Volume I, Treatise III, Chapter IX

That Our Distractions and Remissness Ought not to be Ascribed to Our Exterior Occpuations, but to Our Negligence Therein

From what has been said we may easily see that if our employments happen sometimes to distract us, and make us relent in our fervour, the fault is not in our employments, but in ourselves, who know not how to acquit ourselves of them. If you stop at the rind or exterior of the action, you will fatigue both mind and body to no purpose. The will of God, which is, as it were, the interior, the marrow and the substance of all things, ought to be your food and nourishment. Break the rind and penetrate to the marrow like the eagle, which Ezechiel speaks of, “Which carried away the marrow of the cedar” (Ezechiel 17:3), and say with the Psalmist: “Lord, I will offer unto you holocausts full of juice and marrow” (Psal. Ixv. 14); and by this means you will constantly advance in perfection. Martha and Mary are sisters—one neither hurts nor hinders the other; that is, action and contemplation prejudice not each other. But, on the contrary, prayer well made helps us to perform each action well; and each action well done helps us very much to pray well. If you feel, therefore, any trouble and disquiet in what you are about, it is because the help and assistance of prayer are wanting: ‘‘ Martha, Martha, you torment and trouble yourself about many things.” (Luke 10:40,41) Martha is troubled because her sister Mary does not help her; and, therefore, desiring her assistance, addresses herself to our Saviour, saying, “‘ Speak to her to help me.” Do you also endeavour to gain assistance from Mary, that is from prayer and meditation, and you will find that all your disquiet will soon vanish. The holy living creatures that appeared to Ezechiel “held their hands hid under their wings” (Ezechiel 1:8), to let us understand, that those who make profession of a spiritual life ought not to act but under the shadow of contemplation; and must unite meditation and action in such a manner, that the one be never separated from the other. Cassian says, that the ancient anchorets of Egypt ceased not to practise contemplation, though they Were most attentive to their work; and as long as their hands were employed in the duties of Martha, their hearts were entirely engaged in the exercises of Mary. And St. Bernard, speaking of this subject, says: “The principal care of those who devote themselves to spiritual exercises is to employ themselves in exterior things, in such manner that the interior head of devotion do not at all cool; but that the same function which weakens the body serve to give new strength to the mind.” (Bern. Ser. ad Solit.) It is, therefore, by no means true that exterior occupations impede devotion and interior recollection; on the contrary, they contribute thereto, For they, giving employment but to the body, the mind is quite at liberty to think VoL, I. K constantly on God. It is for this reason, an ancient religious, very much advanced in virtue, was used to say, that in religion, he envied extremely two sorts of persons, novices and lay-brothers; the first, because they were employed in nothing but in promoting their spiritual advancement; and the second, because not having their mind embarrassed by care, they might have it always disengaged, and free for prayer.

St. John Climacus relates, that in a monastery near Alexandria he found a cook who was exceedingly occupied in his employment, because he was every day to prepare meat for two hundred and thirty religious persons, besides strangers: and yet amidst all these his exterior labours, he failed not to be always recollected in himself, and to shed tears in very great abundance. St. John Climacus, much astonished at this, pressed him to tell him how, amidst so many embarrassments, he was able to preserve so great recollection of mind, and to obtain the gift of tears. I always imagine to myself, answered the brother, that it is God whom I serve, and not men; wherefore, I believe that I ought not to give myself any respite or repose; and the sight of the material fire furnishes me with a continual fountain of tears, by setting continually before my eyes the violence of the fire of hell. We read in like manner of St. Catherine of Sienna, that the persecution of her parents, who would oblige her to marry, went to such an excess, that believing the spiritual exercises she practised were what most of all hindered her from marrying, they deprived her of all liberty of being able to apply herself in secret to prayer; and employed her in the meanest offices of the house, putting her into the kitchen in the place of a slave whom they took out of it. But this holy virgin, instructed by the Holy Ghost, built herself a retreat in the bottom of her heart, and proposed to herself never to quit it, and she performed faithfully what she had proposed; so that though she was not permitted to remain in the apartment, which she before had in her parents’ house, any longer than they thought fit; yet she never left that she had made within her heart; so that though it were easy to deprive her of the one, it was impossible for them to-put her out of the other..For when she was employed in the most servile offices of the house, she looked upon her father and mother as representing Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin; and in the persons of her brethren, and the rest of the family, she represented to herself the apostles and the disciples of our Saviour.

Thus having her mind always filled with this idea, she performed all things with joy, thinking that it was Jesus Christ she served; and placing herself always in God’s sight, she enjoyed continually his presence, and shut herself up with him in the sanctuary of her heart. Hence she was wont to say to her confessor, when he was charged with any temporal employments, or had any journey to make; “Dear father, make within yourself a retreat, and endeavour never to forsake it.” Let us take this counsel to ourselves, and we shall find by experience, that all exterior employments that can be imposed upon us, so far from impeding, will, on the contrary, help us to interior recollection and continual prayer.

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