. One is of reason, and so called reasonable and
superior. The other is of the senses, called inferior and sensual, and
we can refer to it with the names of appetite, flesh, sense and
passion.
Nevertheless even if we say that we want something only because of the
senses, this doesn't mean we truly want it, as long as we don't incline
ourselves to desire it with the superior will. For we are human beings
on account of reason. This is why our entire spiritual battle consists
principally in the fact that this reasonable will, placed between the
divine will which excels it and the inferior will of the senses, feels
itself continually battered by one and the other: each of these tries
to pull it towards itself and render it subject and obedient to itself.
But those who are prisoners of bad habits feel great pain and
exhaustion. This is especially true when they first decide to improve
their corrupt life and, freeing themselves from the world and from the
flesh, give themselves to the love and service of Jesus Christ.
This is because the divine and sensual wills are always battling about
the superior will; the hits it sustains are powerfully strong; they
make
themselves well-felt, and not without great pain. This does not happen
to those who intend to continue in the path in which they are already
accustomed, be it virtues or vice, since the virtuous consent easily to
the divine will, while the
impure bow
themselves
to the sensual will without dispute.
But no one presumes to be able to follow the true Christian virtues,
nor to serve God as one ought, if first one does not truly wish to do
oneself violence and to suffer the pain that one feels in leaving not
only the greater pleasures but even the small ones, to which one was
formerly attached with earthly affection. And the consequences of this
is that very few reach the scope of perfection: after having gotten
past
the greater vices with effort, they no longer wish to do themselves
violence by continuing to suffer the punctures and travails that one
feels in resisting an almost infinite number of little-wills and
little-passions of little value. Prevailing on them in every hour,
these latter vices come to acquire dominion and lordship over their
hearts.
Among the victims we find some who -- while they do not rob the goods
of others -- become excessively enamored of those they legitimately
possess. Others, while not acquiring honors by illicit means, neither
abhor them as they should, nor cease to desire them and sometimes to
seek them by different paths. Still others, though they observe the
required fasts, do not mortify their belly, as they eat and desire
delicate foods they do not need. Still others who are living in
chastity
do not separate themselves from certain enjoyable friendships which
carry great obstacles to union with God and the spiritual life. These
friendships are very dangerous in any person, even a holy one, and more
in those who fear them less; we ought to fly from them as much as
possible.
From these small vices follow the lukewarm spirit
in which these people perform their good works. These works are
accompanied by many hidden interests and imperfections, from a sort of
esteem of oneself, and from the desire to be praised and appreciated by
the world. Not only do such people fail to progress in the way of
salvation, but they go backwards! They run the risk of falling back
into
their prior evils, into a state in which they do not love true virtue.
They prove themselves ungrateful to their Lord, who removed them from
the tyranny of the demon. In addition, they are ignorant, and blinded
from seeing the danger in which they find themselves, while they
persuade themselves to be in a secure location.
Here we discover a far more damaging deception,
which is equally less cautioned:
many who tend to the spiritual
life
love themselves more than they ought (although in truth they know
not
how to love themselves). For the most part they practice
those exercises more conforming to their tastes; they do not take up
the others, that irritate their sensual appetites, even though reason
would want them to turn their energies against them.
And so, my beloved daughter, I advise and exhort you:
fall in love
with the difficulty and the pain that consist in conquering oneself:
this is everything! The victory will be as equally certain and prompt
as
your love of this difficulty, which proves to the beginner both the
virtue and the war. If you love the difficulty and the painful combat
more than the victories and the virtues, you will acquire everything
more quickly.