Are you a self-made man who worships his maker?

By David Torkington -

Like most European Catholics I was born and brought up in the aftermath of the Renaissance influenced by a spirituality that owed as much to the rise of humanism as to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Naturally I thought that if I were to attain the perfection to which I aspired it would be primarily the result of my own efforts. I was in effect a Christian Stoic, a Pelagian who had failed so comprehensively to make myself into the saint of my dreams that I was about to give up the spiritual life for good.
It was then that I came across Pax Animae written by a Spanish Franciscan John of Bonilla in 1588. It was a spiritual gem untouched by the spirit of the Renaissance. Reading it was the nearest I came to a Damascus road experience. It immediately enabled me to see that I had been misled into believing that I could be the architect of my own perfection. On the very first page the author made it clear that: 
With love you may bring your heart to do whatsoever you may please. The hardest things become easy and pleasant, but without love you will find everything not only difficult but quite impossible.

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