Book I. Dialogue V: The imperceptibility of our acts: the soul begins, by means of the prayer of pure faith, to distinguish intellectual acts from acts of the senses

I

Q. How is it that our acts both good and bad often escape our consciousness ?

A. These are, in general, the six causes to which Bossuet attributes this i¹

(i) An act may escape us when it is so delicate that it makes no impression, or such a slight one that we forget it, for it is then as if it had never been produced.

(ii) There may be acts so spiritual and intellectual, or at any rate so rapid, that they leave no trace in the brain, as if they were a wave that disappeared in the midst of the water.

(iii) A great wandering and inattention of the mind brings to us a thousand thoughts which are taken from us as soon as they are born;

(iv) The opposite disposition, that is to say a vehement occupation of the mind in one direction, makes whatever slips in from any other escape us; the same thing happens in fervour, in the transports of Prayer, when by a sort of ravishment a soul is carried away by its desires and no longer possesses itself;

(v) The same thing occurs when there is a violent combat of our thoughts in our interior, and they divide our soul so much that we do not know to which we yield, as often happens in the case of temptations which we shall discuss in due course.

DIALOGUEV 45

(vi) Lastly (he continues), what is most important, our acts often escape us by their very simplicity.

Q. How could this happen at the very time when one was performing simple and direct acts ?

A. This arises, says the Bishop of Meau x,² from our scanty knowledge of the very principle of these spiritual acts, which is our soul.

Q. How is it that our souls know themselves so little ?

A. This (he continues) is because our soul, enveloping itself continuously in the sensible images with which it is filled and penetrated, does not distinguish itself from the body, knowing itself only through a confused feeling, by consciousness, one might say: as a necessary result what it knows least are its intellectual acts and movements, for this reason; that it sees everything through a thick cloud of bodily images conveyed to it continually by the senses, and therefore forms the habit of thinking that nothing is real but what it feels and touches and handles: from which it follows that when it. is applied to the pure intellection which takes place in mystical prayer, it escapes, so to speak, from itself and thinks it is no longer working, whereas it is just beginning to exercise its true and natural functions.

II

Q. How can the soul rise, and how does it actually rise, from this twofold ignorance of itself and its acts ?.

A. Above all by faith and contemplation; for this reason: Bossuet answers: because the soul, finding itself entirely isolated, begins experimentally to disentangle itself from the body, and also learns to separate its intellectual occupations, which are its true actions, from its senses.

Q. How does the soul exercise its intellectual operations in this prayer, and how does it find itself consequently more and more enlightened ? Is it by acquiring new knowledge, more brilliant light, as one does in reading books or in the study of the humane sciences ? i Book V, § 18 and 19.

4^ ON PRAYER

A. No,’ he replies with Cassian, 1 on the contrary, it is by impoverishing herself (an expression, he adds, which is all the better for being taken from the Gospels); by impoverishing herself, I say, by losing the rich substance of all the beautiful conceptions and words with which she accompanied her interior acts: she thus learns to speak the language of the heart. Until one attains to this, one always talks in one s interior a human language, and clothes one’s thoughts in the words one would use in explaining oneself to another. But in pure contemplation one learns to speak so much to God that one retains only the language that he alone understands, which is what we have called the language of the heart: above all in the act of love, which neither can nor wishes to explain itself to God except through itself One tells him of one’s love only by loving him, and at that time the heart speaks to God alone... thought being thus purified of all that made it gross, of human images, expressions and language, the soul enjoys the purest of all goods, that is, God: not only by the purest of its interior faculties, but also by the purest of its acts: and unites itself intimately with truth, more, again, by will than by understanding.

Ill

Q. Before interrupting you with new questions, I should like to know if he said anything else on this subject.

A. Hear how he continues: 2 While advancing always, a sold entirely absorbed by Faith and reduced to pure Faith, which believes in God because he is God, and which, in order to adhere, to the truth, has only need to submit to the authority of tiuth itself; such a soul, reducing itself to pure Faith, at length arrives at that poverty of spirit which caused David to say:

‘ The poor and needy will praise Thee’*.... It enters then truly into the school of the Holy Ghost, into that interior school where the soul is excellently taught by God:... c How far from the senses oj the flesh,’ says S. Augustine, c is this school in which peace and silence reign, this school where God is heard, and the counsel of the heart is kept !... the astonished senses see nothing, and the soul, which has escaped from them,

/o them reduced to nothing —ad nihilum redactus sum et nescivi. 5 ‘ I am reduced to nothing, 5 said David, c and this same nothing, hVzzV/j I find in myself in an interior where God leads me, is impenetrable to me, et nescivi 5: and he continues thus: ‘ I am made like a beast before thee, ut jumentum, without reasoning, without discoursing; all I can say in this state is that I am always with thee, and that in the darkness of the Faith where thou hast plunged me I find only thee —et ego semper tecum. 5

Q. I would like you now to explain to me several things that I do not well understand, especially on this last point. In this school of the Holy Ghost where the soul is excellently taught by God I can see nothing but poverty of spirit, peace, silence, nothing sensible, a soul reduced to nothingness, and an impenetrable nothingness at that; as well as the depths whither one is led, the comparison with an unreasoning beast; a darkness of Faith into which the soul is plunged, and in which the only light it can see is the obscure idea of an incomprehensible God.

