9
Striving for Perfection
THE gift of free decision—the capacity of freely choosing one’s position, commonly called freedom of will—is one of the deepest and most characteristic marks of the person.
Man alone is a free creature
Alone among earthly creatures, man is not exclusively dependent on the blind causational rhythm of nature. To be sure, he also is placed in the framework of this causational rhythm; his body, together with some provinces of his psychic life, are dependent upon it. Beyond that, however, he is endowed with the capacity of entering into an entirely different kind of relationship with his environment. In his cognitive acts, the link of natural causation is superseded by the absolutely different and spiritual one of intentional object-reference. Based on that, his affective acts, too—such as joy, enthusiasm, and so forth—enclose a meaning, a reference to some object; which, is to say, they have motives in the proper sense of the term and not simply causes in the manner of mere biopsychical reactions.
Nor is this all. In an even more integral sense of freedom than the one implied in his single cognitive and emotional acts as such, man—by virtue of his personal center of consciousness—can posit free decisions and thus call into being an entirely new sequence of causes. The Yes and No he pronounces, his free assent and dissent, are no mere effect of forces and influences, impressions and impulsions canalized or arranged by his personal center in the fashion of an agency of exchange, as it were; they are properly and actually generated by man’s central personality.
Free will is a sublime gift
This freedom of man is a truly miraculous aspect of earthly existence, and at the same time, one of the most sublime gifts that God has conferred upon our race. Freedom is the presupposition of responsibility: it is by virtue of his freedom than man can acquire merit and fall into guilt. It is on the basis of his freedom that man can be morally good or evil; and above all, that he is capable of that response to God which glorifies him in an incomparably higher sense than any values that may also inhere in unfree beings. God wills us to serve Him in the mode of this free assent, which is one of the deepest expressions of man’s God-likeness.
Free will introduces the possibility of sin
However, in order to endow man with this greatest of gifts—which lends him his specific dignity, provides his life with its ultimate gravity and emphasis, and underlies the importance of his behavior—what did God, so to speak, take into the bargain? Nothing less than sin: the possibility that man might offend God. For without freedom there can be no sin. Unfree nature cannot offend God; but for freedom, no disharmony would exist in the universe. And yet, God has assigned to man the gift of freedom, because, were he not free, he could not give God the response that is due to Him.
The individual alone has power over his own will
No power on earth, no temptation or attraction however potent, can force our assent; no pressure or influence can forcibly—in the way of a force majeure—provoke our decision. Much can be imposed on man’s body by violence (and also on his psychic state, so far as it is linked to the physical one); he can be made to perform certain actions repugnant to him, and particularly, can be prevented from doing anything he wishes to do; but no matter what limitations are placed upon his outward sphere of action, nothing, except himself, has any power over his inward decision, over his ultimate, and irrevocably free, Yes or No.
Freedom’s first dimension: sanction or disavowal
We must next distinguish two dimensions in which the freedom of man extends. The first dimension denotes man’s basic capacity of assent and dissent itself—the fact that he can confirm and reject things, recognize and repudiate values and non-values, by taking up an inward position in regard to them and engaging his person in defense of that position; that he is able to stamp the spontaneous responses of his nature, as elicited by a variety of values, with the ultimate sanction of his central personality, or inversely, to invalidate these natural reactions by a disavowal issuing from this supreme center; that he has the power to decide his attitude to things out of himself as it were. This basic, inward fact of personality has been described earlier as a constitutive element of what we have called true consciousness.
Freedom’s second dimension: the initiation of action
By the second dimension of freedom, we mean man’s capacity to enact, to decree, to command certain movements or actions. He is endowed with a certain range of effectiveness; his will has power over certain outward things and can cause or prevent their happening. We may effectively decide whether to do something or to forego it; to tell something or to keep it secret, according to our will.
Limits to the second dimension of freedom
In contradistinction to the first dimension of freedom, this sphere of our power is circumscribed by limits, both essential and accidental. We could not snatch the moon from the sky (should we even wish to do so); we cannot, in general, cause other people to execute what we want them to do.
Even within ourselves, there are many things we cannot bring about by a simple command. If, for instance, our reason approves of an event and our will consequently acclaims it as something that ought to evoke joy, we may nevertheless not be able to evince actual joy at the mere command of our will; similarly, when we are ashamed of feeling a certain malicious pleasure, a mere act of will may not suffice to uproot and to dissolve that pleasure. Our loves, hopes, enthusiasms, and other emotional attitudes, are by no means so definitely subject to our will as are our actions (their outward possibility taken for granted).
Again, among the things exempt from our will we must make a distinction. Some of them are strictly outside our range of power: thus, it is impossible for us to raise a dead man to life or to transform a stupid person into an intelligent one. On the other hand, there are also things which we cannot bring about by command but to whose securing we can yet indirectly contribute a great deal. In general, our affective attitudes, as well as those of others with whom we are in contact, belong to this class.
If it is true that we cannot feel love, joy, or fervor at the command of our will, it does not follow from this that we are as little responsible for feeling or not feeling them as we are for some physiological process in our brain or for the outbreak of a tempest. In an indirect sense, we do contribute in a high measure towards the presence or absence of such emotional attitudes in ourselves, We can consciously prepare the ground (in our inner world) for the rise of the adequate affective response to values, remove the obstacles from its path, and pull down the towers of pride and concupiscence within us so that Christ may extend His realm in our souls.
Sanction and disavowal are deeper and more important than free action
The first dimension of man’s freedom, his capacity for a free assent to values, is by far deeper and more important than the second. Whereas in relation to all that directly falls within his power—notably, his actions—his will plays a master’s part, his relation to values is not that of a master but of a partner acting in humble self-subordination. In exercising our freedom in the sense of its second function, we command; in regard to its first function, we on the contrary obey the demand that emanates from values. Our freedom in the first sense is our fundamental and decisive moral freedom.
By the same token, it is that of which no external power can rob us. Our range of power proper can be grievously restricted—by imprisonment, for instance, or bodily diseases like a paralysis of our limbs or a loss of our power of speech. Yet, no outward force nor any bodily ailment can ever take from us our capacity for the right response to value. Also, it is on our first kind of freedom that the second one is based. It is by virtue of the former that we select the object for whose attainment we require the latter. Whether we make the right use of our first freedom essentially decides the value of the use we make of the other.
Virtue calls for the proper training of both dimensions of freedom
These two dimensions of freedom are by no means always kept apart with sufficient clarity. Hence it comes that too often an education of the will as such, aimed at enabling the pupil to overcome the inhibitions that may hinder him from translating his decisions into actions—destined, in other words, to temper his will and to make him a disciplined person—is by itself supposed to furnish him with an adequate moral training. A person thus disciplined, it is believed, will ipso facto be more fit to display the right response to values.
