The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Thirteen

The good Dom Chautard explains the full damage of allowing the imagination to run wild has on the interior life: 

The disorder pursues its course. From the mind and the imagination it gets down into the affections. The heart is filled with nothing but will-o’-the-wisps. What is going to become of this dissipated heart, scarcely concerned anymore with the Kingdom of God within itself? It has become insensible to the joys of intimacy with Christ, to the marvelous poetry of the Mysteries, to the severe beauty of the Liturgy, to the appeals and attractions of God in the Blessed Eucharist. It is, in a word, insensible to the influences of the supernatural world. What will become of it? Shall it concentrate upon itself? Suicide! No. It must have affection. No longer finding happiness in God, it will love creatures. It is at the mercy of the first occasion for such love. It flings itself without prudence or control into the breach, without a care perhaps even for the most sacred of vows, nor for the highest interests of the Church, nor even for its own reputation. Let us suppose that such a heart would still be upset by the thought of apostasy—and profoundly so. But still, it feels far less fear at the thought of scandalizing souls. Thanks be to God, it is doubtless the exception for anyone to follow this course to the very limit. But is there anyone incapable of seeing that this getting tired of God, and accepting forbidden pleasures, can drag the heart down to the worst of disasters? Starting from the fact that “the sensual man perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God,” 1!l we must necessarily end up with: “He who was reared in the purple has embraced dung.” 20 Obstinate clinging to illusion, blindness of mind, hardness of heart all follow one another in progressive stages. We can expect anything. To crown his misfortunes, the will is now found to be, though not destroyed, reduced to’ such a state of weakness and flabbiness that it is practically impotent. Do not ask him to fight back with vigor; that would make a simple effort, and all you will get will be the despairing answer, “I can’t.” Now a man who is no longer capable of making any effort, at this stage, is on the way to dreadful calamities.  

In short, when one allows the imagination to run wild and subsequently throw themselves onto the love of creatures (as one cannot concentrate solely on themselves) for affection, they become a flurry of activity. They get caught up in how to attain this and that person's affection ... it is almost as if they live or die by the breath of others ... and will do anything to keep that person's affection.

This is not to say one cannot have affections for others or otherwise enjoy close friendships. It is only when we concern ourselves solely with these loves of creatures that it becomes a problem ... an easy problem to fall into.

What happens to the soul when this is its prime concern? Well, while the soul is immortal, it has a finite capacity, created as it was to live inside a finite container. It gets tired. "Reduced to a state of weakness and flabbiness that it is practically impotent," as it were. It is no longer able to perform any good works at all, so worn down with performing good works that it is unable to keep at them.

Only when a soul maintains a relationship with God - through the interior life - is it able to stay the course and remember why it is doing these good works in the first place.

Friends, have we allowed love of creatures and affections to overshadow the love due to God?

"Maternity"

This was painted by Edmund Blair Leighton in 1917, and is titled simply, "Maternity."

There is more than one way to be a mother.

The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Twelve

Dom Chautard continues with his description of the total horrors of what awaits a soul if it does not take the olive branch - so to speak - from Our Lord standing at the door:

Now, let us go further and penetrate even into the depths of this soul whose features we are sketching. Thoughts play a most important part in the supernatural, as well as in the moral and intellectual life. Now what are the thoughts that occupy this man, and what direction do they take? Human, earthly, vain, superficial, and egotistical, they converge more and more upon self or upon creatures, and that, sometimes, with every appearance of devotion to duty and of sacrifice. This disorder in the mind brings with it a corresponding unruliness in the imagination. Of all our powers, this one is the most in need of being repressed at this stage. And yet it never even occurs to him to put on the brakes! Therefore, having free rein, it runs wild. No exaggeration, no madness, is too much for it. And the progressive suppression of all mortification of the eyes soon gives this crazy tenant of his soul opportunities to forage wherever it wills, in lush pastures!

As Dom Chautard said earlier, "Everything links up. Deep calls to deep." Or, as Holy Mother Church has solemnly repeated throughout the ages, "How we pray affects how we believe and how we live." 

Defects in one's prayer life has detrimental effects on how a person thinks. Indeed, it creates a disorder that spreads into other aspects of one's prayer life, as Dom Chautard has illustrated elsewhere.

Friends, have we allowed proud, vain, superficial and egotistical thoughts (admittedly hard to separate from one another) to invade our prayer life? Have we let our imagination run wild with what we think we are capable of doing - to the point where our planned actions and ideas are unattainable simply because of the height they are at?

Dom Chautard's last sentence here seem to refer to the consumption of knowledge that a soul has no right to know - "suppression of all mortification of the eyes" and "forag[ing] ... in lush pastures" - and this in turn feeds the imagination to assume such lofty heights and thus despoil otherwise lush pastures. It is a firm warning if that is what it means.

If anyone has another interpretation of the last sentence, suggestions are welcome in the combox.

