Spirituality of the Religious Life According to St. Stanislaus Papczyński 50 of Inspectio cordis, a process of a gradual departure from our sins and errors – including the false concepts of the spiritual life – is achieved during the purgative stage, prompting us to take on the spiritual battle in order to regulate our passions and to subordinate them to the law of supernatural love. Another characteristic trait of this stage is a growing knowledge of the things of God, including the rules of life with God and the knowledge of oneself. The path of purgation may also be called a time of eye-opening to the truth about God and man, and thus the truth about his inequity but also the truth about his dignity as a child of God. As Papczyński believes, it is important here that the “true knowledge of your sins, but also an abhorrence, sorrow and a swift repentance for them” be achieved with the comprehension of God’s mercy revealed in Christ, because it is on account of these sins that “the Son of God […] suffered so much.”66 To learn the truth about oneself, it is necessary to get to know God. However, on the other hand, man must learn “his passions and inequities” so that he could “learn the powers and perfections of God.”67 This “knowledge of God and of oneself ” is attained in various ways, but it always serves the one and some of them. As to the need to purify “the image,” he says: “Nor is it sufficient to apprehend the mere presence of God; we must also show in our actions and exterior deeds that we truly bear within us the living and unsullied image of God.” And then, quoting from St. Ambrose (De dignitate conditionis humanae, 2, PL 17, 611-612), he adds: “Therefore, let everyone pay more careful attention to the excellence of his first condition and acknowledge the venerable likeness to the Holy Trinity in himself, and strive by the nobility of his conduct, the exercise of the virtues and the dignity of merits to possess the honor of the divine likeness; so that when what he is like becomes manifest, it then appears that he is similar to Him who wondrously formed him in His likeness in the first Adam, and yet more wondrously reformed him in the second” (MTG, pp. 27-28, Stockbridge, 2013). 66 IC (See: 12. Saturday Morning, pt. 3 ) Cf. T. Rogalewski, Miłosierdzie gwiazdą… pp. 280-281. 67 It is worth citing here a longer excerpt from the above-quoted Inspectio cordis: “Therefore, if you want to know God, then first acquire a knowledge of yourself. Acquire a knowledge of your passions and imperfections if you have the intention of knowing the divine powers and perfections. After you have toiled sufficiently in attaining this knowledge of yourself, then you will easily know God. You labor in vain, when you seek to know the divine things without self-knowledge. If you will not strive to attain a knowledge of yourself, you will not know God. Woe to you, who do not know your Shepherd, for neither will he know you as his sheep.” (Feast of St. Adalbert, BHC, pt. 3)
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