The plain answer that Our Lord gave to this question consisted in the words: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”[1] The first and most necessary condition is: “if thou wilt.” Do you really wish it? Are you fully in earnest about it? He does not say: if thou wouldst wish; but if thou wilt. Oh, what a heap of false desires, wishes, and intentions of going to heaven we have in our hearts, that are called by theologians mere velleities! for we do not say: I will; lam fully determined, earnestly resolved; but I would wish; I should like. These velleities are nothing else but half acts of the will, slight and weak movements of the heart, fruitless and empty desires, sickly and vacillating resolutions, vain, natural longings which we have for all that is represented to us as good, pleasing, becoming, and useful. Lame and weak desires of the kind are common even with the greatest and most hardened sinners; for they well know what sin is: how detestable, dangerous, and injurious it is, and they would wish to be freed from it; they are also aware of the beauty of virtue, and would willingly practise it; they would like to be pious, God-fearing, devout, chaste, and innocent; but even while they wish to turn from evil and lead good lives they go on in the old way and make no change.
Shown by a simile. St. Augustine gives us a vigorous sketch drawn from his own experience of this apparent or half will in his meditation on the words of the Prophet David: “As the dream of them that awake, 0 Lord! so in Thy city Thou shalt bring their image to nothing.”[2] Thus the saint compares the lives of such people to the dream of a man who is just wakening and on the point of getting up out of bed. When one awakens or is aroused in the morning he knows that it is time to finish his sleep and to get up; but overcome by drowsiness he lies on still, and remains where he is; he opens his eyes and sees the sun shining through the window, but his head is still heavy and he allows it to sink on his breast, closes his eyes, and goes on as before. Bye-and-bye he raises his head again from the pillow, but it is still heavy as lead, and he lets it fall down again. That man does not wish to sleep any longer, and yet he sleeps; he wants to get up, and still remains in bed because his will is not earnest in the matter. So it is in reality with the weak desire to go to heaven. “The sluggard willeth,
