The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much farther than these surface matters of a physical nature that have been cited.  It applies in particular to the disposition of time and the ruling of daily actions.  The introduction of a definite order into the day actually seems to increase the time at one’s disposal.  I know, I can hear you saying:  “If you were the head of a family, and had children to look after, you would not talk that way.  You would know something of the practical difficulties of life.”  But indeed I am quite familiar with the situation.  And if I were so situated I am certain that I should feel all the more need of order.  Families are disorderly because we let them be; because we do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly.  A school or a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it were permitted to be.  Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order if you will let it.  That is precisely the reason for the insistence on the ascetic principle—­this tendency of life to get out of order; that is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the whole Catholic insistence on discipline.  Time can be controlled; and, notwithstanding American experience, children can be controlled; and control means the rescuing of the life from disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a level of order and sanity and possible sanctity.

We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of life except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our life an element of foresight.  An undisciplined and untried strength is an unknown quantity.  The man who expects to meet temptation when it occurs without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure.  I do not believe that there is any other so great a source of spiritual weakness and disaster as the going out to meet life without preceding discipline, thus subjecting the powers of our nature to trials for which we have not fitted them.  Self-control, self-discipline, ascetic practice, are indispensible to a successful Christian life.

     O STAR of starres, with thy streames clear,
     Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide,
     O lusty Living, most pleasant t’appear,
     Whose brighte beames the cloudes may not hide: 
     O Way of Life to them that go or ride,
     Haven from tempest, surest up t’arrive,
     O me have mercy for thy Joyes five.

* * * * *

     O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel
     With joy thee gret that may not be numb’red,
     Or half the bliss who coulde write or tell,
     When th’ Holy Ghost to thee was obumbred,
     Wherethrough the fiendes were utterly encombred? 
     O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth,
     That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.

John Lydgate of Bury, XV Cent.  From Chaucerian and Other Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat, 1894.

PART TWO