Rules for Amendment of Life in a State Already Embraced

To persons engaged in the bonds of marriage, or raised to an ecclesiastical dignity impossible or difficult to abandon, we do not propose the rules regarding the choice of a state. Instead of these we subjoin a method of reform, or rules of conduct that will serve for amendment of life in the state already fixed.

The following are the elements of this method:

Do you wish to adopt and follow a plan of life conformable to the end for which God created you?

Perform the Exercises of the second week to be pointed out presently.

Employ the methods of election named above, applying them with much reflection and exactness to the following objects, or others which may serve as matters for your deliberation:

What style of house, what number of servants, is it proper for you to keep?

How does it become you to administer and regulate your affairs?

What instructions and examples ought you to give for the edification of your children and servants?

What part of your revenues ought you to employ for your personal use and that of your house?

What other part ought you to destine to the poor, or consecrate to pious works?

In all this you ought to have nothing in view but the glory of God and your own salvation.

And you ought to be persuaded that the more you withdraw from yourself, from self-love, and seeking your own ease, the more you will advance in the way of salvation and perfection.

The Exercises to be performed before beginning this work of reform are (besides the meditation on the ordinary mysteries of Jesus Christ), the Contemplation of the Two Standards, the Exercises of the Three Classes, the Prelude of the Elections. These will greatly assist in making the person in retreat conceive the idea and the desire of the perfection of which he is capable, and of which his state is susceptible.

The second article on Election is scarcely applicable here, but rather the third, with its double method. We must proceed in this way:—Each of the points to be examined before God,—for example, the personnel of the house, expenses, pious works,—will be considered separately. Whenever deliberation has been made and resolution taken on a point, pass on to another. The more grave and difficult the question, the more time it requires: sometimes an hour or more must be given to one; sometimes several points successively will have been decided in this space of time.