How to Subdue Sudden Stirrings of the Passions

If you, my beloved, are not yet accustomed to subduing the sudden movements and stirrings of the passions occasioned, for example, by insults or other encounters, I counsel you to do the following: make it a rule for yourself each day, while still sitting at home, to review all the situations that may meet you during the day, both favorable and unfavorable, and what passionate impulses, lusts, and irritations may thereby be aroused in you—and prepare yourself in advance how to suppress them at their very birth, giving them no quarter. Acting thus, you will never be suddenly overtaken by any passionate movements, but will always be ready to repel them, and will be able neither to be troubled by anger nor swept away by desire. Such a review of contingencies should be done above all when you intend to go out and visit places where you must encounter persons who might either attract or provoke you. Being prepared, you will easily avoid both. A wave of passion, even if one arises, will roll over you or break against you like against a solid rock, and will not toss you about like a light skiff. Let the holy prophet David assure you of this with regard to anger, as he says: ”I have prepared and was not troubled” (Ps. 118:60).

But such preparation does not accomplish everything. A stirring of passion may still arise, and unexpectedly at that. In such a case do the following: as soon as you feel a passionate movement, whether of lust or irritability, hasten to bridle it by a effort of will; descend into the heart with the attention of the mind, and strive with all your might not to let it reach the heart, keeping watch that it neither be provoked by what provokes it, nor cleave to what attracts it. But if one or the other should suddenly arise in the heart, try at first not to let it come outward—do not betray it by word, or glance, or gesture.

Then compel yourself to lift your mind and heart up to God, and by reviving in yourself a clear awareness and feeling both of God’s infinite love and of His impartial justice, strive by both of these to drive out the passionate movement and to raise up the good disposition opposed to it. In the situation at hand it may not be fully possible to do this as it ought to be done, but at all costs do not abandon the intention and effort to do so. Perhaps for now it proves fruitless—afterward you will complete it when the passion-provoking encounter has passed. Care earnestly at least not to reveal the arising passion. This in itself will keep it from gaining ground. Then, as soon as you are free from the unwholesome influx of impressions, hurry to the heart and strive to cast out the viper that has crept in there.

But the best and most effective safeguard against sudden arousal of the passions is the removal of the causes from which such movements always arise. Of these causes there are two for everything: love and hatred. If you, my beloved, have fallen captive to love for some person or are attached to some thing, great or small, then it is natural that when you encounter them, or when you see them being offended and harmed, or someone wishing to take them from you, you are at once troubled by this, grieve, are agitated, and rise up against those who do so. Therefore, if you wish that such sudden upheavals should not happen to you, take care to conquer and uproot from your heart such disordered love and such disordered attachment—and the further you have gone in either, the greater care you must take to bring yourself to indifference and to relate to things and persons with reason; for the stronger your love and attachment, the more violent and sudden the arousal of passion in all the cases mentioned.

Likewise, if you have ill will toward some person or aversion to some thing, it is equally natural to fall suddenly into indignation or disgust when you encounter them, especially when someone praises them. Therefore, if you wish to preserve peace of heart in such situations, compel yourself this time to suppress the evil feelings that have arisen, and afterward to extirpate them entirely.

In this the following reflection (regarding persons) will help you—that they too are creatures of God, created, as you are, in the image and likeness of God, by the all-powerful right hand of the living God; that they too have been redeemed and recreated by the priceless Blood of Christ the Lord; that they too are your brethren and fellow members, whom you ought not to hate even in your thought, as it is written: ”you shall not hate your brother in your mind” (Lev. 19:17). Above all, when—suppose they deserve ill-will and hostility—you take them into kind disposition and love, you thereby make yourself like God, Who loves all His creatures and is disgusted by none, as the wise Solomon praises Him: ”You love all things that exist, and loathe nothing that You have made; for You would not have made anything if You had hated it” (Wis. 11:25), and Who, overlooking the sins of men, ”makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45).