HPR, v. 34.1 (1933–1934), pp. 43-47
PRACTICAL ASCETICAL NOTES FOR PRIESTS
The Cultivation of Perfection
By BEDE JARRETT, O.P.
In Our Lord’s view of holiness, whether for priest or people, the central part of it lies hidden within. There is little means of judging a man’s holiness, since it is concerned not with acts but with motives, and motives are out of sight. In these papers, therefore, the real effort will be to help my brother-priests to remember this. We need reminding that it is never what we do, but why we do it, that most matters. If we can get our motives right, the rest can be left to follow its own way. Moreover, motives themselves are commanded us in the saying that we must love. Love is less an action than a motive for action. We are bidden, not to do, but to love. We shall, therefore, take the main underlying ideas of Our Lord and try to lay them in a scheme of spiritual teaching. We as priests shall only be true priests in proportion to our spiritual life’s energy. Not our parish but our soul is what we shall take to the Seat of Judgment at the end.
So we have set out what constitutes the essence of that perfection which Our Lord laid on us as a command. Then we have spoken too of the way in which that perfection manifests itself, namely, in the acceptance of the divine will, for it is clear that we shall be perfect if we leave ourselves to be trained by God. Hence, we must trust Him absolutely and suffer in serene love whatever He shall do to us. Then will He gather us to Himself. But we must needs have a consciousness of our native sinfulness, and because of our insufficiency be led to put all our confidence in Him. We must not only remember that we are nothing worth, but also that He is worth all. Since He is all, He also does all. In the language of the old mystics: “There is no doer but He.” Even sin has a place in His economy of grace, so that we must not let ourselves become impatient of our faults but use their memory to love God better. This the Passion of Christ can achieve in us, through the compassion of God’s Mother, in our prayer and contemplation. Thus shall we be made perfect in hope.
“Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” That saying of Our Blessed Lord is one that continuously puzzles us. Thus we listen to what He says and we know ourselves and we know too that He knew us better even then [sic] we do. We know ourselves and know that the idea of the infinite perfection of God is something not only above us but utterly impossible to us, beyond our very dreams; and yet Our Lord, who knows human nature for He made it, gave us not as an invitation but as a command that we should be “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.” How can we be perfect? How can we be perfect as God?
But when we use the word “perfection” or say of a thing that it is perfect, we may mean all sorts of things, we may mean “perfection” in all sorts of ways. Thus, we even use the word of a ruin. People say that Tintern Abbey is a “perfect” ruin. We do not mean that it is complete, for it is a ruin; but we mean that it is perfect as a ruin, perfect in its own order, perfect in its place. We may say of speech that it is “perfect,’” and by that mean that it contained no word too much, no word too few. It could not be improved on. It was perfect. We say of a witty answer that it was a “perfect” reply, meaning that it fitted the situation exquisitely, that nothing better could have been said. Or again we can say that the silence was “perfect.” We mean, of course, that it was absolutely complete or in place.
Can we not then describe perfection as implying completeness in a particular order, so that the perfect thing does completely what it is wanted to do? Thus, a mechanical instrument is perfect or complete if it does its work thoroughly, exactly fulfills the purpose for which it was designed. Thus also we can say reverently that God is perfect because He fulfills all that He is: “I am who am.” God is perfect; in Him everything is in order. Again, His world is a perfect world in its own order, for everything in it is in its proper place. God is perfect. But man was made after the image and likeness of God. Man therefore — you, I, all men — was created to be perfect, but perfect only as man, perfect only as a man should be: all his powers, his passions, his emotions, his intelligence, his will, all are to be perfect, each in its own place, doing its own work, fulfilling its own purpose as — if it is properly in order — it will do. That is what man was intended to be; he was made after God’s image and likeness. That is why it is, and how it is, that man can be perfect. He is formed on the model of God.
If you remember, even as a child when you learnt your Catechism, you were taught that man is like God—that is, like the Blessed Trinity. Since then, you did your theological studies, and now have better understood that he is so by nature. God made him so in his first creation. And you have learnt too that, besides his nature, he received a supernature — treasures of grace by which his soul is again made like God a second time by participating in the divine life. God is perfect; man, fashioned after God’s likeness, was also intended to be perfect in two orders, both by nature and by grace. And also he was to be perfect by a determination of his will. He cannot be perfected against his will.
Our Lord said: “Be perfect.” That is evidently a command. Are we perfect, that is, are we fulfilling our purpose? Are we perfect, having everything in order, our intelligence, our will, our love, our anger, our hopes, our desires, everything about us doing what it should be doing, every power and faculty exquisitely obedient and alive? That is what He meant us to be, that is how He fashioned us.
