3.3.c. It Multiplies His Energies and His Merits

“Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace which is Christ Jesus.”

Tu ergo, fili mi, confortare in gratia (2 Tim. 2:1).

Grace is a participation in the life of the man-God. The creature possesses a certain measure of strength and can, in a certain sense, be qualified and defined as a force. But Christ is power in its very essence. In Him dwells in all its fullness the power of the Father, the omnipotence of divine action, and His Spirit is called the Spirit of Power.
“O Jesus,” cries St. Gregory Nazianzen, “in Thee alone dwells all my strength.” “Outside of Christ,” says St. Jerome, in his turn, “I am powerlessness itself.”

The Seraphic Doctor, in the fourth book of his Compendium Theologiae, enumerates the five chief characteristics which the power of Christ takes on in us.

The first is that it undertakes difficult things and confronts obstacles with courage: “Have courage and let your heart be strong.”
Viriliter agite et confortetur cor vestrum (Ps. 30:25).

The second is contempt for the things of this earth: “I have suffered the loss of all things and counted them but as dung that I may gain Christ.”
Omnia detrimentum feci et arbitror ut stercora ut lucrifaciam Christum (Philipp. 3:8).

The third is patience under trial: “Love is strong as death.”
Fortis ut mors dilectio (Cant. 8:6).

The fourth is resistance to temptation: “As a roaring lion he goeth about . . . whom resist ye, strong in faith.”
Tamquam leo rugiens circuit . . . cui resistite fortes in fide (1 Pet. 5:8–9).

The fifth is interior martyrdom, that, is, the testimony not of blood but of one’s very life, crying out to Christ: “I want to belong to Thee alone.” It consists in fighting the concupiscences, in overcoming vice and in working manfully for the acquisition of virtues: “I have fought a good fight.”
Bonum certamen certavi (2 Tim. 4:7).

While the exterior man counts on his own natural powers, the man of interior life, on the other hand, sees them as nothing but helps; useful helps, no doubt, but far from being everything that he needs. The sense of his weakness and his faith in the power of God give him, as they did to St. Paul, the exact limit of his strength. When he sees the obstacles that rise up one after another before him, he cries out in humble pride: “When I am weak, then am I powerful.”
Cum enim infirmor, tunc potens sum (2 Cor. 12:10).

“Without interior life,” says Pius X, “we will never have strength to persevere in sustaining all the difficulties inseparable from any apostolate, the coldness and lack of co-operation even on the part of virtuous men, the calumnies of our adversaries, and at times even the jealousy of friends and comrades in arms . . . Only a patient virtue, unshakably based upon the good, and at the same time smooth and tactful, is able to move these difficulties to one side and diminish their power.”

Encyclical of Pius X, June 11, 1905, to the Priests of Italy.

By the life of prayer, comparable to the sap flowing from the vine into the branches, the divine power comes down upon the apostle to strengthen the understanding by giving it a firmer footing in faith. The apostle makes progress because this virtue lights his path with its clear brilliance. He goes forward with resolution because he knows where he wants to go, and how to arrive at his goal.

This enlightenment is accompanied by such great supernatural energy in the will that even a weak and vacillating character becomes capable of heroic acts.

Thus it is that the principle, “abide in Me,”
Manete in me (Joan. 15:4).

union with the Immutable, with Him who is the Lion of Juda and the Bread of the strong, explains the miracle of invincible constancy and perfect firmness, which were united, in so marvelous an apostle as was St. Francis de Sales, with a humility and tact beyond compare. The mind and the will are strengthened by the interior life, because love is strengthened. Christ purifies our love and directs and increases it as we go on. He allows us to share in the movements of compassion, devotion, abnegation, and selflessness of His adorable Heart. If this love increases until it becomes a passion, then Jesus takes all the natural and supernatural powers of man, and exalts them to the limit, and uses them for Himself.
Thus it is easy to judge what an increase of merit will flow from the multiplication of energies given by the interior life, when one remembers that merit depends less upon the difficulty that may be entailed by an action, than upon the intensity of charity with which it is carried out.