A Remedy Against Being Troubled by Any Light Failings and Weaknesses

If it happens that you fall into some pardonable fault in deed or word—namely, being upset by some chance event, or judging, or hearing others judge, or arguing about something, or experiencing a movement of impatience, fussiness, or suspicion of others, or neglecting something—you should not be extremely troubled, or grieve and despair while thinking about what you have done; still less should you add to it despondent thoughts about yourself, that surely you will never be free from such weaknesses, or that the force of your resolve to serve the Lord is weak, or that you are not walking the way of God as you should, burdening your soul at every such occasion with thousands of other fears born of faint-heartedness and grief.

For what comes of this? That you are ashamed to stand before God with boldness, having proved unfaithful to Him; you waste time in vain examining how long you remained in each failing, whether you consented to it and desired it or not, whether you rejected such and such a thought or not, and the like. And the more you torment yourself in this way, the greater the increase of spiritual disorder, anguish, and reluctance to go to confession. But even when you go to confession and confess with troubled fear, still after confession you find no peace—for it seems to you that you have not said everything. And thus you live a life that is bitter, restless, and of little fruit, wasting much time in vain. And all this comes from our forgetting our natural weakness and losing sight of how the soul ought to relate to God—namely, that when the soul falls into some pardonable and non-mortal fault, it should turn to God with humble repentance and hope, and not torment itself with excessive grief, anguish, and bitterness over it.

I say this of pardonable sins, for it is only in these that a soul can fall that has taken up the strict life we are describing here. We are addressing here those who live the spiritual life and who actively seek to advance in it, in every way avoiding mortal sins. For those who live not strictly but as they happen to, and who are not troubled even if they offend God by mortal sin, a different word is needed. The remedy spoken of above is not for them. They must grieve deeply and weep bitterly, always strictly examine their conscience, and confess all their sins without sparing themselves; and they must on no account through negligence deprive themselves of the means necessary for their healing and salvation.

Repentance must always be animated and penetrated by firm hope in God—both after light everyday falls and still more after weightier failings than usual, into which even the zealous servant of God sometimes falls by permission. For penitent contrition that only torments and gnaws the heart never restores the soul to a hopeful disposition, if it is not joined with firm hope in the mercy and goodness of God. Such hope must unceasingly fill the hearts of those who strive to attain the higher degrees of Christian perfection. It enlivens and brings all the powers of soul and spirit into full tension. But many who have entered on the path of spiritual life, taking no care of it, halt in their course with a weakened heart, making no advance—for which reason they prove unfit to receive the gracious goods which the Lord has placed along this path, and of which ordinarily only zealous ones are accounted worthy—those who with unflagging ardor press ever forward and forward.

Most of all, those who experience any anxiety of heart, or any perplexity, or a divided conscience, must turn to their spiritual father or to some other person experienced in the spiritual life, accompanying this with a hopeful prayer that the Lord may through them reveal and grant a comforting resolution of their perplexities and disturbances—and then settle in full peace upon their word.