Page title
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Preface
    Archive

The Right Use of Pleasure
Fr. Edward Leen, C.S.Sp.

“We are tempted to pursue not what we ought, but what holds out promise of pleasure. Disorder begins when seeking only mere gratification we renounce everything which does not promise it, and make everything we do minister it to us. We are meant by God to make use of delectation, to make it serve our purposes, to find in it an aid to surmounting the tediousness of life; we misuse it when we make it an end, not a means. All immortification may be reduced to this – the pursuit of satisfaction of mind or body as an end. As St. Paul says: ‘Christ did not please Himself.’ He did not seek His own satisfaction in what He did. He acted not under the stimulus of pleasure but of Divine charity.

“Were our nature not so corrupted by sin, it would be sufficient for us to practice temperance and use pleasure in moderation. But so strong is the attraction which pleasure exercises over us, so powerful is its appeal, such a response does it find in us to its allurements, that the taste of it is dangerous for us. It is difficult to yield to its influence without running the risk of exceeding in the measure of it we accord to ourselves. To school ourselves to the right use of delectation, we must begin by starving our craving for it: we must be more than temperate in its regard, we must be mortified – insensible, as it were, and dead to its call. In the restraint we have to exercise over the senses, over the imagination and over the will, Religion demands more of us than reason. It is not sufficient to prescribe the limits of reason to the bodily appetites, we must, in order to make the body obedient to reason and faith, chastise it and reduce it to subjection by depriving it of many gratifications legitimate enough in themselves and in the abstract. The more that is conceded to the body the less it is satisfied and the greater are its demands. The body will not be a good servant until it has been consistently deprived of what it has strictly a right to. Our Lord has set us the example for this rigorous treatment of ourselves. We shall not have order and peace in our powers, contentment in our mind, and docility to the inspiration of grace in our soul, unless we reduce to practice the lesson given us by Him. This involves the patient, constant, and unremitting mortification of all our tendencies – resolutely denying ourselves in many things – ‘always,’ as St. Paul advises us, ‘bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies.’”
 Or 
Wednesday, March 10, 2010


Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Right Use of Pleasure
Fr. Edward Leen, C.S.Sp.

“We are tempted to pursue not what we ought, but what holds out promise of pleasure. Disorder begins when seeking only mere gratification we renounce everything which does not promise it, and make everything we do minister it to us. We are meant by God to make use of delectation, to make it serve our purposes, to find in it an aid to surmounting the tediousness of life; we misuse it when we make it an end, not a means. All immortification may be reduced to this – the pursuit of satisfaction of mind or body as an end. As St. Paul says: ‘Christ did not please Himself.’ He did not seek His own satisfaction in what He did. He acted not under the stimulus of pleasure but of Divine charity.

“Were our nature not so corrupted by sin, it would be sufficient for us to practice temperance and use pleasure in moderation. But so strong is the attraction which pleasure exercises over us, so powerful is its appeal, such a response does it find in us to its allurements, that the taste of it is dangerous for us. It is difficult to yield to its influence without running the risk of exceeding in the measure of it we accord to ourselves. To school ourselves to the right use of delectation, we must begin by starving our craving for it: we must be more than temperate in its regard, we must be mortified – insensible, as it were, and dead to its call. In the restraint we have to exercise over the senses, over the imagination and over the will, Religion demands more of us than reason. It is not sufficient to prescribe the limits of reason to the bodily appetites, we must, in order to make the body obedient to reason and faith, chastise it and reduce it to subjection by depriving it of many gratifications legitimate enough in themselves and in the abstract. The more that is conceded to the body the less it is satisfied and the greater are its demands. The body will not be a good servant until it has been consistently deprived of what it has strictly a right to. Our Lord has set us the example for this rigorous treatment of ourselves. We shall not have order and peace in our powers, contentment in our mind, and docility to the inspiration of grace in our soul, unless we reduce to practice the lesson given us by Him. This involves the patient, constant, and unremitting mortification of all our tendencies – resolutely denying ourselves in many things – ‘always,’ as St. Paul advises us, ‘bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies.’”