A. Believe then if you like that I have more lights than Bossuet, who has always been regarded as one of the greatest men of his time; I cannot tell you more, except to say that it is in these words that all the mystics, both ancient and modern, have explained these things, if I have understood them aright; with this difference, that Bossuet seems to me to do it in a less obscure and confused way, with more order and more consecutively.

Q. How is it, then, that I understand next to nothing of his words ?

A. Because in order to understand the language of mystical theology it is necessary either to have some experience of it, or at least to have made a particular study of it. In this connection I remember the story of a very pious doctor, of great intelligence and a good director, that he sometimes lent to a confrere books in much the same style as you have been hearing; but they returned them almost at once, saying that they were full of unnecessary refinements, that both thoughts and words were too fine spun, and that they were completely incomprehensible: ‘ whereas, 5 this good doctor added, ‘ I know certain simple and ignorant people whose words, views and above all acts made me feel that they understood, that they loved this sort of reading and took pleasure in it as well as making it the rule of their actions. 5

Q. But Bossuet never passed for a great mystic, at least in practice.

A. But besides his great insight, the width of his attainments, do you count for nothing the grace of his ministry, especially at a time when, fighting with all his strength against the new doctrine, he tried to retain the old truths that were being abused ? Besides, if you knew in what Parisian Convent and with whose aid he wrote this Instruction you would not be surprised at his theory in this matter.

Q. But why did he not at least banish these mystical expressions which are so little to the taste of the times ?

A. It is as if you said: ‘ Why did not those who explained scholastic theology exclude certain purely scholastic expressions ? 5 You must know that in everything appertaining to mystical theology it would be even more difficult to banish certain mystical, metaphorical and allegorical expressions which alone facilitate the understanding of such profound, obscure and hidden truths.

Q. And lastly why did he explain that passage in the Gospel where it says: Blessed are the poor in spirit, and the two verses of Psalm lxxii, in the very particular sense which he gives them ?

A. Because apart from the fact that many say this is the literal sense, it is at all events the mystical sense, and he only takes it in this way on the authority of many others.

IV

Q. What is the meaning of his special reference to simple and direct acts of the heart ?

A. Having said³ of all these acts: The most impure and grossest are those which reduce to a formula, although they have their uses for beginners, he continues:⁴ The Psalmist has pushed acts of the heart to their utmost simplicity in these words: ‘ The Lord hath heard the desire of the poor: thy ear hath heard the preparation of their heart.' As soon as he has begun to take the first steps and to get ready to will, before he has time to explain his act to himself God sees it in the bottom of his heart, and hears it from there.

Q. Would you kindly explain to me further this beautiful passage which seems to me so instructive and consoling ?

A. Bossuet did it for us himself, when he continued: 3 The same Psalmist says elsewhere: 4 I said, I will confess against myself my injustice to the Lord. And thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin.' What admirable precision ! exclaims the Bishop of Meaux; I have said, I will confess, I have not yet confessed, I have resolved to do it, I have prepared my heart for this: he does not say; thou wilt forgive, as if God had to await my confession before forgiving my fault, but he says; thou hast forgiven. On our side the future; I will confess: on God y s side the past; thou hast forgiven: God has forgiven before we have finished confessing our faults. I believe, he continues, that David's feeling should be pushed so far as to say that before I have ever formed any words in myself God has already heard the profound resolution of a soul which has determined, before any expression, to recognize and correct its fault. How often does one say within oneself: I will pray, and the prayer is already made. One will be often before God like a beggar, not daring to ask for anything, so unworthy does one deem oneself yet one has already asked by the secret intention of the soul for what one would not dare beg expressly. God sees the fruit beginning in the node, and the prayer in the intention of praying.⁵

(f. There is, then, according to him, no person who cannot pray when he would and as often as he would, for there is no person who cannot form the intention, have the will to do so, and persevere therein, despite all temptations, aridity and involuntary distraction ?

A. Your conclusion is as just and obvious as it is consoling, for all persons of good will. This is what Bossuet calls in his turn praying in the actual disposition of the heart and will alone, which God sees in the inner depths, even when we can neither see nor feel it.

Q. How does he end this beautiful passage?

A. Such are the acts of the heart (he continues ),⁶ that the more one performs them the more the soul purifies and simplifies itself. These acts are concentrated in the heart with charity, which believeth all things, hopeth all things, beareth all things, beseecheth all things and at the proper time develops all those acts which it contains in seed.

