Chapter XIV. Spiritual Idleness

IF, of all graces, that of perseverance is the most previous, because it is the one which makes all the others of lasting value, certainly among the vices which beset the devout life, spiritual idleness is one of the chief; for it is the contradictory of perseverance. Yet I doubt whether, practically, we regard it with the fear which it deserves. All the three dispositions of our normal state, fatigue especially, are desolated by it. Struggle is tempted to give way to laziness, and to take recreation away from Christ. Fatigue is sorely drawn in its aching lassitude to fall off from dry interior faith, and to seek consolation in creatures, a step almost as fatal as going to sleep in the snow. And rest murmurs when the trumpet sounds to renew the fight, and would fain prolong itself by natural means when supernatural means have ceased.

I suppose it may be said that every man is an idle man. Did any one ever see a man who did not naturally gravitate to idleness, unless perchance he had a heart-complaint? Nay, so natural is it, that very idle men plead its very naturalness as a proof that it is almost irresistible. No man does hard work naturally. He must be driven to it, no matter whether it be by the love of money, or the fear of hell. Idleness of its own nature is sweet, sweeter than the brightest gift the gay world can give. But spiritual men have a special inclination to be idle, which they do not always sufficiently consider. Nothing is more rare in the Church than a irue contemplative vocation. Consequently, it is almost impossible for the generality of devout persons to spend their whole time in direct acts of the virtue of religion, and the cultivation of interior motives and dispositions. Then, on the other hand, they conceive, not always judiciously, that their former habits of recreation, and their old amusements, are to be altogether eschewed. So that their piety creates a sort of void in them, and gives them nothing to fill it up with. This is one great reason why those who have no regular profession, or adequate domestic occupation, should engage themselves in some external work of zeal and mercy. However, if this theory to explain the phenomenon be not true, the fact is undeniable, and th(world has long ill-naturedly pointed to it, that religiouu people, as a class, are uncommonly idle.

As this idleness is an effectual bar to progress, it is important that we should examine the matter narrowly; and if we do so, we shall find that there are seven developements of this spiritual idleness, about each of which something shall be said.

The first of them is what is usually called dissipation It is easy to describe, but not easy to define. It is a sir. without a body. It can make a body of anything and animate it. It works quietly, and hardly allows itself to be felt. Indeed one of its most dangerous characteristics is that a person is rarely aware, at the time, that he is guilty of dissipation. Its effects upon our devotion are quite disproportioned to the insignificance of its appearance. It can destroy in a few hours the hard-earned graces of months, or the fruit of a whole retreat; and the time immediately following a retreat is one of its favourite and chosen seasons. Let us see in what it consists. Every one knows after he has been dissipated, that such has been the case; but he does not always see in what his dissipation has consisted. The desolation of his soul is a proof to him that something has been wrong; but he cannot always give the wrong its name.

Dissipation consists, first of all, in putting things off beyond their proper times. So that one duty treads upon the heels of another, and all duties are felt as irksome obligations, a yoke beneath which we fret and lose our peace. In most cases the consequence of this is, that we have no time to do the work as it ought to be done. It is therefore done precipitately, with natural eagerness, with a greater desire to get it simply done than to do it well, and with very little thought of God throughout. The French statesman's maxim, Never do to-day what you can put ofF till to-morrow, admirable as it is for the prudent discharge of worldly duties, can seldom be safely practised in the spiritual life. Neither would anything but confusion come of Lord Nelson's opposite rule, that a man should always be a quarter of an hour before his time. The great thing is to do each duty as it comes, quietly, perseveringly and with our eyes fixed on God. Without our having any set rule to observe, daily life has a tendency to settle itself into a groove, and thus each duty has a time which may be called its right time; and by observing this we shall avoid, on the one hand, being pressed by an accumulation of duties in arrear, and on the other being dissipated by having gaps of time not filled up An unoccupied man can neithei be a happy man nor a spiritual man