Now a cruder error than this is hard to imagine. There are many people who, while possessed of an iron will, able to pursue their aims with great energy and remarkable success, and giving proof of the utmost self-control, yet neglect their deeper spiritual freedom and refuse an adequate response to the call of value. While free from any paralysis of the will, they are yet slaves to pride and concupiscence. Many of the great evildoers in history (Richard the Third for instance) were at the same time disciplined personalities whose will power left nothing to be desired.
On the other hand, the converse type undeniably also exists: persons who do make use of their deeper freedom and respond adequately to values, whose inward decisions are not dictated by pride or concupiscence; but who labor under various inhibitions and in many cases, owing to their weakness, fail to translate their good intentions into actions.
Self-discipline is not the same as moral freedom
Certainly, to acquire a healthy will that is able to wield the power of command normally due to it is by no means immaterial for our inner development. Still, the place of that purpose in our striving for perfection is only a secondary one. The central object of our striving for perfection bears on the more essential capacity of using our freedom (in the first sense) adequately, in conformity with the will of God. In other words, the prime task of the education of personality is not to teach man how to make his innate freedom practically valid—though that may be next in importance—but to heighten his innate freedom into moral freedom proper. A mere preservation and exercise of our physical freedom—in the broadest sense of the term, including even the freedom of our inward response—does not by itself amount to the acquisition of that moral freedom which our freedom of will is really meant to prepare and support.
In contrast to persons who, drifting along as though unconscious, allow their freedom to droop to a point nearing extinction, those habituated to exercise their will power may be described as free; yet, as we have seen, they may at the same time lack the freedom of inner response and choice, being slaves to pride or concupiscence. They cannot be credited with moral freedom; nor even can those who, though enjoying a degree of inner freedom insofar as they are not simply dominated by their sensuous appetites or their instinct of self-assertion, have not used that inner freedom for an integral response to values and a subordination of self to the demands they utter, nor turned it into a basis for a free assent to God and His holy will.
He alone can be said to possess moral freedom who makes the right use of his inner freedom, in whom the central attitude of value-response has achieved a definitive victory over pride and concupiscence, and whose behavior in general and in its significant details is actually adapted to the logos of values as it appears in the various situations and aspects of life.
Moral freedom implies, not only the capacity to obey the demand of the values accidentally, but a permanent and intimate conformity to their suasion, sealed with the express sanction of the central personality. Moral freedom in this sense—which obviously belongs to what we have labelled as the first sphere of freedom is equivalent to freedom proper, freedom in its perfection; above all, it goes incomparably deeper than the merely formal or technical freedom embodied in the controlling position of the will.
Hence, the means that conduce to this moral freedom cannot be the same as those destined merely to impose a discipline on nature, that is, to ensure a formal preponderance of the conscious will. In certain schools of ascetical training, this fact has sometimes failed to receive due appreciation. There has been a certain tendency to expect too much from the development of man’s capacity to subordinate his entire nature to his will.
Yet, the mere fact that a person has achieved self-control—that whatever he decides to do he executes without inhibitions; that everything in him promptly obeys the command of his will—does not by itself indicate, let alone guarantee, that he has achieved moral freedom.
Again, this failure to distinguish between the two dimensions of freedom has worked out in a sense apt to discredit the very idea of freedom. The somewhat excessive stress laid on the education of will power—in keeping with the view that considers a formal ascendancy of the will over all spontaneous emotions as the mainstay of man’s progress towards perfection—has provoked a reaction, not unjustified in itself, against the all too artificial and inorganic character of such a conception of life.
Let us trust (some have argued) organic evolution rather than a highly-strung effort of the will; let our remolding be a work of God, who alone is able to transform souls, not a specious result of our own conscious planning. It mostly happens in such cases that this reaction, though healthy to a degree, has certainly overshot the mark. The sublime central meaning of freedom proper—in the sense of the first dimension of freedom—which constitutes the deepest expression of our God-likeness, has been overlooked.
It was because they failed to distinguish clearly enough between the two dimensions of freedom that certain votaries of the liturgical movement went too far (in a direction suggestive of magic automatism and moral passivity, as it were) in their emphasis on an organic inner life informed by the spirit of the liturgy. True, a unilateral education of will power as a means to achieve freedom, stressing the second dimension of freedom well-nigh exclusively, does deserve the reproach that it involves a mechanistic outlook on psychic life; yet such a criticism hardly applies to a conception of freedom centered on its first dimension. For the freedom of assenting to values and of stamping this assent with a personal sanction has nothing to do with mere technique or discipline; it definitely represents an inward and organic function of the will.
Without a doubt, the mechanism of the innervations subject to the command of the will may be regarded as a comparatively artificial structure in man’s moral life; without a doubt, it is characteristic of the deepest manifestations of our personality that they cannot be promptly and infallibly evoked by pressing, as it were, a button in the apparatus of our emotional dispositions.
But no grosser misconception could be thought of than to attribute this aspect of mechanical artificiality to our free and conscious assent to values, for the reason only that freedom in this sense, too, means a decisive step from out of the penumbra of a subconscious, primarily biological, mode of existence to the higher region of clear, distinct, express, and responsible acts.
Far more than any biological display of spontaneity, our free spiritual motion towards a union with values is, on the contrary, a true prototype of things generated (of whatever is genitum: that is, a manifestation in which our very being is somehow expressed and coined out) as contrasted to the mere artifact (to all things manufactured or made: factum). Instead of giving ear to the minimizers of freedom who would conceive of man’s progress towards perfection as modeled after the growth of an apple, as it were, we must understand that we cannot esteem the human capacity for a free and voluntary assent highly enough; for it constitutes the central condition of all adequate tribute to God from our part, so much so that for its sake (as has been pointed out above) God has even permitted sin to be possible.
We are called freely to assent to our transformation
And this, also, contains the answer—in its most important part, at least—to the question we are next faced with: What can, and should, be our own contribution to the process of our transformation in Christ? What is meant by the cooperation on our part to which St. Augustine refers in saying: “He who created thee without thee, shall not justify thee without thee” (Sermo 169.13)?
First, it is the free word of assent we are to speak to God and to our own transformation in Christ. In the free gift of ourselves that is implied in our decisive turn towards God (which finds its most tangible expression in the act of conversion); in the Volo uttered in the rite of Baptism as an express statement of the person’s being delivered to God; in the words of the Blessed Virgin, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word”—herein lies the basic actualization of our freedom in the process of our justification and sanctification. This is the word which God expects from us and from which we can never be dispensed.
But this alone does not suffice. We are also called upon to concur with our transformation in Christ by single acts subject to the command of our will; that is, by the operation of our freedom in the line of its second dimension.
