The Passions beneath Reason and Grace

My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.

The intellect sees.

The will consents.

The passions move.

Before a deliberate choice has fully formed, the soul may already feel attraction or repugnance, hope or fear, joy or sorrow, courage or anger. The heart quickens. The face changes. Memory supplies an image. The body prepares to approach, flee, resist, grieve, or rejoice.

These movements can assist virtue.

They can also become instruments of disorder.

The pilgrim must therefore learn neither to obey every feeling nor to fear the fact of feeling.

The passions are subjects of the interior kingdom.

They are not its king.

What the Passions Are

The passions are movements of the sensitive appetite arising from the apprehension of a sensible good or evil and ordinarily accompanied by bodily change.[^1]

The word passion here does not mean only violent emotion or sinful desire. It includes the ordinary movements by which a person is drawn toward what appears good or recoils from what appears harmful.

Saint Thomas distinguishes eleven principal passions.

In the concupiscible appetite are:

• love and hatred;
• desire and aversion;
• joy and sorrow.

In the irascible appetite, which faces goods difficult to obtain and evils difficult to overcome, are:

• hope and despair;
• fear and daring;
• anger.[^2]

This order is not a museum of technical words. It helps the soul name what is happening.

Am I drawn toward a perceived good?

Am I grieving a good believed lost?

Am I afraid of an approaching evil?

Am I angry because an injury appears to require resistance?

Am I despairing because the desired good seems impossible?

Confused feeling becomes easier to govern when it is named truthfully.

The Passions Are Created Goods

God did not create man as an intellect trapped inside an inconvenient body.

Body and soul form one human nature. Sensitive appetites belong to that nature. The capacity to delight in friendship, grieve at death, fear danger, desire food, recoil from cruelty, hope for deliverance, and become angry at injustice is not an accidental corruption added by the Creator.[^3]

Before the Fall, the passions were perfectly subject to reason. Original sin destroyed that harmony. The sensitive powers now move with a measure of independence, sometimes preceding judgment and sometimes resisting it.[^4]

The wound does not make the power itself evil.

Hunger is not gluttony.

Attraction is not impurity.

Fear is not cowardice.

Anger is not hatred.

Sorrow is not despair.

Pleasure is not consent to sin.

The moral question concerns object, measure, circumstance, and the response of reason and will.

Feeling Is Not a Verdict

A feeling reports that something has appeared attractive, threatening, painful, delightful, shameful, or difficult.

It does not by itself prove that the appearance is true.

Fear may reveal real danger. It may also arise from memory, fatigue, imagination, bodily illness, inexperience, or an exaggerated report.

Anger may reveal an injustice. It may also arise because pride has interpreted correction as an attack.

Sorrow may reveal a genuine loss. It may also cling to a preference that charity requires the soul to surrender.

Consolation may accompany grace. It may also accompany vanity, novelty, group excitement, or self-deception.

The intellect must examine the object.

The will must decide what response is lawful.

Intensity does not confer authority.

First Movements and Deliberate Consent

Many passionate movements arise before full deliberation. Such first movements are not imputed in the same way as acts knowingly entertained and deliberately chosen.[^5]

This distinction protects both the scrupulous and the presumptuous.

The scrupulous soul may feel anger flash and conclude that charity has already been destroyed. The presumptuous soul may cultivate anger for an hour and excuse it because the first movement was spontaneous.

The beginning may be involuntary.

The welcome may not be.

Ask:

Did I summon this movement?

When I recognized it, did I resist, redirect, restrain, or deliberately feed it?

Did I choose words or acts beneath its pressure?

Did I return to the injury for the pleasure of accusation?

Do not confess mere sensation as though it were full consent. Do not hide consent beneath the language of sensation.

Christ Possessed Perfect Human Affections

Our Lord assumed true human nature without sin. He hungered, thirsted, marveled, rejoiced, loved, wept, grieved, feared death according to the sensitive appetite, and showed holy anger. His Passion was not emotional numbness. It was the supreme manifestation of human powers perfectly ordered beneath divine charity.[^6]

At the tomb of St. Lazarus, Jesus wept.

In the Temple, zeal moved Him against profanation.

Over Jerusalem, He lamented.

In Gethsemane, He began to fear and to be heavy, while His human will remained perfectly obedient: “Not my will, but thine be done.”[^7]

This is the pattern.

