What is the Interior Life? (part vi)

SIXTH TRUTH. If I am not faithful in the use of certain means, my intelligence will become blind and my will too weak to co-operate with Jesus in the increase, or even the maintenance of His life in me. And the result will be a progressive diminution of that life: I shall find myself slipping into tepidity of the will. Through dissipation, cowardice, self-delusion, or blindness, I tend to compromise with venial sin. But therefore my whole salvation is in danger, since I am paving the way to mortal sin.

Were I to have the misfortune to fall into this tepidity (and a fortiori if I were to go lower still), I would have to make every effort to get out of it. 1. I would have to revive the fear of God in my soul by imagining myself, as vividly as possible, face to face with my last end, with death, with the judgment of God, with hell, eternity, sin, and so forth. 2. And to revive compunction by the sweet science of Thy wounds, O my merciful Redeemer. Going, in spirit, to Calvary, I would throw myself down at Thy holy feet and let Thy living Blood run down upon my head and heart to wash away my blindness, melt the ice in my soul, and drive away the torpor of my will.