Of the delectable spiritual good things which can be
distinctly apprehended by the will. Describes the kinds of these.
WE can reduce all the kinds of good which can distinctly
cause joy to the will to four: namely, motive, provocative,
directive and perfective. Of these we shall speak in turn, each in
its order; and first, of the motive kind -- namely, images and
portraits of saints, oratories and ceremonies.
2. As touching images and portraits, there may be much vanity
and vain rejoicing in these. For, though they are most important
for Divine worship and most necessary to move the will to
devotion, as is shown by the approval given to them and the use
made of them by our Mother Church (for which reason it is always
well that we should employ them, in order to awaken our
lukewarmness), there are many persons who rejoice rather in the
painting and decoration of them than in what they represent.
3. The use of images has been ordained by the Church for two
principal ends -- namely, that we may reverence the saints in
them, and that the will may be moved and devotion to the saints
awakened by them. When they serve this purpose they are beneficial
and the use of them is necessary; and therefore we must choose
those that are most true and lifelike, and that most move the will
to devotion, and our eyes must ever be fixed upon this motive
rather than upon the value and cunning of their workmanship and
decoration. For, as I say, there are some who pay more attention
to the cunning with which an image is made, and to its value, than
to what it represents; and that interior devotion which they ought
to direct spiritually to the saint whom they see not, forgetting
the image at once, since it serves only as a motive, they squander
upon the cunning and the decoration of its outward workmanship. In
this way sense is pleased and delighted, and the love and
rejoicing of the will remain there. This is a complete hindrance
to true spirituality, which demands annihilation of the affections
as to all particular things.
4. This will become quite clear from the detestable custom
which certain persons observe with regard to images in these our
days. Holding not in abhorence the vain trappings of the world,
they adorn images with the garments which from time to time vain
persons invent in order to satisfy their own pleasures and
vanities. So they clothe images with garments reprehensible even
in themselves, a kind of vanity which was, and is still, abhorrent
to the saints whom the images represent. Herein, with their help,
the devil succeeds in canonizing his vanities, by clothing the
saints with them, not without causing them great displeasure. And
in this way the honest and grave devotion of the soul, which
rejects and spurns all vanity and every trace of it, becomes with
them little more than a dressing of dolls; some persons use images
merely as idols upon which they have set their rejoicing. And thus
you will see certain persons who are never tired of adding one
image to another, and wish them to be of this or that kind and
workmanship, and to be placed in this or that manner, so as to be
pleasing to sense; and they make little account of the devotion of
the heart. They are as much attached to them as was Michas to his
idols,[658] or as was Laban;[659] for the one ran out of his house
crying aloud because they were being taken from him; and the
other, having made a long journey and been very wroth because of
them, disturbed all the household stuff of Jacob, in searching for
them.
5. The person who is truly devout sets his devotion
principally upon that which is invisible; he needs few images and
uses few, and chooses those that harmonize with the Divine rather
than with the human, clothing them, and with them himself, in the
garments of the world to come, and following its fashions rather
than those of this world. For not only does an image belonging to
this world in no way influence his desire; it does not even lead
him to think of this world, in spite of his having before his eyes
something worldly, akin to the world's interests. Nor is his heart
attached to the images that he uses; if they are taken from him,
he grieves very little, for he seeks within himself the living
image, which is Christ crucified, for Whose sake he even desires
that all should be taken from him and he should have nothing. Even
when the motives and means which lead him closest to God are taken
from him, he remains in tranquility. For the soul is nearer
perfection when it is tranquil and joyous, though it be deprived
of these motives, than if it has possession of them together with
desire and attachment. For, although it is good to be pleased to
have such images as assist the soul to greater devotion (for which
reason it is those which move it most that must always be chosen),
yet it is something far removed from perfection to be so greatly
attached to them as to possess them with attachment, so that, if
they are taken away from the soul, it becomes sad.
6. Let the soul be sure that, the more closely it is attached
to an image or a motive, the less will its devotion and prayer
mount to God. For, although it is true that, since some are more
appropriate than others, and excite devotion more than others, it
is well, for this reason alone, to be more affectioned to some
than to others, as I have just now said, yet there must be none of
the attachment and affection which I have described. Otherwise,
that which has to sustain the spirit in its flight to God, in
total forgetfulness, will be wholly occupied by sense, and the
soul will be completely immersed in a delight afforded it by what
are but instruments. These instruments I have to use, but solely
in order to assist me in devotion; and, on account of my
imperfection, they may well serve me as a hindrance, no less so
than may affection and attachment to anything else.
7.[660] But, though perhaps in this matter of images you may
think that there is something to be said on the other side, if you
have not clearly understood how much detachment and poverty of
spirit is required by perfection, at least you cannot excuse the
imperfection which is commonly indulged with regard to rosaries;
for you will hardly find anyone who has not some weakness with
regard to these, desiring them to be of this workmanship rather
than of that, or of this colour or metal rather than of that, or
decorated in some one style or in some other. Yet no one style is
better than another for the hearing of a prayer by God, for this
depends upon the simple and true heart, which looks at no more
than pleasing God, and, apart from the question of indulgences,
cares no more for one rosary than for another.
8. Our vain concupiscence is of such a nature and quality
that it tries to establish itself in everything; and it is like
the worm which destroys healthy wood, and works upon things both
good and evil. For what else is your desire to have a rosary of
cunning workmanship, and your wish that it shall be of one kind
rather than of another, but the fixing of your rejoicing upon the
instrument? It is like desiring to choose one image rather than
another, and considering, not if it will better awaken Divine love
within you, but only if it is more precious and more cunningly
made. If you employed your desire and rejoicing solely in the love
of God, you would care nothing for any of these considerations. It
is most vexatious to see certain spiritual persons so greatly
attached to the manner and workmanship of these instruments and
motives, and to the curiosity and vain pleasure which they find in
them: you will never see them satisfied; they will be continually
leaving one thing for another, and forgetting and forsaking
spiritual devotion for these visible things, to which they have
affection and attachment, sometimes of just the same kind as that
which a man has to temporal things; and from this they receive no
small harm.