That It Is Always Necessary to Exercise Ourselves in Mortification, How Good and Advanced Soever We May Be in Virtue

ST. BERNARD says that we must always carry the pruning-hook of mortification in our hands, pruning and mortifying, and that there is no person who stands not in. need of pruning or retrenching something or other, how much soever he be mortified and think himself advanced. “Believe me,” says he, “that which is cut, sprouts anew; that which is driven out, returns; that which is quenched, flares up again; and that which is lulled to sleep, wakes up once more. It is not sufficient, therefore,’ adds the saint, ‘to have pruned once; we must use the knife often, and even always, if possible; for if you will not deceive yourself, you will always find something to cut and to retrench within yourself.” The hedges which we see in certain gardens furnish us with a very fit comparison for this subject. The myrtle and the box are artistically cut here into the figure of a lion, there into that of an eagle, and there into a man on horseback. But if the gardener did not go always cutting and pruning the shoots that keep growing, in a few days there would be no lion left, nor eagle either, nor man on horseback, because the shrub goes on growing according to its nature and is naturally ever sprouting afresh. So here, though you be a lion or an eagle, though you fancy that you are very strong and master of yourself, if you do not go always pruning, retrenching, and mortifying, you will soon be neither lion nor eagle, but a monster, because we have here within us a root of contrariety that is ever sprouting and growing according to its own nature, so that there will always be something to mortify. “However much progress you have made, you deceive yourself in thinking that your vices are dead whereas they are only held in check. Whether you will or no, you have within you the Jebusite. The enemy is always with you; you may check and keep him down, but you cannot finally cast him out”—Quantumlibet in hoc corpore manens profeceris, erras si vitia putas emortua, et non magis suppressa. Velis, nolis, intra fines tuos habitat Iebusaeus, subjugari potest, sed non exterminari (St. Bernard). St. Paul says: I know that there dwelleth not in my flesh any good. This would be saying little, says St. Bernard, if he did not add: For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would not, I do; and yet it is not I who do it, but the sin that dwelleth in me (Rom. vii. 18-19). Hither, then, prefer yourself to the Apostle, says St. Bernard, or you must confess that there dwells in you a vicious and evil inclination and that you have ever something to mortify.

The holy Abbot Ephrem in confirmation of this says: “The war of soldiers is soon over, but a monk’s fight lasts until he passes away to the Lord’—Bellum militum breve, sed monachi pugna quoadusque ad Dominum migret. There is much more to do in mortifying and checking our affections and passions than in cutting the hardest stones. For besides the fact that the stone offers the workman no such resistance or contradiction as is found in ourselves, it never returns again to its primitive roughness once it has been cut; but our affections and passions change very frequently and are apt to revive and reawaken, and it is necessary to return to the task of repressing them time after time. St. Jerome on that text of the prophet, Sing ye to the Lord on the harp (Psalm xcvii. 5), says that, as a harp makes no good music nor harmony till all the strings are in tune, and one single string broken or not in accord with the rest makes a discord, so one single passion in us, discordant and unmortified, will prevent our soul from making good music in the ears of God. Sing to tune on a harp of ten strings (Psalm xxxii. 2). But to bring this well about, it is clear how necessary it is to keep up this exercise.

On this account those ancient Fathers, as St. John Climacus relates, proved and exercised in many sorts of mortifications and humiliations even the most perfect among their number. And they gave a good reason for this, because it often happens that those who seem very perfect and great endurers of hardship, if their superiors cease to prove and exercise them, regarding them as men of consummate virtue, come in time to lose or abate that modesty and endurance which they had. For however good land may be, rich and fertile, yet if left uncultivated and unwatered it is apt to go wild and barren and yield a crop of thorns and thistles; so let a soul be ever so advanced in perfection, yet if it is left without the watering and the labor of mortification and the practice of endurance, it will become a wild and barren soil and will produce thorns of evil and impure thoughts and a false and deceitful sense of security. Thus we all stand in need of mortification: not only such as have any bad and corrupt inclinations, but even those whose inclinations are very good; not only the perfect and beginners, but also the most ancient and perfect; not only those who have sinned, but those who have preserved their baptismal innocence; some to gain virtue, some to keep it. He who rides a horse, however good and gentle it be, always takes bridle and spur, because, after all, it is but a horse.

If anyone will come after me, says our Savior, let him deny himself and take up his cross (Matt. xvi. 24). St. Luke adds, Take up his cross daily (Luke ix. 23). You ought to let no day pass without curbing your own will in something. Any day that you let pass without doing this, says St. John Climacus, count it for a great default; reckon that you have lost that day and that you have not been a religious that day. Amici, perdidimus diem—“Friends, we have lost a day,” said the Roman emperor [Titus] ; we have not been kings or emperors, for we have bestowed no favor on anyone. But it is much more proper for a religious man to mortify himself and deny his own will than for kings and emperors to bestow favors, for this it is to be a religious, to do what you do not want to do and leave undone what you do want to do.

Our Father Francis Borgia has left us a good example in this as in all other things. He used to say that without doubt his meat would be bitter and disagreeable to him any day that he did not chastise his body with some good penance or mortification; and he added that it would be a grief to him throughout life if he knew that death would surprise him on a day on which he had not done some penance and mortified his senses. Thus he let no day pass on which he did not mortify himself; and he prayed and besought the Lord to do him this favor, that comforts should be to him a torment and a cross, and afflictions a comfort, which is the third and highest degree of mortification; and he used to say that he should have no comfort until he had obtained this of our Lord. He lived in perpetual watchfulness, making war on his body, and was always finding something wherein to mortify and maltreat it. All the things that enabled him to afflict it he called his friends. If the sun distressed him on a journey, he would say: “Oh, what good assistance our friend renders us!” He said the same of the frost and wind and rain in the rigor of winter, and of the pain of the gout and attacks of the heart and of those wha persecuted and said evil things of him; all these he called friends because they helped him to vanquish and subdue his body, which he held for his deadly enemy. And not content with the mortifications and afflictions that came in his way, he went seeking new contrivances to mortify himself. Sometimes he put sand and pebbles in his shoes to hurt his feet when walking. In summer he hung about in the sun, and in winter in the snow and ice. He laid his temples bare with pulling out the hairs. When he could not take the discipline, he tormented his flesh with pinches and other artifices. Even in sicknesses he sought means to add aches to aches and pains to pains. His purgative draughts, however bitter they were, he sipped as though they were a plate of nourishing soup. He chewed bitter pills, and broke them up between his teeth, and kept them in his mouth a long time. In this way did he mortify and torment his senses and crucify his flesh, and so he came to arrive at the perfection of sanctity at which he did arrive.