Negligence
will not only impede your
path to perfection, but it will deliver you to the hands of your
enemies. In order not to fall into this miserable slavery, you must fly
from every earthly curiosity and attachment, and from every occupation
unnecessary to your status. Then, you must make an effort to respond to
each good inspiration and to every command from your superiors, doing
everything when, and how, they please.
Do not hesitate even for a second, for that first hesitation brings a
second and third, and the others. The senses, being already nourished
and held by the pleasure which it has tasted, collapse and surrender
before these latter hesitations more quickly than to the first. Because
of this, either you begin the activity too late, or it becomes
repugnant and you abandon it. In this way, bit by bit, you acquire the
habit of negligence. It grows within you so much that, at the very
moment it binds us fast, we blush at our slavery and resolve to be
solicitous and diligent, even though we have to this point been very
negligent.
This negligence flows everywhere. Its poison not only infects our will,
making it abhor the work; it blinds the intellect as well. The
intellect does not realize how vain and ill-founded are our resolutions
to follow quickly and diligently through the task we must complete
immediately; it does not see that we abandon the entire affair
willfully, or we postpone it. Nor will it suffice to complete the
required task quickly. Rather, you need to do it in that very time
requested; it needs to meet the quality and essence necessary, so that
it might have every possible perfection.
It is, in fact, not diligence, but pure
negligence
to hurry and complete the task in advance if it is not done well. Why?
Quietly, we hand ourselves over to slothful rest, to which our thoughts
were attached while we hurried to complete the task. All this great
evil comes about because we do not value a job well done at
the
proper time, because we do not want to do battle with a resolute spirit
against fatigue and difficulty, which negligence presents to beginners.
As a result, you must consider frequently that raising your mind to God
even
once, and bending your
knee in God's honor
even once,
1
is more valuable than
all the treasure in the world. Remember that every time we do violence
to ourselves and our vicious passions, the angels carry from heaven to
our soul a crown of glorious victory. Reflect that from the negligent,
God takes away, piece by piece, the graces he has conceded them, and to
the diligent he increases them, until he leads them into joy. If you,
when you begin a task, are not forceful enough to proceed generously
when fatigued and in difficulty, you must hide your fatigue and
difficulty in such a way that they seem less than they are judged by
the negligent.
Let us further admit that your exercise requires many, many deeds, and
a long-lasting fatigue to acquire even one virtue, and that the enemies
you wish to expel appear numerous, and strong. Nevertheless, start to
produce deeds, even if you accomplish few, and they weary you several
days; fight against each enemy as if you had no others to fight
—
but
with great confidence that, with God's help, your are stronger than
they.
Behaving in this manner, negligence will
weaken and
prepare itself in such a way that the contrary virtue will slowly come
into you.
I say the same about prayer. Just as your exercise requires an hour of
prayer, and this appears burdensome to your negligence: immerse
yourself in prayer as if you wish to pray for an eighth of an hour,
because you will pass quickly to the next eighth, and from this to the
next one remaining. If, now in the second or in the other eighths, you
feel repugnance and too violent a difficulty, interrupt the exercise in
order not to lose patience. However, take the exercise up again shortly
thereafter.
You must also observe this method in
your exterior
works, when it happens that you must do more things which disturb you
because they appear numerous and difficult to your negligence. Begin
one courageously and tranquilly, as if you had nothing else to do.
Proceeding with diligence in this manner, you will manage to complete
them all with much less fatigue than your negligence predicted. If you
do not proceed in this manner, and you do not confront the fatigue and
difficulty that present themselves to you, the vice of negligence will
so prevail on you that this fatigue and difficulty, which the exercise
of virtue first bring, will keep you anxious and anguished not only
when they are present, but also when they are absent. In fact, you will
fear constantly the torment and assault of enemies, and you will see at
your shoulders someone who imposes tasks on you. Because of this, you
will know disquiet even at times of tranquility.
Know, daughter, that this vice of negligence, with its hidden poison,
will not only rot the first small roots that virtuous habits ought to
produce; it will also rot the very habits you have acquired! As the
termite behaves in wood, so negligence proceeds secretly, gnawing and
consuming the essence of the spiritual life. Using this method, the
demon lays traps and snares for everyone, but especially with the
spiritual.
Watch, therefore, praying well and working well, and do not wait to
weave the cloth for the wedding dress until it is time to meet your
spouse (see
Matthew
25.6-10). And remember each day
that the one who gives you the
morning does not promise you the evening, and even if he grants you the
evening, he does not promise the morning. Therefore, spend each moment
of the day according to God's will, just as if no more time was left to
you, and more, because you will have to give the most detailed account
for every moment.
I will conclude by warning you to regard as wasted the day in which,
even though you have accomplished many tasks, no have not obtained
numerous victories against your wicked inclinations and against your
self-will. Nor will you have thanked your Lord for his benefits, and
particularly for the sorrowful passion he suffered for you, nor the
sweet paternal chastisement when he has considered you worthy of the
the inestimable treasure of a few tribulations.
1The
literal Italian is
una
sola genuflessione fatta in sua
onore: only one genuflection
made in his honor.