The ego keeps us from being saints. The passive purgation destroys the ego. Again, the ego stops the gifts of the Holy Spirit from working and stops the growth of the virtues.
Only in the stages after the death of the ego can one be said to be working for God and not for the hidden desires of the heart which center on the individual and not God.
One must go through the stages. The entire Dark Night series reveals this journey into purification. But, journey is both grace from God and our own willingness to mortify ourselves in some way.
In other words, the cross sent by God to purify us must complete the work of mortification which we impose on ourselves. Consequently, as St. Luke relates: "He [Jesus] said to all: If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself [this is the law of mortification or abnegation], and take up his cross daily, and follow Me"; (11) per crucem ad lucem. This road leads to the light of life, to intimate union with God, the normal prelude of the life of heaven.
Notice the repetition in Garrigou-Lagrange in the phrase, "the normal prelude of the lift of heaven". Purgatory after death is not the normal way. Purgation on earth is and again, one weakens the Church is one is not allowing God to purify the heart, intellect, soul.........Getting rid of judgement towards others is a huge step. As long as one judges, one is still full of the ego.
After baptism, not before, we are in a state of innocence and sanctifyng grace which does not last long, as when we begin to reason, we begin to sin. Only the young saints, again, many listed in a recent post, maintain purity of heart, mind and soul. And, even many of them suffer, as we see with two young Blesseds Jacinta and Francisco. Jacinta, by the way, is the youngest child to be made a Blessed without being a martyr.
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| http://www.santuario-fatima.pt in Ilustração Portuguesa no. 610, 29 October 1917 |
At the age of eight, she understood and experienced intense pain for the conversion of sinners. Her good inclinations overcame not only her own bad ones, but she interceded for others.
"But," says Tauler, "if it could see its own sins, it would completely forget those of others, no matter how great they might be." (11)
Every time this inclination is reproved, it strives to justify and defend itself, and cannot bear to be corrected. It tells itself that others have their defects, but that it has always acted with a good intention or through ignorance or weakness. This inclination reaches the point of persuading itself that it seeks God in everything, whereas in reality it seeks itself always and lives only on appearances and externals. It prefers appearance to reality. Therefore it seeks itself even in prayer and the taste for spiritual things, in interior consolations turning the gifts of heaven, whether interior or exterior, and even God Himself, to its own satisfaction. If it happens to lose an object of its delight, it immediately seeks another, in order to rest in it and to refer all to self.
Tauler uses the same metaphor of the cell within the heart as does St. Catherine, as re-posted here the other day.
To bring about the predominance of the good inclination, man must be a severe guardian and observer of self, of his exterior and interior senses. He must not allow his senses to become dissipated, to run after creatures. "He must," says Tauler, "build a cell within his heart, withdraw to it and live in it as far as possible unknown to the whole world, that he may be less turned away from divine contemplation. He must not lose sight of the life and passion of our Savior." (12) The consideration of Christ's life and passion will give birth in him to the desire to resemble Christ by humility of heart, patience, meekness, true love of God and neighbor.
There is not a doubt that humility is the only way to stop the incessant thinking of one's self and move toward constantly thinking of God and others.
When a man finds that he is not conformed to the divine model, he will ask the Holy Ghost to give him the grace better to see the ugliness of sin and its deadly results. He will abase himself with sincerity and humility, but with confidence in infinite mercy, begging it to raise him up again.
The more a man promptly mortifies his evil inclination, the more living and beautiful the image of God that is in him becomes: the natural image, that is, the soul itself in so far as by nature it is spiritual and immortal, and the supernatural image, in other words, sanctifying grace from which spring the infused virtues and the gifts. Then gradually man begins to think frequently of God instead of thinking always of himself, and instead of seeking self by referring everything to self, he begins to seek God in everything that happens, to love Him truly, effectively, practically, and to refer all to Him.
Tauler concludes: "As long as you seek yourself, as you act for yourself, as you ask for the reward of and the wages for your actions, and cannot endure being known by others for what you really are, you dwell in illusion and error worthy of pity. When you despise another because of his defects, and when you wish to be preferred to those who do not live according to your maxims, you do not know yourself, you are still ignorant of the evil inclination that subsists in you." (13) It is this inclination that hinders the image of God from being what it ought to be, so that the soul may truly bear the fruits of eternal life; therefore the necessity of knowing oneself profoundly in order to know God and to love Him truly.
These reflections on retarded souls lead us to speak of the necessity of the second conversion or passive purification of the senses, which marks, according to St, John of the Cross, the entrance into the illuminative way of the advanced.
I have gone backwards in a sense in this series to reinterate the necessity for the time of purgation. As I re-post some of the posts from the perfection series, one can see the road from this time of purgation to the illuminative state. To be continued..............................
