Chapter 32: Idyll and Fact

1. Introduction
   • The Deplorable State of the Individual Catholic
     • Having discussed the marvels of the Catholic vision of reality and the treasures of the Catholic life, “it is something of a shock to come to [the individual] Catholic” (443-3).
     • “Illumined by such truths, fed by such food, we yet look so horribly like everyone else. Living within one split second of the judgment seat of God, we are so intent upon other matters” (443-3).
2. Our Mediocrity
   • The Principle Argument against the Church
     • “There is no doubt at all that the principle argument against the Church is the Catholic” (444-2).
     • Regular Catholics who “do in a general way listen to the teachings [of the Church] and receive the sacraments . . . stand more than any other single factor between the unbeliever and belief” (444-2).
     • When the unbeliever hears of the immensities that we believe, he feels as though his life would be revolutionized if he believed the same things (444-2).
     • However, the lives of the Catholics he sees appear to be anything but revolutionized:
       • “He meets us, for instance, after we have received Communion, and he finds the Real Presence of Christ in the communicant rather harder to believe than the Real Presence of Christ in the Host” (444-2).
     • The only way he can reconcile Catholic beliefs and the outward appearance of Catholics is to conclude that they don’t really believe what they claim to believe (444-2).
       • This, of course, comforts the puzzled unbeliever and helps to keep him in his aimlessness (444-2).
   • The Key to the Puzzle
     • If we fail to see the key to our own puzzle “we may easily get a mistaken view of the vital realities which seem to vitalize us so little” (444-3).
     • The grace that we receive through the sacraments is a glorious gift, but it is working in a fallen nature. It is a treasure, but a treasure that is carried about in “earthen vessels,” that is, we are the earthen vessels (445-2).
       • “But we have this treasure [i.e., the supernatural life that comes with sanctifying grace] in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7).
     • Grace works upon and within these earthen vessels: “Grace is a supernature, but it does not supersede [the] nature [upon which it acts]” (445-2).
     • This grace is a new principle of supernatural life that is placed at the very core of our being. It gives us the supernatural powers of the theological and moral virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but it does not of itself directly improve our nature (445-2).
       • Analogy: Grace is like electricity in a wire. It gives the wire the power to light up a room, but the wire is not changed by the electricity, and the electricity does not correct defects in the wire; if the wire is broken, the electricity does not flow (445-2).
     • Grace is given to us primarily for the purpose of healing of our nature; however, it will not heal our nature without our cooperation (445-2).
       • “He who has created you without yourself [i.e., your consent], does not justify you without yourself. Thus He created you without your knowledge, but only with your agreement and your will does He justify you” (Augustine, Sermo 169, II, 13; Summa I-II, q.3, a. 3, as quoted in Ott, 252)
     • Considering what has been said above, we can see that the key to understanding the puzzle of being gloriously gifted creatures who exhibit so little of the glorious gifts we receive through baptism is twofold:
       • First, the healing that grace is intended to bring about cannot do its work without our cooperation (445-2).
         • “Most people strongly resist growing from ordinary to heroic sanctity” (SSD, p. 268).
         • Sheed gives a general idea of what this cooperation consists of later on in the chapter, but he does not give a specific plan.
       • Second, grace has to work in a fallen (damaged) nature (445-4).
         • However, the unbeliever also has a damaged nature. If there isn’t much of a moral difference between the unbeliever and the believer, then the problem of a fallen nature isn’t the primary problem.
3. Failure to Cooperate with Grace: Defects of the Intellect
   • Our Darkened Intellect
     • Recall that one of the four freedoms Adam lost for the human race is the gift of freedom from ignorance; hence, his posterity is saddled with a darkened intellect.
     • Consider the darkened intellect in which the theological virtue of faith and the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel and knowledge must operate: “Vast and luminous realities are spread out before our gaze: why are we not dazzled?” (445-4)
     • The problem is that our intellects are defective at three levels (445-4).
       • There are truths our intellects do not know.
       • There are truths our intellects know but do not advert to.
       • There are truths our intellects know of and advert to but do not comprehend.
4. The First Defect of the Intellect: Truths We Should Know but Do Not Know
   • Ignorance about Sanctifying Grace
     • A great number of Catholics make almost no study of their religion. They believe it and would be likely to die for it rather than deny it, “but they are not interested enough to find out very much about its meaning” (446-2).
       • They realize that knowledge is not the most important part of religion and have reasoned from that fact to the erroneous conclusion that knowledge of religion is not important for them at all (446-2).
     • Consider the typical Catholic’s knowledge of sanctifying grace. He knows that it is necessary for salvation, and has been urged to live so as to merit increases in sanctifying grace, “but for the most part [he has] only the vaguest notion of what sanctifying grace is” (446-2).
       • As an aside, it was true in Sheed’s day that the regular Catholic knew sanctifying grace is necessary for salvation. It is not clear that the regular contemporary Catholic possesses that knowledge.
     • Three consequences follow from this lack of knowledge about sanctifying grace:
       • First, he thinks that his destiny after death is a matter of whether he dies in the state of sin rather than in the state of grace, which is a completely different perspective (446-2).
