Cardinal Mercier on Christian Mortification

The aim of Christian mortification is to counteract the evil influences which original sin continues to exert on our souls, even after Baptism has regenerated them.

Our regeneration in Christ, while completely wiping out sin in us, leaves us, none the less, very far indeed from original rectitude and peace. It was recognized by the Council of Trent that concupiscence, which is to say the triple covetousness of the flesh, the eyes and the pride of life, makes itself felt in us even after Baptism, in order to rouse us to the glorious struggles of the Christian life.[1] It is this triple covetousness which Scripture calls sometimes the old man, as opposed to the new man who is Jesus living in us and ourselves living in Jesus; and sometimes the flesh or fallen nature, as opposed to the spirit or to nature regenerated by supernatural grace. It is this old man or this flesh, that is to say the whole man with his twofold, moral and physical life, that one must, I do not say annihilate, because that is an impossibility so long as our present life continues, but mortify, which means to cause it to die, to reduce it almost to the powerless, inactive and barren state of a corpse; one must prevent it from yielding its fruit, which is sin, and nullify its action in all our moral life.

Christian mortification ought therefore to involve the whole man, to extend to every sphere of action in which our nature is able to operate.

Such is the purpose of the virtue of mortification; we shall explain its practice by running through, one after another, the many forms of activity in which it is manifested in our lives:

I. Organic activity or bodily life.
II. Sensible activity, which comes into play either under the form of sense-knowledge through the external senses or the imagination, or else under the form of sensible appetite or passion.
III. Rational and free activity, the principle of our thoughts and our judgements and of the decisions of the will.
IV. The exterior manifestation of the life of the soul or our exterior actions.
V. Our relations with our neighbor.[2]

Practice of Christian Mortification

I. Mortification of the body

1. In the matter of food, restrict yourself as far as possible to simple necessity. Consider these words which Saint Augustine addressed to God: "O my God, Thou hast taught me to take food only as a remedy. Ah! Lord, who is there among us who does not sometimes exceed the limit here? If there is such a one, I say that man is great, and must give great glory to Thy name." (Confessions, book X, ch. 31)
2. Pray to God often, pray to God daily to help you by His grace so that you do not overstep the limits of necessity and do not permit yourself to give way to pleasure.
3. Take nothing between meals, unless out of necessity or for the sake of convenience.
4. Practice fasting and abstinence, but practice them only under obedience and with discretion.
5. It is not forbidden for you to enjoy some bodily satisfaction, but do so with a pure intention, giving thanks to God. 
6. Regulate your sleep, avoiding in this all faint-heartedness, all softness, especially in the morning. Set an hour, if you can, for going to bed and getting up, and keep strictly to it.
7. In general, take your rest only in so far as it is necessary; give yourself generously to work, not sparing your labour. Take care not to exhaust your body, but guard against indulging it; as soon as you feel it even a little disposed to play the master, treat it at once as a slave.
8. If you suffer some slight indisposition, avoid being a nuisance to others through your bad mood; leave to your companions the task of complaining for you; for yourself, be patient and silent as the Divine Lamb who has truly borne all our weaknesses.
9. Guard against making the slightest illness a reason for dispensation or exemption from your daily schedule. "One must detest like the plague every exception when it comes to rules," wrote Saint John Berchmans.
10. Accept with docility, endure humbly, patiently and with perseverance, the tiresome mortification called illness.

II. Mortification of the senses, of the imagination and the passions

1. Close your eyes always and above all to every dangerous sight, and even have the courage to do it to every frivolous and useless sight. See without looking; do not gaze at anybody to judge of their beauty or ugliness.
2. Keep your ears closed to flattering remarks, to praise, to persuasion, to bad advice, to slander, to uncharitable mocking, to indiscretions, to ill-disposed criticism, to suspicions voiced, to every word capable of causing the very smallest coolness between two souls
3. If the sense of smell has something to suffer due to your neighbor's infirmity or illness, far be it from you ever to complain of it; draw from it a holy joy.
4. In what concerns the quality of food, have great respect for Our Lord's counsel: "Eat such things as are set before you." "Eat what is good without delighting in it, what is bad without expressing aversion to it, and show yourself equally indifferent to the one as to the other. There," says Saint Francis de Sales, "is real mortification."
5. Offer your meals to God; at table impose on yourself a tiny penance: for example, refuse a sprinkling of salt, a glass of wine, a sweet, etc.; your companions will not notice it, but God will keep account of it.
6. If what you are given appeals to you very much, think of the gall and the vinegar given to Our Lord on the cross: that cannot keep you from tasting, but will serve as a counterbalance to the pleasure.
7. You must avoid all sensual contact, every caress in which you set some passion, by which you look for passion, from which you take a joy which is principally of the senses.
8. Refrain from going to warm yourself, unless this is necessary to save you from being unwell.
9. Bear with everything which naturally grieves the flesh, especially the cold of winter, the heat of summer, a hard bed and every inconvenience of that kind. Whatever the weather, put on a good face; smile at all temperatures. Say with the prophet "Cold, heat, rain, bless ye the Lord." It will be a happy day for us when we are able to say with a good heart these words which were familiar to Saint Francis de Sales: "I am never better than when I am not well."
10. Mortify your imagination when it beguiles you with the lure of a brilliant position, when it saddens you with the prospect of a dreary future, when it irritates you with the memory of a word or deed which offended you.
11. If you feel within you the need to daydream, mortify it without mercy.
12. Mortify yourself with the greatest care in the matter of impatience, of irritation or of anger.
13. Examine your desires thoroughly; submit them to the control of reason and of faith: do you never desire a long life rather than a holy life, wish for pleasure and well-being without trouble or sadness, victory without battle, success without setbacks, praise without criticism, a comfortable, peaceful life without a cross of any sort, that is to say a life quite opposite to that of Our Divine Lord?
14. Take care not to acquire certain habits which, without being positively bad, can become injurious, such as habits of frivolous reading, of playing at games of chance, etc.
15. Seek to discover your predominant failing and, as soon as you have recognized it, pursue it all the way to its last retreat. To that purpose, submit with good will to whatever could be monotonous or boring in the practice of the examination of conscience.
16. You are not forbidden to have a heart and to show it, but be on your guard against the danger of exceeding due measure. Resist attachments which are too natural, particular friendships and all softness of the heart.

