Untitled - Saints' Books

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330 Material for Instructions. [PART n.
n.
We must Bear Contempt.
Secondly, the virtue of meekness consists still more
in bearing insults. Many, says St. Francis of Assisi,
place their sanctification in saying many prayers, or in the
practice of many corporal mortifications, but afterwards
they cannot bear an offensive word. Not understand
of what profit it is to bear in
ing," says the saint,
sults." A soul gains more by peacefully bearing an
affront than by fasting for ten days on bread and
water.
St. Bernard says that there are three degrees of ad
vancement, to which a soul that wishes to be a saint,
ought to aspire. The first is not to wish for authority
over others; the second, to wish to be subject to all;
the third is to bear insults with peace.
2
You will, for
example, see that what is given to others is denied to
you: what others say is heard with attention; what you
say is received with derision: others are praised, are
elected to offices of honor, to transact business of im
portance; but you are despised: what you do is censured
and ridiculed. You will be truly humble, says St. Dorotheus,
3 if
you accept in peace all these humiliations, and
recommend to God, as your best benefactors, all that
treat you in this manner; for they thus cure your pride,
which is a most malignant and deadly malady.
1
In thy humiliation keep patience, Behold, then, what
we must do; we must give way neither to anger nor to
complaints, but accept insults as due to our sins. He
1
Non intelligences, quanto majus sit lucrum in tolerantia injuriarum."
2 "Primus profectus, nolle dominari; secundus, velle subjici; tertius,
injurias sequanimiter pati."
De Divers, s. 60.
3 Doctr. 20.
4
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In humilitate tua patientiara habe." Ecclus. ii. 4.