What! Can that which is called the will of God work me harm? Shall I fear, shall I fly from the will of God? Ah! where shall I go to find something more profitable if I fear the divine action and resist the effect of the divine will?
How faithfully we should listen to the words which are each moment uttered in the depths of our hearts! If our senses, our reason, hear not, penetrate not the truth and wisdom of these words, is it not because of their incapacity to divine eternal truths? Should I be surprised that a mystery disconcerts reason? God speaks; it is a mystery; therefore it is death to the senses and reason, for it is the nature of mysteries to immolate to themselves sense and reason. Through faith mystery becomes the life of the heart, to all else it is contradiction. The divine action killeth while it quickeneth; the more we feel death the firmer our faith that it will give life; the more obscure the mystery, the more light it contains. Hence it is that the simple soul finds nothing more divine than that which is least so externally. The life of faith wholly consists in this constant struggle against the senses.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
The Revelation of the Present Moment is the more Profitable that it is addressed Directly to us.
We are only truly instructed by the words which God pronounces expressly for us. It is neither by books nor curious research that we become learned in the science of God: these means of themselves give us but a vain knowledge, which only serves to confuse us and inflate us with pride.
That which really instructs us is all that comes to us by the order of God from one moment to another: this is the knowledge of experience, which Christ Himself was pleased to acquire before teaching. It was indeed the only knowledge in which, according to the words of the Gospel, He could grow; for as God there was no degree of speculative knowledge which He did not possess. But if this knowledge was needful to the Incarnate Word Himself, it is absolutely necessary for us if we would speak to the hearts of those whom God sends to us.
We only know perfectly that which we have learned by experience through suffering and action. This is the school of the Holy Spirit, who utters the words of life to the heart; and all that we say to others should come from this source. Whatsoever we read, whatsoever we see, becomes divine science only through the fecundity, the virtue, the light, which the possession of this experience gives. Without this science all our learning is like unleavened dough, lacking the salt and seasoning of experience; the mind is filled with crude, unfledged ideas; and we are like the dreamer who, knowing all the highways of the world, misses the path to his own home.
Therefore we have only to listen to God’s voice from moment to moment if we would learn the science of the saints, which is all practice and experience.
Heed not what is said to others; listen only to what is uttered for you and to you: you will find therein sufficient to exercise your faith, for this hidden language of God by its very obscurity exercises, purifies, and increases your faith.