III. Mortification of the mind and the will

1. Mortify your mind by denying it all fruitless imaginings, all ineffectual or wandering thoughts which waste time, dissipate the soul, and render work and serious things distasteful.
2. Every gloomy and anxious thought should be banished from your mind. Concern about all that could happen to you later on should not worry you at all. As for the bad thoughts which bother you in spite of yourself, you should, in dismissing them, make of them a subject for patience. Being involuntary, they will simply be for you an occasion of merit.
3. Avoid obstinacy in your ideas, stubbornness in your sentiments. You should willingly let the judgements of others prevail, unless there is a question of matters on which you have a duty to give your opinion and speak out.
4. Mortify the natural organ of your mind, which is to say the tongue. Practice silence gladly, whether your rule prescribes it for you or whether you impose it on yourself of your own accord.
5. Prefer to listen to others rather than to speak yourself; and yet speak appropriately, avoiding as extremes both speaking too much, which prevents others from telling their thoughts, and speaking too little, which suggests a hurtful lack of interest in what they say.
6. Never interrupt somebody who is speaking and do not forestall, by answering too swiftly, a question he would put to you.
7. Always have a moderate tone of voice, never abrupt or sharp. Avoid very, extremely, horribly; all exaggeration.
8. Love simplicity and straightforwardness. The pretenses, evasions, deliberate equivocations which certain pious people indulge in without scruple greatly discredit piety.
9. Carefully refrain from using any coarse, vulgar or even idle word, because Our Lord warns us that He will ask an account of them from us on the day of judgement.
10. Above all, mortify your will; that is the decisive point. Bend it constantly to what you know is God's good pleasure and the rule of Providence, without taking any account either of your likes or your dislikes. Be submissive, even to your inferiors, in matters which do not concern the glory of God and the duties of your position.
11. Look on the smallest disobedience to the orders or even the desires of your superiors as if it were addressed to God.
12. Remember that you will practice the greatest of all mortifications when you love to be humiliated and when you have the most perfect obedience towards those to whom God wishes you to be subject.
13. Love to be forgotten and counted as nothing; it is the advice of Saint John of the Cross, it is the counsel of The Imitation of Christ: speak seldom either well or ill of yourself, but seek by silence to make yourself forgotten.
14. Faced with a humiliation, a reproach, you are tempted to grumble, to feel sorry for yourself. Say with David: "So much the better! It is good that I should be humbled."
15. Entertain no frivolous desires: "I desire few things," said Saint Francis de Sales, "and the little that I desire, I desire very little."
16. Accept with the most perfect resignation the mortifications decreed by Providence, the crosses and the labors belonging to the state of life in which Providence has placed you. "There, where there is less of our choice," said Saint Francis, "there is more of the good pleasure of God." We would like to choose our crosses, to have a cross other than our own, to carry a heavy cross which would at least have some fame, rather than a light cross which tires us by being unceasingly there: an illusion! it is our cross we must carry, not another, and its merit is not in what sort of cross it is, but in the perfection with which we carry it.
17. Do not let yourself be troubled by temptations, scruples, spiritual dryness: "What we do in time of dryness has more merit in the sight of God than what we do in time of consolation," says the saintly Bishop of Geneva.[3]
18. Do not fret too much about your imperfections but humble yourself because of them. To humble oneself is a good thing, which few people understand; to be troubled and vexed at oneself is something that everybody knows, and which is bad, because in that kind of distress and vexation self-love always plays the greater part.
19. Let us beware alike of the timidity and despondency which sap our courage, and of the presumption which is only pride in action. Let us work as if everything depended on our efforts, but let us remain humble as if our work were useless.

IV. Mortifications to practice in our exterior actions

1. You ought to show the greatest exactitude in observing all the points of your rule of life, obeying them without delay, remembering Saint John Berchmans, who said: "Penance for me is to lead the common life"; "To have the highest regard for the smallest things, such is my motto"; "Rather die than break a single rule."
2. In the exercise of your duties of state, try to be well-pleased with whatever happens to be most unpleasant or boring for you, recalling again here the words of Saint Francis: "I am never better than when I am not well."
3. Never give one moment over to sloth: from morning until night keep busy without respite.
4. If your life is, at least partly, spent in study, apply to yourself this advice from Saint Thomas Aquinas to his pupils: "Do not be content to take in superficially what you read and hear, but endeavor to go into it deeply and to fathom the whole sense of it. Never remain in doubt about what you could know with certainty. Work with a holy eagerness to enrich your mind; arrange and classify in your memory all the knowledge you are able to acquire. On the other hand, do not seek to penetrate mysteries which are beyond your intelligence."
5. Devote yourself solely to your present occupation, without looking back on what went before or anticipating in thought what will follow. Say with Saint Francis: "While I am doing this I am not obliged to do anything else"; "let us make haste very calmly; all in good time."
6. Be modest in your bearing. Nothing was so perfect as Saint Francis's deportment; he always kept his head straight, avoiding alike the inconstancy which turns it in all directions, the negligence which lets it droop forward and the proud and haughty disposition which throws it back. His countenance was always peaceful, free from all annoyance, always cheerful, serene and open; without however any merriment or indiscreet humor, without loud, immoderate or too frequent laughter.
7. He was as composed when alone as in a large gathering. He did not cross his legs, never supported his head on his elbow. When he prayed he was motionless as a statue. When nature suggested to him he should relax, he did not listen.
8. Regard cleanliness and order as a virtue, uncleanness and untidiness as a vice; do not have dirty, stained or torn clothes. On the other hand, regard luxury and worldliness as a greater vice still. Make sure that, on seeing your way of dressing, nobody calls it "slovenly" or "elegant," but that everybody is bound to think it "decent."

