Sirach, Chapter 21, Verse 11
Those who keep the
Law control their thoughts; perfect fear of the Lord is wisdom.
If you have not had much
success with your habitual sins and find yourself always confessing the same
sins over and over: perhaps this verse will provide a key to real change for those who control their thoughts keep
the law for where the mind goes unchecked the body and the will follow.
One of the most remarkable characteristics[1]
of all forms of organic life is the power to adapt itself to the circumstances
in which it is placed. It will endeavor under the most altered conditions to
live, and, in order to live, it will resort to all kinds of contrivances,
sometimes effecting such changes in its outward appearance that none but a
trained eye could detect its identity. Yet with all these adaptations, it will
preserve its identity.
Man possesses this power in perhaps a higher degree than
any other form of life. He can find his home in any country, in any climate,
under an almost infinite variety of conditions. He can live and adapt himself
to circumstances involving the most violent contrasts and soon settle down and
find the means of making himself at home. But man has other needs and another
life beside that of his physical nature. He is something more than an animal
and needs more than food and shelter.
For the life of man is above all things a mental life.
He can never rid himself of the companions of his mind. He is not the mere
creature of his outward circumstances. There are other surroundings that are
far more intimate and closer to him than any external things, however nearly they
may touch upon him. These things can but touch the surface of his being;
his thoughts enter into the sanctuary of his soul.
The beast is wholly dependent upon what it finds around
it. Man can live a life practically independent of most of these things. In the
utmost solitude, he can gather around him a company of his closest and most
intimate friends, and in the crowded thoroughfares of life, he can be alone
with them. You may tell a man by his friends, but there are no friends so
intimate as his thoughts. If you know the
companions of his mind, you will know what kind of man he is.
It is not the sufferings or the consolations of life
that directly affect character, but the thoughts that men call around them at
such times. No external thing can in itself affect the inner life of the soul.
Men are material; the soul is spiritual.
Choose which thoughts to listen to
We often attribute to such things some moral characteristic,
but in themselves they are neither good nor bad. The same things do harm to one
person and good to another: suffering has been a curse to some and a blessing
to others; poverty has closed the door of Heaven to some, and to others it has
been the source of beatitude. The value of these things comes from the thoughts
the soul calls around itself when it encounters such things. Some trouble comes
into a person’s life, and instantly there gathers around him, through the door
opened by that trouble, a crowd of thoughts, anger, rebellion, bitterness,
and discontent and, at the same time, thoughts of penitence, acceptance, and
the example of our Lord. The outward trouble has thrown open an unseen door
into the spiritual world, and in flow this mixed crowd of thoughts, swarming
around the soul and clamoring for a hearing. The soul must choose among them all which it will listen to and which
it will reject, and by that choice, it rises or falls. One person chooses
thoughts that heal, encourage, and strengthen him; another, those that stir him
to bitterness and revolt. The morality lies not in the thing but in the person.
The soul must
choose, and what it chooses it will probably choose again and again, until that
chosen thought gains the right of entrance, and closes the door to all others,
and becomes the constant companion of the soul. And in every event, great and small, it enters and takes its place,
instructing its pupil as to its meaning, interpreting it, explaining it — its
hidden purpose, its power for good or evil — or misrepresenting it and making
the good seem evil and the evil good, and gradually becoming master of its
whole life, the molder of its character.
Indeed, it is true. These secret and unseen companions
of the soul, intangible and volatile as they are, affect our whole view of men and
things around us. The hard, substantial facts of life are interpreted by them;
they become plastic in their hands, and change their appearance and coloring at
their bidding. These phantom forms that rise out of the darkness and return to
it again, colorless, impalpable, ethereal, that speak in inarticulate whispers
and touch us with ghostly hands, are more real to us than the solid earth and
the strong mountains. They can veil the heavens for us and take the brightness
out of the sunshine and deepen the shadows at noonday or make the darkest day
seem bright.
For they come from the same land whence the soul comes;
they are of closer kinship than any material thing can be. And it is the mind
that sees, not the eye. It is in the light that burns within that all outward
things are seen. Amid the pleasant laughter and genial companionship of
friends, some thought silently enters, holds up its lantern and casts its pale
light around, and, seen in that light, all is suddenly turned to ashes, the
voices lose their ring, and the laughter becomes hollow and cheerless. One
thought in an instant has changed the whole scene from life to death.
It is thus in the
thoughts men choose as their companions on their way through the world that the
key to their interpretation of life is to be found. Different men view the
same things in different ways. And the same men, in the course of a few years,
alter their whole view of life. They have simply changed their companions on
the road. Indeed, the breaking with one set of people and the forming ties
of friendship with others of a different type is often but the outward evidence
and result of a hidden and inward change of the more intimate friendships of
the mind.
Drive bad thoughts out with good ones
There is a better
way: the positive rather than the negative way. Let not your mind be overcome
with evil, “but overcome evil with good.” The emptying the
mind of evil is not the first step toward filling it with good. It is not a
step in that direction at all. If you succeeded in emptying your mind of every
undesirable thought, what then? You cannot empty it and then begin to fill it
with better thoughts. No, you must empty it of evil by filling it with good.
Nature abhors a vacuum. You drive out darkness by filling the room with light.
If you wish to fill a glass with water, you do not first expel the air; you
expel the air by pouring in water. In the moral life, there is no intermediate
state of vacuum possible in which, having driven out the evil, you begin to
bring in good. As the good enters, it expels the evil. Therefore, the effort of the soul must be to fill the mind so full of
healthy thoughts that there is no room for others — trying not so much not to
think of what is evil as to think of what is good. The mind is ever working,
never at rest. It will feed upon whatever food is given it. If it is given
wholesome food, it will develop and grow strong.
He, therefore, who
wishes to overcome any habit of evil thoughts must do so indirectly rather than
directly, trying not so much not to indulge in anger as to fill the mind with
loving and kindly thoughts, meeting discontent by rejoicing in the will of God,
self-consciousness by wrapping himself around in the presence of God — turning
as promptly as possible to think of something bracing when he is conscious of
the presence or approach of evil.
This, and the constant effort to keep the mind
interested and occupied about healthy subjects that it can enjoy without strain
or weariness will do much to recover it from the ill effects of the lack of
discipline. It is a great matter to know how to give it relaxation without
laxity and, by its studies and recreations, to prepare it for prayer and the
more strenuous work of life. A mind that has a wide reach of interests and
is constantly kept busy will have no time and no care for morbid thoughts.
And the mind that is constantly fed on healthy and nourishing food will turn
away from poison, however daintily served.
All this, it will be perceived, can be done with little
introspection or self-analysis. It is based on the wisest of all systems: that
nature works best if she is not too closely watched. A person who is always
anxious about his health will never be healthy. Nature knows her own laws, and
it is not good to interfere too much, even for the sake of putting them right.
It is not an unknown experience that torturing scruples may take the place of
mental laxity and a ceaseless introspection, which is the enemy of all
freshness and spontaneity. We must take
heed so that, in the efforts to overcome one evil, we do not fall into a worse
one. We have to change the habit of the mind without giving it any undue shock,
to keep it well in hand without seeming to watch it, to bring it under control
without enslaving it and while seeming to leave it in perfect liberty. And to
do this we need to have some confidence in its power to rectify itself if it is
healthily fed and duly exercised.
By Fr. Basil W. Maturin (1847–1915) who was an
Anglican priest who became a Catholic priest at age 51. Both before and after
his conversion, he was famous for his preaching and psychological insight: he
had a profound gift for guiding souls. In 1915 he was on board the Lusitania
when a German U-boat sank the ship; he drowned after helping numerous other
passengers to safety.
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