Transformation involves both our acts and our virtues
The moral being of the person, which we envisage here in its comprehensive sense, from the point of view of his transformation in Christ, has a twofold extension: it embraces the sphere of his single concrete acts of knowing, choosing (in the widest sense of the term inclusive of affective overtones), and doing, on the one hand; and on the other hand, the superactual or habitual sphere of what are commonly called his qualities, such as, for example, the virtues of faithfulness, justice, humility, purity, or kindness. These permanent qualities should not be interpreted as mere dispositions for this or that single decision or action, for, say, a specified act of humble submission or of charitable forgiving. They constitute a reality sui generis.
Each of the two spheres—of concrete behavior and of habitual being—has its own significance; neither is merely subservient to the other. They both glorify God in their own respective manner. Thus, every just action or attitude as such represents a new value in its own right, which adds to the value embodied by the habitual justice of a person. And again, the possession of a virtue—humility for example—means the realization of a specific value even apart from the person’s particular acts of humility.
Notwithstanding, however, the independent meaning inherent to these two spheres of personal morality, there is between them a close interconnection and interaction. On the one hand, our virtues provide the ground for our single moral acts; they facilitate the latter and underlie the special dispositions we need for their performance in the various kinds of situations that confront us. On the other hand, our single moral acts and achievements prepare our acquisition of the corresponding virtues. By repeating a good action again and again in a number of analogous cases, we shall more and more take on the habit of the virtue in question itself.
We can directly determine actions and affect our virtues
Still, our capacity to enact particular moral decisions is not conditioned by our possession of the respective virtues; conversely, our endeavor to acquire a virtue is not restricted to our performance of concrete particular decisions within its province. The center of our personality, the free agent that is the actual subject of our behavior and our decisions—as well as of our basic intention of assent to God—is by itself independent of either of the two spheres. It has the direct capacity both to evoke a moral attitude in any given particular case and to exercise in various ways a shaping and transforming influence upon our superactual moral being, our moral character as such.
Thus, the free cooperation of our central personality and our will proper is ordained to two tasks: first, that of moving us to conform to God’s will and to display a response to value pleasing to God in our single acts according to given concrete situations; secondly, to the task of rectifying our permanent superactual moral being; of stamping upon it the impress of the Christian virtues. Both are implied in the process of unfolding the supernatural life which we have received in Baptism. Now the way in which our will may exercise its influence is appreciably different in the two cases.
We can affect the character of our particular acts both directly and indirectly
First, we consider our particular moral acts. Here we are faced, first of all, with the vast domain of actions in the narrower sense of the term. These lie within the range of our direct power; they can be properly and truly commanded by our will. It is within our power to assist or not to assist a certain needy person, to revile or not to revile a person who has offended us, to tell a lie or not to tell it, or to treat somebody considerately or otherwise.
But this is not all. It is not by our capacity of a direct command alone that we can influence our actions. In addition to that, we can also contribute to their determination indirectly; above all, by a daily examination of our conscience, with the taking of good resolutions as its result.
Further, we can—and should—diminish occasions of sinning by avoiding certain situations which are calculated to tempt our weakness. We may, so to speak, establish guards in advance, destined to prevent us from faltering in the crucial moments. From repeated acts of mental communion with God and of spiritual concentration, we may draw fresh strength for dealing adequately with given tasks and demands newly confronting us. In certain dangerous situations we may protect ourselves preventively, as did Ulysses in regard to the song of the Sirens; we, too, may, as it were, have ourselves tied fast, or—like his mates—have our ears plugged with wax. In periods of contemplation and moral stability, we may preventively fight the danger of being again caught in a centrifugal vortex and hopelessly enmeshed again in the autonomous mechanism of certain situations.
Finally, we may harness ourselves for this struggle against sin by a temporary renunciation of certain legitimate goods; that is, invigorate our readiness for good works, for conforming to the commandments of God, through the practice of asceticism. In sum, we are able to determine our actions not only in a direct sense, in view of their strict dependence on the command of our will, but also in an indirect sense, inasmuch as, by manifold preparatory acts which in their turn are subject to the direct command of our will, we may create favorable conditions for our doing right in certain foreseen situations in which our steadfastness is likely to be put on trial.
We cannot directly command affective responses, but can sanction or disavow them
But as we have seen, there is also a large class of inward acts that does not fall within our radius of power proper. If, for instance, the news of a person’s conversion leaves us in a mood of blunt indifference, our will is not at liberty to conjure up within us the mood of joy which would be adequate to the event. Similarly, we cannot force our cold and unsympathetic heart to bestow upon a person in need the full response of compassion and merciful love which would be congenial to the situation.
Certainly, by our free will we can command ourselves to perform some action destined to alleviate his trouble; yet the inward contribution of love we cannot give him just by deciding to do so. Nor is our will able to extinguish or silence, by direct command, a mood of envy or malicious satisfaction that colors our feelings in a given situation.
Against this fact, however, must be set another of no less importance. By an act of our free personal center we can either sanction or disavow our emotional attitude, which involves a far-reaching modification of the inmost nature of our attitudes. A mood of malicious satisfaction, for instance, which we expressly disavow in our mind, is decapitated as it were; it is revoked and declared invalid, and thereby deprived not only of its outward efficacy but to a large degree even of its intrinsic virulence. Still, by that alone it is not yet wholly uprooted, nor is its affective content annihilated. The will to be charitable from which may derive charitable deeds and good works, is not yet charity.
A further distinction commends itself: it makes a considerable difference whether the personal sanction (that is, the ultimate act of assent or disapprobation relative to our spontaneous feeling) is issued isolatedly in any random event, as it were, or whether we expressly refer it back to our permanent moral principles, our habitual basic intention. In the latter case it has far more meaning and weight.
But even so, our freely posited intention as such is a mere skeleton of the full-fledged affective attitude, be it that of love, joy, compassion or contrition.
We must avoid artificial efforts to awaken good responses
Our range of direct power, then, as far as our affective attitudes are concerned, only extends to the possibility of a free sanction or disavowal; in an indirect sense, however, much more can be done to influence them. We can consciously create space in ourselves for the right affective responses and remove such factors as are apt to thwart their unfolding. Yet, there is a certain kind of misdirected effort from which we must rigorously abstain. We should never try artificially to conjure up a noble mood as such—to emotionally implement our free intentional act by any direct effort in the deceptive hope of forcing it thereby into full affective growth. Such cramped efforts are doomed to sterility; but more disastrous is their effect in turning our glance away from the intentional object in question (which alone, if anything, may kindle in us an adequate emotional response) and fixing it upon our own behavior. An unhealthy self-reflectiveness is thus fostered which, far from any likelihood of completing the reality of our affective attitude, is almost certain to stifle it.
