Painting by Gregory Frank Harris

by Fr. Edward Garesché, Catholic Book of Character and Success

What more interesting and excellent purpose can a man set before him than to build up for himself a fine and noble personality? It is an excellent and admirable human achievement.

One’s personality, one’s character, is himself; and the thought stirs the soul that you can remake yourself, perfect yourself, correct the evil within you, and fill out and develop the good within you, until you are a different person — finer, nobler, more excellently in accord with the ideals of human nature.

The building of character is a lifelong task. It requires the exercise of unremitting effort and weariless patience. It means rising up after falls, trying again after failures, never letting discouragement take hold of you. It means honest thought, careful observation of yourself and others, self-discipline, and courage.

Yet all these things are possible while you are living your ordinary life, and they will bring with them the reward of the effort you make.

Sculptors who work in marble have a stubborn substance to conquer. Yet, what an inward delight they feel when, after all the careful planning, the stern effort of creation, and the patient struggle for self-expression, they see before them an exquisite work of art, beautiful and immortal, destined to receive the praise of men for generation after generation.

Think of how Michelangelo felt when he rested his weary arms and gazed at the Pietà, one of the loveliest creations of human art. It had cost him immense pains, severe study, physical labor, and mental effort, but he had achieved it, and it was his.

Your efforts in character building are made with even more stubborn material perhaps, but far nobler: your will, your feelings, your intelligence, your habits, and your impulses, which must all be shaped, controlled, disciplined, and brought into harmony with an effort more careful and painstaking than is required to shape the gleaming marble with the sculptor’s chisel.

Day after day, hour after hour, whether you wish it or not, you are at work on your character. Not a single deliberate action of your whole life is without its effect upon that character. You are so made that whatever action you perform tends to create or increase a habit.

Yield to an evil impulse, and the evil habit grows stronger by just so much. Control that evil impulse, and in that very moment, you add just so much to the strength of your self-control.

Perform an act of kindness to anyone, and at the moment, you become just so much kinder. Yield to an act of injustice, and your will tends to lean just so much more toward injustice.

You are different today from when you began to live, and much of that difference may be expressed in terms of the habits you have formed. Moreover, the features of your character are changing from hour to hour. You are not even the person you were this morning. You are a little better or a little worse, in proportion as you have acted rightly or wrongly today.

 If your deeds today have been noble, it will be a little easier for you to be noble tomorrow. If your deeds today have been unworthy and base, you will have to struggle harder tomorrow to avoid baseness, and you will be a little readier to yield to temptation.

Many people nowadays have an ambition to build up a strong, symmetrical, athletic body, and there is only one way of doing this, and that is by systematic exercise. The same thing is true of your spirit, your mind, your intelligence, your memory, and your character.

The only means to build up a noble and upright character is exercise — that is to say, the performance, day after day, of worthy actions, from good motives. The only way to correct the bad habits within you is precisely by means of exercise.

As a person can strengthen his posture, round out his muscles, and add vigor to his whole constitution through skillfully chosen movements, so can you strengthen and harmonize your character by deliberately, day after day, going against your evil inclinations.

This discipline of the spirit is much nobler than the discipline of the body, because the finest, most athletic, healthful body will in a few years sink into dust. Nothing can preserve it in health and vigor for very long.

But the spirit is immortal, and the building up of a fine character is not for time only but for eternity. The work you do on your character reaches forward beyond this life to all the ages to come.

If, then, you begin to train your character, to make it a leading pursuit of your life to study yourself and deliberately to cut down on what is excessive in you, to develop what is lacking, and to follow your good impulses and curb and restrain the evil ones, you will be benefiting not yourself alone, but everyone who comes in contact with you.

Indeed, the result of this systematic and faithful training of your character will go far beyond your present influence and will bring help and strength to generations yet to come.

Friendship is the result of an analogous union of souls –each gives his best to the other. In practice, this giving of one’s best means sustained self-sacrifice. Friendship cannot endure without it.

St. Ignatius, speaking of friendship between God and the soul, gives these two simple signs of the love of friendship:

First, it shows itself by deeds rather than words.

Secondly, if one friend has good things, he wishes to share them with the other.

These are good norms for human friendship, too; they indicate the quality of self-giving that is the salt of all friendship.

Painting by Gregory Frank Harris

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Consoling Thoughts of Saint Francis de Sales Set

Souls who seek guidance on their journey will need look no further than the master of spiritual direction himself, St. Francis de Sales. Among his many works, the Doctor of the Church addressed the most difficult issues in a soul’s course: spiritual and physical trials, death of loved ones, and darkness, all covered in the Consoling Thoughts of St. Francis de Sales Set.

Volumes included in this set of four are:

• Consoling Thoughts on God
  • Consoling Thoughts on Trials of An Interior Life
    • Consoling Thoughts on Sickness and Death
      • Consoling Thoughts on Eternity

Readers of Consoling Thoughts will experience firsthand why St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) is known to history as the Gentle Saint. St. Francis was Bishop of Geneva and a tireless preacher, who yet made time to correspond with numerous souls who wrote him for his insight and guidance. His Consoling Thoughts are compiled from these letters as well as from his other spiritual works.

Available here.

The Practice of the Presence of God ~ Available here.

Brother Lawrence was a man of humble beginnings who discovered the greatest secret of living in the kingdom of God here on earth. It is the art of “practicing the presence of God in one single act that does not end.” He often stated that it is God who paints Himself in the depths of our souls. We must merely open our hearts to receive Him and His loving presence.
As a humble cook, Brother Lawrence learned an important lesson through each daily chore: The time he spent in communion with the Lord should be the same, whether he was bustling around in the kitchen—with several people asking questions at the same time—or on his knees in prayer. He learned to cultivate the deep presence of God so thoroughly in his own heart that he was able to joyfully exclaim, “I am doing now what I will do for all eternity. I am blessing God, praising Him, adoring Him, and loving Him with all my heart.”
This unparalleled classic has given both blessing and instruction to those who can be content with nothing less than knowing God in all His majesty and feeling His loving presence throughout each simple day.

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