Resolution on Custody of The Heart
Oh Jesus, it is my desire that my heart acquire a habitual solicitude to PRESERVE ITSELF from every stain and to BECOME MORE AND MORE UNITED to Your Heart in all my occupations conversations, recreations, and so on.
The negative, but essential element of this resolution demands that I absolutely refuse to contract any stain in my motives and in the way my acts are carried out.
PURITY OF INTENTION
Q: How is purity of intention to be acquired?
A: It is acquired by close attention to ourselves at the beginning and above all during the course of our actions.
Q: Why is this attention necessary at the beginning of our actions?
A: Because if these actions are pleasing, useful, or in harmony with our natural attractions, nature at once moves to perform them of its own accord, attracted by pleasure and self-interest alone. But we must pay great attention to ourselves, indeed we must have great command over ourselves, if we are to prevent the will from being rushed off its feet, so to speak, by the appeals of natural motives with their flattery, solicitations, and attractions.
Q: Why do you add that this attention is above all necessary during the course of our actions?
A: Because even when a person has the strength to repudiate, at the outset, every seductive appeal of sense and self-love, in order to follow in all things nothing but the direction of faith, in all purity of intention; nevertheless if he forgets, later on, to keep a close watch on himself, the actual enjoyment of the pleasure that makes itself felt, or of the advantages that accrue during the course of certain actions keep piling up new impressions and appeals, and the heart yields little by little, so that nature, although mortified by the first refusals, comes to life again and regains its ascendancy. Pretty soon, self-love subtly and almost without our being aware of it, begins to insinuate its selfish motives, and substitutes them for the good motives with which our actions were taken up and begun. From this fact, it many times happens, as St. Paul says, that what began in the spirit ends up in the flesh, that is in low and worldly and selfish views.—Fr. de Caussade, S.J.
The positive element drives my ambition on to the point of seeking to intensify the Faith, Hope, and Love with which the action was begun.
This resolution is going to be the real barometer by which to measure the practical value of my morning mental prayer and my liturgical life. For my interior life will be what my custody of the heart is. “With all watchfulness keep thy heart, because life issueth out from it.”
Omni custodia serva cor tuum, quia ex ipso vita procedit (Prov. 4:23).
Mental prayer gives me back the verve with which I run on towards divine union. But it is custody of the heart which is going to enable the traveler to gain strength from the nourishment he took before his journey began, or takes along the way, so that he will always maintain the same lively pace with which he started out.
This custody of the heart means nothing else but the HABITUAL, or at least frequent solicitude to preserve all our acts, as we perform them, from everything that might corrupt their MOTIVE or their ACCOMPLISHMENT.
This solicitude will be calm, peaceful, free of all strain, at once humble and strong, because its basis is filial recourse to God and trust in that recourse. Here my heart and my will do much more work than my mind, which must remain free to carry out my various obligations. Far from impeding my activity, custody of the heart will make it all the more perfect by bringing it into line with the Spirit of God, and adjusting it to the duties of my state.
Now this exercise is something that I want to practice at every moment of the day. It will consist in a glance from the heart, upon the present action, and a moderate attentiveness to all the various parts of the action as I perform them. It amounts to carrying out, with all exactitude, the precept: Age quod agis.
Do what you are doing—that is to say: apply yourself totally to the matter in hand.
My soul, like an alert sentinel, will keep a vigilant watch over all the movements of my heart, over everything that goes on within me, all my impressions, intentions, passions, inclinations, and, in a word, over all my interior and exterior acts, all my thoughts, actions, and words.
Obviously this custody of the heart demands a certain amount of recollection, and it cannot be practiced if my soul is dissipated.
However, the frequent practice of this exercise will help me to acquire the habit that will make self-custody easy.
Quo vadam et ad quid?
Where am I going, and for what? St. Ignatius of Loyola used frequently to ask himself this, and it is alluded to in the Spiritual Exercises.
