Catholic during the Great Apostasy

1 The great proof of a soul mortified and purified of its disorderly inclinations is that it suffices itself. As God, being the happiest, suffices Himself to the uttermost, so you, too, will approach God with your own happiness, if you learn to be detached from yourself.

6And in this seclusion, if you wish, you will never be alone, as long as you do not separate yourself from Christ. If you feel like talking, talk to yourself, but beware of talking to the evil ones. Perhaps you want to know what you should talk to yourself about? About what others usually talk about, i.e. talk about yourself to yourself. Draw out one fault after another and condemn whatever you find reprehensible in yourself. You will never run out of some fault to correct.

Give yourself over to solitude, but hide solitude itself. To boast of seclusion is vain boasting. To make bodily seclusion pleasing and useful to you, combine with it spiritual seclusion. Remove yourself from vain occupations, remove yourself not only from people but also from things that do not concern you. Free yourself from the bonds of all creatures and banish from your heart all memory of them. Abandon all preoccupation with insignificant things and rid yourself of vain thoughts, and in the quietness of your heart attend to yourself and the Lord God. In this spiritual silence, in this forgetfulness and emptying of all things, lies true peace of heart and true rest. Here protect yourself, here hide yourself, here stay always; for there we find God, where we abandon all creatures.

2. If you want to be good, avoid bad company. Nothing spoils good manners more than stopping with rotten people. You will never return from their company as you came. A delicate soul, unconfirmed in goodness, cannot withstand the onslaught of evil influences that hit it in a row. With whom thou comest in, such thou art become. A fellow gourmand will soon encourage you to gluttony; a rich neighbour will awaken greed in you; a single example of promiscuity or stinginess can completely ruin you morally. Relatives, friends and servants all lead to evil. Dangers abound everywhere, snares abound.

Hardly have we seen the light of day, and at this very moment we are surrounded on all sides by iniquity and the ugliest human perversity. You will scarcely find a man who does not either praise a vice or incite to it, or who does not inculcate it in the minds of the immature.

Don’t leave home for a while, stay away from the hustle and bustle of the streets, and you will see how sweet and pleasant such solitude is. There you will experience a peace and joy that cannot be eclipsed by even the smallest cloud, nor disturbed by even the lightest storm. By chance, someone pulls you out of this blissful solitude; you listen and leave the house. Soon others will join you, a circle will form, it will slowly turn into a gathering and you will sin in various ways, and you, something that came good, will return home the worst. And you will not even notice the wounds of the soul until you are alone. So shut thyself up as much as thou canst, so that the corrupted world may not poison thy soul with sin venom.The more secluded the soul is, the happier it feels.

3 Imagine that you are momentarily on top of a high mountain. From there, look at the misery of this world. Soon disgust will rise in you and you will want to go into the desert. You will see many robbers on the roads, many buccaneers on the seas, you will see terrible wars and a land stained with human blood, you will see vile and promiscuous crime. You will see such iniquities hidden from daylight that it is impossible for those who commit them to take pleasure in them. You will see so much wickedness, so much shamelessness that you would not doubt for a moment that you have before your eyes only madmen, if only there were fewer of the wicked.

But the perverse world considers this to be proof of sanity, because these madmen are so numerous. Even in the midst of the laws themselves, lawlessness takes place, and virtue is not even certain where it is to be ex officio defended. The innocent is sometimes judged and the guilty set free, and perhaps the world sins no less by setting free than by the crimes themselves.

There is no fear of the criminal law, for what is there to fear if one can wriggle out of punishment. The tongues of the slanderers are virulent, the mouths of the praisers insincere; here anger is fierce, there again falsehood carries on a hideous trade. One is drenched in liquor, another rots in idleness. The one wallows in insatiable skittishness, while the other throws himself on all sides, seeking in the applause of the public to satisfy his vanity. Look at the streets filled with the public and you will see as many criminals as people. All become guilty of wrongs against their fellow men, of contempt against God, of abuse against creatures; becoming guilty of everything, they bring upon themselves a terrible judgment.

And will you be able to get home safely, in the midst of so many and on all sides lurking misdeeds, which, wishing to rise and raise their eyes to heaven, will knock you down and stifle you?

It is difficult to be good in the midst of brooding iniquity, which, unable to change you to its hoof, will at least cook up great difficulties for you. The only tabernacle of peace is to break out of this whirlpool of malice and take up such a position that, safe from all pestilence, you may freely observe this terrible blight of the world. Invincible is the spirit that has abandoned external goods and, caring only for itself, encloses itself in the narrow tabernacle of its person. For such a one, the world is a prison and solitude a paradise.

4 It is of no use to remove oneself from the world, and not to turn the eyes of the soul to oneself, and not to exercise oneself scrupulously in virtue. A man has nothing good if he lacks virtue; there is no peace, no happiness, except in virtue.

The three objects in the universe correspond strangely to each other: in everything and above everything God, between sense things light, and between the qualities of the soul virtue.

God is the light and the giver of virtue to men; light is the benefit to the world and the image of God; virtue is the light of the soul, by which we are called sons of God and are (I John III, 1). Hence it is to this light that you should approach, purified in soul, if you wish to reach the pinnacle of the desired perfection.

For virtue is the perfection of man, the renewer of innocence, the fullness of all sweetness. It is the complement of nature, of itself incapable of supernatural good. She is the ease of doing good, helping us to live godly, enlightening our blindness, arming us against sin, uniting us with merit, winning us eternal life. In this state, you must first know thoroughly the essence of each virtue and its cause, for no one loves what he does not know.

Then you must constantly exercise yourself in virtue; if you lack the opportunity to do so, imitate the soldiers who, even in the midst of peace, march and manoeuvre to prepare for real war. Imagine that the world is accusing you of very serious crimes, that it is showering you with insults, that it is robbing you of your property, and so exercise patience, as if all this were actually happening. You will not be frightened by the sad reality if you prepare yourself for it in this way. The soldier who has already been wounded more than once is the bravest in battle.

5 An acquired virtue can only be acquired through long exercise. And you will know by the following signs whether you have acquired any of them.

Namely, if you feel that the sins opposed to a virtue have died out, or at least thinned out considerably; if you find it easy to keep bad motives in the reins of your mind and to guide them; if you perform virtuous deeds without difficulty and even with pleasure.

If you despise the prunings of the frigid and are ready at any time to perform works not to the taste of imperfect people. If you have an innate loathing for evil deeds, to which you used to be compulsively inclined.

If you do not like even dreaming indecent dreams or sinful dreams at all. If you strive to do what you praise and admire in others, and abstain from what you condemn in others.

If you do not indulge even in dreaming indecent or at all sinful dreams. If you strive to do that which you commend and admire in others, and abstain from that which you condemn in others.

If you do not disdain even the smallest transgression, and you guard against and avoid even the slightest imperfection.

If you see or hear that your companions are succeeding in wealth or importance, and you do not envy them or worry.

If you sincerely confess your faults and wish to be corrected and admonished by all. If, content with the testimony of your conscience, you keep good deeds within you and conceal them, for the mere accomplishment of a good deed is a reward.

If you continually exercise yourself in virtue; for true virtue never grows dull, but is always active.

‐———–

Cardinal John Bona’s Guide to Heaven. Translated by the Rev. Dr. Jan Bernacki. Tarnów 1900.