7. Strengthen Thou my soul, and prepare it, O Good of all good; and, my Jesus, then ordain Thou the means whereby I may do something for Thee, so that there may be not even one who can bear to receive so much, and make no payment in return. Cost what it may, O Lord, let me not come before Thee with hands so empty, [3] seeing that the reward of every one will be according to his works. [4] Behold my life, behold my good name and my will; I have given them all to Thee; I am Thine: dispose of me according to Thy will. I see well enough, O Lord, how little I can do; but now, having drawn near to Thee,--having ascended to this watchtower, from which the truth may be seen,--and while Thou departest not from me, I can do all things; but if Thou departest from me, were it but for a moment, I shall go thither where I was once--that is, to h.e.l.l. [5]
8. Oh, what it is for a soul in this state to have to return to the commerce of the world, to see and look on the farce of this life, [6] so ill-ordered; to waste its time in attending to the body by sleeping and eating! [7] All is wearisome; it cannot run away,--it sees itself chained and imprisoned; it feels then most keenly the captivity into which the body has brought us, and the wretchedness of this life. It understands the reason why St. Paul prayed to G.o.d to deliver him from it. [8] The soul cries with the Apostle, and calls upon G.o.d to deliver it, as I said on another occasion. [9] But here it often cries with so much violence, that it seems as if it would go out of the body in search of its freedom, now that they do not take it away. It is as a slave sold into a strange land; and what distresses it most is, that it cannot find many who make the same complaint and the same prayer: the desire of life is more common.
9. Oh, if we were utterly detached,--if we never placed our happiness in anything of this world,--how the pain, caused by living always away from G.o.d, would temper the fear of death with the desire of enjoying the true life! Sometimes I consider, if a person like myself--because our Lord has given this light to me, whose love is so cold, and whose true rest is so uncertain, for I have not deserved it by my works--frequently feels her banishment so much, what the feelings of the Saints must have been.
What must St. Paul and the Magdalene, and others like them, have suffered, in whom the fire of the love of G.o.d has grown so strong? Their life must have been a continual martyrdom.
It seems to me that they who bring me any comfort, and whose conversation is any relief, are those persons in whom I find these desires--I mean, desires with acts. I say with acts, for there are people who think themselves detached, and who say so of themselves,--and it must be so, for their vocation demands it, as well as the many years that are pa.s.sed since some of them began to walk in the way of perfection,--but my soul distinguishes clearly, and afar off, between those who are detached in words, and those who make good those words by deeds. The little progress of the former, and the great progress of the latter, make it plain. This is a matter which a person of any experience can see into most clearly.
10. So far, then, of the effects of those raptures which come from the Spirit of G.o.d. The truth is, that these are greater or less. I say less, because in the beginning, though the effects are wrought, they are not tested by works, and so it cannot be clear that a person has them; and perfection, too, is a thing of growth, and of labouring after freedom from the cobwebs of memory; and this requires some time. Meanwhile, the greater the growth of love and humility in the soul, the stronger the perfume of the flowers of virtues is for itself and for others. The truth is, that our Lord can so work in the soul in an instant during these raptures, that but little remains for the soul to do in order to attain to perfection. No one, who has not had experience of it, will ever be able to believe what our Lord now bestows on the soul. No effort of ours--so I think--can ever reach so far.
11. However, I do not mean to say that those persons who during many years make use of the method prescribed by writers on prayer,--who discuss the principles thereof, and the means whereby it may be acquired,--will not, by the help of our Lord, attain to perfection and great detachment with much labour; but they will not attain to it so rapidly as by the way of raptures, in which our Lord works independently of us, draws the soul utterly away from earth, and gives it dominion over all things here below, though the merits of that soul may not be greater than mine were: I cannot use stronger language, for my merits are as nothing. Why His Majesty doeth this is, because it is His pleasure, and He doeth it according to His pleasure; even if the soul be without the fitting disposition, He disposes it for the reception of that blessing which He is giving to it. Although it be most certain that He never fails to comfort those who do well, and strive to be detached, still He does not always give these effects because they have deserved them at His hands by cultivating the garden, but because it is His will to show His greatness at times in a soil which is most worthless, as I have just said, and to prepare it for all good: and all this in such a way that it seems as if the soul was now, in a manner, unable to go back and live in sin against G.o.d, as it did before.
12. The mind is now so inured to the comprehension of that which is truth indeed, that everything else seems to it to be but child"s play. It laughs to itself, at times, when it sees grave men--men given to prayer, men of religion--make much of points of honour, which itself is trampling beneath its feet. They say that discretion, and the dignity of their callings, require it of them as a means to do more good; but that soul knows perfectly well that they would do more good in one day by preferring the love of G.o.d to this their dignity, than they will do in ten years by considering it.
