The Priest at Prayer for July 11: Mortification

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

Mortification

First Meditation - General Motives

I. Our destiny in this life and the next is union with God; in the next life, by a real, everlasting union and conscious possession of the Divine Essence; in this life, by what St. Thomas calls "intentional union" through charity. Now, this charity is the effect of grace operating through prayer and meditation on supernatural realities, right intention in our works, and the accomplishment of the Will of God in all our free activities. It is union with God through faith, hope, and charity.

O God, my Creator, such is the high destiny which Thy sovereign Will has marked out for me; only for the sake of reaching this destiny dost Thou suffer me on earth; this is the sole purpose behind Thy command to love Thee with my whole heart and my whole soul and with all my strength.

II. Union with God! To become one with God, as Christ is One with the Father! It all seems so remote. The course seems to lie through so many rocks and reefs! How different my human condition is from God's Being! There is need of a constant process of self-adjustment and adaptation if I am to conform to God; there must be an entire transformation, a paring down, a remodelling of my inmost being before I can live with God and make myself at home with my heavenly Father.

And what about the rebelliousness of so much in me against these radical changes: the anguish and fierce protests of each sense and faculty when asked to unite with God instead of its own immediate objects, usually so different from, and even opposed to, God, so insub­stantial or so deep in the mire? Added to which are the siren lures of the world and the subtle suggestions of the spirit of darkness.

Lord, Thou art the fixed pole-star of my voyaging soul; show me the course by which to arrive at the beckoning shores without sinking or being ship-wrecked and stranded on the rocks.

III. Evil inducements and fallacious charms and all instigations to rebellion go by the general name of temptation, or of the primary personal source of temptation, of whom St. Peter speaks as

"a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour"­ (1 Peter v, 8);

a hungry lion seeking to feed on me as long as I live on earth. This means continual warfare on my part, as Job declares; a life beset with temptation and snares, all so many obstacles on the road to my union with God, which must be struggled against at every hour.

It means that this relentless struggle, which bears the frightening name of "mortification", is not something which is left only to generous hearts anxious to go beyond the strict terms of the law, it is not something we can freely choose to take or leave, it is a virtue that nobody who
submits to God's Will and commands can afford to do without, a virtue without which no one can cross the threshold of everlasting life.

Resolution
In order to keep my spiritual life within the narrow gauge of mortification, I resolve to read and absorb the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, where the theory of Christian mortification, usually so little understood, is expounded with logical precision.

I shall do this until I am forced by inner conviction to accept as a rule of conduct the conclusion arrived at by the Apostle when he says:

"If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death; if you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life.

"Those who follow the leading of God's Spirit are all God's sons." (Rom. viii, 13-14)

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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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