Each time you feel your reasonable will battered on
the one side by the sensual will, and on the other by the divine will,
each seeking to carry the day, it is necessary that you exercise
yourself in many ways so that the divine will may prevail within you.
First: When you are assailed and battered by the impulses
of the senses, you must oppose them with an obstinate resistance so
that the superior will may not consent to these impulses.
Second: Once they have ceased, excite them anew within
yourself, so that you may beat them down with greater impetus and
force. Afterwards, call them back to a third battle, in which you
accustom yourself to driving them away with disdain and repugnance.
These two incitements to battle must be done in each of our disordered
appetites
apart from them the carnal impulse, regarding
which we will deal with in due course.
In the end you must perform acts contrary to your every
impure passion. With the following
example it will all become clearer to you.
Perhaps you are battered by the impulse to be impatient. If you remain
attentive, upon entering within yourself you will feel that these
impulses batter continually against the gate of the superior will, to
make it bow and consent to them. As your first exercise, oppose
yourself against each impulse, repeatedly doing as much as you can to
prevent your will from giving consent. Never cease from this battle
until you see that the enemy, exhausted and near, acknowledges he is
beaten.
But daughter, observe here the demon's malice. When he realizes that we
strongly oppose the impulses of some passion, not only does he cease to
excite them within us, but, once they are excited, he tries to quiet
them for the time being. He does this to prevent our exercise from
helping
us to acquire the habit of the virtue contrary to that passion, and
further to make us fall into the traps of vainglory and of pride.
Astutely, he convinces us that being excellent soldiers, we have beaten
our enemies quickly. For this reason you must go on to the second
battle, calling the impulse to mind and exciting within you those
thoughts that produced your impatience. This way, you will feel your
sensitive nature moved by them, and you can repress their impulses
repeatedly and with a greater strength than before. Although we repress
our enemies knowing we do well and please God, nevertheless without an
utter hatred of them, we run the risk that they conquer us on a
different occasion. For this reason you must set yourself against them
with a third assault, and drive them far away from you, performing acts
of not only repugnance but also of indignation, until you find these
impulses become odious and abominable.
In the end, to decorate and perfect your spirit with the habits of
virtue, you must produce interior acts directly contrary to your
disordered passions. Take, for example, the desiring to acquire
perfectly the habit of patience. If someone disdains you, he presents
you with an occasion to be impatient. It is not enough to exercise
yourself in those three manners of combat which I mentioned. Rather,
you
must in addition want and love the disdain you have received! You
must desire to be insulted anew in the same way and by the same person,
awaiting and pointing out to yourself that you may face even harsher
things. The reason these contrary acts as necessary to perfect yourself
in virtue is this: the other acts, even if they be many and strong, are
insufficient to uproot those roots that produce the vice.
To keep the same example: therefore, although when we are disdained, we
may not consent to the motions of impatience, even battling against
them with the three methods indicated above, if we do not habituate
ourselves with many frequent acts to love and rejoice in being
disdained, we will nonetheless be unable ever to free ourselves from
the vice of impatience which is founded on the abhorring of disdain, on
account of our inclination to our own will. And as long as it remains
alive, the
impure root continues
to bud in such manner as to make our virtue languish. Indeed it will
suffocate it completely and hold us in constant danger of falling back
into it on every occasion in which it presents itself. From these
things it follows that without the aforesaid contrary acts, we cannot
ever acquire the true habit of virtue.
In addition, one should take heed that these acts must be so frequent
and in such number that they can destroy the
impure habit completely. Inasmuch as
the vice has taken possession of our heart through many
impure acts, likewise by many
contrary acts one must eradicate it to introduce the virtue. I further
assert this: to acquire the virtuous habit requires good deeds more
than
acquiring the
impure habit
requires
wicked ones. For in fact the good deeds are not helped by our nature,
which is corrupted by sin, while our wicked deeds are.
Beyond what I have said up to this point, I add that if the virtue you
then exercise requires it, you must also perform exterior acts
conforming to the interior ones, as (remaining in the given example)
using gentle and loving words and serving, if you can, the one who has
been annoying and contrary to you in whatever way possible. And
although these acts, as interior as they are exterior, may be, or may
seem to be, accompanied by great weakness of spirit, so as to seem to
you that you do them against your every will, on this account you must
not abandon them in any way. As weak as they may seem, they keep you
firm and safe in the battle and they make the road to victory easy for
you.
Stay attentive and recollected within yourself to fight not only
against great and efficacious wills, but also against the small and
weak ones of every passion. For these open the road to the great ones,
and so they generate every vice within us. From the little care than
some have had to eradicate these little-wills from their hearts, after
having conquered the great wills of the same passion, it has happened
that when they least expected it, they have been assailed and conquered
by the same enemies, more vigorously and ruinously than before.
I also remind you to look at times to mortifying and breaking your
wills even of licit, unnecessary things. For many good things will
follow from this, and you will make yourself better disposed and ready
to conquer yourself in the others. You will make yourself strong and
expert in the battle of the temptations; you will escape many traps of
the demon, and you will do a thing that is very pleasing to God.
Daughter, I tell you clearly: if you continue in the way that I have
spoken, in these sincere and holy exercises to reform and conquer
yourself, I assure you that in little time you will advance greatly and
you will become truly spiritual, and not spiritual in name alone. But
in other manners and with other exercises, although they be, as you
believe, excellent and delightful to your taste, so that you seem from
them to stand completely united and in sweet conversations with the
Lord, do not ever persuade yourself to have acquired virtue and true
spirit. For (as I told you in the first chapter) this neither consists
in, nor is born from, exercises that are pleasant and conformable to
our nature, but from those that crucify it with all its acts: from
which, renewed by means of the habits of evangelical virtues, they join
it to its Crucified One and its Creator.
You must not doubt that since the vices come from many frequent
occasions where the superior will gives in to the sensual appetites,
likewise the evangelical virtues are acquired by making frequent acts
conforming to the divine will. This sometimes calls us to one virtue,
and sometimes to another. Even though our will be battered by the
inferior part, and by vice, it cannot ever be
impure and earthly unless it gives
in
and bows to it. Likewise, our will cannot ever become virtuous and
joined to God, even though it be called in lively manner, and battered
by the inspirations and divine grace, until it conforms itself to this
grace as necessary with acts both interior and exterior.