|
Before I begin to speak of the fourth Mansions, it
is most necessary that I should do what I have
already done -- namely, commend myself to the Holy
Spirit, and beg Him from this point onward to speak
for me, so that you may understand what I shall say
about the Mansions still to be treated.
For we now begin to touch the supernatural[77] and
this is most difficult to explain unless His Majesty
takes it in hand, as He did when I described as much
as I understood of the subject, about fourteen years
ago.[78] Although I think I have now a little more
light upon these favours which the Lord grants to
some souls, it is a different thing to know how to
explain them. May His Majesty undertake this if there
is any advantage to be gained from its being done,
but not otherwise.
As these Mansions are now getting near to the place
where the King dwells, they are of great beauty and
there are such exquisite things to be seen and
appreciated in them that the understanding is
incapable of describing them in any way accurately
without being completely obscure to those devoid of
experience. But any experienced person will
understand quite well, especially if his experience
has been considerable. It seems that, in order to
reach these Mansions, one must have lived for a long
time in the others; as a rule one must have been in
those which we have just described, but there is no
infallible rule about it, as you must often have
heard, for the Lord gives when He wills and as He
wills and to whom He wills, and, as the gifts are His
own, this is doing no injustice to anyone.
Into these Mansions poisonous creatures seldom enter,
and, if they do, they prove quite harmless -- in fact
they do the soul good. I think in this state of
prayer it is much better for them to enter and make
war upon the soul, for, if it had no temptations, the
devil might mislead it with regard to the
consolations which God gives, and do much more harm
than he can when it is being tempted. The soul, too,
would not gain so much, for it would be deprived of
all occasions of merit and be living in a state of
permanent absorption. When a soul is continuously in
a condition of this kind I do not consider it at all
safe, nor do I think it possible for the Spirit of
the Lord to remain in a soul continuously in this way
during our life of exile.
Returning to what I was saying I would describe here
-- namely, the difference between sweetness in prayer
and spiritual consolations -- it seems to me that we
may describe as sweetness what we get from our
meditations and from petitions made to Our Lord. This
proceeds from our own nature, though, of course, God
plays a part in the process (and in everything I say
you must understand this, for we can do nothing
without Him). This spiritual sweetness arises from
the actual virtuous work which we perform, and we
think we have acquired it by our labours. We are
quite right to feel satisfaction[79] at having worked
in such a way. But, when we come to think of it, the
same satisfaction[80] can be derived from numerous
things that may happen to us here on earth. When, for
example, a person suddenly acquires some valuable
property; or equally suddenly meets a person whom he
dearly loves; or brings some important piece of
business or some other weighty matter to a successful
conclusion, so that everyone speaks well of him; or
when a woman has been told that her husband or
brother or son is dead and he comes back to her
alive. I have seen people shed tears over some great
joy[81]; sometimes, in fact, I have done so myself.
It seems to me that the feelings[82] which come to us
from Divine things are as purely natural as these,
except that their source is nobler, although these
worldly joys are in no way bad. To put it briefly,
worldly joys have their source in our own nature and
end in God, whereas spiritual consolations have their
source in God, but we experience them in a natural
way and enjoy them as much as we enjoy those I have
already mentioned, and indeed much more. Oh, Jesus!
How I wish I could make myself clear about this! For
I think I can see a very marked difference between
these two things and yet I am not clever enough to
make my meaning plain: may the Lord explain it for
me!
I have just remembered a verse which we say at the
end of the last psalm at Prime. The last words of the
verse are Cum dilatasti cor meum.83 To anyone who has
much experience, this will suffice to explain the
difference between the two; though, to anyone who has
not, further explanation is necessary. The spiritual
sweetness which has been described does not enlarge
the heart; as a rule, it seems to oppress it
somewhat. The soul experiences a great happiness[84]
when it realizes what it is doing for God's sake; but
it sheds a few bitter tears which seem in some way to
be the result of passion[85]. I know little about
these passions of the soul; if I knew more, perhaps I
could make the thing clear, and explain what proceeds
from sensuality and what from our own nature. But I
am very stupid; I could explain this state if only I
could understand my own experience of it. Knowledge
and learning are a great help in everything.
My own experience of this state -- I mean of these
favours and this sweetness in meditation -- was that,
if I began to weep over the Passion, I could not stop
until I had a splitting headache; and the same thing
happened when I wept for my sins. This was a great
grace granted me by Our Lord, and I will not for the
moment examine each of these favours and decide which
is the better of the two; I wish, however, that I
could explain the difference between them. In the
state I am now describing, the tears and longings
sometimes arise partly from our nature and from the
state of preparedness we are in;[86] but
nevertheless, as I have said, they eventually lead
one to God. And this is an experience to be greatly
prized, provided the soul be humble, and can
understand that it does not make it any the more
virtuous; for it is impossible to be sure that these
feelings are effects of love, and, even so, they are
a gift of God.
Most of the souls which dwell in the Mansions
already described are familiar with these feelings of
devotion, for they labour with the understanding
almost continuously, and make use of it in their
meditations. They are right to do this, because
nothing more has been given them; they would do well,
however, to spend short periods in making various
acts, and in praising God and rejoicing in His
goodness and in His being Who He is, and in desiring
His honour and glory. They should do this as well as
they can, for it goes a long way towards awakening
the will. But, when the Lord gives them this other
grace, let them be very careful not to reject it for
the sake of finishing their customary meditation.
