p. 244Of the Spiritual Retreat of Three Days

Meditation is to the soul what fuel is to the fire, what the weights are to the clock. If we cease to supply fire with its aliment, it ceases to give out heat and flame; if we neglect to wind the clock, the needle necessarily stops and ceases to indicate the hours. So, in like manner, unless our fervour be reanimated from time to time in retreat by longer meditations and more frequent communion with God, it will soon grow cold, nay, degenerate into mortal languor, since, owing to our natural propension to evil, our heart constantly gravitates towards the earth. Hence it is that persons desirous of perfection are wont, besides the great retreats, to consecrate at least three days twice a year to the renovation of the interior spirit. This salutary practice, which is one of the rules of our Society, sustains and preserves devotion, assists us to repair our forces should they have suffered any diminution in virtue. We shall demonstrate the necessity and advantages of this retreat in the following considerations, and shall end by explaining the most appropriate method of making it.

Article I

Of the necessity of retreat

First proof.—The present state of our soul. This habitual disgust for heavenly things, this continual effusion of our soul on exterior objects, this inveterate tepidity in meditation, this habitual imperfection in the accomplishment of our daily actions, the dangerous and frequent temptations (too deliberate, perhaps, in their cause), the absolute or nearly absolute absence of fear of committing sin, evince clearly that we entertain less horror of venial transgressions, are familiarized with offending God, and have every reason to apprehend being already on the verge of mortal sin.

The number and violence of our yet unsubdued p. 245passions which frustrate the designs of Providence upon us: so many vicious and deep-rooted habits uncorrected, and which still ‘keep us fast bound with a chain of iron:’ so many good works omitted, which were obligatory or to which grace solicited us, so many faults committed in the holy land, the very sanctuary of religion, amid the angels of the earth: the too well-founded doubt and too legitimate uneasiness as to whether we are in a state of grace, whether we have faithfully fulfilled all the duties of our charge, or whether we have not neglected even the most important; whether the infractions of our vows and rules have not been mortal; whether our confessions have always been accompanied with the requisite dispositions of integrity, contrition, firm purpose of amendment, etc. Yes, all these are so many more than sufficient proofs that we are in greater danger than we imagined of losing not only our vocation, but our soul; consequently, that it is most incumbent on us to have recourse to retreat to recover our peace of conscience and anticipate and avert, by the reformation of our lives, the misfortunes which menace us.

Second proof.—The neglect of our duties. The rules of the institute we have embraced require that we be men of profound humility, unalterable patience, heroic obedience, continual mortification, assiduity and fervour in prayer, living models of virtue, capable of inspiring a horror of vice and love of virtue, by the mere prestige of our presence. But, woe to us! we are still impatient, arrogant, incorrigible, passionate, voluntary slaves of sensuality, strangers to piety, subject to our passions, the sport of self-love: so that possibly the irregularity of our lives renders us a subject of scandal to seculars, of affliction to those with whom we live, of humiliation to the Order of which we are members, and of grief to the Church.

The excellence of our vocation demands that we be dead to self, that we live for God alone and the promotion of His glory, and for our neighbour by labouring for the salvation of souls, without any desire of self-complacency. But, alas! what have we done up to the present? What have we suffered for God or for our neighbour? Have we prevented a single mortal sin? Have we snatched one soul from hell or conducted it heavenward? To what degree of perfection have we attained? Is it not true that the old man still survives in us, and holds the empire over our reason? How often have we not sacrificed the glory and interest of God to the desire of some vain honour, a culpable human respect? How often have we preferred our advancement, temporal advantage, or sensual gratification, to the salvation of souls? Perhaps some may even be able to upbraid us with being the cause of their ruin? Ah! were a sudden death to befall us to-day, what would be our fate? This thought fills us with dismay, and yet we have the temerity, religious as we are, to live in a state in which we would be afraid to die! Oh! how imperative it is on us to regulate, in anticipation, the account of our soul in retreat.

