Chapter VII. On imitating our Lord in His interior life

One of the first characteristics in our model which we ought to copy in ourselves is His hidden life, His life of retirement and recollection, and, above all. His interior life.

It consisted in the application of His heart to God, His aims. His knowledge. His love. His zeal, and His desires, which were infinite in their scope ; so that we may say that all He did and suffered externally is no* thing in comparison with what took place in His interior.

In order to stimulate ourselves to imitate Him in this regard, we ought to lay it down as certain that all our perfection depends on the interior life. We acquire perfection by the communication which God makes to us of His graces, and by our faithful co-operation with these graces. Now this communication is made especially to souls which enjoy an intimate familiarity with God, and consequently it is by means of the interior life that we make greater progress in perfection.

First, because therein we exercise the sublimest virtues and the most excellent gifts of the Holy Spirit-faith, hope, charity, which are the theological virtues ; religion and penance, which are the noblest of the moral virtues ; wisdom, understanding, and science, which are the most perfect gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Secondly, because therein not only do we converse a with God, but God works with us and makes Himself known unto us ; so that having a more perfect knowledge of His perfections and virtues, and being, as it were, wholly imbued therewith, we proceed to practise them with regard to our neighbour. One day Gk)d revealed to St. Catherine of Sienna, while engaged in prayer, some effects of His divine mercy towards a sinful soul, which left the Saint in a rapture of joy, and with a marvellous increase of zeal for the salvation of souls.

Thirdly, because He sometimes bestows upon us in one single prayer, by the effusion of His Spirit, more graces and succours than we should acquire during several years in exterior actions even of zeal and charity. Nothing furthers more our spiritual advancement than the time and application we devote to the exercises of the interior life. It is as if a gentleman in the royal favour, instead of labouring to improve his estate, should reside at court with the king : be would push his fortune far more in a single month by the liberality of the prince, than he would have done in twenty years by remaining in the country.

The Saints attained perfection by the way of the interior life, conversing familiarly with God. St. Ignatius in his Constitutions would have us regard this familiar converse with God as the chief instrument of our own salvation and that of our neighbour, for which our vocation obliges us to labour.