The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved - St. Leonard of Port Lucie sermon

[BobCatholic]

This sermon of St. Leonard of Port Lucie is titled The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved.

https://www.olrl.org/snt_docs/fewness.shtml

Reading this, he says that 99.999% of people go to hell. Almost no hope. This sermon generates despair in me.

Please. Refute this sermon.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Sure. He's wrong. Q.E.D.

Why did you read this in the first place?

[BobCatholic]

Because it was of interest to me.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

God does not desire your perfection,
but your attempts to attain perfection

Faith is the basis of life, and charity is its crown; but hope is its greatest need. Most of the difficulties of life come because man is so prone to lose heart. His distractions in prayer suggest to him that he was not meant for such high acts. His weekly tale of sins at Confession seems to imply by its almost identical repetition that it is useless for him to continue his efforts at "a firm purpose of amendment." His faltering attempts at perfection disconcert him from any very persistent or long-continued service. His cold and listless Communions take away his feelings of devotion and lead him to fancy that it would be better not to go at all than to go with so little seeming effect. This joylessness in the sacraments does far more harm than that, for it makes him close the very gates through which alone help can come to him.

The whole of life tends to depress a man who is at all conscious capacities, his responsibilities, and his failures. Is he, then, a great sinner! Not at all. Has he lost his faith and love? Most certainly not. What, then, is wanting to him? Hope.

He has given up hope; he is disheartened; he is too discouraged to go on. He is very human; oh yes, but he is very foolish also, for when hope has gone, all is over. Failure counts for nothing. Defeat, disappointment—these matter nothing at all, so long as hope sits patiently, stirring the embers, watching and tending the fire, coaxing the flame, never despairing and never leaving the wind to work its will. That the clouds should come up over the sky, or that darknes should encircle the earth, brings no real terrors, for we are sure that the dawn will come out again and that the sun will break through with its golden glory.

Now, hope frankly starts by acknowledging the certainty of trouble. It implies that life is hard, implies indeed that a perfect life (that is, a life without fault) is impossible for man. That is to say, the first thing for me to do is to realize quite simply and quite definitely that I shall never overcome one single fault, at least in the sense that I shall never be able to find myself free from temptations. I may improve; please GodI shal! I may lessen the number of my sins by narrowing the occasions of them. I may so far clear myself that the old fault has ceased even to be repeated; for the goodness of God may achieve all these things.

But at any rate, I must never expect that this will be done for me so completely as to prevent forever any struggle in my life. The sins that troubled my boyhood will haunt my steps until my gray hairs.

As a child, I knew I was naughty and thought that grown-up people did nothing wrong Now that I am grown up, I look upon children as the innocent followers of Christ. But now the certainty that I must face is that always I shall be a wrongdoer. I must reconcile myself quite determinedly to this prospect, not buoy myself up with false hopes of a time when I can rest securely upon my oars. Life is always a pull upstream. The terrible thing is when people expect to find things ultimately easy and discover them to be continuously very hard. The shock is too much for them; they lose heart and can never recover.

This, then, is the first point I must get into my mind, and it should need little to make it sure. I am a failure from the beginning, and shall be a failure to the end; at the best, says our Master, an "unprofitable servant.” I can never be perfect.

The next point, when that first has been fairly faced, is more reassuring. I can never be perfect; nor does God want me to be perfect. He does not expect perfection from me, for the very simple reason that He knows He would not get it. He knows man, for He made man; He knows exactly the limits of his power. Only the Heavenly Father is or can be perfect. It is foolish of me, then, to be discouraged because my prayers are full of distractions, my Communions cold, and my confessions always the same. God does not ask from me perfection in any of these ways.

Rather, it would fill me with wonder if, for any length of time, these things went wholly well. I would at once grow suspicious. God does not ask from me perfect prayers or perfect sacraments. He does not ask me even to overcome my temper or my want of charity or my untruthfulness. He does not ask these things, for He knows He could not get them from me.

What, then, does He ask? That I should try to overcome them, only that and nothing more—that I should try, day after day, despite failure, repeated and certain, to overcome these obstacles to my union with Him. For goodness consists not in the love of God, but in the attempts to love Him. If, then, I fail, let me not be discouraged, but, realizing my own weakness and confident only in God's strength, let me go on striving my best, for my business in life is really little else than to continue to fail without losing courage or lessening effort. The phrase of St. Catherine should ring always in my ear: "God doth not ask a perfect work, but infinite desire."