Third proof.—The abuse of grace. Not alone should we be holy on account of the excellence of our vocation, but we could likewise easily become so, owing to the helps and graces we receive. So great is the efficacy of the adorable Eucharist, that one single communion, if well made, would suffice to raise us to sublime sanctity; and, nevertheless, after having been thousands of times seated at the Lord’s Table, we are still, perhaps, the slaves of our evil habits.

Confession is a salutary bath, wherein the soul purifies itself from its stains, a heavenly balm, which heals all our wounds, a perfect antidote against the poison of sin. And yet, after so frequent an avowal of our faults, we still approach the sacred tribunal with an invariable formula of the same infidelities, the same iniquities, and scarcely have we left the confessional ere we relapse into the habitual offences, which a moment since we promised to renounce; so that very frequently we leave the minister of God without having tranquillised our conscience.

The annual retreats, so generally practised by devout souls, are means of the first order for the speedy attainment of sanctity. But what fruit have we derived from them, unless it be some sheets of paper, covered with our resolutions, and preserved by us as so many testimonies of our sloth in their fulfilment. Thus, without foresight for the future, indifferent concerning our advancement, reckless about our eternal destiny, oblivious of our duties, neglectful of the divine inspirations, we spend entire months and years in tepidity and on the utmost confines of mortal sin. Meantime, the thread of grace wastes away insensibly and finally snaps, the heavenly light gradually becomes dimmed, holy inspirations become less urgent, the bowels of divine mercy contract, the wrath of its justice is enkindled, death approaches with uplifted scythe: this year, perhaps, we shall appear before the judgment-seat of God, to render an account of our persistent frustration of the blessings of our vocation, time, talents, and the other graces conferred upon us.

Ah! when the Sovereign Judge shall unseal the book of our conscience, and when with His light, a thousand times more piercing than that of the sun at its meridian ‘He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and p. 247will manifest the counsels of hearts’¹11 Cor. iv. 5.; then those false principles, those erroneous maxims concerning the religious life, by which we now suffer ourselves to be deluded, shall vanish as a faint glimmer before the funereal lamp: then shall the mask be torn away, depicting to us in all their enormity our secret sins and those we have occasioned in others, and of which we did not even suspect ourselves guilty; then shall we confess the blindness of our self-love, which regarded as venial sins what were, alas! too really mortal.

Shall we now presume to deny the necessity we are under of seriously devoting, at least, a day or two to the regulation of the accounts of our life, and in laying the foundations of a solid virtue? Great God! dissipate, we beseech Thee, by the brightness of Thy light, the darkness which obscures my mental vision, that, recognising the danger which menaces me, I may recoil before the abyss which yawns beneath my feet, and bring to retreat all the fervour with which I shall desire to have made it at the hour of death.

Article II

Of the utility of retreat

First proof.—The countless graces we derive from it for ourselves.

It is certain that in retreat we receive numberless and extraordinary graces. The holy inspirations, the heavenly light, the efficacious impulses to good, the interior movements of a victorious grace, more exalted views of the eternal truths and of the designs of God in our regard, are so many signal favours with which the goodness of God deigns to enrich those who make retreat well: while, on the contrary, those who neglect or perform it carelessly, forfeit the right to those spiritual advantages, and expose themselves to the privation of numberless merits in this life and of so many degrees of glory in the other. Were the veil withdrawn from our eyes, were it permitted us to read the impenetrable secrets of Providence, we would probably behold a profusion of spiritual helps prepared for us, following each other consecutively, and emanating from the graces attached to a good retreat; but which shall be withheld from us should we omit or perform it precipitately or coldly. In point of fact, God may possibly have decreed to attach some special grace, some high degree of virtue, to the good dispositions in which we spend these days of salvation, favours which we shall never obtain should we allow so auspicious an opportunity to pass.

If, as the price of a fervent retreat, we were promised an honourable employment, a lucrative post, anything, in fact, capable of flattering our pride or self-love; were we assured of the cure of a virulent disease or complete justification from an unjust calumny, how fervently and faithfully would we not devote those days to pious reflections?

