Book II. Dialogue VII: Advice to advanced souls on the aridities of their prayer, and on the particular temptations which accompany them

Q. Why are advanced souls more exposed than beginners to aridities in prayer ?

A. Because since they are no longer in their spiritual childhood, as S. Paul says, God begins to give them a food which is admittedly less delightful, but more nourishing; this is the recollection which is called dry and arid, because in fact it is so.

Q. Is this recollection very different from that of beginners ?

A. Apart from sweetness, it is like the first, for we are occupied with God, though without zest; the heart remains tranquil before God, but in a dry peace; we are not usually bored in this recollection, but neither are we delighted; we emerge from it with our will ever more determined towards good, but also more profoundly detached, more remote from sense-impressions and hence less perceptible, which seems regrettable to souls accustomed to sweetness, and sensible devotion. It is as when children are weaned; we see some of them overwhelmed with sorrow, in tears and despair. But they must humble themselves with these weaknesses, and fortify their hearts against them; for such is the will of God and his ordinary custom.

Q. Is there some reason for this ?

A. God acts thus, say our masters, in the interest of his glory, which requires one to serve him with perfect detachment; this very rarely happens in the actual enjoyment of that which flatters self-love— which is always a little attached, and very naturally, s 231 to what it enjoys. God makes us see here our great and veritable interest, for it is by this dry way of pure spirit and pure faith, as it is called, that we gradually attain to the purity of perfect disinterested love, which is the measure of holiness and of all perfection.¹²

Q. What is the first and most dangerous temptation of this new state ?

A. It is that of abandoning this prayer on all kinds of pretexts, which are but so many illusions and new temptations of the enemy.

Q. What is the first pretext on which this dangerous temptation is founded ?

A. The belief or the strong fear that we have lost recollection, because we find in it now neither savour nor sensibility.

Q. How can we be protected from this illusion and its consequences ?

A. Firstly and principally by a humble obedience which expresses itself in blind submission to the judgement and will of the director, secondly by these wise reflections: ‘ my attraction has been examined and recognized as real; I have only taken this step for good reasons, on good advice, and after many salutary experiences: I am therefore in no danger of tempting God, and can give myself up to him on this point as on others, and look to him for everything with confidence. Besides, the Bishop of Meaux 2 3 has taught us that this kind of prayer, c because of its very simplicity, is always and in all states very much less perceptible in itself than in its effects; 5 as these effects are good, their principle cannot but be good; for a bad tree never brings forth good fruit, as Our Lord said.

Q. Should we make these reflections at the time of prayer ?

A. We must beware of this, for it would be a distraction; we must have been well penetrated with them already, so that no voluntary doubt can come to trouble the fragile peace of a heart without savour, and thus snatch from us all the fruit of this frail recollection, for it is without sensible attraction. If the temptation became very pressing, this is all we could say to encourage us in prayer: This is not the time to examine either what is happening in me, nor what I ought to do. We can think of this at our leisure after prayer, as is practised after meditation.

But if this recollection is so arid and so painful to retain, it is not an infused recollection.

A. What does it matter whether it be infused or active ? Is it not certain that both these are true prayer ? I can then set myself holily to persevere in it, despite the illusions of the enemy who wishes to turn me away from this simple presence of God; I am at least sure that I have the desire and will to remain in his holy presence, which is the essential of all good prayer.

Q. But since one has now neither taste nor sensible attraction to bring back when necessary the wandering faculties, what is one to do when they begin to stray through distractions which must now be much more strong and frequent ?

A. Everyone agrees that neither the imagination nor the mind depends absolutely on ourselves; it is only distractions of the will that are harmful. Now these voluntary distractions are now less to be feared; for when we have attained to this state, we are sufficiently detached from creatures to be delivered from these seductive and dangerous distractions which fix the spirit and the heart on the objects we cherish, or call them back unceasingly. Besides, a soul accustomed to interior recollection recognizes much sooner than

5234 ON PRAYER another the least distraction and stops it much more easily at its birth.

Q. Why does this become easier to it ?

A. Because once we have applied ourselves to the interior gaze on God, as soon as we perceive our wandering we have only to do in our interior what a person does who, in the company of some very worthy man, catches himself turning his eyes this way and that, and merely brings them back modestly and without the slightest effort on to the person to whom he owes the respect; in the same way we bring back to God our interior gaze which had escaped elsewhere.

Q. But this detour is not so easy nor so perceptible as with the eyes of the body.

A. I agree, especially for those who do not even know what this simple operation of the soul is. But those of whom we speak, who have had the experience a million times, practise it as often as they wish; and when through the imperceptibility of this act they sometimes doubt if they are actually performing it, they at least feel that they have the will and desire for it. That is enough and calms them.

