39 — HIDING FROM ONESELF

Presence of God. — O Jesus who, wholly forgetful of Yourself, consecrated Yourself to the Father’s glory, teach me to forget myself.

Meditation

1 — To enter the fullness of hidden life, it is not enough to hide from others’ eyes; one must hide also from oneself, that is, forget oneself, avoiding every self-centered concern and return to self. One can be concerned with oneself from a material, coarse point of view, but one can be so also from a spiritual point of view. To be too preoccupied with one’s own spiritual progress, with consolations God grants or does not grant, with one’s state of dryness, etc., is often a sign of subtle spiritual selfishness, is a sign of a soul more occupied with itself than with God. Then it is time to learn to forget oneself, to hide from oneself, not wishing to examine too much what passes within, not giving it too much importance and renouncing even the satisfaction of wanting to account for one’s own interior journey. And it is good to know that not infrequently God permits painful and dark states precisely because He wants the soul to live hidden from itself. Precisely here ended the program of hiddenness of St. Teresa Margaret, who not only intended “to live, so to speak, invisible and unobserved” among her sisters, but “also to be in a certain manner hidden and unknown to herself, to die to self without knowing it and without tasting any pleasure of this mystical spiritual death, burying in Christ every thought and every reflection, even spiritual and eternal, on self, in a most subtle way.” This is the explicit purpose of complete forgetfulness of self, which embraces also renunciation of the spiritual satisfaction of accounting for one’s own immolation. But to avoid returning upon self, the soul must necessarily polarize elsewhere its aspirations; therefore the negative exercise of no longer thinking of self must go hand in hand with the positive one of centering itself in Christ, of “burying in Christ” every thought, every concern, even spiritual, about self.

No one will succeed in turning concern away from self unless he fixes it on the object of his love; St. Teresa Margaret forgot herself to the end by burying her thought “in Christ,” the only Beloved.

2 — The soul totally forgetful of self is also totally disinterested. It no longer serves God with mercenary spirit, that is, looking more to the reward it may receive than to His glory, but serves Him

• according to the beautiful expression of St. Teresa of Jesus - “gratuitously, as great lords serve kings” (Lt.). Such must be the style of a soul of interior life, which, having been invited by God to His intimacy, must not act as a hireling, but as daughter, as spouse. This is one of the most beautiful fruits of hidden life.

St. John of the Cross teaches: “God is better pleased with one work, however small, done in secret and without desire that it be known, than with many works done with this desire; because one who with pure love works for the Lord, not only does not care at all that his actions be seen by men, but does not even do them so that God Himself may know them. So that if, by hypothesis, the Lord should never know them, he would not cease to render Him the same services, with the same joy and purity of love” (S.C. I, 20). The same delicate thought we find in St. Therese of the Child Jesus: “Even if, impossible thing, God Himself were ignorant of my good actions, I would not be grieved, for I love Him so much that I would like to be able to please Him without His knowing it is I” (CR.).

This absolute purity of intention makes the soul act only for God and never for its own advantage, not even spiritual. Certainly God will recompense good works, but this care is totally left to His good pleasure, while the soul concerns itself only with pleasing Him. Hidden life thus culminates in sovereign disinterest, not only with respect to human rewards and praises, but also with respect to spiritual consolations. Then the soul seeks God alone and He alone suffices it. And if God, as though seeming not to take account of its love and services, leaves it in dryness and abandonment, it does not worry and does not for this stop, because the only motive that moves it to act is to please God alone.

Colloquy

O my God, teach me to forget myself, to hide in You every concern, every excessive care for myself. Why do I want to serve You, O Lord? Why do I want to love You and advance on the way of holiness? Perhaps for my own satisfaction, for my own interest or vain complacency? Oh, how paltry would be a spiritual life that had ends so low, so vain! No, my God, You created me for Your glory, and I humbly ask You to be able to live only for Your glory, above every personal interest and satisfaction!

Is it not already honor enough that You do me by allowing that a poor and miserable creature like me may direct his life to Your glory? that a poor worm, as I am, may give glory to You, O most high God, infinite perfection? What shall I then seek, O Lord, beyond this? Is it worth more to satisfy the creature or the Creator, to satisfy myself or my God? O Lord, I want to serve and satisfy You alone, I want to give pleasure to You alone, and only in this do I want to place my own pleasure, the motive of my gladness. I understand it: if You lead me by an arid and dark way, if You permit that darkness often gather around me, it is precisely because You want to teach me to serve You with purity of intention, seeking only Your satisfaction and not my own. If You permit me to continue exercising myself in interior life, in virtue, without seeing any result, if You keep hidden from me my few progresses, You do this precisely to establish me in humility. Perhaps if I had greater light, if the work of Your grace in me were more manifest, I would glory in it and, delighting in myself, would halt my impulse toward You, sole object of my complacency.

O Lord, how admirable You are in Your ways! Blessed be this interior darkness that defends me from the dangers of spiritual pride! No, my God, I do not ask You to change my way; rather I beg You to continue leading me thus, in a life of complete hiddenness, not only from others’ eyes, but also from my own. And if, by Your grace, there is in me anything good, let this serve to gladden Your gaze and not mine, which, vainly delighting, could ruin it in an instant. Keep me therefore under the shadow of Your wings, teach me to serve You gratuitously out of pure love; teach me to forget myself, to bury in You every concern for myself, to entrust with full abandonment into Your hands my soul. Behold, to gain it, I surrender it to You, I want to lose it in You, and in You I shall find it again clothed in Your beauty.