We must trust both in God’s goodness and our weakness
1 min • Digitized on September 2, 2021
From The Spiritual Combat, in file "The Spiritual Combat (Dornin edition)", page 110
By Dom Lorenzo Scupoli
When I say ready compliance, I would not be understood to mean mere desires, or feeble and barren resolutions, by which so many are deceived, for the following reasons:
First, such desires and resolutions, have not for their foundation a diffidence ourselves and a confidence in God; the consequence of which is, that a soul puffed up with a secret pride, is so blind as to take that for solid virtue which is only so in appearance.
The remedy for this evil, and the light requisite for discovering it, must be obtained from Heaven, which suffers us to fall, that our eyes being opened by wo-ful experience, we may remove the confidence we had in ourselves, placing it in the Divine Grace, and exchange an almost imperceptible pride, for an humble knowledge of our own weakness.
Thus good resolutions will never be effectual, unless firm and steady; neither can they be firm and steady, unless founded in a diffidence of ourselves and a confidence in God.