Sound Familiar?

St. John of the Cross: "Many from want of knowledge use spiritual goods for the sole satisfaction of the senses, and their spirit therefore remains void.  The soul is in great measure corrupted by sensible sweetness, and draws off all the life-giving waters of grace before they reach the spirit, which is left dry and barren.  Scarcely one can be found who is not subject to this tyranny of the senses."

Living on the surface of the soul, we come to live on the surface in everything; for he who knows not how to penetrate within the soul has forgotten how to penetrate into the depths of anything else.  He is taken up with externals, and matters of detail become chiefly important to him.  Thus in duties and obligations, he sees the letter rather than the spirit, the bark rather than the sap, the body rather than the soul.  He knows that such and such details are prescribed, and certain others forbidden.  He sees the external side of the law, the material fact of the prescription, and this is the only thing to which he attaches a certain amount of importance.  He does not see the inward side, the reason and end of the prescription, the spirit of the law; and thus he brings an external and mechanical fidelity to the material observance of the letter which he sees and which killeth, without drawing any inspiration from the spirit which quickeneth, and which he does not see.

We so rarely ask ourselves to what deep needs correspond the observances imposed by the law or introduced by custom!  We are no longer acquainted with needs which are deep.  Above all we want external agitation and surface sensations; and as these are not to be found in the law, we go on to seek for them in factitious practices which are calculated to produce emotions.  In the meantime, so far as what is of obligation is concerned, we are satisfied with keeping a watch upon externals; for this, indeed, costs us less.  "The mind dwells in the elementary, in the word only, and does not really enter into the region of thought.  For want of piety, the mind neither goes from the word to the idea, nor from the idea to the soul, and still less from the soul to God."  And in this way, a soul whose fidelity to external practices leaves nothing to be desired does not make any progress, because it does not enter within where it would draw the water of life; it is like an automaton, the movement of which is regulated throughout, but remains ever the same.  This is materialism in piety.

Being attached to external practices, the soul cannot soar.  It is imprisoned, chained, stuck fast.  Seeing things in their littleness, it becomes small and cramped.  Petty practices make petty souls; for the soul always takes its proportion from the things to which it becomes attached.  I become little if I am attached to little things, or rather, to the petty side of things; for even little things have a great side, as great things have a petty side.  There are souls who only know how to get attached to the smaller side of things, whether the things be great or small; and hence they become mean and narrow.  Others, on the contrary, have ever in view the greater aspects to which they become attached, and which constantly help to make them expand.

In piety, as, indeed, in all other matters, the external is the smaller side.  As soon as I give it importance, everything within me begins to get wasted and mean; my spiritual horizon grows narrow, I become the slave of trifles, which check my expansion.  I suppose that a few infidelities in things external kill piety, and this is unfortunately true of mine, which is altogether outward.  Thus I am faithful to my petty practices and become imprisoned in them: if I neglect them, I have noting left.  This is common experience; and this is why we find unhappy souls constantly playing fast and loose, resuming their practices, forsaking them by degrees, and then coming back to them only to give them up again.

Does all of the foregoing sound familiar?  It should.  Does the sentence “He is taken up with externals, and matters of detail become chiefly important to him” remind you of a place caught up in externals (“putting on the show”), while internally it is rife with abuse and corruption?  It should.

The reason, by the way, for the change in font from “Arial” to “Bookman Old Style” is that the Arial text is excerpted from the preface of a book entitled The Interior Life (edited by the Very Rev. Father Joseph Tissot). Although it was written in the late nineteenth century, its relevance is such that it could have been written yesterday.  It is one of those rare classics that is truly classic in that it will always be relevant and apposite, no matter what the time frame – but especially in today’s -- for that calcified segment of the traditional Catholic world that is caught up in externals but rotting on the inside with abuse, corruption, and – sadly, in some cases -- perversion.