Mirror of the Honest Life and Eight Points of Spiritual Perfection

But it is said so that you may know where you ought to have the intention of your mind fixed; to this destination you should always recall the intuition of your soul. The mind rejoices in what it can obtain and grieves and sighs when it finds itself distracted, as often as it perceives itself separated from that intuition. If you wish to object with a complaining voice, saying that you cannot remain in the same state for long, you must know that the divine power can do more than a man can think, and that the frequency of an act is accustomed to generate a habit similar to itself. Whence it often happens that that which a man perhaps bound himself to in the beginning with a certain violence and difficulty, he will afterwards perform easily and at length with great delight, provided he does not desist from what he has begun.

Hear, my son, the discipline of your father. Attend diligently to those words of mine and write them in your heart as if in a book. Do not emulate the multitude of those who have already turned back after the desires of their own hearts, in whom devotion has grown tepid, charity has cooled, and humility and obedience have also been prostrated; who desire to please men, seek honors, serve their bellies, and who, beyond measure, love gifts and follow rewards; who receive in this world that which they seek as the wages of their work, and will remain empty in the future. But attend to those egregious flowers, the most holy fathers, who burned with an incomparable zeal for holiness, and hasten to take up their purpose with similar zeal and conversation, just as it is already proposed to you. Therefore, whether you eat, or drink, or do anything else, let this voice of a pious father always resound in your ears, admonishing and saying: "My son, return to your heart, by abstracting yourself from all things as much as possible, and keep the eye of your mind always in purity and tranquility. By preserving your intellect from the forms of base things, absolve the affection of your will from the cares of earthly things, always clinging with fervent love to the Highest Good. Keep your memory also lifted up continually through the contemplation of divine things by tending to things above, so that your whole soul, with all its powers and strengths, [is directed] into God."