We have been considering how blind is the natural understanding of man; and now we will see also how his heart is naturally weak and corrupted. When I say weak, I mean when there is a question of doing good; his heart is only too strong when there is a question of doing evil.
This will of man, which God created upright and pure, has been corrupted by original sin, and we are all born in this unfortunate and hereditary corruption. The order of creation has been reversed. Once the heart of man had a natural inclination to love God above all things. But since sin entered into the world, all our love is bestowed upon ourselves, and we love nothing but as it affects ourselves. Again, if this love of ourselves was reasonable, if we really understood our true interests, this very love would lead us quickly to God, our first beginning and our last end. But it is not reason, it is not our true interests, that regulate our self-love. This love is unreasonable, because it makes us our own end, and our own centre: it is contrary to our true interests, because it only looks to a present and temporary good, to a sensible advantage, and entirely loses sight of a divine and spiritual good, of supernatural and eternal advantages.
Hence it happens that from our earliest childhood we seek after earthly things with the whole strength of our souls; that we only look for happiness in the enjoyment of them; that the necessities and pleasures of our body occupy and enslave us; and that our soul, buried, so to speak, in matter and material things, either cannot rise at all, or only rises with the greatest difficulty towards spiritual things.
From this comes that terrible concupiscence, the source of almost all our sins. The saints knew this, and groaned over it, because they felt how humiliating it is for them, to how many temptations it exposes them, and how contrary it is to the primitive order, which made the soul subject to God, and the body to the soul. But the greater number of men, and even of Christians, instead of deploring this cruel malady, cherish it, take a pride in themselves for it, and would even think themselves unfortunate if they were not subject to it. For the man without passions seems to them a being without emotion and without life. And the man who fights against his passions, instead of yielding, passes, in their eyes, for a fool, and an enemy of his own happiness.
This is the cause of that frightful difficulty which we find in understanding, in appreciating, and in practising Christian morality, the end and aim of which is to destroy in us the reign of concupiscence. And if Christian morality seems to us beautiful, and reasonable, and worthy of the dignity of man, we must not think that we so regard it by our natural and human light. Never could it appear so to us if we were not enlightened by the rays of Divine grace. But from clearly seeing that the teachings of Christian morality are beautiful to the practice of it, how far it is! By the aid of grace we form good resolutions; we promise God that we will be faithful to Him; we think ourselves firm and immovable in virtue; but alas! at the first occasion, the first temptation, we fail; the least difficulty frightens us; the attraction of a sensible and present good makes us forget everything; in a word, we fall at every step; and it is impossible for us to raise ourselves up again by our own strength. What weakness! How humiliating it is!
I do not do the good I wish to do; but the evil I wish not to do, that I do. Again, if I wish to do good, although it may only be a feeble desire, and if I do not wish to do evil, this is all the gift of Divine grace; for the corruption and malice of my will are such, that its first natural movements would draw it away from good, and incline it to evil. We need not watch ourselves for a long time to discover this sad disposition. Our heart is almost always at war with reason. Reason advises us to do such and such a thing; passion advises us the exact contrary. We see, and we approve of, the better part; but we follow the worst. Even a pagan remarked this. This constant fight between reason and the passions keeps the soul in one continual state of agitation.
But this is only the beginning of our malice. Our natural malice is irritated at the forbidding of evil: it is angry with God, Who is the Author of this prohibition. It exhausts itself in reasonings in subtle arguments, to persuade itself that such a prohibition is unjust and tyrannical, and that man has a right to give himself up, without restraint and without measure, to the guidance of his passions. Listen to self-love; self-love wishes to be the master of all, he pretends that everything belongs to him; he has no respect for the rights of others. Any resistance that is opposed to what he desires seems to him an injustice. He envies others for what they have, and he has not; and not only does he envy them, but he tries by every means to take away from them what they have. And it is quite certain that passion would stop at nothing, if once it were strong enough to tear down the barriers. It is never the fear of God which arrests its fury; it is simply the fear of man, and of human laws: therefore passion will substitute fraud and deception, as much as it can, for violence. And the crime is committed in the heart, even if we are wanting in the courage and the means to carry it out. Many disorders are committed in the world; but incomparably more are committed in the secret of men's hearts, which are never able to be actually committed for want of occasion and resources. Whoever could look secretly upon all that men desire, resolve, and execute in the interior of their mind, would find them a thousand times more wicked than they appear outwardly.
