To Sister Charlotte-Elizabeth Bourcier de Monthureux. Explanation of certain trials. Direction. Nancy, 1734.
My dear Sister,
As long as you continue abandoning yourself to God as you
are doing at present, I assure you in His name that He will
never abandon you. The experiences of the past and the
present are your guarantee for the future. I acknowledge that
the path by which our Lord conducts you is very hard to nature;
but, besides the fact that He is the Master, He allows you
to reflect from time to time on the advantages and security of
this way, also to consider its necessity. It is the usual way by
which God conducts His chosen spouses to the perfection He
destines them to attain; and I have known very few whom He has
not judged it necessary to guide along this path when they give
themselves up entirely to Him. Why then are there such painful
states? Why this heaviness of heart which takes the pleasure out
of everything? and this depression which makes life insupportable?
Why? It is to destroy, in those souls destined to a perfect
union with God, a certain base of hidden presumption; to
Self-love is like a many-headed hydra, and its heads have to be cut off successively. It has many lives that have to be destroyed one after the other if one wishes to be completely delivered. You have, doubtless, obtained a great advantage by making it die to nature and the senses; but do not dream that you are entirely set free from its obsessions. It recovers from this first defeat and renews its attacks on another ground. More subtle in future, it begins again on that which is sensible in devotion; and it is to be feared that this second attempt, apparently much less crude, and more justifiable than its preecessor, is also much more powerful. Nevertheless, pure love cannot put up with the one any more than with the other. God cannot suffer sensible consolations to share a heart that belongs to Him. What then will happen? If less privileged souls are in question, for whom God has not such a jealous love, He allows them a peaceful enjoyment of these holy pleasures, and contents Himself with the sacrifice they have made of the pleasures of sense. This is, in fact, the ordinary course with devout persons, whose piety is somewhat mixed with a certain amount of self-seeking. Assuredly God does not approve of their defects; but, as they have received fewer graces, He is less exacting in the matter of perfection. These are the ordinary spouses of an inferior rank, whose beauty needs not to be so irreproachable, for they have not the power to wound His divine heart so keenly; but He has far other requirements, as He has quite other designs with regard to His chosen spouses. The jealousy of His love equals its tenderness. Desiring to give Himself entirely to them, He wishes also to possess their whole heart without division. Therefore He would not be satisfied with the exterior crosses and pains which detach from creatures but desires to detach them from themselves, and to destroy in them to the last fibre that self-love which is rooted in feelings of devotion, is supported and nourished by them, and finds its satisfaction in them. To effect this second death He withdraws all consolation, all pleasure, all interior help, insomuch that the poor soul finds itself as though suspended between Heaven and earth, without the consolations of the one, nor the comforts of the other. For a human being who cannot exist without pleasure and without love, this seems a sort of annihilation. Nothing then remains for him but to attach himself--not with the heart which no longer feels anything, but with the essence of the soul--to God alone, whom he knows and perceives by bare faith in an obscure manner. Oh! it is then that the soul, perfectly purified by this two-fold death, enters into a spiritual alliance with God, and possesses Him in the pure delights of purified love; which never could have been the case if its spiritual taste had not been doubly purified.
But this carries me too far. Let us return to your letter.What a number of false steps! you say. But do you not know the remedy? To humble yourself gently, rise again, and to take courage. "But," you add, "I do this with so much repugnance, trouble, weariness, and sadness." This is precisely what increases the merit, and makes you acquire solid virtue, because it is only by gaining it at the point of the sword that it is so, says St. Francis of Sales. "Our surroundings are very depressing." I understand that perfectly, and it is precisely on this account that God attacks your heart in its weakest point. "Indeed, my daughter," said St. Francis of Sales, "this is to gain it all for Himself, this poor heart." Well then, give it to Him, at first, perhaps, against your inclination, but later more amiably, when that grace that He has taken away, which was so sweet and alluring, returns again but without being felt. "But I am not sure that I do love, all that I know is that I try to love." Well, that is all that God requires of you. It is a received axiom in theology that God never refuses grace to him who does all that is in his power to acquire it. Try then to love Him, and if these efforts are not the fruit of love, they will obtain for you the grace of charity. God already gives you a great favour in inspiring you with the desire to love Him. Some day, I hope, He will lead you further, and satisfy this desire. Say to yourself, "I should be consoled, even overwhelmed with consolation if I felt towards God what I try to feel, but at present God wishes to take from me all interior consolation, to make me die the second death which should precede that completely supernatural and divine life of His Holy Spirit, of His grace and pure love."
Now I come to a beautiful part of your letter which rejoices
my heart before God. You say; "I should like, very humbly,
to remonstrate, but instead I will remain on my cross through
obedience even if I have to die there." Here indeed the good
God gives and inspires you with a great courage. He holds
you, therefore, always in His hand; what have you to fear?
No, you will not die of it, my dear daughter, except only by a
spiritual death more precious than any earthly life. "Yes,"
you add, "but all the same I should be very glad and much