46

clip'n'save

Today I found a cheat code, although I do not know if it will be of general interest, but I am going to write it down here for my own reference while trying not to be too terse for anyone else. Nothing in Notes can ever be found again.

Here is what you ought to do in order to fully appreciate this cheat code: Get out Ascent of Mount Carmel (it is in Collected Works) and turn to “Endeavor to be inclined always...” laundry-list, including the “...and, for Christ...” bit at the end. (Goodreads quotes section might have it if you scroll.) This is the fast, short, safe road up to the summit and that is why St. John of the Cross recommends it; why would you want a slow, long, uncertain road? It is, however, appalling at first glance.

Now get out Spiritual Exercises (find the Puhl translation, which, being from 1951, is in copyright and I don’t see it lying around on the internet), and turn to Three Kinds of Humility #167 The Third Kind of Humility. Read that paragraph. What!!?! If I had time to waste on this, I would make a “They’re the same picture” meme. I’m telling you, though, they’re the same picture.

Why is this interesting to me? Because St. Ignatius of Loyola (a practical man whose aim was to set souls on fire, cf. Luke 12:49) also includes instructions for how to obtain it. This is what I am pleased to refer to as a cheat code. #168 Note says to turn back a few pages and use the three colloquies from Three Classes of Men. This in turn (with an additional note which you should read) will actually just tell you to use the three colloquies from The Standard of Christ (in the meditation on the two standards.)

So (TL;DR) if you are daunted by the instructions in Ascent you should get out the Puhl translation of SpirEx and go pray those three colloquies[2]. These guys are not messing around so I’m sure it will help. Probably it will set your hair on fire for you. This is exactly the sort of thing I like because I have (this is one of my three[3] favorite quotes from my favorite movie of all time) “a funny sense of fun” [YouTube link].

[1] First, I had recently read To Raise the Fallen (someone mentioned it somewhere). Then, I looked for a biography on abebooks.com and found a reprint by Forgotten Books of an old one from a scan (as one of the Amazon reviews notes, the scan is imperfect and a couple of pages are missing or duplicated) and it arrived in the mail this week. I read the front matter and then jumped to the Afterword at the end (because of how it was described) and then started reading the book properly from the beginning. Today I got to the notes from the Long Retreat, and at “Three classes of men” onward, I got down Spiritual Exercises from the bookshelf to see what he was referring to.

[2] The first colloquy is to ask the BVM to obtain a thing for you (you know she gets what she asks for) and it escalates from there all the way up the chain of command just for good measure.

[3] the others are “we can’t all be lion-tamers” and (solidly in first place) “the trick is not minding that it hurts”.