No one has defined perfection better than Rodriguez: "Christian perfection consists in uniting ourselves to God through love."
And St. Francis de Sales says the same thing, except that after "love God with your whole heart," he adds "and your neighbor as yourself."
Perfection is a thing of the heart. Certainly it is not a question of sensible love; heart must be understood here in its most noble sense. Perfection is not a fragmentary, spasmodic love active by fits and starts, without any duration, but a morally continuous love, not necessarily manifesting always the same pitch of enthusiasm, the same generosity, but an alert, indissoluble, and complete love which encompasses the details as well as the entirety of our life, in order to make the least particle of our life's mosaic an adherence to God, a union with God, an explicit or implied gift of ourselves to Him.
All this does not differ greatly from the definition of St. Thomas Aquinas: In hoc perfectus consistit quod totaliter Deo inhaereat, perfection consists in this: that we cling to God.
How great is my love? What use do I make of it? Are there at times wilful lapses in my devotion to God?
This remark was found in the notes of a young girl, "I have a horror of the word mediocre. When as a schoolgirl I received a corrected exercise, with the word mediocre in the margin, I was deeply humiliated.... Now it is a question of something more important than an exercise; it is a question of my soul."
Can I truthfully put the words Very Good on each page of my existence? If not, my perfection is decidedly imperfect.
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)
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