Bede Jarrett, “God does not desire your perfection”

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Because it was of interest to me.

"I drank the poison because it tasted good."

This stuff is spiritual poison to you. Stay away from it.

Recognize that these persistent thoughts are not reflective of reality. Say to yourself, "That's just my brain doing things; I don't need to pay attention to it." Then turn your attention to something else. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[BobCatholic]

How would the writings of a saint be spiritual poison?

[Doom]

How would the writings of a saint be spiritual poison?

Did you feel good after reading it? Does it really seem plausible that the mere fact that someone is a saint automatically means that every single thing that person ever wrote is spiritually beneficial for everyone? If you know are inclined to despair then you should avoid reading books that will likely encourage that, regardless of who. Wrote it.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

How would the writings of a saint be spiritual poison?

Did it build up the theological virtues of faith, hope (especially) and charity in you? It might have had such an effect on people in St. Leonard's day, but this sort of thing has the exact opposite effect on you, damaging the gift of hope. For you, if not for them, it is spiritual poison.

[BobCatholic]

Did you feel good after reading it?

Emotions are not a good test of any writing. Sounds a lot like the FIF (funny internal feeling) that Mormons tell people about reading the Book of Mormon.

Does it really seem plausible that the mere fact that someone is a saint automatically means that every single thing that person ever wrote is spiritually beneficial for everyone?

I'm thinking that someone who is a saint is not going to lie.
I'm thinking they're telling the truth.

If you know are inclined to despair then you should avoid reading books that will likely encourage that, regardless of who. Wrote it.

I'm not inclined to despair. I'm inclined to listen to the truth. If St. Leonard lied about something in the sermon, please tell me what the lie is.

The despair could be as a result of me being so horrifically imperfect that I cannot handle the truth. (Cue Colonel Jessup)

And if I can't handle the truth, I'm doomed since I can't handle Jesus who is THE Truth.

[BobCatholic]

Did it build up the theological virtues of faith, hope (especially) and charity in you? It might have had such an effect on people in St. Leonard's day, but this sort of thing has the exact opposite effect on you, damaging the gift of hope. For you, if not for them, it is spiritual poison.

This is a good point.

Why would a saint write something that would not build up the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity? I doubt that was his intent.

[gherkin]

If St. Leonard lied about something in the sermon, please tell me what the lie is.

It has not been clearly revealed what the number of the saved will be. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, for example, shows IIRC that most theologians believe that a good majority of Catholics will be saved. But there is room for debate about the point. Early monastic writers tended to be pretty dark on the view. I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say that St. Anselm thought that if you weren't a monk you had little chance for heaven. But that's a theological opinion, not a revealed truth, and many other great saints and doctors disagree with him. St. Leonard evidently had a view and preached on it. He wasn't lying, he was preaching what he believed to be the truth. But he's not infallible.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

The devil can quote Scripture; he can surely misuse St. Leonard.

If something is driving you to despair, then you are not encountering God in whatever it is. Period, end of story. That's Discernment of Spirits 101. God is not interested in driving you (or anyone) to despair.

Why, then, do you choose to go places where you know that you (maybe not someone else, but you) will not encounter God?

Here's what I suspect is happening, one way or the other. There's a part of each person's brain that is intended to alert us to dangerous situations so that we can take action. When that part is doing its job, it can be literally life-saving. I think of it as a dog that barks to alert us to a problem. But because of sin and because of various things we've encountered, that part of our brains is mis-wired in every single one of us. The dog barks when it shouldn't, or it barks too loudly in response to a relatively minor situation.

Fortunately, we can re-train the dog if we go about it right.

Recognize that the dog is barking when it shouldn't be. Every time you're tempted to despair, that's the dog barking when it shouldn't be.
Relabel the thought. Instead of thinking, "Wow! I should listen to this!", think, "Oh, the dog's barking about despair again." Or, even shorter, "There he goes again."
Revalue the thought. Instead of being REALLY IMPORTANT like the dog wants you to think, it's worthless.
Refocus your attention on something else. Breathing in slowly and breathing out slowly is a good choice. You can almost always do this, and it helps to negate the effect of all the adrenaline the dog dumped into your bloodstream.

You are never going to find peace of heart the way you're going about it. You might find it this way.

BTW, the above procedure works for persistent temptations too. There's a hurdle at the beginning because the dog will bark louder and louder because you're not PAYING ATTENTION to something that [it thinks] is REALLY IMPORTANT. Persist. Every time you listen to the dog, you reinforce it. Every time you manage not to listen, you decrease its power over you.

