16th Tuesday after Pentecost

Summary of the Morrow's Meditation

We will this week continue our meditations upon mortification, and we shall see that we must mortify self-will: 1st, in what it wills; 2d, in what it desires. We will thence deduce the resolution: 1st, to seize with thanksgiving every opportunity which Providence presents to us for mortifying our will and our desires in order to accustom them always to bend beneath the yoke of duty; 2d, to lead, today, an orderly and well-regulated life, not granting anything to caprice. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of Our Lord: "Father, not My will, but Thine be done" (Luke xxii. 42).

Meditation for the Morning 

Let us adore Our Lord giving us throughout the whole of His life a continual example of mortification of His self-will. Never did He do anything but what His heavenly Father willed He should, and in the manner which He willed, and because He willed it (Matt. xxvi. 39; Mark xiv. 36; Luke xxii. 42). Let us thank Him for this beautiful example, and let us ask of Him grace to follow it.

FIRST POINT

We must Mortify Self-will in what it Wills

Let us believe with a lively faith that we are not placed in this world to do our own will, but to do the will of God; that we are not here to do our own pleasure or to amass riches, but to do what God demands from us, in the condition and in the place wherein He has placed us (I Pet. iv. 2; Rom. xii. 2).Our will does not belong to us; it belongs to God, as does our whole being; it is His property. If He leaves it in the hands of our own counsel, it is in order that we should offer to Him a free homage of it, honorable to His greatness, meritorious to ourselves, but not to authorize us to dispose of it according to our own liking and to do what pleases us. Jesus Christ Himself followed this rule; never in anything did He seek His own satisfaction (Rom. xv. 3). In accordance with His example, we ought to bend our will in all things to the good pleasure of God. If what His good pleasure demands is in agreement with our own liking, we must abstract from it what belongs to our natural taste, and only think of what is the divine good pleasure; and if what He commands does not please us, we must rejoice to do the will of God with a more assured and perfect purity of intention. Never, then, ought we to say, "I do this because I will to do it," or because it pleases me to do it; but rather we must say, "I do this because it is in the order of my duties and of the good pleasure of God." To act otherwise is not to act like a Christian; it is to steal away our life from the essential dominion of God over us; it is to lose the merit of our works. To act in conformity with this precept is to live a perfect life; it is to content God, since in all things we follow His good pleasure, of which we have the faithful expression in a good rule of life, which fixes the order of our actions, which marks the time and the manner of them, in such a way that no duty shall be neglected and that all shall be well ordered. It is to content our neighbor, since the divine good pleasure which we follow in all things disposes us to be always amiable towards everyone, and never allows our own will to come in contact with the will of another. Lastly, it is to assure to ourselves happiness in this present life, because we will only what God wills, we see in everything the divine will which rules or permits everything, and we feel a delightful pleasure in saying, "I am doing the good pleasure of God."

SECOND POINT

We must Mortify Self-will in what it Desires.

It would be impossible to express all the evil which desires and the passions they excite cause to the soul: desires which are too lively and too eager; passions too impetuous and too ardent; desires which are ceaselessly multiplied, which, opposed as they are the one to the other, tear and divide the soul, each in its own direction, tending towards objects incapable of satisfying it; passions which are vain and unjust, which are impatient and murmur if they are not quickly satisfied. To-day we desire one thing, to-morrow we desire another. We are never content in our place, because we imagine that we should be better in a place where we are not. We seek happiness here and there, in the world, in solitude, and nowhere do we find it, because we seek it in the satisfaction of our desires, instead of going to seek it at its true source, which is mortification of these same desires. Hence, in the world all complain, all speak only of unhappiness. "I am born," they say, "to be unhappy; I was wretched in such or such a position; I am still so, and I shall be so always." Yes, it will always be thus, because we never give ourselves up to an unruly desire without causing ourselves trouble and anxiety; because disgust and weariness necessarily accompany the man who listens to his caprices; because we never satisfy an unruly will without feeling remorse of conscience, which reproaches us with having yielded to passion; because, lastly, the man who has attachments does not know what interior repose is; he is indignant if attempts are made to deprive him of what he loves; he is afflicted if he thinks that he may be deprived of it, or if he is obliged to deprive himself of it.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.