Chapter XXIII. The Right Use of Spiritual Favors

There is no subject on which the ancient and modern traditions of the spiritual life are more apparently at variance, than concerning the right use of spiritual favors. Ancient books bid us seek after them, pray for them, make much of them; while modern books tell us to shrink from them, to be afraid of them, to be nervously cautious when we have them, and to pray rather to be guided by the common way of faith. There is no real discrepancy in this seeming contradiction. It is the same tradition manifesting itself differently under altered circumstances. But I approach the subject with fear and trembling.

Our first duty is to get a clear view of the question. Spiritual favors belong to what may be called the uncommon order. Nevertheless, there are two classes of them. One class consists of the raptures, extasies, visions, locutions, touches, wounds, thirsts, stigmata, and transformations which belong to the saints. The second class includes only two things, spiritual sweetnesses and spiritual consolations, which are the frequent and often daily gifts of the middle-class Christians, that is, those who rise above mere precept, and walk by counsels, without entering into the higher mystical world of the saints. Now with the first class I have nothing whatever to do. Not a word I shall say will allude to them. It may be true that the extatic state is, as some theologians say, the naturae Btate of man; that Adam was created in it, and that our Lord lived in it; and that the supernatural mystical holiness works its way more or less imperfectly back into it. But nothing of this is applicable to the class of souls to frhose interests this treatise is devoted.

I am writing, let me repeat it, for persons living in the world, yet nevertheless aiming at perfection, and a disinterested love of God. This must be borne in mind throughout, or else much that is said will inevitably be misunderstood or misapplied. If any one is so bold as tc say that perfection of any kind is impossible to seculars, he must consider the treatise a simple mistake from beginning to end. I have no controversy with him, and shall not stay now to prove a truth, in whose favor I have the whole ascetical tradition of spirited writers, and the indubitable facts of many processes of canonization. Such a controversy would be useless and hopeless. For the sake, however, of those whom such wild inconsiderate doctrine may trouble, and even hold back from a generous love of God, I will quote from the Bollandists an anecdote of St. Catherine of Genoa, while she was living in a Genoese palace, and in the state of marriage. One day Fra Domenico de Ponzo, a Franciscan, hearing Catherine speak _n a ravishing manner of divine love, either from a desire to try her, or from a wish to induce her to embrace the religious state, began to tell her that in the secular state, and with the tie of marriage, the heart had not liberty to love God, and could not love Him so purely, as in the religious state. So long as the Friar contested nimself with showing the undoubted superiority of tb« religious over the secular state, Catherine agreed wi*V fr»l but when he came to limit the love of God possible in the secular state, she rose from her seat with her countenance all on lire, and her eyes sparkling, and said, If I believed that the habit which you wear, and which it is not in my power to put on, could add the slightest spark to my love, I would snatch it off your shoulders, and tear it to pieces. That your renunciation of everything, and your religious state, may enable you to acquire merits far superior to mine, may be true; I let it pass, and congratulate you on your happiness) but you will never make me believe that I cannot love God as perfectly as you. In fact, my love finds nothing to arrest it, and if it did, it would cease to be pure love. Then turning to God, she cried out, 0 my love! who then shall hinder me from loving thee as much as I please? For that end I have no need of religious profession. Were I in a camp, in the midst of soldiers, I do not see what obstacle there would be to my love! She then quitted the room, leaving the company in amazement at her heat and energy j and retiring to her own chamber to give free course to the vehemence of her love, she cried out, 0 Love! who then can hinder me from loving Thee? If the world, or the state of marriage, or any other thing, could hinder my love, how contemptible it would be! But I know that love overturns all obstacles. God was pleased to reward this outburst by speaking an interior word in her soul, assuring her that no state could hinder the perfection of love, and effacing at once the trouble injected into her mind by the temerarious doctrine of Fra Domeuico.¹

I confine myself therefore to the second division of gifts, and whenever I speak of spiritual favors I shah mean only one or both of two things, either spiritual sweetnesses or spiritual consolations, which, though of the uncommon order and gratuitous, are the ordinary gifts not only of the perfect, but of every soul honestly striving after perfection. It is as if they were merited by our having no reserves with God, and followed as a spiritual consequence from generosity, although from various causes they are often withdrawn or suspended.

Spiritual sweetness and spiritual consolation are in reality two different things, though they may be often spoken of together, because they follow the same laws, while they exhibit different phenomena. Alvarez de Paz warns us to keep the distinction in mind. Spiritual sweetness is a grace from God, which produces serenity

PiSte" au milieu du Monde, by M. Huguet, a Marist Father, published also at Lyons, by Girard et Josserand. I should also mention old Walter Hilton's Treatise to a Devout Man of Secular Estate, though it is not easy to procure. Even in the Scale of Perfection, addressed to a cloistered nun, he says (pp. 21, 22, London edition of 1659), " Worship in thy heart such as lead active lives in the world, and suffer many tribulations and temptations, which thou, sitting in thy house, feelest not of, and they endure very much labor and care, and take much pains for their own and other men's sustenance; and many of them had rather, if they might, serve God as thou dost, it bodily rest and quietness. And nevertheless they, in the midst of their worldly business, avoid many sins, which thou, if thou wert in their state, shouldst fall into; and they do many good deeds which thou canst not do. There is no doubt but many do thus; but which they be thou knowest not; and therefore it's good for thee to worship them all, and set them all in thy heart above thyself as thy betters, and cast thyself down at their feet." It should be remembered that ho who wrote thus was a Carthusian.

