Of Other Great Goods and Advantages That There Are in Self-Knowledge

ONE of the chief means that we can apply on our side for the Lord to do us favors and impart to us great gifts and virtues, is to humble ourselves and know our weakness and misery. So said the Apostle St. Paul: Willingly will I glory in my weaknesses, infirmities and miseries, that so the power of Christ may dwell in me (II Cor. xii. 9). And so St. Ambrose upon those words: J rejoice and glory in my infirmities (II Cor. xii. 10), says: “If the Christian is to glory, he should glory in his lowliness and poverty, because that is the way to grow and be strong before God.” St. Augustine applies to this purpose the saying of the prophet: Lord, thou wilt give thine inheritance rain with goodwill: it was weak, and thou hast set it wp (Psalm Ixvii. 10). When think you that God will give to His inheritance, that 1s, to the soul, rain with good will, a gracious rain of gifts and graces? When the soul knows her infirmity and misery, then the Lord will set her up, and then shall fail upon her with good will the gracious stream of His gifts. As amongst us the more our poor mendicants discover their poverty and sores to rich and pitiful men, the more they move them to pity and the greater alms they receive at their hands; so the more a man humbles himself and knows himself, and the more he discovers and confides his misery to God, the more does he invite and incline the mercy of God to have compassion and pity on him and to impart to him with greater abundance the gifts of His grace. For it is God who giveth strength to the weary, and maketh strong and robust them that seem to be undone (Isaias =4.°29).. To say in short the benefits and advantages of this exercise, I say that self-knowledge is a universal remedy for all things. Thus in the questions that are put in spiritual conferences that we are wont to hold as to what is the origin of such and such a defect, and what is the remedy for it, in almost all such cases we may answer that the origin of the defect is lack of self-knowledge, and the remedy would be to know and humble oneself. For if you ask whence comes my habit of making rash judgments of my brethren, I say it is from want of self-knowledge; for if you entered into yourself, you would find so much reason to have an eye to and bewail your own disorders that you would take no account of those of others. If you ask whence comes my addressing my brothers in harsh and offensive words, that also comes of lack of self-knowledge; for if you knew yourself, you would take yourself for the least of all and look upon everyone else as your superior, and so you would not dare to address them in that manner. If you ask me whence come excuses, complaints, and murmurings, “Why don’t they give me this or that 72 OG “Why do they treat me in this manner?” it is clear that they arise from the same cause. If you ask how comes it that a man is upset and saddened beyond measure when he is troubled with such and such temptations, or grows melancholy and loses heart when he sees that he falls many times into certain faults, once more that comes of want of self-knowledge; for if you had humility, and well considered the evil of your heart, you would not be troubled or discouraged, but would wonder that worse things did not befall you and you did not fall into greater faults, and you would go about praising and giving thanks to God that He holds you by His hand, not to let you fall into the sins that you would fall into if He did not keep hold of you. What may not come out of a cesspool and running sewer of vices? Such evil odors as these are to be expected from such a dunghill; and from such a tree, such fruit. On these words of the prophet, He remembereth that we are dust (Psalm cii. 14), St. Anselm observes: “Ts it much that the wind rising raises the dust?” If you require aid to be very charitable towards your brethren, very obedient, very patient, very penitent, here you will find the aid wanted for all.

Of our Father Francis Borgia we read that one day in traveling he met a nobleman of those realms, a friend of his, who seeing his poverty and the inconvenience that he suffered on the way, condoled with him and begged him to take more thought of his personal comfort. The father said to him with apparent cheerfulness, much dissembling the real state of the case: “Let not your lordship be troubled, nor think that I am so badly off as I look, since I would have you know that I always send before me a courier, who has my lodging ready and supplied with every requisite.” The nobleman asked: “Who is this courier?” He replied: “It is my knowledge of myself and the consideration of what I deserve, which is hell for my sins; and when with this knowledge I come to any lodging, however inconvenient and ill-prepared it be, I always think that I am made more comfortable than I deserve.”

In the chronicles of the Order of Preachers it is told of blessed St. Margaret of the same order that a religious, a great servant of God and a very spiritual person, on one occasion in conversation with her said to her among other things that he had entreated God many times in prayer to show him the way by which those ancient Fathers had traveled to please God and receive so many favors as they did receive at His hand; and how one night when he was asleep there was put before him a book written in letters of gold, and thereupon a voice awoke him which said: “Arise and read;’”’ whereupon he had risen and read these words, few, but heavenly and divine: “This was the perfection of the ancient Fathers, to love God, to despise themselves, to despise no one, to judge no one.” And forthwith the book disappeared.