V

&• Explain me those last words, for I detect in them some hidden meaning.

A. They mean that although the simple and direct acts which are practised in mystic prayer are acts of that charity which contains fully all that one should believe, hope for, ask, etc.... it is wrong to neglect sometimes to perform explicit and developed acts; it is to this that this same charity does not neglect to

Q. What is his conclusion?

A. The same always: he never ceases from repeating it, for it undermines the very foundations of false mysticism: * We must not,’ he concludes,⁷ ‘suppose in Prayer nor in the exercise of piety a single act which embraces all the others and involves their suppression. Faith, hope and charity are and always will be three things, and their acts are quite distinct, though they are not always distinctly perceived. 3

Q. Why does he add those last words ?

A. For the consolation of certain souls who are always restless, when they do not see the distinction between these three acts, which often perform themselves so to speak all at once, by a simple movement of that charity which believeth all things, hopeth all things, beseecheth all things, as we have just remarked.

(ix) It is likewise an error to think that there exists any one comprehensive act which so completely contains all the others which are expressly commanded by God, that it exempts us from producing them distinctly at the appropriate times; thus one must always be in the disposition to do so.

(x) It may happen that one is at some moments unable to perform certain acts commanded by God, but this cannot last for long.

(xi) The obligation of making acts is sweet, as is their practice, because it is love that imposes them, love that commands their exercise, love which inspires and directs them.

(xii) One must not worry as to their actual practice of these acts, souls which are obviously sincerely disposed to perform them; on the contrary, it must be assumed that they are walking as they should, especially when they are seen to be persevering in virtue; for instead of thwarting souls of good will it is necessary to widen their hearts, whether they are in the common or the extraordinary ways of prayer, which in itself is immaterial; the important thing for all is to be in the order that God wills for them.’

Footnotes

1. Book V, §17. ↩

2. Book V, § 20. 2 Ibid., § 29. 3 Ibid., § 22. ↩

3. It is easy to explain those acts which Christians are com- manded to make, and the best way of carrying them out. Of all these acts the grossest are those which reduce to a formula and which one carries out according to the instructions in books, under such titles as acts of contrition, acts of petition, etc. These acts are very imperfect, and are often merely an amusement of our imagination without anything of them entering into the heart. They have, however, their utility for those who are only beginning to love God: they are a mere outer skin, it is true, but through this skin the good sap runs out; they arc the snow on the corn, which in covering it fattens the earth and feeds the grain: one progresses gradually from them to acts of the heart. (Bossuet, Inst., Book V, § 23.) ↩

4. Book V, § 24. 3 Ibid., § 24. ↩

5. Mme. de la Maisonfort, Superior of S. Cyr, having put many of her difficulties before Bossuet, he took the trouble to reply to her in writing: his fourth and last letter ends thus: ‘ The whole of the doctrine contained in these replies may be reduced to these guiding principles: (i) We must believe as a truth revealed by God that we must expressly and distinctly practise all the virtues, and in particular these three: faith, hope, charity, for God commanded them and their exercise. (ii) We must believe with the same certainty that he has similarly commanded the acts which they inspire, which aro petition and thanksgiving, as acts in which consist the perfection of the soul in this life and the true adoration which is owing to (iii) As an incentive to the performance of these acts it is sufficient to know that God commanded them: and it is for- bidden to wait for an extraordinary impulse and operation, which would be tempting God, instead of being content with his express commandment. (iv) We must nevertheless believe that we do not perform a single act of virtue without a prevenient grace which sustains us and inspires us to act. (v) This grace is not that which puts men into a passive state, for it is common to all the saints, who are not all passive in their prayer... _ (vi) The state which is called passive consists 111 the suspen- sion of those conversations, acts and reflections which are said to come from our own effort and industry, not, however, exclud- ing grace, for this was the error of Pelagius, but excluding its ordinary ways and methods of action. (vii) ‘ It is an error to think that this passive state is perpetual, except perhaps in the Blessed Virgin, or in some chosen soul which comes more or less near to so eminent a perfection. (viii) It follows that the passive state only occurs at certain moments, among others those of actual prayer, but cannot be predicated of the whole course of life. ↩

6. Book VI, § 38. DIALOGUEV 51 lead us, according to Bossuet, and this is what all those persons who are habitually in this state of prayer tell their directors. This is how the Bishop of Meaux explains direct acts, which are practised in the heart and not outwardly indicated; this, according to him, is the way in which the soul purifies and simplifies itself, and these acts become concentrated in charity which does all things; and this, lastly, is how the soul is kept, by these simple acts, in a perpetual attitude facing towards God, this perpetuity, however, not being absolute or metaphysical, but moral, as he explains later. 1 ↩

7. Book V, § 26. ↩