Thought for the Day – 7 April– The Spiritual Combat (1589) – Dom Lorenzo Scupoli OSM (c1530-1610)

“None shall be crowned who has not fought well.” 2 Tim 2: 5

XLII: … How to Resist the Devil When
he Seeks to Delude Us, by Indiscreet Zeal

“When our cunning adversary perceives that we are walking onward in the path of holiness with fervent, yet well-regulated desires, being unable to draw us aside by open allurements, he transforms himself into an Angel of Light and, by suggestions of seeming friendship, words from Scripture and examples of Saints, importunately urges us to aspire indiscreetly, to the height of perfection that ,so doing, he may cause us to fall headlong from thence.

To this end, he encourages us to chastise the body with great severity, by fasts, disciplines, hair-shirts and other similar mortifications, that he may either tempt us to pride by the thought that we are doing great things which is a temptation which especially, besets women, or that we may fall sick and so be disabled from the exercise of good works; or else that from pain and over-weariness, we may take a disgust and abhorrence to spiritual exercises and thus, by degrees, grow cold in the way of godliness and, at last, give ourselves up with greater avidity than before to worldly pleasures and amusements!

This has been the end of many, who, following presumptuously the impulse of an indiscreet zeal, hav,e in their excessive outward austerities, gone beyond the measure of their interior virtue and so, have perished in their own inventions and become the sport of malicious fiends.
This would not have befallen them had they well considered what we have been saying and remembered, that these acts of painful self-discipline, praiseworthy as they are and profitable to such as have corresponding strength of body and humility of spirit, must yet be proportioned to each man’s state and condition.

And those who are unequal to labour with the Saints in similar austerities, may find other opportunities of imitating their lives by strong and effective desires and fervent prayers, aspiring after the most glorious crown of Christ’s true soldier by despising the whole world and themselves too; by giving themselves up to solitude and silence; by meekness and humility towards all men; by patience under wrongs; by doing good to those most opposed to them and, by avoiding every fault, however trivial it may be – all things far more acceptable to God than painful bodily exercises!

With regard to these, I would have you to be rather discreetly sparing, in order to be able, if necessary, to increase them, than by certain excesses of zeal, to run the risk of having to relinquish them altogether.
I say this to you, being well assured you are not likely to fall into the error of those who, though they pass for spiritual, are enticed and deluded by deceitful nature into an over-anxious care for the preservation of their bodily health.
So jealous are they and fearful of the slightest thing which might affect it that they live in constant doubt and fear of losing their physical attributes.
There is nothing of which they better love to think and speak than of the ordering of their lives in this respect.
Hence, they are ever solicitous to have food suited rather to their palate than
their stomach, which is often weakened by over-delicacy.
And although all this is done on the pretext of gaining strength, the better to serve God, it is in fact but a vain attempt to conciliate two mortal enemies, the spirit and the flesh; an attempt which injures both, instead of benefiting either; for this same over-carefulness impairs the health of the one and the devotion of the other!

A certain degree of freedom in our way of life is therefore safer and more profitable, accompanied, however, by the discretion of which I have spoken, having regard to different constitutions and states of life which cannot all be brought under the same rule.
In the pursuit of interior holiness, as well as of exterior devotion, we should proceed with moderation, as has been shown before, on the subject of the gradual acquisition of virtues.”

Dom Lorenzo Scupoli