But this perfection, orderliness, was to be aimed at deliberately, by our own will. You will never be perfect unless you want to be perfect. Honestly, do you want to be? Do you want to have your anger completely under control, never to be angry except when it is reasonable to be angry, never to love unless you should, never to enjoy what you ought not to enjoy? Do you want to be perfect? They that have tasted it — Saints, we call them — say that it is a thing blessed beyond dreams. They were men, women, children who set themselves perfectly in order, aimed at perfection, wanted it, heard of it, and acknowledged it as a divine command.
Can we be perfect? What have we to do to become perfect? It can be maintained that quite truly we have very little to do. We believe this to be God’s world; we believe God to be in charge of it and us. We believe that God fashioned our world, and that God made each one of us. But God made us intending that we should know our own way, goal and purpose, and achieve it for ourselves, and thus reach the perfection He meant us to have — a perfection, that is, within our scope. How can we achieve this goal? Leave it to Him, leave it to Him entirely; He will get us there, if we will but let Him. That is all that we have to do, to let Him make us perfect. It is His job. God governs us, God governs our life absolutely. Every moment of our life, then, we are under the infinite power of God. Because you believe this, you must try not to chafe against God. Do not fight against Him. Let Him deal with you; He will treat you in the way He sees you need. Nothing is asked of you but this absolute acceptance of the divine will affecting every detail of your life.
Have you grown old? Or are you middle-aged or young still? Whoever you are, God is watching you, who slumbers not nor sleeps. God is watching you, not to do you hurt, but to make you perfect. All that is asked is that you should surrender yourself absolutely to Him. He will give you what He sees you need for the perfection of yourself. Have faith in Him and you will remain tranquil, putting yourself into His hands.
“But what will He do with me?” He will make you more truly and more fully after the image and likeness of Himself, as He made His Son. “Shall I be happy under what He does to me?” Do you remember how God treated His Son? It is a foolish question to ask, if you do remember. You certainly can be happy. But whether you will be or not, depends entirely on yourself. “Will He treat me hardly?” God chastizes those whom He loves. That is the price you must pay for your divine fashioning after the image of His Son. You will be bought and sold, denied, betrayed; you will have false accusations brought against you. Yes, but the point is: what are you going to do about it? Are you going to leave yourself absolutely in His hands? Or are you going to fight for your good name? Do not so act! Dare to leave yourself to His fashioning. After the example of His Son, if you wish to be perfect, be submissive. Surrender yourself body and soul to His will. “Be ye perfect” — dare we even aim at that? What were His blessed words? He knew human nature as we cannot know it. He knew its baseness, as we even do not know it; He knew its frailty, its inconsistency. Yet, knowing it, He dared to say to us: “Follow Me.” How well He thought of us, how nobly He judged us who said to us: “Follow Me. Come where I go, follow Me to the heights of self-sacrifice that I have climbed.” He would not have said it unless He meant it, unless He knew that we could.
Was He a dreamer? He was no dreamer. He knew mankind, for His fingers had fashioned them. He knew the shallowness of those who then followed Him and of those who would follow Him, but He knew also their depth, their greatness. And knowing this He calls all of us to follow Him.
What He asks is that we should come willingly. So we must answer Him personally, one by one. Are we willing to follow Him, really willing? I do not think we really are; I think we are desperately afraid of what He may ask us to give up. St. Augustine, as a youth with his dreams and idealism and yet with that frailty of his flesh, prayed his broken prayer: “Give me chastity, but not yet!” Not yet! Not yet! Is that not like our own heart’s prayer? Perfection? Yes, but not yet!
He says to us: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” We were made after His image and likeness, made so by nature, made so by grace. He tells us that, even after we have sinned, He will again re-make us to that blessed likeness, if we will let Him deal with every detail of our lives. All that is asked of us is to accept His divine overmastering will and this may well include the crown with thorns, the scepter set in our hand by way of mockery, the garment of a fool flung round us. Do not be troubled by these. Take them as part of life. In your young priesthood or grown middle-aged or old, take His will each one. If you will but let Him, He will make a saint of you. When He comes down on the altar at your Mass, ask this Master, thus passing by, to give you the high courage and the blessed patience you need to let Him deal with you in His own way.
Out of our troubles He will fashion of us priests more worthy of Himself. Out of our difficulties He will fashion each one of us for some grace of life, for that particular grace He had in view when He made us. Out of our forlornness He will make of us “another vessel as it seems good in His eyes to make it.” As you say the Pater Noster, repeat with special meaning before Him that phrase of it that asks that His blessed will be done.
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