Rules for Leading a Good Life
In the morning, when rising from bed, make the Christian acts. Every day make mental prayer for half an hour; read for at least a quarter of an hour some spiritual book. To hear Mass. To make a visit to the Most Blessed Sacrament and the Divine Mother. To say the Rosary. And in the evening to make the examination of conscience, with the act of contrition, and the Christian acts, together with the Litany of the Ever-Blessed Mary.
To go to Confession and Communion at least every week, and often if possible, with the advice of your spiritual director.
To choose a good, learned, and pious confessor, and to be directed always by him, as well in your exercises of devotion, as in all affairs of importance; and not to leave him without a good reason.
To avoid idleness, bad companions, immodest conversations, and above all, the occasions of sin, especially where there is danger of incontinency.
In temptations, of impurity particularly, to sign yourself immediately with the sign of the holy Cross, and to invoke the most holy names of Jesus and Mary as long as the temptation lasts.
When you commit any sin, to repent of it at once, and resolve to amend, and if it is a grievous sin, to confess it as soon as possible.
To hear sermons as often as you can, and to belong to some confraternity, with no other end than to attend to the affair of your eternal salvation.
To fast in honor of the Ever-Blessed Mary on Saturday, and on the vigils of her seven feasts, observing some corporal mortification, according to the advice of your spiritual father; to make the novenas of the above-named feasts of Mary, as well as of the Nativity, Pentecost, and that of your holy patron.
In adverse circumstances, as in sickness, losses, persecutions, you must unite yourself in all things to the will of God, and be resigned; saying always, “This is (or has been) the will of God; may his will be done!”
To make the spiritual exercises every year in some religious house, or some place apart; or at least to make them in your own house, applying yourself during those days as much as possible to prayer, spiritual reading, and to silence. And in the same way to make a day of retreat every month, by going to Communion, and by avoiding all conversation.
This short list of rules is found on page 345 of TAN's reprint of The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection by St. Alphonsus de Ligouri. They are a summary of the same Holy Doctor's Rule of Life.
Posted on the Feast of St. Justin Martyr, a.D. MMVIII