13. The life of this soul is a life of trouble: the cross is always there, but the progress it makes is great. When those who have to do with it think it has arrived at the summit of perfection, within a little while they see it much more advanced; for G.o.d is ever giving it grace upon grace. G.o.d is the soul of that soul now; it is He who has the charge of it; and so He enlightens it; for He seems to be watching over it, always attentive to it, that it may not offend Him,--giving it grace, and stirring it up in His service. When my soul reached this state, in which G.o.d showed me mercy so great, my wretchedness came to an end, and our Lord gave me strength to rise above it.
The former occasions of sin, as well as the persons with whom I was accustomed to distract myself, did me no more harm than if they had never existed; on the contrary, that which ordinarily did me harm, helped me on. Everything contributed to make me know G.o.d more, and to love Him; to make me see how much I owed Him, as well as to be sorry for being what I had been.
14. I saw clearly that this did not come from myself, that I had not brought it about by any efforts of my own, and that there was not time enough for it. His Majesty, of His mere goodness, had given me strength for it. From the time our Lord began to give me the grace of raptures, until now, this strength has gone on increasing. He, of His goodness, hath held me by the hand, that I might not go back. I do not think that I am doing anything myself--certainly I do not; for I see distinctly that all this is the work of our Lord. For this reason, it seems to me that the soul in which our Lord worketh these graces,--if it walks in humility and fear, always acknowledging the work of our Lord, and that we ourselves can do, as it were, nothing,--may be thrown among any companions, and, however distracted and wicked these may be, will neither be hurt nor disturbed in any way; on the contrary, as I have just said, that will help it on, and be a means unto it whereby it may derive much greater profit.
15. Those souls are strong which are chosen by our Lord to do good to others; still, this their strength is not their own.
When our Lord brings a soul on to this state, He communicates to it of His greatest secrets by degrees. True revelations--the great gifts and visions--come by ecstasies, all tending to make the soul humble and strong, to make it despise the things of this world, and have a clearer knowledge of the greatness of the reward which our Lord has prepared for those who serve Him. [10]
16. May it please His Majesty that the great munificence with which He hath dealt with me, miserable sinner that I am, may have some weight with those who shall read this, so that they may be strong and courageous enough to give up everything utterly for G.o.d. If His Majesty repays us so abundantly, that even in this life the reward and gain of those who serve Him become visible, what will it be in the next?
1. Ch. xx. -- 30.
2. Ch. xx. -- 34.
3. Exod. xxiii. 15: "Non apparebis in conspectu meo vacuus."
4. Apoc. ii. 23: "Dabo unicuique vestrum secundum opera sua."
5. See ch. x.x.xii. -- 1.
6. "Farsa de esta vida tan mal concertada."
7. Inner Fortress, iv. ch. i. -- 11.
8. Rom. vii. 24: "Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis hujus?"
9. Ch. xvi. -- 7.
10. 1 Cor. ii. 9: "Quae praeparavit Deus his qui diligunt Illum."
Chapter XXII.
The Security of Contemplatives Lies in Their Not Ascending to High Things if Our Lord Does Not Raise Them. The Sacred Humanity Must Be the Road to the Highest Contemplation. A Delusion in Which the Saint Was Once Entangled.
1. There is one thing I should like to say--I think it important: and if you, my father, approve, it will serve for a lesson that possibly may be necessary; for in some books on prayer the writers say that the soul, though it cannot in its own strength attain to this state,--because it is altogether a supernatural work wrought in it by our Lord,--may nevertheless succeed, by lifting up the spirit above all created things, and raising it upwards in humility, after some years spent in a purgative life, and advancing in the illuminative. I do not very well know what they mean by illuminative: I understand it to mean the life of those who are making progress. And they advise us much to withdraw from all bodily imagination, and draw near to the contemplation of the Divinity; for they say that those who have advanced so far would be embarra.s.sed or hindered in their way to the highest contemplation, if they regarded even the Sacred Humanity itself. [1] They defend their opinion [2] by bringing forward the words [3] of our Lord to the Apostles, concerning the coming of the Holy Ghost; I mean that Coming which was after the Ascension. If the Apostles had believed, as they believed after the Coming of the Holy Ghost, that He is both G.o.d and Man, His bodily Presence would, in my opinion, have been no hindrance; for those words were not said to the Mother of G.o.d, though she loved Him more than all. [4] They think that, as this work of contemplation is wholly spiritual, any bodily object whatever can disturb or hinder it. They say that the contemplative should regard himself as being within a definite s.p.a.ce, G.o.d everywhere around, and himself absorbed in Him. This is what we should aim at.