and tranquility, no matter amid what a tumult of passions and temptations it has entered the soul. We see a difficulty before us at which our infirmity recoils, but sweetness at once smooths it away, levelling the hills and filling up the vales, so that we run, like a railroad, on an easy level. A duty lies at our door, for which our character has an insurmountable repugnance j but sweetness surmounts the insurmountable, and the repugnance vanishes. When the soul is hard, it softens it, and when it is indocile, it renders it tractable. It lasts longer than consolation. It abides out of prayer, even if it comes in it, and it makes us affable to others, while consolation sometimes leaves us with a temptation to irritability. Consolation, on the other hand, is as it were a honey to the palate of the mind. It infuses delight and pleasure rather than peace and tranquillity. It attracts the soul to itself, and then floods it with spiritual sensations of the most exquisite delicacy. It is shorter in its duration than sweetness, but more efficacious. It does a greater wor!: in a less time. It belongs especially to prayer; but it does not usually come until we are weaned from the world, as the manna did not fall in the wilderness till the meal of Egypt was consumed. Thus sweetness draws nearer to tenderness in devotion, though distinct from it, while consolation touches more on those high things on which I have said I shall not enter. Both are divine, but sweetness works in a more human way, and is less masterful than consolation. Having thus distinguished the two, I shall henceforth speak of them under the common title of spiritual favors; because, as I said before, while they exhibit different phenomena they follow the same laws, and that is sufficient for my present purpose.²

I shall now make some observations on the following points: first, the office of these spiritual favors; secondly, the fruits of them; thirdly, the necessity of them shown by their effects; fourthly, the signs of them; fifthly, the delay, denial, or suspension of them; sixthly, the way tc obtain them; seventhly, the right use of them; and eighthly, the apparent discrepancy between ancient and modern books upon the subject. And as I divide for the fiake of clearness, so my division will lead me into occasional repetition.

First, let us speak of the office of these spiritual favors. St. Bonaventure sums them all up in fivti things. They fill the memory with holy thoughts. They give us a vast intelligence of God. They inspire us efficaciously with conformity to His will. They cause revsrence and composition of body and outward demeanor. They lead us to delight in hard work, and, if need be, in suffering for God. Another way of looking at the matter is this. If we consider the nature of devotion and our own nature, we shall see that there are in us three impediments to devotion, the infirmity of the flesh, which caused the disciples to sleep in Gethsemane, sensuality, which was the law St. Paul felt warring in his members against the law of Christ, and the necessary cares of life, which he experienced in bearing the solicitudes of all the Churches. Now sweetness and consolations, one with another, remove these three impediments; and God will either send them to us without any co-operation of our own, or sometimes to reward preceding efforts or present fervor.

Secondly, the fruits of these spiritual favors rapidly make themselves manifest in the soul. The busy, noisy, populous memory, ever like a seething and seditious city, becomes quiet and loyal, and attends to its manufactures, and keeps the feasts of Holy Church with an obedient joy. All trains of thought which concern heavenly things display a copiousness and exuberance which they never had before. Meditations are fluent and abundant. The virtues no longer bring forth their actions in pair* and travail, but with facility and abundance, and their offspring are rich, beautiful and heroic. There are pro. vinces of temptations always in discontented and smouldering rebellion. But we have a power over them which is new, and which is growing. We have such a facility in difficulties as almost to change the character of the spiritual life; and a union of body and spirit which is aa great a revolution as agreement and peace in a divided household. All these seven blessings are the mutations of the Right Hand of the Most High. Even to beginners, God often vouchsafes to give them, not merely as sugar-plums to children, as some writers have strangely said, but to do a real work in their souls, and enable them to drive their way through the supernatural difficulties proper to their state. But proficients should ardently desire them, for they fatten prayer; and the perfect can lever do without them, as they can never cease augmenting their virtues and rendering the exercise of them pleasant. What is the death-bed itself but an exercise of virtues, so intense as to compress the growth of ten years into an hour? Nay, even in desolations we need them; for it is an axiom in mystical theology that God both desolates and consoles at one and the same moment, and by one and the same process.

Well, therefore, may Alvarez de Paz say: * " They err then who do not magnify this spiritual sweetness, and do not thirst for it in prayer, and are not saddened, if it withdraws. They show that they have never learned by experience its manifold utility. For if they had once tasted it, and seen how by its impulse they rather ran than walked, yea ind even flew to perfection, they would indeed have esteemed that to be precious which brings with it * De Inquisitione Pacis, ii. 3, 2.

bo great an increase of virtues and purity. When it has possession of the heart even of a beginner and an imperfect man, it elicits actions which are perfect at all points (omnibus numeris absolutas). And if it hides itself from a man who is advanced in virtue and already perfect, he does not know how to do his ordinary actions without multifarious imperfections during that temporary suspension. It is not the sign of a soft-living man, and an effeminate heart or over-delicate spirit, to sigh after this sweetness; but it is the work of a wise and strong man, who, recognizing his inborn infirmity, desires that which will eaable him to run to God with more speed and with greater agility, and to do greater and more heroic deeds. He whose judgment is otherwise neither knows himself nor has any ardent desire after perfection, nor compre hends the true and solid riches of this sweetness." *

