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The error of skipping the terrestrial phase is typified by the attitude which some Christians take towards the cross. They imagine it to be particularly virtuous or pious behavior if, at the death of a beloved person, they remain entirely calm and evince little or no pain—since the deceased has won eternity, and chosen the best part. They do as though they were themselves already dwelling in eternity.

Again, the alternative holds: either they will develop a kind of false, morbid, foggy idealism; or else, they fall into a shallow, matter-of-fact resignation, a banal routine composure (a cheap substitute for true Christian serenity and peace of mind), becoming thus wholly insensible to the gravity and greatness of death.

The fact is that they have lost the sense of the true proportions of our metaphysical situation, the true correlation of earthly life to eternity. The false familiarity they affect with eternity will either seduce them into a thin and pale idealism, an attitude of invariably floating in the heights, or it will lead to an implicit desubstantialization of the meaning of eternity, a short-circuited assimilation of its aspects to the sphere of earthly affairs. In either case, the distinction is blurred between eternity and the earth, and a denatured idea of the supernatural replaces its true conception. Instead of our actual transformation into a supernatural mode of being, it is the supernatural that we bring down to the level of natural concerns.

The same law applies in this case as applies in all other great things in our life. Such things have their proper dimensions to traverse. This is a condition of their proper realization. Attempts to pass by these dimensions will lead us to a merely ostensible attainment of our end. A love-relationship, a work of art, a great undertaking like the foundation of a new religious Order—all these imply, of necessity, a period of maturing.

There are certain successive stages which must be traversed; certain stages which must be actually covered. If we ignore this rhythm which is a law of being; if we attempt to skip over the proper course of things and to secure the final result at one blow; if we even try to force the maturing of some great plan—we fatally deprive that great thing of its depth and its inward weight, and substitute for it a mere counterfeit, bearing the stigma of flat artificiality. It is only by the paths which God has marked out for us that we can reach the high peaks of spiritual being.

Holy sobriety remains conscious of the gulf that separates us from God

In regard to the interrelation of earth and heaven, too, this truth holds. Only by developing along the proper lines in the framework of earthly life can we mature for eternity. We must consider the immeasurable distance that separates us from God: and hence, neither believe that we can part with our earthly condition at one bound and soar above everything as though we were angels, nor approach God with too much familiarity and haul down the supernatural into the banal atmosphere of our everyday life.

It is by directing our glance in unquenchable longing upwards to God, by maintaining a permanent attitude of sursum corda throughout the varying actions and situations that constitute our life, that we shall more and more outgrow the limits of earthliness and incorporate ourselves in the world of God. In this manner the supernatural will become, in actual truth, the determining and shaping principle, the forma of our life. “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God: mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth” (Col. 3:1-2).

Holy sobriety avoids an exaggerated estimate of our own experiences

Religious illusionism may also take the form of our persuading ourselves that we are burdened with a heavy cross, which we bear with heroism—whereas in fact we have no opportunity at all to practice such a heroism, for the heavy cross exists only in our imagination.

Suppose someone outspokenly draws our attention to certain