Chapter V. Mortification and our Supernatural End

Having shown the necessity of mortification for destroying the results of original and personal sin, we now consider how mortification serves to subordinate our natural activity perfecdy to the life of grace, that we may never lose sight of the infinite sublimity of our supernatural end.

Had man been created in a purely natural state, with a body and an immortal soul but without the life of grace, he would have had to discipline his passions, submitting them to right reason and will. He would also have had to submit these higher faculties to God, the author of his nature, to whom his first love as a faithful servant would have been due. And he never would have known God except by the reflection of His perfections in the mirror of His creatures. But it pleased the Most High in His infinite goodness to call us to an incomparably higher last end, to call us to see Him directly, face to face, as He sees Himself, and to love Him as He loves Himself. It pleased Him to have us participate in His intimate life and, even in this world, to possess the beginning of eternal life in the life of grace, for grace is the seed of glory.

It follows tiiat man in his every deliberate act should live not only in a reasonable but in a supernatural way, since everything he does should be ordered at least virtually to his

3 oo THE LOVE OF GOD last supernatural end, the goal of his journey.¹ We ought to live as reasonable beings and also children of God redeemed by His only Son. We must not only submit our passions to reason but subordinate reason itself to faith, to the spirit of faith, and subject all our natural activity to the life of grace and charity, in fidelity to the Holy Ghost.

Our supernatural end, because of its infinite sublimity, demands the mortification of the first interior movements of concupiscence, pride, anger, jealousy, and envy. It requires even the mortification of natural activity which, though not plainly reprehensible, would not hesitate to push its own development to the detriment of the life of grace. What is generally meant in ascetical language by natural activity is activity insufficiently subordinated to our last supernatural end, unsanctified activity, activity stemming almost entirely from an extroverted temperament, from natural enthusiasm, poorly disciplined curiosity, and a need for diversion, influence, and recognized and enjoyed success. People of this type, while no doubt doing good, unconsciously tend to make themselves the center of things, to attract souls to themselves instead of drawing them to God. They forget the words of the Master, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His justice; and all these things shall be added unto you."²

Natural activity can be developed to a point where its detrimental effect on the life of grace is astonishing. Christians of great literary, scientific, and legal education whose faith has scarcely developed at all since their first Communion are not few and far between. And even when they have managed to keep die faith, it is so unenlightened and weak, so out of proportion to their natural activity, that it has little defense against the dangers which surround it. Giants in scholarship are often spiritual dwarfs.

People devoted to the active apostolate or to study, even to the study of philosophy, theology, exegesis, or canon law, may allow themselves to be so taken up with natural activity that the life of grace, the spirit of faith, influences them but little. Overworked, ridden with too human preoccupations, they seem to be living intensely when, in the eyes of God, they are supernaturally sick unto death.

Men with an infinitely sublime supernatural end require mortification diat no merely natural man can understand. The perfection of charity requires it. And by the great commandment every Christian is committed to perfection, not as being bound to realize it immediately but as ceaselessly tending toward it in his own state of life. 3

In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord has something to say on this subject. It would be well for us to consider His words in relation to the first inordinate movements of our natural appetency and, later, to what ascetical doctrine calls "natural activity."

Because our Lord wished to show the excellence of the new law, the law of love and grace, and its superiority over the Old Testament law of fear, He put insistent stress on the s IIa Dae, q.184, a.3.

sublimity of our supernatural end by beginning the Sermon on the Mount with the eight beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit ... the meek. . . . Blessed are they that mourn . . . they that hunger and thirst after justice ... the merciful . . . the clean of heart . . . the peacemakers. . . . Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 4 They will be comforted, satisfied, they will obtain mercy, they will see God, they will be called His children, they will have a great reward in heaven.

How can men attain an end as high as the eternal life of God Himself? They must begin to live it in this world by grace: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." 5 For such perfection real mortification is necessary and it must be exercised not only in our outer life but especially in our inner life, where it deals with the beginnings of every unregulated movement of concupiscence, anger, hatred, pride, and hyprocrisy.

The true Christian is not to keep resentment or animosity in his heart. "If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there diou remember that thy brother hath anything against thee, leave there thy offering before the altar and go first to be reconciled to thy brother; and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift." 8 "Be at agreement with thy adversary betimes." Looking on an adversary, we must see a brother and a son of God. Blessed are the meek.

The evil looks and desires of concupiscence by which a man commits adultery in his heart must be mortified. "If thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out; . . . thy right hand . . .

