Solid Virtue

Fr. Aloysius Bellecius, S.J., wrote Solid Virtue for people who had already given their lives to God and were still confessing the same faults every week. He calls the condition tepidity, and he warns that the tepid man rarely recognizes himself. He softens nothing.

The first part names six habits that keep a person lukewarm: venial sin excused as small, tepidity itself, resisting grace, the one passion that feeds the rest, the fear of what people will say, and lying in bed after you have woken. The second part gives six practices for getting out, with detail you can act on the same day. Fix tomorrow’s rising hour before you sleep. Read a quarter hour a day and finish the book you start. Keep the particular examen St. Ignatius taught, a little notebook of dots for counting one fault at noon and again at night. Make a retreat of three days twice a year. The third part is the long argument for keeping it up, ending with final perseverance.

Nearly every chapter closes with an examination of yourself, and a Double Table at the front arranges the book as two retreats of three days. Bellecius wrote with his fellow Jesuits in mind and says so. Archbishop Croke, who introduced the English translation, insisted it was for lay people as much as for the cloister, since there were no two Gospels given to the world. He defined devotion as the love of God reduced to a settled everyday practice, which is a fair summary of what this book is for.