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If you were to ask each of us, ‘Are you willing to die to yourselves?’ we should all reply sincerely, ‘Yes; we are willing….’ But it is not enough to say or even to think so, for it is possible to deceive ourselves. Dying to ourselves is no theoretical problem composed of abstract thoughts and reasonings; nor does it consist in making resolutions for the morrow which is always later…. It means putting them into practice. To die to ourselves externally is to detach ourselves from all ties, whatever they may be; but this detachment must be complete, whole, lrrevocable, and there must be no looking back. This is going a long way….
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- Copyright © 1951 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
1
Translated from La Vie Spiritvelle, October 1950. by Benedicta Burns.
References
2 It is not a question of sustaining ourselves with abstract thoughts. Here, through God, we listen to the Blessed Trinity, above all, to the Son of God, the Word Incarnate, to the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the proper "bjeet of our contemplation hero below, (cf. Gardeil: 'Christ-Consciousness', Blackfriars Publications.)
3 Contemplation which fixes our gaze on God and divine things, the allegiance which makes us comply with the divine will, and the considerate service of our neighbour, are the indirect means, more efficacious than direct methods, of forgetting ourselves. 'To want to forget something is to think of it', wrote La Bruyere.
4 Here it can only be a question of the moral virtues, for those of faith, hope and charity which have God himself for their object, must be exercised always.