Salesian Literature

Chapter 20  :  Charity harnesses all the passions, all the soul’s emotions, until they obey it

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The human heart lives on love. As our loves are, so are our emotions; love dictates our desires, our delights, our hopes, our fears, our discouragements, our consolations, our hates, our evasions, our griefs, our stirrings of anger, our victories.

 

Let charity reign in the soul, therefore, and it will enshrine itself as queen over all the loves of the will; over its emotions too, since they are naturally dictated by what we love.  It will then go on to take the sense appetite, and so win the obedience of the sense passions.

 

Love of God and love of self dwell in our hearts like Jacob and Esau in Rebecca’s womb (cf. Gen. 25:22-25).  They are mutually distasteful and repulsive; they fall to struggling in the heart all the time.  Pitiable creature that I am, the soul is driven to exclaim, who is to set me free from a nature thus doomed to death (Rom. 7:24), so that charity may reign in me at peace?

 

We are to take heart, for all that, and trust in our Lord’s word; in what is both a bidding and a promise, it assures u the victory of love.  It is as though he were giving us the same counsel as he gave to Rebecca: There are two nations in thy womb; in thy body the separation of two peoples has begun; here is a victory of people over people, and it is the elder that shall be subject to the younger.

 

Rebecca’s twins were called two nations in view of their descendants; the soul has two colonies of impulses, emotions, passions, by reason of its two loves.  Just as the struggle of Rebecca’s unborn twins caused her sharp pains, so the twin loves of the soul cause the heart to ache.  Rebecca, however, was promised that the elder should be subject to the younger; so it has also been decreed that in the human heart the sensual love shall serve the spiritual – in other words, self-love will be at the service of God’s love.

 

When did it come about that the elder of the two nations in Rebecca’s womb served the younger?  Surely not until David mastered the Idumeans in war and Solomon governed them in peace.  But when shall we see sensual love at the service of charity?  Not until love goes to war on our passions, not until zeal subdues them by mortification; not fully, indeed, until in heaven blissful love will secure peaceful possession of our souls (cf. Lk. 11:21; 21:19).

 

How, then, are we to set about ranging our emotions, our passions, in charity’s service?  We know that two things blot out starlight: a cloudy night or a sunny day – obscurity or too much light.  We struggle with our passions in the same way: countering them either with contrary passions, or with stronger emotions of a similar kind.

 

Suppose, for example, I am tempted to expect too much of someone … One way of resisting would be to deter myself by recalling the truth of the matter, which is just the other way: “Stupid fellow, what grounds have I for trusting in so and so, he is no less mortal than I am.  Surely I have learned how fickle, how partial, how foolish people can be!  I have this man’s ear today; tomorrow he will be listening to someone else.  Why should I expect so much of him?”

 

Another way of resisting would be to put my trust on firmer ground: “On the Lord I will fix my eyes continually, trusting him to save my feet from the snare (Ps. 24:15; 41:6).  Was ever man yet that trusted in the Lord, and was disappointed? (Eccl. 2:11)  My heart is set upon the things that a re eternal, that never fail.”  In this way I can withstand the coveting of wealth, of worldly pleasures; either I can show them the indifference they deserve, or I can long for those that are immortal.  That is how the devouring sensitive appetite, the love of earthly things, is put out by charity – as it were by water, or by a more consuming fire.

 

Our Lord used both these methods when he cured the souls of men.  He cured his disciples of worldly fear by instilling into their hearts a higher fear.  There is no need, he told them, to fear those who kill the body, but have no means of killing the soul; fear him more, who has power to ruin body and soul in hell (Mt. 10:28).  Wishing to cure them another time of seeking trivial joys, he set before them a nobler one: But you, instead of rejoicing that the devils are made subject to you, should be rejoicing that your names are enrolled in heaven (Lk. 10:20).  He even dispels trivial joy by grief: Woe upon you who laugh now; you shall mourn and weep (Lk. 6:25).

 

In this way charity supplants, subdues the emotions and passions; it diverts them from the goal self-love had in view, and coverts them to its own spiritual aim.

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