The Practices of Christian Perfection

13. All Christian perfection, in fact, consists in this: first, in willing to become a saint — "If anyone wishes to come after me"; second, in self-denial — "let him deny himself"; third, in suffering — "let him take up his cross"; fourth, in action — "and let him follow me!"

A. "If Anyone Wishes to Come After Me"

14. "Si quis" — if anyone; "anyone," and not "some" — to indicate the small number of the elect who are willing to conform themselves to Jesus Christ crucified by carrying their cross. This number is so small, so small, that if we knew it, we would faint with grief.

It is so small that among ten thousand there is scarcely one, as has been revealed to several saints, among others to St. Simeon Stylites, as the holy Abbot Nilus reports, after St. Ephrem and some others. It is so small that if God wished to gather them, he would cry out to them, as he once did through the mouth of a prophet: "Congregamini unus et unus" — assemble one by one, one from this province, one from this kingdom.

15. "Si quis vult" — if anyone has a true will, an entire and determined will — not through nature, custom, self-love, self-interest, or human respect, but through an all-conquering grace of the Holy Spirit, which is not given to everyone: "Non omnibus datum est nosse mysterium." The knowledge of the mystery of the Cross, in practice, is given only to a few. A man must be courageous, a hero, one fully determined, a man raised up in God, who tramples underfoot the world and hell, his body and his own will — one determined to leave all, to undertake all, and to suffer all for Jesus Christ — in order to ascend Calvary and let himself be nailed to the cross with Jesus in the midst of his own country. Know, dear Friends of the Cross, that those among you who do not have this determination walk on only one foot, fly with only one wing, and are not worthy to be among you, because they are not worthy to be called Friends of the Cross, which must be loved with Jesus Christ "corde magno et animo volenti" — with a great heart and a willing soul. A half-hearted will of this kind is enough to spoil the whole flock, like one mangy sheep. If any such has already entered your sheepfold through the evil door of the world, then in the name of Jesus Christ crucified, let that one be driven out like a wolf among the sheep!

16. "Si quis vult post me venire" — if anyone wishes to come after me, who humbled and annihilated myself so greatly that I became a worm rather than a man: "Ego sum vermis et non homo"; after me, who came into the world only to embrace the Cross: "Ecce venio"; only to place it in the center of my heart: "In medio cordis"; only to love it from my youth: "Hanc amavi a juventute mea"; only to sigh for it throughout my life: "Quomodo coarctor?"; only to carry it with joy, preferring it to all the joys and delights of heaven and earth: "Proposito sibi gaudio, sustinuit crucem"; and at last, who was not content until I died in its divine embrace.

B. "Let Him Deny Himself"

17. If anyone, then, wishes to come after me, thus humbled and crucified, let him glory, as I do, only in the poverty, the humiliations, and the sufferings of my Cross: "Abneget semetipsum" — let him deny himself!

Far from the company of the Friends of the Cross with those proud sufferers, those worldly wise, those great geniuses and strong minds who are puffed up and swollen with their own lights and talents! Far from here with those great talkers who make much noise and bear no other fruit than that of vanity! Far from here with those proud devotees who carry everywhere the self-importance of the proud Lucifer — "Non sum sicut ceteri" — who cannot bear to be blamed without making excuses, to be attacked without defending themselves, to be humbled without rising up again. Take great care not to admit into your company those delicate and sensual people who fear the slightest prick, who cry out and complain at the least pain, who have never tasted the hairshirt, the cilice, or the discipline, or any other instruments of penance, and who, amid their fashionable devotions, mix in a delicacy and a self-indulgence that is most artfully disguised and refined.

