Of Religious Who, Having Left Greater Things, Get a Passion in Religion for Lesser Things

ROM what has been said it follows in the first place that, if we who give up the world with its property and riches do not also give up affection for those things, we are not poor in spirit, since that poverty consists not merely in a bodily and external separation from the things of the world, but further in a detachment of will and affection from them; and this is the main point of poverty in spirit. If there still remains in you a passion for those things, you have not left them altogether, but have brought them with you into religion, since you carry them in your heart. Thus you are not truly poor, but only in outward pretense; and consequently not a true and perfection religious, but a pretended one. It is only in body that you are in religion, but in spirit and heart in the world; you falsely bear the name of religious.

Secondly, it follows that a religious who has given up and despised the wealth and riches of the world, and here in religion gets a passion for little things, for a room, an article of clothing, a book, a picture, and other like things, is not truly and perfectly poor in spirit. The reason is the same as above; for the essence of poverty in spirit consists in giving up affection for the things of the world and having the heart detached from them; whereas this man has not given up this affection, but that which he had for those things in the world, here in religion he has transferred and changed to little things, and his heart is as affectionated and attached to those trifles as it was there in the world to wealth and riches.

Cassian treats this topic very well. I know not, he says, how to characterize a ridiculous thing that happens with some religious, that after they have left the property and riches that they had in the world, we see them in religion so careful and solicitous about little things and trifles, seeking and trying after superfluities and ill-placed conveniences to such a degree that sometimes the affection and solicitude which they have for these things are greater than what they had in the world for their entire estate. Little will it profit these people, he says, to have given up much property and great riches, since they have not given up their affection for them, but have only transferred and changed it to these small trifling objects. The covetous affection which now in religion they can no longer exercise on costly articles, they keep and exercise on things trifling and cheap, clearly showing thereby that they have not given up the covetous affection, but changed and transferred it to these childish trinkets. They keep the same covetousness here as there, as though the evil lay in the gold or in the difference of metals and furniture, and not in the passion and affection of the heart; or as though we had left great things to set our heart on trifles. We did not leave those great things for that. We left and broke with greatness that here it might be the easier for us to despise the less. Otherwise, if the covetous affection keeps its hold on our heart, what matter does it make to me whether it be about great things or about cheap and small things, since we are here as affectionated and attached to those little things, and our heart as taken up and hampered with them, as it could have been about great things? It all comes to the same, when you cannot see the sun for having a plate put before your eyes, whether the plate be of gold or iron or tin; the one is as much of an obstacle as the other. Abbot Mark says the same in a consultation or colloquy that he holds, conversing with his soul. ‘You will tell me, my well-beloved, that we do not gather gold or silver, we have no inheritances or possessions; and I will answer thee that it is not gold or inheritances that do the harm, but the ill use of those things and the disorderly affection for them.” So we see that some rich people pleased God and were saints, as were Abraham and Job and David, because they did not fasten their heart and affections on their riches. But we, without having riches, having already given them up, keep up and maintain the vice of covetousness over base and good-for-nothing things. We do not gather gold or silver, but we get together cheap knickknacks and set our heart upon them and bear them as much affection as we did gold and silver in the world; and here we worry sometimes as much about these things as we should have done there in the world about those other things, and perhaps more. We do not come in for bishoprics, nor aim at dignities, nor ambition such things as that; but we desire the petty compliments and good opinion of men and take all possible means to secure them; we rejoice in being praised and well thought of by people in the house as much as worldly persons do by those around about them.

More miserable and more worthy of reprehension are we, say these holy men, than are people in the world, for having brought ourselves down to a lower level than they. For when men of the world set their heart on anything, it is on things that seem of some consideration and value; but we, having given up those things, fix our affections on cheap and petty objects. We have turned children. We should have gone on making ourselves men, and perfect men, growing every day, as St. Paul says, unto a perfect man (Eph. iv. 13), and we are doing just the reverse. Of men, strong men, that we were when we entered religion, leaving all things in the world and breaking manfully with it all, we have made ourselves babies, setting our hearts on the toys and baubles of children. And as the baby, when you take away its apple and its plaything, begins to cry, so these folk, when you deprive them of the trifle that they had set their hearts upon and do not grant them what they ask for, at once bristle up and speak out their mind. It is just as Cassian says—on the one hand it is a thing to make you laugh, and on the other it is a sad and pitiful sight, to see a grave personage, a religious, who to be sure had the heart to despise the world and all that it contained, come to be such a slave of mean and petty objects and be as much upset and put out as a baby, because they refuse it an apple, because they have taken away a toy.

The glorious St. Bernard, writing to some religious, says: “More miserable are we religious than all the rest of mankind if in religion we are to seek these childish trifles and for them lose all merit of what we have given up and done hitherto. What blindness, or to say better, what madness and folly it is for us, who have given up greater things, to come to be enslaved to things so mean and worthless, to our own so great loss and detriment!’ Would you see the loss? says St. Bernard. ‘We have despised the world and all things in it; we have left our parents, relations, and friends; we have shut ourselves up in monasteries and bound ourselves to perpetual imprisonment, to be ever under lock and key and a doorkeeper; we have given up our own wills and bound ourselves ever to follow the will of another. What should we not be ready to do, not to lose so many great merits!”