[BobCatholic]

It has not been clearly revealed what the number of the saved will be.

As a result I'm blindly stumbling around the dark wondering where is my room in the afterlife.

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, for example, shows IIRC that most theologians believe that a good majority of Catholics will be saved. But there is room for debate about the point.

The contemporary Church appears to be close to universalistic, so that doesn't give me comfort.

Early monastic writers tended to be pretty dark on the view. I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say that St. Anselm thought that if you weren't a monk you had little chance for heaven.

The Church's actions - based on her Canonizations - say the same thing. The overwhelming vast majority of canonized saints were monks, nuns, priests, deacons, bishops and Popes.

A teeny minority were actually spouses or parents - and of those, none got to heaven MERELY by fulfilling the responsibilities of their vocation in life and dying in a state of grace.

[BobCatholic]

The devil can quote Scripture; he can surely misuse St. Leonard.

I agree.

If something is driving you to despair, then you are not encountering God in whatever it is. Period, end of story. That's Discernment of Spirits 101. God is not interested in driving you (or anyone) to despair.

However, God apparently is not interested in talking to me and giving me encouragement.

So I'm basically on my own.

You are never going to find peace of heart the way you're going about it. You might find it this way.

Perhaps.

Unfortunately, that dog is the only voice I can hear. I can't hear the voice of anyone from Heaven.

I know I could be fooling myself - and I don't trust that dog.

But I also don't have a voice giving me comfort from Heaven. I'm not entitled to it so I can't even ask for it.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Of course you're not entitled. But at the Last Supper, Jesus gave His disciples a farewell gift of peace, as we recall at every Mass.

What, exactly, is it going to cost you to try things my way?

[gherkin]

It has not been clearly revealed what the number of the saved will be.

As a result I'm blindly stumbling around the dark wondering where is my room in the afterlife.

Well then stop it.

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, for example, shows IIRC that most theologians believe that a good majority of Catholics will be saved. But there is room for debate about the point.

The contemporary Church appears to be close to universalistic, so that doesn't give me comfort.

I think you need to look into who Fr. G-L was. He was one of the most profound critics of modernism and the new theology of the 20th century.

The Church's actions - based on her Canonizations - say the same thing. The overwhelming vast majority of canonized saints were monks, nuns, priests, deacons, bishops and Popes.

A teeny minority were actually spouses or parents - and of those, none got to heaven MERELY by fulfilling the responsibilities of their vocation in life and dying in a state of grace.

Canonizations are not relevant. They mark heroic virtue along with the presence of a cult.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Canonizations require the visible presence of sanctity and heroic virtue. A known ... I guess I have to say "flaw" of the canonization process is that it's not good at recognizing quiet heroic virtue. The process requires that the person be well-known for sanctity, and it just doesn't happen for most lay people who don't die young or in interesting ways.

BTW, this isn't just a problem for the laity; it took 1900 years for the Church to canonize someone for being a plain old parish priest, and that was St. John Vianney, who is absolutely remarkable.

At any rate, it doesn't require eminent sanctity or heroic virtue to get to Heaven, so the whole point is irrelevant anyhow.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I hesitated a bit to post that because what you really need to be thinking is:

Recognize: That's a pessimistic thought with no basis in reality.
Relabel: The dog is barking.
Revalue: It means nothing about my chances of going to Heaven.
Refocus: Go do something interesting.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I realize that you may question the first point, but it is true unless one of the following is true:

1) gherkin and I and others are deliberately lying to you; or
2) we are dupes of Modernism; or
3) you have a unique insight into the situation.

I submit that none of these is likely to be true.

[Gandalf the Grey]

However, God apparently is not interested in talking to me and giving me encouragement.

So I'm basically on my own.

If you're constantly and incessantly proclaiming to God about how you're such a crappy son, how do you expect to hear Him when He tries to give you encouragement?

Is it really that God is not interested in talking to you? Or is it really that you're not interested in hearing Him give you encouragement?

But I also don't have a voice giving me comfort from Heaven. I'm not entitled to it so I can't even ask for it.

You don't have to be "entitled"...God didn't do anything He did because we were entitled to it. We were enemies and He still fought and died for you and me.

He WANTS to encourage you now. You just have to let Him love you instead of building this giant wall around your heart with the excuse of you believing that you're not worthy of anything He wants to give you.