Author Description

"The translation of this little seventeenth century work might at first sight seem uncalled for today, when the need for adapting the religious life to modern requirements is being stressed so much. Yet, whenever there is a question of adaptation, it is always all the more necessary to insist on those essential elements without which the whole structure of the religious life would be ruined: and it is with these essentials that our author is concerned. It is this which imparts a timelessness to his writings, in spite of the fact that his style is so very much of the period in which he lived." And this is even more true in the twenty-first century. We must stay faithful to the timeless essentials of religious life! Father Masson says: "Jesus Christ says that He is the vine and we are the branches, and that His Father is the husbandman. This is truth infallible; and therefore we should consider ourselves as offshoots of this vine and united to it, living only by its root and the unceasing inflow of its life, on which our spiritual life entirely depends. Of it we should expect everything; nothing of ourselves. We should rest on the vitality of its root, which for its part will not fail us: nor will its inflow cease for a moment to make us grow, as long as a mischievous freedom does not deliberately separate us from the principle of our life, like a branch tearing itself apart from its vine." Dom Masson then asks: "What then is the Religt'o1ts State? It is a bulwark against the dangers of the world." And later on he adds: "It is the school of self-renouncement, where we learn to deny ourselves, to destroy our passions, to uproot our evil habits. Self-renunciation is the first lesson of our great Master: " If any man has a mind to come My way, let him renounce self."" This short little work is loaded with excellent advice for anyone who is contemplating the religious life or who wants to be a good religious.