Another Way of Meeting the Aforesaid Difficulty

WE might also answer this difficulty in another way, which is this. If we were thoroughly humble, or desired and aimed at being so, we ought to rejoice at the superior’s knowing us and taking us for what we are; and to that end alone we should manifest to him all our evil inclinations and defects; for it is not right that I should be regarded otherwise than for what Iam. True humility not only makes a man know himself and have a poor opinion of himself, but makes him also rejoice at other people’s knowing him and having a poor opinion of him. It is for other reasons, as we have said, that this clear account to be given of conscience is ordained in religion; but though there were no other good in it than this, that should be sufficient for us if we had a true desire of humility, for this is a great exercise of the same. But if this humility is wanting, if we desire to be regarded and highly thought of, if we desire office and high and honorable posts, it is not surprising that there should come over us a vain fear, which is wont to frighten, or rather to delude, persons of that sort. “If my faults come to the knowledge of my superior, I shall be always shoved away into a corner and forgotten.” Saints and servants of God, we see, feign faults and even sins, not to be taken up and promoted to dignities and honorable posts, but to be left alone in their corner. But he who for a contrary motive makes it his policy to throw a veil over the real faults that he has, that men may esteem and promote him and reckon him for more than he is worth, shows himself very far from virtue.

Here there is a very chief point to be observed, which we have touched upon also elsewhere, which is that one of the chiefest things in which a religious should exercise and show humility and mortification and other virtues, is in the case of such virtue being necessary for the accurate observance of his rules, since therein consists our advancement and perfection. If he has not virtue enough to exercise and put in practice the details of humility and mortification to which his rule and institute oblige him, it may be reckoned that he has none at all. What is the good of virtue and mortification if, when it comes to a case of a natural bashfulness or the loss of a little credit, a main rule like this is to be set aside? If you had true humility and selfknowledge and sorrow for your faults, this shame and confusion that is felt in declaring it should be taken cheerfully in atonement and satisfaction for the fault, and that alone should be enough to make you have recourse to the superior. Such was the behavior of the Emperor Theodosius, an example well worthy of being copied. When Rufinus told him not to go to church because St. Ambrose was bent on barring his entrance, the emperor said in a true spirit of Christian humility: “I am minded to go to church, and hear from the bishop what I deserve.”” So you should say: “T am minded to go to my superior, I am minded to go to my confessor, and hear of him what I deserve, to know myself and reckon myself for what I am, and to receive from the Lord this shame and humiliation in satisfaction and atonement for my sins.” This is genuine humility and compunction, and a good sign of repentance; a sign that one does not feel, as possibly one might feel, more shame at discovering oneself to a man than at having offended God. Very far is such a one from true humility. If we are to desire, as our rule says, to suffer injuries and false witnesses and be accounted fools, without our giving occasion for the same, how much more should we desire it for doing an act of virtue, obedience, and religion, and keeping a rule so important as this!

But that we may not seem to wish to carry everything by the way of the spirit only, let us take another way to smooth and further facilitate this business, the way that we mentioned in the last chapter, which is also a good and true way. I mean that not only does a man lose no credit with the superior by discovering and manifesting himself, but rather he gains with him honor and esteem and increase of love; while he loses all that by not declaring himself. To which I add another thing, which follows from the above, that, where this open dealing exists, the superior in that case puts much trust in such a person, and with reason, for he knows and understands what there is in him, and is satisfied that he will have recourse to him for anything that turns up; but when a subject does not altogether show his hand, a thing that readily lets itself be understood, the superior then cannot trust him, because he does not know him and is not aware of what there is in him, and so is forced to be cautious, looking at what he is about and keeping an eye on him.

And this should be well observed, because it is one of the chief sources whence spring much discontent and bitterness among subjects, which unpleasantness would be stopped and brought to an end if people would be open with the superior. It is a very common experience that by this mutual dealing and intercourse irritation is removed, and the apprehensions and imaginations dispelled which superiors had of inferiors, and inferiors also sometimes have of superiors. These suspicions and fears are generally like the phantoms of the night, which horrify and frighten afar off, and if you go up to them and touch them, you will find that they are a branch of a tree which you took for a thing of the next world. So it happens here. Things that upset and frightened you, and seemed to be something considerable, by touching them, handling them, dealing with them, vanish into thin air, and you find them to be nothing at all. Seneca said very well, speaking of the brave and undaunted spirit in which we should face things, that there are things which our failing to face is not because they are difficult in themselves, but they are difficult because we fail to face them—WNon quia difficilia sunt, non audemus; sed quia non audemus, difficilia sunt. If we would set ourselves to it, and pluck up heart to face them, we should see that they have not the difficulty which we imagine. To this effect he alleges the similitude of phantoms that we have mentioned, calling them, in the phrase of the poet [Vergil], ‘shadows terrible to behold”—terribiles visu formae. Observe, he does not say that the things were terrible, but that they looked terrible; but go and touch them, and you will see that it is all nothing: so it is in what we have just been speaking about.