Q. But suppose the aridities and the distractions which accompany them, although not very interesting or attractive in themselves, become continual and insurmountable ?

A. To console and reassure the most timid ones,³ will suppose that all this is joined to the most horrible temptations, as God has permitted in the case of various saints j 1 is it not certain that the will alone produces all the merit or demerit of the situation by its free acts ? Now I feel and believe that all that makes me stray from God, especially at the time of prayer, displeases me infinitely, for it is my cross and a sort of martyrdom; I therefore do not consent to it. My heart continually disavows it by the pain which it causes.⁴⁵

Q. Does this simple disavowal suffice, without the necessity of performing other acts ?

A. Take care, for what we usually call acts of disavowal would be merely vain interior words, without that pain of the heart which is the true repudiation of the will that grieves at evil, before the slightest expression of such sorrow by that simple deliberate movement that Bossuet calls a direct act, 5 from which come as from their source and principle all the other good acts. 9 d. What you have just said merely shows that there is no offence to God in all that I suffer despite myself during prayer; but where is the merit ?

A. It is in all I suffer for the love of God, conforming to the will of God; a merit which always grows in proportion to the cruel aridity, the grievous distractions, the humiliating and torturing temptations.

Q. But I am afraid of giving occasion to them.

A. When you are assured of it you have only to detest all that might have given occasion to them, and then patiently bear the punishment, just as he should do who by irregularities falls into great evils or infirmities.

Q. But if I knew that this was just a trial of God, to comfort her, and she said to him in a complaint full of love:

4 Where wert thou, Lord, when thou didst thus leave me ? ’ this thought alone would encourage me and lighten my pain.

A. Another illusion; that is how secret pride speaks; the wore' c trial 5 pleases and flatters it; that of punishment humiliates and therefore revolts it; but is it not as just, as righteous, to bear the blows of God’s justice as the blows and trials of his mercy ? Besides, are there any pure punishments in the cruel evils of this life ? Do not mercy and justice mingle together, in the words of Scripture? Nothing painful happens, usually at least, which is not trial and punishment, justice and mercy, together; punishment, because we deserve it all the more for our slightest faults; trial, because God’s goodness turns and directs to our advantage all that we suffer in submission to his orders; thus a Father of the Church says that ‘the goodness of the heavenly Father is so great, that his anger and his blows themselves spring from his mercy ’; Tanta est summi Patris pietas, ut etiam ira eius ex misericordia sit.

Q. If we win merit by such prayers, at any rate we do not advance in the way of perfection; this is what discourages and rebuffs us when we have an ardent desire to advance.

A. You must take care here not to fall into new illusions; this ardent desire is praiseworthy; if no sort of pride or self-love enters in, it will always be submitted to the will of God, and therefore without trouble, anxiety or discouragement, because in desiring our perfection we only wish for it in the precise degree and at the time marked out by the will of God, by the means and in the way that will please God. Desiring our perfection otherwise would be to wish for our advancement in order to congratulate ourselves, rather than to please God; to wish for virtues so as to be enriched by them would be to do so in order to see ourselves decked and adorned to our taste, rather than in order to be pleasing in the sight of God. In a word, it would be wishing to be perfect less for love of God than for love of that excellence which would be our own. What refinement of fine and delicate self-love, what illusions about advancement among the most spiritual, as about devotion in the ordinary devout !

Q. What is the way of avoiding or overcoming so many vain fears, illusions and temptations which discourage us from prayer, and especially from this kind; when we think we get no fruit from it and are wasting our time ?

A. It lies in forming a just idea of true advancement, which is not at all what we usually believe it to be.

Q. In what does it consist, then ?

A. It consists in advancing always in the holy way of conformity to the will of God. Read the Scriptures, the Fathers, the theologians, and they will tell you unanimously that the true love which brings forth perfection merely involves wishing what God wishes in all things; this is founded on the words of Our Lord: He that loveth me doeth the will of my Father; and I love him, and do always those things that please him; my meat is to do the will of him that sent me... in the head of the book it is written of me that I should do thy will. 5 Now is it not of faith that apart from sin everything that happens in this world does so by the will or permission of God, even to the smallest event, from the fall of a hair from a head out of so many million men, to the fall of a leaf from a tree amid so many vast forests; and thus of all the most humiliating and mortifying things I suffer, especially at the time of prayer, if I suffer them because God wishes or at least permits it, they are not single acts but long successions of repeated acts, by which I advance ever more in perfect conformity with all the wishes of God.⁶

Q. But when once by a long succession of these reiterated acts I have acquired great facility in performing them, what remains for me to do?