V. Mortifications to practise in our relations with our neighbour

1. Bear with your neighbor's defects; defects of education, of mind, of character. Bear with everything about him which irritates you: his gait, his posture, tone of voice, accent, or whatever.
2. Bear with everything in everybody and endure it to the end and in a Christian spirit. Never with that proud patience which makes one say: "What have I to do with so and so? How does what he says affect me? What need have I for the affection, the kindness or even the politeness of any creature at all and of that person in particular?" Nothing accords less with the will of God than this haughty unconcern, this scornful indifference; it is worse, indeed, than impatience.
3. Are you tempted to be angry? For the love of Jesus, be meek. To avenge yourself? Return good for evil; it is said the great secret of touching Saint Teresa's heart was to do her a bad turn. To look sourly at someone? Smile at him with good nature. To avoid meeting him? Seek him out willingly. To talk badly of him? Talk well of him. To speak harshly to him? Speak very gently, warmly, to him.
4. Love to give praise to your companions, especially those you are naturally most inclined to envy.
5. Do not be witty at the expense of charity.
6. If somebody in your presence should take the liberty of making remarks which are rather improper, or if someone should hold conversations likely to injure his neighbor's reputation, you may sometimes rebuke the speaker gently, but more often it will be better to divert the conversation skillfully or indicate by a gesture of sorrow or of deliberate inattention that what is said displeases
7. It costs you an effort to render a small service: offer to do it. You will have twice the merit
8. Avoid with horror posing as a victim in your own eyes or those of others. Far be it from you to exaggerate your burdens; strive to find them light; they are , in reality, much more often than it seems; they would be so always if you were more virtuous.

Conclusion

In general, know how to refuse to nature what she asks of you unnecessarily.

Know how to make her give what she refuses you for no reason. Your progress in virtue, says the author of The Imitation of Christ, will be in proportion to the violence that you succeed in doing to yourself.

"It is necessary to die," said the saintly Bishop of Geneva, "it is necessary to die in order that God may live in us, for it is impossible to achieve the union of the soul with God by any means other than by mortification. These words 'it is necessary to die' are hard, but they will be followed by a great sweetness, because one dies to oneself for no other reason than to be united to God by that death."

Would to God we had the right to apply to ourselves these beautiful words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians: "In all things we suffer tribulation... Always bearing about in our body the death of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies." (II Cor 4:8-10)

Addendum: Words of Archbishop Lefebvre

"For we do not do penance for penance's sake: penance is required by God and by the Church to make us practice charity, to destroy in us every vestige of selfishness and pride, and of all the vices that constrict our hearts in some way..."

"We do not pursue the warfare against sin for the sake of the fight itself; we pursue it so as at last to attain true charity towards God and towards our neighbor. The goal is charity, union with God, union with Our Lord."

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Footnotes:

1. Manere autem in baptizatis concupiscentiam vel fomitem, haec sancta Synodus fatetur et sentit; quae cum ad agonem relicta sit, [...] Hanc concupiscentiam, quam aliquando Apostolus 'peccatum' (Cf. Rom 6:12 .et seq.; 7: 7; 14-20) appellat, [...] quia ex peccato est et ad peccatum inclinat. (Council of Trent, Fifth Session, Decree on Original Sin).

2. N.B.: All the practices of mortification which we have collected here are derived from the examples of the Saints, especially Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Teresa, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint John Berchmans; or they are recommended by acknowledged masters of the spiritual life, such as the Venerable Louis de Blois, Rodriguez, Scaramelli, Mgr Gay, Abbé Allemand, Abbé Hamon, Abbe Dubois, etc...

3. Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), who is so frequently quoted in this essay, was Bishop of Geneva.

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Source: Cardinal Désiré Mercier, "Christian Mortification," https://www.ecatholic2000.com/cts/untitled-604.shtml.

Internal Semiosis, Resonance, and the Interior Life

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange compared the interior life to the internal conversation that occurs in a man. If this interior life is natural, the conversation occurs simply with oneself, making oneself the ultimate referent of all experience: "As soon as a man ceases to be outwardly occupied, to talk with his fellow men, as soon as he is alone, even in the noisy streets of a great city, he begins to carry on a conversation with himself [....] If a man is fundamentally egotistical, his intimate conversation with himself is inspired by sensuality or pride." (Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans. M. Timothea Doyle, ch. 2, http://christianperfection.info/tta6.php).

At the moment that a man seeks the good in honesty, the nature of this conversation changes: "He converses with himself, for example, about what is necessary to live becomingly and to support his family. This at times preoccupies him greatly; he feels his weakness and the need of placing his confidence no longer in himself alone, but in God" (ibid.). Even in the state of grace, egoism confuses and mangles this interior conversation, pushing God out as much as possible despite the soul's clearer vision of its inadequacy and dependence on God. In fact, Garrigou-Lagrange suggests that this interior conversation cannot end and implicitly points to man's need for God as well as man's final fulfillment in God, who alone can finally satisfy this interior dialogue: "The soul must converse with someone other than itself. Why? Because it is not its own last end; because its end is the living God, and it cannot rest entirely except in Him" (ibid.).

Modern psychology at its best provides scientific precision to analytical explanations of the interior, psychological processes of the intellect and soul. Often, however, where psychology gets something correct, we find such points already explicated in the writings and experiences of the Saints, at least in nascent or unscientific form. St. Paul famously experienced the interior struggle between what he saw was good and what he hated as evil:

For that which I work, I understand not. For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I will not, I consent to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will, is present with me; but to accomplish that which is good, I find not. For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 

I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin. (Romans 7:15–25; DR trans.)

