In all things, therefore, we must love God and His order; we must love it as it is presented to us without desiring more. It is for God, not for us, to determine the objects of our submission, and what He sends is best for the soul. What a grand epitome of spirituality is this maxim of pure and absolute self-abandonment to the will of God! Self-abandonment, that continual forgetfulness of self which leaves the soul free to eternally love and obey God, untroubled by those fears, reflections, regrets, and anxieties which the care of one’s own perfection and salvation gives! Since God offers to take upon Himself the care of our affairs, let us once for all abandon them to His infinite wisdom, that we may never more be occupied with aught but Him and His interests.
Arise, then, my soul; let us walk with uplifted head above all that is passing about us and within us, ever content with God—content with what He does with us, and with what He gives us to do. Let us beware of imprudently falling a prey to those numerous disquieting reflections which, like so many tangled labyrinths, entrap the mind into useless, endless wanderings. Let us avoid this snare of self-love by springing over it, and not by following its interminable windings.
Onward, my soul, through weariness, sickness, dryness, infirmities of temper, weakness of mind, snares of the devil and of men, their suspicions, jealousies, evil thoughts, and prejudices! Let us soar like the eagle above all these clouds, our eyes fixed upon the Sun of Justice, and its rays which are our obligations. Doubtless we may feel these trials; it does not depend upon us to be insensible to them. But let us remember that our life is not a life of sentiment. Let us live in this superior part of the soul where God and His will work out for us an ever uniform, equable, immutable eternity. In this wholly spiritual dwelling where the Uncreated, the Ineffable, the Infinite holds the soul immeasurably separated from all shadows and created atoms, reigns perpetual calm, even though the senses be the prey of tempests. We have learned to rise above the senses; their restlessness, their disquiet, their comings and goings, and their hundred transformations disturb us no more than the clouds which darken the sky for a moment and disappear. We know that in the region of the senses all things are like the wind, without sequence or order, in continual vicissitude. God’s will forms the eternal charm of the heart in the state of faith, just as in the state of glory it shall constitute its true happiness; and this glorious state of the heart will influence the whole material being at present a prey to terrors and temptations. Under these appearances, however terrible they may be, the action of God, giving to the material being a facility wholly divine, will cause it to shine like the sun; for the faculties of the sensitive soul and those of the body are prepared here below like gold, iron, flax, and stone. And like these different substances they will attain the purity and splendor of their form only after they have passed through many processes and suffered loss and destruction. All that we endure here below at the hand of God is intended as a preparation for our future state.
The faithful soul who knows the secret of God’s ways dwells in perfect peace; and all that transpires within her, so far from alarming, only reassures her. Intimately convinced that it is God who guides her, she accepts everything as a grace, and lives wholly forgetful of self, the object upon which God labors, that she may think only of the work committed to her care. Her love unceasingly animates the courage which enables her to faithfully and carefully fulfil her obligations.
Except the sins of a self-abandoned soul, which are light, and even converted to her good by the divine will, there is nothing distinctly manifest in her but the action of grace. And this action is distinctly manifest in all those painful or consoling impressions by means of which the divine will unceasingly works the soul’s good. I use the term “distinctly manifest,” for of all that transpires within the soul, these impressions are what it best distinguishes. To find God under all these appearances is the great art of faith; to make everything a means of uniting one’s self with God is the exercise of faith.
[CHAPTER II.]
The more God seems to withdraw Light from the Soul abandoned to His Direction, the more Safely He guides Her.
It is particularly in souls wholly abandoned to God that the words of St. John are accomplished: You have no need that any man teach you; but as His unction teacheth you of all things. To know what God asks of them, they have but to consult this unction, to sound the heart, to heed its voice; it interprets the will of God according to their present needs. For the divine action disguised reveals its designs, not by thoughts, but by intuition. It manifests them to the soul either by necessity, leaving it but the one present course to choose, or by a first impulse, a sort of supernatural transport which impels to action without reflection, or, finally, by a certain attraction or repulsion which, while leaving the soul perfect liberty, no less attracts it to or withdraws it from objects.
Were we to judge by appearances, it would seem most unwise to thus pursue a course so uncertain; a course of conduct in which, according to ordinary rules, we find nothing stable, uniform, or regular. It is nevertheless at bottom the highest state of virtue, and one which usually is only attained after long exercise therein. The virtue of this state is virtue in all its purity; in fact, it is perfection. The soul is like a musician who to long practice unites great knowledge of music; he is so full of his art that, without any effort, all that he does therein is perfection; and if his compositions be examined, they will be found in perfect conformity with prescribed rules. One is convinced that he will never succeed better than when he acts without restraint, untrammelled by rules which fetter genius when too scrupulously followed; and his impromptus, like so many masterpieces, are the admiration of connoisseurs.
Thus the soul, after long exercise in the science and practice of perfection under the empire of reason and the methods with which she aids grace, insensibly forms a habit of acting in all things by divine instinct. Such a soul seems to intuitively accept as best the first duty that presents itself, without resorting to the reasoning which she formerly found necessary.