IT was eight or nine months after I had the small-pox that Father La Combe passed by the place of my residence. He came to the house, bringing me a letter from Father La Mothe, who asked me to see him, as he was a friend of his. I had much hesitation whether I should see him, because I greatly feared new acquaintances. However, the fear of offending Father La Mothe led me to do it. This conversation, which was short, made him desire to see me once more. I felt the same wish on my side; for I believed he either loved God or was quite prepared to love him, and I wished everybody to love him. God had already made use of me to win three monks of his order. The eagerness he had to see me again led him to come to our country house, which was only half a league from the town. Providence made use of a little accident that happened, to give me the means of speaking to him; for as my husband, who greatly enjoyed his cleverness, was conversing with him, he felt ill, and having gone into the garden, my husband told me to go and look for him, lest anything might have occurred. I went there. This Father said that he had remarked a concentration and such an extraordinary presence of God on my countenance, that he said to himself, “I have never seen a woman like that;” and this was what made him desire to see me again. We conversed a little, and you permitted, O my God, that I said to him things which opened to him the way of the interior. God bestowed upon him so much grace, through this miserable channel, that he has since declared to me he went away changed into another man. I preserved a root of esteem for him, for it appeared to me he would be God’s; but I was very far from foreseeing that I should ever go to a place where he would be.
My dispositions at this time were a continual prayer, without my recognizing it. I only felt a great repose, and a great savour of the presence of God, who appeared to me so intimate that he was more in me than I myself. The feelings of it were sometimes stronger and so penetrating that I could not resist them, and Love deprived me of all freedom. Sometimes there was such dryness that I felt only the pain of absence, which was so much the harsher for me in proportion as the presence had been more felt. I thought that I had lost Love, for in these alternations, when Love was present, I so forgot my griefs, they appeared to me only as a dream, and in the absences of Love it seemed to me that he must never return, and as it appeared to me always it was through my fault he had withdrawn from me, this made me inconsolable. If I had been able to persuade myself that it had been a state through which it was necessary to pass, I should not have been troubled, since love for the will of God would have made all things easy to me; the peculiarity of this prayer being to give a great love for the order of God, a sublime faith, and so perfect a confidence, that one could no longer fear anything, whether perils, dangers, death, life, spirit, or thunder; on the contrary, it rejoices, it gives a great abnegation of self, of its interests, of its reputation, and an oblivion of all things.
At home I was accused of everything that was ill done, or spoiled, or broken. I at once told the truth, that it was not I. They persisted, and I made no answer. Then I was accused not only of the fault, but of having lied. Although it was told to visitors, afterwards when I was alone with them, I did not disabuse them. Oftentimes I heard things said in my presence to my friends likely to deprive me of their esteem, but I never spoke to them thereon. Love wished secrecy, and to suffer everything without justification. If through infidelity I happened to justify myself, I had no success, and brought upon myself new crosses both without and within. But in spite of all this, I was so in love with the cross, that my greatest cross would have been to have been without it. You sometimes, O my God, removed from me the cross, to make me feel it the more; and it was then that you redoubled my esteem, taste, and desire of it, which was sometimes in such excess, it devoured me. When the cross was removed from me for some moments, it seemed to me it was owing to the ill use I had made of it, and that some infidelity had deprived me of so great a blessing; for I never knew better its value than in its loss. O kindly cross, my dear delight, my faithful companion, as my Saviour was incarnate only to die between your arms, should I not be conformed to him in this; and wilt thou not be the means to unite me to him for ever? I often said to you, O my Love, “Punish me in any other manner, but do not take from me the cross!”
