How Important It Is to Set Store by Little Things and Not Despise Them

HE that neglecteth small things shall fall by little and little (Ecclus. xix. 1). The lesson contained in this saying is of great importance, especially for aspirants to perfection. Great things of their own importance press upon our attention, but in smaller matters we are apt more easily to be careless and take little account of them as if they were of little value and importance, which is a great mistake, not without serious consequences. ‘They who fall into the greatest faults begin with the smallest”—A minimis incipiunt qui in maxima proruunt, says St. Bernard. He quotes a common saying: ‘No one goes to any extreme on a sudden’”—Nemo repente fit summus. As a rule, no one ever comes to be on a sudden either very good or very bad, but good and evil grow little by little. Little by little great bodily ailments are developed, and spiritual ailments and great maladies of the soul in the same way. Thus when you see great falls of servants of God, think not, says the saint, that the evil began when it first came to your notice. One who has persevered a long time leading a good life, never comes to slip and fall all of a sudden; his fall comes of his first having become careless of tiny little things, by which carelessness, little by little, virtue was weakened in his soul and he deserved that God should withdraw His hand a little away from him, and so he was open to being easily overcome afterwards by a great temptation falling in his way.

Cassian illustrates this by a very appropriate comparison, a comparison used also by the Holy Ghost. Houses, he says, do not fall down of a sudden, but first the thing begins by some little leakages; then little by little the timbers of the building rot; the mischief gets into the walls and softens and imperceptibly ruins them till it reaches the foundations, and then the whole structure collapses in one night.

We are told, then, in the above words to beware of this danger, because he who makes no account of small things, little by little will fall into greater faults. This should be enough to convince us and put us on our guard, since it is the counsel of the Holy Ghost Himself. By sloth and want of care, says the Holy Ghost in Ecclesiastes, the roof will come to fall, and for want of taking care to repair it, tt will rain through (Eccles. x. 18). Through neglect of repairing the house at the beginning when the damage was small; through not tiling it and stopping the leakages, some fine morning it comes to show itself a ruin. In like manner do men come to great falls and very evil ends. First come in our little affections and our passions like so many small leakages, and they go on little by little penetrating and softening and weakening the virtue of our soul, and so the whole building goes crash from mere neglect of repairs at the beginning when the mischief was small. From negligence in stopping those little leakages, from taking no account of small things, one fine morning a man finds himself under temptation; another day and he is out of religion. Would to God we had not so much experience of this! Truly it strikes one with great fear and dismay to see the first little cracks that were the beginning of the ruin of some who came to a very bad end. The devil is a clever fellow. He does not in the first instance assail God’s servants in great matters—he is much too acute for that; but, little by little, imperceptibly, in small and minute things, he does his work better than if he tempted his man in great things. If he started with mortal sins, he would easily be perceived and packed off; but, entering by small and minute things, he is neither perceived nor packed off, but admitted.

Therefore does St. Gregory say that in some ways there is more danger in small faults than in great ones, because great ones are more clearly known and the evil of them accordingly is more in evidence, moving us to avoid them and to feel more alarm when we fall into them; but small faults are less known, less easily avoided, and made less account of; and as they are made nothing of, so they are repeated and continued, and men settle down to them and never make up their minds manfully to throw them off; and on the heels of small faults there come great ones. St. Chrysostom quite agrees. He says a thing which he calls a marvel: “I dare to utter a marvelous saying, which will appear to you new and unheard of; it is that sometimes we need take more care and pains over avoiding small sins than over avoiding great ones. For great sins of themselves strike us with horror, so that we abhor and fly from them; but the other sins, by the very fact that they are small, make us remiss and negligent; and as we make little account of them, so we never succeed in getting clear of them, and so they come to do us great harm”—Mirabile quidem et inauditum dicere audeo: solet mihi nonnunquam non tanto studio magna videri esse peccata vitanda quanto parva et vilia; illa enim ut aversemur ipsa peccati natura efficit, haec autem hac ipsa re quia parva sunt desides reddunt, et dum contemnuntur non potest ad expulsionem eorum animus generose insurgere, unde cito ex parvis maxima fiunt negligentia nostra.

This is the reason why the devil sets so much store by this means of approaching and assailing religious men and servants of God; and also because he knows right well that thereby he will gain a footing to succeed in making them afterwards fall in greater things. So St. Augustine says: “What matters it whether by a little or a great leak the water enters into the ship, so that in the end it founders? I care not for one more than the other, for it all comes to the same in the end.” So the devil cares not whether he comes in by small things or by great things, so that he finally gains his end, which is to destroy and sink us. Of little drops of water multiplied, says St. Bonaventure, there come to be formed torrents and floods so great as to level to the ground high walls and buildings and strong castles. By a little leak and by a chink and crack the water silently and little by little makes its way into the ship until it sends it to the bottom. For this reason St. Augustine says that, as when a ship springs a leak, it is necessary to be always at the pump, pumping the water out that the ship may not founder, so by the help of meditation and examen we must be always ridding ourselves of the faults and imperfections that little by little are gaining upon us, that we may not founder and be drowned. This must be the exercise of the religious; we must be always at the pump, otherwise we run great risk. And elsewhere he says: “You have eschewed and escaped the waves and tempests and great dangers that there are in the stormy sea of the world; see that you do not come here in the harbor of religion to run aground on a sandbank; see that you do not come to danger and destruction by minute and small things; for at that rate it will profit you little to have eschewed and escaped those great dangers and tempests and rocks and cliffs, if afterwards in the harbor you come to stick fast in the sand.”