Of Some Other Things That Will Help Us to Go On in Self- Improvement and Gain Perfection

B ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. v. 48), says Christ our Redeemer in that sovereign Sermon on the Mount. St. Cyprian on these words says: “If to men it is matter of exultation and glory to have sons like themselves, and then they rejoice, more and more glad at having become fathers when they see that in features, air, and demeanor and in all things their children are in the likeness of their parents, how much more will our heavenly Father be glad and rejoice when He sees that His spiritual sons are coming out like Himself! What a palm of victory, what a reward, what a crown, what a glory, think you, will it be that you should be such that God may not have to complain of you: I have begotten sons, and reared them and exalted them, and they have dishonored me (Isaias i. 2)”—but that you should be such that your works may redound to the great glory and honor of your heavenly Father! This is the great glory of God, to have sons so like Him that through them He comes to be known, honored, and glorified.

But how shall we be like our heavenly Father? St. Augustine tells us: We shall be like God in proportion as we partake of His justice and holiness; the more just and perfect we are, the more we shall resemble our heavenly Father. Therefore does the Lord so much desire us to be holy and perfect, and reminds us of it and repeats it frequently—sometimes by St. Paul: This is the will of God, your sanctification (I Thess. iv. 3) ; sometimes by St. Matthew: Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. v. 48); at other times by the Apostle St. Peter: Be ye holy, because I the Lord your God am holy (I Pet. i. 16;

ON THE ESTEEM OF SPIRITUAL THINGS V7 Levit. xi. 44). This is the will of our heavenly Father. It is a great satisfaction to parents to have good, wise, and holy children. A wise son, says Solomon, is the joy of his father; and, contrariwise, a foolish and worthless son is the sorrow of his mother (Prov. x. 1). For this reason, if there were no other, we should endeavor to give ourselves to virtue and perfection, to give satisfaction to God. This should ever be the principal motive of all our actions, the satisfaction of God and His greater honor and glory.

Besides this, we will mention sundry other motives to aid and animate us thereto. St. Augustine says that the reason why Holy Scripture calls us so many times sons of God—I will be your Father, and you shall be my sons—and why the prophets so often repeat it, and the Apostle St. Paul: Be ye imitators of God, as most dear sons (Eph. v. 1); and the Apostle St. John: See what great love the Father hath for us, granting us to be called and to be sons of God (I John iii. 1), and in many other places—the reason, he says, of this frequent repetition is to induce us, seeing and considering our dignity and excellence, to value ourselves and watch over ourselves with greater care and diligence. A rich dress is kept with much solicitude, and great care is taken that no stain fall upon it. A precious stone and other rich articles are kept with greater care. We should keep with great care what we have received and call ourselves to great account for it. That is why, as St. Augustine says, Holy Scripture so often puts before us the fact that we are sons of God and that God Himself is our Father, to the end that we may behave as His sons whose sons we are and not fall away or degenerate from the high and generous thoughts of sons of God.

Pope St. Leo agrees, saying: “Recognize your dignity; remember that you are a son of God and do nothing unworthy of the nobility and high birth of such a son”—Divinae consors factus naturae noli in veterem vilitatem degeneri conversatione redire: memento cuius capitis et cuius corporis sis membrum. St. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles sets this before the Athenians to animate and raise them to higher things: for we are of divine lineage, being of divine lineage, etc. (Acts xvii. 28). To apply that to ourselves, and keep up the example which St. Augustine gives of the dress: as any stain looks very ugly on a rich dress, and the richer the stuff, the more unsightly does it appear—on brocade or gold lace a stain is a great disfigurement, but on sackcloth it is not seen and no account is taken of it—so in them who live there in the world the stain of a venial sin is not noticed, and oftentimes even of a mortal sin, and no account is taken of it, sad to say; but in religious, who are the cherished and petted sons of God, any stain and any imperfection is conspicuous and strikes the eye—a want of modesty, a slight murmuring, an impatient and angry word, gives great offence and disedification here, whereas among men of the world it is taken no notice of. Dust on the feet is no consideration, but on the eyes and in the pupils of the eyes it is a considerable matter, and very much so. Worldly people are as the feet of this body of the Church; religious are as the eyes and pupils of the eyes; thus any fault ina religious is very considerable, because it takes off the gilding and causes great unsightliness in him, and therefore he is bound very carefully to guard against anything of the sort.