• Ibid., 48. 8 Ibid., 23 L³ cut it off. . . . For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body go into hell." 7 The right eye that serves as an occasion for sin may be a really evil thought that comes to us under the pretext of having some value for our apostolate; it may be a friend, an adviser, even a father, astray himself and apt to lead us into evil. Our Lord could not have expressed Himself more forcefully to show our danger: "If thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out." We can resort, if need be, to corporal austerities, to fasting, watching, the discipline, and find in them great liberty of spirit. 8

Every disordered desire for vengeance must be mortified. "You have heard that it hath been said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil." The Christian reacts to injury not by a bitter desire for revenge and, although out of duty he must resist unto death any evildoer attempting to lead him into sin, he is to endure injury with patience and without irritation or hatred. "If one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other; and if a man will contend with thee in judgment and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him." In other words, the Christian is warned to be ready to endure injustice with forbearance. The apostles, as founders of the Church, fittingly had to meet the terrible blow of persecutions that through their heroic constancy and goodness many might be converted. But patience in bearing injuries is not reserved for apostles but is recommended to all Christians. No other means serves so well to mollify and win over an angry adversary.

A Christian should be less concerned with jealously de-

3 o 4 THE LOVE OF GOD fending his rights than with gaining over to God his angry brother. His special charta is not the declaration of the rights of man but the Gospel. The greatness of Christian justice is made manifest by its union with charity. To the man who would take away our tunic we would do well to give our cloak also, rather than to take action that will set souls deeply at variance with one another. Contention should be avoided by all; litigation by the perfect, unless the circumstances place them under the obligation of protecting the higher interests of those committed to their keeping. But if they cannot yield in a matter of their duties, they can yield concerning their rights, as the saints have always shown us.

Egoism and self-will must be mortified by great charity: "Whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two. Give to him that asketh of thee; and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not away." When anyone asks some help or service, be ready, out of kindness, to give him even more than he asks. When it is a question of your earthly goods or the good of your neighbor's soul, do not cling to what is yours.

Hatred, even toward our worst enemies, must be mortified. Not only supernatural patience and forgiveness of injuries but love of enemies is required of us. "I say to you: Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you; that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven. . . . For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have ? Do not even the publicans this ? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? Do not also the heathens this?" Charity has a formal motive infinitely higher than that of natural friendship.

We love those who do good to us as naturally as we are inclined to hate those who do us evil and to remain indifferent to those indifferent to us. Natural love makes us love our neighbor for his good natural qualities and for the benefits we receive from him. The formal motive of charity is altogether different, since charity demands that we love even our worst enemies supernaturally. We must love them with the same supernatural and theological love we have for God, being reminded by faith that our enemies, if not actually children of God, are called to become so, divine grace urging them to conversion. We ought to pray for them to be converted, to be saved. We ought to wish them, like ourselves, to reach the goal of their journey, the life of heaven, through the blessing and help of our common Father, whom all of us are to glorify eternally. To love our neighbor in this supernatural manner when we are suffering at his hands, we must look at him with the eyes of faith, seeing him as a son of God, and, for love of God, wishing him the true and imperishable goods of die supernatural life. All this evidently requires mortification of every inclination to antipathy, aversion, and rancor. When the fire of charity has destroyed these dispositions in us, then will that great virtue really take first place in our souls and animate our every action.

Finally and forcefully, our Lord makes a special demand of those consecrated to God to mortify every least inclination to hypocrisy and spiritual pride, for if our justice does not surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees, we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. "Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them; otherwise you shall not have reward of your Father who is in heaven. Therefore when thou dost an almsdeed, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets." 9 "When ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites that love to stand and pray in the synagogues and corners of die streets, that they may be seen by men. . . . And when thou fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen, I say to you, diey have received their reward." 10

Christ points out to us the true spirit of mortification — death to sin and its results through love of God. "But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head and wash thy face, that thou appear not to men to fast, but to thy Father who is in secret. And thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee." 11 Anoint your face, with the oil of charity, mercy, and spiritual joy. Wash your face; that is, purify your soul entirely of the spirit of ostentation and of every inordinate affection. When you do acts of piety, you are not forbidden to be seen, but to wish to be seen, for then you would lose that purity of intention which goes directly to God our Father, present in the secret sanctuary of your soul.

