Untitled - Saints' Books

436 Appendix.
Spiritual ftuies for a Driest rolio Aspires to perfection.
i. To AVOID SIN, AND TROUBLE AFTER SIN.
A PRIEST who aspires to perfection and desires to
sanctify himself should, above all, endeavor to avoid
more than death the least deliberate venial sin. In the
present state of human frailty, since Adam s sin, no one
can, and no one ever could, with the exception only of
Jesus Christ and his most Blessed Mother, be exempt
from all indeliberate venial faults. With the help of God,
however, every one can avoid every deliberate fault;
that is to say, committed with full advertence and con
sent; thus the saints have acted. He, therefore, who
tends to perfection should make up his mind rather to
allow himself to be cut to pieces than to tell, with full
knowledge, a lie, or to commit any other venial sin, how
ever small it may be.
Such should be his resolution; but if
unfortunately
he happens to fall into a fault, either deliberate or inde
liberate, let him beware of troubling and disquieting
himself. Disquietude does not come from God; it is a
smoke that comes only from the abode of disquietude
itself, namely, from hell; and it comes to us from that
place because, as St. Aloysius has justly said, the
devil always finds something to fish in troubled waters.
When one has, for example, committed a fault one is
troubled, and one is troubled because one has been
troubled. In this state of disquietude we shall not only
be unable to do any good, but we shall also easily com
mit many other faults, either of impatience or of some
other kind. Hence, as soon as the fault has been com-