And Psalm 19 says, "Who can understand sins? from my secret ones cleanse me, O Lord" (v. 12). These verses posit that there exists a dimension of the broken personality, caught up in sin, in conflict with the conscious striving towards virtue. There is a contrast in Paul between flesh and mind yet almost as if the flesh had a mind and will of its own. Modern psychology would distinguish these dimensions as the conscious, unconscious, and subconscious. The exact nature of these different aspects can lead to serious error in a philosophy of human nature, and it's clear that much of modern psychology has tended towards a mechanistic reductionism of the human psyche, where the unconscious takes on some kind of overwhelming force. Without going to these extremes, it seems reasonable that we often act out of a plurality of motives, some of which we do not discern until we reflect later on our actions with deeper insight. The increase of self-knowledge is not merely quantitative—I know more and more truths about my personality—but also qualitative—I know my personality more deeply than before, its patterns, tendencies, weaknesses, and also very importantly, its strengths, some of which due to my God-given temperament.

Perhaps a semiotic analysis of human psychology would provide some helpful insights for spiritual growth. We know from experience that when a man works on growing in self-knowledge and discernment, the unconscious aspects of his moral actions eventually come to light. We also know from the experience of the Saints that where sinful tendencies reside in these unconscious dimensions, grace and asceticism eventually purify and heal the psyche of these tendencies. Here is a simple refutation of the omnipotence of the unconscious. Transformation in Christ is where the Saint may say truly, "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).

This internal dialogue, often the source of many self-destructive tendencies, especially to despair in various forms, is nothing other than a process of "private semiosis," the internal activity of signs in the human mind as it processes its environment and itself in some unified way. Conversation is speech, and speech consists of signs; human language is nothing other than that form of sign use unique to humans: anthroposemiosis. This semiosis is private insofar as it occurs immanently in the mind, seen in its immediate, raw form only by the individual and God although it may be expressed in a mediated way to others—mediated because only we can experience the fullness of what we experience.

But sign activity, or semiosis, for humans occurs in multiple dimensions since the human alone of all animals can distinguish between signs as such and all other forms of reality, between subject and object, between actual and ideal. Much of the activity that informs our conscious semiosis is subconscious. For example, when we read a novel, we subconsciously take on the role of a reader who understands that we are entering into a fictional world. Did we make the conscious, private semiosic choice to take on this interpretive stance? No (although we could if we so chose). We switch between interpretive modes for all genres of text, and we do something similar when we enter different social settings and engage with different people. Even where there is the conscious awareness of making certain switches, for example, "I must not use vulgarity when I'm around grandma," we might tell ourselves privately, there are other aspects of this switch that we often are not aware of; for example, what is the prior condition that prompts us to tell ourselves that we ought not to use vulgarity around our elders? This prompting is a semiosic process that we might become aware of, just like we might become aware of our breathing at any moment if we so chose to pay attention and knew what to look for, but just like our breathing, these processes often remain on the subconscious level.

Perhaps we can see the distinction between conscious and subconscious precisely in terms of relation, a relation to intentional awareness or the lack thereof. Following a Lacanian line of thinking regarding the unconscious, the unconscious is precisely everything other than the conscious remaining in human experience, encompassing the aspects of the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic; this residue or overflow occurs because conscious processing of our experience always leaves something to be desired, something missing; language is often insufficient—we find ourselves at a loss for words as the saying goes. Hence analogously, just as God is precisely everything other than created, finite beings (and by extension, the concept of God is precisely a concept consisting of an amalgamation of relations by which we conceive that God is not this, nor that, nor that), so too our unconscious is everything other than consciously filtered experience through our private semiosis.

Hence the conscious, unconscious, and subconscious all converge simultaneously to create the presently processed experience of our environments. Deepening our self-knowledge allows us to identify these different strands and how they are functioning at any given moment. Perhaps this lack of self-knowledge or despair of possibly attaining to it in atheistic psychologies has led to the idea that the unconscious inescapably dominates all our behavior. There is truth to the experience that often we seem to lose control of ourselves, that our emotions seem to be out of our control, our thoughts run on endlessly, often laboriously (even St. Teresa of Avila complained about this on multiple occasions). Much of this lack of control for the average person certainly stems from a lack of self-knowledge and the tools to deal with and integrate the different dimensions of our experience. (We might also postulate that this lack of control may be the result of a sensitive temperament that is more attuned to the multiple effects of one's surrounding and/or the result of a sensitivity that comes from ascetic and mystical purification by which one is keenly aware of the different spirits affecting our behaviors, thoughts, etc.; maybe some combination of the above was the case with St. Teresa, whose almost constant contemplation bombarded her soul with new infusions of grace, overwhelming her and overflowing into the bodily dimension of her being, sometimes painfully.) With self-knowledge and discipline, these different dimension can be identified, organized, and trained even on the natural plane.

But first, we need to understand why the process of the constant bombardment of shifting emotions and internal dialogue occurs. To begin metaphysically, all being contains positive and negative dimensions, positive perfections and negative lacks due to its finite structure and the circumstances that may have vitiated its due development towards its final end. Being is simultaneously communicative and receptive, sharing its proper perfections around it and receiving the perfections of other beings, hopefully in ways complementary to its own teleological needs—e.g. rain is necessary for plant growth, but too much rain may drown the plant. Hence we may say there is complementary communication and non-complementary communication (where complementary is understood in relation to aiding a being's fulfillment of its final end).

Our relation to reality encompasses these perfections in an intentional form, and our semiosis communicates these intentional realities and perfections, which in turn constantly are those elements that bombard us. So much of this communication is occurring all the time that it seems impossible for any individual to process all of it, and we know from neuroscience just how much processing our brain does behind the scenes in order to maintain our practical functionality at any given moment. Within this bombardment is the opportunity for help or hurt. It is a common experience that we find ourselves in pain or ambient anxiety, and it seemingly arises from nowhere. Demonic influence and psychological disorder momentarily set aside for theoretical reasons in this analysis, it may very well be that a steady bombardment of non-complementary being has slowly accumulated within our souls, leading to affective experiences of pain, anxiety, etc. It may also be that this accumulation resonates in a certain way with already present stores of past accumulations of pain, going back even into early childhood or gestation. Psychology has been able to show just how influential these formative years are and how devastating they may be if a child is not given a properly nurturing upbringing.

