MENS NOSTRA On the Promotion of the Spiritual Exercises

Excerpt: Now, if we would cure this sickness from which human society suffers so sorely, what healing remedy could we devise more appropriate for our purpose than that of calling these enervated souls, so neglectful of eternal things, to the recollection of the Spiritual Exercises? And, indeed, if the Spiritual Exercises were nothing more than a brief retirement for a few days, wherein a man removed from the common society of mortals and from the crowd of cares, was given, not empty silence, but the opportunity of examining those most grave and penetrating questions concerning the origin and the destiny of man: "Whence he comes; and whither he is going"; surely, no one can deny that great benefits may be derived from these sacred exercises. But pious retreats of this kind do much greater things than this, for since they compel the mind of a man to examine more diligently and intently into all the things that he has thought, or said, or done; they assist the human faculties in a marvelous manner; so that the mind becomes accustomed, in this spiritual arena, to weigh things maturely and with even balance, the will acquires strength and firmness, the passions are restrained by the rule of counsel; the activities of human life, being in unison with the thought of the mind, are effectively conformed to the fixed standard of reason; and, lastly, the soul attains its native nobility and altitude, as the holy Pontiff St. Gregory declares in his "Pastoral," by a concise similitude: "The human mind, like water, when shut up around, is gathered up to higher things; because it seeks that from which it descended; but when it is left loose, it perishes; because it spreads itself uselessly on lowly things." Moreover, as St. Eucherius Bishop of Lyons wisely observes; when exercising itself in these spiritual meditations; "the mind rejoicing in the Lord is stirred up by a certain stimulus of silence; and grows by unutterable increments." And not only so, but it also acquires that "heavenly nourishment," concerning which Lactantius says "for no food is sweeter to the mind than the knowledge of truth"; and according to an ancient author, who long passed as St. Basil, it is admitted to "the school of heavenly doctrine and the discipline of the divine arts" wherein "God is all that is learnt, the way by which we are directed, all that whereby the knowledge of the supreme truth is attained." From all this it clearly appears that the Spiritual Exercises avail both to perfect the natural powers of man; and further, and more specially, to form the supernatural or Christian man. Now, certainly in these days when so many impediments and obstacles are raised against the true sense of Christ, and the supernatural spirit, wherein alone our holy religion consists; when Naturalism, which weakens the firmness of faith, and quenches the flames of Christian charity, holds dominion far and wide; it is of the greatest importance that a man should withdraw himself from that bewitching of vanity which obscureth good things and hide himself in that blessed secrecy, where, cultured by heavenly teaching, he may form a just estimate, and understand the value of human life devoted to the service of God alone; he may abhor the turpitude of sin; he may conceive the holy fear of God; he may clearly see unveiled the vanity of earthly things; and, stirred up by the precepts and the example of Him who is "the way, the truth and the life," he may put off the old man may deny himself, and with humility, obedience, and voluntary chastisement of self, may put on Christ and strive to attain to the "perfect man," and to that absolute "measure of the age of the fullness of Christ," whereof the Apostle speaks; nay, more, may endeavour, with all his soul, to be able to say himself, with the same Apostle: "I live now not I; but Christ liveth in me."