Catholic Thought discussion

Part III: “The Practice of Virtue,” Chapters 1 through 22
1. How to Select That Which We Should Chiefly Practise
2. The Same Subject Continued
3. Patience
4. Exterior Humility
5. Interior Humility
6. Humility Makes Us Rejoice in Our Own Abjection
7. How to Combine Due Care for a Good Reputation with Humility
8. Gentleness Towards Others and Remedies Against Anger
9. Gentleness Towards Ourselves
10. We Must Attend to the Business of Life Carefully, but Without Eagerness or Over-Anxiety
11. Obedience
12. Purity
13. How to Maintain Purity
14. Poverty of Spirit Amid Riches
15. How to Exercise Real Poverty, Although Actually Rich
16. How to Possess a Rich Spirit Amid Real Poverty
17. Friendship: Evil and Frivolous Friendship
18. Frivolous Attachments
19. Real Friendship
20. The Difference Between True and False Friendship
21. Remedies Against Evil Friendships
22. Further Advice Concerning Intimacies

Part III delves into the maintenance, practice, and perfection of various virtues. In the first half of the chapter, he provides insight and guidance for the virtues of patience, humility, gentleness, obedience, purity, poverty, and friendship.

I haven't commented much on the book. That's because I don't really don't have much to say. It's an incredible handbook to spiritual direction. I don't know how much of the book will stick with me. It's probably good to keep the book at arms reach and randomly peruse it every so often. I am finding this book way more enriching than The Imitation of Christ.

Yes, it does not require much to comment and is more like a complete manual toward spirituality. It is hard to keep it all in mind. I went to the effort to summarize it in its entirety after a previous reading. The summary ended up to thirty-one pages. St. Francis often gives directions on doing certain tasks according to a particular schedule, daily, monthly. Perhaps I need to extract this calendar from his instructions next and keep it on the side to refer to because my previous summary is much too unwieldy.

I also find this book more useful and accessible than Imitation of Christ. I am skipping around rather than trying to read it sequentially, but focusing on the chapters that deal with the spiritual exercises I know I most need to work on (which is most of them!) Otherwise I know I won't finish on time. But this is a book to keep around and return to again and again.

Part III: “The Practice of Virtue,” Chapters 23 through 41
23. The Practice of Bodily Mortification
24. Society and Solitude
25. Modesty in Dress
26. Conversation; and, First, How to Speak of God
27. Unseemly Words, and the Respect Due to Others
28. Hasty Judgments
29. Slander
30. Further Counsels as to Conversation
31. Amusements and Recreations: What are Allowable
32. Forbidden Amusements
33. Balls, and Other Lawful but Dangerous Amusements
34. When to Use Such Amusements Rightly
35. We Must be Faithful in Things Great and Small
36. A Well-Balanced, Reasonable Mind
37. Wishes
38. Counsels to Married People
39. The Sanctity of the Marriage Bed
40. Counsels to Widows
41. One Word to Maidens

St. Frances continues to explain the practice of virtues in the second half of Chapter III. Here he delves into the topics of mortifications, dress, conversation and slander, amusements, and purity again, this time for married people and widows.

St. Francis gives concrete and practical advice, in the first chapter of this Part III, on responding to a temptation or any vice with the opposite virtue to make progress. Respond to pride with humility and gentleness. Exercising prayer, sacraments, prudence, constancy, and moderation will help us in perfecting a virtue we are conscious of and know we need to perfect. It may be hard to respond to anger with calm but that is what we need to learn to practice at such moments.

St. Francis continues this subject in the following chapter. The issue of scrupulosity is one that will speak volumes to a person who needs this advice and guidance. Jesuit author Daniel A. Lord addressed this in an essay I read here recently: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Some notable quotes from Part III

From Chapter 1:

When we are beset by any particular vice, it is well as far as possible to make the opposite "En son beau vestement de drap d'or recame, Et d'ouvrages divers a l'aiguile seme." virtue our special aim, and turn everything to that account; so doing, we shall overcome our enemy, and meanwhile make progress in all virtue. Thus, if I am beset with pride or anger, I must above all else strive to cultivate humility and gentleness, and I must turn all my religious exercises,--prayer, sacraments, prudence, constancy, moderation, to the same object.

From Chapter 3:

Be patient, not only with respect to the main trials which beset you, but also under the accidental and accessory annoyances which arise out of them. We often find people who imagine themselves ready to accept a trial in itself who are impatient of its consequences. We hear one man say, "I should not mind poverty, were it not that I am unable to bring up my children and receive my friends as handsomely as I desire." And another says, "I should not mind, were it not that the world will suppose it is my own fault;" while another would patiently bear to be the subject of slander provided nobody believed it. Others, again, accept one side of a trouble but fret against the rest--as, for instance, believing themselves to be patient under sickness, only fretting against their inability to obtain the best advice, or at the inconvenience they are to their friends. But, dear child, be sure that we must patiently accept, not sickness only, but such sickness as God chooses to send, in the place, among the people, and subject to the circumstances which He ordains;--and so with all other troubles. If any trouble comes upon you, use the remedies with which God supplies you.

From Chapter 9:

One important direction in which to exercise gentleness, is with respect to ourselves, never growing irritated with one's self or one's imperfections; for although it is but reasonable that we should be displeased and grieved at our own faults, yet ought we to guard against a bitter, angry, or peevish feeling about them. Many people fall into the error of being angry because they have been angry, vexed because they have given way to vexation, thus keeping up a chronic state of irritation, which adds to the evil of what is past, and prepares the way for a fresh fall on the first occasion. Moreover, all this anger and irritation against one's self fosters pride, and springs entirely from self-love, which is disturbed and fretted by its own imperfection. What we want is a quiet, steady, firm displeasure at our own faults.

From Chapter 13:

Be exceedingly quick in turning aside from the slightest thing leading to impurity, for it is an evil which approaches stealthily, and in which the very smallest beginnings are apt to grow rapidly. It is always easier to fly from such evils than to cure them.

From Chapter 19:

Do you, my child, love every one with the pure love of charity, but have no friendship save with those whose intercourse is good and true, and the purer the bond which unites you so much higher will your friendship be. If your intercourse is based on science it is praiseworthy, still more if it arises from a participation in goodness, prudence, justice and the like; but if the bond of your mutual liking be charity, devotion and Christian perfection, God knows how very precious a friendship it is! Precious because it comes from God, because it tends to God, because God is the link that binds you, because it will last for ever in Him. Truly it is a blessed thing to love on earth as we hope to love in Heaven, and to begin that friendship here which is to endure for ever there. I am not now speaking of simple charity, a love due to all mankind, but of that spiritual friendship which binds souls together, leading them to share devotions and spiritual interests, so as to have but one mind between them. Such as these may well cry out, "Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity!"