Poverty of Spirit

339. Consider how very necessary it is for you to set your face against yourself, and walk in the way of penance if you would attain to perfection.

340. If any one tempts you with lax opinions, and should even confirm them by miracles, trust him not ; but rely rather upon penance and perfect detachment from creatures.

341. God in His law commanded the altar of sacrifice should be empty within. This is to teach us that He would have the soul emptied of all things, that it may be an altar worthy of His Majesty.

342. One desire only does God allow, and suffer in His presence within the soul — the desire of keeping the law perfectly, and carrying the cross of Christ. It is not said, in the sacred writings, that God commanded any thing to be laid up in the ark with the manna except the book of the law and the rod of Moses, a type of the cross of Christ.

343. That soul which has no other aim than the perfect observance of the law of our Lord, and the carrying of the cross of Christ, will be a true ark containing the true manna, which is God.

344. If you wish devotion to be born in your heart, the love of God to grow, together with the desire for divine things, cleanse your soul from every desire and self-seeking, so that nothing of the kind remain with you. For as a sick man, freed from the evil humours which troubled him, feels instantly returning health and a taste for his food, so shall you recover your health in God if you rid yourself of your spiritual disorders : and if this be not done, whatever you may do, you will make no progress.

345. Live in this world as if God and your soul only were in it ; that your heart may be a captive to no earthly thing.

346. Do not weary yourself to no purpose, nor seek spiritual joy and sweetness, unless it be by denying yourself in that which you aim at.

347. If you would attain to holy recollection, it must be by rejecting, and not by admitting.

348. Be interiorly detached- from all things, and do not set your affection upon any temporal thing, and your soul will gather in a harvest of blessings beyond its comprehension.

349. The goods of God, which are beyond all measure, can be contained only in an empty and solitary heart.

350. So far as it lies in your power, refuse nothing asked of you, though you may have need of it yourself.

351. He will never attain to perfection who will not labour to be satisfied with this : that all his natural and spiritual desires should be satisfied in the absence of everything which is not God. This is most necessary for abiding peace and tranquillity of spirit.

352. Let your soul be always ordered by a desire not for that which is easy, but for that which is most difficult ; not for that which is most pleasant, but for that which is most unpleasant ; not for that which is elevated and precious, but for that which is vile and despised ; not for great things, but for little things : not to seek for anything, but to seek for nothing ; not for that which is best, but for that which is worst ; desiring to enter, for the love of Jesus, upon detachment, emptiness, and poverty in everything in this world.

353- If Y°u will cleanse your soul of strange posses sions and desires, you will understand all things spiritually ; and if you will restrain yourself from setting your heart upon them, you will rejoice truly in them, and understand them certainly.

354. All people will be your servants, and all things will minister to you, if only you will forget them and yourself.

355. You will never have to do with necessities greater than those to which you made your heart yield itself : for the poor in spirit are most happy and joyous in a state of privation ; and he who has set his heart upon nothing, finds fulness everywhere.

356. The poor in spirit give generously all they have, and their pleasure consists in being thus deprived of everything for God's sake, and out of love to their neigh bour, ordering all things by the law of this virtue.

357. Poverty of spirit looks to the substance of devotion solely, and making use only of what is sufficient for it, is weary of the multiplicity and curiosity of visible means.

358. A soul withdrawn from exterior things, detached from its own will, even in divine things, will not be raised by prosperity nor subdued by adversity.

359. The poor that are naked shall be clothed ; and the soul that will strip itself of all its desires, likings, and dislikings, God will clothe with His own purity, His own joy, and His own will.

360. The love of God in a pure and simple soul, detached from every desire, is frequently in act.

361. Restrain your desires, and you will find that which your heart longs for : how can you tell that your desire is according to the will of God ?

362. If you desire to have your soul in peace and comfort, and to serve God in truth, do not rest satisfied with what you have done in the way of self-denial, for it may be that on the new road you have entered, you may find yourself as much hindered, or even more than you were ; but give up everything that you have.

363. If you fail in the practice of self-denial, which is the sum and root of virtue : every other way is but beating the air, and you will make no progress, notwithstanding most profound meditations and communi cations.

364. Not only do temporal goods, the delights and the tastes of sense, hinder and thwart the way of God, but spiritual delights and consolations also, if sought for, or clung to eagerly, disturb the way of virtue.

365. Such is the nature of our vain concupiscence that it clings to everything : like the dry-rot, which wastes away what is sound, it has its way both in what is good and what is bad.