Lest You Remain

From Founder’s Writings ( Inspectio cordis, f. 170r–171r) 1. Focus your attention on all the virtues you should contend for with the greatest zeal, search for them with the utmost effort and practice them willingly. Enumerate all in your thought, probing them carefully, especially those, which are suitable for your vocation and perfection. Pay attention also to your shortcomings and vices, which remain in opposition to these virtues. How careful have you been in avoiding talkativeness, which destroys the virtues and distracts your spirit? How concerned have you been for keeping silence, the guardian of the same virtues and a concentration of your spirit? How have you practiced them in your life? How have you cultivated the virtues of kindness, benevolence and gentleness, the greatest adornments of a religious? How much effort have you put into obtaining patience, this hereditary virtue of Christians, and of religious in particular; and to gain courage and magnanimity which stands out with it, that it opposes all that resists perfection? How zealous have you been in fighting such vices as pusillanimity, vain fear, uncontrollable sadness, impatience and anger? How many times have you neg- lected and how many times have you practiced giving yourself over to the will of God (resignation), the main source of internal peace and perseverance? Have you progressed in your religious perfection, not in the sphere of honors, knowledge, positions, eminent functions, but in respect to poverty, humility, obedience, love for God, self-contempt and other virtues which constitute religious perfection? Think whether you have progressed in the spiritual exercises proportionally to the graces which God has bestowed upon you, for example in prayer, contemplation? Or have you regressed? Since according to the often-repeated opinion of the masters of spir- ituality: “Not to progress means to stop and not to proceed means to draw back.” Who does not have such an experience from his daily life! 2. Contemplate to what you have more devoted yourself, while in the religious order: mortifications or comforts? To what have you disposed your spirit: to breaking your will or making it? To fulfilling the wishes of others, your superiors in particu- lar, or to following your own desires? If you have been more busy pursuing your desires, be certain that a false spirit has guided you. If you did otherwise, do not have any doubts that you guided yourself in the right direction and in accordance with your vocation. To answer this call, cherish and also help the smaller new sparks of God’s love for practicing the virtues to grow, favoring them with your efforts and desire for progress and actual development. If you hold yourself in contempt, you will feel how sweet is the Lord! If you detach yourself completely from the world, you will experi- ence how bitter it is! What tastes and what smells do those people experience, who not only taste but also absorb carnal pleasures, worldly delights and drinks from Program of Vigils 45