1. The greatest saints are the very persons who could most easily have become the worst of sinners. Their strength of character despised half measures; they must have greatness; and if they had not scaled the heights, it is likely they would have sounded the depths.
Thus St. Paul describes the intense delight of his soul as he contemplated God's law. His heart was inflamed with divine love; he would wish to soar, like the eagle, into the brilliant sunshine, but a weight dragging at his feet held him captive. "I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
The saints were great lovers; and had their love not reached out Godwards, there is every reason to think it would have wallowed in the mire. If St. Teresa's affectionate heart had been permitted to follow its natural dictates, she might have lost her soul; indeed, something of the kind was revealed to her by God. It has been said of St. Catherine of Sienna that she was probably harassed all through her life by fierce inclinations to commit all kinds of sins against purity. Wise spiritual directors like St. Francis de Sales are not surprised to hear of such temptations. "Those who have the greatest number of bad inclinations," he writes, "are those who can reach a greater perfection.... Do not be at all discouraged to find in yourself very many bad inclinations, since by the goodness of God you have a superior will which can overrule all this."
Many souls of good will should derive immense comfort from ideas such as these. There are those who want to love God, to advance in solid holiness, to do the works of Catholic Action, but they get discouraged and frightened because they find in themselves so many violent attractions towards sin, perhaps even in its most heinous forms. When they come into church to pray, even when they approach the altar to receive Holy Communion, they are assailed with "bad thoughts," and they begin to consider themselves presumptuous, illadvised, in aspiring to sanctity. The truth cannot be too often restated that the mere presence and insistence of such temptations indicates in itself nothing more than that "we are men, not angels."
That is why St. Paul, although he sometimes groaned and staggered under the weight he had to carry, yet on other occasions rejoiced, and willingly, in his infirmities. Why? Because in the midst of them he experienced the "virtue of Christ," that sustaining grace which God will never refuse to the soul that clings to Him. "Who shall deliver me?" he asks, and, for our comfort, he answers his own question. "The grace of God, by Our Lord Jesus Christ" will uphold him and ultimately set him free.
Jesus, if Your saints were thus subjected to the fires of temptation, I need not expect to escape the scorching. "When I am weak, then I am strong" _ confident, unalterably trustful, that You are with me to give courage and victory. Never could I doubt Your promise to make with the temptation issue that I may bear it, not with tranquillity merely but with great joy.