One of the reasons which have induced some spiritual writers to speak discouragingly of consolations is their³ laying us open to delusion. This of course expresses ae undoubted truth of ascetical theology. Yet I will venture to say that the exaggeration, that common bane of spiritual books, into which some writers have fallen, haf done far more harm to the souls of readers by the false and unreasonable suspicions it has created, than even a positive delusion of Satan would have done. Nay, this diabolical prudence, to use a common expression of ascetijs, is itself a delusion of the enemy, and one of his most fatal and most successful stratagems; and spiritual books are his usual ambuscades. Let us take a case of the worst kind, a case in which the consolations have actually been delusions, and let us learn from the saints, both by example and doctrine, their heavenly sagacity and enlightened moderation. For our example we may take St. Catherine of Bologna, whose consolations for five years were in great measure delusions, and among them were continual apparitions of our Blessed Lord, as she believed, but which were in reality fictions of Satan. Yet because of humility and obedience, all turned to her good and to her growth in holiness. Nay, she says she "drew great profit" from her delusions.

But a saint's own example is perhaps less to us than a saint's teaching to souls more like our own. Let us listen then to the great prophetess of Carmel. St. Theresa is explaining the words of the Pater Noster, Lead us not into temptation. She says that those who arrive at perfection do not pray to be delivered from those temptations which consist in sufferings and combats. On the contrary they desire, and pray for, and delight in such trials, as soldiers wish for war, because they know how great is the profit which they will derive from them. "They are never much afraid of open enemies What they dread, and ought to dread continually, and beg our Lord to be delivered from, are traitorous enemies, certain demons who transform themselves into angels of light, and come disguised. These are not found out, until they have done great harm to the soul: but they keep sucking the very blood, and destroying the virtues, and we are in the very midst of the temptation without knowing it. It is from them that we must pray the Lord to deliver us/' Now, after the Saint has thus distinctly pointed out the mischief these transfigured demons may do us, mark what follows. " Observe, that there are many ways in which they do injury, and do not think that it is only by making us believe that the false consolations and delights, which they can produce in us, are from God. This seems to me the least part of the harm which they can do: nay, rather, it may happen that they thereby cause the soul to advance more rapidly; for with the bait of these consolations it continues more hours in prayer; and not knowing that they come from the devil, and seeing itself unworthy of such delights, it will never cease giving thanks to God; it will feel under greater obligations to serve Him, and it will make more efforts to dispose itself in order that it may receive still greater favors from our Lord, since it believes that they proceed from Sis Hand. Always follow after humility. Keep in view that you are unworthy of these favors, and strive not after them. If this is done, in my opinion the devil loses in this way many souls, whom he hopes to ruin, and the Lord brings our good out of the evil, which Satan endeavors to do us. For His Majesty looks to our intention, which is, ti please and serve Him, when we are 37 20 with Him in prayer; and the Lord is faithful. It is right to walk carefully, that there may be no flaw in humility through some vainglory, and to entreat our Lord to deliver you in this peril. Fear not, my daughters, that His Majesty will allow you to receive many consola⁴ tions from any one but Himself."*

So in a like spirit St. Teresa says, that it is a false humility, to reject from a fear of vain-glory the supernatural gifts and consolations which God bestows on faithful souls in prayer. For since we see that they are gifts, and that we in no way deserve them, they only serve to excite in us an intenser love of the Giver. " It seems to me," she adds, "impossible according to the constitution of our nature for any one to have courage for great undertakings, who does not perceive that he is favored by God. For we are so miserable and so inclined to things of the earth, that we shall be ill able to abhor in very deed and with great detachment all things here below, unless we see that we have some pledge from above: since it is with these gifts that the Lord bestows on us the strength which we lost by our sins. It will be a hard matter, too, for us to desire to be held in displeasure and abhorrence by all, as well as to aim at all the other great virtues which the perfect possess, if we have not some pledge of the love which God beais us, and wilh it a lively faith. For we are by nature so dead that we follow after what we see before us, and hence, these very favors are tLe means of arousing our faith and of strengthening it. Perhaps, indeed, it is I, who am so vile, that am judging of others by myself; and there may be persons who need no more than the truth of the faith in order to perform works of great perfection, whereas I, as I am so miserable, have had need of everything." *

Of course we must not run into the other extreme, and offend against the moderation of the saints, on the subject of these sweetnesses and consolations. St. John of the Cross makes the best road to the summit, indeed the only one to the topmost peak, of his Carmel, straight and narrow, the way of pure faith and the absence of sensible consolations. But on the other hand, he gives us another road, tortuous but upward, on which he writes the words Science, Counsel, Sweetness, Security, Glory; and to this he gives the name of the Way of the Imperfect Spirit, with these two mottoes, "Because I took pains to procure these (consolations) I had less than I should have had if I had ascended by the straight path/' and, "I went slower, and gained a less elevation, because I did not take the straight path.'7 From this doctrine what other inference can be drawn than that the highest perfection is in the renunciation of these gifts, but that there is also a perfection which seeks them, and a perfection too by which the tops of Carmel may be scaled? It will be well indeed for most of us if we can mount to perfection at all, even by the less perfect road. But the following passage of St. Theresa will put both sides of the * Vida, cap. x.

question before us at once, and with a clearness whick precludes the necessity of comment.