Above all, we should never stoop to the method of trying to lend body to the thin ghost of our intentional attitude by drawing on the fund of cheap general emotionalism which every one of us carries in him as a mechanical potentiality. Thus, let us never seek to awaken true compassion in our souls by setting in motion the machinery of sentimental associations, nor to flog ourselves into enthusiasm by willfully heaping up in our minds a succession of turbulent imagery, a crude artifice reminiscent of the unclean fire we see flare up in cases of mass suggestion and mental epidemics.
Genuine affective responses cannot be commanded
Our genuine and complete responses to value, with the personal uniqueness and weight proper to them, grow organically from seeds implanted in the secret depths of our personality; it is only by indirect ways that we can contribute to their arising in us. This precisely is inherent in their nobility, that they have the character of gifts as opposed to things that can be commanded or made to order. What should properly preoccupy us is merely our adequate attention to the object, not the full flowering of our attitude as such. For it is precisely the distinctive mark of a genuine attitude of response that the object alone—and by no means the attitude itself—constitutes its theme.
But we can, by virtue of our free will, provide (for instance) against being absorbed by the rhythm of incessant highly-strung activity or dominated by the machinery of our concrete aims: the exclusive prevalence of pursuits and efforts which is apt to stifle our deeper psychic life and with it any fully experienced response to values.
We may free ourselves from the false attitude of always asking, “What can I do in this matter? How can I change this?”—the attitude underlain by the disastrous error that it is pointless to take an interest in any object unless we can do something about it. By recollection and a contemplative approach to God, we may again and again seek to reach spiritual depths. By ascetical practice we may seek gradually to clear away the obstacles which pride and concupiscence oppose to our adequate response to values. Finally, we may beseech God in prayer to accord us love, holy joy, and deep contrition.
Transformation of our moral character is not directly under our control
Yet, the path of the indirect education of all these concrete attitudes lies along our transformation as a whole—that of our habitual being. Even though we take our departure from the problem of our single acts and attitudes, the consideration of our striving for perfection will necessarily arrive at the second great task that God has imposed on us: our contribution to the transformation of our moral character, or in other words, our acquisition of the Christian virtues.
Secondly, our habitual being, generally considered, is outside the range of our direct power. We are not able to conjure up in ourselves, merely by an act of free will, either humility or faithfulness, either confidence in God or loving kindness, either mildness or mercy. This does not mean, however, that we can do nothing relevant to the unfolding of those virtues in us. The ways in which our free central personality may exercise an influence in this sense vary, it is true, according to the single virtues.
We can influence the development of certain virtues
In some cases, such as the readiness to change, the virtue in question originates in a direct act of our free central personality, the effectiveness of which is similar, however, not to that of our will when it commands our single actions proper, but to the way in which our ultimate free assent (as discussed earlier in this chapter) determines our behavior. Only the engagement of our person as implied in our readiness to change—in an act of conversion, notably—necessarily affects the depth of our being; also, this virtue chiefly consists—the very term readiness indicates it—in a durable disposition of the will as such.
The essential moment here is, therefore, the free act of inner conversion, the central decision of our will to let ourselves be transformed by Christ without any reservations. The road that leads herefrom to our habitual readiness to change is marked by many single acts reviving the original one, by which we again and again actualize, as it were, the attitude of readiness once adopted, This progressive penetration of the entire personality by a definite direction of will, which has started by a basic personal decision and has unfolded in manifold single decisions or types of conduct (mostly such as come within our range of direct power), finally leads to the acquisition of a habitual readiness to change. The way in which the virtue of confidence in God may develop in us presents a similar structure.
These virtues, then, though they cannot be acquired by our will except in an indirect manner—inasmuch as, like everything habitual, they can only be brought about gradually and not at once—are yet subject to our direct power of will insofar as the free self-engagement of the person constitutes their inmost essence, and moreover, insofar as a set of concrete single acts equally subject to our direct will power will serve, not merely as an accidental means to acquire them, but as a substantial element of their unfolding and amplification.
In regard to certain other virtues, however—such as humility, charity, and kindness—we are in an entirely different position. To be sure, here, too, the act of a free and self-engaging assent to God’s will, both as an initial presupposition and as a permanent element of our attitude, is of eminent importance. But our free decision as such does not suffice to generate, as it were, the living substance of these virtues (nor of the single attitudes correlative to them). The full affective reality of what we call humility—and the more so, that of charity towards God and our fellow men—implies an integral response of our personality to God and the world of values, which we are not free to command directly by our will. In an indirect sense, we can do a great deal to acquire them by removing obstacles from their path, as we shall see it more in detail later.
Again, with regard to another class of virtues such as simplicity, patience, or consciousness as described in Chapter 4, the central element of what we must do to acquire them consists in definite single acts which, in given situations, can be called forth and sustained by our free will. The man who, in the various trials and tribulations of life, again and again endures the test—expressly recognizing God as the lord of Time—and masters, by a free act of his will, the unruly stirrings of impatience and the un-Christian self-assertion that underlies it, will slowly but surely develop the true habitual virtue of patience.
The ways, then, in which our habitual being can be influenced by our volitive acts are in a wide measure different according to the single virtues. Let us examine now more closely those methods of a conscious striving for perfection which are the only ones to be applied in regard to such virtues like charity or kindness, which are, in a particular sense, gifts of grace, and therefore least subject to the command of our will.
Virtues develop when we devote ourselves to good things for their own sake
In this matter, there is one basic fact we must consider before all else. It is not from what we undertake with a view to our transformation, but from the things to which we devote ourselves for their own sake, that will issue the deepest formative effect upon our habitual being. The transformation of our character under these influences is essentially, on our part, the reception of a gift rather than a purpose attained by our will. All true values to which we attend in a contemplative attitude, with which our souls become imbued, unfold such a transforming effect in the depths of our being. The vision of the beautiful, as Plato says (Phaedrus 249d), causes the soul “to grow wings.”
Whenever a true value affects us, whenever a ray of beauty, goodness or holiness wounds our heart, whenever we abandon ourselves in contemplative relaxation to a true value that comes within our presence—so that the full process of frui, of the creative ripening of its experience within us becomes possible, so that that value may penetrate us wholly and elevate us above ourselves—a certain actual change (which is, in itself, transitory) is produced in our being, which, however, according to the height of the value that affects us and the depth of our actual response to it, will leave permanent traces far outlasting our actual experience. By this spiritual nourishment our very essence will be changed and, as it were, leavened.
God transforms us directly with His grace
An entirely new element is present, however, in the case of a similar value-experience as referred to God. The eternal beauty and absolute holiness of God, as manifested in Christ in a way particularly appropriate to evoke our love, still determine, formally speaking, a natural effect as do other high values; an effect which is certainly in accordance with the will of God and has its place in our spiritual progress.