       • Second, he thinks that salvation is “simply a matter of getting into heaven and thus avoiding all the unpleasantness of hell” (446-2).
         • Hence, he has not grasped the notion that there are degrees of glory in heaven and that the degrees are “dependent upon the intensity of the life of grace in the soul at death” (446-2).
       • Third, He has not grasped the fact that unbelievers will be moved to belief in proportion to the degree they see the Gospel lived out in believers.
         • “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Mt 5:16).
     • The result of this “hodge-podge of light and darkness” is that he lives according to a philosophy of getting as much pleasure from this life as is possible without losing heaven (446-2).
       • “The extremely practical question How little of heaven am I likely to get by this system? does not arise at all [in his mind]”(446-2).
     • Such a man has no awareness of the degrees of glory in heaven, and little, if any, awareness that there is glory in heaven at all (447-1). “The motive of such a life is not desire for heaven, but desire to avoid hell” (447-1).
   • Ignorance about Sin and Our Existence
     • As with our ignorance about sanctifying grace, there is great ignorance regarding the whole truth about sin:
       • A Catholic surely knows that the moral law is a command of God (447-2).
       • However, he can easily be ignorant of the fact that God’s law is also a cause and effect statement about reality, and this is the primary element of the truth about the moral law (447-2, 426-2).
       • If we consider the moral law from its aspect of being a cause and effect statement about reality, we can compare it to a car manufacturer’s instructions about running a car. If we put something other than gasoline into the car’s gas tank, we will not be happy with the effect (447-2).
         • Similarly, at the moment of death we will find no joy in the effect (i.e., damnation) for which the cause is a life of unrepented sin. In light of this, sin is folly (447-2).
         • We can also say that acting contrary to the moral law is nothing less than seeking something that we know does not exist. That is, we are seeking a perceived good that is not really a good at all because it lacks existence.
           • “Sin is nothingness” (Catherine of Siena, “Dialogue,” # 35).
     • There is a still greater ignorance about sin that should concern us. We are made of nothing and we are continuously held in existence solely by the fact of God willing our existence (447-3).
       • Thus, “sin is an effort to gain some happiness for ourselves against the will of God, against the one thing that is holding us in existence. . . . What could be more ridiculous?” (447-3).
         • Sin is, in effect, an attempt to chip away at the “life line” that keeps us in existence: God’s will. The attempt is always an exercise in futility because God’s will is unchanging:
           • “[In God] there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas 1:17).
       • We are being kept from God by things that are wholly of God, due to the intellectual defect that underlies all others, “our tendency to take the part for the whole, to treat the part as if it were the whole, [and] to try to get from it that total satisfaction that can only be got from the whole” (447-3).
         • It appears that Sheed means to say we attempt to satisfy our natural desire for the Good by making the things created by the Good as the end rather than the means to the end (the end, of course, is God Himself).
   • Summary Thought
     • The defect of our intellects by which we tend to take the part for the whole underlies all other intellectual defects. Because of this defect we attempt to get satisfaction from the part that can only be obtained from the whole (447-3).
     • The result of this defect is that we are constantly chasing shadows, and making little progress, if any, in the spiritual life.
     • “The trouble is that our minds have not the muscles for totality. But they can grow them” (447-3).
5. The Second Defect of the Intellect: Truths Known But Not Adverted to
   • Immediate Realities vs. Distant Realities
     • We tend to allow our intellects to be dominated by our imaginations. Hence, the lesser thing seen up close has a greater impact on us than the greater thing seen at a distance (447-4).
       • When we experience suffering, we are inclined to ask why God doesn’t intervene to alleviate our suffering (i.e., the immediate thing) and fail to advert to the more distant reality that God may be using this suffering to bring about a particular good that we need (448-1).
       • Similarly, there is “the tendency to be unduly affected by the appearance of unworthy conduct in a priest (i.e., the immediate thing]” while failing to advert to the fact that “his office [is] the channel of God’s gifts (i.e., the distant thing) (448-1).
       • What this says about us is that the priest’s personal moral conduct is more real to us than the fact that he is the channel of God’s gifts, which come to us regardless of whatever defects may be in the priest (including mortal sin!) (448-1).
     • The effect of this defect is that much of our time is wasted by useless imagining or by thinking about the wrong things.
6. The Third Defect of the Intellect: Truths Adverted to But Not Comprehended
   • The Need for the Development of Our Spiritual Muscles
     • “The unbeliever is wrong when he thinks that we do not really believe the immensities we profess” (448-2).
       • History is filled with evidence of ordinary Catholics who will die for the Mass, and no one dies for something he does not believe (448-2).
       • Yet, “[these] same Catholics were almost certainly distracted at every Mass they ever attended, and may very well have spent more time thinking of other things [while at Mass]” (448-2).
     • The measure of a person’s belief in a doctrine is his willingness to die for that belief. The measure of a person’s comprehension of a doctrine is his willingness to live according to that doctrine (448-2).
     • If we are not dazzled by the vitalizing immensities we believe, it is because we have not developed the intellectual muscles needed to wrestle with these realities (448-2).