Now, God promises us on the same condition blessings which are infinite, inestimable, and eternal. He promises to heal the mortal languor of our soul and to shield us from the overwhelming confusion which awaits the unfaithful servants on the last day. How great, then, would be our folly were we, religious as we are, insensible to such rewards, while we manifest such anxiety and ardour for temporal advantages.

O religious! numbers of your brethren are accustomed to win for themselves the most precious treasures by p. 248retreat; many seculars would attain to eminent sanctity were that assistance granted to them. What reply will you make on the last day, when, accusing you with your indifference, they will reproach you for your abuse of so great a grace? What answer will you give to the Sovereign Judge Himself?

Beware, lest, having, like the barren fig-tree, disappointed the cares of the Father of the family, you also incur the same anathema. History furnishes us with thousands of examples of a similar chastisement. You are not superior to others. Take heed, then, for God is not mocked with impunity. He who despises His mercy exasperates His justice, and he who shuts his eyes to the light shall be enveloped in the dark whirlwinds of His wrath.

Thou art ‘terrible,’ Lord, ‘in Thy counsels over the sons of men.’²2Ps. lxv. 5. How should I not fear lest I find ‘my ruin’³3Luke ii. 34. in this retreat, where I ought to find the fountain of life? But no, assisted by Thy grace, I will apply myself seriously to this duty, ‘for I am afraid of Thy judgments,’⁴4Ps. cxviii. 120. ‘and he that feareth neglecteth nothing.’⁵5Eccli. vii. 19.

Second proof.—The graces we obtain there for others.

It may be that as the reward of this retreat, if well made, God will choose us as co-operators in some important work for His glory; that He will grant us the conversion of some great sinners, who would otherwise have continued in the ways of iniquity; or else the gift of a singular unction in the sacred tribunal and in our exhortations to virtue.

God, in the adorable dispositions of His wisdom, ordinarily attaches the salvation of souls to certain circumstances of time, means, place, and especially to p. 249persons who alone are destined to operate the salvation of such souls in particular.

Thus it seems that Divine Providence had reserved for St. Francis Xavier alone the work of the conversion of Japan, which, but for him, might never have been effected; but if, instead of performing fervently the exercises of the retreat which St. Ignatius induced him to make, and of laying in it the foundations of solid virtue, he had acquitted himself carelessly of them, would he now possess the glory of being the apostle of so many provinces? Would those remote regions have been converted to the faith? Let us study the history of the Church; how often has not God, on account of the sanctity of His ministers, of the Vincent Ferrers, the Anthony of Paduas, the Francis Regis’, and a host of others, poured forth copious and efficacious graces on their auditors, of which they would have been deprived had these evangelical preachers been less eminently holy?

If the eternal salvation of children so far depends on the piety of their parents that they are often deprived of the means of receiving the grace of baptism, through the fault of the latter, is it not likewise possible that the eternal happiness of countless souls may be attached by an invisible bond to the perfection of others?

Now, are not the excellence of our vocation, the talents we have received, the numberless means with which God has furnished us, so many cogent reasons for believing that Divine Providence desires that on our perfection should depend the salvation of many souls, who shall never enter heaven unless we labour faithfully for our sanctification, and also that this short retreat is, perhaps, the decisive moment in which the Almighty has resolved to grant us, provided we oppose no obstacles, the graces necessary for the accomplishment of His designs of mercy towards us.

What reproaches must we then expect, if we do not avail ourselves of these holy exercises to correct the disorder of our lives, and if we render ourselves incapable of being made the instruments of God to be employed for the salvation of our brethren, in the time that He has prescribed? What regret shall we not experience later on if, spending these days of grace in tepidity, we compel the God of Charity to reject us, to choose in our place, for the conversion of sinners, another assistant, another minister more deserving? Finally, what a severe account shall we not have to render should souls, whose salvation we ought to have wrought, be lost because we shall not have repressed our evil desires, resisted sensual gratifications and the seductions of the flesh, or conquered vainglory and human respect?