Another symptom of dissipation consists in overtalking and prolonging immoderately visits of civility. By this is not meant that there is any point at which a person is bound to stop, or where anything positively wrong begins; but that there is such a thing as moderation in those matters, which is guided in each case by circumstances. Again, indulging in idle and indolent postures of body when we are alone, tends to dissipate the mind, and weakens the hold which the presence of God ought to have upon us. We must also be upon our guard against a habit, which is far from uncommon, of being always about to begin some occupation, and yet not beginning it. This wears and wastes our moral strength, and causes us to fritter our lives away in sections, being idle to-day because we have something in view to-morrow, which cannot be begun until to-morrow. The same dissipating result will be produced, if we burden ourselves with too many vocal prayers and external observances of devotion. We shall always be in a hurry, and under a sense of pressure, which will soon lead to disgust and low spirits.

A want of jealousy of ourselves at times and places of recreation is another source of dissipation. Recreation is itself a dangerous thing; because in one sense it ought to distract and dissipate us, if it is to do us any good; and of such consequence is this distraction, that recreation well managed is one of the greatest powers of the spiritual life, a fountain of excellent cheerfulness, and a powerful enemy of sins of thought. But I must speak of this hereafter. All that need be said here is that a want of jealousy over ourselves at recreation is a cause of dissipation. The same may be said of building castles in the air; and of that lax spirit which is always desiring dispensations from little obligations and self-imposed rules. I say self-imposed

<J28 SPIRITUAL IDLENESS.

rules; for why impose them if they are not to be kept, and how can they be kept unless we be more jealous of seeking a dispensation when we ourselves are the dispensing power than when it must be sought from some one else?

The consequences of this dissipation are unfortunately oo well known to all of us to require any long description. First comes self-dissatisfaction which is the cankerworm of all devotion. Then captiousness and self-defence, after which we feel that the power to pray is gone from us, as our strength goes from us in an illness. These are followed by positive illtemper, in an hour of which we lose weeks of struggle and progress. With this is coupled a morbid inclination to judge and criticise others. Or if we have grace to keep down these more gross evils, our dissipation shows its power in multiplying our distractions at prayer, in making us peevish after communion, or reserved with our director, or in drawing us into an effeminate way of performing our duiies, and giving us a great distaste for penance.

The second development of spiritual idleness is sadness and low-spirits. It is no uncommon thing for spiritual persons to speak of sadness as if it were some dignified interior trial, or as if it were something to call out puie sympathy, kindness, and commiseration. Whereas in by far the greater number of instances it is true to say that no state of the spiritual life represents so much venial sin and unworthy imperfection as this very sadness. It is not humility, for it makes us querulous rather than patient. tt is not repentance, for it is rather vexation with self than jorrow for the offence against God. The soul of sadness is self-love. We are sad because we are weary of well doing and of strict living. The great secret of our cheerfulness was our anxiety and diligence to avoid venial sins, and our ingenious industry to root them out. We have now become negligent on that very point, and therefore we are sad. If indeed we still try, as much as we did before, to avoid actual venial sins, we have lost the courage to keep ourselves away from many pleasant times and places which we know to be to us occasions of venial sin. We content ourselves with an indistinct self-confidence that we shall not fall; and at once the light of God's Countenance becomes indistinct also, and the fountain of inward joy ceases to flow. We desire to be praised, and are unhappy if no notice is taken of what we do. We seek publicity as something which will console, rest, and satisfy us. We want those we love to know what we are feeling and suffering, or what we are doing and planning. The world is our sunbeam and we come out to bask in it What wonder we are sad?

How many are there whose real end in the spiritual life is self-improvement rather than God, and how little they suspect it! Now perhaps it is true to say that we never attain in the way of self-improvement a point which seems to us quite easy of attainment. We are always below the mark we aimed at. Here again is another source of sadness. But whatever way we look at this miserable disposition we shall find that the secret fountain of all its phases is the want of mortification, and more especially of external mortification. In a word, who ever found any spiritual sadness in men trying to be good, which did not come either from a want of humility, or from habitually acting without distinct reference to God?

