and in the Canticles, " Open, my sister, the door to me." (Cant, v. 2.) He is not content with all this, but as if he were tired of knocking, he sits down himself at our door, to let us know, that he would have entered before, had he not found it shut; and still, instead of going away and leaving us, he chooses rather to sit down and wait for us, that we may be sure of finding him as soon as we open the door. Though you have delayed to open your heart to God and to comply with his inspirations, yet he has not, on this account, gone away. He has too great a desire of entering, to be so easily repulsed ; and therefore he sits at the door and waits till you open. " The Lord waits," says Isaiah, " that he may shew mercy to you." (Is. xxx. 18.) And certainly no friend is so eager to visit an intimate friend, as God is to visit our hearts; he longs much more to communicate himself, and grant his favours to us, than we long to receive them ; the only thing he requires of us is, to hunger and thirst after them. " To him that thirsts I will give of the fountain of the water of life gratis." (Ap. xxi. 6.) " If any man, therefore, thirsts, let him come to me and drink." (John, vii. 37.) He would have us feel an earnest desire of acquiring virtue and perfection, that the object of our desires being granted, we may know how to esteem and preserve it as a most precious jewel. For in general, whatever is not earnestly wished for is, when obtained, not much esteemed. One of the principal reasons why we make so little progress in perfection is, because we do not desire and long for it so earnestly as we ought; we have some desires, it is true, but then they are so weak and languid that they vanish almost as soon as they are felt.
St. Bonaventure (Process, iv. Rel. c. 3) says, that there are many who intend well, and who conceive the best projects imaginable, yet have not courage enough to offer violence to themselves, and to overcome themselves as far as to carry their good projects into execution. Hence we may say of them what the apostle said of himself: " To will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good, I find not." (Rom. vii. 18.) These projects without effect are not the productions of a resolute will, and to speak properly they are but mere velleities; in a word, we will, but we do not will effectually. t$ The slothful," says the Wise Man, " wills and does not will." (Prov. xiii. 4.) u His desires kill him, for his hands will not work at all. He spends himself all the day long in desires." (Ib. xxi. 25.) "He is a compound of desires," says St. Jerom; and Father Avila
