Book II. Dialogue IV: On purity of action

Q. In what does this purity consist ?

A. It does not consist in the materiality of our actions, but in the purity of the motives which cause us to act; they can be reduced in general to acting specifically only for the love of God, or according to the order of God, 1 without which our conduct would be sinful, imperfect or useless.

Q. Why is this purity necessary to enter into holy recollection during prayer or meditation ?

A. Because this divine recollection unites us in a particular way to the God of all purity, and demands in the soul degrees of purity corresponding to degrees of unity with him.

Q. How is this purity acquired ?

A. Chiefly through the three others of which we have spoken; for in proportion to our care in avoiding everything which might displease God by sullying the conscience, and everything which might rob God of the affections of our heart by attaching it to his creatures, and everything which might occupy our spirits to the prejudice of God, would we not find ourselves infallibly disposed to act in all things only for God and in the sight of God ? This purity is also acquired by great attention to ourselves at the beginning and above all in the performance of our actions.

Q. Why is this attention necessary at the beginning of our actions ?

A. Because if these actions are useful and agreeable

14 Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God ’ (1 Cor. x, 31).

*94 and conform to the inclinations of our nature, our hearts will lead us to perform them by the mere attraction of pleasure and interest; what attention and command of ourselves is needed to prevent our will from being drawn away in the first place by the impression of natural motives which gratify, invite and charm us !

Q. Why did you add that this attention was specially necessary during the performance of our actions ?

A. Because when we have had the strength in the first place to renounce the seductive attraction of the senses and of our self-love, so as to follow only the ways of faith by pure intentions in all things, if later we forget to observe ourselves closely, the actual enjoyment either of the pleasure we taste, or of the interest we discover during the performance of certain actions, is always making new impressions, and the will weakens gradually. Nature, though mortified by its previous renunciation, awakes again, retrieves its old domination, and soon self-love glides with its self-interest, subtlety, and almost without our knowledge into our hearts, substituting itself for the good motives by which our actions had been undertaken and begun. The result of which in numberless cases is that, as S. Paul said, we begin with the spirit and finish with the flesh, that is with low, earthly, sensual, ambitious or self-interested views. This destroys or corrupts all the purity, all the merit of an infinite number of undertakings, actions of piety, charity, zeal, justice, love of order and the public good, even in the most holy ministries and in the most sacred functions.

Q. How is the perfection of this purity attained ?

A. By trying to act in all things with the sole intention of pleasing God, that is with the single motive of pure love, without, however, excluding the other good motives of an inferior order. True disinterestedness so enhances our actions that the least of them so performed is of greater merit in the eyes of God than a hundred others, even the greatest, which are performed without this generosity of heart. For, as Bossuet says,¹ in accord with the whole of the School, charity is the principle of merit in the exercise of a free choice, and the more charity a person has the more merit he has, however much or little he strives; and, as he adds later, all the merit of our actions depends on the degree of charity contained in them, which is known to God alone. That is why by working little and doing little, in very limited conditions, in states where there is practically nothing to do, at least anything which appears great in the eyes of men, we yet may, by the motive of charity alone, acquire more sanctity on earth, and more glory in Heaven, than those who, in superior conditions, do many and even great things, but things not animated by the motive of true charity which is pure love; a principle which in every state should and can console the small and weak, and humble the great, without discouraging them, for it depends on them to act in all things through pure love.

d. What is that impurity of action which is most to be feared, especially for spiritual persons ?

A. Exterior and interior vanity, a* What is the first of these ?

A. It is an unruly desire for the vain esteem of men. a* How does this empty desire corrupt our actions ?

A. It leads our thoughts and regards to dwell on what such people will think and say of us, and their esteem and approbation is dear to our hearts; for we worship our reputation; and if we do not renounce this once for all, it will be, says S. Teresa, 2 as if a worm were attached to the roots of a plant, which gnaws it little by little, dries it up, and makes its fruit and flowers fall away. On the other hand, when we are able to trample underfoot all such things as honour, esteem, reputation, the approbation of men, we will be, say our masters, in one of the rarest degrees of the spiritual life which, by detaching us from all we held most dear

*97 in the world, unites us to God, places us in such a state that we act only for God, content to please God alone, enjoying God not only in prayer but almost at all times and places.²

Q. Is interior vanity also to be feared ?

A. Even more, for it is as evil and yet more hidden.

Q. What is it, then ?

A. It is a vain esteem of oneself, which makes us prefer ourselves to others, measuring and comparing ourselves always with them; from this spring hauteur, pride, disdain, envy, jealousy, and a hundred other irregular movements. It is a vain confidence in oneself the result of which is that, without realizing it distinctly, we count in all kinds of eventualities on ourselves, on our knowledge, our resolutions and our own strength, more often than on the grace of God; more often on some foundation of virtue and acquired merit than on the pure pity of God, though often we say the opposite and believe we are really convinced. Lastly, it lies in vain and almost continual returns to secret complacency, by which, through not taking care, we attribute to ourselves all the good we do, all we do for God, for salvation, for perfection; now is there anything so opposed to the spirit of recollection in God, but so calculated to suppress it, as all these clouds of pride and vanity ? We have implied the reason: it is because this is the most humbling of all prayers and that which most requires humble spirits who are forgetful of themselves.