       • This is similar to the man who does not stagger under a weight for which he does not have the muscles to lift (448-2).
       • We can develop these “spiritual muscles,” and God calls us to do so. The only reason we do not have the spiritual strength of the saints is because we have chosen to avoid the necessary training.
         • “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).
     • In order for us to live according to what has been learned in this course of study and to be dazzled by it, we must patiently apply ourselves to the effort of becoming habituated to the realities we now know and comprehend (448-2).
7. Failure to Cooperate with Grace
   • Our Most Serious Problem: A Defective Will
     • Between our defective intellects and our defective wills, the defective will is the more serious problem, for it is the will that ultimately results in salvation or damnation for us (449-1).
     • The will can fix its love on any perceived good in the entire spectrum of reality, from nothingness (sin), through the natural love of disordered passions, to God by way of supernatural love (the virtue of charity) (449-1).
     • “It is by no act of our will that we [exist as men and women]: but as to what sort of men [and women], our will is decisive” (449-1).
       • “He who has created you without yourself [i.e., your consent], does not justify you without yourself. Thus He created you without your knowledge, but only with your agreement and your will does He justify you” (Augustine, Sermo 169, II, 13; Summa I-II, q.3, a. 3, as quoted in Ott, 252)
     • We exist by God’s continuing action to hold us in existence. Similarly, the continuing action of God is also necessary if we are to act (449-2)
       • “Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).
     • “It is not thinkable that beings whose very existence results from God’s action upon nothingness should themselves be able to act without God’s concurrence in their action” (449-2).
     • If we desire to act in a manner that is harmful to us, God will concur in that act; He will allow us to damage ourselves, if that is what we desire to do. The resulting act is, of course, a sin.
       • This necessarily follows from the fact that we have a free will, that is, a will that is free from coercion (179-2).
       • Note that while the power to carry out an evil act necessarily comes from God, the act itself is wholly carried out by the human person through his nature. Consequently, the responsibility for the sin belongs entirely to the human person. God has no part in our sins.
   • The Seven Capital Sins
     • Consider the seven capital sins: Pride, covetousness, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, anger.
       • These sins are in the will, as are all sins, “for sin is always a defect of the will. [A sin’s] act may be in the intellect, or in the body; but the sin itself is in the will” (449-3).
       • No act, merely as an act can bring about our damnation but “the will can damn us without any action at all save merely [the act of] willing” (449-3).
     • Sin is always a matter of assertion of self against the laws of reality (450-1).
       • Of these seven sins, pride is the worst in that it is an inordinate love of self or, as Sheed writes, “[a] positive choice of self in place of God as the supreme object of our love and our actions” (450-2).
       • As such, pride is the most ridiculous of sins for we have to borrow from God the power to set ourselves up as the supreme object of our love; stated alternatively, if we have to borrow from God to make ourselves supreme, then our supremacy is contingent on Him, which means it is not supremacy at all; hence, the contradiction (450-2).
         • “No sin is its own contradiction more instantly and obviously; no [other] sin, therefore, means a more total break with reality” (450-2).
       • The other six capital sins focus on creatures without making an “assertion at all about the nature of God or themselves” (450-2) and, thereby, avoid the contradiction found in the sin of pride (450-2).
         • Nevertheless, they still consist of an assertion of one’s desires against the laws of reality, which always means choosing less for ourselves than what we might have or need (450-2).
   • Regarding Sins of the Mind:
     • Regarding sins of the mind, we find a motivation in the pleasure of egoism that comes from the illusion of autonomy in “asserting self with the appearance of impunity” (450-3).
     • “There is a disease in the will which can find some sort of pleasure in the assertion of self, even where the appearance of impunity has vanished away and the wretched inadequacy of self in the face of reality is altogether obvious” (450-3).
       • Examples of this are found everywhere, but are perhaps found most readily in the behavior of teenagers, especially in regard to respect for their parents.
   • Regarding Sins of the Body:
     • The sins of the body are the lesser sins because they concern the lesser part of us, though they too can bring about damnation (450-4).
     • Whereas the sins of the mind involve an assertion of (imagined) strength, the sins of the body result from a yielding to weakness (450-4).
     • “Our bodies are so made that there is a clean joy to be got through their senses, and this joy is a splendid thing, meant by God” (450-4).
       • For example, we need food for nourishment:
         • The senses of taste, smell and touch provide us with sensory pleasures that incite in us a desire to eat and drink so as to nourish our bodies.
         • The senses of sight and hearing provide us with intellectual pleasures that incline us to learn about the things that surround us so as to nourish our intellects.
     • However, “the body can urge its desires upon the will with [an] altogether disproportionate effect” that stands in stark contrast to what occurs within us when moved by actual grace to carry out some good act. We often find that the latter is easily put off till later or never, whereas the immediate urgings of the senses will win out if not forcefully overcome (451-1).
       • “In some cases thou must use violence and manfully resist the sensual appetite and not regard what the flesh has a mind for” (“Imitation,” bk. 3, c. 11, p. 5).
       • “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force [i.e., by force of the will in cooperation with grace]” (Mt 11:12).