2. This seems to me right enough now and then; but to withdraw altogether from Christ, and to compare His divine Body with our miseries or with any created thing whatever, is what I cannot endure. May G.o.d help me to explain myself! I am not contradicting them on this point, for they are learned and spiritual persons, understanding what they say: G.o.d, too, is guiding souls by many ways and methods, as He has guided mine.
It is of my own soul that I wish to speak now,--I do not intermeddle with others,--and of the danger I was in because I would comply with the directions I was reading. I can well believe that he who has attained to union, and advances no further,--that is, to raptures, visions, and other graces of G.o.d given to souls,--will consider that opinion to be best, as I did myself: and if I had continued in it, I believe I should never have reached the state I am in now. I hold it to be a delusion: still, it may be that it is I who am deluded. But I will tell you what happened to me.
3. As I had no director, I used to read these books, where, by little and little, I thought I might understand something.
I found out afterwards that, if our Lord had not shown me the way, I should have learned but little from books; for I understood really nothing till His Majesty made me learn by experience: neither did I know what I was doing. So, in the beginning, when I attained to some degree of supernatural prayer,--I speak of the prayer of quiet,--I laboured to remove from myself every thought of bodily objects; but I did not dare to lift up my soul, for that I saw would be presumption in me, who was always so wicked. I thought, however, that I had a sense of the presence of G.o.d: this was true, and I contrived to be in a state of recollection before Him. This method of prayer is full of sweetness, if G.o.d helps us in it, and the joy of it is great.
And so, because I was conscious of the profit and delight which this way furnished me, no one could have brought me back to the contemplation of the Sacred Humanity; for that seemed to me to be a real hindrance to prayer.
4. O Lord of my soul, and my Good! Jesus Christ crucified!
I never think of this opinion, which I then held, without pain; I believe it was an act of high treason, though done in ignorance.
Hitherto, I had been all my life long so devout to the Sacred Humanity--for this happened but lately; I mean by lately, that it was before our Lord gave me the grace of raptures and visions.
I did not continue long of this opinion, [5] and so I returned to my habit of delighting in our Lord, particularly at Communion.
I wish I could have His picture and image always before my eyes, since I cannot have Him graven in my soul as deeply as I wish.
5. Is it possible, O my Lord, that I could have had the thought, if only for an hour, that Thou couldst be a hindrance to my greatest good? Whence are all my blessings? are they not from Thee? I will not think that I was blamable, for I was very sorry for it, and it was certainly done in ignorance. And so it pleased Thee, in Thy goodness, to succour me, by sending me one who has delivered me from this delusion; and afterwards by showing Thyself to me so many times, as I shall relate hereafter, [6] that I might clearly perceive how great my delusion was, and also tell it to many persons; which I have done, as well as describe it as I am doing now. I believe myself that this is the reason why so many souls, after advancing to the prayer of union, make no further progress, and do not attain to very great liberty of spirit.
6. It seems to me, that there are two considerations on which I may ground this opinion. Perhaps I am saying nothing to the purpose, yet what I say is the result of experience; for my soul was in a very evil plight, till our Lord enlightened it: all its joys were but sips; and when it had come forth therefrom, it never found itself in that company which afterwards it had in trials and temptations.
7. The first consideration is this: there is a little absence of humility--so secret and so hidden, that we do not observe it.
Who is there so proud and wretched as I, that, even after labouring all his life in penances and prayers and persecutions, can possibly imagine himself not to be exceedingly rich, most abundantly rewarded, when our Lord permits him to stand with St. John at the foot of the cross? I know not into whose head it could have entered to be not satisfied with this, unless it be mine, which has gone wrong in every way where it should have gone right onwards.
8. Then, if our const.i.tution--or perhaps sickness--will not permit us always to think of His Pa.s.sion, because it is so painful, who is to hinder us from thinking of Him risen from the grave, seeing that we have Him so near us in the Sacrament, where he is glorified, and where we shall not see Him in His great weariness--scourged, streaming with blood, faint by the way, persecuted by those to whom He had done good, and not believed in by the Apostles? Certainly it is not always that one can bear to meditate on sufferings so great as were those He underwent.
Behold Him here, before His ascension into heaven, without pain, all-glorious, giving strength to some and courage to others.
In the most Holy Sacrament, He is our companion, as if it was not in His power to withdraw Himself for a moment from us. And yet it was in my power to withdraw from Thee, O my Lord, that I might serve Thee better! It may be that I knew Thee not when I sinned against Thee; but how could I, having once known Thee, ever think I should gain more in this way? O Lord, what an evil way I took!
and I was going out of the way, if Thou hadst not brought me back to it. When I see Thee near me, I see all good things together.
