Chapter II. On imitating our Lord in separation from all creatures

Since creatures serve only to increase our misery, and all our happiness is in God, our sole endeavour ought to be to detach ourselves from creatures, and to be united to God. This it is to which the example of our Lord so powerfully excites us.

1. Jesus Christ, in His mortal life, received on the part of creatures only pain and sorrow. Mankind, whom He had come to save, calumniated and persecuted Him. His disciples betrayed or deserted Him. Even His relations according to the flesh were opposed to Him. There were but His holy Mother, St. Joseph, St. John Baptist, and a very few others, who did not cause Him grief.

What hope of finding in creatures what the Son of God found not ? Would we have them treat us better than they treated Him ? Have we any right over them He had not, that we should expect them to afford us nothing but satisfaction? We ought to make up our minds to accept that which was the lot and the choice of our Lord ; that is to say, detach ourselves from creatures by a general abnegation, expecting from them nothing but suffering unmingled with pleasure.

2. As the sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ, during His mortal life, received only evil on the part of creatures, so was it replenished with all blessedness on the part of God, by reason of its union with the Person of the Word, and the beatific vision which His soul enjoyed in the same manner as it now enjoys it. Hence we learn that it is from God alone, and not from any creature, that our happiness comes ; that it is only our union and familiar converse with God that can render us happy in this world ; and that if we attach ourselves to Him by recollection, prayer, and the other exercises of the spiritual life, He will pour down upon us in profusion His heavenly benedictions, which are a paradise on earth.

3. From these two considerations we must conclude that it is a lamentable misfortime if, after having left the world to unite ourselves to Gk)d, after having renoimced the riches, the honours, and the pleasures of earth, yea, and ourselves also, by vows of religion, with the view of being wholly Gk)d's, and God being wholly ours, — ^we should nevertheless remain attached in affection to the things we have left, and should not attain the end we aimed at in embracing religious perfection, viz. union with God, wherein that very perfection, and consequently our happiness, consist.