Book II. Dialogue VIII: On emptiness of spirit, on the impotence which follows and the extraordinary revolts of the passions
Q. What is it that is called emptiness of spirit ?
A. The meaning of the phrase is almost obvious as it stands—it is a spirit empty, it seems to itself, of all thoughts of God and often of the world. For you must know that while God, in order to humble and purify a soul, to detach and advance it, holds it in this transitory state, it seems to the soul that it has fallen into a sort of stupidity and dullness, from which springs what is called impotence to be occupied with God, or with any good thing.
Q. What are the results of this state ?
A. When we wish to think of or reflect on good things, the mind wanders, loses itself somewhere, and remains stupid. If we wish to apply ourselves to prayer, all ordinary acts become impossible, we feel only the pain of wishing and being unable to make them. If we wish to retire into ourselves, we cannot find the way in, and we are thus, as it were, banished and exiled from our own heart, as the author of the Imitation expresses it. And if we wish to occupy ourselves with pious reading, we at once feel what S. Teresa1 felt in a like case: 6 Four or five times I read as many lines; and, though they were written in Spanish, I understood them less at the end than I did when I began: so I gave it up.’ But what doubles this heavy and humiliating cross is the sad comparison with former states, so different from our present one, in which we are, as it were, suspended between heaven and earth, receiving no consolation from either; finding no support either within or without.
d. But perhaps it is only a violent outbreak of melancholy or natural stupidity.
A. Not at all, for it happens thus in the same way to people who are usually the most joyful, and have most spirit; and on the other hand, during this sad condition, by a singular effect of Providence, these same people who are so stupid in themselves usually seem outwardly quite other than they are inwardly, speaking and replying quite sensibly on all subjects, reasoning quite well when necessary, and even writing at will on the things of God with a facility at which they themselves are surprised; it happened thus to the Venerable Mother de Chantal among many others, when she was charged with a large community and had to reply to all the daughters of her Order in so deplorable a situation during several years, and in such a degree of impotence that being unable to perform any sensible pious acts, she thought herself without faith, without hope, love or religion. This threw her into a state of suffering and confusion, which was so much the worse in that she esteemed virtue all the more and violently desired to practise it.
Q. With what are those people occupied interiorly during this time who pass under this severe trial ?
A. Although by the various degrees of darkness and impotence they can be put into different classes, I nevertheless say that without distinction they are all almost continually occupied with God, each in his own way, not, in truth, by reflective or conscious acts, but by simple direct acts, or what is the same thing, by the mere actual disposition of the heart, but not perceived, or so confusedly that their whole merit and martyrdom is here comprised without their having the consolation of knowing it.
d- Where and by what signs can we know that they are thus almost continually occupied with God ?
A. We know because we know on the one hand that their will has for a long time been fixed on God, and on the other that, as Bossuet2 with the mystics teaches us, ‘ a will fixed on God produces a series of good movements, which during this life is called continual prayer/ and in consequence is continual occupation with God.
Q. On what principle is this view of the Bishop of Meaux and the mystics based ?
A. On the words of Our Lord: ‘Where your treasure is, there your heart is also/ certainly by its simple movements, feelings and deliberate affections, which are truly acts of the will, though most people do not recognize them as such.
But if because their will was fixed on God in whom they have put their treasure these good souls effectively felt this series of good movements, they would perceive it, at any rate when they were told of it.
A. Certainly not as a rule; for c apart from the fact that these acts escape them by their own simplicity, they become much more imperceptible during the interior agitation of these trials 5; so we are told by the Bishop of Meaux, 2 and he is well known to be the most sound of prelates on all points which seemed to bear any resemblance to Quietism.
Q. But suppose instead of feeling in themselves this succession of good movements these good souls assured you of the very opposite ?
A. They do it often enough, with sadness in their hearts and care in their eyes; but their director is more than ever convinced that they are deceived.