But the consequences of sadness are of the most fearful description. Nothing gives the devil so much power 20 over us. Mortal sin itself very often gives him less purchase over our souls. It blunts the sacraments, and destroys their influence upon us. It turns all sweet things bitter, and makes even the remedies of the spiritual life act as if they were poisons. Under its morbid action we become so tender that we are unable to bear pain, and tremble at the very idea of bodily mortification. The courage which is so necessary for growth in holiness oozes out of us, and we become timid and passive where we ought to be bold and venturesome. The vision of God is clouded in our soul, and every day the fit of sadness lasts it is carrying us further and further out of our depth, and beyond the reach of rational consolation. It seems a strong thing to say, but it is in reality no exaggeration, that spiritual sadness is a tendency towards the state of Cain and Judas. The impenitence of both took root in a sadness, which came out of a want of humility, and that want was itself the fruit of acting with a view to self rather than a view to God.

Above all things we must be careful not to let sadness force us away from our regular communions, or from any of the strictnesses we may practise. We must be all the more faithful to them because we are sad; and we must beware of adopting any change while the cloud is on us. Exactness in little duties is a wonderful source of cheerfulness; and set mortifications, few and not severe, but quietly persevered in, will cast out the evil spirit. We must look out for opportunities of giving way to others; for that brings with it softness of heart and a spirit of prayer. We must make the use of our time a subject?f particular examination of conscience, and always have on hand some standing book or occupation with which to fill up gaps of vacant time. We must never omit our devotions to our Blessed Lady, whom the Church so sweetly calls "the cause of our joy;" and we must consider that day lost on which we have not thus done homage to her. Finally, we must regard, not the act only which we do, but the time which obedience has fixed for doing it, whether it be the obedience of self, rule, family, or director; for the marvellous virtue of obedience resides often more in the time and manner of an act, than in the act itself, just as the spiritual life itself consists not so much in an assemblage of certain actions, as in the way in which we do all our actions.

To these two idlenesses, dissipation and sadness, we must add a third; it is a kind of sloth, or general languor, which it is very hard to describe; but the main features of which every one will recognize. Some time has passed since we had a clear view of ourselves. We have got out of sight of ourselves, and are journeying on like men driving in the dark. Then something occurs which wakes us up to a consciousness of our position. We find that we are continually making resolutions, and as continually breaking them. They form, as usual, part of our morning prayer, and in an hour or two they have passed from our minds as though we had never made them. Even if we reflect upon them, and make some little effort to put them into execution, we find that they are utterly nerveless, and without power or animation. We do not exactly turn a deaf ear to the inspirations which we are receiving at ail hours, but we are dilatory in carrying them out, and so the time for them passes by, and another duty comes in the way, and it is too late

So that on the whole we hardly correspond to any of oui inspirations

All this is bad enough. But there is added to it a physical feeling of incapacity to make any exertion. It seems to us as if any effort was out of the question; and what is in truth merely a moral malady puts on all the semblance and feeling of a bodily indisposition, and soon causes one. We then begin to make light of serious twinges of conscience, and we are peevish and impatient of any warning or admonition, or of any attempt to bring spiritual matters before us. Everything that every body does seems inopportune, and out of good taste. Without rhyme or reason we have an almost universal nausea of men and things, and we give in to " the spirit of causeless irritation" which characterizes the paralytic, as Sir Walter Scott tells us of Chrystal Croftangry. It is as if life were worn out and we had got to the end of things, as if we had worked our way through the upper coats of existence down to what Bossuet calls " the inexorable ennui which forms the basis of human life." In this state we are not only distracted at prayer, but slovenly also) and even the sacraments we treat with a kind of lazy irreverence and formal familiarity, which it is frightening to think of. In fact our state is a kind of passive possession of the spirit of disgust and sloth; it is as if we had lost the power of being serious, and were numb, or in a trance, so far as spiritual things are concerned. It is this state to which dissipation is always tending; and if we are so unfortunate as not to have checked it in its earlier stages, but find ourselves actually under this oppression, we must rouse ourselves and act with as much vigour as if we had fallen into mortal sin

