Today's Imitation...

"4. How, then, can this life be loved, which is so full of bitterness and subject to so many trials? How can it even be called life since it brings forth so many deaths and spiritual plagues? Yet it is loved and many seek all their pleasures in it.

The world is often blamed for being deceitful and vain, yet it is not easily given up, especially when the desires of the flesh take hold. Some things lead us to love the world, others to despise it.

Those things that lead a person to love the world are sensual desires, the enticement that lure the eyes, the pride in riches (1 Jn 2:16); but the pains and miseries that follow them breed a hatred of and disgust with the world.

5. But, sad to say, a little pleasure dominates the minds of the worldly, driving out of their hearts all heavenly desires, to such an extent that many imagine that joy is to be found in living under such sensual pleasures. That is because they have neither seen nor tasted the sweetness of God and the inward joy of virtue.

But those who utterly despise the world and strive to live under holy discipline experience the heavenly sweetness promised to spiritual persons; they also see the errors of the world and how it is deceived in so many ways."

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