Not only does the prohibition of evil irritate man; it is actually an additional attraction to make him commit evil. The law, far from arresting the will, only excites it; and the great charm of sin is that it is sin. Saint Paul has said it, and daily experience only shows it to us too well: it is quite sufficient for a thing to be forbidden us, to make us instantly desire to do it. A book, a picture, a play, have been forbidden to us; at once our curiosity is aroused, and we have no rest until it is satisfied. What has been hidden from us is the thing of all others we desire to know. What has been refused to us is the thing of all others we desire to have. It seems as if every law, every restraint, were an attempt against our liberty; and as if neither God nor man had any right to control our desires. Can the corruption and malice of our will be carried any further?
The worst of all is that instead of being covered with confusion at all these miseries, we glory in them: instead of condemning them, or at least excusing them, we seek to justify them; we boast of the evil we have done, and even of that which we have not really done; we give ourselves out for more wicked than we really are. The great triumph of libertines, when they are together, is to surpass themselves in this manner. And their only shame is when they see that others have succeeded in carrying their wicked pleasures and debaucheries farther than they themselves have.
If we do not feel ourselves capable of such excesses as these, we know ourselves but very imperfectly. The root of corruption is the same in all hearts; nothing is necessary but to give one's self up freely to any one single passion, and at once the corruption is developed. Let us go a little way into the depths of our own heart; let us recall what has happened there in such and such circumstances; let us see where such a desire, such an inclination, such a feeling would have led us, if education, and fear, and religion had not restrained us, or if the occasion had not been wanting. Let us be just to ourselves; and let us confess in all humility that if God had not specially watched over us there is no crime, however terrible, into which our natural corruption might not have led us. Let us thank God, both for those sins which He has forgiven us, and for those from which He has preserved us. And let us say, with Saint Augustine, that there is no crime which one man has committed which another man is not capable of, and which he would not, perhaps, commit, in very deed, if it were not for the Divine assistance.
The depth of our misery is so great that we could not possibly bear the full sight of it; and if God were to allow us to see it as it is, when we begin to give ourselves to Him, the sight would drive us to despair: therefore He only shows it to us by degrees, and with a reserve that is full of wisdom. But as this knowledge of our true selves is absolutely necessary for us to make us humble, watchful, and full of distrust of our own strength and confidence in God, by degrees, and gradually, as we grow stronger and advance in virtue, God will show us our natural corruption and our weakness. And by the greatness of the evil He will make us judge the price of the remedy; He will make us approach that dreadful abyss from which His grace has drawn us back, and will discover to us all the profoundness of its depth. Thus He made Saint Teresa see the very place in hell which she would have occupied if He had not called her to Himself by His infinite mercy. And it is thus that the sins we have actually committed, and those we might have committed but for the assistance of His grace, are made to serve as a foundation for our humility and our sanctity.
But God does not stop there with those souls which He designs to call to the highest perfection: He is not contented with giving to them a speculative knowledge of their misery; He will give to them an experimental knowledge. For this He waits until their will is so confirmed and rooted in good that there is no longer any fear that they will actually sin. Then He makes them experience the feeling of their corruption: He permits bad thoughts and evil desires of all kinds to take possession of their minds and their hearts; all their passions seem to be unchained; the devil joins his black suggestions to the inclinations of corrupt nature. These souls, in reality so pure, so full of horror for everything evil, are plunged into evil, and hemmed in by it; they think they have plunged themselves into it, and have surrounded themselves with it, through their own fault; they see themselves covered apparently with the most horrible sins; they imagine they have consented to these sins, when in reality they are farther from them than ever. Their Director, who knows so well what are their real dispositions, cannot succeed in reassuring them. God will keep them in this state until they have acquired a humility proportionate to the high degree of sanctity to which He intends to raise them. The lives of many of the greatest saints show us the truth of this, and mystical writers have given rules for the discernment of this state, and for the conduct of the favoured souls whom God causes to pass through this terrible trial. Saint Paul tells us of himself, that to hinder him from being filled with pride at the greatness of the revelations vouchsafed to him, God gave him a thorn in his flesh, and allowed the angel of Satan to buffet him. And he adds that when he asked and prayed God three times to deliver him from this trial, God answered him: My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness; that is to say, that when we feel most deeply our own weakness, it is then that we experience the strength of the Divine grace, and it is then that our virtue is really purified.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou