p. 67Marks of Tepidity

1. To recite vocal prayers and make meditation only from habit, without attention, fervor or devotion, and hence without fruit and profit;—not to combat distractions, to defer, interrupt, shorten, or even sometimes entirely omit these exercises without sufficient reason.

2. To make the examinations of conscience only superficially, drowsily, and without real sorrow and earnest resolution.

3. To make practical distinctions between important and unimportant rules, obligations and customs of the Institute, in order frivolously to disregard the so-called little things, not bearing in mind that it is something great, and not seldom heroic, to be always faithful in little things, and that, as a rule, our fidelity in greater things depends on our previous fidelity in little things.

4. To be occupied willingly in exterior employments, not in order to do good, but out of love of distraction and of eagerness for news, and because one lives in dissipation of mind and is averse to recollection.

5. To be too fond of intercourse with seculars, and to fail therein in religious modesty, dignity and prudence, and to show therein vanity and an unmortified spirit.

6. To be eager for human consolation, to impart to others and to complain to them of one’s trials, pains and troubles, and seek only human sympathy and comfort.

7. Willingly to speak of others, of their affairs, and of their faults, uncharitably to criticise, to find fault with them, not excuse them, to have no esteem for fraternal charity.

8. To consider burdensome and to carry unwillingly the yoke of religious discipline, and especially of obedience; not willingly to submit one’s judgment and will and render them conformable to the will and judgment of the superior; to lose one’s peace and composure at humiliations and corrections, and not to endeavor to conquer one’s self therein.

9. To yield to sensuality in eating and drinking, in sleep,—either out of the proper time or too long,—in sitting down, and in the use of exterior penances; to seek one’s ease, not to mortify one’s senses and passions.

10. Not carefully to shun the occasions and dangers of sinning.

11. Not willingly to speak or listen to others speaking of God and on spiritual subjects.

12. Not to heed and obey the inspirations of grace; to commit again and again the same faults without fear and without remorse.

13. To care nothing about one’s imperfections and faults, to be indifferent towards one’s progress in perfection, or even towards one’s vocation; not to use the proper means of sanctification.

14. To go to confession without sincere sorrow and firm purpose of amendment, to receive holy Communion without devotion, reverence, and spiritual hunger, and only from habit; to assist at holy Mass and other divine services without fervor and recollection, and hence to derive from these holy exercises but little or no profit.

15. Willingly to associate with those who lack fervor and who charge all that do not chime in with them with being scrupulous and excessively worried on account of trifles.

Such are the principal marks of tepidity. The possession of even one of them should be for us a subject of fear. If, however, we possess several or even all of them, there is no longer any doubt of our being in the dangerous state of tepidity.