" It is most worthy of note, and I say it because I know it by experience, that the soul which begins to travel along this way of mental prayer with determination, and can bring itself not to care much or to be much elated or cast down, because these delights and tendernesses are wanting, or because the Lord bestows them, has already accomplished great part of the journey. There is no fear of such a one turning back, however much he may stumble, because the building is being begun on a firm foundation. For the love of God consists not in having tears, or in these delights and tendernesses, which we desire for the most part on account of the consolation which we receive from them, but in serving Him with justice and strength of mind, and humility. The other seems to me more like receiving and giving nothing ourselves. For poor women, such as me, weak and without strength, there appears to me a suitableness, in my being led as (God is now doing with me) by consolations; in order that I may be able to support certain labors which it has pleased His Majesty that I should have: but for the servants of God, men of weight, learning, and understanding, whom I see make so much ado because God does not give them devotion, it disgusts me to hear of it. I do not say that they should not accept it, if God gives it them, and esteem it highly, since in that case His Majesty sees that it is suitable: but when they have it not, they should not distress themselves: and they should understand that it is not necessary, inasmuch as his Majesty does not give it, and they should be masters of themselves. Let them believe that it is a fault: I have proved it and seen it. Let them believe that it is an imperfection, and that they are not walking with liberty of spirit, but that they will find themselves weak in what they undertake.

u I do not say this so much for beginners, though I lay such stress upon it, since it is of the greatest importance for them to begin with this liberty and determination: but I say it for others, and they are many, who have begun and never could succeed in finishing: and the reason of this, I believe to be in a great measure that they have not embraced the cross from the beginning. They are ever in affliction because it seems to them that they are doing nothing; when the understanding ceases to operate, they cannot endure it: and yet perchance this is the very time when the will is growing stout, and acquiring strength, though they perceive it not."*

Thirdly, emboldened by the doctrine of Alvarez de Paz, I will go on to say that some measure of these spiritual favors is necessary, and that the necessity may be shown by their effects. Can we do withont fervor, which it is their special office to produce? Are not copious and tender affections, something more than a help to us in prayer? Do we not actually measure our growth in holiness by our facility in the exercise of virtues? Shall we persevere in mortifying ourselves, if we do not at last come to love mortifications? We are full often in absolute need of something more than their own light to be thrown on the truths of faith. Even to preserve reverence, mysteries must sometimes be compelled by pressure to give out the savory taste and the recreating odor they contain. Worldliness is a wide thing with an ob- • Vida, o. xi.

stinate life, and it sometimes bursts out oven in a chvout soul like a devouring conflagration. Nothing can extinguish it but an abundance of spiritual sweetness. A drunken man dares, what a sober man will not dare, from a leap out hunting to higher things. So in the spiritual life we have many a leap to take in the darkness of faith, which we never should take were we not inebriated with divine love and the wine of spiritual consolations. Discretion is indispensable to the spiritual life; but the delicacies of it are never found apart from the serenity of spiritual sweetness. This is the reason S. Ignatius tella us never to decide on anything in times of dryness and desolation. Now look at these nine wants. Are they not absolute wauts to the spiritual man? And what are their satisfactions but the nine effects of spiritual favors? If you please, we may look at it in Da Ponte's way. He says that when we give ourselves up to God and aim at perfection, we labor under two necessities. Observe, he calls them necessities. The first is perseverance in prayer, and the second is perseverance in mortification; and he adds that it is quite hopeless for us to dream of persevering in either of them without spiritual favors. According to his doctrine, God shows us this by the very seasons which He usually selects as the times of His visitations, which are times of prayer, times of mortification, times of sorrow, times of dryness, and times of distraction. But hear two of the great fathers of the Church. St. Gregory says, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense. What is the mountain of myrrh, but lofty and solid mortification? And what is the hill of frankincense, but great humility and prayer? It is Iben that the Spouse comes to this mountain and hillf when He familiarly visity those whom He sees striving to mount on high by the mortification of their vices and distractions, and to smell sweetly of pure and lowly prayer. And what comes of this visitation except that the just, like trees of myrrh and frankincense planted on this mountain and hill, distil their precious liquors in greater abundance and excellence, while they exercise higher and more fervent affections of mortification and prayer? This is what the soul herself felt when she said, Come, 0 south wind, blow through my garden, and let thea romatical spices thereof flow, that is, the odoriferous dew of the tears which flow from our eyes. By this the soul signified that the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which is represented by the moist and warm south wind, was necessary (necessaria) to soften the heart that it might bring forth abundantly the tender affections of devotion, the eye sweet tears, and the hands fervent works. For that visitation is nothing else than the choicest myrrh which drops from the hands of the Spouse.*