A fourth kind of spiritual idleness may be called useless industry, which is a great temptation to active-minded men; for, as I said before, idleness is natural and pleasant to all temperaments, but has different phases for different characters. There is nothing in recreation which hinders our uniting ourselves to God j but there are a variety of unmeritorious occupations in which we can fritter away our time, and in which it is almost impossible for us to have any deliberate or distinct intention to glorify God. It is difficult to specify, but every one knows that recreating and idling are very different things, and that idling much more often consists in doing useless or childish things, than in doing nothing at all. There are many kinds of reading, which are not wrong in themselves, but which for some reasons in our own particular case will dissipate us, or prepare distractions for our meditation, or will feed future temptations, and supply them with images ready at hand, or will be dangerous to us because they will inordinately engross us; and in which, in spite of our intellectual conviction that they are not wrong, we have an interior reproach, which, if we were in a right state of mind, would act as a prohibition. So in these days of cheap and rapid postage we ought to be more jealous of our correspondence than we are. Is it too much to say that every letter we write is more or less a drain upon our spirituality? And if this be so, ought we not to make a rule to ourselves against unnecessary letter-writing, against the writing of any letter which either business or social propriety or affection does not render practically unavoidable? Time is precious, a^d we have little of it, and how much if? spent in writing letters, and how many pretend that all their letter- writing 20* is safe because it is, they say, a veritable mortification I Attachments are multiplied and strengthened by correspondence, while it increases our objects.of anxiety, magnifies our reasons for being nervous and restless, and catera for that idolatry of family ties which nowadays wage;? Buch a vigorous warfare against the manliness of Christian sanctity.

Letter-writiog tends also to increase the natural exaggeration of our character. We express ourselves in an exaggerated manner, and our style at last transfers its exaggeration to our feelings. We thus form a false estimate of things; and are greatly troubled about small events, or highly excited about low expectations. What is the family circle generally, but ineffable trifles seen through a hugely magnifying medium? It reminds us at every turn of Wordsworth's real sufferer in the workhouse, when she says,

I heard my neighbours in their beds complain Of many things which never troubled me!

Unreality is another obvious effect of excessive correspondence; for to make much of little things is to be unreal. Sacraments and prayer cease to have their natural and legitimate proportions, when we are so eager, and decisive, and communicative about children, residences, visits, summer plans and winter projects. We make a romance of ourselves in our letters, and paint life with an artificial rouge because its native complexion is for the most part unhealthy and dull. If our letters turn on religious subjects, so much the worse; for then they are full of detraction, levity, and spiritual gossip.

Building castles in the air is another branch of this use less industry, and by far the least innocent Did any one ever catch himself building a castle in the air, which did not in some way redound to his own honour and praise? Can religious men spend an hour in giving magnificent mental alms, or bearing crosses heroically, or undergoing martyrdom, or evangelizing continents, or ruling churches, r founding hospitals, or entering austere orders, or arranging edifying death-beds, or working miracles at their own tombs, without their being essentially lower and grosser, vainer and sillier men, than they were when the hour began? They acquire a habit of admiring fine things without practising them. It is worse than novel-reading, for here men write as well as read them. They become intoxicated with conceit and sentimentality. It gives a tincture of puerility to all they do, and lowers them in thought, feeling and purpose. Do not be startled at the strong words, but this castle-building literally desolates and debauches the soul. It passes over it like a ruinous eruption, leaving nothing fresh, green, or fruit-bearing behind it, but a* general languor, peevishness and weariness with God.

The not managing our recreations well is of sufficient importance to form a fifth kind of spiritual idleness. I have already said that recreation is a matter of immense importance in the spiritual life. The whole tradition of the Church is in favour of it; and I doubt if ever there was a religious house which persevered in strict observance for any length of time, without the recreations which are traditional in each order. For an order without traditions is an order without life, at least without the full life of maturity. It is either dead, or still an infant. It sounds Btrange to a man in the world that recreation should te compulsory in religious houses; yet that it is so, is part of the universal heavenly wisdom common to all monastio legislators. But in the world recreation is an affair of much greater difficulty, because so few rules can be given about it. All we can say is, that one very important question concerns the kind of recreation in which we shall indulge. It must be suited to our state of life, and no less so to the particular point of advancement which we have reached in the spiritual life. It must be conformed to our natural character, and it must not throw us with companions who will do our souls an injury. The degree of it is another problem. God's glory must be kept in view, and we must never emancipate ourselves from a moderate fear of dissipation: and above all things it must be seasonable. For an inopportune recreation is always a loss of grace.

