She shows how safe a path it is for contemplatives not to raise their spirits to lofty things, and how the approach to the most exalted contemplation must be by way of Christ’s humanity. She tells of an incident in which she was herself deceived. This is a very profitable chapter.
I WANT to say one thing, if your Reverence will allow me to do so, which is, in my opinion, very important, and will serve as a lesson that may well be necessary. In some books on the subject of prayer, it is said that although the soul cannot reach this state of itself, since the work that the Lord performs in it is entirely supernatural, yet it can help itself by lifting the spirit above all created things and raising it with humility, once it has spent some years in the purgative life and made some progress in the illuminative. I do not quite know what they mean by ‘the illuminative’, but I understand it to be the life of those who are making progress. They earnestly advise us to put aside all bodily imagination and directly to approach the contemplation of the Divinity, saying that even the thought of Christ’s humanity will embarrass those who have arrived at this point, and hinder their attainment of perfect contemplation. They quote Our Lord’s words to the Apostles at the coming of the Holy Ghost1 – I mean after His ascent into heaven. But it seems to me that if they had believed, then, as they did after the coming of the Holy Ghost, that He was both God and man, it would have been no hindrance to them. Moreover, these words were not spoken to the Mother of God, though she loved Him more than all the rest. But these writers think that as this is an entirely spiritual work anything bodily may prevent or impede it, and that contemplatives ought to think of themselves as circumscribed, but of God of being everywhere. Their endeavour must then be to be engulfed in Him. This seems to me right enough for some occasions, but I cannot bear the idea that we should withdraw ourselves completely from Christ, and put His divine body on a level with our miseries and all created things. May His Majesty grant me the ability to explain myself!
I do not oppose this view, for they are spiritual men and learned, and know what they are saying. Besides God leads souls along many roads and paths, as He has led mine. It is of mine that I wish to speak here – I will not meddle with the souls of others – and of the danger that I found myself in through trying to conform with what I read. I can well believe that those who have reached union and gone no further – I mean those who have had raptures and visions and other favours that God grants to the soul – will suppose this view to be the best, as I once did myself. But if I had adhered to it, I do not think that I should ever have reached my present state, for I believe it to be mistaken. Of course, it may be I who am mistaken – but I will describe what happened to me.
As I had no director, I used to read these books, and little by little came to think I was learning something from them. Later I discovered that I should have learnt very little from my reading if the Lord had not shown me the way. For until His Majesty taught me by experience, I understood nothing and had no idea what I was doing. When I began to have a little experience of supernatural prayer – I mean of the prayer of quiet – I tried to banish all bodily things, but I did not dare to lift up my soul, for I saw that in my state of wickedness this would be presumption. Still, I thought that I was experiencing the presence of God – as proved to be true – and contrived to remain with Him in a recollected state. If God assists at this prayer, it is very sweet and brings great joy. So conscious was I of the gain I was deriving from it and of my pleasure in it, that no one could have made me return to my meditations on the Humanity, which seemed to me to present a positive hindrance. O Lord of my soul and my Good, Jesus Christ crucified, I never recall this old belief of mine that it does not give me pain. I think that it was an act of high treason, though one committed in ignorance.
All through my life I had been deeply devoted to Christ – for this happened only recently. By ‘recently’ I mean before the Lord granted me the favour of raptures and visions. So I did not hold this opinion for very long, and soon returned to my habit of rejoicing in the Lord. Especially when I took Communion, I would wish to have His image and portrait before my eyes, since I could not have it as deeply graven on my soul as I should have liked. Is it possible, my Lord, that I could have harboured the thought, even for so much as an hour, that You could hinder my greatest good? Where did all my blessings come from, if not from You? I will not think that I was to blame for this, since I was very sorry for it, and it was certainly the product of ignorance. You were pleased, therefore, in Your goodness, to remedy matters by giving me someone to cure me of this error, and by afterwards permitting me to see You often, as I shall tell later on, in order that I might clearly realize how gravely wrong I was and tell many people of my mistake – as I have already done – and also in order that I might put it all down here at this moment.