Yet, over and above it there appears the aspect of our supernatural transformation by Him who has created us and from whom we have received the new divine life as a pure gift. Of course, God’s action of grace is by no means confined to the salient moments of our contemplative experience.
But we know by Revelation that God wills us to deliver ourselves to His action of grace expressly, to empty and to open ourselves so as to undergo it; and that, in these moments of a specific personal contact with God, particularly favorable conditions are given for the influx of grace.
That process of being received, embraced, and assumed as it were, which in reference to value as such is present in an analogical sense only, happens actually and literally when we give ourselves to the almighty God who has the power to elevate our being to Himself and to transform it in its very roots.
Our natural transformation under the action of the values we experience, a primary potentiality of our intellectual constitution, prefigures and prepares in a way—and continues to assist—the supernatural one, which it is essentially destined to subserve.
Thus, the deepest effect on our being emanates from our contemplative surrender to God. Whenever we grow empty of all created things including our own self; whenever we offer ourselves to God in thematical awareness not of our transformation but of Christ alone; whenever we lose ourselves in the vision of His face and dispose ourselves to be permeated by His light, He stamps our essence with His seal.
Hence, apart from the purely supernatural effect, the deepest transformation in our being issues from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which we participate per ipsum, cum ipso, et in ipso (through Him, with Him, and in Him) in Christ’s sacrifice.
We must never use values merely as a means for our transformation
An analogical power belongs to mental prayer and to the Divine Office. Mental prayer, again, should be undertaken not primarily for the sake of our transformation but in order to let God speak to us, to be touched by Him in our depths. This is even truer in regard to liturgical prayer, which we perform in response to the glory of God, by no means to utilize it for our transformation but because that response is due to God.
It is generally implicit in the character of these primordial agents of our transformation which we are here discussing that they must not be instrumentalized in the service of that transformation. The moment we enjoy a beautiful thing in order thereby to enrich our soul or love a person so as to derive therefrom an inward gain; or again, worse still, the moment we use liturgical prayer (as we might use some ascetical practice) as a means of our spiritual progress, we render these acts of response to value or surrender to God virtually invalid. And, along with their basic autonomous value, they also lose the faculty of a transforming influence upon our essence.
But notwithstanding the fact that we must never instrumentalize these attitudes of response and surrender by subordinating them to the purpose of our transformation, in their context all intentional reference to that transformation need not be so completely excluded as it has to be in the case of all moral actions in which we are directed to the realization of some concrete good—for instance, in actions which flow from love of our neighbor. In contemplation, the thematic aspect of our transformation—though it must never be accorded a primary place—may legitimately enter at several points.
Contemplation awakens in us a deep desire for transformation
First, all contemplative attention to God (and, by virtue of an analogical relationship, to all true values as such) involves a confrontation of one’s own self with God. We become aware of the immense distance that separates us from the holiness of God, as St. Peter did when he exclaimed, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8), It dawns upon us that in order to be worthy of any contact with God, we ought to become thoroughly different from what we are. “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord: or who shall stand in his holy place? The innocent in hands, and clean of heart” (Ps. 23:3-4).
Thus there awakens in us a longing for our transformation into Christ as a condition of the frui of God, of our contemplative union with God, the ultimate end of our desire and the enduring theme of our endeavor. In this spirit do we then pronounce the liturgical words preceding Holy Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, say but the word and my soul shall be healed.”
Contemplative surrender to God is felt as a transformation
Secondly, we experience our contemplative surrender to God as an incorporation of our being in Him. Precisely in the measure in which God is the exclusive theme of our attention, we shall feel impelled to say with St. Peter, “Lord, it is good for us to be here: let us make here three tabernacles.” Similarly shall we be willing to say with St. Catherine of Siena: Che tu sia ed io non sia (“That Thou be, and I be not”).
Although our transformation in the sight of God does not assume the place of a primary aim, it is implied in the logic, as it were, of our elevation by God and our response to the divine attraction, and is thus inevitably woven into the fabric of our contemplative attention. It is not that we degrade the latter to a means of our transformation; but we are aware of its transforming effect, and in this secondary sense our transformation does play a thematic part, which is entirely legitimate.
Contemplative surrender to God keeps us aware of His call that we be transformed
Thirdly, we may (and should) also perceive and keep aware of the call of God that reaches us from above in our contemplative state, and that refers to our transformation. Our glance proceeds thus naturally from God—or from the value that has spoken to us—to the subject of our striving for perfection.
All true contemplation is likely to engender, in an organic and almost self-evident fashion, specific good resolutions: one such, at least—the express decision to keep faithful to our upward course—is essentially inseparable from true contemplation as such. Our discernment of what may be justified in the face of Christ is sharpened anew; and our will turns away from everything repugnant to His most holy gaze.
In this sense, again, our transformation acquires a thematic significance as an adjunct to our every act of contemplative surrender.
We remain aware that contemplation and value-responses are sources of transformation
Finally, in the fourth place, in the general framework of our transformation in Christ we may take account of the moments of contemplative attention to God and to true values as the principal source from which issues the gift of our transformation. The measure of this secondary reference is scaled according to the various modes of contemplative attention.
One pole is represented by the Opus Dei—that is, liturgical prayer—in which the thematic role of our transformation is restricted to a minimum; the other pole is represented by our communion with created values, which admits of it to a comparatively high degree.
As regards our attention to created values and their frui in us, our consciousness of their mission in contributing to our transformation in Christ may be accorded a significant place. We are rightly aware that our experience of the beauty of nature and of great genuine art—provided that we are fully receptive to its radiation and let its voice pervade the depths of our being—cannot but make us better.
We should similarly take cognizance of the fact that our union in holy love with another person—a love-relationship rooted in Jesus—is certain to transform us and to bring us nearer to God. True, at the moment when our response to the object is actualized the essence of that object (with the value-power emanating from it) constitutes the only theme of our attention; but that does not prejudge the question as to what part the frui of created values is to play in our lives as such.
Contemplative delight in values is commendable
Many religious persons erroneously believe that in reference to created things no frui, no joyful immersion of one’s self in the essence of an object, as it were, is commendable; they hold the narrow view that no created object has any use for our eternal aim except in a purely instrumental sense, as a subordinate means of our pursuit irrespective of its intrinsic value. All frui of created values they subsume under the category of pleasures, and deem it less pleasing to God than any kind of neutral work (as the latter escapes the suspicion of being undertaken for its pleasurableness).
They take no account of the truth that the natural gifts of God, “the Father of all lights,” are assigned a function in our transformation in Christ; that, therefore, their frui is nothing in the nature of a frivolous diversion but, on the contrary, a valid task in conformity with the will of God. So afraid are they of losing sight of the ultimate goal that they leave unused one of the most important factors of its attainment. They fail to understand that on this plane a really effective uti (that is, a utilization of created things as directed to our eternal aim) presupposes a frui free from all concern about the uti.
