Of Excessive Solicitude in What Regards the Body, and How Proper It Is to Avoid Singularities Here

WHILE our Father says that it is a praiseworthy thing to take proper care of bodily health and strength for the service of God, so he says also that excessive solicitude for what touches the body is reprehensible. As we have treated of the first head, so we will treat now of the second. In all things, it is difficult to hit the golden mean; but in what regards our bodily health there is particular difficulty, because self-love is a great schemer here, and sets up for being an eminent physician, saying that this is bad for the chest, that for the stomach, that for the head, that for the eyes; and so, under color of necessity, sensuality and love of good cheer very commonly come in. On this point St. Bernard very properly inveighs against those who have an excessive care of their health, and under pretense of preserving it draw these differences between one dish and another. He says they are disciples of Hippocrates and Galen, not of Christ, and that they find these differences and peculiarities of articles of food not in the Gospel, nor in Holy Scripture, but in books of medicine. “Beans, they say, are windy; cheese lies heavy on the stomach; milk is injurious to the head; water-drinking does not keep up my chest; cabbage engenders melancholy; leeks kindle bile; fish from a pond or muddy water agrees not at all with my constitution’—Legumina, inquit, ventosa sunt, caseus stomachum gravat, lac capiti nocet, potum aquae non sustinet pectus, caules nutriunt melancholiam, choleram porri accendunt, pisces de stagno aut de lutosa aqua complexiont non congruunt. “Good heavens,” he says, “what are we to make of you, if in our rivers, our gardens, our storerooms, we can hardly find anything to give you? Consider that you are not a doctor, but a religious, and ought to make more account of your profession than of your constitution.”

St. Bernard goes on to show four very excellent and practical reasons for the propriety of following the community and avoiding singularities. “Parce, obsecro, primum quidem quieti tuae, parce deinde labori ministrantium, parce gravamini domus, parce conscientiae.” The first is for your own quiet and ease, for these singularities carry with them these uneasy thoughts: Will they give it me or not? Are they annoyed and bored at giving it me? And if they do give it me, they make me wait; and for once it comes, it often fails to come. No one knows the anxiety there is over this except him who has tried it. It puts me much at ease to be able to get on with the ordinary fare. Secondly, look at the trouble you give over this to the cook, the refectorian, and the server at table; they all have to trot round and round, going and coming to satisfy you; do try to save them this worry. Thirdly, see what a burden you are to the house with your singularities, since the common and ordinary fare stands ready prepared for all, and that is done without trouble; but to have to range beyond this, to suit your whims and unnecessary peculiarities, is very burdensome and tiresome. Fourthly, have regard to conscience, I do not say your own, but your brother’s, who sits next to you and eats what they give him, and is scandalized at your not eating; since you give him occasion to murmur interiorly at you, judging you for an epicure; or if he does not thus judge of you, but supposes you need that accommodation, then he forms judgments and inward complaints against the superior and those who should have care of you, for not meeting your needs.

“Some,” St. Bernard goes on to say, “seek to justify themselves and back up what they do in this matter by the example of St. Paul, who recommends his disciple Timothy to drink a little wine for the weakness of his stomach. Do not go on drinking water, but drink a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thy frequent ailments (I Tim. v. 23). To this I reply, first of all, that St. Paul does not take this advice for himself, but applies it to another, and that other had not asked for this indulgence either, but it was given him without his trying or asking for it, whereas you do try and ask for this indulgence and singularity for yourself. Thus I do grievously suspect,” says the saint, ‘the prudence of the flesh coming in under color of discretion, and that being sensuality which you think necessity.” Secondly he says: “Let them observe that St. Paul is not speaking there of a religious like you, but of a bishop like Timothy, whose life was then so necessary in the infancy of the Church. Give me another Timothy, and I will feed him, if you like, with powdered gold, and give him balsam to drink.”

And he adds by the way: “If you do take kindly to this advice of the Apostle to his disciple to drink wine, I would wish you at least also to take kindly to that word which he adds, modico, ‘very little.’”’ St. Jerome, writing to Eustochium on the means of preserving chastity, gives as his first advice not to drink wine. “The spouse of Christ should shun wine like poison”—Sponsi Christi vinum fugiat pro veneno. Notice this phrase, which well accords with what St. Paul says: Wine, wherein is luxury (Eph. v. 18). St. Jerome goes on to say: “This is one of the principal weapons which the devil makes use of in his war against youth. Neither covetousness, nor pride, nor ambition makes such war on them; wine and youth are two incentives and two fires of lust. Why feed the flame with oil? Why, with a body already on fire with youth, add further fire?”

