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We speak with a singular propriety of a man's death
in our French tongue, for we call it an overpassing (trespas)
and the dead the overpassers, intimating that death
amongst men is but a passing over from one life to
another, and that to die is no other thing but to
overpass the confines of this mortal life, to enter
the immortal.
True it is, our will can no more die
than our soul, yet does it sometimes go out of the
limits of its ordinary life, to live wholly in the
Divine will. This is when it neither wills nor cares
to desire any thing at all, but gives itself over
totally and without reserve to the good pleasure of
the Divine Providence, so mingling and saturating
itself with this good pleasure, that itself is seen
no more, but is all hidden with Jesus Christ in God,
where it lives, not it, but the will of God lives in
it.
What becomes of the light of the stars when the sun
appears on our horizon? Certainly it perishes not,
but it is ravished into and absorbed in the sun's
sovereign light, with which it is happily mingled and
allied; and what becomes of man's will when it is
entirely delivered up to God's pleasure? It does not
altogether perish, yet is it so lost and dispersed in
the will of God that it appears not, and has no other
will than the will of God.
Consider, Theotimus, the
glorious and never sufficiently praised S. Louis,
embarking and setting sail for beyond seas: and see
the queen, his dear wife, embarking with his majesty.
Now if any one had asked of this brave princess:
Madam, whither are you going? She would without doubt
have replied, I go whither the king goes. - And if
further asked: But do you know, Madam, whither the
king goes? She would also have made answer: He told
me in general; however, I care not for knowing, I
only desire to accompany him. - And if one had
replied: Why then, Madam, you have no design in this
journey? No, would she have said, I have none, except
to be with my
dear sovereign and husband. - Well then, it might
have been said to her, he goes into Egypt to pass
into Palestine; he will stay at Damietta, Acre, and
many places besides, do not you intend, Madam, to go
thither also?
To this she would have made answer: No,
in truth, I have no intention save only to keep
myself near my king; as for the places whither he
goes, they are all indifferent to me, and of no
consideration whatever, except so far as he will be
in them; for I have no affection for anything but the
king's presence: it is therefore the king that goes,
it is he that designs the journey, but, as for me, I
do not go, I only follow: I desire not the journey,
but solely the presence of the king; the staying, the
journeying, and all their circumstances being utterly
indifferent to me.
Surely if we ask some servant who is in his master's
train whither he is going, he ought not to answer
that he is going to such a place, but simply that he
follows his master, for he goes nowhere of his own
accord, but at his master's pleasure only.
In like
manner, Theotimus, a will perfectly resigned to God's
should have no will of its own, but simply follow
that of God. And as he who is on ship does not move
by his own motion, but leaves himself to be moved by
the motion of the vessel in which he is, so the heart
that is embarked in the Divine pleasure, ought to
have no other will than that of permitting itself to
be conducted by the Divine will. And then the heart
does not as before say: Thy will be done, not mine: -
for there is now no will to be renounced; but it
utters these words: Lord I commend my will into thy
hands, - even as though it had not its will at its
own disposition, but at the disposition of the Divine
Providence.
So that it is not exactly as with
servants who follow their masters, for, in their
case, although the journey be undertaken at their
master's pleasure, yet their following comes from
their own particular will, though a will following
and serving, submitted and subjected to, that of
their master: so that as the master and servant are
two, the will of the master and the will of the
servant are also two.
But the will which is dead to
herself that she may live in that of God, is without
any particular will, remaining not only in conformity
and subjection, but quite annihilated in herself, and
cemented into God's, as one might
speak of a little child who has not yet got the use
of his will to love or desire anything save the bosom
and face of his dear mother.
For he does not think of
willing to be on one side or on the other, or of
anything else, except only to be in the arms of his
mother, with whom he thinks himself to be one thing.
He never troubles himself as to how he shall conform
his will to his mother's, for he perceives not his
own, nor does he think he has any, leaving all the
care to his mother, to go, to do, and to will, what
she judges profitable for him.
It is truly the highest perfection of our will to be
thus united to that of our sovereign good, as was
that saint's who said: O Lord, thou hast conducted
and led me at thy will.(1) For what did he mean but
that he had made no use of his will to conduct
himself, letting himself simply be led and guided by
that of God.
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