All high created values can purify and transform us
The aim of our transformation in Christ itself compels us to accord an adequate place in our lives to our contemplative attention to the high created values which put us in a kind of contact with God and exercise an irreplaceable formative effect upon our being. Hence, we should recognize that the world of created things is not merely a training ground for ascetical mortification; that, provided we give them the right response according to the will of God, the created goods are only also bearers of a positive mission in the service of our eternal end.
We should realize the purifying and elevating effect that emanates from all high beauty; how, by virtue of its sheer quality, it transmits to us an aspect of the Divine, and how it tends to divert our minds from everything sinful or paltry, if only we yield to its suggestion of ascent, and grow fully aware of its meaning and nobility. No less is it in the nature of a great and deep love in Christ Jesus to liberate us, to loosen the bonds of our attachment to trivial goods, and to guide us towards God. We should perceive the enduring sursum corda that emanates from it, and the way it makes us grow in true simplicity.
In all these marvellous goods we should discern the call of God, nor ever resist the upward drift they tend to communicate to us. We must keep alive in us a general readiness to follow every call of God as contained in these gifts, and cultivate a conscious attention to their logos as an essential aspect of our striving for perfection. In this respect, again, the words remain true: “Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Ps. 94:8).
In moral actions, transformation cannot be our motive
Moral actions and good works, in their turn, equally exercise a transforming effect upon our habitual being. Here, however, our transformation must not be present to our minds even in the sense of a thematic overtone, as is legitimate in the case of our contemplative attitudes. Moral actions as such, including acts of abstaining from sin, great as their indirect significance is for our transformation, must never be performed with this aim in view.
Moral conduct issues from our general basic direction to God; in its concrete singularity, it expresses our response to some definite value or negation of value, or accordingly, to some (positive or negative) commandment of God. In our moral conduct we must concentrate entirely upon this concrete aim prescribed by God, and be guided solely by our interest in honoring the obligation it entails for us. Suppose a man is in danger of death and we hasten to succor him; obviously, in so doing, our interest must be absorbed by the peril that threatens him and we must not by any means act with a view to promoting our inner growth. We must follow the call of God that engages us to avert that evil, without any regard whatsoever to enhancing our own perfection.
Performed as a means of our transformation, our action would be, morally speaking, untruthful and in a sense invalid. For it derives its moral valuableness precisely from the fact of our being interested in the realization of an objective good (or, correlatively, the frustration of an objective evil). Our glance must be kept fixed on the object in question, and through the medium of that object on God, and not be diverted to the sanctification of our person. We owe this response to the object as such; hence, by instrumentalizing it, we deprive it of weight and validity.
Good deeds should be seen as a consequence, not a means
In the context now under discussion, the subject of our transformation cannot be thematic even in the secondary forms we have been describing above. The good works are fruits of our essential nexus with God; they must not be treated as means of its acquisition. It is to them that St, James refers when he says, “Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation” (James 1:27).
Nay, good works in this adequate sense of the term themselves belong essentially to the new man in Christ, so much so that they are included (as consequences) in one’s intention to become a new man. That intention must actualize itself after our daily examination of conscience, in various concrete resolutions expressing our determination to better obey the call of God according to the diverse situations that confront us and no longer to offend God by any definite action subject to our will power.
Whenever, for example, we are sorry for having told a lie, or been too hot-tempered, or again, for having turned an indifferent eye to a fellow man’s suffering, or having omitted a prayer, this contrition should engender the resolution not only to overcome our habitual defects as manifested by such and similar instances of improper behavior, but to gird ourselves inwardly for acting on the next occasion in a fashion consonant to the situation—that is, to display an adequate free response to the good presented to us in the call of God. We strive for the habitual virtue out of the desire, also, to be able to abstain from any concrete offense against God, and correspondingly, to fulfill the will of God in our definite single actions.
In the moment of our action, then, our attention should be directed exclusively to the demand that confronts us: thus, while rescuing a man from mortal danger, we should think of the preservation of his life alone; while fighting a temptation to lie, we should have in mind nothing but the high dignity of the human word, the function—assigned to it by God—to express and communicate the truth.
On the other hand, our resolution to act correctly in new situations of the same type also refers to the actualization of a habitual right attitude in conformity with the will of God. In a thus qualified sense, the concrete resolutions we take after our examination of conscience may well be regarded, also, as a material element of our own contribution to our transformation in Christ. They are, among others, an indispensable means of our transformation, a means God has placed within our range of direct power.
Our actions performed in the spirit of Christ, our good works, are, as we now see, on the one hand, a consequence and a fruit of our transformation, and on the other a specific actualization thereof—visible stages, as it were, of our progress towards union with Christ. Yet they must never be done with, this intention; we must not apply them as a means of our transformation.
For, independently of their function in our spiritual progress, they have their primary and proper meaning as a response to the concrete object proposed, and the particularized call of God that it transmits.
The factors contributory to our transformation, as discussed in the preceding pages, hold that character in a more or less gratuitous fashion only; in the sense, that is, of a surplus over the proper and autonomous meaning of our attitudes. It is now time to raise the question as to the possibilities at the disposal of our freedom of working towards our transformation with an express intention.
Transformation calls us to see all things in conspectu Dei
In the first place, we should again and again extricate ourselves from the fabric of unilateral aspects in which the concrete situations of life inevitably plunge us and rise to a total vision of Truth, ascending again and again to an awareness of God, of the message of the Gospel, and of our eternal destiny. Our prayer, our daily examination of conscience, as well as frequent moments of reflection and contemplation must help us to keep alive in ourselves a vision of all things in conspectu Dei.
Various aspects of our daily life should serve to remind us, for example, of the greatness and nobility proper to every human being as a person created in the likeness of God, loved by Christ with an infinite love, and redeemed by His most holy Blood. An express and frequent realization of this truth is important, because many people allow their spiritual life to be submerged in a certain trivial atmosphere which deforms their character. By acquiescing, as it were, in this attitude, by contenting ourselves with an outside picture of men and taking them simply in the guise in which they present themselves, we impose on our own minds a flattening perspective that does not extend beyond the peripheral sphere of single situations.
We should, again and again, see through the unessentialness of this distorted perspective, and realize the greatness and beauty of the metaphysical situation in which (whether or not he is aware of it) man is objectively placed, the dialogical situation in which his soul faces God. We should never lose sight of the greatness there is about being called and addressed by God, being responsible before God, being—as is every man—called to account by that eternal question of God: “Adam, where art thou?” We should never look at a person without there being present before our eyes the entire gravity and solemnity of the things that are the objective theme of every human soul.