St. Bernard, that saint in whom antiquity so suddenly puts on a modern look, thus describes the unfortunate predicament in which the heart is placed from which these spiritual favors have been withdrawn. " From this proceeds the barrenness of my soul and the lack of devotion which I feel. Hence it is that my heart is dried up, and my soul like a land without water. I cannot shed tears. I can find no savor in the Psalms. I have n pleasure in reading good books. Prayer does not recreate me. The door is not opened to meditation. I am lazy in work, sleep at my vigils, prone to anger, obstinate in my dislikes, free in my tongue, and unrefrained in mjf * S. Greg, in loc.

appetite. Alas for me! for the Lord visits the mountains which are round about me, but He comes not near to me. Am I then one of the hills over which the Spouse leaps so as not to touch it? For I see one man singular in his gift of abstinence, and another admirable for his patience. One has extasies in contemplation, another penetrates heaven by the importunity of his intercessions. Others excel in various virtues, as mountains that the Lord visits, and on which the Spouse of holy souls leaps and exults. But I miserable, who feel none of these things, what am I but one of those mountains of Gelboe from which, for my sins, the Lord has turned aside, when He compassionately visited the others? Wherefore, my soul, you ought to tremble, when you feel the grace of this divine visitation taken from you. In that failing, you will fail, and whatever good you have will fail with you." It seems then to be the doctrine of the saints that these spiritual favors, I speak of consolations and sweetnesses, are not ornaments and crowns, but are to be numbered among the necessary vital forces of the spiritual life.

Fourthly, we have to consider the signs of these spiritual favors. Some are premonitory warnings of God's coming, and some are tokens of His actual presence in the soul; and it is of no little consequence to be acquainted with both these classes of symptoms. The premonitory warnings of God's coming are five in number. Sometimes, without any cause of which we can take cognizance, an instinct awakes in our soul tc expect God, an impulse to get ready for His coming. It causes no inward perturbance, though it is a surprise; neither does it throw us into any confusion, though it* fjret effect is to deepen our reverential fear At othei times we feel, without, anything either in our inward dispositions or external occupations to account for it, interior admonitions to sanctify ourselves, to make acts of contrition, to go to confession, or suddenly to turn our attention with considerable vivacity upon some particular venial sins. We feel and act as if we were on the eve of some great feast. ' Or again we feel wrapped in a delightful peace. The peace may have been sudden, as in a schoolroom when the master's step is heard, or it may have deepened gradually till it became sensible. Or like sudden appetites which come on us, we all at once are aware of an unusual hunger after justice and holiness, as if there was some void in our soul which we were aching to fill. Or again we are sensibly possessed with an intense and very humble, but also very efficacious, desire to be more pure, in order to win God down to us; for we know that pure souls are His magnets and attract Him. This last is considered to be in most cases quite the immediate precursor of our Lord. He comes swiftly then, as to Mary the moment her beautiful Fiat was pronounced. He comes to exhort, to teach, to console, to reprove, yet to reprove so lovingly that a divine reproof is a thousand times sweeter than earth's best consolation.

There are also five signs of God's actual presence in the soul, for the purpose of dispensing His spiritual favors. The first is a sudden breadth of mind, as if walls had been thrown down and we saw far away over immense and various landscapes, all lying with the most gorgeous golden sunshine upon them. The second is an outbreak of torrents of thoughts and affections, as if at once the windows of heaven had been opened and the fountains pf the great deep broken up as at the deluge The third is a clear apprehension of heavenly things, as if we saw exactly how the heavenly court is arranged, and what are the eternal occupations of the blessed, and as if we too were put in momentary possession of their feelings about earth and the things of earth. The fourth is a feeling as if devotion were feeding us with substantial food, so solid does it seem to be, and such conscious vigor and strength is it pouring into every faculty of our soul, and perhaps even into the tired limbs of our body. The fifth is a fastidious contempt of the world, which makes us turn with sick hearts and weary eyes from every manifestation and development of it. It is like learning the treachery and meanness of a friend. From that moment fresh attachment seems an impossibility. Any one or more of these signs is a token to us of a divine visitation.

It should be observed also that the manner of God's entry into the soul is twofold. Sometimes He arrives in the upper part of the soul, and thence, like dew, He insinuates His sweetness gradually all through us, even to our bodies. At other times He arrives in the lowest depths of our soul, and breaks upward like a crystal bubbling fountain, which fast inundates us till we overflow. The first method seems to concentrate us in Him; the second to make us spread ourselves out in love and works of mercy towards others. The last is more the method of sweetness, the first the method of consolation, were it not that God comes as He wills, and will not be bound by systems.

