Holy sobriety humbly admits human limitations

Holy sobriety is closely linked to humility and to the Christian principle of abiding by the plain truth. The root of all “mystical” illusionism lies in pride. The mystical man, who contemns ordinary reason and common sense, is reluctant to admit his bondage to terrestrial shackles, his frailty and fallibility. He prefers not to be subject to the universal laws of fallen nature. At least he feels his task is to grapple with problems of a unique character, and an exceptional brand of difficulties. Holy sobriety, on the contrary, implies a humble admission of the fact that we, too, must pay our tribute to universal human weakness.

The sober man is free from the obsession that he must needs be something unique and extraordinary, and is free from all narrowing crampedness. He takes account of reality as it is—of the whole of reality, to be sure, not (as does the self-styled realist) of its crude and base aspects only. He is aware that by himself he amounts to nothing but that he may say with St. Paul, “I can do ail things in Him who strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13). He knows that God can and will regenerate him if he cooperates. He knows that Christ has redeemed him and communicated His holy life to him.

The “natural idealist” is blind to human weakness

His spiritual impetus, therefore, is entirely different from that of the natural idealist. The idealist inclines to overrate the power of the human spirit as such; he believes himself able to rise above his human weakness by purely natural means: that is to say, by sheer moral effort. He is prone, also, to overlook man’s bondage to earthly conditions in general; to interpret the frailty inherent in man’s constitution as a merely accidental shortcoming.

Thus, his lofty mood involves a certain divorce from reality; his bold perspectives are never free from a trait of anemic thinness and of reckless illusionism. He would storm the skies by flight, like Icarus—instead of humbly ascending step by step the narrow, steep, and laborious path that leads to eternity. His attitude has something forced and high-strung about it. His enterprise is doomed to failure, for it rests on a gigantic illusion concerning human nature, whose dismal abysses he hardly even suspects. He fails, in a word, owing to his ignorance of man’s need of redemption.

The saint builds his hopes on confidence in God

Of a wholly different kind is the spiritual elan that characterizes the saint. Humbly aware of his own weakness, clearly conscious of his need of being redeemed, in an unrestrained avowal of man’s frailty and enchainment to earth, he looks up to God and prays: “God, come to my assistance.” He would not, then, start building the tower without knowing the foundations.