No trial befalls me that is not easy to bear, when I think of Thee standing before those who judged Thee.
9. With so good a Friend and Captain ever present, Himself the first to suffer, everything can be borne. He helps, He strengthens, He never fails, He is the true Friend. I see clearly, and since then have always seen, that if we are to please G.o.d, and if He is to give us His great graces, everything must pa.s.s through the hands of His most Sacred Humanity, in whom His Majesty said that He is well pleased. [7] I know this by repeated experience: our Lord has told it me. I have seen clearly that this is the door [8] by which we are to enter, if we would have His supreme Majesty reveal to us His great secrets.
10. So, then, I would have your reverence seek no other way, even if you were arrived at the highest contemplation. This way is safe. Our Lord is He by whom all good things come to us; He will teach you. Consider His life; that is the best example. What more can we want than so good a Friend at our side, who will not forsake us when we are in trouble and distress, as they do who belong to this world! Blessed is he who truly loves Him, and who always has Him near him! Let us consider the glorious St. Paul, who seems as if Jesus was never absent from his lips, as if he had Him deep down in his heart. After I had heard this of some great Saints given to contemplation, I considered the matter carefully; and I see that they walked in no other way.
St. Francis with the stigmata proves it, St. Antony of Padua with the Infant Jesus; St. Bernard rejoiced in the Sacred Humanity; so did St. Catherine of Siena, and many others, as your reverence knows better than I do.
11. This withdrawing from bodily objects must no doubt be good, seeing that it is recommended by persons who are so spiritual; but, in my opinion, it ought to be done only when the soul has made very great progress; for until then it is clear that the Creator must be sought for through His creatures. All this depends on the grace which our Lord distributes to every soul.
I do not intermeddle here. What I would say is, that the most Sacred Humanity of Christ is not to be counted among the objects from which we have to withdraw. Let this be clearly understood.
I wish I knew how to explain it. [9]
12. When G.o.d suspends all the powers of the soul,--as we see He does in the states of prayer already described,--it is clear that, whether we wish it or not, this presence is withdrawn.
Be it so, then. The loss is a blessed one, because it takes place in order that we may have a deeper fruition of what we seem to have lost; for at that moment the whole soul is occupied in loving Him whom the understanding has toiled to know; and it loves what it has not comprehended, and rejoices in what it could not have rejoiced in so well, if it had not lost itself, in order, as I am saying, to gain itself the more. But that we should carefully and laboriously accustom ourselves not to strive with all our might to have always--and please G.o.d it be always!--the most Sacred Humanity before our eyes,--this, I say, is what seems to me not to be right: it is making the soul, as they say, to walk in the air; for it has nothing to rest on, how full soever of G.o.d it may think itself to be.
13. It is a great matter for us to have our Lord before us as Man while we are living and in the flesh. This is that other inconvenience which I say must be met with. The first--I have already begun to describe it--is a little failure in humility, in that the soul desires to rise of itself before our Lord raises it, and is not satisfied with meditation on so excellent a subject,--seeking to be Mary before it has laboured with Martha.
If our Lord will have a soul to be Mary, even on the first day, there is nothing to be afraid of; but we must not be self-invited guests, as I think I said on another occasion. [10] This little mote of want of humility, though in appearance a mere nothing, does a great deal of harm to those who wish to advance in contemplation.
14. I now come back to the second consideration. We are not angels, for we have a body; to seek to make ourselves angels while we are on the earth, and so much on the earth as I was, is an act of folly. In general, our thoughts must have something to rest on, though the soul may go forth out of itself now and then, or it may be very often so full of G.o.d as to be in need of no created thing by the help of which it may recollect itself.
But this is not so common a case; for when we have many things to do, when we are persecuted and in trouble, when we cannot have much rest, and when we have our seasons of dryness, Christ is our best Friend; for we regard Him as Man, and behold Him faint and in trouble, and He is our Companion; and when we shall have accustomed ourselves in this way, it is very easy to find Him near us, although there will be occasions from time to time when we can do neither the one nor the other.
15. For this end, that is useful which I spoke of before: [11] we must not show ourselves as labouring after spiritual consolations; come what may, to embrace the cross is the great thing. The Lord of all consolation was Himself forsaken: they left Him alone in His sorrows. Do not let us forsake Him; for His hand will help us to rise more than any efforts we can make; and He will withdraw Himself when He sees it be expedient for us, and when He pleaseth will also draw the soul forth out of itself, as I said before. [12]