Holiness does not require the heart to become stone.

It requires every movement to remain truthful, proportionate, and obedient.

The Sacred Heart does not save man by abolishing human affection. It heals affection and makes it sacrificial.

Love Is the Root of the Passions

Love is the first movement toward an apprehended good. Desire reaches toward the good not yet possessed. Joy rests in the good present. Hatred recoils from an opposed evil. Aversion withdraws from an evil approaching. Sorrow bears the evil present.[^8]

Therefore the government of passion begins with the government of love.

What do I treat as good?

What do I fear losing?

What loss makes me inconsolable?

What possession seems able to give rest?

Disordered passions often reveal disordered love. A man rages because reputation has become his treasure. He despairs because temporal success has become his imagined last end. He envies because another's good appears to diminish his own. He fears truth because comfort has become more precious than conversion.

Charity does not eliminate lesser loves. It orders them beneath love of God.

Desire Must Learn Its Measure

Desire stretches the soul toward a good not yet possessed.

Without desire, no one would seek food, friendship, knowledge, justice, prayer, virtue, or heaven. Yet desire becomes tyrannical when a finite good is demanded without measure or treated as necessary for beatitude.[^9]

The undisciplined soul says:

I must have this pleasure.

I must receive this answer.

I must be understood.

I must know what happens next.

I must escape this burden.

Mortification teaches desire to speak more truthfully:

This may be good, but God is the supreme Good.

This may be permitted, but it is not always expedient.

This may be wanted, but it is not owed.

This may be delayed, surrendered, or received with gratitude.

Desire governed by charity becomes capable of longing for holiness.

Fear Must Serve Prudence

Fear concerns an approaching evil difficult to avoid.[^10]

Some fears are natural and protective. Fear of fire keeps a child from the flame. Fear of sin helps the soul avoid occasions. Fear of judgment can begin the return to God. Reverential fear remains even in charity because the soul dreads offending the One it loves.[^11]

Other fears become disordered.

Human respect fears ridicule more than sin.

Cowardice magnifies temporal loss until duty appears impossible.

Anxiety rehearses imagined futures as though worry could become providence.

Fear should be heard, examined, and assigned its proper place.

What evil is feared?

How probable is it?

What duty remains even if it occurs?

What prudent preparation is possible?

What must be entrusted to God?

Courage does not require the disappearance of fear. It commands action according to reason despite fear.

Anger Must Become Just Zeal

Anger arises in the presence of an injury under the aspect of something to be resisted or set right. Because injustice should be opposed, anger can assist virtue. Because self-love easily misjudges injury and measure, anger is especially dangerous.[^12]

Holy anger seeks the restoration of order.

Sinful anger seeks the satisfaction of self.

Holy anger remains governed by truth, justice, charity, rightful competence, and proportion.

Sinful anger exaggerates, imputes motives, delights in humiliation, refuses peace, and turns correction into punishment of an enemy.

Before acting under anger, ask:

Is the injury real?

Is it mine to correct?

What good am I seeking?

Would I say this if no one applauded?

Am I willing that the offender repent and be saved?

Hatred of heresy is necessary because heresy poisons faith and endangers souls. It must not become permission to hate the deceived soul or to indulge cruelty. Salesian zeal joins doctrinal hatred of error to apostolic hunger for conversion.[^13]

Sorrow Can Purify or Consume

Sorrow bears the presence of an evil or the loss of a loved good.

Some sorrow is holy.

Blessed are they that mourn.

Contrition grieves sin because God has been offended.

Compassion grieves another's suffering.

The Church mourns sacrilege, apostasy, lost souls, and the apparent triumph of false shepherds.

Our Lady's sorrows were not defects in faith. They were the suffering of immaculate love united to the Cross.[^14]

But sorrow can become disordered when it refuses consolation, feeds resentment, abandons duty, or treats a created loss as the loss of God.

Do not command the sorrowing soul simply to stop feeling. Help it tell the truth, pray, sleep, eat, fulfill the next duty, receive legitimate comfort, and place the loss inside the Passion of Christ.

Tears can become prayer.

They must not become a throne.

Joy Must Rest in the True Good

Joy is repose in a good possessed.

Catholic life is not a cult of gloom. The liturgy rejoices. The saints feast. Families laugh. The soul delights in truth, friendship, beauty, forgiveness, answered prayer, work completed, and the hope of heaven.[^15]

Yet joy must be judged by its object.

There is laughter that follows cruelty.

There is excitement produced by novelty.

There is relief when conscience has been silenced rather than healed.

There is religious enthusiasm that mistakes emotional union for unity of faith.

True spiritual joy can coexist with tears, persecution, obscurity, and penance because its deepest object is God.

The martyrs sang without pretending that fire did not burn.

Hope and Despair

Hope in the sensitive appetite concerns a difficult but attainable good. The theological virtue of hope rests upon God, relying upon His omnipotence and mercy for eternal life and the means necessary to reach it.[^16]

Natural hope can fail without destroying theological hope. A plan may collapse. Health may not return. A human institution may not be restored in one's lifetime.

The soul may say, “I no longer expect this temporal outcome,” while still saying, “God remains faithful, grace remains possible, and heaven remains the end.”

Despair concerning salvation is a grave sin because it judges divine mercy insufficient or forgiveness impossible. Presumption commits the opposite disorder by expecting salvation without conversion and perseverance.[^17]

The remedy is not optimism.

It is supernatural hope joined to repentance.

Temperament Is Not Destiny

Persons differ in bodily constitution, speed of reaction, sensitivity, energy, sociability, and endurance. One becomes angry quickly and recovers quickly. Another rarely shows anger but preserves an injury. One feels sorrow intensely. Another hides fear beneath activity.

These differences can help self-knowledge. They cannot excuse sin or define vocation with mechanical certainty.

“This is simply my temperament” may describe a difficulty.

It does not canonize it.

Grace works in actual persons, not abstractions. The energetic must learn restraint. The hesitant must learn courage. The sensitive must learn stability. The impassive must learn compassion. Each temperament possesses possible strengths and characteristic temptations.[^18]

The Body Affects the Battle

Exhaustion can shorten patience. Hunger can intensify irritation. Illness can darken feeling. Stimulants can increase agitation. Isolation can magnify imagined threats. Disorder in sleep and work can make ordinary temptations appear overwhelming.

This does not reduce moral life to the body.

It does require humility.

Reasonable sleep, food, medicine, movement, silence, and human company may be part of governing the passions. A person should not excuse deliberate cruelty because he is tired. Neither should he ignore the bodily disorder that repeatedly places charity under unnecessary strain.[^19]

Stewardship strengthens spiritual combat.

Do Not Manufacture Religious Emotion

The soul may be tempted to measure prayer by feeling.

If tears come, prayer appears successful.

If sensible consolation disappears, God appears absent.

This is unsafe.

Consolation may be received gratefully, but it is not the substance of faith, hope, charity, or worship. Dry prayer offered faithfully may honor God more purely than an hour filled with sweetness.[^20]

False religion often manipulates feeling because emotion can be produced more quickly than conversion. Music, crowds, repetition, personality, novelty, and shared excitement can create an experience of unity without unity in truth.

The Catholic faith does not fear affection. It refuses to make affection the rule of doctrine.

A Salesian Government of the Heart

Saint Francis de Sales governs souls firmly without treating violence toward self as holiness. He warns against anxiety, discouragement, restless self-examination, and harsh resolutions that cannot endure. His gentleness is disciplined strength beneath charity.[^21]

When a passion rises:

1. recollect yourself before God;
2. name the movement without exaggeration;
3. examine its object;
4. distinguish first movement from consent;
5. refuse what is sinful;
6. choose the contrary virtue or next duty;
7. use brief prayer;
8. repair any harm promptly;
9. begin again peacefully.

Do not become angry at yourself for having felt anger.

Do not despair because fear returned.

Do not make sorrow the proof that grace has failed.

Peaceful repetition forms the heart.

The Passions beneath the Cross

Calvary does not display emotional sameness.

Our Lady stands in maternal compassion as the type of the Church, sharing the Passion without rebellion or collapse.

Saint John remains in faithful love as the type of the true priesthood, receiving the Mother and standing beside the Sacrifice.

Saint Mary Magdalene remains as the repentant sinner whose forgiven love refuses to flee.[^22]

Their affections are distinct, but all are ordered toward Christ.

This is the interior unity the pilgrim seeks.

Sorrow does not overthrow faith.

Love does not refuse sacrifice.

Fear does not command flight.

Repentance does not become despair.

The heart remains beneath the Cross because truth and charity govern it.

Practical Means of Government

The passions are educated through concrete order.[^23]

• Guard the senses from occasions that inflame impurity, envy, fear, or rage.
• Refuse unnecessary argument while agitated.
• Delay nonessential messages written under anger.
• Keep prescribed fasts and abstinences and prudent voluntary mortification.
• Establish stable sleep and work where duties permit.
• Use psalms, aspirations, the Rosary, and the Holy Name.
• Confess deliberate sins plainly.
• Receive correction without making sensation the judge of truth.
• Practice the contrary virtue in small acts.
• Seek prudent medical help where bodily or psychological illness materially affects functioning.
• Do not abandon prayer during dryness.
• Place every affection beneath the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart.

Government becomes easier before crisis. The soul that guards inputs, keeps duties, prays steadily, and practices restraint is not beginning from nothing when a storm arrives.

Further Formation without Repetition

This chapter establishes the general government of the passions. More particular treatments already exist elsewhere in the work:

• Adolescence and the Government of Awakening Passions
• When Anger Rises, Let Zeal Be Governed by Charity
• Feeling Is Not Charity
• Purity of Imagination and the Custody of the Interior Life
• The Battle of Thoughts, Memory, and Imagination
• Recollection against Dissipation
• Temptation, Repeated Small Compromises, and the Making of Captives
• Perseverance in Prayer When God Seems Silent

Book II need not reproduce those complete treatments. Its task is to establish the governing architecture of the interior kingdom and send the pilgrim onward for focused formation.

A Rule for the Passions

1. Name the movement. Confusion loses power when described truthfully.
2. Judge the object. Feeling does not determine reality.
3. Distinguish movement from consent. Avoid both scruple and excuse.
4. Refuse sinful nourishment. Do not rehearse images, injuries, or fantasies for pleasure.
5. Choose the contrary virtue. Let action educate affection.
6. Respect bodily limits. Fatigue and illness require stewardship, not moral surrender.
7. Accept consolation gratefully. Never make it the measure of faithfulness.
8. Pray through dryness. Love is proved by fidelity.
9. Practice Salesian gentleness. Govern firmly without anxious violence.
10. Remain beneath the Cross. Let every affection be ordered toward Christ.

For Meditation

• Do my feelings serve truth, charity, and duty—or do I let their intensity decide what is true, good, and required?
• Which passion most often seizes judgment before I examine its object?
• Do I mistake emotional intensity for certainty?
• Do I accuse myself of first movements to which I did not consent?
• Which involuntary movement do I later choose to feed?
• What created good have I begun to treat as necessary for happiness?
• Does fear serve prudence or excuse disobedience?
• Does anger seek justice and conversion, or humiliation and revenge?
• Do I permit holy sorrow to become inactivity or despair?
• Can I receive lawful joy without grasping or dissipation?
• What bodily disorder regularly weakens my government of the heart?
• Do I measure prayer by consolation?
• Which affection must be placed deliberately beneath the Cross today?

Rule for the Pilgrim

• Neither worship the passions nor despise them. Receive them as powers of human nature wounded by sin and capable of serving holiness. Let reason judge their object, let the will govern consent, let grace heal and elevate the soul, and train every affection to move beneath the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
• Do not obey a feeling merely because it is strong.
• Do not condemn a feeling merely because it is painful.
• Name it.
• Judge its object.
• Govern consent.
• Use the body prudently.
• Mortify appetite without hatred of the body.
• Let fear become vigilance, anger become zeal, sorrow become compunction, desire become hunger for God, and joy become thanksgiving.
• Learn gentleness from Saint Francis de Sales.
• Learn compassion from Our Lady.
• Learn fidelity from Saint John.
• Learn repentant love from Saint Mary Magdalene.
• Place the whole heart beneath the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

A companion for this lesson

Continue Your Formation

Read the chapters on resisting the passions and renewing the combat after a fall in The Spiritual Combat by Fr. Lorenzo Scupoli, C.R., to govern emotion without denying the order God placed in the soul.

View the Pilgrim's Shelf →