Against this background the defects of any person will appear not as so many trivial irritants or repellent traits, but in their character as sins or consequences of sin, possibly as something terrible and monstrous, but at any rate as something that betokens the wretchedness of human nature in its universality, and above all, something that causes us to think of both the justice and the mercy of God. Moreover, even against the background of sin, the greatness of the spiritual person as an image of God, the fact of the Incarnation uniting and elevating—in an ineffable way—human nature to the Divine one, as well as the sublime beauty of a human soul in the state of grace, must remain present to our vision. Thus do we establish a decisive condition for charity and spontaneous kindliness to rise in our souls. How should love blossom in us, unless we penetrate the ultimate reality and grasp the beauty attached to every human soul?—a beauty that can never be definitively destroyed before the status viae is terminated.
The same consideration applies to all virtues. In regard to all of them, we must begin by liberating ourselves, again and again, from the unessential aspects inherent to the natural plane of vision, by rising to the truth of God, by endeavoring to see all things in their creational meaning and in the transfiguring light which Christ has spread above them. All virtues consist in a habit of the right response to God and the world of values: to place ourselves in the perspective of Truth complete is the prime condition for our acquiring them.
Transformation calls us continually to renew our surrender to God
The second thing we may do by our own will for the transformation of our nature is to renew from time to time our express act of surrender to God—an act leading to a prayer of petition. Again and again we must come to realize that we can do nothing by ourselves but may expect everything from God, and entrust our souls to His hands, saying with the Psalmist, “I am Thine” (Ps. 118:94). In the same breath, we must realize the insufficiency of this our act itself; our impotence, that is to say, to anchor ourselves in God once for all, by one act of devotion or surrender. Hence, that act itself will move us on to ask God for His freely granted help, continuing to speak with the Psalmist: “Save Thou me.”
Transformation calls us to ascetical practices
In the third place, we may contribute directly to our transformation by single salutary practices, particularly of asceticism. Renunciation of certain permissible pleasures will help us in dying unto ourselves and becoming empty so that God may enter in us.
By a kind of minute daily work we may thus loosen the innumerable bonds that fetter us to the earth. It would be false to assume that ascetical renunciations are relevant to a virtue inasmuch only as they imply a material reference to that particular virtue. The practices of fasting, of silence, of restraining the delight of the eyes, and others like them—they all have no direct nexus, for instance, with the virtue of charity, but yet they create space in our souls for charity. For our slavery to the interests of the body, as well as our concupiscence from which we are to free ourselves by fasting, thwarts the path of charity within us.
Again, the practice of silence serves to prevent us from lapsing into a certain kind of irrelevancy, an absorption by peripheral concerns. For supernatural love cannot thrive in us unless we are composed, that is, concentrated in a dimension of depth. All easygoing and dispersive states of mind draw us away from the fountainhead of charity. Complacency, sloth, and love of comfort are so many forms of egoism which make our lives unfree and narrow, an arid soil for charity; it is to rid us of these impediments that the mortification of the flesh is largely intended.
However, we must never consider ascetical practice as a means effective by itself, nor use it, so to speak, as a medicine which in a purely causal sense is certain to produce the desired effect. No asceticism can make us free for God and for transformation in Christ unless it is permanently animated and directed by our longing for God and our firmly settled determination to become a new man in Christ.
While applying these means we must well keep it in mind that they cannot do more than clear the path for more direct and positive operations in the framework of our striving for perfection; that their effectiveness, far from being automatically given, always depends on our inward dedication to God, and above all, on the help accorded us by God. That is why the Church prays in the time of fasting (Collect of Tuesday after the first Sunday in Lent) in these terms: “Look down upon Thy household, O Lord, and grant that our minds which have been chastened by the tormenting of our bodies may be made to glow with desire of Thee.” (In the next chapter, we shall have more to say about the close relationship between true freedom and charity, and, accordingly, the function of ascetical practices—which are directed to our liberation from the manifold shackles of inordinate attachment to created goods—in clearing the ground for charity and also for other virtues.)
Transformation calls us to shun the shallow and trivial
Another indirect means in the service of our striving for perfection consists in the endeavor to keep our minds away from everything that is apt to deflect them from God. To avoid certain unnecessary conversations, to do without the entertainment provided by shallow readings (which cannot but focus our attention on matters peripheral), to shun everything that panders to our delight in sensations; in general, to steer clear of whatever is calculated to draw us away from God and impale our minds on worldly concerns, thus interfering with simplicity and a collected attitude of mind—here, again, is an important means at the disposal of our will, of contributing to our transformation.
Nay, so far as possible we must avoid contact with everything that has an air of triviality. Not that we should shrink from intercourse with trivial people or a trivial milieu in all circumstances: considerations of charity or apostolic tasks may well make it a duty for us to frequent them.
But we must never, as it were, set up our quarters in such an atmosphere, nor even rest at ease in its midst. While dwelling there we must remain a stranger to it, keeping ourselves impermeable to its infiltration, nor ever cease to experience our sojourn in such a medium as a sacrifice.
An orderly life aids our transformation
To ordain our daily lives according to some definite rule constitutes a further method in the service of our inner transformation. Apart from the specific importance which the single provisions of that rule may possess for our progress in virtue, a certain wholesome effect proceeds from order as such. It pervades life with a certain rhythm of composure and continuity, which makes it easier for us to collect ourselves; it protects us from being absorbed by the succession of varying events and impressions, so apt to interfere with our concentration upon essentials.
An orderly regulation of our lives relieves us from the temptation to let our attention to prayer, contemplation, and work, our avoidance of peripheral concerns, depend on chance and circumstance; it enables us to provide systematically for the meaningfulness and depth of our existence. It makes it possible for us to acquire constancy without which all good endeavors are condemned to sterility.
Finally, an established outward order also raises us above our dependence on our own arbitrary whims and momentary dispositions; it commits us from the outset, and enduringly, to our direction towards God. The last-named advantage is more perfectly attained, of course, in the case of a rule followed—as in monastic life—from holy obedience, as contrasted to merely self-devised and self-imposed regulations.
In any event, however, we must keep aware of the fact that all technical regulation of life is but a means, not an end in itself; its observance must not be allowed to become a matter of rigid mechanical routine. We should not erect the rule into an absolute, nor abandon ourselves to its automatism as to a supreme law. Otherwise it may easily blunt, rather than sharpen, our perception of the call of God, and harden our hearts rather than open them to Christ.
Work promotes virtue
An indispensable function in our lives is assigned, furthermore, to work as such. Idleness—the absence of regular activity and effort—cannot but demoralize us and hamper our inward progress. Human nature is ordained to a regulated display of its active energies; to the habitual performance of activities subservient to some objective and rational purpose.