This, in my opinion, is the reason why many souls who have reached the prayer of union advance no further and fail to achieve very great liberty of the spirit. There are two reasons, I think, on which I can base my opinion. Of course I may be quite wrong, but what I say I have learnt by experience, for my soul was in a very bad way until the Lord gave it light. All its joys came in little sips; and once these were over, it never found any companionship, as it did later, in its trials and temptations. My first reason is that hatever little humility the soul possesses is so disguised and concealed as not to be observed. Could there be anyone as miserably proud as I was, one who after labouring all his life at every imaginable kind of penance and prayer and after suffering every kind of persecution, would not count himself very rich and amply rewarded if the Lord allowed him to stand at the foot of the Cross with St John? I do not know how anyone could take it into his head not to be content with this, except myself, for the result was that things went wrong with me just when they should have gone right.
There may be times when our temperament or some indisposition finds the Passion too painful a subject to be dwelt on. But what can hinder us from being with Him after His Resurrection, since we have Him so near us in the Sacrament, in which He is already glorified? Here we shall not see Him wearied and broken and pouring with blood, as He lies exhausted by the roadside, persecuted by those to whom He was doing good and not even believed in by the Apostles. Certainly one cannot always bear to think of the great trials He suffered. But here He is free from pain, full of glory, strengthening some and bringing courage to others before He ascends into heaven. In the most holy Sacrament, He is our companion, and it would seem impossible for Him to withdraw from us even for a moment. Was it possible for me, then, O my Lord, to withdraw from You in the hope of serving You better? True, when I offended You I did not know You. But once I did know You, how could I suppose that I should gain more in this way? O, what an evil path I was pursuing, Lord! Indeed, I think that I should have lost the road altogether, if You had not brought me back to it. When I have seen You beside me, my eyes have rested on all blessings at once. No trial has come to me that I cannot suffer gladly when I gaze at You as You stood before Your judges. In the presence of so good a Friend, of a Captain so brave that He Himself stepped out first to suffer, one is capable of bearing anything. He helps us and gives us strength; He never fails and is a true friend.
I clearly see, and have done so ever since, that if we are to please God and He is to grant us great favours, it is His will that this should be through His most sacred Humanity, in whom His Majesty said He is well pleased.1 I have learnt this indeed by repeated experiences; the Lord has told it me. I have clearly seen that it is by this door we must enter, if we wish His sovereign Majesty to reveal great secrets to us. Therefore, your Reverence, even if you are at the summit of contemplation, you must seek no other way; this one alone is safe. It is through this Lord of ours that all good things come to us. He will show us the way. If we consider His life, that is our best example. What more can we ask than have so good a friend at our side, who will not leave us in trials and tribulations, as worldly friends do? Blessed is he who truly loves Him, and always has Him by his side. Let us consider the glorious St Paul, from whose lips the name of Jesus seems never to have been absent, so firmly did he hold it in his heart. Since realizing this, I have looked carefully into the lives of several saints who were great contemplatives, and they travelled by no other road. St Francis proves this by his stigmata, as does St Antony of Padua with the Infant Jesus. St Bernard too rejoiced in the Humanity, and so did St Catherine of Siena and many others of whom your Reverence will know better than I.
Withdrawal from bodily objects must no doubt be good, since it is recommended by such spiritual persons. But, in my opinion, it is right only when the soul is very far advanced. Until then it must, of course, seek the Creator through His creatures. All this depends on the grace that the Lord gives to each soul: a subject into which I will not enter. But what I should like to make clear is that Christ’s Humanity must not be reckoned among these bodily objects. This must be clearly understood, and I wish I knew how to explain it.
When God is pleased to suspend all the faculties, as we have seen He does in the kinds of prayer already described, it is evident that, even against our will, this Presence is taken from us. We accept this at such a time. It is a blessed loss since it enables us to enjoy more than we seem to be losing. For then the soul is wholly occupied in loving One whom the understanding has been working hard to know. It is loving what it has not comprehended, and rejoicing in what it could not rejoice in so well if it had not lost itself, in order, as I say, the better to gain itself. But that we should painfully and laboriously accustom ourselves to give up trying with all our strength to keep always before us – and the Lord grant we always may! – this most sacred Humanity; this, I insist, seems to me wrong. It leaves the soul, as they say, in the air; it has no support, I think, however full it may think itself to be of God.