C. "Let Him Take Up His Cross"

18. "Tollat crucem suam" — let him take up his cross; "suam" — his own! Let that man, that woman, so rare — "de ultimis finibus pretium ejus" — whom the whole earth from one end to the other could not buy, take up with joy, embrace with ardor, and carry upon his shoulders with courage his own cross, and not another's: his cross, which by my wisdom I have fashioned for him with number, weight, and measure; his cross, to which I have, with my own hand, set its four dimensions in perfect proportion — namely, its thickness, its length, its breadth, and its depth; his cross, which I have cut for him from a portion of the one I carried on Calvary, by an effect of the infinite love I bear him; his cross, composed in thickness of the loss of goods, of pains, of illnesses, and of spiritual trials that must, by my providence, befall him each day until his death; his cross, composed in length of a certain duration of months or days during which he must be crushed by calumny, be stretched upon a bed of sickness, be reduced to begging, and be prey to temptations, dryness, abandonment, and other afflictions of spirit; his cross, composed in breadth of all the most bitter circumstances, whether from his friends, his servants, or his relatives; his cross, finally, composed in depth of the most hidden sufferings with which I shall afflict him, without his being able to find consolation in creatures, who will even, by my command, turn their backs on him and join with me in making him suffer.

19. "Tollat" — let him take it up! Not drag it, not shake it off, not cut it down, not hide it! That is to say: let him carry it high in his hand, without impatience or sadness, without voluntary complaint or murmuring, without dividing or sparing himself, without shame or human respect. "Tollat" — let him place it on his forehead, saying with St. Paul: "Mihi absit gloriari nisi in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi!" — God forbid that I should glory in anything but the Cross of Jesus Christ, my Master! Let him carry it on his shoulders, in imitation of Jesus Christ, so that this cross may become the weapon of his conquests and the scepter of his empire: "(Imperium) principatus (ejus) super humerum ejus." Finally, let him set it in his heart through love, so that it may become a burning bush that burns day and night with the pure love of God, without being consumed.

20. "Crucem" — the cross; let him carry it, for there is nothing so necessary, so useful, so sweet, or so glorious as to suffer something for Jesus Christ.

1. "Nothing So Necessary"

For sinners!

21. Indeed, dear Friends of the Cross, you are all sinners; there is not one among you who does not deserve hell — and I more than anyone. Our sins must be punished, either in this world or in the next; if they are punished in this world, they will not be in the next. If God punishes them in this world, in agreement with us, the punishment will be loving: it will be mercy, which reigns in this world, that chastises, and not rigorous justice; the chastisement will be light and passing, accompanied by sweetness and merit, followed by rewards in time and eternity.

22. But if the punishment necessary for the sins we have committed is reserved for the next world, it will be the avenging justice of God, which puts everything to fire and sword, that will carry out the chastisement! A chastisement that is terrifying — "horrendum" — ineffable, incomprehensible: "Quis novit potestatem irae tuae?" A chastisement without mercy — "judicium sine misericordia" — without pity, without relief, without merit, without limit, and without end. Yes, without end: that mortal sin of a moment which you committed, that evil and deliberate thought that escaped your notice, that word carried off by the wind, that small action against the law of God, which lasted so briefly, will be punished for an eternity, as long as God is God, with the demons in hell, without this God of vengeance having pity on your horrible torments, your sobs and tears enough to split the rocks! To suffer forever, without merit, without mercy, and without end!

23. Do we think about this, my dear Brothers and Sisters, when we suffer some trial in this world? How happy we are, then, to make so fortunate an exchange — an eternal and fruitless punishment for one that is passing and meritorious — by carrying this cross with patience! How many unpaid debts we have! How many sins we have committed, for the expiation of which, even after a bitter contrition and a sincere confession, we would have to suffer whole centuries in Purgatory, because in this world we were content with very light penances! Let us then pay in this world on friendly terms by carrying our cross well! Everything is exacted to the last penny in the next world — even an idle word. If we could seize from the devil the book of death, where he has recorded all our sins and the punishment due to them, how glad we would be to suffer whole years here below, rather than a single day in the life to come!

For friends of God!

24. Do you not claim, Friends of the Cross, to be friends of God, or to wish to become so? Resolve, then, to drink the cup that must necessarily be drunk to become a friend of God: "Calicem Domini biberunt et amici Dei facti sunt." The beloved Benjamin received the cup, while the other brothers received only the wheat. The great favorite of Jesus Christ received his heart, ascended Calvary, and drank from the cup. "Potestis bibere calicem?" It is good to desire the glory of God; but to desire and ask for it without resolving to suffer all things is a foolish and extravagant request: "Nescitis quid petatis... Oportet per multas tribulationes" — it is necessary, "oportet." It is a necessity; it is an indispensable thing; we must enter the kingdom of heaven through many tribulations and crosses.

