The Fourteen Rules

D. "And Let Him Follow Me!"

41. But it is not enough to suffer: the devil and the world have their martyrs. One must suffer and carry one's cross in the footsteps of Jesus Christ: "Sequatur me" — let him follow me! That is, in the manner in which he carried it. And here are the rules you must observe:

1. Do Not Procure Crosses Deliberately and Through Your Own Fault

42. Do not deliberately procure crosses for yourselves through your own fault; one must not do evil so that good may come of it. One must not, without a special inspiration, do things badly in order to draw upon oneself the contempt of others. Rather, imitate Jesus Christ, of whom it is said that he did all things well — not out of self-love or vanity, but to please God and to win over one's neighbor. And if you carry out your duties as best you can, you will not lack contradictions, persecutions, or contempt, which divine Providence will send you against your will and without your choosing.

2. Consider the Good of Your Neighbor

43. If you do something indifferent that scandalizes your neighbor, even unreasonably, abstain from it out of charity, to put an end to the scandal of the little ones; the heroic act of charity you perform on that occasion is worth infinitely more than the thing you were doing or intended to do. If, however, the good you are doing is necessary or useful to your neighbor, and some pharisee or malicious person takes unreasonable scandal at it, consult a wise adviser to determine whether the thing you are doing is truly necessary and greatly useful to the common good of your neighbor. If he judges it so, continue doing it, and let them talk, provided they let you act. In this case, respond as Our Lord responded when some of his disciples came to tell him that the Scribes and Pharisees were scandalized by his words and actions: "Let them be; they are blind."

3. Admire, Without Presuming to Attain, the Sublime Virtue of the Saints

44. Although certain saints and great persons have sought, pursued, and even procured for themselves crosses, contempt, and humiliations through extravagant actions, let us simply adore and admire the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit in their souls, and humble ourselves before such sublime virtue, without daring to fly so high — being, in comparison to those swift eagles and roaring lions, nothing but timid souls and dead dogs.

4. Ask God for the Wisdom of the Cross

45. You may, however, and indeed you should, ask for the wisdom of the Cross, which is a savory and experiential knowledge of the truth that, in the light of faith, reveals the most hidden mysteries — among them, the mystery of the Cross. This is obtained only through great labors, deep humiliations, and fervent prayers. If you need that sovereign spirit which gives courage to carry the heaviest crosses; that good and gentle spirit which savors, in the higher part of the soul, the most repulsive bitterness; that holy and upright spirit which seeks only God; that knowledge of the Cross which contains all things; in a word, that infinite treasure whose good use makes a soul a sharer in the friendship of God — ask for wisdom, ask for it unceasingly and earnestly, without hesitation, without fear of not obtaining it, and you will infallibly receive it. And then you will see clearly, by experience, how it is possible to desire, to seek, and to relish the Cross.

5. Humble Yourself for Your Faults, Without Being Troubled

46. When you have, through ignorance or even through your own fault, committed some blunder that brings you a cross, humble yourself at once interiorly beneath the powerful hand of God, without voluntarily troubling yourself, saying, for example, within yourself: "There, Lord, is a product of my trade!" And if there is sin in the fault you have committed, accept the humiliation that results as its chastisement; and if there is no sin, accept it as a humiliation for your pride. Often — very often indeed — God permits his greatest servants, those most advanced in his grace, to commit the most humiliating faults, in order to take from them the proud sight and thought of the graces he gives them and the good they do, so that "no creature," as the Holy Spirit says, "may glory before God."

6. God Humbles Us to Purify Us

47. Be thoroughly convinced that everything within you is utterly corrupted by the sin of Adam and by your actual sins — not only the senses of the body, but all the powers of the soul. And since our corrupt mind regards any gift of God in us with self-reflective complacency, that gift, that action, that grace becomes all soiled and corrupted, and God turns away his divine eyes. If the gaze and thoughts of the human mind thus spoil the best actions and the most divine gifts, what shall we say of the acts of self-will, which are even more corrupt than those of the mind? After this, it is no wonder that God takes pleasure in hiding his own in the secret of his face, so that they may not be sullied by the gaze of others or by their own self-knowledge. And to hide them thus, what does this jealous God not permit and do! How many humiliations he arranges for them! Into how many faults he lets them fall! How many temptations he permits to assail them, as with St. Paul! Into what uncertainties, darkness, and perplexities he leaves them! How wonderful God is in his saints, and in the ways he takes to lead them to humility and holiness!

7. Avoid the Snare of Pride in Your Crosses

48. Take great care, then, not to believe, like those proud devotees full of themselves, that your crosses are great, that they are trials of your faithfulness, and testimonies of a singular love of God toward you. This snare of spiritual pride is very subtle and delicate, yet full of poison. You should believe: first, that your pride and your delicacy make you take beams for straws, wounds for pinpricks, an elephant for a mouse, a terrible insult and cruel abandonment for a small word spoken in passing, a mere trifle in reality; second, that the crosses God sends you are loving chastisements for your sins, as indeed they are, rather than marks of a special good will; third, that whatever cross or humiliation he sends you, he spares you infinitely, considering the number and enormity of your crimes, which you must regard only through the holiness of God, who suffers nothing impure and whom you have offended; through a God dying and overwhelmed with grief because of the shadow of your sin; and through an eternal hell that you have deserved a thousand, perhaps a hundred thousand times; fourth, that in the patience with which you suffer, you mix in more that is human and natural than you think. Witness those little compromises, those secret searches for consolation, those natural outpourings to your friends, perhaps to your spiritual director, those excuses so subtle and so prompt, those complaints — or rather those pieces of gossip — about those who wronged you, so cleverly turned, so charitably pronounced, those returns and delicate complacencies over your own sufferings, that Luciferian belief that you are something great, and so on. I would never finish if I had to describe here all the turns and dodges of nature, even in suffering.

