From "A Little Book of Eternal Wisdom"

Ch 10. The Third Thing.--Why God Permits His Friends To Suffer So Much Temporal Suffering

The Servant.--Another thing, Lord, I have at my heart: may I venture to tell it Thee? May I indeed venture to dispute with Thee like holy Jeremias? Gentle Lord, people say as follows: that how sweet soever Thy love may be, Thou dost yet allow it to prove very harsh to Thy friends in the many severe trials which Thou sendest them, such as worldly scorn and much adversity, both inwardly and outwardly. Scarcely is any one, say they, admitted to Thy friendship, but he has forthwith to gather up his courage for suffering. Lord, by Thy goodness! what sweetness can they have in all this? Or how canst Thou permit it in Thy friends? Or art Thou pleased not to know anything about it?

Eternal Wisdom.--Even as My Father loves Me, so do I love My friends. I do to My friends now as I have done from the beginning of the world.

The Servant.--This is what they complain of; and therefore, say they, Thou hast so few friends because Thou allowest them to prosper in this world so very sorrily. Lord, on this account there are also indeed many who, when they gain Thy friendship, and ought to prove constant in suffering, fall off from Thee; and (woe is me! that I must say it in sorrow of heart, and with bitter tears) relapse to that state which, through Thee, they had forsaken. O my Lord, what hast Thou to say to this?

Eternal Wisdom.--This is the complaint of persons of a sick faith and of small works, of a lukewarm life, and undisciplined spirit. But thou, beloved soul, up with thy mind out of the slime and deep slough of carnal delights! Unlock thy interior sense, open thy spiritual eyes and see. Mark well what thou art, where thou art, and whither thou dost belong; for then shalt thou understand that I do the very best for My friends.

According to thy natural essence thou art a mirror of the Divinity, thou art an image of the Trinity, and a copy of eternity; for as I, in My eternal uncreated entity, am the good which is infinite, so art thou according to thy desires, fathomless, and as little as a small drop can yield in the vast depth of the sea, just so little can all that this world is able to afford contribute to the fulfillment of thy desires. Thus, then, art thou in this wretched valley of tears, where joy and sorrow, laughing and weeping, mirth and sadness, are mingled together; where no heart ever obtained perfect happiness; for it is false and deceitful, more than I will tell thee. It promises much and performs little; it is short, uncertain, and changeable; today much joy, tomorrow a heart full of woe. Behold, such is the disport of this scene of time!

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.

What is the Interior Life? (part v)

FIFTH TRUTH. The triple concupiscence caused by original sin and increased by every one of my actual sins establishes elements of death that militate against the life of Jesus in me. Now in exact proportion as these elements develop in me, they diminish the exercise of that life. Alas! They may even go so far as to destroy it outright.

Nevertheless, inclinations and feelings contrary to that life, and temptations, even violent and prolonged can do it no harm whatever as long as my will resists them. And then (what a consoling truth!) like any other elements in the spiritual combat, they serve only to augment that life, in proportion to my own zeal.

What is the Interior Life? (part iv)

FOURTH TRUTH. In proportion to the intensity of my love for God, my supernatural life may increase at every moment by a new infusion of the grace of the active presence of Jesus in me; an infusion produced:

1. By each meritorious act (virtue, work, suffering under all its varying forms, such as privation of creatures, physical or moral pain, humiliation, self-denial; prayer, Mass, acts of devotion to Our Lady, etc.).

2. By the Sacraments especially the Eucharist. It is certain, then (and here is a consequence that overwhelms me with its sublimity and its depth, but above all, fills me with courage and with joy), it is certain that, by every event, person or thing, Thou, Jesus, Thou Thyself, dost present Thyself, objectively, to me, at every instant of the day. Thou dost hide Thy wisdom and Thy love beneath the appearances and dost request my co-operation to increase Thy life in myself.

O my soul, at every instant Jesus presents Himself to you by the GRACE OF THE PRESENT MOMENT --- every time there is a prayer to say, a Mass to celebrate or to hear, reading to be done, or acts of patience, of zeal, of renunciation, of struggle, confidence, or love to be produced. Would you dare look the other way, or try to avoid His gaze?

What is the Interior Life? (part iii)

THIRD TRUTH. I would be depriving myself of one of the most effective means of acquiring this interior life if I failed to strive after a precise and certain faith in the active presence of Jesus within me, and if I did not try to make this presence within me, not merely a living, but an extremely vital reality, and one which penetrated more and more into all the life of my faculties. When Jesus becomes, in this manner, my light, my ideal, my counsel, my support, my refuge, my strength, my healer, my consolation, my joy, my love, in a word, my life, I shall acquire all the virtues. Then alone will I be able to utter, with sincerity, the wonderful prayer of St. Bonaventure, which the Church gives me for my thanksgiving after Mass: Transfige dulcissime Domine Jesu.

What is the Interior Life? (part ii)

SECOND TRUTH. By this life, Jesus Christ imparts to me His Spirit. In this way, He becomes the principle of a superior activity which raises me up, provided I do not obstruct it, to think, judge, love, will, suffer, labor with Him, by Him, in Him, and like Him. My outward acts become the manifestations of this life of Jesus in me. And thus I ten to realize the ideal of the INTERIOR LIFE that was formulated by St. Paul when he said: "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me."

Christian life, piety, interior life, sanctity: in all these we find no essential difference. They are only different degrees of one and the same love. They are the half-light, the dawning, the rising, and the zenith of the same sun.

Whenever the expression "interior life" is used in this book, the reference is not so much to habitual interior life, which we may call the "principal" or "capital" of the divine life deposited in us, by sanctifying grace, as to the actual interior life, which invests this capital and puts it to work in the activity of our soul, and in our fidelity to actual graces.

Thus I can define it as the state of activity of a soul which strives against its natural inclinations in order to REGULATE them, and endeavors to acquire the HABIT of judging and directing its movements IN ALL THINGS according to the light of the Gospel and the example of Our Lord.

Hence, a twofold movement. By the first, the soul withdraws from all that is opposed to the supernatural life in created things, and seeks at all times to be recollected: aversio a creaturis. By the second, the soul tends upwards to God, and unites itself with Him: conversio ad Deum.

The soul wishes in this way to be faithful to the grace which Our Lord offers to it at every moment. In a word, it lives, united to Jesus, and carries out in actuality the principle: "He that liveth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit."

What is the Interior Life? (part i)

From The Soul of the Apostolate, by Dom Chautard, OCSO. The CAPS and the italics are in the original.

What is the Interior Life?

In this book the words life of prayer, contemplative life will be applied as they are in the Imitation of Christ to the state of those souls who have dedicated themselves to a Christian life which is at the same time out of the common, and accessible to all, and, in substance, obligatory for all.

Without embarking upon a study of asceticism, let us at least remind the reader that EVERYONE is obliged to accept the following principles as absolutely certain, and base his inner life upon them.

FIRST TRUTH. Supernatural life is the life of Jesus Christ Himself in my soul, by Faith, Hope, and Charity; for Jesus is the meritorious, exemplary, and final cause of sanctifying grace, and, as Word, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, He is its efficient cause in our souls.

The presence of Our Lord by this supernatural life is not the real presence proper to Holy Communion, but a presence of vital action like that of the action of the head or heart upon the members of the body. This action lies deep within us, and God ordinarily hides it from the soul in order to increase the merit of our faith. And so, as a rule, my natural faculties have no feeling of this action going on within me, which, however, I am formally obliged to believe by faith. This action is divine, yet it does not interfere with my free will, and makes use of all secondary causes, events, persons, and things, to teach me the will of God and to offer me an opportunity of acquiring or increasing my share in the divine life.

This life, begun in Baptism by the state of grace, perfected at Confirmation, recovered by Penance and enriched by the Holy Eucharist, is my Christian life.

Statement of Purpose

Christ came not to send peace, but the sword. This blog - Gladius Veritatis, or Sword of Truth - exists in order to remind us all of our raison d'etre (reason for being, final end) and to comment upon the present ecclesiastical and societal situations, exposing the forces behind the insanity we see (and which grows) every day. We are, especially in the formerly-Christian West, in serious trouble. The hour is late indeed, as the enemies of God, His Holy Church, and even all merely natural decency are pushing hard to complete the long-dreamed of New World Order, complete with its own one-world, visible, dogma-less, humanitarian religion.

The sins of men have reached such a point that it seems clear that God will allow (or very nearly allow) this insane project of deluded men come to pass. Many who say they are against this diabolical project are, in fact, aiding the enemy. May they see the truth before it is too late, and may the Almighty God bring us all to true repentance of our sins. The Ninivites of old won favor in the sight of God, even though He was angry enough to destroy them. Mercifully, He sent His messenger Jonas, and the Ninivites heard him, immediately doing fitting penance for their numerous offenses against His Supreme Majesty. May He move us to do likewise now, as we have offended Him for too long, as Our Lady of Fatima said to three little children 89 years ago in Portugal.

There are myriad matters which could be discussed on several topics, as the situation in the modern world (and in Catholic circles) is dire in the extreme. I have neither the time nor the wisdom to comment upon them all, especially if the comments are to be truly helpful to anyone. I do hope, however, to help at least one individual, in however small a manner. If this comes to pass, I shall consider my time well spent. Whenever possible, I shall simply provide the time-tested words of men far wiser and holier than I. God speed to all who read this blog. Please pray for me. Vincit veritas.