For children of God!

25. You rightly glory in being children of God. Glory, then, in the strokes of the lash that this good Father has given you and will continue to give you, for he scourges all his children. If you are not among his beloved children, you are — oh, what misfortune! oh, what a blow! — you are, as St. Augustine says, among the reprobate. He who does not groan in this world as a pilgrim and a stranger will not rejoice in the next as a citizen of heaven, says the same St. Augustine. If God the Father does not send you from time to time some good crosses, it is because he no longer cares about you; he is angry with you. He looks upon you as nothing more than a stranger, outside his house and his protection, or as a bastard child who, not deserving a share in his father's inheritance, does not deserve his care and correction.

For students of a crucified God!

26. Friends of the Cross, students of a crucified God, the mystery of the Cross is a mystery unknown to the Gentiles, rejected by the Jews, and despised by heretics and bad Catholics; but it is the great mystery that you must learn in practice at the school of Jesus Christ, and that you can learn only at his school. You would search in vain through all the academies of antiquity for a philosopher who taught it; you would consult in vain the light of the senses and of reason: only Jesus Christ can teach you this mystery and make you relish it through his victorious grace. Make yourselves, then, proficient in this surpassing science under so great a Master, and you will possess all other sciences, since it eminently contains them all. It is our natural and supernatural philosophy, our divine and mystical theology, and our philosopher's stone, which by patience transforms the basest metals into precious ones, the sharpest pains into delights, poverty into riches, the deepest humiliations into glory. He among you who best knows how to carry his cross, even if he knows neither A nor B, is the most learned of all. Listen to the great St. Paul, who, on his return from the third heaven where he learned mysteries hidden even from the Angels, cries out that he knows and wishes to know nothing but Jesus Christ crucified. Rejoice, poor unlettered one, poor woman without wit or learning: if you know how to suffer joyfully, you will know more than a doctor of the Sorbonne, who does not know how to suffer as well as you.

For members of Jesus Christ!

27. You are members of Jesus Christ — what an honor! But what a necessity to suffer in that capacity! The Head is crowned with thorns, and the members would be crowned with roses? The Head is mocked and covered with mud on the way to Calvary, and the members would be covered with perfume upon a throne? The Head has no pillow on which to rest, and the members would be delicately laid upon feathers and down? That would be an unheard-of monster. No, no, my dear Companions of the Cross, do not deceive yourselves: those Christians you see on every side, fashionably dressed, wonderfully delicate, excessively lofty and grave, are not the true disciples or the true members of Jesus crucified. You would insult this Head crowned with thorns, and the truth of the Gospel, to believe otherwise. O my God! How many phantoms of Christians there are, who believe themselves to be members of the Savior yet are his most treacherous persecutors, because, while with their hand they make the sign of the Cross, in their heart they are its enemies! If you are led by the same spirit, if you live the same life as Jesus Christ, your all-thorny Head, expect nothing but thorns, nothing but scourges, nothing but nails — in a word, nothing but the Cross — because it is necessary that the disciple be treated as the Master, and the member as the Head. And if heaven presents you, as it did St. Catherine of Siena, with a crown of thorns and a crown of roses, choose with her the crown of thorns without hesitation, and press it into your head, to resemble Jesus Christ.

For temples of the Holy Spirit!

28. You are not unaware that you are the living temples of the Holy Spirit, and that you must, like so many living stones, be placed by this God of love in the building of the heavenly Jerusalem. Expect, then, to be hewn, cut, and chiseled by the hammer of the Cross; otherwise, you will remain like rough stones that are good for nothing, that are scorned and cast far away. Take care not to resist the hammer that strikes you; take heed of the chisel that carves you and the hand that turns you! Perhaps this skillful and loving Architect wishes to make of you one of the chief stones of his eternal edifice, and one of the most beautiful portraits of his heavenly kingdom. Let him do his work, then; he loves you, he knows what he is doing, he has experience; all his blows are skillful and loving — he never strikes a false blow, unless you render it useless by your impatience.