8. Profit from Small Sufferings Even More Than from Great Ones

49. Profit from small sufferings even more than from great ones. God does not look so much at the suffering as at the manner in which one suffers. To suffer much and to suffer badly is to suffer like the damned. To suffer much and with courage, but for a bad cause, is to suffer like a martyr of the devil. To suffer little or much and to suffer for God is to suffer like a saint.

If it is true that one may choose among crosses, it is especially the small and hidden ones that should be chosen when they come alongside great and conspicuous ones. The pride of nature can seek, pursue, and even choose and embrace great and showy crosses; but to choose and joyfully carry small and hidden crosses — that can only be the effect of a great grace and a great faithfulness to God. Do, then, as a merchant does with his cash-box: profit from everything; do not let the smallest fragment of the true Cross go to waste, even if it be only a fly-bite or a pinprick, a little fault of a neighbor, a small unintended insult, a small loss of a penny, a small disturbance of the soul, a slight weariness of the body, a small ache in one of your limbs, and so on. Profit from everything, as the shopkeeper does in his store, and you will soon grow rich in God, just as he grows rich in money by putting penny upon penny in his cash-box. At the slightest setback that comes your way, say: "God be blessed! My God, I thank you"; then store away in the memory of God, which is like your cash-box, the cross you have just gained; and think no more of it except to say: Thank you, or mercy!

9. Love Crosses, Not with Sensible Love, but with Rational and Supernatural Love

50. When you are told to love the Cross, this does not mean a sensible love, which is impossible to nature. Distinguish, then, three kinds of love: sensible love, rational love, and faithful and supreme love; or in other words: the love of the lower part, which is the flesh; the love of the higher part, which is reason; and the love of the highest part, or summit of the soul, which is the intelligence enlightened by faith.

51. God does not ask you to love the Cross with the will of the flesh. Since it is utterly corrupt and sinful, everything that springs from it is corrupt, and it cannot even submit of itself to the will of God and his crucifying law. That is why Our Lord, speaking of it in the Garden of Olives, cried out: "My Father, let your will be done, and not mine!" If the lower part of man in Jesus Christ, though it was holy, could not love the Cross without interruption, all the more will our own, which is utterly corrupt, reject it. We may, it is true, sometimes experience an even sensible joy in what we suffer, as many saints have felt; but that joy does not come from the flesh, though it is in the flesh; it comes only from the higher part, which is so filled with the divine joy of the Holy Spirit that it overflows into the lower part, so that at that moment the most crucified person can say: "My heart and my flesh have leapt for joy in the living God!"

52. There is another love of the Cross that I call rational, which resides in the higher part, which is reason. This love is entirely spiritual, and since it is born of the knowledge of the happiness one has in suffering for God, it is perceptible and even noticed by the soul; it rejoices and strengthens it interiorly. But this rational and perceptible love, though good and very good, is not always necessary in order to suffer joyfully and divinely.

53. That is why there is another love, of the summit and the apex of the soul, say the masters of the spiritual life — or of the intelligence, say the philosophers — by which, without feeling any joy in the senses, without perceiving any pleasure in the rational soul, one nevertheless loves and savors, by the gaze of pure faith, the cross one carries. Although everything may be at war and in turmoil in the lower part, which groans, complains, weeps, and seeks relief, one can still say with Jesus Christ: "My Father, let your will be done and not mine!" Or with the Blessed Virgin: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word!"

It is with one of these two loves of the higher part that we must love and embrace the Cross.

10. Suffer All Kinds of Crosses, Without Exception and Without Choice

54. Resolve, dear Friends of the Cross, to suffer all kinds of crosses, without exception and without choice: all poverty, all injustice, all loss, all illness, all humiliation, all contradiction, all calumny, all dryness, all abandonment, all suffering both interior and exterior, always saying: "My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready." Prepare yourselves, then, to be forsaken by men and angels, and as if by God himself; to be persecuted, envied, betrayed, calumnied, discredited, and abandoned by all; to suffer hunger, thirst, begging, nakedness, exile, prison, the gallows, and every kind of torment, even though you have not deserved it for the crimes imputed to you. Finally, imagine that after losing your possessions and your honor, after being cast out of your house like Job and St. Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary, you are thrown, like that saint, into the mud, dragged like Job onto a dung heap, all stinking and covered with sores, without anyone to give you linen for your wounds or a morsel of bread to eat — which would not be refused to a horse or a dog — and that with all these extreme sufferings, God leaves you as prey to all the temptations of the demons, without pouring into your soul the least sensible consolation. Believe firmly that this is the supreme point of divine glory and of the true happiness of a true and perfect Friend of the Cross.