As I have written about this at great length
elsewhere,[87] I will not repeat it here. I only want
you to be warned that, if you would progress a long
way on this road and ascend to the Mansions of your
desire, the important thing is not to think much, but
to love much; do, then, whatever most arouses you to
love. Perhaps we do not know what love is: it would
not surprise me a great deal to learn this, for love
consists, not in the extent of our happiness, but in
the firmness of our determination to try to please
God in everything, and to endeavour, in all possible
ways, not to offend Him, and to pray Him ever to
advance the honour and glory of His Son and the
growth of the Catholic Church. Those are the signs of
love; do not imagine that the important thing is
never to be thinking of anything else and that if
your mind becomes slightly distracted all is lost.
I have sometimes been terribly oppressed by this
turmoil of thoughts and it is only just over four
years ago that I came to understand by experience
that thought (or, to put it more clearly,
imagination[88]) is not the same thing as
understanding. I asked a learned man about this and
he said I was right, which gave me no small
satisfaction. For, as the understanding is one of the
faculties of the soul, I found it very hard to see
why it was sometimes so timid[89]; whereas thoughts,
as a rule, fly so fast that only God can restrain
them; which He does by uniting us in such a way that
we seem in some sense to be loosed from this
body.[90] It exasperated me[91] to see the faculties
of the soul, as I thought, occupied with God and
recollected in Him, and the thought, on the other
hand, confused and excited.
O Lord, do Thou remember how much we have to suffer
on this road through lack of knowledge! The worst of
it is that, as we do not realize we need to know more
when we think about Thee, we cannot ask those who
know; indeed we have not even any idea what there is
for us to ask them. So we suffer terrible trials
because we do not understand ourselves; and we worry
over what is not bad at all, but good, and think it
very wrong. Hence proceed the afflictions of many
people who practise prayer, and their complaints of
interior trials -- especially if they are unlearned
people -- so that they become melancholy, and their
health declines, and they even abandon prayer
altogether, because they fail to realize that there
is an interior world close at hand.
Just as we cannot stop the movement of the
heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we
cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the
faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost,
and have misused the time that we are spending in the
presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly
united with Him in the Mansions very near His
presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of
the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild
and venomous creatures and from this suffering
winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must
not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make
us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come
from the fact that we do not understand ourselves.
As I write this, the noises in my head are so loud
that I am beginning to wonder what is going on in
it.[92] As I said at the outset, they have been
making it almost impossible for me to obey those who
commanded me to write. My head sounds just as if it
were full of brimming rivers, and then as if all the
water in those rivers came suddenly rushing downward;
and a host of little birds seem to be whistling, not
in the ears, but in the upper part of the head, where
the higher part of the soul is said to be; I have
held this view for a long time, for the spirit seems
to move upward with great velocity. Please God I may
remember to explain the cause of this when I am
writing of the later Mansions: here it does not fit
in well. I should not be surprised to know that the
Lord has been pleased to send me this trouble in my
head so that I may understand it better, for all this
physical turmoil is no hindrance either to my prayer
or to what I am saying now, but the tranquillity and
love in my soul are quite unaffected, and so are its
desires and clearness of mind.
But if the higher part of the soul is in the upper
part of the head, how is it that it experiences no
disturbance? That I do not know, but I do know that
what I say is true. I suffer when my prayer is not
accompanied by suspension of the faculties, but, when
the faculties are suspended, I feel no pain until the
suspension is over; it would be a terrible thing if
this obstacle forced me to give up praying
altogether. It is not good for us to be disturbed by
our thoughts or to worry about them in the slightest;
for if we do not worry and if the devil is
responsible for them they will cease, and if they
proceed, as they do, from the weakness which we
inherit from the sin of Adam, and from many other
weaknesses, let us have patience and bear everything
for the love of God. Similarly we are obliged to eat
and sleep, and we cannot escape from these
obligations, though they are a great burden to us.
Let us recognize our weakness in these respects and
desire to go where nobody will despise us. I
sometimes recall words I have heard, spoken by the
Bride in the Canticles,[93] and really I believe
there is no point in our lives at which they can more
properly be used, for I do not think that all the
scorn and all the trials which we may have to suffer
in this life can equal these interior battles. Any
unrest and any strife can be borne, as I have already
said, if we find peace where we live; but if we would
have rest from the thousand trials which afflict us
in the world and the Lord is pleased to prepare such
rest for us, and yet the cause of the trouble is in
ourselves, the result cannot but be very painful,
indeed almost unbearable. For this causes Lord, do
Thou take us to a place where these weaknesses, which
sometimes seem to be making sport of the soul, do not
cause us to be despised. Even in this life the Lord
will free the soul from this, when it has reached the
last Mansion, as, if it please God, we shall explain.
These weaknesses will not give everyone so much
trouble, or assail everyone as violently, as for many
years they troubled and assailed me. For I was a
wicked person and it seemed as though I were trying
to take vengeance on myself. As it has been such a
troublesome thing for me, it may perhaps be so for
you as well, so I am just going to describe it, first
in one way and then in another, hoping that I may
succeed in making you realize how necessary it is, so
that you may not grow restless and distressed. The
clacking old mill must keep on going round and we
must grind our own flour: neither the will nor the
understanding must cease working.
This trouble will sometimes be worse, and sometimes
better, according to our health and according to the
times and seasons. The poor soul may not be to blame
for this, but it must suffer none the less, for, as
we shall commit other faults, it is only right that
we should have patience. And as we are so ignorant
that what we read and are advised -- namely, that we
should take no account of these thoughts -- is not
sufficient to teach us, it does not seem to me a
waste of time if I go into it farther and offer you
some consolation about it; though this will be of
little help to you until the Lord is pleased to give
us light. But it is necessary (and His Majesty's
will) that we should take proper measures and learn
to understand ourselves, and not blame our souls for
what is the work of our weak imagination and our
nature and the devil.
|