     • For those untrained in the laws of reality, there is an attractiveness in sin that virtue appears to lack; but the problem here is with our impaired vision, not with virtue (451-1).
     • Sin comes about by taking the path of least resistance, which always leads to deficiency of life:
       • “It is a going-with-the-stream-of-one’s-inclinations. But it takes no vitality to go with the stream: a dead dog can do it” (451-1).
   • Partners in Sin
     • As we can see, there is plenty in us to account for our sinning, but we are not left to ourselves: there is the Devil and his demons (451-2).
     • It is difficult to see what motivates the Devil to tempt us, for he sins in tempting us and nothing can be gained by sin (451-2).
     • Everything he does is futile in that “his own sins and the sins he leads other to commit serve only to illustrate the unbreakableness of God’s law” (451-2).
       • “As to guilt, all sins are in the demons; since by leading men to sin they incur the guilt of all sins” (Summa I, q. 63, a. 2).
   • The Devil’s Tactics
     • We know that God allows the Devil to temp us, but how does the Devil do it?
     • The Devil has no direct power over us; he is not able to read our souls (452-1).
     • He does have a great intellect, as do all angels, and with that intellect he can make educated guesses as to what is on our mind, just as we sometimes do with respect to others (452-1).
     • “[The Devil’s] power relates to the matter of our bodies” (452-1), for all angels have a power over matter as a necessary consequence of the superiority of their being; they cannot create or destroy matter, “but they can move material things in space, and redistribute the elements within material things themselves,” as long as God permits them to do so (452-1).
     • Using this angelic power, the Devil can stir up the flesh, move the eye to see that which he would not otherwise see and he can produce images in the brain (452-1).
       • “The imagination is a psycho-physical faculty” (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v., Imagination). As such, its images have two sources, sense stimuli and images recalled by memory that originated in sense stimuli.
   • Man’s Enemies: The World, the Flesh and the Devil
     • “One way or another, under the impulse of his own desires [the “flesh”] and other men’s urgings [the world] and the Devil’s tempting [the Devil], man is in constant peril of sin; and no one of us can feel that our own performance is particularly impressive” (452-2).
       • “And you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph 2:1-3).
       • “All temptation is from either the Devil, the world, or the flesh” (“The Aquinas Catechism,” p. 7).
     • “Leaving out the saints, the rest of us are a pretty unimpressive lot” with respect to our resistance to temptation (or lack thereof).
       • The saints, all of whom finish out their lives in a state of habitual heroic virtue, are nevertheless “as naturally weak as we all are. . . . The ordinary saints were and are converted sinners” (Dubay, “Saints: A Closer Look,” p. 18).
     • And the Virgin Mary is the only human person who never succumbed to the three enemies of man (452-2).
       • “Woman! above all women glorified / Our tainted nature’s solitary boast” (William Wordsworth, “The Virgin”).
   • Excursus: St. John Vianney and the Devil
     • There was a ten-year period in the life of St. John Vianney where he had regular experiences of external manifestations of the Devil. Many of these experiences are recorded in the definitive biography by Francois Trochu. Some excerpts follow below.
       • “Every night the poor Curé heard the curtains of his beadstead being rent. . . [He assumed rodents and he got up to shake the curtains.] The more he shook the curtains . . . the louder became the sound of rending.” In the morning he would find the curtains undamaged (p. 235).
       • Speaking of the times when the Devil would give him an especially difficult time at night, the Curé would say: “’It is a good sign: there is always a good haul of fish the next day’ ‘The devil gave me a good shaking last night,’ he would say at times; ‘we shall have a great number of people tomorrow. The grappin is very stupid: he himself tells me of the arrival of big sinners . . . He is angry. So much the better!’”
       • “In the attic, for hours on end, was heard the uninterrupted, exasperating tramp of a flock of sheep. Below the bedroom, in the so-called dining-room, a noise went on as of a prancing steed, which, leaping to the ceiling, apparently dropped to the floor on its four iron shoes” (p. 241).
     • Vianney was a devoted reader of the “Imitation” and “If he were asked what reading would help the soul’s advancement, he recommended the Gospel, the ‘Imitation of Christ,’ and the ‘Lives of the Saints’” (p. 311). He clearly followed the advice of the “Imitation” in his efforts to repel the attacks of the Devil:
       • “I turn to God; I make the sign of the cross; I address a few contemptuous words to the devil” (p. 239).
       • From the “Imitation”: “Charge him with it when he suggests wicked and unclean things and say to him: Be gone, unclean spirit; be ashamed, miserable wretch; thou are very filthy indeed to suggest such things as these to me. Depart from me, thou wicked imposter, thou shalt have no share in me, but my Jesus will be with me as a valiant warrior and thou shalt be confounded . . . ” (bk. III, c. 6, #4).
8. Imperfect Response to Grace (1/2): The Virtues
   • The Supernatural Virtues and Natural Habits
     • Reconciling our propensity to sin with the presence of sanctifying grace in our souls poses a problem. How is it, for example, that a person in possession of the virtue of charity can act cruelly toward another? (453-2).
