517 part iv: meditations for weekly retreats the Wisest of all the wise asserts. Finally, resolve to uphold and exercise modesty, and to avoid and cast out the most hurtful and destructive vice of immodesty. 2. Consider that modesty is the custodian or feeder of virtues, or their guide, if you will. Besides the already identified, there are many other vices contrary to it, as shown below: 1) An improper attitude or rather discomposure of the body, like agitated arms or some other part of the body; then a loud, unpleasant, and also flippant way of speaking. This vice includes: all unbecoming jokes, wits, curses, murmurs, lies, insults, [f.169r] quarrels, brawls, blasphemies, buffoonery, sarcastic remarks, words seasoned with disorderly jokes, calumnies, slanders, humiliations, and defamations. In regard to the eyes however, the eyes are not only repugnant to modesty when they are restless and wild, but also when they are exceedingly downcast and lowered and coerced by a kind of continuous struggle. 2) Adverse to modesty also is the irreverence towards persons to whom due honor must be shown, such as the elderly, as well peers and those lower in rank. 3) As to hearing, these things destroy modesty: showing interest in gossiping or spreading gossip, whether they are secular and external, or domestic and internal; although unrelated to you, they create the greatest distraction of your spirit and result in great damage; lending your ear to conversations redolent of the world and intended to stir unhealthy curiosity or to injure somebody’s good name. Many other countless vices of immodesty in regard to hearing could be added here. 4) It is a grave imperfection and a greatly reprehensible thing to frequent, enter, search, or plunder somebody else’s rooms without any just cause; indeed, without authorization, but out of sheer curiosity; [as is] inquiring into, judging, and condemning somebody else’s works without an edifying benefit; opening books without necessity, flipping them back and forth, scratching, damaging and staining them; and finally, not avoiding even the slightest actions that either introduce or suggest laxity and prepare the end of our perfection and the ruin of salvation.
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