The reason, then, why some spiritually-minded persons never enter into the true joys of the spirit, is, that they never wholly cease to rejoice in outward and visible things. Let such reflect that if a visible Church and Oratory be a fitting and appropriate place for prayer, and images motives thereunto, they must not so use them as to have all their sweetness and joy in them, and so forget to pray in the living temple, which is the interior recollection of soul. 8S. Paul, to remind us of this, says: ‘ Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’* and our Lord: ‘ Lo, the kingdom of God is within you;’f to the same effect tend the words already cited: ‘They that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth.’}{ God will make no account of your oratories, and the places you have so well prepared, if you attend more to the pleasure which they furnish than you do to interior detachment, which is spiritual poverty, and which consists in denying yourself in all that you may possess.
* 1 Cor. iii, 16, _ + 8, Luke xvii, 21. t 8S. John iv, 24, x2
308You must, therefore, if you would purge the will from joy, and the vain desire for it, and direct that joy to God in your prayers, look only to this, that your conscience be pure, your will wholly with God, and your mind earnestly fixed upon Him; and that you choose a place for your prayers, the most solitary and unfrequented possible, and there apply the whole joy and satisfaction of your will to the calling upon God and glorifying His name. As to the trifling joys and satisfactions of outward things, regard them not, but labour to deny yourself in them. For if the soul becomes habituated to the sweetness of sensible devotion, it will never advance to the power of spiritual joy which is to be found in spiritual detachment by means of interior recollection.