85. Third Monday of Lent

Meditations no. 131 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Docility in spiritual direction so as to remove from our heart whatever is not God’s.

The Old Testament tells the story of Naaman, a general of the king of Syria’s army, who caught leprosy, and travelled to Israel. A maid-servant had told him about a prophet of Yahweh who lived in Samaria and who could cure him of his disease. After a long trip, Naaman came with his horses and his chariots and halted at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored, and you shall be clean.

But Naaman, unaccustomed to God’s ways, did not understand. I thought that he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?

He wanted to be healed. That was why he had undertaken that long journey. But he had been expecting a spectacular cure. When he was on the verge of returning to his country in disappointment, his more sensible servants said to him: My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, when he says to you, “Wash, and be clean”?

Naaman came to his senses, and acknowledged humbly that his servants were right. He went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

An act of humility, his docility in following the advice he had received, made the miracle possible. This is a lesson we must never forget. In the fraternal chat and in Confession we are given guidance that might, from a human point of view, seem to be of little use in combating our evil inclinations and overcoming our weaknesses. However, we will receive God’s grace when we put this advice into practice with ready faith and obedience.

Lord, by your grace and the aid of our heavenly Mother … I will let the Directors’ hands mould me and make me strong, sturdy, effective and attractive in your sight. Then I will truly have the clean, supernatural blood of our family coursing throughout my whole interior life and external work.

Through responding to God’s grace, soul and body become divinized.

Our Lord says in the Gospel: There were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. St Ambrose comments: From these words of the Lord, it is clear that no one is cured or cleansed from the stains of the body except the one who makes an effort to bring it about. For God’s favours are not granted to those who sleep but to those who watch. We must respond to divine grace, which means staying alert, and being quick to reject anything that might turn us away from God.

Our senses are like the doors of the soul. Our spiritual powers are fed by what the senses give them. Therefore, we must guard our senses, so as not to admit into our soul anything harmful.

Dissipation. You slake your senses and faculties in whatever pool you meet on the way. And you can feel the results: unsettled purpose, scattered attention, deadened will and quickened concupiscence. Subject yourself once again to a serious plan that will make you lead a Christian life. Or you’ll never do anything worthwhile, our Father reminds us. As St Augustine says, to be truly chaste is to have your sight fixed on God and live as an offering to him.

Our Founder tells us that we have to fight against our passions by increasing our life of piety daily. I will never get tired of saying that nobody in the Work can imagine they lack the necessary means for the fight. Nor will I get tired of repeating that if anyone abandons those means, they will fall. It’s a clear symptom: when the energies of someone’s soul are habitually enfeebled, when they are dull or their life is languid, you can be sure that they already abandoned the fight some time ago; that their hearts are empty of God and filled instead with selfishness, love of comfort, and the flesh … So feed your soul on God’s love. Give it to him completely!

We must love God with our whole being, even with our body and our senses, which must be instruments in his service. Our goal of centring our whole being on God is a hard one, because the senses tend towards what is immediately pleasing and gratifying. That is why we must struggle. As St Gregory remarks: There are some who want to be humble without being despised. They want to be content with what they have without suffering need. They want to be chaste without mortifying their body … When they try to acquire virtues while fleeing from the efforts that virtue requires, it is as though they hoped to win a war by living comfortably in the city, without having anything to do with the combat on the battlefield. Of course they cannot win in that way. The conquerors are those who remain awake and vigilant, those who battle with the enemy, those who regularly mortify themselves. And these people are precisely the happiest. Because you need a heart which is in love, not an easy life, to achieve happiness.

The fruits of temperance.

My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God, we proclaim in the Entrance Antiphon of today’s Mass. It is an invitation to guard our heart and senses, our soul and body, for God alone. And since by ourselves we cannot do anything, the Church prays: God of mercy, free your Church from sin and protect it from evil. Guide us, for we cannot be saved without you.

How are we to keep our heart and our senses for God alone? By loving the virtue of temperance, which, as St Augustine says, subdues and quietens those passions which long for things that turn us away from God’s laws and his goodness, or, what is the same thing, from bliss … This is the function of temperance: to strip us of our former nature and renew us in God, that is to say, to despise all the pleasures of the body and human praises and direct all our love to the things of God, which are unseen.

Temperance is self-mastery, our Father reminds us. Not everything we experience in our bodies and souls should be given free rein. Nor ought we to do everything we can do. It is easier to let ourselves be carried away by so-called natural impulses, but this road ends up in sadness and isolation in our own misery.

Some people don’t want to deny anything to their stomach, eyes, or hands. They refuse to listen when they are advised to lead clean lives. As for the faculty of generating new life - a great and noble faculty, a participation in God’s creative power - they misuse it and make it a tool for their own selfish ends.

But I never did like talking about impurity. I would rather consider the rich rewards that temperance brings. I want to see men who are really men, and not slaves to cheap glitter, as worthless as the trinkets that magpies gather. A manly person knows how to do without those things that may harm his soul, and he also comes to realize that his sacrifice is more apparent than real; for living in this way, with a spirit of sacrifice, means freeing oneself from many kinds of slavery, and savouring instead, in the depths of one’s heart, the fullness of God’s love.

Life then takes on again shades and tones which intemperance had tended to blur. We find ourselves able to care for the needs of others, to share what is ours with everyone, to devote our energies to great causes. Temperance makes the soul sober, modest, understanding. It fosters a natural sense of reserve which everyone finds attractive because it denotes intelligent self-control. Temperance does not imply narrowness, but greatness of soul. There is much more deprivation in the intemperate heart which abdicates from self-dominion, only to become enslaved by the first caller who comes along ringing some pathetic, tinny cow bell.

If we appeal lovingly to our Lady, as her children, temperance will bear fruit in us; and our heart, our senses, our whole life, will be filled with God. If you want to be faithful, be very Marian. Our Mother, from the time of the angel’s message, until her agony at the foot of the Cross, had no other heart, no other life, than that of Jesus.

Go to Mary with the tender devotion of a son, and She will obtain for you the loyalty and self-denial that you desire.