Learning the Way from Those Who Walked It

So if we truly want to reach the crown of the virtues, we ought to listen to those teachers and guides who do not dream in pompous speeches but have learned by deed and experience. They are able to teach us in turn, to direct us as well, and to show us the road by which we may reach it by a most sure path; and they also testify that they themselves reached it by faith rather than by any merit of their efforts. [a]

Moreover, the purity of heart they have gained has taught them this above all: to recognize more and more that they are weighed down with sin. For their heartfelt sorrow for their faults grows day by day as their purity of soul advances, and they sigh continually from the bottom of their hearts, because they see that they cannot possibly avoid the stains and blemishes of the faults ingrained in them through the countless idle trifles of their thoughts. That is why they declared that they looked for the reward of the life to come not from the merits of their works but from the mercy of the Lord. They took no credit to themselves for their great watchfulness of heart compared with others, since they ascribed it not to their own efforts but to God’s grace. They did not flatter themselves because of the carelessness of those who are cold and worse than themselves. Rather, they aimed at a lasting humility by fixing their gaze on those whom they knew to be truly free from sin and already enjoying eternal blessedness in the kingdom of heaven. By this consideration they avoided the downfall of pride, and at the same time they always saw both what they were aiming at and what they had to grieve over, knowing that they could not reach the purity of heart they longed for while weighed down by the burden of the flesh.