A. There is an immense road to cover, to acquire the perfection of this conformity, to pass thousands of new degrees until we finally come to this uniformity of will that Jesus Christ⁷ asked of us, when he said to his Father: c that they also may be one in us 5: ‘ ut ipsi in nobis mum sint ’; which obviously only happens when by wishing only what God wishes, as he wishes and because he wishes it, our will becomes in every way uniform with that of God. This is not all; there are many more steps to climb before we come to what the mystics call deiformity, which is merely a will entirely transformed into that of God. This is that consummation of which Jesus Christ 2 spoke in the same passage, c Ut sint consummati in unum,’ and which he makes us ask for every day in the words of the Pater noster: * Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 9 For, and note this, in Heaven there is not only conformity, uniformity of the will with God’s, but a veritable deiformity, much more perfect even than that of the great saints on earth, than that of S. Paul, when he says: ‘ I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me; 5 and thinks, wills, and rules in me. Is it surprising after this that S. Teresa, who was learned only in the School of the Holy Ghost, having spoken of the most sublime unions in high contemplation, ends with these words: 4 Of all unions the most precious, the most desirable in my opinion is that of will.’ It is in the same spirit that S. Francis de time be given thee; but to be fully satisfied shall not be granted thee. Take courage therefore and be strong; as well in doing as in suffering things repugnant to nature. Thou must put on the new man; and be changed into another man. Thou must oftentimes do that which thou wiliest not; and let alone that which thou wiliest. That which is pleasing to others will go forward; and that which thou wouldest have will not succeed.’ (Imitation of Christ, Book III, Ch. XLIX.)

Sales exclaims 1 regarding prayer that c the height of love’s ecstasy is to have our will not in its own contentment but in God’s. 5

Q. This being so, though it can never happen during prayer, we must merely continue firmly in entire conformity with all the permissive wills of God. How is it then that so many people, some spiritual, let themselves be disturbed and troubled, and often leave off in distaste, being discouraged and strongly tempted to abandon the practice ?

A. Perhaps some of them do not know that it is impossible to pray properly without peace, because disturbance and trouble during or even after prayer cause all its fruits to be lost, one of the chief of which is to pacify the heart; perhaps they do not know that we earn merit and advance as we learn by practice to join ourselves to all God’s wills, especially as regards the interior crosses which wound the hearts more deeply and in the most delicate places; perhaps they have never learned that great maxim, c We advance further by suffering than by acting ’; for, apart from the fact that it is more painful to suffer than to act, we act almost always at our own will and suffer almost always at God’s; perhaps the others, having formed false ideas on prayer, as on devotion, try to make everything sensible and not ever think they are really praying nor having devotion except so far as they are touched or softened, or as they can do at will many sensible acts. Shall we never learn to seek God in simplicity of heart, by mere righteousness of the heart, in a pure spirit, in pure faith, since, according to S. Paul, we only walk in the ways of God by pure faith: per Jidem ambulamus. Finally many, perhaps, on the pretext that they have none but good intentions, no other views than those of spiritual good, the obtaining of the graces of God in prayer, in reality seek themselves, wishing to do and obtain everything to their liking, at the time and in the manner they * Love of God, Book VI, Ch. II.

desire, as if God’s will should not be the only rule of our good desires and of our most holy seeking.

Q. But how can you expect one to behave very peacefully during prayer, and be most content, when having in view only salvation and perfection we do nothing of what we wish and obtain nothing we ask for ?

A. How different is our conversation with God from that we have with men.⁸ * *⁹ If after the most urgent importunities, prayers and solicitations to creatures we can obtain nothing, we retire very discontented; and in a sense we have reason to be so, because we have gone away with empty hands. But in dealing with God, it is merely for us to be in peace, to go away always content and with good reason therefore. For if I wish I gain in it always, and never go away empty-handed, but always full. Of what ? Of those very refusals which he permits, from those apparent refusals, because I feel pleasure in finding myself rebuffed, when it pleases him thus to mortify and humble me in his presence; so that his divine contentment is always mine, because everywhere and in all things I wish only for his good pleasure, so that my very discontent becomes a reflected content, whenever it is the content of my God. This is the way in which the cleverest courtiers, I will not say behave, but affect to behave, with the sovereigns of the earth; why then should I not behave so towards God ? When I have reasonably done what I can, especially on the advice of my director, far from being agitated, at worrying over my apparent lack of success in my prayers, I will try to make my pleasure into the good pleasure of God in all things, all else being but self-love, and vain affectation; far from being discouraged, from thinking myself poor and wretched, after prayers apparently so ill made, I will think myself so much the more rich in God’s sight, as I renounce my wishes to agree to his. Thus, in fact, O God, shall I gradually enrich myself, so that I shall clothe myself in the most precious of thy treasures, in what is most pleasing in thy sight; that is the continual but most humble and disinterested submission of spirit and heart to thine adorable will, at the cost of mine, in spite of mine; I will sacrifice them in advance, putting them at the foot of thy throne with Jesus Christy by and in Jesus Christy according to the words that thy holy spouse puts in the mouths of thy ministers in the Sacred Canon of the Mass: Per Ipsum et cum Ipso et in Ipso.¹⁰