What awful chastisements will not so many wretched souls, lost through our fault, the Blood of Jesus Christ rendered abortive in their behalf by our neglect, their Angel Guardian, whose cares we have frustrated by our tepidity, invoke against us? Assuredly, should such motives fail to determine us to perform these holy exercises with fervour, with the firm resolution to devote ourselves irrevocably to the practice of virtue, we are unworthy to continue members of a religious order, one of the chief ends of which is to labour for the salvation of our neighbour.

O God! full of zeal for our souls, I will from this moment cease to resist Thee. I resolve to consecrate, at least, some days to redeem the loss of so many years. In compliance with the advice of Thy Prophet, ‘I will enter p. 250into my chamber; I will shut its doors upon me, and I will hide myself for a moment.’⁶6Isaias xxvi. 20. I will there reanimate the fire of devotion, in order to be able to inflame others therewith, and preserve them ‘from everlasting burning.’⁷7Ibid. xxxiii. 14. Woe to me! if, by my tepidity in retreat, I should become an occasion of ruin to my neighbour. Alas! Thy justice will rigorously require of me ‘soul for soul;’⁸8Exod. xxi. 23. it will force me to render an account of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed in vain.

Third proof.—The ineffable consolations we draw thence.

It will one day be a great consolation to us to have made our retreat with care; and we shall not have to apprehend the threats denounced against those who perform the exercises slothfully. In truth, ‘unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more.’⁹9Luke xii. 48. The severity of our account will increase, in proportion to the measure of the graces that shall have been granted to us. He that has received five talents must gain other five, or else he shall be treated as a ‘slothful servant.’¹⁰10Matt. xxv. 26. A retreat is a new grace, and the truths proposed therein are new talents: woe to us, then, if we neglect to profit by and trade with these talents; how great shall be our consternation at the hour of death! but, on the contrary, if we make it with fervour, oh! with what joy will not the remembrance of our fidelity fill us!

Were the blessing of a retreat granted to such or such of my old friends, who are now suffering in purgatory, and that too, perhaps, for having followed the exercises without zeal or piety, with what eagerness, what p. 251earnestness, would they not endeavour to profit by it! but how deeply do they not now deplore the having abused so favourable an opportunity!

Perhaps we ourselves, and that sooner than we imagine, shall one day bewail in these expiatory flames the having passed these ‘days of salvation’¹¹112 Cor. vi. 2. in tepidity. We richly merit chastisement, therefore, should we not now do what we shall then so bitterly neglect having omitted. Who can tell whether ‘the axe is not already laid to the root of the tree?’¹²12Luke iii. 9. It may be that this is the last retreat that shall be granted to us, since an unexpected death has already cut off many of those who assisted at these retreats last summer or last winter, and the vigour of whose constitutions seemed to promise an advanced old age. If we are wise, let us make the present retreat with fervour, that it may one day be a source of consolation instead of remorse to us.

Lord, permit not that this grace, which has already been, and shall continue to be, so powerful a means of perfection to so many others, should become for me the source of greater infidelity, or that I should drink death where others have found the source of life. Grant, O my God, that I may at length live a little for Thee, I who till now have lived for the world; and that I may at least devote some days to my soul, after having squandered months and years in pampering my body; for, perhaps, no more time shall remain to me if I lose these days of grace that are offered to me.

My resolution is taken: I will employ the time of this retreat in attending, with all the earnestness of which I am capable, to my one only important business. I am determined ‘to think upon the days of old and the eternal years’¹³13Ps. lxxvi. 6. alone. I am ready to do Thy holy will in all things as far as I shall know it: ‘Show me Thy ways, therefore, O Lord, and teach me Thy paths:’¹⁴14Ibid. xxiv. 4. teach me Thy will, ‘that I may know my end;’¹⁵15Ibid. xxxviii. 5. grant me the grace to will what Thou willest and the strength necessary for its accomplishment.

Article III

Advice concerning the manner of making the retreat with fruit

If we would follow the spiritual exercises with profit and by our docility to the voice of grace labour efficaciously for the amendment of our lives, let us carefully observe the following advice concerning the time and method of making retreat:

1. The time in which we should make the retreat

The time most profitable for making retreat is—

1. When we feel ourselves interiorly attracted thereto, and that we seem to hear, in our hearts, the sweet invitation of the Heavenly Bridegroom: ‘Arise, my dove, come into the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall;’¹⁶16Cant. ii. 14. ‘come apart into a desert place, and rest a little.’¹⁷17Mark vi. 31. Let us not fail to correspond promptly to this heavenly inspiration, and let us reply with the docility of Samuel, ‘Here I am: for Thou calledst me;’¹⁸181 Kings iii. 9. ‘lead me in the eternal way;’¹⁹19Ps. cxxxviii. 24. ‘I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou shalt go.’²⁰20Matt. viii. 19.

These inspirations are a certain sign that Divine Providence has special designs concerning the retreat to p. 252which it interiorly solicits us and destines great graces for us in it. How dangerous it would be for us to thwart its designs!

God also manifests His will to us, in this matter, when our superior or director prescribes or advises retreat for us; whether in this they propose to themselves the fulfilment of a point of our rule, or that they are actuated in this particular circumstance by the knowledge they possess of our spiritual wants.

2. When there is question of our choosing a state of life, beginning a new kind of life, entering on any important charge, or when we are undecided as to what resolution we ought to come to in an affair of moment; because in these circumstances particularly we require a spirit of counsel and rectitude, of prudence and strength.

But where shall we find this spirit, if not far removed from the tumult of the world, and close to Him who has said of Himself: ‘Counsel and equity is mine; prudence is mine; strength is mine?’²¹21Prov. viii. 14. He alone can impart to us in solitude the ‘counsel and prudence’ necessary to understand what we have to do, and the ‘equity and strength’ to execute it. Let us, therefore, gladly take refuge in the abode where ‘wisdom abideth with counsel,’²²22Ibid. vii. 12. and where we shall be ‘endued with power from on high.’²³23Luke xxiv. 49.

3. When we are suffering and anxious, when we are under persecution, any great adversity or misfortune, let us come, in the exercises of retreat, to seek near God a consolation, which our murmurs, discontents, worldly dissipation, and even the society of our friends are unable to afford us. The Royal Prophet informs us that in his trials he had recourse to this source of consolation. In the first instance he portrays the aridity and p. 253desolation of his soul and the relentless fury of his spiritual enemy. ‘I am grieved in my exercise,’ says he, ‘and am troubled at the voice of the enemy, and at the tribulation of the sinner; fear and trembling are come upon me, and darkness hath covered me.’ What a combination of evils!

What remedy does the holy king oppose to such multiform misfortunes? He teaches us in the continuation of his canticle, ‘I said: who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly away and be at rest? I have gone far off flying away; and I abode in the wilderness.’²⁴24Ps. liv. 2 and fol. Thus he withdraws, he hides himself in solitude. Amid the tempests which assail him, it is the beacon which guides, the harbour which shelters, the anchor which saves him. There he finds the cessation of his anxieties, relief in his sufferings, consolation in his trials, light in his darkness, the balm for all the miseries of his soul. Let us profit by his example, if we desire to experience the like salutary effects.

4. When tepidity, that fatal precursor of mortal coldness, begins to oppress our soul; when our heart, poured out on exterior objects, seems desirous to become an alien to itself, to give itself up to the dissipation of creatures; when our confessions languish; when we approach the Holy Table without fervour; when we meditate slothfully; when we experience a disgust and disrelish for spiritual things; when our imagination is filled with unchaste ideas, our mind given up to vain thoughts, our will assailed by concupiscence; in a word, when the whole man is delivered up to dangerous temptations, it is then time, it is high time, to oppose, in retreat, a strong barrier to this devastating torrent. In this state, the least delay is dangerous, the shortest delay fraught with peril. Then, “if you hear the Lord’s voice,” Ah! I conjure you, as you value your salvation, “harden not your hearts.”²⁵25Ps. xciv. 8. For your resistance would indubitably one day attract upon you this equitable and terrible reproach of the Sovereign Judge: “I called you, and you refused to listen, I also will laugh in your destruction.”²⁶26Prov. i. 24. To avert so dire a misfortune, let us take the wings of “the great eagle” of the Apocalypse, and let us “fly into the desert.”²⁷27Apoc. xii. 14.

2. The method of making the retreat

1. We must abstain as much as possible from all other occupations, so that we neither write nor read, nor do anything which does not conduce to the end and object of the retreat.

2. To perform our daily actions with more attention and fervour, and follow with exactitude the rule that shall be laid down for us.

3. To observe exterior solitude carefully by strict silence and a guard over the senses, and interior solitude by a more perfect recollection and more fervent aspirations to God.

4. To write our resolutions. They must be particular, not general. We should determine the circumstances of the place, time, and of the means for fulfilling them.

5. To increase our usual corporal mortifications; to choose for the matter of the particular examen during these three days, the observance of silence, and of the rule, the accomplishment of the employment confided to us.

6. To take care not to make the confession of review of the last six months through routine or custom, but with the desire of drawing from it these three spiritual advantages: the first, to perceive, by seeing all our sins at a glance, whether we have advanced or retrograded in virtue up to the present time; second, to conceive a deeper sorrow for and more lively horror of our faults; third, to discover our predominant passion, that vice which is the root of all our other defects.

7. To commence the work of our spiritual renovation with the firm conviction that we stand in great need of it, even though it may not be long since we have made the great annual retreat, or are soon to make it. We must, likewise, bring to it great generosity of heart, and be ready to accomplish all that shall appear to us to be the will of God, refusing nothing to our Divine Master, but offering ourselves wholly and unreservedly to Him.

8. For this end we must study what God, by His frequent inspirations, seems most particularly to require us to do or to avoid, and remark what constitute the chief obstacles to our spiritual progress. We may read over our resolutions of the preceding retreats, in order to examine how we have kept them. Fidelity to these directions will merit for us the grace to reap the most precious fruits from the retreat.

As we advise that these little retreats of three days be made twice a year, we have arranged a double index at the end of this work, in which the subjects treated of are so arranged as to suit the exercitants of them. We have at the same time indicated the order in which it seems to us advantageous to use them for meditation, spiritual lecture, or particular examen.

If we are unable to devote three whole days to an affair of such moment, let us consecrate only one day to it, and if, owing to our occupations, even this time is too long, we should not fail at least to spend an hour or two in treating of interests of such vital importance to us.

Knowing the time and method of making retreat, it only remains for us to set to work, with the intimate conviction of the necessity and utility of those holy exercises. We may stimulate our zeal by recalling the following eulogy bestowed on this duty by the illustrious St. Bernard: “Retreat,” says he, “purifies the soul, regulates our affections, directs our actions, moderates our excesses, reforms our morals, renders our life virtuous and irreproachable. It foresees what is to be done, judges what has been done, and leaves nothing defective in our heart which it does not correct.” Shall we, then, find it difficult to devote some moments of our life to an occupation so holy, a business so useful and so important, we who so thoughtlessly squander entire hours and days in repose, amusements, sleep, vain labours, and frivolities?

The spiritual favours granted by the Church to the exercise of retreat are an additional inducement to us to make it. The illustrious Pope Benedict XIV. has granted, by a rescript, dated 1753, a plenary indulgence to all those who perform the exercises of St. Ignatius during ten, or even five, days; and this favour he has extended to all who consecrate one day of each month to a preparation for death. This opinion of a Pontiff, at once so saintly and so learned, manifested by the dispensation of the treasures of the Church, cannot leave us any room to doubt of the efficacy of retreat for the attainment of solid virtue.