Q. But what proofs can the director have, against the feeling of the persons concerned and their own knowledge ?
A. Proofs as sure as they can or need be: they are this very sadness and those tears; in others the proofs are certain openings of the soul or words that escape them which, while making surely known the ruling disposition of the heart, make also its effects and consequences known, for is it not true that once a director has learned the ruling passion of people of the world by their declared and obvious sins, he at once sees an impenetrable abyss of hidden and unknown sins, committed interiorly almost continually and without specific reflections, by simple and deliberate movements of this ruling passion? In the same way when by certain openings of the heart, the director once knows that the person desires nothing so much as to please God, that it fears nothing so much as displeasing him, that the slightest doubt or fear in this matter tortures it, he at once sees in this ruling disposition what the mystics, with Bossuet and the other Bishops, call continual prayer. That is why they drew up at Issy Article XIX, which reads as follows i3 ‘ Perpetual prayer does not consist in a single and perpetual act... but in a habitual and perpetual disposition to do nothing which might displease God, and to do everything to please him. 5 Now you will realize easily why it is that all the books and preachers teach us that in the matter of salvation and perfection everything depends on good will and rightness of heart with God. That is why the Prophet cried out: 2 ‘How good is God to Israel: to them that are of a right heart. Quam bonus Israel Deus, his qui recto sunt corde ! 5 This is why the angels proffer peace at the birth of Christ to men of good will: c Pax hominibus borne voluntatis.’ This is why S. Augustine said that the ardour of charity which consists in an excellent will is the cry of the heart, that is the fervour of a prayer of the heart: c Flagrantia caritatis clamor cordis, 5 and why the Church utters these words: c O God to whom all hearts are open, with whom one deals and speaks by the will alone, 5 4 Deus cui omne cor patet, et omnis voluntas loquitur.’*4
Q. For further instruction on so important and consoling a point, could you not tell me by what openings of the heart, by what discourses, a director can acquire a morally certain knowledge of this disposition and this habitual and perpetual preparation of heart, which is simply the will fixed on God as its final end ?
A. The people of whom we speak use very different words, according to the degree of darkness and impotence they feel; but I think they can all be reduced to three different classes.
Q. How do those of the first class express themselves ?
A. It is very sad, they say, and grievous to spend the time of prayer and whole days without being able to pray or to raise one’s heart to God, or to recollect oneself for a moment or to fix one’s mind on anything good. However much we desire it, attempt it, kindle ourselves to it, it is all useless and a waste of time. We see them lament over this like poor people reduced to the last state of misery. Do those who live in the world, the dissipated, the lukewarm, even the devout, usually complain thus, or feel such interior agony ? Whence then can these pains come if not from a great depth of will fixed on God, and filled with good desires that we grieve at being usually unable to bring forth, perhaps because thus we are deprived of the sweet satisfaction of reflective, perceived and sensible acts ? Let them be humbled by all these imperfections of self-love, of which God seeks to cure them; and then let them rest in peace and content; in peace because, apart from any expression of sensible acts, God sees all things in the most intimate depths of the heart; content, because their very discontent is the contentment and good pleasure of God.
Q. How do the others express themselves ?
A. They say that it is not this humiliating and torturing state of stupidity, darkness and impotence that grieves them, but simply the fear of being aban- T doned by God, and of having contributed to this perhaps by some hidden infidelity. This is a grievous reflection, which ceaselessly occupies and tortures them. Now you see the principle from which such feelings spring; let them also remain in peace and content; in peace because God sees all, both in the despair of their filial fear and in their impotent desires hidden and stifled in the depths of their hearts, without their ever being able to unfold them save by some wandering sigh; content to be at the mercy of the heavenly Bridegroom, though they are neither attired nor adorned as they would wish, but rather deformed in their own eyes, and yet the more pleasing to God’s eyes the less they admire themselves, as S. Augustine says.
Q. What do the last kind say ?
A. They say that their state becomes ever worse, and they are no longer able to bear it; that all support, all resource is slipping from them, since they have nothing left of their former feelings, and find in themselves nothing but insensibility, hardness, horror of holy things, movements of spite, revolt, rage, blasphemy, without being able to make their usual denials of all this evil, not even by a single act of submission and abandonment, from which state grows a sort of despair that gnaws at their vitals. Thus they are in complete despair because they seem to have lost whatever precious remnants of good feelings God had left them; they suffer at this time an interior ordeal approaching that of Job. But like him let them remain in peace and content; in peace, because all these feelings of such despair are merely violent cries which rise to the heavens, and are the more moving for God who hears them as they are more profound and incomprehensible to the heart that utters them; content, because, as Bossuet tells them,5 pious feelings are never lost during these terrible trials, they only disappear from sight, hide in the depths of the soul, cloak themselves often in their opposites, and there purify and strengthen themselves to emerge later with new vigour; and content, moreover, because, according to S. Francis de Sales and the other mystics,6 * all these former pious feelings which are now hidden and seem driven back from all perceptibility, retreat into that apex of the spirit from which all the interior is ruled.’
&. Is it possible that the most holy operations of grace are effected in this way ?