No matter how humble that purpose may be, in order to impart to the activities it governs any moral relevancy it must possess some rational meaning and usefulness; mere activity for the sake of activity, or activity of a merely playful character, falls short of that function of moral training and strengthening. No such function can attach to activity unless it implies an element of service, which, in however indirect a fashion, has some place in the hierarchy of services in reference to the kingdom of God. To despise work because of its character of subservient usefulness would be, therefore, a gross mistake.
Man in his fallen condition is by no means capable of permanently maintaining, in statu viae, that intensity and actuality of spiritual experience which is proper to the purely contemplative attitude. That aspect of vacare in eternal life of which St. Augustine speaks, that freedom of rest and, as it were, emptiness which we shall obtain in eternity, cannot, even in an analogical sense, be anticipated on earth except in comparatively rare moments. A large portion of our lives will be spent, accordingly, in an unhealthy way unless it is devoted to some kind of work subservient to a rational purpose.
Such leisure as lacks the note of true contemplation—that is, mere recreation or amusement—must not occupy more than a small fraction of our time, lest it should impart to our lives a tinge of frivolousness and effeminacy; nay, by evoking a sense of boredom produce in us a specific aptness to sin. Work, on the other hand, also fulfills the function of being a strong curb on the overactivity of the instincts and on the poisoning of illicit appetites of all kinds, to whose pressure idleness makes us far more liable to succumb.
Certain moments magnify the range of our freedom
Beyond, however, all of the opportunities offered by the tissue of our daily lives, our freedom has the power to promote the transformation of our being in a much deeper sense so far as certain particular moments are concerned. Time and again, certain specific situations may occur—situations, to be sure, that we cannot conjure up at will—in which our free center of personality is given the capacity to bring about, by a single and definite act, a durable transformation of our inmost being. For example, there may be a moment when our renunciation of a cherished good of high intrinsic value will usher in, beyond the limits of our relation to that good, a process of detachment from terrestrial goods in general.
There may be cases, again, when our forgiving a person whom we have long held in scorn takes on the form of a softening of heart in a general and in an enduring sense as well. Or again, a deep humiliation may, in given circumstances, start off our wholesale emancipation from our slavery to pride.
These are moments in which, thanks to a gift of God, our range of direct power is suddenly extended, so that the effectiveness of our free decision may advance into the depths of our being. In such cases, the concrete object to which our act refers has the function, as it were, of a pars pro toto, an exemplar representing a whole sphere of objects.
Thus, in the act of detaching ourselves from that object we change our attitude towards a vast province or the entire domain of created goods. In the act of bursting our bonds in this one case, we lift in principle a general state of bondage to which we were hitherto subjected. Such was the victory St. Francis achieved when he embraced the leper and kissed his sores. He then not only broke the specific shackle imposed on his love by his natural repugnance to ugly and disgusting things but made an essential breach with his dependence on his natural dispositions as such. In cases like this, the outward deed means at the same time an effective interior act, by which a new situation is created in the soul itself. This is most explicitly the case, it need hardly be emphasized, in regard to an act of conversion.
It is not, as has been observed above, in our power to conjure up such situations. These moments, when the operativeness of our freedom is increased and the range of our power expanded to a degree far beyond normal, bear an unmistakable character of gratuitous gifts. Whereas ordinarily we can only posit such free actions as may be supposed to exercise an indirect effect in favor of our transformation, in these supreme moments we may make a decisive step forward concerning our permanent state of soul. It is to these moments that St, Paul refers when he says: “Behold, now is the acceptable time . . . now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). Nor must we allow these decisive moments to pass unused: “Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Ps. 94:8).
Receptivity to grace in the sacraments transforms us
Yet, the ultimate and all-important source of our transformation in Christ lies not in what we do or what we can do by our free will, but in what God accords to us in the Sacraments: above all, our participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the reception of Holy Communion. The Lord Himself alone, who has redeemed and regenerated us by His most holy Blood, can receive us and transform us in His nature. Indeed, He cries to us: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37), What we can contribute is that we do thirst—and drink. It is reserved for our freedom to receive the grace of God, the supernatural life He bestows upon us, and to open wide the gates of our souls so that the divine Life may penetrate us. This communication of grace is not given us in a way extraneous to our freedom of overriding it, but in that we go to Christ, and drink. Nevertheless, what we receive far surpasses everything we may intend or desire, indeed anything accessible to our power of experience. In the full objective sense of the term, we thus receive a new life which is to transform our very being—we may well say our ontological nature.
We should pray that we be transformed
Finally, it is certainly also within our power to pray for our transformation in Christ; to continue imploring God that He shall grant us the grace of that transformation and bless our own contribution to it. Mindful of the words of the Lord, “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), and again, “Ask, and you shall receive” (John 16:24), we must pray with the holy Church: “O God of virtues, to whom belongeth every excellent thing, implant in our hearts the love of Thy name, and bestow upon us the increase of religion, fostering what things are good, and, by Thy loving care, guarding what Thou hast fostered” (Collect of the sixth Sunday after Pentecost).
Transformation calls us freely to cooperate with God’s action in our soul
Such, then, are the manifold ways in which man is called to cooperate by his striving for perfection in the process of his transformation, and such is the part God has assigned to his freedom as a basis for that cooperation. As for the roads that lead to the single virtues—fruits of the Holy Spirit, in which the divine Life as received in Baptism, unfolds and manifests itself—we treat of these more specifically in the appropriate chapters. Here our emphasis has lain on the general conspectus.
Before all else, it should be stressed that the new supernatural life that Christ imparts to us in Baptism is a purely gratuitous gift of divine Mercy. Man is not the author even of his natural life; he is not able, as the Lord says, to increase his stature by so much as an inch. How much less is he capable of attaining supernatural life by his own forces. Yet, the complete unfolding of this life of holiness—that is, his transformation in Christ—does require his free cooperation. Even the initial reception of that holy life in Baptism supposes, in an adult at any rate, not only the Faith but a certain determination of the will. This is clearly expressed in the baptismal rite, which prescribes a thrice-repeated Volo to be pronounced by the catechumen.
The call of the Lord, sequere me, refers both to the primal surrender to God that precedes Baptism and to the striving for perfection that is to pervade the whole of life up to the last breath, Small as our contribution is if compared to the operation of God, we cannot help feeling overawed with the magnitude, the manifoldness, and the difficulty of the work it requires on our part.
For the success of that work, the Holy Church prays in almost all Collects of the ecclesiastical year; thus, in the Collect of the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost: Almighty, eternal God, grant us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may deserve to attain what Thou dost promise, make us to love what Thou dost command; or again, in the Collect of the third Sunday after Easter: O God, who dost show the light of Thy truth to them that go astray, that they may be able to return to the path of justice, grant unto all who profess themselves and are reckoned Christians, both to reject the things that are opposed to that name and to follow after the things that befit it.