The old children's rhyme about sticks, stones, and words never hurting us is simply a child's denial of a very painful reality, its attempt to gain control over what feels beyond its control, the overwhelming overflow of communicated being (or perhaps non-being in the sense of moral evil) leading to pain. The rhyme then seeks to contain the pain through the use of words, but this misses the point because the child clearly does not have the experience or psychological maturity or discernment in order to properly face such pain.

As different webs and spirals of semiosis accumulate in the soul by forming qualities in the manner of habits—and here I am being more speculative than before—perhaps it is precisely in this way that the soul informs the body in a secondary manner—the primary manner being that the soul provides the basic constitutive framework of this kind of living animal—, in the manner of how quality is respect to form as quantity is respect to matter. Habits, while being qualities in the soul, clearly have physical effects in the body; neural networks are formed in habits, for example. As the soul is informed by semiosic processes, so too the body responds accordingly. And perhaps the movement is reciprocal: as the body is affected by external forces beyond the soul's control, the soul is affected, or at least its full and proper expression through the body. Hence, physical and mental disabilities that impede the proper development and expression of normative human intellectual activity.

Regardless of how the above process works, the accumulations of semiotic webs within the soul, both conscious and unconscious, then lead to qualities that affect bodily development and render certain patterns of behavior easier, swifter, and accompanied by a certain spiritual and bodily delight. The quality of a soul informed by a habit and its subsequent informing of the body renders a person apt for the actualization of these habits, creating what we might call a "resonance."

Just as in acoustics, room resonance depends on the wall matter, sound, and location all interacting simultaneously to create a booming effect, or just as pitch resonances may create sympathetic vibrations when certain conditions are met, when certain semiosic processes converge in a human informed with this habitual quality, a resonance may occur, rendering the actualization of the habit immediate, facile, and delightful, perhaps even overwhelming in a certain sense.

Thus the pain of a person trapped in vice—the convergence of these semiosic processes is nothing other than what is called a temptation. At the moment of this convergence, the communication of intentional non-complementary being creates a certain resonance, striving to activate the soul, whose vicious quality renders it apt for reacting in this vicious way. Thus the psychological experience of the temptation may feel overwhelming.

Similarly, for a person formed in a virtuous habit, when the proper semiosic conditions converge, the virtue is activated, the morally good action executed with delight, sometimes with a deep relish at having accomplished the good, even simple goods.

And just as conditions may create resonance based on the qualitative predisposition of a soul formed in this habit, so too opposite conditions may resonate very poorly if at all in people with the opposite qualities respectively. Hence what used to be a temptation to a soul now is hardly a blip in its habitual, qualitative orientation towards the good; likewise, a stimulus to good may be experienced for a soul trapped in sin as painful, dissonant, and hardly moving. The semiosic communication is jarring with the quality of the soul; the being that is being communicated is not converging properly with the soul informed or disformed by these qualities. We see analogous clashes in the realm of physical organisms all the time, where external conditions and the subjective constitution of an organism or seed do not converge to lead to the flourishing of the organism.

But lest this process seem to be another form of omnipotence, shifting from the unconscious to these semiosic processes, it must be remembered that conscious semiosis in the human is the discursive reason, guiding and directing the will, creating the conditions for freedom. Clearly the freedom of a soul trapped in sin is encumbered but can never be totally destroyed without destroying discursive reason itself. Hence these semiosic processes are both the condition for freedom as well as the possibility for either its hindrance or development, just as water is a necessary condition for the growth of plant life, but too little, too much, or contaminated water will kill the plant. The will must still choose, and the will can direct the intentionality of these semiosic processes, guiding them in certain limited ways, depending on the various conditions, both external and internal. Qualities are supposed to aid the soul in the proper guidance of these processes, in the proper flourishing of the rational aspect of human nature.

Grace enters. We say that grace perfects nature. Grace is a communication in the divine life, a participation, or in other words, a relation. This is precisely semiosis on the divine level, entering through an analogous, accidental, created, physical mode into the soul. Without grace, the private semiosis of an individual would begin at conception and crash into oblivion at death. Grace thus creates a relation between the soul and God and creates an elevation of those dimensions that exist in the soul, giving them an orientation to the divine or at least the conditions that make possible the development of this orientation. Hence the accumulated semioses remain, but grace now offers and provides a "defrag" program for the soul. There is certainly an extent to which the soul may do this itself—the active purifications and ascetical stages of the spiritual life constitute this extent. But the end for which God has made man goes beyond man's natural, immanent capacities, and besides which, the wounds of sin that remain render the accumulation of harmful semioses sometimes overwhelming, something experienced sometimes as loss of total control, addiction.

The conversation, the private semiosis, may now turn to God. God's semiosis enters into the soul; the Trinity makes its dwelling in the heart. The Logos communicates the fullness of the divinity. The Holy Ghost consumes and transforms. The Father guides the soul lovingly, teaching, listening, aiding, assuring.

We also believe there is a Communion of Saints. Communion involves communication, reception, relation, a sharing, a participation. The semiosis of grace extends not only to the Deity but to those who are linked by grace to God.

These are the helps that the soul needs. Nevertheless, those resonances remain, the resonances of already formed habits. The struggle is arduous, but the soul is assured of divine assistance, a true omnipotence, the omnipotence of God and the shared, participated omnipotence of the Blessed Mother, who obtains for us all that we need. The theological virtues create wellsprings, new qualities in the soul, by which the old resonances may be combatted not only on the natural plane but also the supernatural.

Here it must be remarked one particular difficulty people have in allowing grace to establish a new, supernatural quality. Faith is the virtue by which we attain to God as revealed and revealing Truth. St. John of the Cross interestingly argues that living faith alone is the proximate and proportionate means of union with God. What does this mean semiotically? Simply that the semiosis of faith is experienced psychologically as pure emptiness, darkness, nothing except the will's constant clinging to God despite all other competing strands of semiosis in the psyche.