A. What better testimony can I give you than Bossuet’s, 2 when he said that the feelings of most perfect submission remain in what appears to be an uprising against God; that feelings of hope which seemed suppressed merely fortify themselves by being concentrated within; that the more we are driven into despair, the more hope rises and love hides itself under bitter reproaches, sometimes even 3 under the appearance of blasphemies, which at bottom are merely love hurt and outraged by the apparent scorn of a lover who seems to be abandoning us (that is, God); that all the apparent furies of a soul so driven to desperation only spring from the violent regret in our hearts at seeing ourselves, as we think, rejected and abandoned by God, as you have noted in Bossuet’s story7 of Blessed Angela of Foligno, when in such case and such transports she would cry out: * Lord, if thou must cast me into hell, do not delay any longer, but hasten; and since thou hast once abandoned me, finish with me and plunge me into this abyss.’ This is what the mystics call the despair of love, or despairing love, of which profane love, with its blind and violent ecstasies, gives many clear examples which may help to make more credible to us the divine excesses of ‘ a love stronger than death, a jealousy (for the glory of God) as hard as hell,’ and that yet does not yield to its punishments, says the Holy Ghost in the Canticle. 6
O God, how wonderful art thou in thy saints ! how profound and incomprehensible are thy effects in them ! As author of nature and of grace, thou changest all without destroying anything, for in making the objects of our pursuit to change thou sanctifiest us by our own sufferings, using their most natural movements as so many steps to raise us to the most perfect love; but also what extraordinary unhappiness for us, since it imposes on thee almost a necessity of exercising thy most wonderful operations secretly and unconsciously, amid the darkness of our revolted passions, so that instead of these vain complacencies which would sully thy divine operations, the humility of our feelings helps to keep them in all their purity.
Q. But if the strongest and most criminal temptations join to this desolating impotence, what should these souls do during this double ordeal ?
A. Two chief things.
Q. What is the first ?
A. They must realize that what we suffer despite ourselves is not sin, but on the other hand almost a source of merit, purification and advancement. For the heart, troubled by violent and repeated blows, holds firm always through either love or fear, and roots itself more and more in both; and all our masters teach us that virtue only becomes substantial in so far as it undergoes severe trials. What does he know who has never suffered ? What does he know who has not been tempted ? God made S. Paul understand this when, having been asked fervently three times to deliver him from a temptation the efforts of which seemed so violent and so humiliating that he called them buffets, Our Lord replied: ‘ My grace is sufficient for thee, for power is made perfect in infirmity. 5
Q. You should know also that the more extraordinary, diabolical, bizarre or extravagant, either in themselves or in relation to the character, state and education of the persons concerned, are these temptations, the more we should take courage and confide in God; for thenceforth his permissive will is more specially marked in them; as when he sometimes allows the most holy souls to fall into what are called the onslaughts of the devil, the very name of which says everything to those who understand it without saying too much to those who do not.
Q. What is the second thing we should do ?
A. When the mind is sufficiently enlightened, the heart must surrender with heroic courage and unshakable confidence to whatever shall please God, apart from sin, which can never please him.
Q. But temptation leads to sin; how then can we thus abandon ourselves ?
A. We must distinguish between three things, especially in the temptations in question, the danger of fear, excessive suffering of the heart and great humiliation of the spirit. As for sin, we must always hate it and detest it sovereignly, pray for deliverance from it in deliverance from all consent to temptation; as for suffering, the rending of the heart, martyrdom of the heart; as for our abjection, as for the interior confusion at which we blush, we must give ourselves up to God’s good pleasure, without limits or end, in the way and for as long as he pleases. For the greatest temptations, without the slightest consent, are such great graces, that all the holy souls God makes to travel by this road merely ask him (just as S. Paul did, instructed by Our Lord) for deliverance from all consent to sin, and never from that which purifies the heart by making self-love suffer, never from that which humbles the pride of the mind by filling it with confusion.
Q. What do the spirituals think of these operations of God in souls ?
A. That as he is the sovereign master, he does what he decided in his eternal counsel, and no one can ask him: Why doest thou thus ? They further add that as justice demands that our cherished passions should be our own executioners, and that all the wilful satisfactions of a criminal heart change into bitterness, so it is through his wise goodness that we are never cured of our vices until we have felt a hundred times our wretchedness regarding them, our weakness, our impotence; so that God alone can have all the glory and that no person may glory except in God, even for the most important victory. Those who wish to be more deeply instructed on this matter need only read: (i) in Guillore’s Progres the chapter which treats of excesses of the emotions; (ii) in the works of the great Archdeacon of Evreux, the saintly Boudon, the chapters regarding interior anguish in The Ways of the Cross; a book admittedly most careless as to style but full of the spirit of God and the unction of his grace; (iii) in the works of Father Surin, the chapters on trials in the first volume of his new Spiritual Catechism, which is almost identical with the old, which was approved by Bossuet and to which he gave such a glorious testimony when he said, regarding the very point we have been discussing:
‘ The author wrote divinely of trials after he had experienced them himself. 5
Footnotes
Chapter 29 of 31