What would Jesus do;
how would He act in my place? What would He advise? What does He ask of me at this moment? Such are the questions that will come spontaneously to my mind, hungry for interior life.
When I feel myself drawn to Jesus through Mary, this custody of the heart will quickly become far more effective. My heart will soon feel, as it were, an incessant need for recourse to so good a Mother. And this is how we actualize the precept, “ABIDE in Me and I in you.”
Manete in Me et Ego in vobis (Joan. 15:4).
which sums up all the other principles of the interior life.
What You have declared, O Jesus, to be the fruit of the Eucharist, “he abideth in Me and I in him.” is what my soul is out to get, by means of custody of the heart, which will unite me with You.
He abideth in Me. Yes, I shall see myself as truly in my home, in Your divine Heart; with every right to dispose of all Your wealth, by using the unlimited treasures of sanctifying Grace, and the inexhaustible mine of Your actual Graces.
And I in him. But, thanks to my self-custody, You also, My Lord, will be truly at home in my heart. For, bending every effort to insure the continual exercise of Your sovereignty over the operation of all my faculties, not only will I be careful never to do anything without You, but my ambition will go so far as to desire to put into every one of my actions an ever increasing power of love.
The habit of interior recollection, of spiritual combat, of a busy and well regulated life, and the incalculable increase of my merits will all result from my self-custody.
And thus, O Jesus, my indirect union with You through my works, that is my relations, according to Your will, with creatures, will become the sequel to my direct union with You through mental prayer, the liturgical life, and the Sacraments. In both these cases, this union will proceed from Faith and from Charity and will be formed under the influence of Grace. In the direct union, it is You Yourself, O My God, and You alone, that I have in view. In the indirect union I apply myself to other things. But since it is in obedience to You that I do so these objects to which I have to give my attention become the means willed by You to achieve my union with You. I leave You in order to find You. It is always You that I am seeking, and with just as much love, but now I seek You in Your Will. And this divine Will of Yours is the one and only beacon light upon which self-custody fixes my constant gaze, that I may direct all that I do to Your service. And so in either case I am able to say: “It is good for me to adhere to my God.”
Mihi adhaerere Deo bonum est (Ps. 72:28).
It is therefore a great MISTAKE to imagine that in order to become united to You I must put off my active work or else wait for it to get done. It is a mistake to imagine that certain kinds of work, because of their very nature, or because of the time they involve, might so dominate my life or cramp my freedom that it would become impossible for me to be united to You. Not at all: You want me to be free. You do not want activities to imprison me beneath their weight. You want me to be the master and not the slave of activity. And to that end You offer me Your grace, on condition that I am faithful in the custody of my heart.
And so, from the moment a supernatural practical sense tells me, through the many events and circumstances and details arranged by Your Providence, that such and such activity is really bound up with Your will, I have the twofold duty of not trying to get out of it but also of not doing it merely for the pleasure it may give me. I must take on the job, and carry it out solely in order to do Your Will. Otherwise selflove might step in and corrupt its worth, and diminish my merit.
“Good actions,” says Fr. Desurmont, C.SS.R., “conceal within themselves delights, honors, glory and a certain indefinable something which human nature finds extremely tasty, and which it often likes far more than sinful pleasure. And the soul is not on its guard against this gnawing worm, this refined egoism which kills actual grace.
“The Lord, out of kindness toward us as well as out of jealousy for His glory, declares Himself to be, as far as He is concerned, indifferent to all particular goods. And He has decided that one thing alone shall be pleasing to Him, namely His own Will. In such a way that a mere nothing, performed in conformity with His Will, can merit Heaven, while wonders worked without it remain unrewarded. And consequently what we have to do is to aim, in all things, not only at what is simply good, but at the good that is willed by God, that is, His Will” (Le Retour Continuel à Dieu).
And if I find out what it is You will, Dear Lord, and see how You want it done, Quod, et quomodo Deus vult, and then go ahead and do it simply because it is Your Will, Et quia Deus vat, then my union with You, far from diminishing, will only be intensified.
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