Of the imperfections into which some beginners are wont to fall, in the matter of the second capital sin, which is avarice, in the spiritual sense.
Many a beginner also falls at times into great spiritual avarice. Scarcely anyone is contented with that measure of the spirit which God gives; they are very disconsolate and querulous because they do not find the comfort they desire in spiritual things. Many are never satisfied with listening to spiritual counsels and precepts, with reading books which treat of their state; and they spend more time in this than in doing their duty, having no regard to that mortification, and perfection of interior poverty of spirit to which they ought to apply themselves. Besides, they load themselves with images, rosaries, and crucifixes, curious and costly; now taking up one, then another, now changing them, and then resuming them again. At one time they will have them of a certain fashion, at another time of another, prizing one more than another because more curious or costly. Some may be seen with an Agnus Dei, and with relics and medals, like children with coral.
I condemn here that attachment and clinging of the heart to the form, number, and variety of these things, because in direct opposition to poverty of spirit, which looks only to the substance of devotion; which makes use indeed of these things, but only sufficiently for the end, and disdains that variety and curiosity, for real devotion must spring out of the heart, and consider only the truth and substance which the objects in question represent. All beyond this is attachment and greed of imperfection; he who will go on unto perfection, must root out that feeling utterly.
I knew a person who for more than ten years used continually, without interruption, a cross rudely formed of a piece of blessed palm, and fastened together with a common pin bent backwards, until I took it away. This was a person not deficient in sense and understanding. I knew another who had a rosary made of the backbones of fish, and whose devotion, I am certain, was not on that account of less value in the eyes of God; for it is clear that the cost or workmanship of these contributed nothing to it.
Those beginners, therefore, who go on well, do not rely on visible instruments, neither do they burden themselves with them, nor do they seek to know more than is necessary for acting rightly; their sole object is to be well with God and to please Him; their avarice consists in that. With a noble generosity they give up all they possess; and their delight is to be poor for the love of God and their neighbour, disposing of everything according to the laws of this virtue; because, as I have said, their sole aim is real perfection, to please God in all things and themselves in nothing.
The soul, however, cannot be perfectly purified from these imperfections, any more than from the others, until God shall have led it into the passive purgation of the dark night, of which I shall speak immediately. But it is expedient that the soul, so far as it can, should labour, on its own part, to purify and perfect itself, that it may merit from God to be taken under His divine care, and be healed from those imperfections which of itself it cannot remedy. For, after all the efforts of the soul, it cannot by any exertions of its own actively purify itself so as to be in the slightest degree fit for the divine union of perfection in the love of God, if God Himself does not take it into His own hands and purify it in the fire, dark to the soul, in the way I am going to explain.
- from The Dark Night of the Soul, by Saint John of the Cross