y
perils both of body and soul; His care of me by means of His Angels; and
His other individual benefits. Under the second head come all my faults
and the punishments due to me, whether in the past or now in the
present; my proneness to sin; my misuse of my own powers by habituating
my thoughts and desires--as well as the inclinations of my other various
faculties--to evil; my sojourning in a region far away from His
Friendship and from His Divine conversation[90]; my perverted affections
which make me think far more of temporal than of spiritual advantages or
disadvantages; my utter lack of virtue; the wounds of my ignorance, of
my malice, of my weakness, of my concupiscence; the shackles on my hands
and feet, on my good works, that is; the shackles, too, on my
affections, so that I dwell amidst darkness and rottenness and
bitterness, and shrink not from it! My deafness, too, to the inner voice
of my Shepherd; and, what is far worse, that I have chosen God for my
enemy and my adversary as often as I have chosen mortal sin, and that I
have thus offered Him the grievous insult of refusing to have Him for my
God, and choosing instead my belly, or money, or false delights--and
called them my God!

Meditations such as these should be in daily use among spiritual and
religious people, and for their sake they should put aside the
"much-speaking" of vocal prayer, however much it may appeal to them. And
it is of such meditations that devotion and, by consequence, other
virtues, are begotten. And they who do not give themselves to this form
of prayer at least once in the day cannot be called religious men or
women, nor even spiritual people. There can be no effect without a
cause, no end without means to it, no gaining the harbour on the island
save by a voyage in a ship; and so there can be no real religion without
repeated acts regarding its causes, the means to it, and the vehicle
that is to bring us thither (_on_ 2. 2. 82. 3).

_Cajetan:_ Just as he who removes an obstacle is the occasion of the
resulting effect--a man, for instance, who pulls down a pillar is the
occasion of the resulting fall of what it supported, and a man who
removes a water-dam is the occasion of the consequent flood--so in the
same way have women and simple folk a cause of devotion within
themselves, for they have not that obstacle which consists in
self-confidence. And because God bestows His grace on those who put no
obstacle to it, the Church ther