Fifthly, we have to consider, still following in the track of the old spiritual masters, the reasons we may reverently venture to find for God's denying, delaying, or suspending these spiritual favors. St. Gregory says, that it is lest we should think these gifts come from our owu nature, were our own inheritance, or were due to us by any title of justice. We cannot be kept in too complete a dependence upon God, and the occasional subtractions of the divine favors admirably effect this. At other times He does it to increase our appreciation of His favors, to make us desire them more spiritually, and to long for His return more fervently, treating us, says St. John Climacus, as a mother does her sucking child. Another reason is that we may humble ourselves and lay His absence to the charge of our own sins, to our ingratitude, our negligence, our want of humility, and especially our want of reverence in our way of receiving Him when He comes: or it may be to caution us against vanity and too great a complacency in ourselves, as if His favors were attestations of our sanctity, instead of excesses of His mercy. Sometimes the weakness of our bodily constitution makes it necessary for Him to withdraw His favors for awhile, lest our health should give way under the application to divine things which they cause in us, or we should lose our sleep and appetite, and so be unable to go through the duties of our office or station in life. Sometimes He foresees that we shall be so allured by the sensible sweetness of His favors if He continues them, that we shall be guilty of an indiscreet excess, as children make themselves sick by eating sweets; and so a reaction would come over us; and a spiritual languor, nausea, and unprofitable idleness would take possession of us. Sometimes He suspends His favors because we begin to have a repugnance to our external work and the assistance of our neighbor, and to perform our obligations in a ver^ perfunctory way, because we affect the sweetness and solitude of this divine intercourse. For while it lasts, it mostly abstracts the soul from other things, and altogether possesses it.

At other times He withdraws to give us the opportunity of exercising true and solid virtues by turning His previous visitations to account. For solid virtues are found in God only, not in his sweetnesses and consolations. So that if the sweetness lasted we should not know ourselves as we ought to do, and we might mistake for our own activity what wag in reality the energy of His sweetness. Again, He delights to see us laboring on without the succors of His sensible favors, because it is an image to Him of His own ever-blessed Passion, and because it is then we are winning the brightest crowns for ourselves. Furthermore, He would have us expert in the spiritual life, and proved with a diversity of trials, that we may know how to bend over the oar in a calm, as well as shake out our sails to the wind in a breeze. Sometimes He would advance us all at once in heroic humility, or give us our purgatory here for some infidelity, or burn and eat away certain spots of sin, by some most grievous dereliction, such as Job had when he cried out, Thou wilt take me as a lioness, and returning Thou tormentest me wonderfully. Sometimes He sees in us that common fault, a want of esteem of grace, and He comes and goes, that by a comparison of our two states we may measure at once our own imbecility and the efficacy of grace. Into the deeper mysteries of dryness and desolation I need not enter. They would not be practical to those for whom I write.

Generally speaking the abundance of divine favors depends on our proficiency in the spiritual life. Gerson, in his Mountain of Contemplation, remarks that there are three reasons of favors, which resemble three seasons of the year. The state of beginners is the winter, when the sun is hidden from us by clouds and fogs, and the cold is great, and the rain frequent, though the sun sometimes shines and the days are occasionally smiling. For in their beginnings they have to sustain great obscurities, the relics of their past lives, and the contradiction of still unmodified passions; yet God sometimes visits them and shows them His glad and beneficent countenance. So far was that great master of mystical theology from thinking spiritual sweetness merely a bait for children in holiness. Those who have made some progress in prayer live in a kind of early spring. They have a greater variety. On one day the sky is clear and serene, the next it is cloudy and rainy. Yet the sun often makes his appearance. So the Sun of justice frequently visits the proficients, and indulges them, and gives them sensible tokens of His presence, and leaves with them the odoriferous flowers of fervent desires. Nevertheless He withdraws Himself from them, so that a little while they see Him, and again a little while and they do not see Him; in order that this variety may increase their hunger and appetite for Him, and make them prepare themselves so as to retain Him longer when He visits them. The perfect live in summer, when the rays of the sun are more ardent, and fewer clouds pass over his face; yet there are occasional storms, thunder and hail and tremendous rains, such as winter does not know. Thus the perfect enjoy a more stable and durable quiet, and God's visitations of them are much more frequent. Yet occasionally He tries them with more awful inward conflictg 38 and penul desolations, so as to advance them in humility. Yet in the midst of these tempests He sends upon them scattered rays of light, so that the nights seem almost to be days because of the frequency of the divine lightnings. Sixthly, we have to consider the way to obtain these favors. The teaching of all the old spiritual books is that we are to besiege God for them, like the importunate widow in the Gospel. If we are to know, says one, how we are to desire them, let us look how the old patriarchs desired Christ. They must be our model. As they yearned for Him in the flesh, so must we yearn for Him in these favors; for it is truly Himself we seek when we seek them. Sicut antiqui patres! it is hard to have before us an example of more intense desire. To be humble when they come, and grateful as well as humble, is the way to win them back again with increased riches, and more exuberant sweetness. When our Lord sees that we are solicitous to retain Him, and will not let Him go, as Jacob held the angel fast till morning light, He indulges us, and if He quits us then, He soon returns again. If we are anxious forthwith to turn the sweetness of His favors into solid virtues, increased mortification, redoubled prayer, and practical holiness, we have insured His speedy returns and His more frequent visitation. There are two cases also in which it pleases Him and makes Him love to haunt us, if we say, Fuge, Dilecte mi, Fly, my Beloved. One is when discretion tells us that exuberant devotion is becoming injurious to our health, and encroaching on our work; and the other is when obedi* ence and duty call us off from the secret caresses of His love. We must learn, as St. Philip said, to leave Christ for Christ. Moreover if we would enjoy to the uttermost the frequency of these divine favors, we must beware of an inordinate and irregular greediness for them, and of any complacency or return upon self in them. Louis of Blois mentions the case of a pious person who was punished with a dryness of fifteen years because of one vain complacency in her spiritual favors. We must also cautiously avoid all culpable distractions at prayer; for God only fills empty souls, says St. Bernard, quoting the miracle of Eliseus and the oil (4 Kings iv.). When the vessels were full, she said to her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he answered, I have no more. And the oil stood