Q. But in the first place, tell me again why this prayer is the most humbling ?

A. Because in the others we speak to God, and to ourselves, we reflect, we reason, we know distinctly that we act and operate with grace; all our acts exercise the activity of the spirit and the will, which encourage both of them; this pleases and contents the human heart, and thence are born the interior satisfactions which, however holy they are in themselves, did not prevent S. Francis de Sales from crying out³ that our miserable satisfactions do not make for the contentment of God. But in the prayer of which we speak, the mind, the will and all the powers are bound and as if dead, so far as distinct and ordinary operations go. The only possible operations are simple direct acts so little known or so confusedly perceived that in them we are afraid of nothing so much as idleness, as wasting our time, so that instead of feeling complacency during or after this prayer we are strongly tempted to abandon it. I recall this to all directors, who often find it so difficult to calm people favoured with this gift, which is, moreover, the best known; what did it not cost S. Francis de Sales to calm the fears of Mother de Chantal ? And how often was this holy soul afflicted with the same fears, the same pain and temptations ?

Q. But when it is a recollection as sweet as it is perceptible ?

A. Acts are not more distinct for this, nor less confusedly perceived. Besides, all the most sweet and perceptible things that visit a soul at this time seem to it so strange and so false, that we may well see, says S. Teresa, 2 that it is impossible to deliberately put oneself in this state; thus at this time we may rejoice like a poor man who receives alms, but not glorify ourselves for it. So people who for a long time have trodden this path, through seeing their impotence, and what comes from them and what from God, could hardly ever appropriate to themselves the good they do, think or say; all this is at once attributed to God by a simple movement of the heart which forestalls all reflection on themselves because it comes from an intimate, profound and habitual conviction of their impotence to do good.

Q. And whence comes in these souls this profound and habitual conviction ?⁴

A. Bossuet has told us i⁵ c They have learnt by intimate experience the truth of these words: “ Without me you can do nothing. 55 5 d- Those people then, who fight against and reject this kind of prayer through fear of vanity, deceive themselves grossly ?

A. Their error is due to the fact that they feel they ought to experience in ordinary recollection all that happens fairly often in extraordinary passive prayer; ecstasies, raptures, interior words, visions, revelations, clear and sublime knowledge of the Trinity, of all our mysteries, etc. But if they knew that instead of all this one usually experiences only darkness, suffering, interior confusions and humiliations, 2 and that therefore there is need of great patience, entire resignation, perfect abandonment, as we have heard from the lips of the Venerable Mother de Chantal herself, particularly in her letter to a superior of her order; if, I say, they knew all this, they would fear this prayer more than they do perhaps, but for very different reasons.

d. Are there not writers who, in speaking only of simple recollection, of ordinary contemplation or of ordinary passive prayer, yet give such exalted and magnificent ideas of them that some are dazzled and others discouraged from aspiring to them ?

A. How different this is in practice ! Remember all the most noble things the Bishop of Meaux has said on the subject of contemplation and then see to what, according to him, those magnificent words are reduced in practice: 3 ‘ to peace, to the silence which reigns in the school of the heart where the senses see nothing and understand nothing, where the soul which escapes from them itself seems reduced to nothing, to an impenetrable nothingness, by the obscurity of the faith into which the soul is plunged, where it finds itself bereft of reasoning, of discourse, like a beast: ut jumentum.’ Do you see anything in this actual nothingness to flatter human pride ?

Q. Certain writers then deceive us, in saying that we must always fear the illusions of pride and vanity ?

A. This advice is wisely given, but for the most part ill understood.

Q. What do they mean us to understand by this ?

A. That we must always take care lest our pride and our falsely dazzled self-love lead us never to seek, ask for nor even wish for the least of these prayers through vain desires for some sort of elevation. For the devil, profiting by such an arrogant disposition, may well cause us, like many others, to find, by all kinds of illusions, not what is truly in this prayer but all we would have vainly sought in it; that is to say, not that which constitutes true elevation, by lowering and vilifying us in our own eyes, but that which causes a sort of swelling of the spirit and the heart, in which consists the false elevation which is a true abomination in the sight of God. Thus we must never forget that when the mystics regard these prayers as sublime and elevated, it is always in the divine sense that they speak and not in the human sense, as certain vain and ignorant minds imagine; x it is always in this sense that S. Paul spoke so nobly of the eminent knowledge of Christ:⁶ Propter eminentem scientiam Jesu Christi. What, then according to him, is this sublime and eminent knowledge for which he goes on to say that he has renounced

1 ‘ Here Satan can do little or no harm, if the soul directs unto God the joy and sweetness it then feels;... when he sees that the soul humbles itself through that joy and sweetness—and hero, in all things relating to prayer and sweetness we must be very careful to endeavour to make ourselves humble,—Satan will not often repeat his work when he sees that he loses by it.... If the soul is humble, indifferent to, and detached from, all joy, however spiritual, and if it loves the Cross, it will make no account of the sweetness which Satan sends.’ ( Life of S. Teresa, Ch. XV.)

everything and regards all things as dung ? In practice it is, as you know, merely love of the Cross, participation in the sufferings of Christ to the extent of expressing in ourselves the image of his Cross i⁷ Ad cognoscendum ilium et societatem passionum illius, configuratus morti ejus. Will you find again in this knowledge anything to flatter vanity and nourish self-love?⁸

d- Why, lastly, did you add that this prayer requires humble spirits which take no thought for themselves ?