Pride can be mortified in another way. "Judge not, that you may not be judged. For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. . . . And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye; and seest dost the beam that is in thy own eye?" Rash judgment, generally born of pride, reads malice into every peccadillo and fails in charity and also in justice. God alone can judge the secrets of men's hearts. When we attempt it we arrogate to ourselves a jurisdiction we do not have. Pride bribes our judgment, and we are incapable of

giving a just verdict about the man we view not as a brother but as a rival to be put down.

Of those charged with instructing others in the things of salvation, our Lord requires a very special mortification of intellectual pride. In speaking of the Pharisees, He says that they "love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the synagogues, and salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi. But be not you called Rabbi. For one is your Master, and all you are brethren. . . . He that is the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled ; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." 12

St. Paul speaks in the same way. "Knowledge pufTeth up; but charity edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he hath not yet known as he ought to know. But if any man love God, the same is known by Him." 18 In commenting on this text, St. Thomas says that knowledge without charity profits nothing for salvation and leads to pride. Charity must accompany knowledge, and truth must be sought not through curiosity and vainglory but out of love for God and souls. Only then will knowledge become profitable for salvation. St. Bernard says that some people desire to know merely to know, and they are curious; others, to be known, and they are vain; others, to sell their knowledge, and they are calculating; others, to be edified, and they are prudent; still odiers, to edify their neighbor, and they are charitable.

For us to avoid curiosity on the one hand and intellectual sloth on the other, mortification and a special virtue are needed. To study for love of God and souls, a supernatural i= ibid., 23:6-12.

end, we need the virtue of studiousness. Charity animates our study so that we will never sacrifice the principal to the accessory or the Creator to the creature in intellectual work; nor, as it too often happens, pursue a detailed, critical study of the letter of the Gospel without ever penetrating beyond the words to the very spirit of the word of God. 14

St. Thomas insists on this point when explaining the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount: "Everyone therefore that heareth these My words and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock. . . . And everyone that heareth these My words and doth them not shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon die sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew: and they beat upon that house. And it fell; and great was the fall thereof." 13 About this the Angelic Doctor says 16 that every man must examine the foundations of his own building, the basis on which his intention rests; some listen to the words of the Gospel only to know, to edify merely the intellect, and so build on sand ; others listen to put what they hear into practice, to love God and neighbor, and they build on the rock of charity. "Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ?" 17

The Sermon on the Mount places before us the greatness of Christian morality and keeps us from losing sight of the necessity for generous mortification to reach our supernatural end. The spirit of mortification in the new law is the spirit of the love of God and of souls in God.

Authors of ascetical and mystical writings use the term "natural activity" to mean whatever the soul does outside of and prejudicial to the influence of grace, unsanctified activity, apt, when developed, to lead men from divine union toward practical naturalism. Commonly, people are all too unaware that they should mortify their "natural activity." Yet, to realize that such mortification is necessary, we have only to recall St. Thomas' principle that no individual deliberate act is indifferent but either morally good or morally bad.

Objectively, some acts are indifferent — taking a walk, for instance. Yet every act we do deliberately, we do for either a good or a bad end, and not to act deliberately but mechanically is hardly an ideal for man. All our deliberate acts should be at least virtually ordered to God and have such reasonable and truly good ends that they lead us finally to Him who has first claim on our love.

"No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will sustain the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." 18 No one can seek two different last ends, two supreme goods. 19 "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." 20 In the Saint Gotthard range of the Alps there is said to be a watershed where every drop turns either nordi toward the Rhine and the North Sea or

south to the Rhone or the Ticino and the Mediterranean. So in our lives every deliberate act goes in die direction of good or of evil; for in the concrete reality of life neutrality in moral matters simply does not exist. We need, then, to consider the proximate and ultimate consequences of our action and our apparently good or at least inoffensive natural activity. If it is born outside the influence of grace, it will most likely grow up to do grace harm. Too often we keep the divine life in us as a kind of superstratum without bearing or influence on many of our actions which lack even virtually the spirit of faith and love.

Of the three degrees of "natural activity" the first and grossest consists in that natural ardor which makes some people undertake everything they do through impetuosity, acting with little or no reflection and with hot and hasty vigor. The boiling over of an impetuous disposition into activity in no way proceeds from grace and quickly becomes contrary to it, being trailed by disorder and followed up by trouble, incoherence, and blindness. The principle behind impulsive activity is self-love. The desire for immediate self-satisfaction makes a man act hastily and imprudently. His agitation is the very opposite of peace, of that tranquillity of order wherein a man keeps himself in the presence of God. Because so much unconscious egoism, whether individual or that collecdve type we might call "nosism," enters into impulsive actions, we do well to stop or postpone beginning whatever work seems to carry us away. Group or party spirit may come to substitute for the spirit of God when we desire something good to be done but wish to do it ourselves and in our own way either personally or through our society, religious family, or community. The resultant and saddening divisions among work- ers in the Lord's vineyard certainly dispose no one for divine contemplation.

