Untitled - Saints' Books

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Primum
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248 Material for Instructions. [PART n.
because victory
is
very rare." How many miserable
men, exclaims St. Laurence Justinian with tears, after
many years spent in the solitude of a desert, in medita
tions, fasting, and penitential austerities, have, for the
sake of sensual indulgence, left the desert and have lost
chastity and God? 2 Priests, then, who are bound to
perpetual chastity, must take great care to preserve it.
You shall never practise chastity, said St. Charles Borromeo
to an ecclesiastic, unless you are careful to watch
over yourself with great diligence; for chastity is easily
lost by the negligent. 3
This care and attention consist in taking the means
of preserving chastity. These means are, to avoid cer
tain incentives to impurity, and to adopt certain reme
dies against temptations.
i. FLIGHT OF THE OCCASION.
The first means is to avoid the occasions of sins
against purity.
"We
must," says St. Jerome,
from those whose presence may entice us to evil."
be far
Philip Neri used to say that in this warfare cowards,
that is, they that fly from the occasions, are victorious.
Concupiscence," says Peter de Blois, overcome by
"is
nothing more easily than 5
by flight."
The grace of God is a great treasure, but this treasure
we carry in vessels that are frail and easily broken.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels* Man cannot of
1 "
Inter omnia certamina, sola duriora sunt praelia castitatis, ubi
quotidiana est pugna, et rara victoria." Serm.
2 "
293, E. B. app.
Quanti, post frequentes orationes, diutissimatn eremi habitationem,
cibi potusque parcitatem, seducti spiritu fornicationis, deserta relinquentes,
duplici interitu, perierunt DC spir. an. hit. 1. i.
!
3
Minim " est quam facile ab iis deperdatur, qui ad ejus conservationem
non invigilant."
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4 hujus vitii remedium est longe fieri ab eis quorum praesentia
alliciat ad malum."
St.
5 "
6 " Habemus
Nunquam luxuria facilius vincitur, quam fugiendo." Serm. 45.
autem thesaurum istum in vasis fictilibus." 2 Cor. iv. 7.