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In the 60th and 63rd chapters of her Dialogue, St. Catherine shows
that what happened in the case of the Apostles, our models formed
immediately by the Saviour Himself, must happen, after a certain
manner, in the case of each one of us. Indeed we may say that if
even the Apostles stood in need of a second conversion, then still
more do we. The Saint emphasizes especially the faults which make
this second conversion necessary, in particular self-love. In
varying degrees this egoism survives in all imperfect souls in
spite of the state of grace, and it is the source of a multitude
of venial sins, of habitual faults which become characteristic
features of the soul, rendering necessary a veritable purging even
in those who have, as it were, been present on Mount Thabor, or
who have often partaken of the Eucharistic banquet, as the
Apostles did at the Last Supper.
In her Dialogue [65] St. Catherine of Siena speaks of this self-
love, describing it as
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'the mercenary love of the imperfect,'
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of
those who, without being conscious of it, serve God from self-
interest, because they are attached to temporal or spiritual
consolations, and who shed tears of self-pity when they are
deprived of them.
It is a strange but not uncommon mixture of sincere love of God
with an inordinate love of self. [66] The soul loves God more than
itself, otherwise it would not be in the state of grace, it would
not possess charity; but it still loves itself with an inordinate
love. It has not yet reached the stage of loving itself in God and
for His sake. Such a state of soul is neither white nor black; it
is a light grey, in which there is more white than black. The soul
is on the upward path, but it still has a tendency to slip
downwards.
We read in this 60th chapter of the Dialogue (it is God who
speaks).
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'Among those who have become My trusted servants there
are some who serve Me with faith, without servile fear, it is not
the mere fear of punishment, but love which attaches them to My
service (thus Peter before the Passion). But this love is still
imperfect, because what they seek in My service (at any rate to a
great extent) is their own profit, their own satisfaction, or the
pleasure that they find in Me. The same imperfection is found in
the love which they bear towards their neighbour. And do you know
what shows the imperfection of their love? It is that, as soon as
they are deprived of the consolations which they find in Me, their
love fails and can no longer survive. It becomes weak and
gradually cools towards Me when, in order to exercise them in
virtue and to detach them from their imperfection, I withdraw
spiritual consolations from them and send them difficulties and
afflictions. I act in this way in order to bring them to
perfection, to teach them to know themselves, to realize that they
are nothing and that of themselves they have no grace. [67]
Adversity should have the effect of making them seek refuge in Me,
recognize Me as their benefactor, and become attached to Me by a
true humility.... If they do not recognize their imperfection and desire to become
perfect, it is impossible that they should not turn back.'
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This is
what the Fathers have so often asserted:
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'In the way of God he who
makes no progress loses ground.'
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Just as the child who does not
grow does not merely remain a child but becomes an idiot, so the
beginner who does not enter upon the way of proficients when he
ought to, does not merely remain a beginner, but becomes a stunted
soul. It would seem, unhappily, that the great majority of souls
do not belong to any of these three categories, of beginners,
proficients or perfect, but rather to that of stunted souls! At
what stage are we ourselves? This is often a very difficult
question to answer, and it would perhaps be vain curiosity to
inquire at what point we have arrived in our upward path; but at
least we must take care not to mistake the road, not to take a
path that leads downwards.
It is important, therefore, to reach beyond the merely mercenary
love, which often we unconsciously retain. We read in this same
60th chapter:
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'It was with this imperfect love that Peter loved
the good and gentle Jesus, my only-begotten Son, when he
experienced the delights of sweet intimacy with Him (on Mount
Thabor). But as soon as the time of tribulation came all his
courage forsook him. Not only did he not have the strength to
suffer for Him, but at the first threat of danger his loyalty was
overcome by the most servile fear, and he denied Him three times,
swearing that he did not know Him.'
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St. Catherine of Siena, in the 63rd chapter of the same Dialogue,
shows that the imperfect soul, which loves God with a love which
is still mercenary, must do what Peter did after his denial. Not
infrequently Providence allows us, too, at this stage to commit
some very palpable fault, in order to humiliate us and cause us to
take true measure of ourselves.
says the Lord, [68]
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'having recognized the grievousness
of its sin and repented of it, the soul begins to weep, for fear
of punishment; then it rises to the consideration of my mercy, in
which it finds satisfaction and comfort. But it is, I say, still
imperfect, and in order to draw it on to perfection... I withdraw
from it, not in grace but in feeling. [69]... This I do in order
to humiliate that soul, and cause it to seek Me in truth...
without thought of self and with lively faith and with hatred of
its own sensuality.'
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And just as Peter compensated for his
threefold denial by three acts of pure and devoted love, so the
enlightened soul must do in like manner.
St. John of the Cross, following Tauler, gives us three signs
which mark this second conversion:
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'The soul finds no pleasure or
consolation in the things of God, but it also fails to find it in
any thing created.... The second sign... is that ordinarily the
memory is centred upon God, with painful care and solicitude,
thinking that it is not serving God, but backsliding, because it
finds itself without sweetness in the things of God.... The third
sign... is that the soul can no longer meditate or reflect in its
sense of the imagination.... For God now begins to communicate
Himself to it, no longer through sense, as He did aforetime, by
means of reflections which joined and sundered its knowledge, but
by an act of simple contemplation, to which neither the exterior
nor the interior senses of the lower part of the soul can attain.'
[70]
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Progressives or proficients thus enter, according to St. John of
the Cross,
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'upon the road and way of the spirit, which... is
called the way of illumination or of infused contemplation,
wherewith God Himself feeds and refreshes the soul.' [71]
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While St. Catherine of Siena does not give so exact an analysis,
she insists particularly upon one of the signs of this state: an
experimental knowledge of our poverty and profound imperfection; a
knowledge which is not precisely acquired, but granted by God, as
it was granted to Peter when Jesus looked upon him immediately
after his denial. At that moment Peter received a grace of
enlightenment; he remembered, and going out he wept bitterly. [72]
At the end of this same 63rd chapter of her Dialogue we find a
passage of which St. John of the Cross later gives a full
development-
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'I withdraw from the soul,'
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says the Lord,
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'so that
it may see and know its defects, so that, feeling itself deprived
of consolation and afflicted by pain, it may recognize its own
weakness, and learn how incapable it is of stability or
perseverance, thus cutting down to the very root of spiritual
self-love; for this should be the end and purpose of all its self-
knowledge, to rise above itself, mounting the throne of
conscience, and not permitting the sentiment of imperfect love to
turn again in its death-struggle, but, with correction and
reproof, digging up the root of self-love, with the knife of self-
hatred and the love of virtue.' [73]
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In this same connection the Saint speaks of the many dangers that
lie in wait for a soul that is moved only by a mercenary love,
saying that souls which are imperfect desire to follow the Father
alone, without passing by the way of Christ crucified, because
they have no desire to suffer. [74]
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