It is difficult to exaggerate the results of well-managed recreations. The spirit cannot always be on the stretch. The bow must be unstrung sometimes, or it will spoil. Now a well-managed recreation does three things; it preserves all the grace already acquired without suffering one fraction of it to be lost, or one degree of fervour to evaporate. The love of God runs on from the work into the recreation, and thus the habit of recollection remains unbroken, and we are keeping to the side of our heavenly Father in our amusements as closely as in our work or in our trials. Secondly, it not only keeps together the past, and preserves its spirit, but it gains us strength and freshness, bravery and promptitude, for the future. Old grace is consolidated, and the appetite for new is quickened. Children are said to grow more while they are sleeping than while they are awake. So it is with us in recreation. This is itn third function. We grow on it. It is no standing still. It is not only a blessing for the past, and a blessing for the future; it is a present blessing, because it is present growth. It increases our cheerfulness; and whatever makes us cheerful in devotion give? us more power. It would be a great thing if recreation merely kept us from sin, by filling up and occupying vacant hours when the infirmity of human nature compels us to intermit our direct attention to religious things. We should owe to it our preservation from a thousand sins of thought, and dissipating inutilities both of mind and heart. But this is far below its real work. Its function is not less important in the spiritual life than is that of sleep in the natural life; and like sleep it has need of a wise, considerate, and firm legislation.

1 shall conclude the subject of recreation with the advice of Scaramelli. If our spirit ask of us imperfect things, such as diversions, conversation and superfluous alleviations, which are not called for either by our health or the discharge of our relative duties, the laws of perfection require us to mortify ourselves. I know that these recreations are the very food of those who are weak in spirit; as the apostle ways, He that is weak, let him eat herbs: for being deprived of the consolations which grace brings to pure souls, they feed their hunger and weariness with these earthly consolations. Richard of St. Victor says that a man finds food in his own nature, the food of sweetness, and food in accidental causes, such as prosperity and success. But this is not the spiritual food wherewith Christ refreshed Himself. Nevertheless it is the food of the imperfect, the pothorbs of the weak:

and is often useful food: for it partly heals and socthes the disease of sloth, which the mind suffers because of the penury of grace. But persons who are seriously bent on the attainment of perfection must deprive themselves of these useless recreations, so as to dispose themselves to receive from God a greater abundance of grace and heavenly benedictions. If our spirit asks of us anything concerning food, sleep, clothing and diversion, which is necessary to the maintenance of life or the preservation of health or the right performance of our duties, or anything which obedience, fittingness, and right reason also require, we must condescend to its requests and indulge ourselves in the necessary recreations. But in these cases a spiritual man must, be careful to purify his intention, and to protest to himself that he only condescends to these things in order to do God's holy will, not to satisfy his own natural inclination, to please Him, not to please himself. So that his condescension may be rather to the instincts of nature than to its affections; and even in his condescension he may contrive to contradict his own satisfaction, and seek only the will and pleasure of God. In this manner the human spirit may have its appetite satisfied, without its satisfaction being any impediment to spiritual progress. I am aware that these things are difficult to put in practice, but St. Bernard says that we have but to lean confidently on God, and all will be accomplished, according to that word, T can do all things in Him who strengthened me.*

A gejeral indifference about the use of our time is a sixth manifestation of spiritual idleness. The use of time U » large subject; and it is one of far greater con-

» Discernimento degli spirit, sect. 272, 273.