Sometimes natural ardor manifests itself in loud, expressive enthusiasm, so tiresome to thoughtful and recollected people who recognize it as a rhinestone imitation of the diamond of spiritual joy and as different from it as chauvinism is from patriotism or the silly, affected cult of knowledge is from love of truth. But the man of impulse is himself fooled, believing himself, when only an unformed or mediocre scholar, to be quite an authority, or, if a very ordinary administrator, an exceptional man of affairs. If a man like this is simply an inoffensive megalomaniac, he may be nothing worse than ridiculous; but if he is ambitious and reaches a high office, he can be dangerous because of the harm he can do.

The second, less gross and less dangerous, degree of natural activity may be called natural eagerness. Natural eagerness marks a man when, although he has a much more delicate conscience than the ambitious enthusiast, he does not enter enough into the privacy of his heart to listen to the Holy Ghost. Self-will slips into his activity and blocks the workings of grace. Fascination for some proximate end like study or the apostolate makes him lose sight of its relationship to the ultimate end, the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Then, not keeping his ultimate end sufficiently in mind, he no longer turns to God enough for help to do what he should, he no longer prays enough. He has forgotten the great principle St. Thomas recalled so often: the order of agents corresponds to the order of ends. No one can tend toward the last end without the concurrence of the supreme agent, the author of our salvadon, God. When we see only the proximate and human end to be attained, we rarely have recourse to anything

3 i2 THE LOVE OF GOD but human effort and let our natural eagerness take control. Then if our success does not measure up to our expectations, we become sad and upset. This would not happen if, instead of acting precipitately, without counsel or precept, we awaited the movement of grace, the motive force of God's will. Many souls aspiring to perfection have this fault and fail to realize what an obstacle it is to the operation of the Holy Ghost. To overcome it we must always consult God in prayer about any important affair, asking earnestly for His light. Only thus can we become really interior souls, guided in all things by the inspiration of die Holy Ghost.

As our Lord led His apostles to sanctity, He corrected this fault little by little. Before the Passion, Peter said to Him: "Although all shall be scandalized in Thee, yet not V And Jesus answered : "Amen I say to thee, today, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny Me thrice." 21 When James and John wished for fire from heaven to fall on a village that had remained deaf to God's words, He replied : "You know not of what spirit you are." 22 And St. Paul reminds us that natural activity can puff a scholar up with pride and make a preacher but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. 23

The third degree of natural activity, though without passion and excessive eagerness, is a natural movement of more subtlety and therefore more difficult to know than the two others. People of well controlled passions and pure intention who consult God in prayer about anything of importance may still not wait sufficiently for the action of grace before carry-

ing out some work. They seem to forget that the Holy Ghost knows the day and hour for doing.

From time to time some trace of unconscious self-love makes them judge things, not in the spirit of faith, but in a wholly natural way, so that they act in an entirely human fashion without waiting for the time willed by God. Not being contemplative enough, they forget the lesson of Psalm 39, Expectans expectavi Dominum, et intendit mihi. This does them more harm dian they think, forming a cloud between them and God, momentarily dimming the divine light in their souls. The soul already possessed of union is for that instant somehow disfigured, commonplace, even vulgar. Overanxious to get things started, it has lost the particular assistance of the Holy Ghost and marred God's work within itself. And that "sense" it once had for the things of God may be lost to it for a while.

When Christ foretold His terrible passion to His disciples, Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him by saying: "Lord, be it far from Thee, this shall not be unto Thee." But Jesus turned on him and said, "Go behind Me, Satan; thou art a scandal unto Me, because thou savorest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men." 24 Peter had spoken too naturally, forgetting that no one can reprove the Son of God. Of course he spoke out of his love for Christ, but it was a natural reaction, not conformed to the Spirit of God; were it not for Christ's response, the devil could easily have used it to deceive Peter and prevent him from understanding the great mystery of the redemption.

