We have said that the passions are not in themselves evil;
all can without exception be turned to good.
a. Love
and joy can be directed towards pure
and lawful family-affection, towards good and supernatural friendship, but
chiefly towards good and supernatural friendship, but chiefly towards Our Lord,
Who is the most tender, the most generous, the most devoted of friends. This,
the, is what matters most, that we center our hearts in Him by reading,
meditation, and by actually carrying out in our lives the teachings in the two
chapters of the Following of Christ (Thomas
a’ Kempis’ Imitation of Christ), “On
the love of Jesus above all things,” and “On familiar friendship with Jesus”,
two chapters which have proved a potent source of inspirations to many souls.
b. Hatred
and aversion can be turned against
sin, against vice, and against whatever leads to them, in order that we may
loathe them and fly from them: “I have hated iniquity.”
c. Desire
is transformed into lawful ambition; into the natural ambition of doing honor
to one’s family, one’s country, and into the supernatural ambition of becoming
a saint, an apostle.
d. Sadness,
instead of degenerating into melancholy, becomes a sweet resignation under
trials, which are for the Christian soul a seed of glory; or it is changed into
tender compassion for the suffering Christ, loaded down with insults; or it is
turned towards afflicted souls.
e. Hope
becomes a Christian virtue of unfailing trust in God and multiplies our
energies for good.
f. Despair
takes the form of rightful mistrust of self, based upon our own insufficiency
and our sins, but tempered by trust in God.
g. Fear is
no longer that sense of depression which weakens the soul; but in the Christian
it I a source of power. The Christian fears sin, he fears hell; but this
righteous fear inspires him with courage in the struggle against evil. He fears
God above all, he dreads to offend his Maker, and treads under foot human
respect.
h. Anger
instead of causing us to lose self-control, is but a just and holy indignation
that strengthens us against evil.
i. Boldness
becomes prowess in the faces of
obstacles and dangers; the greater the difficulty we encounter, the more eager
we are to make efforts to overcome it.
To attain these happy results, there is nothing like meditation, accompanied by devout
affections and generous resolutions. Thereby, we conceive an ideal, and form deep-seated convictions that help us daily to
approach that ideal. The purpose in view is to evoke and nurture in the soul
such thoughts and feelings as are in harmony with the
virtues we want to practice, and to remove images and impression allied to the
vices we want to shun…
Source: The Spiritual
Life: A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical Theology, 802-803
Posts