While we live as human beings, it is very important for us to keep Christ’s Humanity before us. Here I come to that second hindrance that I mentioned. The first, which I began to explain, is a certain lack of humility, in that the soul desires to rise of itself before the Lord raises it, and is dissatisfied with meditating even on anything so precious, and longs to be Mary before it has laboured with Martha. When the Lord wishes it to be Mary, even on the very first day there is no need for fear, but we must prepare ourselves properly, as I think I have already said. This small grain of insufficient humility may seem to be of little importance, but it does great harm to those who want to advance in contemplation.
To come now to the second point, we are not angels but have bodies, and it is madness for us to want to become angels while we are still on earth, and as much on earth as I was. Generally, our thoughts must have something to support them, though sometimes the soul may go out from itself, and it may often be so full of God that it will need no created thing to bring it to recollection. But this is not very usual. When we are busy, or suffering persecutions or trials, when we cannot get enough quiet, and in times of dryness, Christ is our very good friend. We look at Him as a m an, we see Him weak and in trouble, and He is our companion. Once we have got this habit, it is very easy to find Him beside us, though times will come when we can do neither the one nor the other. To this end, it is advisable to do as I have said, and not show ourselves to be trying after spiritual consolations. Come what may, the great thing is to embrace the Cross. The Lord was deprived of all consolation, and forsaken in His trials. Let us not forsake Him; His hand will help us to rise better than our own efforts; and, as I have already said, He will withdraw Himself when He sees that it is good for us and when the Lord wishes to take the soul out of itself.
It greatly pleases God to see a soul humbly take His Son as mediator, and yet love Him so much that even when His Majesty is pleased to raise it, as I have said, to the highest contemplation, it realizes its un-worthiness and says with St Peter: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’.1 This I have proved, for it is in this way that God has led my soul. Others may, as I have said, find another and shorter cut; hut what I have learnt is that the entire edifice of prayer must he founded on humility, and that the lower a soul abases itself in prayer, the higher God raises it. I do not remember His ever having granted me the remarkable favours of which I shall speak later except when I have been overwhelmed by the sight of my own wickedness; and His Majesty has even managed to help me towards this self-knowledge by revealing things to me that I could not have suspected myself. It is my opinion that though a soul may seem to be deriving some immediate benefit when it does anything to further itself in this prayer of union, it will in fact very quickly fall again, like a building without foundations. I am afraid too that it will never achieve true poverty of spirit, which lies in not seeking comfort or pleasure in prayer, since it has already given up earthly comforts and pleasures. It must find its consolation in trials, undergone for the sake of Him who lived a life of trials; and these it must endure, remaining calm in times of dryness, though it may grieve at having to suffer them. But they should not cause us the disquietude and distress that are felt by some who, if they are not always working with their intellect and stimulating feelings of devotion, think that all is lost, as if their efforts merited some great blessing. I do not mean that such things should not be sought for, or that we should not be careful how we approach God, but merely, as I have said elsewhere, that we should not worry ourselves to death even if we cannot think a single good thought. We are unprofitable servants. So what do we suppose we can do?
But it is Our Lord’s will that we shall know this, and be like the little donkeys that work the water-wheel I have mentioned. Though their eyes are blinkered and they have no idea what they are doing, they water more than the gardener can with all his efforts. Once we have placed ourselves in God’s hands, we must walk freely along this road. If His Majesty is pleased to promote us to His household or Privy Council, we must go willingly. But if He tells us to serve Him in minor offices and, as I have said elsewhere, not sit down in the highest room.2 God is more careful for us than we are for ourselves, and He knows what each of us is good for. What is the use of a man’s governing himself if he has already given over his entire will to God? This, in my view, is much less permissible here than at the first stage of prayer, and does much more harm; for these blessings are supernatural. If one has a bad voice one cannot make it good, however much one forces oneself to sing; whereas if God is pleased to give one a good voice, one has no need to try it twice. So let us continually pray Him to grant us favours, and resign our spirit while trusting in His greatness. Since the soul is permitted to sit at Christ’s feet, let it take care not to stir from there, but stay as it will. Let it imitate the Magdalen and, when it is strong, God will lead it into the desert.