Q. Have you not other advice or enlightenment to give to advanced persons ?

A. As it would take us too far, let us keep it for the next dialogue.

already lost that soul which perseveres in prayer, and that every fall which he can bring about helps it, by the goodness of God, to make greater progress in his service.’

What consoling words for souls which are still weak and suffer in the exercise of prayer !

Footnotes

1. • I know thy hidden thoughts; I know that it is very expe- dient for thy salvation that thou shouldest sometimes be left without savour: lest thou shouldest be puffed up with good success; and shouldest take pleasure in thyself in that which thou art not. What I have given I can take away; and restore again when I please.’ [Imitation of Christ, Book III, Ch. XXX.)
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2. Instruction, p. 531. ↩

3. To quote only one of these in ten thousand, let us take this from the Life of S. Catherine of Siena: The devil, being allowed by God to tempt his servant, importuned Catherine day and night for a certain period by a thousand evil representations which he brought about in her imagination, and even caused to appear outwardly. The saint took occasion thereby to redouble her penances, and to chastise her innocent body without mercy, as though it were to blame for all these evils. One day, when she had been tormented by horrible thoughts, she struggled until her whole body was covered with blood. Our Lord appeared ↩

4. I was beside thee, 1 the Saviour replied. c But how, 1 replied Catherine, 4 couldst thou have been beside me amongst such evil thoughts, such horrible imaginations ? 1 4 Yes, 1 replied Jesus, ↩

5. 1 was in the midst of thy heart, and took pleasure in seeing these struggles and thy resistance to them; for there is no fault when the soul which is suffering gives no consent. 1 This reply gave the saint so much courage that the devil gave up the combat in despair of victory. ( Life of S. Catherine of Siena in Surius, and Bollandists, Apr. 30—See Spiritual Combat y Ch. XLIX.) ↩

6. ‘ I know thy desire; and I have heard thy many groanings. Thou wouldst already be in the glorious liberty of the children of God;... but this hour has not yet come; it is still the time of war, labours and trials.... Thou must yet be tried upon earth; and exercised in many things. Consolation will from time to ↩

7. John xvii, 21. a Ibid. ↩

8. Hear what tho holy Bishop of Hippo says: ‘ When God does not give us what we wish it is in order to give us what we would love more, if we knew all things.’ And the illustrious doctor takes an example from his own life. Deceiving his mother, he dreamed in secret of going to Italy. S. Monica suspected his plan and begged Our Lord in tears to prevent this voyage: ↩

9. But thou, profoundly considering and hearkening to that whereon her main desire was set, didst not regard what she then particularly desired, that thou mightest the better accomplish in me what she had begged so long.’ (Ep. xxxi. Confessions, Book V, Ch. VIII.) ↩

10. We cannot end this dialogue better than by quoting here a page from the Life of S. Teresa, written by herself, Ch. XIX. It is a strong encouragement to persevere, despite trials, in the holy exercise of prayer: ‘ One of the reasons that move me, who am what I am, under obedience to write this, and give an account of my wretched life, and of the graces Our Lord has wrought in me—though I never served him, but offended him rather—is what I have just given: and, certainly, I wish I was a person of great authority, that people might believe what I say. I pray to Our Lord that His Majesty would be pleased to grant me this grace. I repeat it, let no one who has begim to give himself to prayer be dis- couraged, and say: If I fall into sin it will be the worse for me, if I go on now with the practice of prayer. I think so too, if he gives up prayer, and does not correct his evil ways; but if he does not give up prayer, let him be assured of this—prayer will bring him to the haven of light. In this the devil turned his batteries against me, and I suffered so much because I thought it showed but little humility if I persevered in prayer when I was so wicked that—as I have already said—I gave it up for a year and a half—at least for a year, but I do not remember distinctly the other six months. This could not have been, neither was it, anything else but to throw myself down into hell; there was no need of any devils to drag me thither. O my God, was there ever blindness so great as this ? How well Satan prepares his measures for his purpose, when he pursues us in this way; the traitor knows that he has ↩