A TREATISE OF DISCRETION How the affection should not place
reliance chiefly on penance, but rather on virtues; and how
discretion receives life from humility, and renders to each man his
due. "These are the holy and sweet works which I seek from My
servants; these are the proved intrinsic virtues of the soul, as I
have told you. They not only consist of those virtues which are
done by means of the body, that is, with an exterior act, or with
diverse and varied penances, which are the instruments of virtue;
works of penance performed alone without the above-mentioned
virtues would please Me little; often, indeed, if the soul perform
not her penance with discretion, that is to say, if her affection
be placed principally in the penance she has undertaken, her
perfection will be impeded; she should rather place reliance on the
affection of love, with a holy hatred of herself, accompanied by
true humility and perfect patience, together with the other
intrinsic virtues of the soul, with hunger and desire for My honor
and the salvation of souls. For these virtues demonstrate that the
will is dead, and continually slays its own sensuality through the
affection of love of virtue. With this discretion, then, should the
soul perform her penance, that is, she should place her principal
affection in virtue rather than in penance. Penance should be but
the means to increase virtue according to the needs of the
individual, and according to what the soul sees she can do in the
measure of her own possibility. Otherwise, if the soul place her
foundation on penance she will contaminate her own perfection,
because her penance will not be done in the light of knowledge of
herself and of My goodness, with discretion, and she will not seize
hold of My truth; neither loving that which I love, nor hating that
which I hate. This virtue of discretion is no other than a true
knowledge which the soul should have of herself and of Me, and in
this knowledge is virtue rooted. Discretion is the only child of
self-knowledge, and, wedding with charity, has indeed many other
descendants, as a tree which has many branches; but that which
gives life to the tree, to its branches, and its root, is the
ground of humility, in which it is planted, which humility is the
foster-mother and nurse of charity, by whose means this tree
remains in the perpetual calm of discretion. Because otherwise the
tree would not produce the virtue of discretion, or any fruit of
life, if it were not planted in the virtue of humility, because
humility proceeds from self-knowledge. And I have already said to
you, that the root of discretion is a real knowledge of self and of
My goodness, by which the soul immediately, and discreetly, renders
to each one his due. Chiefly to Me in rendering praise and glory to
My Name, and in referring to Me the graces and the gifts which she
sees and knows she has received from Me; and rendering to herself
that which she sees herself to have merited, knowing that she does
not even exist of herself, and attributing to Me, and not to
herself, her being, which she knows she has received by grace from
Me, and every other grace which she has received besides.
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