That Temptations Make a Man Diligent and Fervent

d Me carry with them also another considerable benefit and advantage, that they make a man diligent and careful, fervent and spiritual, as being always on the verge of a fight. As a long peace makes men slack, careless, and up to doing very little, so war and practice in arms makes them strong, robust, and valiant. For this reason Cato in the Roman senate gave this as his opinion: “It is well for the Romans that Carthage should stand intact, lest idleness draw them into other and greater evils. Woe to Rome when Carthage shall be no more!” The Lacedemonians gave the same answer when their king proposed to destroy and level to the ground a city that had given them much trouble at every stage of their history. The governors and senators declared that they would never consent to the breaking of the whetstone on which the strength and valor of the Lacedemonian youth was sharpened to a keen edge. They gave the name of “whetstone” to a city that had often made them take up arms, for thereby their youth were exercised in arms, and displayed the mettle and valor of each; and they reckoned it a great injury to their state to have no more wars and conquests. Thus having no temptations is apt to make men remiss and careless. A religious is going about with folded arms: nothing can induce him to take the discipline or wear a haircloth; he yawns at meditation, is slack in obedience, wanders about seeking conversation. There comes upon him a violent temptation, in which God and God’s aid are necessary; thereupon he pulls himself together, and conceives spirit and fervor for mortification and meditation. Even in the world they say: “If you want to know how to pray, go to sea.” Necessity and danger teach people to pray and have recourse to God in earnest. So St. Chrysostom says that on this account God permits temptations for our good and spiritual profit. ‘When He sees that we are falling into tepidity, withdrawing from His conversation and intimacy and making little account of spiritual things, He lets us go a little from His hand, that, being thus chastised, we may return to His Majesty with more seriousness and care.” And elsewhere: “When the devil assails us and goes about to frighten us with his temptations, that makes for our advancement, since then we get to know what we are and have more diligent recourse to God.” Thus temptations are not only no obstacle or hindrance to our traveling in the way of virtue, but are even a means to help us thereto. So the Apostle St. Paul called temptation, not a knife or lance, but a prick and goad. The goad does not kill nor injure, but awakens and arouses, and makes one go the way more vigorously; so temptation does not injure, but does much good, since it arouses and awakens people to go their way better. This is apt to prove generally beneficial to all, even to the most advanced. However good and strong a horse may be, the spur is needful, and he runs better when he feels it; so God’s servants run better and more nimbly in the service of God when they feel these pricks and goads of temptations, and then they become more humble and cautious.

St. Gregory says: ‘‘The aim of the devil in temptation is evil, but that of the Lord is good.” The leech, when it sucks the blood of the patient, has no other purpose but to glut itself and would suck it all away if it could; but the purpose of the physician is to draw off the bad blood and give health to the sick man. When they apply the cautery called the “fiery button” to a patient, all that the fire wants is to burn, but all that the surgeon wants is to heal; the fire would like to reach the healthy part, but the surgeon applies it only to that which is diseased and will not let it go further. Thus the aim of the devil in temptation is to ruin our virtue and merit and glory; but the Lord’s aim is otherwise, and He marvelously works the exact contrary effect by the same means. Thus the stones that the devil hurls against us to break our heads and kill us, He takes to work out from them a most fair and precious crown for us, as we read of the glorious St. Stephen, who was surrounded by persecutors and overwhelmed by the stones that they threw at him, and saw the heavens opened, and Jesus Christ as it were gathering up those stones, to make of them for him a jeweled crown of glory.

Gerson adds another point that is very consoling, which he says is the common doctrine of doctors and saints. It is that, though one under the molestation of temptations commits some faults, and thinks that he has been guilty of some negligence and carelessness, and there has been some venial sin mixed up in the matter; nevertheless, on the other hand, the patience that he keeps under this affliction, and his conformity with the will of God, and the resistance that he makes, fighting against the temptation, and the expedients and means that he applies to gain the victory, not only remove and clear away all these faults and negligences, but make in him a growth and progress in merit of greater grace and greater glory, according to the saying of the Apostle: God draws good from the temptation—faciet cum tentatione proventum [éxBaots, a way out] (I Cor. x. 13), and makes us thrive and gain advantage thereby. A nurse or mother, in order that her child may learn to walk, leaves it a little to itself and then calls it. The child trembles and dares not go; she lets it alone, even though it falls sometimes, holding that for a less evil than its not learning to walk: thus does God deal with us. I am as a nursing mother to Ephraim (Osee xi. 3). God reckons nothing of these falls and faults that you think you commit, in comparison with the advantage that follows from temptations. Blosius relates of the holy virgin Gertrude that she afflicted and scolded herself much for a smali defect that she had, and desired and begged God to deliver her from it altogether. And the Lord replied very gently and sweetly: ‘Why wishest thou Me to be deprived of great honor, and thyself of great reward? For every time that thou dost recognize this defect or any other like it, and purposest to avoid it in future, thou gainest a great reward; and every time that anyone endeavors to overcome his defects for My love, he honoreth Me as much as a soldier would honor his king by fighting manfully in war against his enemies and trying to overcome them.”