A. Because without this it would be impossible even to understand it. Scholars, who have had no experience of it, could not judge it if they were not humble, as Bossuet says in his Preface; 2 which reminds me that I have heard one of the most famous and learned theologians in France say at Paris that he had read several times of the various degrees of prayer of which S. Teresa spoke, without understanding them; this kind of sublimity tends much more to confound pride than to flatter it, for even to understand them requires a certain humility of spirit which produces neglect of one’s own person, of one’s knowledge and information; which would seem to be founded on the words of Christ:

‘ I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to little ones.’ 3

Q. Why when speaking of remote dispositions, did you say nothing of exterior mortification ?

A. Because everybody knows its usefulness; all books and preachers expound it, and it is by common consent an aid to all kinds of prayer. Besides, of what use is all this mortification if not supported interiorly, and purified of all the secret complacency of pride, of presumption, of vain self-esteem ? How often beneath a mortified exterior are found uncircumcised minds and hearts, given over to all the strength of their desires and the violence of the most unruly passions; which can never happen when one makes one’s ruling principle this interior abnegation, which is the chief source of all sanctity. Now to what degree of this abnegation do these four purities of which we spoke lead ? Do they leave nothing to mortify or to sacrifice, in actions, intentions, desires or thoughts ? Do they not plunge the senses, the mind, the heart, the whole nature into a condition in which it cannot be vainly satisfied by anything ? Do they not therefore kill all the passions in the heart, so that the enemy finds no foothold for his temptations, nor for his illusions, for both spring only from pride and self-love, living in their roots or in the evil offshoots of the cursed seed of Adam ?

{T Why not, at least, speak of interior peace, which is said to be the foundation of prayer and all spiritual life ?

A. I admit that we can build nothing solid except on this foundation, for it is certain on the one hand that God dwells and works only in peace, and on the other that the lack of this peace is to the soul what the lack of health is to the body. Now as illness, in weakening the strength of the body, makes it impotent to apply itself to the troubles of the body, so that which troubles or disturbs the peace of the soul makes it feeble, languishing and almost incapable of applying itself to the labours of the spirit. That is why S. Francis de Sales repeats so often in his works that trouble, anxiety, sadness and grief are true maladies of the spirit and very hurtful to the good of the soul; I agree once more with all this, but without speaking directly of this peace, have I not perhaps done better in teaching the four certain ways of attaining it, and so substantially that this divine peace can no longer be troubled by anxious remorse, for this only comes from impurity of conscience and ill understood regrets; nor by the violence of our attachments, for they have their sole source in the impurity of a heart which, being made for God alone, attaches itself violently to his creature; nor by the tyranny of our passions, for their first origin was in the impurity of a mind given over to its straying fancies; nor finally by the desire to please men, or the vain fear of displeasing them; for both come merely from the impurity of the motives of our actions which have not God alone in view.

Q. Will you tell me what are the proximate dispositions for recollection ?

A. Generally it is for each one to make his ordinary prayer; for it is impossible to pave the way for recollection in prayer without praying.

Q. What prayer is necessary for this ?

A. That to which one has already been drawn by the common attraction, or by the order of a director; for it is a certain principle when praying that no one should leave his ordinary way to take up another, unless it be a new attraction which calls him to this change.

Q. You speak then only to those who pray regularly ?

A. Certainly, or to those who have resolved to apply themselves constantly thereto.

Q. How should these two kinds of persons apply themselves in their manner to ordinary prayer, to prepare themselves for the prayer of recollection ?

A. They should observe two rules, of which we will speak in the next dialogue.

Footnotes

1. Instruction, p. 608. s Life, Ch. XXXI. ↩

2. Imitation of Christy Book III, Ch. XXXVI, Against the Vain Judgements of Men. ↩

3. Second dialogue, Vol. Y, p. 72 ff. a Life, Ch. XIV. ↩

4. Ibid., p. 466. Q ↩

5. Instruction, p. 532. * Ibid., p. 571. ↩

6. Philipp, iii, 8. ↩

7. Philipp, v, 10. 2 Preface, p. 354. ↩

8. ‘ So then, when the soul is in the prayer of quiet, let it repose in its rest—let learning be put on one side. The time will come when they can make use of it in the service of Our Lord.... But in the eyes of Infinite Wisdom, believe me, a little striving after humility, and a single act thereof, are worth more than all the science in the world. This is not the timo for discussion, but j Q r understanding plainly what we are.’ ( Life of S. Teresa, Ch- XV -) ↩