| We do not now speak of those great elect souls whom God by a most special favour so maintains and confirms in his love, that they run no hazard of losing it.
We speak for the rest of mortals, to whom the Holy Ghost addresses these warnings: He that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Labour the more that by good works you may make sure your calling and election. Whence he makes them make this prayer: Cast me not away from thy face; and take not thy holy spirit from me. And lead us not into temptation: that they may work out their salvation with a holy trembling, and a sacred fear, knowing that they are not more constant and strong to preserve God’s love than were the first angel with his followers and Judas, who receiving it, lost it, and losing it lost themselves for ever; nor than Solomon, who, having once left it, holds the whole world in doubt of his damnation; nor than Adam and Eve, David S. Peter, who being children of salvation, fell yet for a space from the love without which there is no salvation…
… Charity is sometimes weakened and depressed in the affections till it seems to be scarcely in exercise at all, and yet it remains entire in the supreme region of the soul. This happens when, under the multitude of venial sins as under ashes, the fire of holy love remains covered, and its flame smothered, though it is not dead or extinguished…
… This misery of quitting God for the creature happens thus.
We do not love God without intermission, because in this mortal life charity is in us as a simple habit, which, as philosophers have remarked, we use when we like and never against our liking. When then we do not make use of the charity which is in us, that is, when we are not applying our spirit to the exercises of holy love, but, when (keeping it busied in some other affair, or it being idle in itself) it remains useless and negligent, then it may be assaulted by some bad object and surprised by temptation…
… The love of God, which brings us as far as contempt of self, makes us citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem; self-love, which pushes us forward to the contempt of God, makes us slaves of the infernal Babylon.
It is true that only little by little we come to despise God, but we have no sooner done it than instantly, in a moment, holy charity forsakes us, or rather wholly perishes. Yes, for in this contempt of God does mortal sin consist, and one only mortal sin banishes charity from the soul, inasmuch as it breaks the connection and union with God, which is obedience and submission to his will: and as man’s heart cannot live divided so charity, which is the heart of the soul and the soul of the heart, can never be wounded without being slain: as they say of pearls, which being conceived of heavenly dew perish if any drop of salt water get within the shell that holds them. |