But my point is not simply that Hopkins found it difficult; rather, that in such a severe “program” of religious life there was every indication that nearness to God could be brought about by increasingly rigorous behavior, more prayer, more work, more abstinence. It was Loyola’s way, and Hopkins chose it, and it wore him to the bone. That such behavior, born in humility, finally becomes a kind of self-exploitation rather than self-mastery, and therefore is no longer humility at all, of course complicates the issue.