     • Recalling that the virtues are referred to as supernatural habits by theologians (411-2), note a key difference between these supernatural habits and the natural habits:
       • Natural habits are acquired through the repetition of particular acts whereas supernatural habits are acquired all at once in a single act of God at the time of baptism.
       • That is, supernatural habits are not acquired as the result of a repetition of acts. Also, at the time they are acquired they do not exhibit the same facility in action that we see in the natural virtues (453-3).
         • The reason for this is the defective “instrument” the supernatural virtues have to work with, which will be discussed shortly.
     • Despite the difference in the mode of acquisition of natural habits versus supernatural habits, the supernatural habits are truly habits, for they are a real modification of our nature (453-3).
   • Two Sets of Habits
     • When we receive the gift of sanctifying grace at baptism, and along with sanctifying grace the supernatural habits, we enter a curious state in which we possess two sets of habits, the natural and supernatural habits (453-4).
     • “A naturally cold man gets the virtue of charity, and remains cold; a naturally lustful man get the virtue of temperance and remains lustful” (453-4).
     • The problem is that while grace gives us a power to act supernaturally (e.g., to be courageous for the love of God), it does not remove our natural power to act sinfully (454-2).
     • In fact, grace does not even remove our desire to act sinfully (i.e., concupiscence). What it does, in effect, is to “insert a new desire to act for the love of God, so that there is a new war in our powers” (454-2).
       • Our situation is like that of a great pianist who is working with a bad piano where the pianist is virtue and the piano is our nature. The pianist has the power to produce great music, but that power is limited by the bad instrument with which he has to work (454-3).
   • The Apparent Unevenness of Our Virtues
     • The Church teaches that we possess all of the supernatural virtues at the same level of intensity; for example, “there is no such thing as a man having more prudence than fortitude” (454-4).
     • Why, then, does the contrary appear to be the case. That is, it seems as though the virtues are meted out to a man quite unevenly so that he appears to be strong in one virtue, weak in another and so-so in still another.
     • The reason for the uneven appearance of virtue in a man is that his situation is like that of a man who is an expert with all instruments in an orchestra:
       • If the instruments themselves are of various levels of quality, his ability (i.e., the “virtues”) to play the instruments appears to be uneven as he goes from one instrument (i.e., our “nature”) to the next. The problem lies in the instruments, not in his abilities (454-4).
     • Despite appearances to the contrary, the supernatural virtues we possess are equally powerful (455-2).
       • However, our natural powers are not equally up to the task of manifesting the supernatural virtues. As a result, we practice them unevenly because our natural powers are uneven, not because of any unevenness in the supernatural virtues (455-2).
     • When God gives us an increase of the supernatural life, He does not simply give us an increase in one virtue or another. Rather, the increase is that of the supernatural life itself and the supernatural life consists of all the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit (455-2).
   • Harmonizing the Natural and Supernatural Virtues
     • Our problem, then, is “to bring our natural habits into harmony with our supernatural habits” (455-3).
     • Grace operates through our faculties. Therefore, our faculties must be made into instruments that enable the full power of the supernatural virtues to be manifested (455-3).
     • This means we must work for the destruction of the bad habits that make our faculties bad instruments for the supernatural virtues, and we must work for the development of the good habits that make our faculties good instruments for the exercise of the supernatural virtues (455-3).
     • This work is accomplished through repeated supernatural actions that undo bad natural habits while establishing and reinforcing good habits, so that the supernature of sanctifying grace becomes second nature to us (455-3).
       • “[This] is the law of our nature for the formation of natural habits, and the supernatural life does not supersede it” (455-3). In other words, it is the repeated acts of supernatural virtues that work to undo our bad natural habits.
     • Some counsels on the virtues:
       • “When attacked by some vice we must practice the contrary virtue as much as we can and refer all the others to it. By this means we will vanquish our enemy and at the same time advance in all the virtues” (St. Francis de Sales, “Introduction to the Devout Life,” p. 124).
       • “St. Gregory Nazianzen says that by perfect practice of a single virtue a person can reach the heights in all virtue. . . . This is to be taken of a virtue that is practiced with great fervor and charity” (St. Francis de Sales, “Introduction to the Devout Life,” p. 124-5).
       • “If every year we rooted out one vice, we should soon become perfect men” (“Imitation,” bk. 1, c. 11, p. 5).
   • Benefits of the Supernatural Virtues
     • If the supernatural virtues do not of themselves reform our natural habits, then how can we say that the supernatural virtues are habits since “a habit is a modification of a being, disposing it to act in a particular way” (455-4, 411-3)?
     • Recalling the three elements of a habit:
       • First, a habit is a modification to our nature; it is something in our nature and not external to it (411-2).
       • Second, a habit is real and objective (411-2).
       • Third, a habit enables us to do things we could not do otherwise (412-1).
     • Though sanctifying grace doesn’t automatically reform our natural habits, it does dispose us to bring about that reformation in many ways, including the six listed below:
       • First, grace places “this new energizing of divine life in the very center of our being (456-1).
         • This is the indwelling presence of God, one of the four types of divine presence:
           • “Jesus answered him, ‘If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’” (John 14:23).
           • “He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may . . . become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).
