If it seems you have reached the point where you no
longer
feel an effective desire to fight, and feel as if your superior will
can offer
no more resistance to the inferior will and to your enemies:
stand
firm,
and do not abandon the combat. In fact, you must consider yourself
ever
victorious, unless you realize with certainty that you have given in.
Our
superior will does not need the desire of the inferior will to produce
its
acts, so its enemies cannot ever constrain it to capitulate if it does
not
wish to -- although they may oppose it harshly. It is for this
reason
that God has blessed our will with liberty and with such strength that,
if
all our senses, if all the demons, and all the world together armed
themselves
and swore to defeat her, fighting and pressing against her will all
their
power:
in spite of them she can will or not will anything with
great
freedom, and as often and as long and however and to whatever end may
please
her.
And if at times these enemies should assail and constrain you with such
violence
that your will, nearly suffocated, has not -- so to speak -- the breath
necessary
to produce a single contrary act, do not lose heart, nor throw down
your
weapons, but in this case use your tongue to defend yourself crying:
"I
will not surrender to you, I do not desire you!" So behaves a
solder
whose enemy is so close as to rule out stabbing him with the sword's
tip:
instead he beats him with the sword handle. Just as he tries to leap
back
in order to wound him with the blade, so must you withdraw into your
self-knowledge
that you are nothing and can do nothing. With faith in God, who can do
all,
strike the foe, your passion, crying out:
"Help me, O Lord! Help
me, my
God! Help me Jesus and Mary, that I might not give in to my enemy!"
While your enemy gives you time, you can reinforce the weakness of your
will
by resorting to your intellect and considering various truths. Through
this
consideration, the will can breathe and collect its strength against
the foe.
For example: in some persecution, or in some other travail, you are so
assailed
by impatience that your will nearly cannot bear it, or wishes not to
bear
it: comfort her with the intellect using these or even other arguments.
First: Consider if you merit the evil you suffer, because
you
have given it the occasion to attack. If you merit it, it is your just
duty
to support patiently this evil which you have inflicted with your own
hands.
Second: If you have no fault in this whatever, turn your
thought
to your other errors which God has not yet punished, and for which you
have
not punished yourself. Seeing that God's mercy changes your punishment
for
these, which may be eternal, or perhaps the temporary punishment of
Purgatory,
with a small sentence for now, you should not merely receive willingly:
you
ought to give thanks.
Third: When it seems you have done a great deal of
penance,
and have done little to offend the divine Majesty (although you should
never
persuade yourself of such things), think how, in the kingdom of heaven,
no
one enters except through the narrow gate of tribulation (see
Matthew
7.13-14).
Fourth: Even if you could enter through some other way,
the
law of love dictates that you should not dwell on such a thing, as the
Son
of God, with all his friends and all his members, passed through that
gate
through thorns and crosses.
Fifth: But that which ought primarily to cause you to
marvel
on this occasion, and on every other, is the will of your God. On
account
of the love he bears you, he is indescribably pleased with every act of
virtue
and of mortification that his faithful and generous warrior performs in
his
sight, so as to correspond with him in love. Be certain of this:
however
irrational the travail, however unworthy its origin, causing you all
the
more pain and difficulty in tolerating it: you will give that much more
joy
to the Lord by approving and loving his divine will and disposition,
even
on those occasions that are disordered by their very nature, and so all
the
more bitter to you. For everything that befalls you, even the unruly,
has
its rule and its most perfect order.