Of the Inconveniences and Losses That Follow from Not Taking Correction Well

4 Peas pride and folly goes so far that now scarcely anyone is found to venture to correct and advise another of his faults, since no one is willing to undertake a bad job, or as they say, to provoke an uproar at his own expense. And the man gets what he deserves for this. For what does the sick man deserve who will not let himself be attended to? He deserves to go unattended and be left to die. Now that is what he deserves who will not be corrected and takes amiss any admonition given him. He who hateth reproofs shall die; he who casteth off discipline, despiseth his own soul, says the Wise Man (Prov. xv. 10, 32). He deserves that no one should correct him or admonish him of anything; that he should come to have grave faults, manifest to all the rest of the community, and people should be complaining of them, and yet there should be no one to tell him. Such is the usual fate of such folk, and it is one of the greatest punishments that could befall them. Curavimus Babylonem et non est sanata, derelinquamus eam—“He has no mind to profit by attention and medical care, let us leave him” (Isaias li. 9). When a vineyard is left unpruned and undug, it is gone to waste. So they leave a man forlorn, giving him up for lost, for his not taking well advice and correction.

Our Father Francis Borgia, speaking of the inconveniences and mischiefs that follow from not taking correction and admonition well, says that thence we are likely to settle down in one or other of two very awkward situations. They will be these. Either for lack of correction and warnings defects will come to be fixtures, seated and, as it were, quite at home in those who have them, there being no one to dare to set about applying a remedy to such an impatient sick person; or, if admonitions are given to him who needs them, and he, instead of being grateful, draws from thence bitterness and resentment, and holds aloof from his admonitor, in a few days the house will become a stagnant pool of gall and bitterness. This will be due to want of knowledge on the part of its imperfect members, who will not admit of advice and correction, but take for a wrong what they ought to take for a great benefit, and are aggrieved and irritated where they ought to be grateful, turning their remedy into poison. Thus one should greatly fear: “Are they leaving me to myself for a cure, because I am a bad patient? Are they giving over admonishing me of my faults, because at one time I did not take the correction and admonition well?” Our Father Francis desired in his day that we should keep and carry on that simplicity, charity, and plainness of speech that marked our beginnings, when correction and an admonition of a defect not only gave no occasion for bitterness, but begot heartfelt love and great gratitude.

A grave doctor likens those who will not take correction to the devil, because they make themselves incorrigible. Now to be open to correction or incorrigible is what marks off the sinful man from the devil; for man, however sinful he be, while he is in this mortal life is capable of correction, and the devil not. He quotes accordingly the saying of the Wise Man: He that abhorreth correction is as the footstep of the sinner (Ecclus. xxi. 7), that is, of the devil, who is called by excellence the sinner. As the footprint and impress of the foot is like the foot, so he who abhors correction is just like the devil in making himself incorrigible, since he shuts the door to one of the most proper, powerful, and effectual means of amendment. St. Basil says of such folk a thing worthy of consideration: “The conversation and company of these people who refuse correction and take advice badly is very hurtful to the rest of the religious with whom they live. By their bad example they spread the infection of having little taste, or rather no taste at all, for being corrected and advised; thus they draw folk away from the end and purpose for which they came into religion, which was amendment and reform.” He would have such people removed from intercourse and conversation with the rest, that they may not spread the infection.