PREPARATION FOR A HIGHER DEGREE OF DIVINE. UNION.—ACTIVE LIFE.—INTERIOR TRIALS.
We cannot have studied the lives of the saints without observing, that while infinitely generous of His graces to all His faithful servants, their almighty Lord from time to time chooses certain individuals among them as recipients of a more than ordinary measure of His liberality. We read of a privileged few, to whom He is lavish of what may be termed exceptional marks of His love. These chosen souls, He inundates with celestial gifts,—revealing glimpses of His glory and beauty, transforming them into Himself, so as in a manner to divinize them, and even sometimes imparting visible external marks of their sublime spiritual exaltation. It would seem as if He desired to manifest to men in their persons, the immensity of His goodness, the infinitude of His condescension, and the magnificence of His riches. They are the specially favoured among the favoured: they form a class apart, in which God, wonderful in all His saints, is wonderful surpassingly.
In that exceptional class, suited as it would seem to us rather for angels than for mortals, a place was destined in the divine designs for the subject of our history, Marie Guyart, but before those all-gracious designs could be realized, certain preliminaries were needed. To the thoroughly purified soul alone it belongs to fly without impediment to God, as the needle flies to the magnet, and admirable, nay wonderful as was the interior purity to which this-singularly favoured being had attained; it had yet to undergo further processes of refinement before she should be disposed for the privilege awaiting her. Our Lord continued therefore to draw her more and more forcibly to the perfection of the virtue, revealing to her in the meantime, that when it had reached the required degree, a great, but as yet unspecified grace would be her reward. To stimulate her zeal, He gave her a vision, of a soul free from even the slightest shadow of defect, and the sight was one so entrancing, so enrapturing, that she said, if men could only see it, they would willingly renounce all things for the bare enjoyment of the glorious spectacle. Charmed with the celestial beauty of such a soul, and thirsting ever more to share its happy privilege of flying to God without hindrance or delay, she was carefully on her guard against the most trivial imperfection, and when betrayed into one, never desisted, until by sighs and prayers she had obtained forgiveness, which she knew by the cessation of reproach of conscience.
The sanctity of God was represented to her under the semblance of a vast sea, with whose limpid waters no defilement however small was allowed to mingle, all such being instantaneously rejected. Overwhelmed at—sight of the disproportion between the purity of the human, soul, and the holiness of the great God with whom she aspires to be united, she could only exclaim again and again, in the depths of her self-annihilation, "O Purity! O Purity! Hide, absorb me in Thee, O mighty Ocean of Purity!" At another time, the same Divine attribute was shown her as a spotless mirror, reflected on which, the least of her infidelities seemed magnified into a mountain. The profound impression of the Sanctity of God thus imparted, so greatly increased her delicacy of conscience, that she reproached herself for her smallest failure, as if it had been a fault of magnitude. She says that her union with God was never interrupted by necessary conversation, even though it might have lasted the whole day, but that if she spoke a useless word, or yielded to a distracting thought, she at once found the interior bond weakened, and received a reproach from conscience. Once, after she had committed an imperfection, an interior voice whispered to her, "If an artist had painted a fine picture, would he be well pleased to see it soiled and stained?" Another time, the same interior monitor asked, "If you had a costly pearl or diamond, would you like to have it thrown into the mud?" The words seemed to give her a new insight into the sanctity of God, and they filled her with unutterable confusion. So profoundly did the love of interior purity strike root in her innocent soul, that she accepted, and even desired the most vigorous punishment for the slightest fault, never admitting the idea that there could be a disproportion.
Her view of the divine presence had now become so habitual, that by a marvellous privilege, it was never interrupted. If duty obliged her to speak with her neighbour, her communication with God was not in consequence suspended. If she wrote, her mind was equally intent on her subject and on her Lord, and as often as she paused to renew the ink in her pen, her heart profited of the momentary interruption, to say a loving word to Him. If the whole world had been present, she says, nothing in it could have distracted her soul. She had received an infused knowledge of the nature of the works of God, their relations with their Maker, and the end of their creation; all therefore served to unite her to, instead of distracting her attention from Him.
To make reparation to the outraged sanctity of God, and to honour the Passion of her Lord, as well as with the specific intention of disposing her soul for the yet unrevealed favour awaiting her, she redoubled the austerities already so rigorous. She allowed herself only as much sleep as was necessary for existence, taking that on the ground, with no covering but a hair-cloth. After a while, the bare floor appeared too luxurious a couch, so she spread a hair-cloth over it, and on that she stretched her weary limbs for a short part of the night. This mortification she looked on as the severest she had ever endured, the weight of the body and the hardness of the boards combining to press the sharp surface into the flesh, so that constant pain permitted only short and broken sleep. A considerable portion of the night was divided between prayer and corporal mortifications. She was familiar with instruments of penance of every kind, and used them with an unsparing hand. Ingenious in devising means of crucifying her senses, she mixed wormwood with her food, and between meals, kept the bitter herb a long time in her mouth, until forbidden, through regard for her health, to continue so mortifying a practice. She succeeded however in so completely destroying the sense of taste, as to be finally unable to distinguish one description of food from another. Many years after she went to Canada, this fact was decidedly ascertained by an unmistakable test. Yet she says she was never ill, but on the contrary, always vigorous, always cheerful, always ready for new mortifications, and so impressed with their value, that she would have counted the day lost, on which she had suffered nothing. In daily Communion, she renewed the strength so severely taxed by her appalling austerities and her fatiguing labours for her neighbour.
