Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [106]
But this is not all. It is not by our capacity of a direct command alone that we can influence our actions. In addition to that, we can also contribute to their determination indirectly; above all, by a daily examination of our conscience, with the taking of good resolutions as its result.
Further, we can—and should—diminish occasions of sinning by avoiding certain situations which are calculated to tempt our weakness. We may, so to speak, establish guards in advance, destined to prevent us from faltering in the crucial moments. From repeated acts of mental communion with God and of spiritual concentration, we may draw fresh strength for dealing adequately with given tasks and demands newly confronting us. In certain dangerous situations we may protect ourselves preventively, as did Ulysses in regard to the song of the Sirens; we, too, may, as it were, have ourselves tied fast, or—like his mates—have our ears plugged with wax. In periods of contemplation and moral stability, we may preventively fight the danger of being again caught in a centrifugal vortex and hopelessly enmeshed again in the autonomous mechanism of certain situations.
Finally, we may harness ourselves for this struggle against sin by a temporary renunciation of certain legitimate goods; that is, invigorate our readiness for good works, for conforming to the commandments of God, through the practice of asceticism. In sum, we are able to determine our actions not only in a direct sense, in view of their strict dependence on the command of our will, but also in an indirect sense, inasmuch as, by manifold preparatory acts which in their turn are subject to the direct command of our will, we may create favorable conditions for our doing right in certain foreseen situations in which our steadfastness is likely to be put on trial.
We cannot directly command affective responses, but can sanction or disavow them
But as we have seen, there is also a large class of inward acts that does not fall within our radius of power proper. If, for instance, the news of a person’s conversion leaves us in a mood of blunt indifference, our will is not at liberty to conjure up within us the mood of joy which would be adequate to the event. Similarly, we cannot force our cold and unsympathetic heart to bestow upon a person in need the full response of compassion and merciful love which would be congenial to the situation.
Certainly, by our free will we can command ourselves to perform some action destined to alleviate his trouble; yet the inward contribution of love we cannot give him just by deciding to do so. Nor is our will able to extinguish or silence, by direct command, a mood of envy or malicious satisfaction that colors our feelings in a given situation.
Against this fact, however, must be set another of no less importance. By an act of our free personal center we can either sanction or disavow our emotional attitude, which involves a far-reaching modification of the inmost nature of our attitudes. A mood of malicious satisfaction, for instance, which we expressly disavow in our mind, is decapitated as it were; it is revoked and declared invalid, and thereby deprived not only of its outward efficacy but to a large degree even of its intrinsic virulence. Still, by that alone it is not yet wholly uprooted, nor is its affective content annihilated. The will to be charitable from which may derive charitable deeds and good works, is not yet charity.
A further distinction commends itself: it makes a considerable difference whether the personal sanction (that is, the ultimate act of assent or disapprobation relative to our spontaneous feeling) is issued