Another helpful means of self-improvement we have touched on above; it is to understand that we have still a long way to go and that what we hold and have gained hitherto is as nothing. This means also is suggested to us by the text quoted before. Why, think you, does Christ our Redeemer say: Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect? (Matt. v. 48). Can we possibly attain to the perfection of our heavenly Father? Can man possibly appear just in comparison with God? (Job iv. 17). No, certainly, not by thousands of miles; how ever much we advance, there will always be an infinite distance between us and Him. Yet He tells us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, to give us to understand that on this road of virtue we must ever be moving on and never be content with what we have got, but labor for what is still wanting. Saints commonly say, and very rightly, that there is no surer sign of a man’s being far from perfection than his thinking that he has already attained it; for on this marvelous road, the farther a man journeys, the more ground he sees still before him to cover, and how much is wanting to him.

St. Bonaventure says that, as the higher a man climbs a mountain, the more ground he sees, so the nearer a man approaches the summit of this mountain of perfection, the more it opens out upon him for further exertion. It is a common experience, in looking at a high mountain from afar, to fancy that it reaches the sky and that from thence we could touch the sky with our hand; but as we go on with our journey and reach the top, we find that the sky is much higher than that. So on this road of perfection and knowledge and love of God, Man shall ascend to a high heart, and God shall be exalted still higher (Psalm Ixiii. 7-8). So St. Cyprian explains this passage, that the higher we mount in the knowledge of God, the higher God remains. However much you know of God, there is much more to know; and however much you love Him, there is much more to love. There is always room to mount on this road of perfection; and if anyone thinks that he has reached and gained perfection, it is because he is far off and so fancies that he could touch the sky with his hand.

This may be also understood from what we see in earthly sciences. The more a man knows, the better he appreciates the shortcomings of his knowledge. And so that philosopher said: “The only thing that I know is that I know nothing.” And a great musician used to say sadly that he knew nothing, because he seemed to himself to descry such vast fields of knowledge as he could never attain or understand. So is this knowledge of God. The servants of God who have studied and made much progress therein know well how much is wanting to them for the attainment of perfection. And this is the reason why the farther a man advances, the humbler he is, partly because as one grows in other virtues, one grows also in humility and selfknowledge and self-contempt, all these things going together; and again because the more light and appreciation a man has of the goodness and majesty of God, the deeper becomes his knowledge of his own misery and nothingness. Abyss cries to abyss (Psalm xli. 8), the great abyss of the knowledge of God and of His goodness and infinite majesty discovers to us the depths of our own misery; and by the beams of this divine light we come to see the specks and motes of our imperfections and how much we still want of being perfect. The novice and the beginner sometimes fancies that he has now got virtue; that is because he does not know how much he is wanting in it. A man that has little or no skill in painting, when he sees a picture, admires it at once and discovers no fault; a good painter comes along, looks at it attentively, and discovers many faults. The same falls here; you are not master of the art of selfknowledge, and therefore fail to see the faults there are in this picture of your soul; whereas another, who is better skilled in that art, sees them very well. Let all this serve to inflame us with a desire of acquiring that virtue we still want, for blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice (Matt. v. 6); that is to say, as St. Jerome explains it, they who, however just they are, are never satisfied and never think their present estate enough, but hunger continually after more virtue and perfection, as did the Prophet David when he said and begged of God: Lord, wash me yet more and more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sins. I am not content with being cleansed and washed of my sins; I am not content with being white, but I would fain that Thou wouldst make me white as snow and whiter even than snow. Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow (Psalm 1. 9). Thus we should cry and raise our voices to God: “Lord, give me more humility, more patience, more charity, more mortification, more indifference and resignation!” Wash me yet more.