What is the perfect joy

ONCE when St. Francis was coming from Perugia to Santa Maria degli Angeli with Friar Leo in the winter, and the very great cold vexed him sore, he called Friar Leo, who was going before, and spake after this manner: "Friar Leo, albeit the minor friars in every land set a great example of holiness and of good edification, nevertheless, write and note diligently that therein is not perfect joy". And when St. Francis had gone farther, he called unto him the second time: "O Friar Leo, although the minor friar should give sight to the blind, make straight the crooked, cast out devils, make the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, and the dumb to speak, and, what is a greater thing, should raise those who have been dead four days; write that therein is not perfect joy". Going a little farther, he shouted loudly:

 "O Friar  Leo, if the minor friar knew all tongues, and all sciences, and all the Scriptures, so that he was able to prophesy and to reveal not only things to come but also the secrets of consciences and souls; write that therein is not perfect joy". Going a little farther, St. Francis yet again shouted loudly: "O Friar Leo, little sheep of God, albeit the minor friar should speak with the tongue of angels, and knew the courses of the stars and the virtues of herbs, and albeit all the treasures of the earth were revealed to him and he knew the virtues of birds and of fishes and of all animals and of men, of trees, of stones and of roots and of waters; write that therein is not perfect joy". And going yet farther a certain space, St. Francis shouted loudly: "O Friar Leo, although the minor friar should know to preach so well that he should convert all the infidels to the faith of Christ; write that therein is not perfect joy". And this manner of speech continuing for full two miles, Friar Leo, with great wonder, asked and said: Father, I pray thee in the name of God to tell me wherein is perfect joy". And St. Francis answered him: "When we shall be at Santa Maria degli Angeli, thus soaked by the rain, and frozen by the cold, and befouled with mud, and afflicted with hunger, and shall knock at the door of the Place, and the doorkeeper shall come in anger and shall say: 'Who are ye?' and we shall say: 'We are two of your friars,' and he shall say: 'Ye speak not truth; rather are ye two lewd fellows who go about deceiving the world and robbing the alms of the poor: get you hence'; and shall not open unto us, but shall make us stay outside in the snow and rain, cold and hungry, even until night; then, if we shall bear such great wrong and such cruelty and such rebuffs patiently, without disquieting ourselves and without murmuring against him; and shall think humbly and charitably that that door-keeper really believes us to be that which he has called us, and that God makes him speak against us; O Friar Leo, write that here is perfect joy. And if we persevere in knocking, and he shall come forth enraged and shall drive us away with insults and with buffetings, as importunate rascals, saying, 'Get you hence, vilest of petty thieves, go to the hospice. Here ye shall neither eat nor lodge.' If we shall bear this patiently and with joy and love; O Friar Leo write that herein is perfect joy. And if, constrained by hunger and by cold and by the night, we shall continue to knock and shall call and beseech for the love of God, with great weeping, that he open unto us and let us in, and he, greatly offended thereat, shall say: 'These be importunate rascals; I will pay them well as they deserve,' and shall come forth with a knotty club and take us by the cowl, and shall throw us on the ground and roll us in the snow and shall cudgel us pitilessly with that club; if we shall bear all these things patiently and with cheerfulness, thinking on the sufferings of Christ the blessed, the which we ought to bear patiently for His love; O Friar Leo, write that here and in this is perfect joy; and therefore hear the conclusion, Friar Leo; above all the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit, which Christ grants to His friends, is that of self-conquest and of willingly bearing sufferings, injuries and reproaches and discomforts for the love of Christ; because in all the other gifts of God we cannot glory, inasmuch as they are not ours, but of God; whence the Apostle saith: What hast thou that thou didst not receive from God! and if thou didst receive it from Him, wherefore dost thou glory therein as if thou hadst it of thyself! But in the cross of tribulation and of affliction we may glory, because this is our own; and therefore the Apostle saith: I would not glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

From the Little Flowers of St. Francis

 

 