SPIRITUAL IDLENESS. • ^db sequence t.Imn many suppose, in those who are aiming at perfection. Bcliecius in his work on Solid Virtue give? a whole book to ttte one act of early rising, which is but a single instance 0/ our use of time. We have to remember that time is ihe stuff out of which eternity i? made, that it is at once precious and irrevocable, and that we shall have to give tne strictest account of it at the last. Very few faults are irreparable, but the loss of time is one of those few; and when we consider how easy a fault it is, how frequent, how silent, how alluring, we shall discern something of its real danger. Idleness moreover, when it has fastened upon us, is a perfect tyranny, a slavery whose shackles are felt whatever limb we move, or even when we are lying still. It is a captivating bondage also, whose very sweetness renders it more perilous. But the worst feature about it is its deceitfulneijs. No idle man believes himself to be idle, except in the lucid intervals of grace. No one will credit how strong the habit of losing time will rapidly become. To break away from it requires a vehemence and a continuity of effort to which few are equal. Meanwhile the iebateable land which lies between it and lukewarmness is swiftly traversed. The hourly accumulation of minute carelessnesses is clogging and hampering the soul, while it is also running us fearfully into ^ebt to the temporal justice of God. It makes our life ttv very opposite of His. His minute notice of us stands in dreadful contrast with our half-intentional and half-unintentionai oblivion and disregard of Him. I doubt if a jealous and conscientious use of time can ever, as many spiritual excellencies can, become a habit. I suspect time is a thing which has to be watched all through life. It is a running stream every ripple of which is freighted witl some tell-tale evidence which it hastens to depose with unerring fidelity in that sea which circles the throne of God. It makes us tremble to think of St. Alphonso just after he had made his solemn vow never to waste a moment of time. We feel that a man who with his humility and discretion dared to commit himself to such a life, could only end by being raised upon the altars of the Church.

The seventh and last developement of spiritual idleness is loquacity. Thomas a Kempis says that he never returned to his cell after a conversation, without entering it a worse man than he had left it) and another holy person said that he never in his life had repented of holding his tongue, whereas he had rarely ever spoken without being sorry for it afterwards. What an insight this gives us into the very core of a saint's life! In spirituality when the tired soul seeks some undue vent or recreation, there is no relief, except castlebuilding, more dangerous than loquacity; and it is one of the commonest of temptations. Some are tempted to be loquacious with everybody who will be a listener; others only with certain people, who are sympathetic, and with whom to exchange sentiments is to rest their minds. Others are only tempted to talk at wrong times and on wrong subjects; and this is sometimes from the devil, and sometimes from the human spirit. As a general maxim it may be laid down that in a spiritual person all effusion of heart is undesirable, except to God, and that it is equally undesirable whether it be about God or about some indifferent subject. There is nothing to choose between them. The evil is in the effusion. We fancy it relieves us in temptation. But there never was a greater mistake. With the exception of certain temptations, solitude braces us up, where effusion weakens and enervates us. Pious people, before they begin to be saint-like, are notably loquacious; and it is often loquacity which retards the hour when the likeness of the saints will pass upon them, or frustrates the process altogether.

It is plain that every one of these seven idlenesses might be made the subject of a little treatise; but I have said enough for my purpose. Perfection in the world is a difficult affair, and many things are fatal to it. Idleness perhaps slaughters more growths in holiness than anything else; because it is so very hard for persons in the world not to be idle. Everything around us is pusillanimous and exaggerated. The ideas which pass current are little and low. The air we breathe is* languor. The types we behold are pompous follies. Of spiritual romance there is enough, of spiritual foppery more than enough, but of healthy mortification and sincere manly devotion less than would seem possible, if the fact were not certain. Thus everything draws us to dleness and to inutility. It is a common observation that religious, of both sexes, are strikingly cheerful. This is owing in no slight degree to the preservation from idleness which rule and community life ensure. We have none of those helps, and therefore we have more to dread from this particular enemy. In fact the danger and the fatal character of idleness may be reckoned among the prominent characteristics of the attempt to attain perfection in the world. We have already found that for perfection in the world a peculiar exercise of patipnoe is necessary in order to supply the place of a re 21 Q ligious rule. So now we must give a more than (omraot attention to the industrious use of time and the discreet management of recreations, in order to meet dangers which religious are beautifully defended from by community life, and a community life invented by a saintly founder. Idleness must be a very prominent object in our warfare, else we shall never attain to the perfection which the saints tell us is open to people in the world.