It is far better to mortify the body through the spirit than the spirit
through the body. To deaden and beat down the body instead of trying to
reduce the swelling of an inflated spirit is like pulling back a horse by
its tail. It is behaving like Balaam, who beat the ass which carried him,
instead of taking heed to the peril which threatened him and which the poor
beast was miraculously warning him to avoid.
One of the three first Postulants who entered the Convent of the
Visitation, established by me at Belley, left it before taking the novices'
habit being unable to understand how Religious could be holy in an Order in
which she saw so few austerities practised. She has since then, however,
been disabused of her error, and has repented of it.
At that time she was under the guidance of those who considered that
holiness consisted in mortifications in respect of food and clothing: as if
the stings of the flesh cease to be felt when you no longer eat of it,
and as if you could not be temperate over partridges and gluttonous over
cabbages.
Our Blessed Father, writing to a novice in one of his convents who was
perplexed on this subject, says: "The devil does not trouble himself much
about us if, while macerating our bodies, we are at the same time doing our
own will, for he does not fear austerity but obedience.
"What greater austerity can there be than to keep our will in subjection
and In continual obedience, Reassure yourself then, O lover of voluntary
penance, if, indeed, the works of self-love deserve to be called penances!
When you took the habit after many prayers and much consideration, it was
thought good that you should enter the school of obedience and renunciation
of your own will rather than remain the sport of your own judgment and of
yourself.
"Do not then let yourself be shaken, but remain where our Lord has placed
you. It is true that there you suffer great mortifications of heart, seeing
yourself so imperfect and so deserving of reproof and correction, but is
not this the very thing you ought to seeks mortification of heart and
a continual sense of your own misery? Yet, you say, you cannot do such
penance as you would. My dear daughter, tell me what better penance can be
given to an erring heart than to bear a continual cross and to be always
renouncing self-love?"