Here we can see why so many people get lost in secondary matters of faith and, although they intellectually adhere or profess to the matters of faith and their extensions to different aspects of the Church and Christian life, this faith doesn't seem to transform them as it ought. For example, focusing on issues, such as the pro-life movement, personal devotions, political topics, like women priests, sexual morality, marriage, or issues of liturgy, tradition, and doctrine—these are all secondary to faith. Faith primarily attains to God and secondarily applies to all else insofar as it stands in relation to God revealing. Hence faith is meant to unite us perfectly to God and not to these secondary matters. St. John of the Cross insists that a person who places importance on these secondary issues is, despite these issues being related to faith, hindering their union with God through faith. The following quotation focuses only on devotions and the Mass, for example:

These people attribute so much efficacy to methods of carrying out their devotions and prayers [....] They put more trust in these methods than they do in the living prayer [....] For example, they demand that the Mass be said with a certain number of candles, no more nor less; or that it be celebrated at a particular hour, no sooner nor later; or that it be said after a certain day, not before; [...] And regarding other ceremonies in vocal prayers and other devotions, one should not become attached to any ceremonies or modes of prayer other than those Christ taught us." (Ascent of Mount Carmel, 3.43.2, 44.4)

St. John of the Cross says the way to the top of the mountain is: nada, the emptiness of pure faith, a total clinging to God in absolute darkness of intellectual and finite semioses. The divine semiosis of faith stands in absolute difference (but not indifference) to all human semioses, and to inject human semiosis into the divine semiosis of faith is to kill faith. Meditation, as St. John of the Cross teaches, is a heuristic process, temporary, by which the soul is actively weaning itself of previous vicious habits and working towards developing virtuous qualities. Think of St. Teresa of Avila's comparison of meditation to drawing water out of a well with a bucket. Meditation simply frees up the soul to a sufficient degree so that its accumulated semioses may not get in the way of the divine semiosis of faith because it often is the case that our accumulations stifle and mute faith without our even intending it to. Perhaps more precisely we should say our accumulations stifle and mute the expression and development of faith but not faith itself; otherwise, it would be impossible to remain in a state of grace unless we were already perfect! No, God, seeing our weakness, accepts the conscious intention of our will to adhere to the faith, and this is sufficient for faith to remain in the soul. Nevertheless, this state is only the beginning, and it's easy for the individual, so accustomed to created, finite semiosic processes, to confuse the divine semiosis of faith with these other finite processes, which extend to our conceptions of the Mass, of the Pope, of what the Church really should look like, and even what our spiritual life should look like. As long as we cling to human semiosis, we hinder faith.

To repeat: meditation is not a clinging to human semiosis, but an efficient tool to redirect human semiosis to free the soul of its accumulated vicious qualities so that these accumulations don't completely stifle and freeze the flowering of faith in the soul. Meditation should be leading us to become more and more humble and detached from our private conceptions and semiosis and becoming more and more attached to God, conversing with Him, remaining recollected in Him, not ourselves, going out of ourselves as St. John of the Cross would say, forgetting ourselves.

Someday, by God's grace, we shall attain to that state where our private semiosis is directed by the Holy Ghost perfectly, so that although we experience reality with our accumulated past and individuality, it is filtered and subsumed harmoniously and without resistance by the divine semiosis of Christ: "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20).

Boredom and the Spiritual Life

To the worldly, the Christian life is a boring life. The reason is because the Christian is perfectly content with any state in life, any job, any task—so long as these are not sinful—because all things and activities have been sanctified by Christ. Thus even monotony and grey take on the splendor of Christ's Resurrection. All things reflect God's will and infinitely wise and loving design—therefore, why should the Christian be discontent? Of course, knowledge of God's providence doesn't mean that the Christian is immune to pain and loss; no, God's providence often makes use of these means to fill the Christian with deeper love and patience and heroic virtue.

But the worldly see none of this. Monotony and death have no meaning. Life has no meaning besides what I make of it, and that is all relatively boring.

The idea of setting aside trifles and entertainments to take up the task of daily prayer and worship, of growth in virtue, of self denial and love of neighbor, of refusing to indulge in those little vices—angry thoughts, fleeting fantasies, revenge, idle talk and gossip, lustful glances, attachment to material things like clothing and cars, etc.—the idea itself is perhaps a bit intimidating. It all builds up.

The worldly can't stand this task. It should be a very good measure in us of where we are by how reluctant we are to follow Christ's dictum: 1) deny yourself; 2) take up your Cross; and 3) follow Him.

Boredom, therefore, is nothing but a sign of a need for deeper conversion. It isn't a reason to despair; far from it. Rather boredom recognized for what it is should make us rejoice because with that recognition means that God is providing the grace for us to see our faults and the path that we must take to grow towards union with Him.

Yes, the Christian life is entering into that repetitious, monotonous pattern of daily prayer and work, silence and, when necessary, tempered leisure. We do this over and over again, searching over our faults, praying for strength, speaking and walking with God, taking time to be recollected rather than dissipating our energies on frivolities and "guilty pleasures." It's all very simple, very quiet, very plain.

Perhaps here, Christians suffer from a twofold danger when reading the lives of the Saints: 1) the extraordinary graces that the Saints personally received, such as visions, locutions, levitation, etc.; 2) the extraordinary events of their lives—the dramatic turns, the miracles, the strong personalities, the conflicts and stakes of history. (A third possible danger is that we believe the Saints were born holy since most hagiography completely neglects the actual process of conversion in many of the Saints; hence we don't really get to see "how" the Saints actually became Saints! A potential consequence is that we believe our process of conversion will be just as mysteriously simple and quick; this assumption can lead to despair, self-deception, or impatience.) We believe that because the Saints were involved in these great circumstances that therefore we too shall be involved in them. We expect our lives to be enthralling and romantic.