The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Eleven

Dom Chautard's notes on "The Active Worker with no Interior Life" is coming to its conclusion. Yesterday, we posted the fourth and final stage of a soul's descent into the "heresy of good works" - coldness towards the Sacraments - noting that there is hope for a soul who has descended into such a heresy.

For Dom Chautard, hope comes in the form of a nudge from the Heavenly Friend:

Thus deformed, the apostle lives outside of Christ, and as for the confidential words spoken by Jesus to His true friends: they are no longer for him. 

And yet, at long intervals, the heavenly Friend manages to reach him with a movement of remorse, a light, an appeal. He waits. He knocks. He asks to be let in. “Come to Me, poor wounded soul, won’t you come to Me? I will heal you.” Venite ad me omnes . . . et ego reficiam vos.1″ For I am your salvation: solus tua ego sum.1″ I came to save that which was lost: ‘ Venit Filius hominis quaerere et salvum facere quod perierat.” ” So gentle, so kind, so discreet, so urgent, this voice brings moments of emotion, and sentimental, evanescent urges to do better. But the door of the heart is only slightly ajar. Jesus cannot get in. These good movements in the tepid soul come to nothing at all. Grace goes by in vain, and will turn against the soul. Perhaps Jesus, in His mercy, to avoid piling up a huge store of wrath, will even cease His appeals. “Fear Jesus passing by, and never returning.”18 

These words paint both a benign and scary image on the reader, this one included. On the one hand, we have Our Lord standing at the door and knocking gently as He does, waiting to be let in. But since the door is ajar, and the soul does not hurry to open it and let the Lord in, He eventually stops knocking ... for our sake, it seems. 

It really brings home the verse from Scripture - "Turn away from Me, I never knew thee."

Do we really want Our Lord to say that to us at our particular judgement? Due to something we could have easily prevented or worked against?

The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Ten

In this tenth part of our series, Dom Chautard's charting of a soul's adoption of the heresy of good works comes to an end. First, it was a loss of an awareness of the supernatural foundations of one's good works. It was followed by the abandonment of both schedule and spiritual works. Then, upon its heels, the official prayer of the Church, the Breviary, was forgotten or otherwise diminished in its spiritual importance. Here, Dom Chautard details the final and most horrifying stage of one's descent into heresy: the detachment of their heart from the Sacraments, the spine of the Church.

FOURTH STAGE. Everything links up. Deep calls to deep. Now it is the SACRAMENTS. They are received and administered, no doubt, as something worthy of respect; but there is no longer any sense of the vital energy contained in them. The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle or in the holy tribunal of Penance is no longer able to make the springs of faith shudder even to the depths of his soul. Even the Mass, the Sacrifice of Calvary, has become a closed garden. Of couse, the soul is still far from sacrilege— let us at least believe that much! But there is no longer any reaction to the warmth of the Precious Blood. His Consecrations are cold; his Communions tepid, distracted, superficial. A familiarity without respect, routine, maybe even repugnance, are lying in wait for him now.

As Dom Chautard himself notes, "Everything links up. Deep calls to deep." Indeed they do.

A soul does not find themselves waking up one day in heresy. Heresy is procedural. Just like one's diminishing of horror at their sin is.

Friends, do we find ourselves at this fourth and final stage? Are our Communions tepid, lacking warmth, distracted and superficial? Is this persistent? Have we approached Communion clinically - almost robotically, even? Have we approached the sanctuary at Communion-time out of simple routine? Now, we must be wary of being so afraid to receive Him that we become Jansenists. But we must also be in the habit of receiving Him with the dignity, decorum and respect He deserves - lest we become little more than savages. 

Friends, where are we in the stages? 

Regardless of how far down we have gotten, there is always a sliver of hope.

That sense of hope and turning back to God is what Dom Chautard will detail in the coming segments of our series.

The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Nine

Having covered the first and second stages of how a soul gradually falls into the heresy of good works, Dom Chautard begins his description of the third stage emphatically:

Everything is now ripe for the — 

THIRD STAGE, of which the symptom is neglect in the recitation of the BREVIARY. The prayer of the Church, which ought to give the soldier of Christ joy and strength to lift himself up, from time to time, and let God carry him in a flight high above the visible world, has now become a very tiring duty to be borne with patience. The liturgical life, source of light, joy, strength, merit and grace for himself and for the faithful, is now nothing more than the occasion of a distasteful task, grudgingly discharged. The interior virtue of religion is more than affected by the disease. The fever for active works is beginning to dry it up altogether. The soul no longer sees the worship of God except insofar as it can be tied up with striking exterior display. The obscure and personal but heartfelt sacrifice of praise, of supplication, of thanksgiving, of reparation, no longer means anything to such a man. In the old days, when he was reciting his vocal prayers, he used to say with legitimate pride, as though to enter into rivalry with a choir of monks: I too “shall sing to Thee in the sight of angels.” In conspectu angelorum psallam tibi.’”‘ The sanctuary of this soul, once fragrant with the liturgical life, has become a public thoroughfare where noise and disorder reign. Exaggerated worry over business and habitual dissipation are enough to multiply his distractions tenfold. And, for the rest, he fights these distractions with less and less vigor. “The Lord is not in noise.” 14 Genuine prayer is no longer to be found in this soul. He prays in a rush, with interruptions that have not the slightest justification; all is done neglectfully, sleepily, with many delays, putting it off until the last minute, at the risk of being finally overcome by sleep. And, perhaps, now and again, he skips parts of the office and leaves them out. All of this transforms what should be a medicine into a poison. The sacrifice of praise becomes a long litany of sins, and sins which may end up by being more than venial.  