           • “Who, standing by a great fire, does not receive from it some little heat?” (Imitation, bk. IV, c. 4, # 3).
       • Second, grace presents God to us in a closer and clearer manner than He is presented apart from grace, which provides us with a greater stimulus to action that is in harmony with His will (456-1).
       • Third, it gives us a stimulus that our nature can respond to (456-1).
       • Fourth, grace brings all of reality closer to us in that it enables us to see reality more clearly (456-1).
       • Fifth, grace enables us to see more clearly the truth about ourselves by giving us a clearer knowledge of the war within us.
         • “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would” (Gal 5:17).
         • “The life of man upon earth is a warfare, and his days are like the days of a hireling” (Job 7:1 DR).
       • Sixth, it shows us that we cannot help but be unsatisfied with things that are less than God “because the central fact about man is that he is “capax Dei,” capable of being filled with God” (456-1).
9. Imperfect Response to Grace (2/2): Healing Our Nature
   • A Long Process
     • The healing of our nature is a long process, as we might expect, for prior to receiving the supernatural life in baptism, we only had the natural habits. They had their evil way uncontested (456-2).
     • With the reception of sanctifying grace we entered the conflict that results from the presence of two opposing sets of virtues, the unreformed natural virtues and the supernatural virtues (456-2).
     • At first, the supernatural virtues “disturb our peace, ruining our previous simple joy in our sins” (456-2).
     • If we are diligent, we will eventually find peace at a new level as a result of a long struggle against vice (456-2).
       • This does not mean the struggle is over, but it does mean that we have the upper hand in the struggle.
     • The healing of our nature can only be brought about by the development of natural habits that are in harmony with grace (456-2).
     • The intensity of the spiritual warfare will vary from one person to another but “the general principles on which the war must be fought are the same for all” (457-1).
       • “First, we must use every means of increasing the supernatural life in us” (457-1).
       • “Second, we must work upon our natures with toil and pain that may amount to agony, fighting against bad habits and forming good [habits]” (457-1).
         • “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb 12:4).
   • The Nature of the Struggle
     • Grace is indispensable for the effort to reform the natural habits, but grace alone will not bring about the necessary healing (457-2).
     • If we take the path of grace alone we deceive ourselves by attempting to let the supernatural do the work of the natural (457-2).
     • One may “multiply Communions against a particular temptation, and often enough the only result is to increase the strife within us without producing the virtuous act or preventing the sin” (457-2).
     • The reality is that by following this strategy we have effectively avoided entering into the struggle, for the supernatural was not promised for the purpose of doing the work that belongs to the natural order (457-2).
       • God could root out a vice, of course, but He has not promised to do that “and it would be something in the nature of miracle if He did” (457-2).
     • The real nature of the struggle involves setting our wills to the correction of our bad habits with a determined effort. Grace will not coerce our wills. “It was not given for that purpose” (457-2).
     • Consequently, unless we are determined to “fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Tim 6:12) our bad habits will remain.
   • The Training of the Body
     • The healing that our nature needs will only come about “with labor and pain,” for it is a corrective action that we need and corrective action always involves the undoing of some prior tendency or action. This undoing is a source of pain (457-3).
     • In addition to the labor and pain called for by this task, there is also an element of “sweetness,” but sweetness requires that we be in complete harmony with reality, and “to get ourselves to the state where virtue is sweet, the road is by no means sweet” (457-3).
       • “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Mt 7:14).
       • “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:30).
       • “If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly” (Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons”)
     • “The body must be made subject to the mind” (458-2) and this must be done in two ways:
       • First, the body must be denied that which the intellect knows is unlawful (this is a matter of obedience to God’s law) (458-2).
         • “The mere keeping of the commandments will tend to bring upon the body a great deal of very unpleasant pressure, which may amount to real pain” (458-2).
       • Second, “there must be definite unpleasantness caused to the body or pleasure refused to the body” apart from the mere keeping of the commandments (this is a matter of mortification, the purpose of which is to “put to death” the inordinate desires of the body) (458-2).
         • This means the body must also be denied, at appropriate times, that which is lawful, for the sake of training the body “for its proper part in the human compound” (458-2).
         • All who have made progress in bringing the body under the subjection of the mind, especially the saints, bear witness to this (458-2).
         • St. Paul states the principle explicitly:
           • “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified [i.e., mortified] the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24).
       • In addition to Sheed’s references to obedience and mortification for the training of the body, there is also a need for penance, which is a matter of freely taking on suffering of some sort, not for the sake of training the body, but to make reparation for our sins and the sins of others.
   • The Training of the Mind and Harmonization of Man’s Will with God’s Will
     • Just as the body needs to be brought into “right relation with the mind,” so “the mind must be brought into right relation with God” (458-3).
     • This aspect of healing falls into the province of prayer, for “prayer does of itself, even more directly than suffering, tend to correct the disharmony between ourselves and reality” (458-3).
     • “[Prayer] asserts every element in the relation that ought to exist between the creature and God” (458-3)
       • Sheed doesn’t say what those elements are, but the list surely begins with humility and repentance:
         • “But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word” (Is 66:2).
