LETTER VI.--Fear Caused by Self-Love.
To Sister Marie-Henriette de Mahuet (1731). How the fear
of displeasing God may be caused by self-love.
My dear Sister,
On re-reading your letter to which I have not been able to
reply sooner, I remarked two things in it: many graces of God,
and many very evident marks of self-love. Your pain and distress are,
you say, made worse by your uneasiness. Pain and
distress are graces from God which serve to purify and to elevate
the soul; uneasiness is an effect of self-love which is agitated
and complaining under this interior cross by which God desires
to put an end to it in order that you may live a new life in Him.
You experience a miserable inability to make your mind act,
so that all reasoning and reflexion are a weariness to you.
Another sign that God would have you feel that He wishes to do
away with your own petty and miserable operations and to substitute
the divine operation without which your progress would
be very slow and painful. But, at the same time you are very
much afraid of wasting time. Another effect of self-love always
seeking for certainty on which to place reliance, while God wills
you to rely entirely upon Him. Books and directors say enough
to reassure you completely as concerns those foolish fears of
wasting time, suggested by self-love or the devil, in the position
you hold. You always feel confused and in a state of abstraction
that makes you seem stupid, and on account of this you believe
yourself to be under an illusion. God grant that it may not be a
mistake to believe that you are in that state of abstraction which
is one of the greatest graces that God could bestow on a soul. If
you are actually, as you say, in this state I congratulate you; far
from being an illusion, what you call abstraction can be nothing
else but a profound recollection leading to everything good by the
constant feeling of the presence of God, and by an intimate union
already formed, or about to be formed in your soul. You are in
great peace: another grace; but you do not dare to think so another
effect of self-love. Do you not know that the solid peace
established by God in a soul subject to trials, is always without
sensible sweetness? and besides, does not God necessarily
deprive a soul of sensible sweetness when it would only make use
of it to nourish its self-love? Could He do us a greater favour
than to kill this domestic enemy by depriving it of its most
essential sustenance, such as sensible spiritual sweetness. It
would indeed be very unjust to complain of this God of infinite
mercy, Who alone knows how to purify your soul, a thing you
would never have been able to do yourself. Your very complaints
prove that you would never have had the courage to put an
end to your self-love which alone impedes the reign of divine
love in your heart. Bless our Lord then for sparing you the
trouble and because He only asks you to allow Him a free hand
to accomplish this work in you. You fear, you say, that your
past unfaithfulness may prevent the operations of God in your
soul. No, my dear Sister, neither your past infidelities, nor yet
your present miseries, darkness, and weakness ought to terrify
you. The only obstacles to the divine operations are your want
of submission and your voluntary annoyance in times of spiritual
poverty, obscurity and weakness. Poverty, darkness and weakness
patiently endured without anxiety would, on the contrary,
only facilitate the divine action. You have nothing to fear
but your own fears. However, if you wish to know how you
ought to act during these interior trials I will tell you. You ought
to keep an attitude of peaceful silent waiting, submissive, and
entirely abandoned to the divine will, as one would wait under shelter
until the storm had passed, leaving to God the task of
calming the elements let loose. The difference between outward
and inward storms is that patience in the former case could
not prevent the greatest disasters resulting, while in the latter
case it would produce the greatest good in the soul.
Your excessive fears about your past confessions are another
result of self-love which desires certainty about everything.
God, on the contrary, wills that we should be deprived of the
absolute certitude so pleasing to our self-love. We must then
make a sacrifice of it to our sovereign Master Who has willed it
so to keep us in humiliation and complete dependence. When
you do violence to yourself you imagine that it does not please
God on account of the imperfection of your interior dispositions.
Another very dangerous illusion of the devil by which he hopes
either to prevent you from doing good, or else to throw you into
a state of uneasiness and trouble after having done so. In the
one case, as in the other, he would deprive you of a great deal
Of your merit. Do not, I beg of you, be trapped in such a
palpable snare.
What causes me pleasure is, that in spite of mistakes caused by
your inexperience I find in your soul, by the grace of God, the
two dispositions most essential to the divine operations, namely,
a firm resolution to belong to God without reserve whatever it
may cost you, and a firm and constant will to avoid the smallest
deliberate fault. Persevere in these dispositions, keep more
on your guard than you have done hitherto against the secret
seekings of self-love, and you will find that the reign of God will
be re-established within you.