Seventhly, we have to consider the right use of these -spiritual favors. After what has been said, a few words will dismiss this part of our subject. We have seen that we must value them and pray for them, and yet not be greedy of them. We must desire them, not for their own sakes, but for their divine effects and solid virtues. We must commute sweetness into additional practice, and consolation into increased strength, as fast as they come. We must receive them with the profoundest humility, and with a growing fervor. They must become the marrow of our mortifications, and be abundantly and unsparingly poured out in kindness to others, and in zeal for souls, and in ministries to the poor. We must with a holy superstition keep them secret, as the secret of a king. As soon as they are known they will evanesce. This is their way. When God means us to let any of them be known, He will give us such a light that we cannot mistake Him and such an impulse that we cannot resist Him. Perhaps this will not be once in our whole life. Then also we must have the art of forgetting them and remembering them at the right times

This must be according as presumption and discouragement, those two sleepless deflecting powers of the spiritua creation, try to disturb the equilibrium of our soul. Finally they must make us languish after God; for what do they show us, with their heaven upon earth, so much as this, that it is not really heaven that is sweet, but the God of heaven?

Eighthly, we have to consider the discrepance between ancient and modern books on the subject of these favors. What has been already said shows that these gifts have a dangerous side, and that caution and moderation are required in the using of them. Barring certain exaggerations, I do not think any really contradictory propositions could be drawn from the two classes of writers on the subject. The genius of the ancients led them to put forward the beauty and desirableness, nay, the necessity, of these favors; while the spirit of the moderns led them to dwell on the dangers of an immoderate appetite for them, and the perils of an incautious use. It is the very aim of a spiritual writer to speak to those of his own day. He is without meaning if he does not. Now I suppose that modern writers found the world very much more effeminate than it was in the days of Gerson. Richard of St. Victor, Tauler, Ruysbroke, Hugh of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, and Louis of Blois, to say nothing of St. John Climacus, St. Nilus, Cassian, and St. Gregory. This want of mortification would at once make the appetite for spiritual sweetness more immoderate and the use of it less cautious. The greater subjective turn of the human mind, and possibly the weakened nerves of the race, have rendered delusions much more common than they were, or possibly, as the times of Antichrist draw nearer, Satan's chain may be lengthened; or we may take the view that they were more common when the modern spiritual school was forming than they are now, when the Jesuit writers have so flooded with scientific light every nook of ascetical theology. Moreover the number of new saints, and the publication of their lives, make the knowledge of these favors more common, and people more readily fancy they are in spiritual states analogous to those they read of in the lives of the saints. Possibly humility is less flourishing in the world than it was, though it never can have flourished much. Moreover, heresies abound in false sweetnesses, and are multiplied on the matters which concern the ascetic life. Jansenism had not only a system of false dogma, but one also of diabolical spiritualism; and Quietism had almost frightened men away from an act of pure love, especially when they found all Quietism out of favor with the Holy See, even in Fenelon's extremest mitigations of the heresy. I venture to make these conjectures in defence of the modern writers, especially as they are more attainable by most readers, and are safer in that their writers had the advantage of many definitions of the Church which their predecessors had not; and I am anxious to show that the tradition of the spiritual life in the Church has always been substantially one and the same. I may therefore be permitted to add (which I do, speaking under correction), that I cannot help thinking that in the grand French ascetics of the seventeenth century there is an extremely faint reflection of Quietism, which appears here and there in their systems, like wayward summer lightning, especially when they speak of the abnegation of self, of tha discernment between God and His favors, of the blessings 38* 2D of aridity, of what they call the nudity of faith, and othet homogeneous subjects. Not that there is not & holy truth in all these things: but I cannot disabuse myself of the prejudice, if it be a prejudice, that there is a little exaggeration in their way of putting them forward, and that that exaggeration is in the direction of Quietism. As Alvarez de Paz says, no one should be heard on the subject of spiritual sweetness whom God has not led by them.

In the life of St. Jane Frances de Chantal we read as follows.⁵ While she was in one of the largest cities in France, a religious, a person of great virtue, desired to speak with her respecting her soul, which she readily allowed. These two great servants of our Lord discovering to each other in all simplicity the paths by which our Lord had led them, the religious said to our Mother, that she was occasionally so tired interiorly, as to be reduced to great weakness and extreme languor; so that she was obliged to be contented with knowing that God is God, without daring to call him her God, or even thinking that He was her God. Our saint's reply was as follows: I shall leave that point to you, my dear Mother, and I shall never practise this abnegation. However tormented and beaten down my soul has been, it has never been so low that I could not say, My God, Thou art my God and the God of my heart. For if the faith teaches me that He is my God, the baptism which I have received makes me realize that of a truth He is my God. The religious immediately replied, that it seemed to her that in saying that word, my God, we had not arrived at a perfect spirit of abnegation. To this our Mother replied that our feeling of abandonment could never equal that of the Son of God, and that in the greatest of His trials, He had *aid, My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me? adding, I have often said to our Lord, when most severely tried, that if it was His pleasure that I should dwell in hell, provided it could be done without ray offending Him, and that my eternal torment should be to his eternal glory, I should be satisfied, but that for all that He should be always my God. The religious thanked our Mother for the light which she had imparted to her, declaring that she was well fitted to be her mistress in divine love, that she would never forget her maxims, and that there was no more delicate matter in the spiritual life than the knowing how to follow the example which the Father has Bet us in His Son our Lord. The saint very often recurred to this conversation, it made so strong an impression on her.

