PREAMBLE TO CONSIDER STATES

First Preamble. The example which Christ our Lord, being under obedience to His parents, has given us for the first state, -- which consists in the observance of the Commandments—having been now considered; and likewise for the second,—which is that of evangelical perfection,—when He remained in the Temple, leaving His adoptive father and His natural Mother, to attend to the pure service of His eternal Father; we will begin, at the same time contemplating His life, to investigate and to ask in what life or state His Divine Majesty wants to be served by us.

And so, for some introduction of it, we will, in the first Exercise following, see the intention of Christ our Lord, and, on the contrary, that of the enemy of human nature, and how we ought to dispose ourselves in order to come to perfection in whatever state of life God our Lord would give us to choose.