The infinite sublimity of our supernatural end requires

3 i 4 THE LOVE OF GOD mortification to prevent the first disordered movements of natural activity from developing and from harming the divine life, to keep us from dissipating ourselves in externals, and to save us from forgetting the indwelling Master of our sanctification. Practiced generously, mortification will make us appreciate more and more that die contemplation of the mysteries of salvation through habitual recollection belongs to the normal way of sanctity.

We can understand why our Lord told us: "How narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to life! And few there are that find it." 25 The way of the flesh, of pride, is very wide at the start but narrows down more and more as it leads on towards hell. On the contrary, the way of the spirit begins as the narrow path of humility and abnegation but widens afterward until it becomes as immense as God Himself, to whom it leads. At its end, the full heart cries: "O how great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee!" 26

St. Paul, too, tells us: "This therefore I say, brethren: The time is short. It remaineth that they also who have wives be as if they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and diey that use this world, as if they used it not. For the fashion of this world passeth away." 27 Therefore, to oppose the three concupiscences, the three counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience have been given to us that our lives may be "hid with Christ in God." If we follow the narrow way that grows ever wider and wider, we shall find realized within us what nature could never hope for, the fulfillment of the promise:

OUR SUPERNATURAL END 3*5 "When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with Him in glory." 28 "For whom He foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren." 29

Tired and bruised, men will push on through the risks and hardships of mountain climbing to stand on Mt. Blanc and view its great glaciers. The vision of the divine Essence for all eternity is surely worth more mortification. "For that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. . . . Now He that maketh us for this very thing is God, who hath given us the pledge of the Spirit." 30 For us not born of flesh, nor of blood, but of God, for us who are of God— Noblesse oblige.

For a practical, simple, yet sublime summary of all that has been said about mortification and its relationship to the love of God and the spirit of wisdom, we now turn to Blessed Grignon de Montfort's V Amour de la divine Sagesse. 31

Not in those who live at their ease, who concede to their passions and senses all they desire, is Wisdom found; for the wisdom of the flesh is the enemy of God and those who walk according to the flesh cannot please God. 32 "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, because he is flesh." 33 All who belong to Christ, Wisdom eternal, have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences and carry actually and always in their bodies the death of Christ. . . .

Never imagine that Wisdom, purer than the rays of the sun, enters into a soul and body stained by sense pleasures. ... To communicate itself, Wisdom demands not partial and temporary mortification, but universal and continual mortification that is both courageous and discreet. If you would have Wisdom:

1. You must really give up the goods of this world ... or at least detach your heart from them and possess them as though not possessing them. . . .

2. You must not conform to the outer manner of worldlings, a practice more necessary than people are apt to think.

3. You must neither accept nor follow the false maxims of the world. . . . Ordinarily worldlings will not teach sin expressly; they simply treat it as though it were eidier honest virtue or a matter of indifference and little consequence. This adroitness the world has learned from the devil to cover up the false and ugly face of sin, and it is this very sagacity that constitutes the malice St. John speaks of in his first epistle: ". . . and the whole world is in the power of the evil one" (I John 5: 19). Now more than ever, the whole world is thoroughly penetrated with malice.

4. You must, in so far as you can, keep away from evil and dangerous companions and even devout people who stand in your way and waste your time . . . that your life may be hidden with Christ Jesus in God (Col. 3:3). Keep silence among men that you may converse with Wisdom, for a silent man is a wise man (Ecclus. 20:5).

5. To have Wisdom, you must mortify the body, not only by suffering patiently whatever sicknesses and inconveniences come to you but also by punishing yourself with fasting, watching, and the other austerities penitent saints have practiced. . . . The world rejects as useless all mortifications of the body and will do or say anything to turn saints away from practicing austerities since it knows that all of them have brought their bodies into subjection by some use of fasting and the discipline. . . .

6. Although voluntary exterior mortification is good, you must join to it, by holy obedience, mortification of the judgment and will. Obedience routs self-love, the despoiler of all things; then every smallest act becomes meritorious . . . and a man arrives surely and as though while asleep at the door of salvation. All this is reaffirmed by the great counsel : Leave all and you shall find all — in Jesus Christ, Wisdom incarnate.

Footnotes

1. Cf. Summa, la Ilae, q. 18, a. 9. In the concrete no deliberate act is indifferent, that is, neither morally good nor morally bad. Some acts, like walking, are indifferent with regard to their object, but they are either good or bad because of their end, for whatever a man docs must be done for some good end, itself subordinate to the last supernatural end, which is to be loved above all others. ↩

2. Matt. 6: 33. ↩

3. 02 THE LOVE OF GOD ↩