If a person swallows too much food, he is inviting impure thoughts. If he mortifies the stomach, he is creating pure thoughts. Often a lion if it is caressed becomes domesticated, whereas the more you coddle the body, the more it goes wild.
You ask for some way of completely eradicating irritability. The inclination to irritability is given us to use against sin, and we were never meant to use it against our fellow men. When we do, we act contrary to our true nature.
Stint your stomach and you will certainly lock your mouth, because the tongue is strengthened by an abundance of food. Struggle with all your might against the stomach and restrain it with all sobriety. If you labor a little, the Lord will also soon work with you.
When we are incapable of scaling the peaks of virtue, all we have to do is to descend into the ravine of humility. Our humility is our surest intercessor before the face of the Lord.
Just as over-drinking is a matter of habit, so too from habit comes over-sleeping. Therefore we must struggle with the question of sleep, especially in the early days of obedience, because a long-standing habit is difficult to cure.
A little fire softens a large piece of wax. So, too, a small indignity often softens, sweetens and wipes away suddenly all the fierceness, insensibility and hardness of our heart.
Wherever we are and whatever our circumstances, the enemy always tries to prevent us from actively responding to the call. Pray for help. For help that you may never fail to respond. And beware lest, having received help and having done the right deed because of it, you should grow proud and acquire the habit of condemning others, in the secret chambers of your heart. Beware! For this would make all the fruits of your good works wither.
Bring out the staff of patience, and the dogs will soon stop their insolence. Patience is an unbroken labor of the soul which is never shaken by deserved or undeserved blows. The patient man is a faultless worker, who turns his faults into victories. Patience is the limitation of suffering that is accepted day by day. Patience lays aside all excuses and all attention to herself. The worker needs patience more than his food, because the one brings him a crown, while the other may bring ruin.
In detachment, the spirit finds quiet and repose for coveting nothing. Nothing wearies it by elation, and nothing oppresses it by dejection, because it stands in the center of its own humility.
Our good Redeemer, by speedily granting what is asked, draws to His love those who are grateful. But He keeps ungrateful souls praying a long time before Him, hungering and thirsting for what they want, since a badly trained dog rushes off as soon as it is given bread and leaves the giver behind.
Our Lord and God made flesh has offered us the image of all virtue, as an example to the human race; and to recall us from the ancient fall, has set before us, as in a picture, His all-virtuous life in the flesh. Among many other good examples, He has shown us how, after His baptism, when He went out into the wilderness, it was with fasting that He began His mental wrestling with the devil, who came against Him as an ordinary man. And through this manner of His victory, our Lord has taught us, His unprofitable servants, how we must practice our wrestling against the spirits of evil, that is with humility and fasting and prayer and sobriety: which He observed though He Himself had no need of such things, being God...
Tedium is the granddaughter of despondency, and the daughter of slothfulness. In order to drive it away, labor at your work, and do not be slothful in prayer. The tedium will pass, and zeal will come. And if to this you add patience and humility, then you will be rid of all misfortunes and evils.
Fear is a rehearsing of danger beforehand; or again, fear is a trembling sensation of the heart, alarmed and troubled by unknown misfortunes. Fear is a loss of assurance.
