Lest You Remain

11 Reflect on the deficiencies, which preclude God’s love. You possess them when you are cold on your path to perfection, which you entered out of love for God; when you do not spread God’s glory; when you humiliate the Order; when you are content with a lower standard of perfection, and give up in your strivings, out of negligence or maliciousness; when you place obstacles to allowing the great and the Highest God, to enter your heart freely, to stay in it and to rule it; when you long for the world again, praise it or even delight in it in your thoughts; when you do not want to avoid, and remove from yourself, any smaller or bigger sin, or even tiny imperfections and opportunities for them. All of this, to a large extent, opposes the love of God and gravely offends the infinite Goodness. ( Inspectio Cordis ) 12 You will not err, thinking that whoever lacks love, does not have any virtues. Futile and fruitless is the teaching, which does not come from love. False and use- less is obedience, which is taken up and performed without love. Vain and false is humility, joined to a speck of hatred. Paltry and pompous is chastity, without its companion and caretaker, holy love. Uncaring and dishonorable is poverty, prac- ticed without love. Deficient is gentleness, not born out of love. Frigid is any per- fection, virtue or action not warmed by love. In this case, without love, we are not able to perform any heroic deeds. Thus it happens to many that they take their hands off the plow, stop in the middle of the road, shamefully abandon good works, because they lacked love. It does not impel, animate or support them. I do not hesitate to claim, that even our wonderful Savior, would not have been able to perform the greatest work of human salvation, if He had not had love. Could He achieve this without the virtue, for which, He took up the work in the first place, moved by the highest love? Whatever He did for our life, whatever He had to bear, whatever He suffered, all this needs to be ascribed to Love, which alone achieved it. ( Inspectio Cordis ) Fr. Founder’s Selected Thoughts on the Religious Life 143