Rule, Penitential & Letters 26

On the fervour of serving God. I. In the Church of God, my brethren, we hold the highest place by the mercy of God: we ought with all earnestness to take care that what we once purposed we may hold with diligent intent, and that what we outwardly promise we may exhibit through the zeal of good work. In which matter it is necessary that, having removed foolish and inept thoughts from our hearts, we enter upon the way of God according to the rule of the life of perfection, and, walking in those things which are before, forgetting the things behind, that is, the temporal, stretch ourselves out with the Apostle (Phil. 3:13), saying to our Creator: Draw us after you; we will run together in the odour of your ointments (Cant. 1:3 [Vulg.]).

By ourselves indeed we cannot reach the way of truth, or make progress in it, and therefore let us seek prevenient grace, saying: Draw us after you, that so we may run to you: and fitly it is first said: Draw us after you, and then there follows, we will run; for unless divine grace goes before us, we are not able to begin a good work, and unless the same follows after, to accomplish it; whence it is said in that prayer: And may your grace, O Lord, go before us and follow us (Collect, 16th Sunday after Pentecost). And well does it agree, that it is said, we will run: for on the way of God we must not advance with slow step, but run with great exultation and haste. But the Apostle admonishes, saying: So run that you may obtain (1 Cor.

9:24). But he runs who proceeds to God with all his strength: he runs who is not wearied in good work, as the Prophet also says of Christ: He rejoiced as a giant to run the way (Ps. 18:6 [Vulg.]). Christ indeed ran the way of God, because he stood not in the way of sinners (Ps. 1:1), that is, he was delayed by no heaviness of sin. II. We must run indeed; but how must we run? Hear how. Let us run, I say, in the odour of your ointments. What are the ointments, in whose odour we run after Christ? The ointments are the examples of the saints who have gone before. Ointments are made of various flowers and spices mingled together.

Diverse spices are the diverse virtues of the saints, which, like fragrant aromatic herbs, are blended together through the virtue of charity, and are cleanly compounded for our use. Of such an ointment it is said: Dying flies spoil the sweetness of the ointment (Eccles. 10:1). The dying flies are vain thoughts rushing upon our heart, which assuredly we ought, through the zeal of prayer, to cast off as with a certain fan, lest they spoil for us also the sweetness of the ointment. For dying flies spoil the sweetness in the odour of the ointment, when vain thoughts destroy the delightfulness of the virtues and the rules of divine obedience which we have learned from the ancient fathers.

Let us therefore, most diligently gazing upon the examples of the saints who have gone before, hasten to enter into that rest (Heb. 4:11). Let us run and not fail in what we have begun, that we may be able to say with the Apostle: We have fought the good fight, we have finished the course, so that for the rest there is laid up for us a crown of justice, which Christ the just Judge will render to us in that day (2 Tim. 4:7-8), who is blessed above all things unto the ages of ages. Amen.