Lorenzo Scupoli On Preserving Inner Peace

Francesco Scupoli CR (c. 1530 – 26 November 1610),better known by his religious name Lorenzo Scupoli, was a Neapolitan Catholic priest, most notable for his authorship of The Spiritual Combat (Il combattimento spirituale), an important work in 16th-century Catholic spirituality. While living in Venice, Scupoli published the first edition of The Spiritual Combat in 1589.  It was written as a practical manual for spiritual living. At first, it teaches that the sense of life is incessant fighting against egoistic longings and replacing them with sacrifice and charity. The book was immediately popular, being republished nearly 60 times during Scupoli's lifetime and was translated into dozens of languages, including German, Latin, French, and English within ten years of its original publication. Despite the book's popularity, Scupoli originally published it anonymously, attributing the authorship only to a "servant of God".

On the Means of Preserving Inner Peace

To preserve inner peace:

(1) First of all keep your outer senses in order and flee all licentiousness in your external conduct, – namely, neither look, speak, gesticulate, walk nor do anything else with agitation, but always quietly and decorously. Accustomed to behave with decorous quietness in your external movements and actions, you will easily and without labour acquire peace within yourself, in the heart; for, according to the testimony of the fathers, the inner man takes his tone from the outer man.

(2) Be disposed to love all men and to live in accord with everyone, as St. Paul instructs: ‘If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men’ (Rom. xii. 18).

(3) Keep your conscience unstained, so that it does not gnaw at you or reproach you in anything, but is at peace in relation to God, to yourself, to your neighbours, and to all external things. If your conscience is thus kept clean, it will produce, deepen and strengthen inner peace, as David says: ‘Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them’ (Ps. cxix. 165).

(4) Accustom yourself to bear all unpleasantness and insults without perturbation. It is true that before you acquire this habit you will have to grieve and suffer much in your heart through lack of experience in controlling yourself in such cases. But once this habit is acquired, your soul will find great comfort in the very troubles you meet with. If you are resolute, you will day by day learn to manage yourself better and better and will soon reach a state when you will know how to preserve the peace of your spirit in all storms, both inner and outer.

If at times you are unable to manage your heart and restore peace in it by driving away all stress and griefs, have recourse to prayer and be persistent, imitating our Lord and Saviour, Who prayed three times in the garden of Gethsemane, to show you by His example that prayer should be your refuge in every stress and affliction of the heart and that, no matter how faint-hearted and grieved you may be, you should not abandon it until you reach a state when your will is in complete accord with the will of God and, calmed by this, your heart is filled with courageous daring and is joyfully ready to meet, accept and bear the very thing it feared and wished to avoid; just as our Lord felt fear, sorrow and grief, but, regaining peace through prayer, said calmly: ‘Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me’ (Matt. xxvi. 46).

Lorenzo Scupoli, ‘Spiritual Warfare, Part 2, chap. 15