29. The Holy Spirit compares the Cross: sometimes to a winnowing fan, which purifies the good grain from the chaff and refuse — let yourselves, then, be tossed and shaken in the fan like grain, without resistance; you are in the winnowing fan of the Father of the household, and soon you will be in his granary. Sometimes to a fire, which removes rust from iron by the intensity of its flames: our God is a consuming fire who dwells through the Cross in a soul to purify it without consuming it, as he once did in the burning bush. Sometimes to the crucible of a forge, where good gold is refined and base gold vanishes in smoke: the good by patiently enduring the trial of fire, the base by rising up in smoke against its flames. It is in the crucible of tribulation and temptation that the true Friends of the Cross are purified by their patience, while its enemies go up in smoke by their impatience and murmuring.

We must suffer as the saints did...

30. Look, my dear Friends of the Cross, look before you at a great cloud of witnesses who prove, without saying a word, what I am saying. See, as if in passing, an Abel, righteous and slain by his brother; an Abraham, righteous and a stranger upon the earth; a Lot, righteous and driven from his country; a Jacob, righteous and persecuted by his brother; a Tobias, righteous and struck with blindness; a Job, righteous and impoverished, humiliated, and afflicted with sores from head to foot.

31. Look at so many Apostles and Martyrs empurpled with their blood; so many Virgins and Confessors impoverished, humiliated, exiled, and rejected — all of whom cry out with St. Paul: "Look upon our good Jesus, the author and finisher of the faith we have in him and in the Cross; it was necessary that he suffer in order to enter into his glory through the Cross." See, at the side of Jesus Christ, a sword piercing to the depths the tender and innocent heart of Mary, who never had any sin, either original or actual. How I wish I could dwell at length here on the Passion of the one and the other, to show that what we suffer is nothing in comparison with what they suffered!

32. After all this, who among us can exempt himself from carrying his cross? Who will not fly eagerly to the places where he knows the cross awaits him? Who will not cry out with St. Ignatius the Martyr: "Let fire and the gallows, let wild beasts and all the torments of the devil come upon me, so that I may enjoy Jesus Christ!"

...otherwise, as the reprobate.

33. But finally, if you do not wish to suffer patiently and carry your cross with resignation like the predestined, you will carry it with murmuring and impatience like the reprobate. You will be like those two animals that dragged the Ark of the Covenant while lowing. You will imitate Simon of Cyrene, who put his hand to the very Cross of Jesus Christ against his will, and who did nothing but murmur while carrying it. And in the end, what happened to the bad thief will happen to you: from the top of his cross he fell to the depths of the abyss. No, no — this cursed earth where we live produces no blessed ones; we do not see clearly in this land of darkness; we are not in perfect tranquility on this stormy sea; we are not without battles in this place of temptation and this field of combat; we are not without thorns on this earth covered with them. The predestined and the reprobate alike must carry their cross, willingly or not. Remember these four lines:

Choose one of the crosses you see on Calvary, Choose wisely; for it is necessary To suffer like a saint, or like a penitent, Or like a reprobate who is never content.

That is to say, if you do not wish to suffer with joy like Jesus Christ, or with patience like the good thief, you will have to suffer against your will like the bad thief. You will have to drink to the very dregs the most bitter cup, without any consolation of grace, and you will have to bear the full weight of your cross without any powerful help from Jesus Christ. You will even have to bear the fatal weight that the devil will add to your cross through the impatience into which it will cast you; and after having been wretched with the bad thief on earth, you will go to find him in the flames.