Here is the paradoxical turn: we become involved in the great and romantic things only after we have completely surrendered any desire for them. And only once we have become holy do we realize that the great and romantic thing is loving God above everything else, and the vast majority of Saints never had miracles, experienced extraordinary phenomena, or were involved in huge historical situations. These Saints actually didn't care for the "greatness" of the situation but only to love God, no matter what situation God placed them in. Most lived quiet, humble lives that shall be known only in the glory of heaven. Most of these Saints are completely unknown to us, perhaps as inconspicuous as a grave we pass by at the cemetery.

The only great thing is to give everything to God in complete humility and simplicity. It is a quiet thing to external eyes, but to the internal soul, there is nothing more exciting. Thus there is an inverse relation: as a person becomes more worldly, holy things become duller, but as a person becomes holier, worldly things lose their appeal.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen on the Effects of Imperfections

[133] Because, writes [St. John of the Cross], dryness might very often proceed not from the Night, or purgation of the sensitive part of the soul, but from sins or imperfections, or from lukewarmness, or from some bodily indisposition, I here set down some signs whereby it may be known whether the dryness is owing to the said purgation, or to some other of the causes we have mentioned.

The first sign, he says, is that as the soul feels no pleasure and comfort in the things of God, so neither does it in creatures. This sign allows us to exclude one first cause: sins or recent imperfections. In fact these are often the reason why a soul falls into a sort of spiritual languor.

[134] Let us remember that, when he speaks, the Saint has in mind fervent souls, that is such as have set out eagerly on the spiritual road with a great longing to attain to sanctity. Since he knows that, in order to please God, he must be pure of heart, the novice who has entered religion really desiring to become holy has bravely undertaken the labour of perfect and absolute abnegation. He has definitely renounced certain pleasures, certain distractions, which held his heart in thrall in the world. He now sets himself faithfully to remove from his path everything that might be an obstacle to his spiritual progress. To speak in more concrete language: let us suppose the case of someone who, before entering the monastery, was passionately fond of playing cards. In itself a very innocent thing; in itself, yes, but not always in its consequences and under certain given circumstances. There are persons for whom card-playing is a source of continual imperfections, even sins: impatience, faults against charity, even against justice, are not rare among inveterate card-players. It is no matter for surprise if some soul, anxious to give itself completely to God and having experienced such difficulties, should have decided never to touch cards again. Perhaps he has felt the sacrifice in the early days, but to a spiritual person all these things soon come to appear but foolish trifles and the passion has been lulled to sleep fairly easily. But do not imagine that it is dead!

Since there are certain games not forbidden even to religious, it may happen that, in good company, our novice is invited to take part in a game which, for him, was once upon a time a continual source of failings. Before the urging of others, he gives way. He begins whilst keeping careful watch over himself but, forthwith, he feels that the passion is not dead! He is very quickly drawn into the old faults: impatience, temptations to cheating, anger become perceptible. Moreover, as he afterwards perceives, from beginning to end of the game all spiritual life seems to be forgotten.

When, on the same day, he goes to his prayer, or places himself in the presence of God, he feels that he no longer possesses the same serenity as before. He is a prey to certain agitation. In that hour of silence destined to converse with God, he finds he is pursued by vivid memories of the pleasure [135] felt some hours previously; he is even a little ashamed to perceive that he rather longs for other similar occasions. If the soul is generous, when faced with such an experience it reacts, asks God's forgiveness and renews, more decidedly than ever, its resolution to abstain from games of chance. In that case, it will be able to say: Felix culpa! But it is not always so, however. The first unfaithfulness will be followed by another, and that much more culpable because experience has rendered the subject aware of the consequences. These latter will make themselves felt much more strongly than on the former occasion. The passion will be fully roused and in the silence of prayer the soul will feel it so keenly that it will suffer disturbance and strong distractions from it. How can it hope that it sprayer will not suffer as a result?

"Every time," says the Mystical Doctor, "that the appetite gives way to some imperfection, forthwith it becomes inclined to it, more or less in the measure of the affection wherewith it applied itself to it" (Dark Night, I, c. 9, n. 2).

We have taken as an example at hint very innocent in itself and, already, we see how serious may be the consequences for the good progress of prayer… What will it be when there is a question of consenting to some inclination that is directly sinful, say in a matter of purity or singleness of heart? The religious who allows himself to be caught in the snare of a particular friendship puts a great obstacle in the way of his life of prayer. When we nourish within us a source of continual infidelities, the heart is inevitably drawn away by many inclinations to creatures. Now the more a heart is inclined to creatures the less free it is to occupy itself with the love for God. And as prayer chiefly consists in expressing our love of God, of necessity it will become less intense when there arise within us the evil tendencies aroused by our blameworthy failures. In expressing its love, the soul will speak less energetically; God's company, once its sole desire, will be less relished, will even be found boring, whilst recollection will be rendered difficult thanks to the numerous distractions which will be born spontaneously from the new attraction for creatures. Hence the soul falls into aridity; it no longer [136] finds pleasure and consolation in the things of God. But the same cannot be said with respect to created things. No, it has again taken pleasure in the things of the world and its heart desires to receive consolation from them. In this soul that has fallen into dryness, the first sign mentioned by St. John of the Cross is wanting. 

Many souls, on the other hand, fall into dryness without this having been preceded by any willful imperfection. Unexpectedly they have found themselves transported from a region irradiated by the warm light of the divine Sun into a polar desert; there is no food either for the imagination or for the heart. Yet this heart wants only God and remains faithful to its Beloved. Here distaste for prayer is conjoined with distaste for creatures. The first sign of the Mystical Doctor is verified, but this does not yet suffice to recognize with certainty the aridity sent by God.

"The second sign," St. John goes on, "is that the mind ordinarily turns to God with painful anxiety, the soul fearing lest it is not serving Him but has turned back; seeing that it finds itself with no relish for divine things" (Dark Night, I, c. 9). This sign excludes another cause of dryness: lukewarmness.