That humiliation of mind might keep pace with subjection of the flesh, she one day brought her director a written confession of the sins and imperfections of her whole life with her name affixed, beseeching him after he had read, to attach it to the church door, that all might know the extent of her infidelity to God. Repeated rebuffs from her confessor served only to manifest the sincerity of her humility; she received them with her habitual love of contempt, and although the paper was burned, instead of being exhibited as she desired, her fidelity to inspiration was rewarded by a new flood of graces. Among the rest, she learned by revelation the exact nature of the celestial favour previously promised only in general terms, our Lord condescending to intimate to her explicitly, that she was destined for that highest degree of divine union, accorded, as we have just seen, only to a privileged few even of the saints. Although the wondrous promise was not to be realized for the present, the prospect of its accomplishment at a future day, filled her with holy joy, nerving her at the same time to new efforts for the removal of every obstacle to the consummation of her hopes.
After she had spent three or four years in the house of her brother-in- law in the manner already noticed, Divine Providence permitted that he should open his eyes to her capabilities and his own injustice. By a tardy concession to her merits, he asked her at last, to undertake the management of his affairs, foreseeing that they could not but prosper in her hands. Besides holding the rank of an artillery officer, he was charged with the commissariat of the whole kingdom, and under favour of these two appointments, he embarked in a variety of enterprises which obliged him to maintain a very large establishment; including numerous servants and vehicles. His charitable sister, in undertaking her new duties, still retained the old, from which her heart refused to part, because of their attendant humiliations. She got through all, and satisfied everybody; meantime so perfectly maintaining her union with God, that she seemed like one of those celestial Spirits of whom our Lord declared that "they ever behold the face of the Father in heaven." She tells us that she spent the greater part of the day in a stable which served as a store, and that sometimes she was still on the quay at midnight, sending off, or receiving goods; that her ordinary companions were carters, porters and other workmen; that she had to look after fifty or sixty horses; that during the frequent absences of her brother and sister, she had their personal affairs to attend to in addition to the rest, and still, that as this multiplicity of occupations had been undertaken only from a motive of charity, God permitted that instead of proving an obstacle to the spirit of recollection, it tended on the contrary to nourish and strengthen it. She says that when she found herself so overwhelmed with business as scarcely to know where to begin, she besought our Lord's help, reminding Him that without it, all must remain undone, and the appeal was never made in vain. Looking back in later life to this period, she remarks that the trials and hardships which she had to encounter during her residence with her brother-in-law, were especially arranged by Divine Providence as a most suitable preparation for her future work in Canada.
Sighing for the consummation of the divine union promised her, and ever seeking for some new gem with which to adorn her soul, she resolved to bind herself by vow to the evangelical counsels, adopting as an obligation, what had hitherto been only a voluntary practice, and thus in a manner anticipating the time when she should realize the dearest wish of her heart, by consecrating herself to God in religion. Her vow of obedience regarded her director, her sister, and her brother-in-law, and in its connection with the two last, was attended with difficulties known only to God. As to poverty, she possessed nothing but what was given her by her sister, contenting herself with bare necessaries. The interests of her son, she abandoned to divine Providence, aspiring with her whole heart to that perfect poverty of spirit which desires but God, and is content with Him alone. In recompense of this new proof of love, her generous Master granted her the precious gift of His own divine peace, and to enhance the treasure, He brought it to her Himself, as on another memorable occasion, He had brought it to His apostles. It was not that her soul had hitherto been a stranger to God's peace; on the contrary, in writing many years later of the favour now conferred, she says she had not supposed it possible to enjoy here below a more perfect interior peace than she habitually possessed, but that after our Lord had whispered to her heart, "Peace be to this house,"—so profound, so imperturbable, so transcendent a peace was imparted, that she never for a moment lost it, although her multiplied afflictions might well have shaken it, had it not been steadily anchored on loving conformity to the will of Him who had established His empire in her soul.
The gold of her virtue had been well tried in the crucible of tribulation, but as yet, it had not been subjected to the fiery ordeal of temptation; through this, for its more entire refinement it was now to pass. All at once her ordinary enjoyment of her spiritual exercises was succeeded by utter disinclination. The sweetness and patience which had scarcely cost her an effort in her intercourse with her neighbour, gave place to a sensitiveness and irritability which would have caused her many faults if she had not been closely and constantly on her guard. Her childlike submission to her director appear intolerable yoke; her dependence on her sister a positive degradation. The humiliations so freely embraced, and so long and dearly prized, seemed in her altered views, inconsistent with self-respect. The corporal penances hitherto lightened and sweetened by the unction of Divine love, now assumed their worst sharpness, and excited her strongest repugnance. Importunate scruples were added to temptation, and while thus violently assailed on many sides, she seemed not to receive light or comfort from any. Her only support in these terrible interior trials was in the remembrance of God's promise "to be with those who are in tribulation" (Ps. xc. 15), and truly He was with hers in hers, and by His almighty grace brought her so triumphantly through them, that amidst her complicated sufferings, she never failed in her fidelity to her Lord; never omitted the smallest duty or fell into the slightest impatience. He who does not permit His creatures to be tried beyond their strength, granted her relief when she least expected it. In the restored light, she clearly saw that the object of the tempter had been to lure her from the path of perfection to which God had called her, and on which, as we have seen, she had already made gigantic strides; and she discovered with equal distinctness that the ordeal through which she had passed was a necessary preparation for the higher graces to come. By her example on this occasion, as well as by her subsequent instructions, she teaches that however strong may be the pressure of temptation, however impenetrable the darkness of aridity, the afflicted soul should not omit any of her accustomed exercises, whether of obligation or of mere devotion, or lose her trust in that divine grace which never deserts her in her conflicts, but powerfully, though perhaps imperceptibly supports her in every difficulty.