         • “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps 51:17).
         • “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk 18:13).
     • “[Prayer] brings the soul into that sort of contact with God in which He is closest and clearest.” This is especially the case with “prayer at its highest point, the Mass” (458-3).
       • The Mass is “prayer at its highest point” in terms of value, for the sacrifice of the Mass is of infinite value. However, experientially this may not be the case; it will depend on the degree to which one has advanced in the spiritual life.
     • The harmonizing of man’s will with God’s will requires more than mere effort of the will; it requires man’s loving cooperation with God’s action, and this is precisely what occurs in the Mass where we find the effortless and unstrained co-action of God and man (458-4).
       • “The richness of [this] experience [of the Mass] falls back upon those other areas of life where the cooperation is most difficult” (458-4).
   • The Essential Role of Private Prayer
     • Observe that this cooperation is not merely our acting as God wills; rather, it involves God acting with us (459-1). St. Paul speaks of this cooperative action in several places in his letters:
       • “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
       • “For this I labor and struggle, in accord with the exercise of his power working within me” (Col 1:29 NAB).
       • “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).
     • “St. Paul sees our prayer and the Holy Spirit’s part in our prayer as so interwoven that he hardly bothers to distinguish them” (459-1).
     • It should be noted that while the Mass is the highest form of prayer, there is also a vital need for private prayer, so as to enable us to receive the riches available in the Mass:
       • “The best preparation for sharing in the Eucharist and the best thanksgiving after it is contemplation. . . . Private prayer opens one’s eyes, purifies the heart, deepens capacity. One need not look far to find the reason why otherwise good people profit so little from daily participation in the Lord’s supper” (Thomas Dubay, “God Dwells within Us,” 128).
       • “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt 6:6).
     • Hence, what Sheed means by prayer is an authentic prayer life that begins with Christian meditation, grows into mystical prayer, and is regularly aided by the sacraments. Such a prayer life will eventually culminate in the transforming union.
10. Sanity Points to Sanctity
    • Moral Oscillations
      • The struggle to bring our nature into full harmony with our supernature is a lifelong endeavor for the typical Christian (459-2).
      • Throughout the struggle, there exists an oscillation between the victories and the defeats. In the process (459-2):
        • The natural habits begin to take on a correspondence with the supernatural habits (459-2).
        • The ability to fend off temptation increases (459-2).
        • Failures to fend off temptations tend to be more quickly followed by repentance (459-2).
      • As the struggle goes on in time, the oscillations grow less violent, and in the saint they cease altogether (459-2).
    • The Saint
      • “The saint is a person who [has] made a total success of man’s prime job of being a man” (460-2).
      • The key characteristics of a saint are his vast supernatural love of God (i.e., the full exercise of the virtue of charity) and a reformed nature through which his supernatural love of God can be expressed without flaw or discord (460-2).
      • What Sheed says here is likely to be understood to mean something far less than what he intends. In order to get a good picture of what a saint is like, one should read Fr. Dubay’s book, “Saints: A Closer Look.” An excerpt follows below:
        • “[The saints] are moral miracles far beyond the capacities of human nature left to itself. . . . Saints are not only more noble and generous than the lesser of us. Each of them has had, said Saint Paul to the Ephesians, ‘a spiritual revolution’ (4:23). They are splendid because they are profoundly in love and with no reservation, both with God and then with their families and neighbors in him. With no least desire to impress others, their heroic choices and actions flow from an inner fire, whose only source can be the Holy Spirit. And they place no impediments to its ignition. Their persevering and heroic fidelity in turn enables them to grow to their remarkable contemplative intimacies with Triune Beauty.”
      • Examples of Heroic Virtue
        • “As a hard working layman, judge, soldier, husband, St. Nicholas von Flue fasted four days a week (and the whole of lent, of course) on a daily piece of bread or a few dried pears. His health did not suffer nor did his long hours of contemplative prayer. Later as a hermit Nicholas ate nothing for years on end. Agents of the civil government for an entire month kept strict watch to make sure he received no food. The local bishop tested the saint once by asking him what virtue was most meritorious. ‘When he replied obedience, he was bidden to eat a sop of bread soaked in blessed wine. He obeyed, but at the cost of such agonies that he was never again asked to eat anything’” (Dubay, Happy Are You Poor, p. 101).
        • “St. Margaret Clitherow, a married English convert, was a beautiful woman, witty and cheerful. She fasted four days a week and spent an hour and a half in prayer each morning. She died a cheerful martyr in her thirties by being pressed to death for harboring priests and attending Mass” (Dubay, Happy Are You Poor, p. 73).
        • “St. Hedwig, a married woman, wore a hairshirt and the same tunic and cloak winter and summer. She walked to church barefooted over ice and snow, and in case she met anyone on the way carried her shoes for possible use” (Dubay, Happy Are You Poor, p. 101).
        • “In order to give to the poor [St. John Vianney] sold all personal property including furniture and linen. In his later years ‘he was paying the rent for at least thirty families’” (Dubay, Happy Are You Poor, p. 66).
