“ST. Augustine says: ‘Heavy work it is, to keep at it, continualIy mortifying and curbing our will: look at the prize and reward to be given you for it, and you will see that it is all very little in comparison: hope of reward lightens the stress of toiL’ So he says we see here in the labours of merchants, farmers and soldiers. Now if the fury and force of the sea and its fearful waves do not dismay mariners and traders, nor rains and storms field-labourers, nor wounds and deaths soldiers, nor blows and falls wrestlers, when they set their eyes on the human hopes which they expect to realize by their labours, how shall one who looks for the kingdom of heaven quail before the labour and mortification that virtue requires? And they indeed for a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable (I Cor. ix. 25), says the Apostle St. Paul. If they for a perishable prize and reward, a thing of such short duration, expose themselves, to such labours, what is it reasonable for us to do for a·prize and reward so great, a prize that shall last forever and ever! Why, what we do is nothing in comparison with what we hope to get for it; it is nothing that they ask of us in comparison with what they give — they give it away to us for nothing.”
— The Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues by Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J. (The Manresa Press: Roehampton); 1929
