That He Who Makes No Effort to Mortify Himself Does Not Only Not Live the Life of a Spiritual, but Not Even of a Rational, Being

THE glorious Augustine says: ‘“‘There is one life of beasts, another of angels, another of men. The life of beasts is entirely taken up with things of earth and the satisfaction of their appetites; that of angels is wholly taken up with God and the things of heaven; that of men is midway between these two lives, since man partakes of the one nature and of the other. If he lives according to the spirit, he becomes like the angels and a companion of them. If he lives according to the flesh, he becomes like the beasts and a companion of them.” This agrees with what St. Ambrose says: “He is carnal who follows the inclinations of the flesh; and he is spiritual who shapes his life according to the commandments of God.” Thus he who lives according to the appetites of the flesh does not only not live a spiritual life, but falls short of the natural life of man, living the animal life of beasts. This alone should suffice greatly to animate us to mortification, since it is a thing most unworthy of the high birth and nobility of man, who was created in the image and likeness of God and to enjoy Him forever, to come to be like beasts, making himself a servant and a slave of a thing so bestial as the flesh and sensuality, subjecting himself to them and guiding himself thereby, and giving full play to the furious onset of his bestial appetite.

St. Bernard says: “It is a great abuse and disorder for the handmaid to be mistress and give command and for the rightful mistress, who should command, to be turned into a handmaid.” This is the disorder and perversity which Solomon saw: I saw slaves going on horseback, made masters and giving commands, and princes crawling about, serving like slaves (Eccles. x. 7). Father Master Avila says: “Think you not that it would be a monstrous thing, a portentous sight to all who saw it, for a beast to have a man in bit and bridle, taking him where it would, ruling him whom it ought to serve?” ‘Now of these there are so many, of low and high degree, controlled by the bridle of their bestial appetites, that, just because there are so many, we no longer take it as a thing to stare at, nor are we shocked at the portentous sight, nor does it excite in us any wonder, of which more’s the pity. It is told of Diogenes that one day at noon he went walking in the market place at Athens with a candle, looking for something; and when asked, ‘What are you looking for?” he said: “I am looking to see if I can find a man.” “Why, don’t you see the market place full of them?” “These,” he said, “are not men, but beasts, since they live not as men but beasts, ruled and guided by their bestial appetites.”

St. Augustine brings in here a graceful and apt comparison. What would be generally thought in society of a man who walked with his feet in the air and his head downmost? “That’s a tumbler,” they would say; “a farcical and ridiculous performance.’”’ Now such in the eyes of God and the angels, says St. Augustine, is the man in whom the flesh is mistress and reason the handmaid; he walks topsy-turvy, feet above and head below. Who would not be shocked? Even Seneca felt this and said a thing divinely true: “I am too great and born to too great things, to become the slave of my own body”’—Maior sum, et ad maiora natus, quam ut mancipium fiam mei corporis—a sentence for a religious and every Christian to carry written on his heart. If a gentile by the mere light of nature attained to feeling this and being shocked at such a spectacle, what may we expect of a Christian, aided by the light of faith, and of a religious, forearmed and favored by so many blessings and benefits of God? He who is not shocked at this, nor resents it, continues St. Augustine, suffers from a perversion of reason and will be a monster more wonderful than a man turned into a beast without resenting it or thinking there was anything particular to see in such a sight.

A philosopher [Galen] relates of himself that in his youth he saw a man setting about in great excitement to unlock a door. Things went wrong, and for all his efforts he could not open it, and all his excitement went for nothing. So angry did he get that he began gnawing the key with his teeth and kicking at the door; and not stopping at that, he began to blaspheme God and foam at the mouth like a raving lunatic, while his eyes looked as though they would start from his head. The philosopher says that, when he saw this, he conceived such a hatred and abhorrence of the vice of anger that thereafter no one ever saw him out of temper, that he might not be seen in similar anger. All this should go to aid us to live like men of reason and not let the appetites of the flesh carry us away. St. Jerome on that text of Job (i. 1): There was a man in the land of Hus, whose name was Job, says he was a man indeed, and gives the reason that we have said, because the flesh in him was not mistress to give orders, but kept subject and submissive, he weighing everything that he did in the scales of reason, according to that saying of Scripture: The lust of sin shall be under thy power and thou shalt hold sway over it (Gen. iv. 7).