What, then, is the result of our inquiry on this most delicate subject of spiritual favors? Briefly, it comes to this. They are from God, and they are signs of love. He knows best the times and seasons, the ways and the means, of sending them; and as He always sends them for good and never for a snare, this consideration of His knowledge of us should enable us to abate any exaggerations of fear or caution we may have about them. The idea of their being merely sweetmeats to allure children, is as false in theology as it is surely intolerable as a question of taste and reverence, and contradicted by all experience, as the saints are the persons who abound most in these very favors. Neither are they to be considered as one of G-od's many ways of leading souls. Some He leads by an abundance of them. Others by fewer. But none either by absolutely few, or by none. We must therefore mafee them the subject of earnest prayer

By them we attain an experimental knowledge of God, which, while it requires to be corrected by theology, is greater than any that theology can teach us. They give us power over nature and against evil. They subject to us the human spirit, and the demons. They give us a facility in fulfilling our vocations. They intensify our love, fortify us in temptation, give us confidence in God, enlarge our gift of faith, and make us the comforters of our brethren. May we not say with the people of Capharnaum, Lord! give us always this bread? Or, with truth in every word, make the prayer of the poor Samaritan woman our own, Sir, give me this water, thit I may not thirst, nor come hither to draw? *

• S. John ri. 34, ir. 16.

Footnotes

1. To persons aiming at perfection in the world, I would recommend a little book published by Pelagaud at Lyons, entitled Pratique de la Vie Interieure a Pusage des gens du mo'nde: and also La Vraio ↩

2. The same distinction is studiously made by Father Graciano de la Madre de Dios, in the second part of his Dilucidario del Verdadero Espiritu. Vol. ii. cap. 74. What we should call sweetness he names ternuras, tendernesses, and distinguishes them from alegria espiritual, jubilo, regozijo, (mirth) consolaciones, embriaguez (inebriation), hartura (satiety). The subject is also discussed by Padre Fraz Joseph del Espiritu Santo, a Portuguese Carmelite, in his Cadena Mystica Carmelitana. Colac. Pri. Propuesta i. Respuesta v The language of the Spanish Mystical writers is for the most part more accurate and expressive than that of others. Thus the Italian term liquefazione is much less full and expressive for the particular operation of grace which it describes, than the Spanish derretimiento, a rapid thaw. Saliendo assi de si el alma, y como abriendo los poros para atraer assi el bien amado, esta dilatacion, se llama Derretimiento. As I am quoting Father Gracian's Dilucidario, I may mention, as throwing light on what I have said before of the human spirit, his commentary on those words of Eliu in the book of Job (cap. 32,) where he speaks of his inward fervor "as new wine which wanteth vent, which bursteth the new vessels." He says that when pious persons, and especially beginners, neglect their studies or the duties of their station for devotional exercises, it is a common thing to pay that they are under a delusion of the devil; but in reality, he observes, it is simply the infirmity of the human spirit, which is often inculpable, as it is as yet unused to this " divine inebriation f* and they who are harsh and excessive in their condemnation of it run the risk of frightening men away from the spiritual life. ↩

3. This matter is of such great importance, especially so far as regards the connection between spiritual sweetness and the solidity of virtue, that I cannot forbear giving a passage from Da Ponte. It is in his life of Marina d'Escobar, and as he is not there professedly treating of the present matter, the passage shows how completely the view given in the text was part of his mind. He is saying that spiritual favors, crosses, and virtues are the triple cord of the spiritual life, which Ecclesiastes says is not easily broken. He gives this reason, — Porque a los favores, y regalos sin las cruces, facilmente suele veneer la soberbia, presuncion, y vanagloria; las cruces, y tormentos, sin alivios de regalos, facilmente despenan en impaciencia, tedio, y pusilanymidad de espiritu. Las virtude? sin Id mezela de essotras dos cosas nunca son solidas, ni fuertes, ni bien probadas, y assi faMlmente las vence lapereza, y tibieza del corazon j pero quand» todas tres se juntan, hacen una santidad aventajada, y eomo iujpugn»bla — Vida Meravilloea. vol. I. Introd. See*. IT. ↩

4. The saint's words in the passage in Italics are as follows: Este me parece el menos dano en parte que ellos pueden haeer, antes podrd ser que con esto hagan caminar mas apriesa, porque cehados de aquel gusto, estan mas horas en la oracion; y como ellos estan ignorantes que es el demonio, y como se ven indignos de aquellos regalos, no acabaran de dar gracias a Dios: quedaran mas }bligado? a servirle: esforzarse han a disponerse, para que les haga mas mereedes el Senor, pensando son de su mano. Camino ie Perfection, tap. xxxviii ↩

5. Vol. ii. p. 25. Oratorian Edition. ↩