Our Blessed Father was speaking to me one day on the subject of exterior
perfection, and on the discontent expressed by certain Religions, who, in
their particular order, had not found the strictness and severity of rule
they desired. He said: "These good people seem to me to be knocking their
heads against a stone wall. Christian perfection does not consist in
eating fish, wearing serge, sleeping on straw, stripping oneself of one's
possessions, keeping strict vigils, and such like austerities. For, were
this so, pagans would be the more perfect than Christians, since many of
them voluntarily sleep on the bare ground, do not eat a morsel of meat
throughout the whole year, are ragged, naked, shivering, living for the
most part only on bread and water, and on that bread of suffering, too,
which is far harder and heavier than the blackest of crusts. If perfection
consisted in exterior observances such as these, they would have to go back
in perfection were they to enter even the most strictly reformed of our
Religious Houses, for in none is a life led nearly so austere as theirs.
"The question then is in what does the essential perfection of a Christian
life consist? It must surely in the first place include the assiduous
practice of charity, for exterior mortifications without charity are of no
account. St. Paul, we know, reckons martyrdom itself as nothing, unless
quickened by charity.
"I do not exactly know what standard of perfection they who insist so much
upon exterior mortification wish to set up.
"Surely the greater or lesser degree of charity is the true measure of
sanctity and the measure also of the excellence of religious rule. Now, in
what rule is charity, the queen of the virtues, more recommended that in
that of St. Augustine? which seems to be nothing but one long discourse on
charity.
"However, it is not a question of comparing one rule with another, it is
rather of noticing which rule is as a matter of fact best observed. For
even had other rules, in regard to the exterior perfectness of the life
they prescribe, every advantage over that of St. Augustine, who does
not know that it is safer to enter a community in which a rule of less
excellence is exactly observed, rather than another where a higher kind
of rule is preached but not kept? Of what use are laws if they are not
observed?
"The consequence, in my opinion, of the mistake made by those who put
over-much stress on esteem of mortification, is, that even Religious get
accustomed to make use in their judgments of those lying balances of which
the Psalmist speaks,[1] and that the simple-minded are forced to trust to
the guidance of blind leaders. Hence it has come to pass that true and
essential perfection is not what the majority of people think it to be, nor
is it reached by the road along which the many travel. May God have pity on
us, and bless us with the light of His countenance, so that we may know His
way upon the earth, and may declare His salvation to all nations, and may
He turn aside from us in this our day, that which He once threatened to
those who thought themselves wise: _Let them alone, they are blind leaders
of the blind._"[1]
[Footnote 1: Psalm lxi. 10.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xv. 14.]