Remedies of the soul

It (your letter) would have made me perfectly happy if it hadn’t told me that the illness you had before I left The Hague has lingered on in the form of stomach troubles. The remedies you have chosen—involving •diet and •exercise—are in my opinion the best of all. Well, they are the best (all things considered) after the remedies of •the soul, which certainly has great power over the body, as is shown by the big changes that anger, fear, and the other passions arouse in it. But when the soul conducts the animal spirits to the places where they can help or harm, it does this not by directly willing the spirits to go in those ways but by willing or thinking of something else. For our body is so constructed that certain movements in it follow naturally upon certain thoughts: as we see that blushes follows from shame, tears from compassion, and laughter from joy. I know of no thought more conducive to continuing health than a strong conviction that our body is so well constructed that once we are healthy we can’t easily fall ill—unless we engage in some excess or are harmed by air pollution or some other external cause. Someone who is ill can restore his health solely by the power of nature, especially when he is still young. This •conviction is certainly much truer and more reasonable than the view of some people—I have seen this happen—who are influenced by an astrologer or a physician to think they must die in a certain amount of time, and are caused purely by this belief to become sick and even, often enough, to die. I couldn’t help being extremely sad if I thought that you were still unwell; I prefer to hope that the illness is all over; but my desire to be certain about this makes me eager to return to Holland.

reading the letter you did me the honour of writing to me, I couldn’t help being very distressed to see that such a rare and perfect ·level of· virtue isn’t accompanied by the health and prosperity that it deserves. I can readily understand the multitude of distressing things that keep turning up in your life—things that are made harder to overcome by being of such a kind that true reason doesn’t issue the command ‘Oppose them directly or try to chase them away’. These are domestic enemies that you are forced to keep company with, and you have to be perpetually on guard lest they injure you. The only remedy that I know is to channel your imagination and your senses as far from them as you can, and think about them, when prudence requires you to, using only your intellect.

In this matter it is easy, I think, to see how the intellect differs from the imagination and the senses. •Consider someone who has every reason to be happy but who continually sees enacted before him tragedies full of disastrous events, and who spends all his time brooding on sad and pitiful objects.

Suppose that he knows that these are imaginary fables: they draw tears from his eyes and move his imagination, but don’t touch his intellect at all. I think that this by itself would be enough gradually to constrict his heart and make him sigh in such a way that the circulation of his blood would be clogged and slowed down. The bigger parts of his blood, sticking together, could easily block the spleen, getting caught in it and stopping in its pores; while the more finely divided parts, being continually agitated, could affect his lungs and cause a cough which in time might be very dangerous. •Now consider someone who has countless genuine reasons for distress but who takes such trouble to direct his imagination that he never thinks about them except when some practical necessity forces him to, and who spends the rest of his time thinking about things that can give him contentment and joy. This will greatly help him by enabling him to make sounder judgments about the things that matter to him, because he’ll look on them without passion. Furthermore, I am sure that this by itself could restore him to health, even if his spleen and lungs were already in a poor condition because of the bad condition of the blood caused by sadness. Especially if he also used medical remedies to thin out the part of the blood causing the obstructions. The waters of Spa are very good for this purpose, I think, above all if while taking them you follow the usual recommendation of physicians and free your mind from all sad thoughts, and even from all serious meditations on scientific subjects. Simply imitate people who convince themselves that they aren’t thinking of anything when they are observing the greenness of a forest, the colours of a flower, the flight of a bird, or something else requiring no attention. This doesn’t waste time; it uses time well, because one can content oneself with the hope that by this means one will recover perfect health, which is the foundation of all the other goods of this life.

*

 I know that everything I write here is better known to you than to me, and that what’s difficult in this matter is not the theory but the practice. Still, the great favour that you do me in showing that you aren’t averse to hearing my views makes me take the liberty of writing them down just as they are, and of adding this: The remedy I have just suggested cured an illness of mine that was very like yours and perhaps even more dangerous. I was born of a mother who, a few days [actually, 14 months] after my birth, died from a disease of the lungs caused by distress. From her I inherited a dry cough and a pale colour which stayed with me until I was more than twenty, so that all the doctors who saw me predicted that I would die young. But I have always tended to look at things from the most favourable angle and to make my chief happiness depend upon myself alone; and I believe that this tendency caused the indisposition gradually to disappear completely—the indisposition that was almost part of my nature!

*

Descartes

( from letters to Elizabeth)

 

Sayings of Heraclitus

*Those awake have an ordered universe in common, but in sleep every man turns away to one of his own.

*The thinking faculty is common to all

*Of the Logos, which is as I describe it, men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos, men are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what They do when asleep.

* Therefore it is necessary to follow the common; but although the Logos is common the many live as though they had a private understanding.

* Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.

*The things of which there is seeing and hearing and perception, these I prefer.

*Sun will not overstep his measures; else Erinyes, Justice’s ministers, will find him out.

* In the same river we both step and do not step, we are and are not.

*It is not possible to step twice into the same river.

*Upon those that step into the same rivers different and different waters flow.

*Sea is the most pure and polluted water; for fish it is drinkable and salutary; but for man undrinkable and perilous.

*Disease makes health pleasant and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest.

*What is in opposition is in concert, and from what differs comes the most beautiful harmony.

* War is the father of all, the king of all; and some he shows as gods, some as men; some he makes slaves, some free.

* One must know that war is common and justice is strife, and that all things happen by strife and necessity.

* For souls it is death to become water, for water death to become earth, from earth water comes-to-be and from water soul

* Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal; each lives the death of the other and dies their life.

* After death things await men, which they do not expect or imagine.

* Time is a child playing a game of droughts; the kingship is in the hands of a child.

* They purify themselves by staining themselves with other blood, as if one stepped into mud to wash off mud. But a man would be thought mad if one of his fellow men saw him do that. Also they talk to statues as one might talk with houses, in ignorance of the nature of gods and heroes.

* The consecration of the mysteries, as practised among men, are unholy.

* To god all things are beautiful and good and just, but men have supposed some things to be unjust, some just .

* This cosmos (the same of all) none of gods or men made, but it always was and is and shall be; an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.

* Asses prefer chaff to gold.

* Dogs bark at those whom they do not recognise.

* If happiness lay in bodily pleasures, we should call oxen happy when they find vetch to eat.

* It is not good for men to obtain all they wish.

* Sane thinking is the greatest virtue, and wisdom is speaking the truth and acting according to nature, paying heed.

* All men are granted what is needed for knowing oneself and sane thinking.

* A dry soul is wisest and best.

* A man when he is drunk is led by an unfledged boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, having his soul moist.

* I sought myself.

*If one doesn’t expect the unexpected one will not find it, for it is not reached by search or trail.

* Character is man’s fate.

* Nature loves hiding

* The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither speaks out nor conceals, but gives a sign.

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher 

Night to little flower

I AM LIKE the night to you, little flower.

        I can only give you peace and a wakeful silence hidden in the dark.

        When in the morning you open your eyes, I shall leave you to a world a-hum with bees, and songful with birds.

My last gift to you will be a tear dropped into the depth of your youth; it will make your smile all the sweeter, and bemist your outlook on the pitiless mirth of day.

 

Rabindranath 

 

Waiting in the dark

WHEN I GIVE up the helm I know that the time has come for thee to take it. What there is to do will be instantly done. Vain is this struggle.

Then take away your hands and silently put up with your defeat, my heart, and think it your good fortune to sit perfectly still where you are placed.

These my lamps are blown out at every little puff of wind, and trying to light them I forget all else again and again.

But I shall be wise this time and wait in the dark, spreading my mat on the floor; and whenever it is thy pleasure, my lord, come silently and take thy seat here.

 

Rabindranath 

A prayer from Talmud

MAY it be Thy will, O God, that we return to Thee in perfect penitence, so that we may not be ashamed to meet our fathers in the life to come.

Unite our hearts, O God, to fear Thy name; keep us far from what Thou hatest; bring us near to what Thou lovest; and deal mercifully with us for Thy name’s sake. May it be Thy will, O God, that love and peace and brotherliness dwell among us! May our hopes of Heaven be fulfilled! Grant that the good inclination may uphold us. Fill us with the desire to fear Thy name, and do Thou give us our soul’s peace. Amen. 

TALMUD.

Real religion

DO not seek for the City of God on earth, for it is not built of wood or stone; but seek it in the soul of the man who is at peace with himself and is a lover of true wisdom.

If a man practises ablutions of the body, but defiles his mind—if he offers hecatombs, founds a temple, adorns a shrine, and does nothing for making his soul beautiful—let him not be called religious. He has wandered far from real religion, mistaking ritual for holiness; attempting, as it were, to bribe the Incorruptible and to flatter Him whom none can flatter. God welcomes the genuine service of a soul, the sacrifice of truth; but from display of wealth He turns away.

Will any man with impure soul and with no intention to repent dare to approach the Most High God? The grateful soul of the wise man is the true altar of God.

PHILO JUDAEUS, 1st cent.

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