But to come back to our point, what I am now trying to recommen4 to religious is what Saints Basil, Bernard, Bonaventure, and others strongly charge us; it is that we should try to accustom ourselves to be content with what is the common usage of religious life, and not seek to be singular in anything, so far as may be. To persuade us to this course, it were enough to see that in this way we shall save many disquieting and distressful thoughts and many judgments of our own and others, as has been said. So, though it were only for our own private interest and our leading a quiet and contented life in religion, we should try to do this, even at the cost of a certain amount of inconvenience, for this quiet and content goes for more than all the benefit that could accrue to us from these singularities. This consideration is enforced by the fact that in this way we shall greatly edify our brethren, give immense satisfaction to superiors, and better please God. Let this be well observed, for it is a very practical and wholesome lesson.

One of the greatest services that you can render, and one of the greatest sacrifices that you can make to God in religion, and one of the greatest penances and mortifications that you can practise, most pleasing to God, most profitable to yourself, most edifying to your brethren, is to pass your whole life in religion without any special privilege or exemption. Live ever in this line tenaciously, and unfailingly observe in all its rigor the common life of religion; be ever content with what is common, the common food that all eat, the common habit that all wear, the common observances that all practise, seeking no privilege, no exemption, no specialty whatever. And since you must do some penance, and have some practice of mortification, let this be your principal penance and mortification. ‘Mea maxima mortificatio vita communis” [St. John Berchmans].

So the saints and masters of spiritual life say that other penances must be moderated in such a way as to leave strength for this, as being the chief penance. Little store will your superior set by your disciplines and haircloths if afterwards you are not content with the ordinary things that others use, but seek your own ease and convenience in dress, lodging, and so forth. But here you see a penance that you have already leave to do; and superiors will be delighted to see you doing it; and you can do it without danger of vainglory, since it does not look like doing penance, nor do others see whether you are mortifying yourself or not, all the while that it is one of the best of penances, and most pleasing to God that you can possibly do. It looks like a plain and common life, and before God it is a life of singular holiness and perfection, very solid and secure.

On the other hand, one of the things most prejudicial and hurtful to a religious order is for a knot of persons to start practising singularities, and claiming privileges and exemptions, even though it be under color of some hobby of their own, and a title that seems to them amply to justify their doings. So true is this, that St. Bonaventure sets it down for one of the principal sources of tepidity and laxity in religious bodies. Though you have lived long in religion, he says, and done great service in it, yet you may do it vast harm in this matter, since those who entered after you do not see your inward virtue, nor consider how much you have labored before they came; all they see is the present example you give them in observing the rules. In this matter the newcomers look to their elders to lead the way, and as they came first to religion, so also to be first in the exact observance of its Rules, thereby to serve as guides and examples to those who are still in their first fervor trying to serve God. When the contrary happens, they are either shocked at it or proceed to imitate it, relaxing their efforts upon the example of others.

Our Father understood this well, and therefore to prevent the great mischief that might enter in this way, he would have every candidate for incorporation in the Society asked this question: ‘Will you be content to live in the colleges and fare as the rest fare, without benefit of privileges and peculiarities, without seeking to be treated better than the meanest in the house?” And this question he would have particularly put to men with university degrees, and to others who might come to be men of importance in the order, because in them he thought there might be some danger of their seeking peculiarities and exemptions. Such claimants do not understand the mischief they make in this matter, though it be in small things; for at once your neighbor thinks that he has labored as much as you and stands in the same need as you, so he puts in for the same special treatment; and then another, who is only a little behind, and then another; and so religious discipline comes to relaxation and ruin. “Much better,’ says St. Bernard to these breakers-up of union and enemies of peace, “much better that you should be no preacher, or have no dexterity in the management of affairs, than that you should enjoy these peculiarities and exemptions; for you do more harm with the one than you do good with the other.” Therefore our Father gives us warning beforehand that in the Society there are to be no exemptions or singularities, and no claim of seniority is to avail to secure these, nor your having been a professor, or a preacher, or a superior. Rather we must hold this for a fixed principle, that you cannot hit upon any policy more ruinous to the Society than to give occasion for the idea that, because you are of old standing or a learned man or a preacher, therefore you have a right to look for exemptions and privileges, and to be treated in some way out of the common, and not as is usual with the rest. Those of oldest standing in the Society, and the most learned, are just the people who should give most edification in all things. It is they who, by their example, should uphold and promote religious discipline, identifying themselves with the humblest (humilibus consentientes, Rom. xii. 16). This is the end that learning and seniority should serve in the Society.