Lest anyone think by the mention of the word BREVIARY that this whole exercise is reserved for priests, it is not so. Laymen/laywomen can - some even say should - recite the official prayer of the Church. No matter what Hour we recite (we are certianly bound by less than those in the Church when it comes to this form of prayer), someone else in the world is reciting with us. It is a wonderful exercise. Dom Chautard is right to express horror at how a soul conducts itself when it abandons the breviary - be it priest, religious, or layperson.

The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Eight

Dom Chautard continues his description of the second stage of a soul descending into the "heresy of good works":

Now for a man in the active life to give up his meditation is tantamount to throwing down his arms at the feet of the enemy. “Short of a miracle,” says St. Alphonsus, “a man who does not practice mental prayer will end up in mortal sin.” And St. Vincent de Paul tells us: “A man without mental prayer is not good for anything; he cannot even renounce the slightest thing. “It is merely the life of an animal.’” Some authors quote St. Theresa as having said: “Without mental prayer a person soon becomes either a brute or a devil. If you do not practice mental prayer, you don’t need any devil to throw you into hell, you throw yourself in there of your own accord. On the contrary, give me the greatest of all sinners; if he practices mental prayer, be it only for fifteen minutes every day, he will be converted. If he perseveres in it, his eternal salvation is assured.” The experience of priests and religious vowed to active works is enough to establish that an apostolic worker who, under pretext of being too busy or too tired, or else out of repugnance, or laziness, or some illusion, is too easily brought to cut down his meditation to ten or fifteen minutes instead of binding himself to half an hour’s serious mental prayer from which he might draw plenty of energy and drive for his day’s work, will inevitably fall into tepidity of the will. In this stage, it is no longer a matter of avoiding imperfections. His soul is crawling with venial sins. The ever growing impossibility of vigilance over his heart makes most of these faults pass unnoticed by his conscience. The soul has disposed itself in such a manner that it cannot and will not see. How will such a one fight against things which he no longer regards as defects? His lingering disease is already far advanced. Such is the consequence of the second stage, which is characterized by the giving up of mental prayer and of a daily schedule.

Oh, how quickly the soul falls, and how quickly do they buy into the lies Satan has put before them, when they abandon serious mental prayer.

The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Seven

Having covered the first stage of a soul's descent into the "heresy of good works," Dom Chautard describes the second stage: the gradual dismissal of good works which would otherwise guard against mortal sin.

Here is the first part of his description:

SECOND STAGE. If the worker were a supernatural soul, being a slave of duty he would be greedy of his time, and regulate its use, living by a schedule. He would well realize that otherwise he would be living purely from morning to night. But if he has no supernatural basis, he will soon find out about it. Since there is no spirit of faith governing his use of his time, he gives up his spiritual reading. Or else, if he still reads anything at all, he makes no studies. It was all right for the Fathers of the Church to spend the whole week preparing their Sunday sermons! For him, unless his vanity is at stake, he prefers to improvise. Yet his improvisations always hit it off with singular aptness — at least that is what be thinks! He likes to read magazines rather than books. He has no method. He flutters about from one thing to another like a butterfly. The law of work, that great law of preservation, of morality and of penance, is something he manages to escape by wasting his free time, and by the extreme pains he takes to provide himself with amusements. Anything that would interfere with his free and easy ways, he considers tiresome, and a mere matter of theory — nothing practical. He does not have nearly enough time for all his works and social obligations, or even for what he deems the necessary care of his health, or his recreations. “Really,” says the devil to him, “you are giving too much time to pious exercises: meditation, office, Mass, work of the ministry. Something has to be cut out!” Invariably he begins by shortening the meditation, by making it only irregularly, or perhaps he even gets to the point where, bit by bit, he drops it altogether. The one indispensable requisite for remaining faithful to his meditation — namely, getting up at the right time — is all the more logically abandoned since he has so many good reasons for having gone to bed late the night before.

Without a schedule, made worse by the lack of spiritual works, man quickly falls prey to the devil. As the saints have told us through the ages, Satan finds an idle man easier to succumb to his willies than one who keeps his body and mind oriented towards God.