Holiness is not based on what practices we have
2 min • Digitized on February 7, 2024
From The Spiritual Combat, in file "The Spiritual Combat (Dornin edition)", page 5
By Dom Lorenzo Scupoli
CHAPTER I.
In what Christian perfection consists; We must fight in order to attain it: Four things necessary for obtaining the victory.
If you seek, O Christian Soul, to attain to the highest pitch of Evangelical perfection, and unite yourself so closely with God as to become one Spirit with him; it is requisite in order to succeed in a design the most sublime that can be expressed or imagined, that you be first acquainted with the true nature and perfection of Spirituality.
Some, who only judge by appearances, make it consist in penitential works, in hair shirts, chastisements, watching fasting, and such like corporal mortifications.
Many, especially women, fancy themselves consummately virtuous, when habituated to long vocal prayers, hearing several masses, assisting at the whole divine office, spending many hours in the church, and frequent communion.
Others, not excepting some of those who have consecrated themselves to God in a religious life, think that perfection consists in being assiduous in the choir, in affecting silence and retirement, and a strict observance of their rule.
Thus different people place perfection in different practices; but certain it is they all equally deceive themselves. For, as exterior works are no more than either dispositions for becoming truly pious, or the effects of real piety, it cannot be said that Christian perfection, and true piety, consist in them.
Doubtless they are powerful means for becoming truly perfect, and truly pious, and when employed with discretion, are of singular efficacy for supporting our nature, ever averse to good, and prone to evil; for repelling the attacks, and escaping the snares of our common enemy; for obtaining from the Father of Mercies, those succours so necessary for the righteous, especially beginners.