2. "Nothing So Useful and So Sweet"

34. But if, on the contrary, you suffer as you ought, the cross will become a most gentle yoke that Jesus Christ will carry with you. It will become the two wings of the soul that soars to heaven; it will become the mast of a ship that will bring you happily and easily to the port of salvation. Carry your cross patiently, and by this cross well carried you will be enlightened in your spiritual darkness; for he who does not suffer anything through temptation knows nothing. Carry your cross joyfully, and you will be inflamed with divine love; for no one lives without suffering in the pure love of the Lord. Roses are gathered only among thorns. The cross alone is the nourishment of the love of God, as wood is the nourishment of fire. Remember, then, this beautiful saying from the Imitation: "The more violence you do to yourself" by suffering patiently, "the more you will advance" in divine love. Expect nothing great from those delicate and lazy souls who refuse the cross when it comes to them, and who do not procure any for themselves with discretion: it is uncultivated ground that will yield only thorns, because it is not cut, beaten, and turned over by a wise farmer; it is stagnant water, fit neither for washing nor drinking. Carry your cross joyfully, and in it you will find a victorious strength to which none of your enemies can resist, and you will taste a charming sweetness to which nothing else compares. Yes, my Brothers, know that the true earthly paradise is to suffer something for Jesus Christ. Ask all the saints: they will tell you that they never tasted a feast so delightful to the soul as when they endured the greatest torments. "Let all the torments of the devil come upon me!" said St. Ignatius the Martyr. "Either to suffer or to die," said St. Teresa. "Not to die, but to suffer," said St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi. "To suffer and to be despised for your sake," said Blessed John of the Cross; and many others spoke in the same way, as we read in their lives. Believe God, my dear Brothers: when one suffers joyfully for God, "the cross," says the Holy Spirit, "is the source of every kind of joy" for every kind of person. The joy of the cross is greater than that of a peasant showered with every kind of riches; greater than the joy of a peasant raised to a throne; greater than the joy of a merchant who gains millions in gold; greater than the joy of generals who win victories; greater than the joy of captives freed from their chains. In short, let us imagine all the greatest joys here below: the joy of a crucified person who suffers well contains and surpasses them all.

3. "Nothing So Glorious"

35. Rejoice, then, and leap for joy when God gives you some good cross to bear; for the greatest thing in heaven and in God himself falls upon you without your perceiving it. The great gift of God, the cross! If you understood it, you would have Masses said, you would make novenas at the tombs of the saints, you would undertake long journeys, as the saints did, to obtain from heaven this divine gift.

36. The world calls it folly, infamy, stupidity, indiscretion, imprudence — let the blind say what they will. Their blindness, which makes them look upon the cross as merely human and completely backward, is part of our glory. Every time they bring us crosses through their contempt and persecutions, they give us jewels, they set us on a throne, they crown us with laurels.

37. What do I say? All the riches, all the honors, all the scepters, all the brilliant crowns of potentates and emperors are not comparable to the glory of the Cross, says St. John Chrysostom; it surpasses the glory of apostle and sacred writer. "I would willingly leave heaven," says this holy man, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, "if it were my choice, to endure suffering for the God of heaven. I would prefer dungeons and prisons to the thrones of the empyrean: I do not envy the glory of the Seraphim as much as the greatest crosses. I esteem less the gift of miracles, by which one commands demons, shakes the elements, stops the sun, and raises the dead, than the honor of suffering. St. Peter and St. Paul are more glorious in their dungeons, with chains on their feet, than rising to the third heaven or receiving the keys of paradise."

38. Indeed, is it not the Cross that gave Jesus Christ "a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth"? The glory of a person who suffers well is so great that heaven, the angels and men, and God himself look upon it with joy, as the most glorious spectacle; and if the saints had one wish, it would be to return to earth to carry some crosses.

39. But if this glory is already so great even on earth, what will it be that it gains in heaven? Who will explain, and who will ever comprehend, that "eternal weight of glory" that a single moment of a cross well carried produces in us? Who will comprehend the glory that a year — and sometimes a whole lifetime — of crosses and sufferings produces in heaven?

40. Surely, my dear Friends of the Cross, heaven is preparing something great for you, a great saint tells us, since the Holy Spirit unites you so closely in something that everyone else flees with such care. Surely God wills to make as many saints as there are Friends of the Cross, if you are faithful to your vocation, if you carry your cross as you ought, as Jesus Christ carried his.