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Section 2 - The most perfect way.
In this state the soul is
guided by the divine action through every kind of obscurity.
When the soul is moved by the divine
influence, it forsakes all works, practices, methods, means,
books, ideas, and spiritual persons in order to be guided by God
alone by abandoning itself to that moving power which becomes the
sole source of its perfection.
It remains in His hands like all the
saints, understanding that the divine action alone can guide it in
the right path, and that if it were to seek other means it would
inevitably go astray in that unknown country which God compels it
to traverse. It is, therefore, the action of God which guides and
conducts souls by ways which it alone understands.
It is, with these souls, like the changes
of the wind. The direction is only known in the present moment,
and the effects follow their causes by
the will of God, which is only explained by these effects because
it acts in these souls and makes them act either by hidden
undoubted instincts, or by the duties of their state. This is all
the spirituality they know; these are their visions and
revelations, this is the whole of their wisdom and counsel
insomuch that nothing is ever wanting to them. Faith makes them
certain that what they do is well, whether they read, speak, or
write; and if they take counsel it is only to be able to
distinguish more clearly the divine action. All this is laid down
for them and they receive it like the rest, beholding beneath
these things the divine motive power and not fastening on the
things presented, but using or leaving them, always leaning by
faith on the infallible, unruffled, immutable and ever efficacious
action of God at each moment.
This they perceive and enjoy in all
things, the least as well as the greatest, for it is entirely at
their service at every moment. Thus they make use of things not
because they have any confidence in them, or for their own sake,
but in submission to the divine ordinance, and to that interior
operation which, even under contrary appearances, they discover
with equal facility and certitude. Their life, therefore, is
spent, not in investigations or desires, weariness or sighs, but
in a settled assurance of being in the most perfect way.
Every state of body or soul, and whatever happens interiorly or
exteriorlv as revealed at each moment to these souls is, to them,
the fulness of the divine action, and the fulness of their joy.
Created things are, to them, nothing but misery and dearth; the
only true and lust measure is in the working of the divine action.
Thus, if it take away thoughts, words, books, food, persons,
health, even life itself, it is exactly the same as if it did the
contrary. The soul loves the divine action and finds it equally
sanctifying under whatever shape it presents itself. It does not
reason about the way it acts; it suffices for its approval that
whatever comes is from this source.
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