Your Reverence must be satisfied with this explanation until you find someone with more experience than I, who knows these things better. Do not believe people who are beginning to taste of God, but who think they are making more progress and receiving greater consolations by helping themselves. How well God can reveal Himself, when He chooses without these petty efforts of ours! Do what we may, He can transport the spirit like a giant lifting a straw, and all resistance is useless. What a strange kind of belief it is that if God wishes a toad to fly, He will wait for it to do so by its own efforts! I think that our spirits would find it even harder and more painful than that to raise themselves up if God did not do it for them, since they are weighed down with earth and countless encumbrances, and the mere desire to fly is not of such use to them. For though flying is more natural to them than it is to a toad, they are so sunk in the mire that by their own fault they have lost the ability.
I will conclude then by saying that whenever we think of Christ, we should remember the love with which He has bestowed all these favours on us, and what great love our Lord God has revealed to us also in giving us this pledge of His love for us, for love calls out love. So, although we may be very much at the beginning and very wicked, let us try always to think of this and to arouse love in ourselves. For if once the Lord grants us the favour of imprinting this love on our hearts, everything will be easy for us, and we shall do great things in a very short time and with very little labour. May His Majesty grant us this love, since He knows how much we need it, for the sake of that love which He bore us and for His glorious Son, who revealed it to us at such great cost to Himself. Amen.
I should like to ask your Reverence one question. Why, when the Lord begins to grant a soul such a sublime favour as to raise it to perfect contemplation, does it not, as by rights it should, become perfect immediately? There is certainly no doubt that it should, for anyone who receives such a favour should never again seek earthly consolations. Why is it then that raptures and the soul’s growing accustomed to receive favours, appear only to bring results of increasing sublimity – and the more detached it is the greater they are – when the Lord might leave the soul sanctified at the very moment when He comes to it? How is it that this same Lord does not perfect it in the virtues until later, and by the passage of time? I do not know the answer, but should like to do so. I do know, however, that there is a difference between the degree of fortitude that God gives us in the early stages, when a rapture is over in the twinkling of an eye, and is almost imperceptible except through the effects that it leaves behind, and what we receive later on when our raptures are of longer duration. I often think that this must be because the soul does not completely prepare itself at once. The Lord gradually trains it, giving it resolution and manly strength to trample all earthly things underfoot. This He did in the shortest time for the Magdalen, and He has done the same for other persons, according to the measure in which they have allowed Him freedom to act yet cannot bring ourselves to believe that even in this life God will reward us a hundredfold.
I have also been thinking out another comparison. Supposing that the same amount is given to beginners as to those who have progressed further, it is like a meal shared by many people Those who eat very little are left with a pleasant taste for a short while; those who eat more receive some sustenance; and those who eat much receive life and strength. Moreover, it is possible for the soul to eat of this food of life so often and so plentifully as to consider that no other food nourishes it. It now sees what good this food is doing it, and its palate has become so accustomed to its sweetness that it would rather not live than have to eat anything else, for that would only take away the pleasant taste left by the good food. Again, the conversation of godly people does not bring us as much profit in one day as in many; and if we are long enough in their company, we may so benefit, with God’s help, as to become like them. Everything, in fact, depends on His Majesty’s pleasure, and on whom He chooses to confer this favour. But it is important that anyone who is beginning to receive it shall make up his mind to detach himself from everything and esteem it as he should.
I think too that His Majesty goes about trying to prove who loves Him – whether this person or that – revealing Himself to us in such sublime joy in order to rouse our belief, if it is dead, in what He is going to give us. ‘Look,’ He says, ‘this is one drop of an immense sea of blessings.’ Indeed He leaves nothing undone for those He loves, and when He sees that they accept His gifts, He gives Himself continuously. He loves all who love Him – and how well they are loved! What a good friend He is! O Lord of my soul, if only one had the words to explain what You give to those who trust in You, and what is lost by those who reach this state yet keep themselves to themselves! It is not Your will, Lord, that they should. For You do more than this when You come to a lodging as mean as mine. May You be blessed for ever and ever!
I beseech your Reverence once more that if you discuss my writings about prayer with spiritual persons, you make sure that they really are spiritual persons. For if they only know one path or have stuck halfway, they will never guess my meaning. There are some whom God leads immediately by a very exalted road, and they think that others can make progress in the same way, by quietening the mind and making no use of bodily aids, but this will make them as dry as sticks. There are others, too, who when they have attained a little quiet, at once think that as they have got this they can get all the rest. But in this way, instead of gaining they will, as I have said, lose. So, experience and discretion are necessary in all things. May the Lord, in His goodness, give them to us.