Vigils Readings – St John of the Cross

COUNSELS TO A RELIGIOUS ON HOW TO REACH PERFECTION by St John of the Cross4

He who wishes to be a true religious and fulfill the promises which by his state he has professed, advance in virtue, and enjoy the consolations and the delights of the Holy Spirit, will be unable to do so if he does not try to practice with the greatest diligence the four following counsels concerning resignation, mortification, the practice of virtue, and bodily and spiritual solitude.

In order to practice the first counsel, concerning resignation, you should live in the monastery as though no one else were in it. And thus you should never, by word or by thought, meddle in things that happen in the community, nor with individuals in it, desiring not to notice their good or bad qualities or their conduct. And in order to preserve your tranquility of soul, even if the whole world crumbles, you should not desire to advert to this or interfere, remembering Lot’s wife who was changed into hard stone because she turned her head to look at those who in the midst of much clamor and noise were perishing.

To practice the second counsel, which concerns mortification, and profit by it, you should engrave this truth upon your heart. And it is that you have not come to the monastery for any other reason than to be worked and tried in virtue, that you are like the stone which must be chiseled and fashioned before being used in the building.

Thus you should understand that those who are in the monastery are craftsmen placed there by God to mortify you by working and chiseling at you. Some will chisel with words, telling you what you would rather not hear; others by deed, doing against you what you would rather not endure; others by their temperament, being in their person and in their actions a bother and annoyance to you; and other by their thoughts, neither esteeming nor feeling love for you.

Trials will never be lacking in religious life, nor does God want them to be. Since He brings souls there to be proved and purified, like gold, with the hammer and the fire, it is fitting that they encounter trials and temptations from men and from devils, and the fire of anguish and affliction.

To practice the third counsel, which concerns the practice of virtue, you should be constant in your religious observance and in obedience, without any concern for the world, but only for God. In order to achieve this and avoid being deceived, you should never set your eyes upon the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the work at hand as a motive for doing it or failing to do it, but upon doing it for God. Thus you must undertake all things, agreeable or disagreeable, for the sole purpose of pleasing God through them.

To practice the fourth counsel, which concerns solitude, you should deem everything in the world as finished. Thus, when (for not being able to avoid it) you have to deal with some matter, do so in as detached a way as you would if it did not exist…Do not desire to know anything in any way except how better to serve God and keep the observance of your institute.

If Your Charity observes these four counsels with care, you will reach perfection in a very short time. These counsels are so interdependent that if you are lacking in one of them, you will begin to lost the profit and gain you have form practicing the others