examination of the heart 366 tues? Grasp the second plank,171 thanks to which you will be able to attain holy riches and find your lost salvation. Be born again in the spirit of humility and a heart filled with contrition, and God will not despise you: He will give you pardon, will grant grace, and will not exclude you from glory. 2. “of water and the Holy Spirit” (cf. Jn 3:5). Behold the best way of healing the two chief vices! An angry disposition is brought about when the element of water prevails in a man. Hence those inclined to anger are called lymphatic,172 as if swamped by excessive waters, they overflow beyond the shore of reason and are similar to a sea that is restless and shaken by tempests. Lust is not only generated from fire, but it is fire itself. Hence somebody, rightly prescribing a remedy for it, said: “Withdraw firewood from the fireplace,”173 calling lust a bonfire. Since opposites are, in fact, healed by opposites, you too, be reborn in water and the Holy Spirit; the Spirit having descended upon the apostles in tongues of fire (cf. Acts 2:3). With the flow of tears from your eyes wash away the sins you have committed through fire. Make up by the fire of charity for whatever you, as a lymphatic, committed through the abundance of water. Demand both things earnestly from the Lord, while He is with you as your Guest. Kindle, O Jesus, in the inmost part of 171 Cf. Francis X. Murphy, NCE, Vol. XI, p. 85 (s.v. Penitential Controversy): In the Penitential Controversy, we read that Tertullian “spoke of duabus plancis [(i.e., two planks)] in the sense of Baptism and one other chance for safety given to those who relapsed into grave sins after the total forgiveness in Baptism.” What he meant is that the first plank is Baptism and the second plank of rescue is the Sacrament of Penance, by which those grave sins are remitted. 172 Lymphaticus, according to Cassell’s Latin Dictionary, means “raving, raging, insane, mad, [or] frantic,” and lympha means a “clear spring or river water” (CLD, p. 327). St. Stanislaus makes a connection between these meanings of lymphaticus as related to anger and lympha as related to water. However, “lymphatic” nowadays is understood of persons in a contrary sense, namely as “sluggish, without energy,” and “a sluggish condition was formerly thought to be due to too much lymph in the body” (Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English, Eds. David B. Guralnik and Victoria Neufeldt, 3rd ed.). Cf. FLL, vol 3, Typis Seminarii, Patavii 1871, p. 136 s.v. Lymphaticus). 173 This is probably taken from a poetical source.
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