The good housewife: watching over the soul's powers

Consideravit domum etc. The good housewife looks well to the ways of her house, not eating the bread of idleness. This house stands for the soul as a whole, and the ways of the house are the powers of the soul. An ancient philosopher says the soul is made in between one and two. The one is eternity, always alone and without change. The two is time, changing and given to multiplying. He means to say that the soul in her higher powers touches eternity, that is, God, while her lower powers, being in contact with time, make her subject to change and pull her toward bodily things, which drag her down. If the soul could know God as well as the angels do, she would never have come into a body. If she could know God without the world, the world would not have been made for her sake. The world was made for her so as to train and strengthen the eye of the soul to bear divine light. The sunlight falling on the earth is dimmed first in the air and spread out over various things, for no human eye can bear the sun directly. In the same way the light of God is too strong and too bright for the soul's eye to bear, unless it is settled and shaped by matter and reflection, which accustom it to living in the divine light.

In her higher powers the soul is in contact with God, and so she takes after God. God takes after himself. He has gotten his form from himself and from no one else. His form is that of perfect self-knowledge, pure light. When the soul comes into contact with him in real understanding, she is like him in form. Suppose you press a seal into green wax or red, or into cloth, just enough for the seal, the seal being stamped right into the wax so that none of the wax is left unsealed, then it is one and the same with the seal. In just the same way the soul is wholly united with God in image and form when she is in contact with him through actual knowledge. St Augustine says the soul is of a nobler build than any other creature, and that is why no mortal thing, which will perish at the end, can have dealings with the soul or affect it except from a distance and through messengers. Such are the eyes and ears and the five senses: these are the soul's ways out into the world, and by these same ways the world gets back into the soul.

According to one master, the powers of the soul flow back into the soul loaded with fruits: they never go out without bringing something back. So be careful that your eyes do not bring back anything to harm your soul. My firm belief is that everything a good man sees must make him better. On seeing evil he thanks God for keeping him from it and prays God to turn him toward what is good. On seeing good, his great desire will be to have it made perfect in himself.

This seeing serves two purposes: it stops what is harmful and makes us set right our faults at once. I have often said that great workers, great fasters, great keepers of vigils, if they fail to mend their wicked ways, which is where real progress lies, are only fooling themselves and are a laughingstock to the devil. There was once a man who grew rich from an arrow. He lived next to a farmer who sowed seed. Whenever the arrow was used, a breeze from any direction would catch it by the head and turn its tail into the wind. So this man went to the farmer and said, 'What will you give me to tell you which way the wind blows?' In this way he sold his arrow and grew rich from it. In the same way we could grow truly rich in virtue by finding out our weaknesses, and then, with regret, setting ourselves to cure them.

This is what St Elizabeth did with great care. She looked well to the ways of her house. She had no fear of the winter, for her household was clothed twice over. She prepared against likely troubles. She worked hard to make up for any lack. So she did not eat the bread of idleness. All the while she kept her higher powers turned toward God. The higher powers of the soul are three. The first is intuition, the second is irascibilis, that is, the power of attack, the third is will. When the soul takes in knowledge of the real truth into the single power by which we grasp God, she is a light. And God too is light, and when the divine light floods the soul, the soul merges into God just as one light merges into another. Then she is called the light of faith, which is a divine virtue. And wherever the soul cannot go with her senses and powers, faith carries her there.

The second power is the attacking force, whose particular task is to press forward. As the eye exists to see colour and shape, and the ear to hear pleasant voices and sounds, so the soul with this power is always moving forward. If she turns aside and wavers from God, that is sin. She cannot bear that anything should be above her. I believe she cannot even bear God being above her, unless he is within her and she has as good as God himself, for she never rests otherwise. With this power God is grasped by the soul, as far as that is possible for a creature, and so it is called hope, which is also a divine virtue. Here the soul has such a clear view of God that she easily imagines God in his whole being has nothing held back from her. King Solomon says, 'Stolen waters are sweet.' And St Augustine tells us, 'The pears I stole were nicer than the ones my mother gave me, because they were forbidden and locked away.' In the same way, the grace the soul wins by her own special effort and wisdom is far sweeter to her than the grace that belongs to everyone in common.

The third power is the inner will, always turned face to face toward God in godly willing, drawing God's love from him into itself. God is drawn by the soul and the soul is drawn by God, and this is divine love, another divine virtue. Divine blessedness lies in three things: in knowledge, and in freedom from bondage to creatures, that is, in having had enough of, and being finished with, self and all creatures. Further, the soul's perfection lies in true knowing, in conceiving, in conceiving God, and in the union of perfect love. Do we want to know what sin means? Falling away from blessedness and virtue, that is the whole cause of sin. Every soul must look to her ways. She had no fear of the winter, with her household clothed twice over, as the scriptures tell of her. She was clothed with strength to stand against imperfection and adorned with truth. To all appearances this woman was rich and had the world at her feet, but in secret she knelt at the shrine of true poverty. And when her outward comforts failed, she fled to him to whom all creatures flee, setting aside both the world and herself. In this way she rose above herself, despising the scorn of others and not minding it, for all she cared about was tending the sick and cleaning the foul, which she managed through her pure heart. In the same way let us look to the ways of our house and not eat the bread of idleness. So help us God. Amen.