Lukewarmness is a cooling-off of the spiritual life, a diminution of the energy wherewith the soul was following after perfection. It is often found in unstable persons, in emotional and changeable temperaments, ruled chiefly by imagination and in whom their actions are the consequences of impressions rather than of real decision of the will. It is not rare to find a soul that at the beginning of the spiritual life seemed fire and flame, but in which all this ardor was seated only in the sensitive part. Its fancy had pictured sanctity as a sort of charm, as a life not without suffering, indeed, but one wherein the divine consolations so far surpassed the trials as to render them all very light. In short, it has imagined the spiritual road to be a path of roses, the perfume of which so consoled the soul as to prevent its feeling the pricks of the thorns. It was urged to the quest of this [137] imagined ideal more under the impulse of some strong emotion than as a result of a serious decision of the will. Now, however, that it has come into contact with the realities of life, and finds from experience how much energy is required in order to go forward, it becomes tired of the continual mortification imposed upon it. It would like to take a holiday and, since this is not granted, it takes it for itself and then … these holidays never end! So it returns to a life more free, less recollected, in search of little human satisfactions and, naturally, all the fair energy of its early days disappears.

Moreover, not only the emotional souls are exposed to lukewarmness. This happens in every soul that, after a period of generous life, grows weary of mortification and allows itself to be recaptured by its self-love. How many young clerics, for instance, lose their devotion by letting themselves be overcome by a passion for study! Instead of considering study as an instrument of the apostolate, they seek therein the natural satisfaction of their intellect, or even, if they are very successful, an occasion of compliments and applause that ministers to their vanity. How can it be expected that the soul that permits itself to be caught again in the snares of its self-love will succeed in saying to God with conviction: "I love Thee with all my heart"? It is simply not true! That heart is divided. Whereas in the early days of conversion, or the entrance not the novitiate, it beat for God alone, now it follows its desires of personal happiness, personal glorification. Naturally such a soul is overtaken by dryness. When love is feeble, prayer is necessarily tepid; and when the soul is cherishing another ideal than that of pleasing God, it loves itself far too well to be able to love God intensely. Prayer will be full of distractions, it will seem too long, it will be easily neglected… We are far from the soul that, amidst aridity, turns its thoughts to God in loving anxiety, fearing lest it should be no longer serving Him.

"Hence there is great difference between purgative aridity and tepidity," writes St. John, "since tepidity implies no [138] little sloth of the will and weakness of soul, without diligent care to serve God; whereas what is simply purgative aridity carries with it ordinary care, together with painful doubt lest the soul is not serving God" (Dark Night, I, c. 9).

A soul that remains full of longing to please God, that suffers at the thought that it is not serving Him as once it did, that notwithstanding all the trials it experiences in prayer goes to it faithfully, as to an appointment with God, and would not shorten even by a moment the time which it has decided to consecrate to His service, that soul may be tranquil; its dryness does not arise from lukewarmness. That soul loves God. Its carefulness, its painful anxiety are unmistakable signs; they are the proper effects of the love that is ever anxious for its object, for the Beloved. Yea, it is a precious anxiety which keeps love awake in the soul amidst aridity. Happy the soul that is aware of it within! It may thereby rest assured that its trial is not unto death but unto salvation.

Besides the two former signs, St. John mentions a third, which has also its special importance. It is: "Inability to meditate and make reflection, and to excite the imagination as before, notwithstanding all the efforts we may make" (Ibid.). 

This inability to meditate is scarcely distinguishable from the actual aridity; rather it seems to constitute an element of the latter. In fact the soul that is suffering from dryness is just precisely a soul that can no longer practice meditation. Therefore, for this to be a sign of the purgative aridity, it must be found conjointly with the two preceding signs; then, however, its value as a "sign" lies especially in the fact that this incapacity for reflection assumes a form that is ever more general, more thoroughgoing and more continuous. There is, indeed, a certain incapacity for meditation which results from temporary physical or psychological conditions. When we have risen very early in the morning, after a very hot summer night during which we have had very little sleep, we find our eyes heavy with sleep and, undoubtedly, this sleepiness will hinder the mental work of meditation.

[139] He who generously fights against sleep need not fear, for that reason, that he is not praying! He is doing even more than expressing his love, he is actually showing it in this trying struggle. We are supposing, however, that he resists the sleep; if he does not, and lets himself give way, he does not pray … he sleeps! The faithful soul knows how to profit by all the circumstances of life, whereas the lukewarm soul is continually losing opportunities. Hence he who is assailed by drowsiness is unable to meditate and suffers from dryness, but when the cooler weather comes and, with it, refreshing sleep at night, the obstacle will disappear and he will be able to return to his meditation. On the contrary, if the inability to meditate arises from the purgative aridity, it will tend rather to become permanent. At first there may be a certain alternation; sometimes the soul will feel inclined to practice meditation and at others will find it quite impossible to do so; finally, however, the distaste for meditation will become permanent.

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Source: Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, St. John of the Cross: Doctor of Divine Love and Contemplation, trans. Benedictine of Stanbrook Abbey (Cork: Mercier Press, 1947), 133-139.

Dr. Germain Grisez on Making Good Use of Time

Many people, for example, waste much of their time and energy in pastimes which, while perhaps sinless in themselves, bear no real fruit either for themselves or others: daydreaming, useless worrying, idle chatter, and passive entertainment. Even fairly well-organized people often fail to make good use of the time and energy still available while they engage in some necessary activity, for example, by allowing their minds to wander as they shower and dress or by using a radio for passive entertainment as they commute. Committed Christians should discipline themselves to replace useless activities with others which not only promise real benefit but further one or another element of their vocation, and, whenever possible, should do two or more such things at once. For example, while occupied with necessary activities which leave the mind free, a person can make plans, think through a problem, or pray; while commuting, someone might listen to worthwhile tape recordings. The ideal of faithfulness is set by the exhortation: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3.17; see CMP, 27.E).

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Source: Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus: Living a Christian Life, ch. 2, q. E, 5, a, accessed April 29, 2014, http://www.twotlj.org/G-2-2-E.html.