from the book, Uniformity with God’s Will & the Practice of the Love of
Jesus Christ
Page 178 Detachment from Human Respect and from Self-Will
“… Unhappy the man that lives the slave of self-will! For he shall have a yearning for many things
distasteful and bitter to his inclinations:
From whence are wars and contentions among you? Are they not hence? From
your concupiscences, which war in your members? You covet, and have not." (James, iv.1,2).
The First War springs from the appetite for sensual
delights. Let us take away the occasion;
let us mortify the eyes; let us recommend ourselves to God, and the war ill be
over.
The Second War arises from the covetousness of riches: let
us cultivate a love of poverty, and this war will cease.
The Third War has its source in ambitiously seeking after
honors: let us love humility and the
hidden life, and this war too will be no more.
The Fourth War, and the most ruinous of all, comes from
self-will: let us practice resignation in all things which happen by the will
of God, and the war will cease.
St. Bernard tells us that whenever we see a person troubled,
the origin of his trouble is nothing else but his inability to gratify
self-will. “Whence comes disquiet,” says the saint, “except that we follow self-will?”
S. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi |
We must therefore love God in the way that pleases God, and
not that pleases us. God will have the
soul divested of all, in order to be united to Himself, and to be replenished
with His Divine love.
St. Teresa writes
as follows: “The prayer of union appears
to me to be nothing more than to die utterly, as it were, to all things in this
world, for the enjoyment of God alone.
Once this is certain, that the more completely we empty ourselves of
creatures, by detaching ourselves from them for the love of God, the more
abundantly will He fill us with Himself, and the more closely shall we be
united with Him.” (Interior Castle, chapter 1)
Many spiritual persons would attain to union with God; but
then they do not desire the contrarieties (oppositeness,
contradiction) which God sends them: they fret at having to suffer from
ill-health, from poverty, from affronts; but, for want of resignation, they will
never come to a perfect union with God.
St. Catherine of Genoa |
I here subjoin the practice of it, taught by St. John of the
Cross.
The Saint says, that in order to
perfect union, “a thorough mortification
of the senses and of the appetites is necessary. On the part of the senses, every single
relish that presents itself to them, if it be not purely for the glory of God,
should forthwith be rejected for the love of Jesus Christ; for example, should
you have a desire to see or hear something in no wise conductive to the greater
glory of God, then refrain from it. As
to the appetites also, endeavor to force ourselfs always to choose the worst,
the most disagreeable, or the poorest, without fostering any other wish than to
suffer and to be despised.”
St. John of the Cross |
In a word, he that truly loves Jesus Christ loses all
affection for things of earth, and seeks to strip himself of all, in order to
keep himself united with Jesus Christ alone.
Jesus is the object of all his desires,
Jesus the subject of all his
thoughts;
for Jesus he continually sighs;
in every place, at every time,
on
every occasion,
his sole aim is to give pleasure to Jesus.
But to reach this point, we must study
unceasingly to rid the heart of every affection which is not for God.
And, I ask, what is meant by giving the soul entirely
to God?
It means, first,
to shun
whatever may be displeasing to God,
and to do what is most pleasing to Him;
secondly, it means to accept unreservedly all that comes
from His hands, how
hard or disagreeable soever it may be;
it means, thirdly, to give the
preference in all things
to the will of God over our own;
this is what is meant
by belonging wholly to God.
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