Esau, the figure of the Reprobate

“Esau, the elder, was strong and robust of body, adroit and skillful in drawing the bow and in taking much game in the chase. He hardly ever stayed in the house, and putting no confidence in anything but his own strength and address, he worked only out of doors. He took very few pains to please his mother Rebecca, and indeed did nothing for that end. He was such a glutton and loved eating so much that he sold his birthrigth for a mess of pottage. He was like Cain, full of envy against his brother, and persecuted him beyond measure.

Now this is the daily conduct of a reprobate. They trust in their own strength and aptitude for temporal affairs. They are very strong, very able and very enlightened in earthly business; but very weak and very ignorant in heavenly things. It is on this account that they are never at all, or at least very seldom, at their own home – that is to say, in their own interior, which is the inward and essential house which God has given to every man, to live there after His example; for God always dwells in Himself. The reprobate do not love retirement, nor spirituality, nor inward devotion; and they treat as little, or as bigots, or as savages, those who work more within than without.

The reprobate care next to nothing for devotion to our Blessed Lady, the Mother of the Predestinate. It is true that they do not hate her formally. Indeed the sometimes praise her and say they love her, and even practice some devotion in her honor. Nevertheless, they cannot bear that we should love her tenderly, because they have not the tenderness of Jacob. They find much to say against the practices of devotion, her good children and servants faithfully perform in order to gain her affection, because they do not think that the devotion is necessary to salvation. The reprobate sell their birthright, that is to say, the pleasures of paradise. They sell it for a pottage of lentils, that is to say, for the pleasures of the earth … they think only of the earth and they love earth only. They speak and act only for earth and for its pleasures, selling for one moment of enjoyment, for one vain puff of honor, for a morsel of hard metal, yellow or white, their baptismal grace, their robe of innocence and their heavenly inheritance.

Finally, the reprobate daily hate and persecute the predestinate, openly and secretly. They feel the predestinate are a burden to them, they despise them, they rob them, they cheat them, they improverish them, they drive them away, they bring them low into dust.”

St. Louis Marie de Montfort