        • “St. Peter of Alcantara so restricted his diet that he is said to have lost the sense of taste, ‘for when vinegar and salt was (sic) thrown into a porringer of warm water, he took it for his usual bean soup’” (Dubay, Happy Are You Poor, p. 82).
        • “[St. John the Baptist de la Salle] had naturally a very delicate palate, but he deliberately starved himself until hunger enabled him to swallow any food, however coarse or ill-prepared” (Butler’s Lives of the Saints, vol. II, 316).
        • “[St. Robert Bellarmine,] would not keep in his possession as trifling a thing as a holy picture or a blessed medal, except the one attached to his rosary beads” (Dubay, Happy Are You Poor, p. 77).
        • Along these same lines, once when I asked Fr. Dubay for a picture of himself for a retreat brochure, he sent me a small, old black and white photo, apparently taken in someone’s home, and asked that I return it when finished with it because it was the only picture he had.
    • The Passions: Our Original Natural Equipment
      • “There is a romantic notion abroad that the greatest sinners make the greatest saints. It is an error, but it hints at certain truths” regarding the passions (i.e., emotions) and one’s temperament (460-2).
      • We have as natural equipment the eleven passions and one of the four temperaments or, more likely, a combination of two or more of the temperaments, and the intellectual virtues.
        • The passions (i.e., emotions):
          • Love Hate Hope Despair
          • Desire Joy Daring Fear
          • Aversion Sorrow Anger
        • The temperaments:
          • Choleric – extroverted, hot-tempered, strong-willed, independent minded, decisive and opinionated
          • Sanguine – extroverted, fun-loving, entertaining, easily amused and optimistic, builds relationships quickly
          • Phlegmatic – introverted, calm, easygoing, slow and indirect when responding to others, by far the easiest to get along with
          • Melancholic – introverted, logical, analytical, lets-do-it-right person, reserved and suspicious until certain of one’s intentions
        • The intellectual virtues, the natural habits of the mind (see the end of the notes for chapter 30 for more on the intellectual virtues):
          • Understanding
          • Science
          • Wisdom
          • Art
          • Prudence
      • There are two things to consider with regard to the way the natural equipment, though defective, may be helpful to us on the road to sanctity.
        • First, with regard to the passions, those who have naturally strong passions “are more likely to be driven to actions [i.e., sins] which will shock themselves into the recognition of their own sinfulness and their need of aid from God” (460-2).
          • On the other hand, those who possess naturally weak passions run a twofold danger:
            • There is the danger of mistaking “the absence of any very spectacular sin for virtue” (460-2).
            • There is the danger of thinking “oneself to be a good enough sort of person, because one happens to be temperamentally incapable of doing anything bad enough to force one to see one’s own badness” (460-2).
            • To the angel of the Church in Laodicea: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew [lit. vomit] you out of my mouth” (Rev 3:15-16).
        • Second, with regard to one’s temperament, sanctity consists of the right direction of one’s energies. “There is no particular virtue in not committing sins for which one has not the taste or the temperament” (460-3).
          • “Great natural energy, which if it take the wrong direction runs into sins of passion, will if it turn to the right direction produce the heroic virtue of the saint” (461-1).
    • The Successful Man: The Saint
      • The saint is the successful man, even by natural standards, because he has found peace and this is what everyone seeks. One might object that everyone seeks happiness rather than peace, but peace is happiness (461-2).
        • Notice that peace is not the absence of activity; it is the absence of discordancy. Our life in the Church does not begin with peace (461-2).
          • “Anyone who joins the Church . . . to find tranquility will soon begin to wonder what he has found: not tranquility certainly, but struggle” (461-2).
      • Peace is not given to us as part of the supernatural life (i.e., the theological and moral virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit), but we will find it if we persevere to the end (461-2).
        • Despite the joys of seventh mansions, “one can suffer intensely from human sins and ignorance and ineptitudes, but there remains down deep in the soul a great calm. On the sense and emotional levels there may be little or no peace, but in the center of the soul . . . there are stability and serenity” (Thomas Dubay, “Fire Within,” p. 107).
        • Note that peace is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. It comes about as the result of a life of virtue.
          • “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, [generosity], faithfulness, gentleness, [modesty], self-control [chastity]” (Gal 5:22-23).
            • Paul lists only nine fruits. The Latin tradition includes three not listed in the Greek tradition, and vice versa, for a total of twelve.
          • “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (Mt 7:15-16).
      • There is a danger in setting our sights on peace at the outset, for in seeking peace we may wind up being led away from the road to peace (461-2).
        • The problem is that the struggle to harmonize our will with God’s will and to bring our body under the control of our will “seems to bring so much discord into our very being, and we want happiness so urgently” that we may be inclined to seek it in the wrong places (461-2).
      • Our Lord warns us of this mistaken approach to peace in the Gospel of Luke:
        • “When he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes’” (Lk 19:41-42).
      • “[The failure to find the way to peace] is at the heart of our tragedy. But the saint’s tragedy is resolved,” for he has found peace.
      • Sheed’s book, as the title indicates, is a book about sanity. However, it should be obvious to anyone who has given serious consideration the book’s content that “sanity points straight to sanctity” (461-2).