Although the love of the cross was so great in me it made me languish when the cross was absent, no sooner did it return to me, that lovable cross, object of my desires and of my hopes, than it concealed from me its beauties to show me only its rigours, so that the cross was keenly felt by me; and, as soon as I committed any fault, God deprived me of it anew, and then it appeared to me in all its beauty, and I could not console myself for not having given it the reception it merited. I then felt myself burning with love for it. It returned, that amiable cross, with so much the more force, as my desire was the more vehement. I could not reconcile two things that appeared to me so much opposed—to desire the cross with so much ardour, and to support it with so much difficulty. These alternations render it a thousand times more felt, for the spirit adapts itself gradually to the cross, and when it commences to bear it strongly, it is taken away for a little time, in order that its return may surprise and overwhelm it. Moreover, when one bears the cross uniformly, one rests upon it, and one even becomes so accustomed to it that it does not occasion so much pain, for the cross has something noble and delicate, which furnishes a great support to the soul.
The crosses you sent me, O my God, were arranged in such a way, through your providence, that they could not produce this effect. Your perfectly wise hand fitted them in such a way, whether by often changing them, whether by increasing them, that they were always new to me. Oh, how well you know, my God, to weight the crosses in the admirable economy that you there observe! It is you alone who know how to crucify in a manner suited to the capacity of the creature. You constantly give new ones, and such as we do not expect. The interior crosses kept pace with the exterior, and they were very similar. Your redoubled absences made me die of grief. When you had given me, O my God, stronger proofs of your love, and my heart thought only of loving you, you permitted some unforeseen faults; then you absented yourself so long, and so harshly, that you seemed bound never to return, and when my soul began to resign herself, and to recognize that this state was more beneficial to her than that of abundance, seeing that from the latter she nourished her selfhood, and did not make of it the full use that she ought, then you returned more powerfully, and my joy was so much the greater as my grief had been deeper. I believe that if God did not maintain this procedure, the soul would never die to herself, for self-love is so dangerous, it attaches itself and becomes accustomed to everything.
What caused me most trouble in this time of confusion and crucifixion without and within, was an inconceivable tendency to hastiness, and when any answer a trifle too sharp escaped me, which served not a little to humiliate me, I was told I was in mortal sin. Nothing less than this rigorous guidance, O my God, was needed with me, for I was so proud, so hasty, and naturally so contradictory in temper, wishing always to prevail, and thinking my reasons better than those of others, that if you had spared me those hammer-blows, you would never have polished me to your taste; for I was so vain I was ridiculous. All these crosses were needed to reduce me. Applause made me insupportable. I had the defect of praising my friends to excess, and blaming others without reason. With all my heart I wish to make known my paltriness. It seems, my God, to serve admirably as shadows to the picture that you have the goodness to produce in me. The more criminal I have been, the more I owe you, and the less I can attribute to myself any good. Oh, how blind are men who attribute to man the sanctity God communicates to him! I believe, my God, you have saints who, after your grace, are extremely indebted to their fidelity. As for me, my God, I am indebted only to you; it is my pleasure, it is my glory, —I could not say it too often.
I bestowed a great deal in charity. You had given me, O my God, so much love for the poor, that I would have liked to supply all their wants. I could not see them in their wretchedness without reproaching myself for my wealth. I deprived myself of what I could in order to succour them. The best that was served me at table was at once removed, owing to the orders I had given, and carried to them. There were hardly any poor in the place where I resided who did not feel the effects of the charity you had given me for them. It seemed, O my God, that you scarcely wanted alms except from me. I was applied to for everything that others refused, and I said to you, “O my Love, it is your wealth; I am only the steward of it; I must distribute it according to your will.” I found means of assisting them without letting myself be known, because I had a person who distributed my alms in secret. When there were families ashamed of receiving charity, I sent it to them as if I had owed it to them. I clothed those who were naked, and I had girls taught to earn their livelihood, especially those who were good-looking, in order that, being occupied and having the means of living, they might be saved from the occasion of ruining themselves. You even made use of me, O my God, to withdraw some from their irregularities. There was one of good birth and handsome, who died very saintly. I furnished milk for the little children, and particularly at Christmas I redoubled my charities for the little children, in honour of the Child Jesus, who was the centre of my love. I went to see the sick—to relieve them, to make their beds. I compounded ointments, and dressed their wounds. I buried the dead. I secretly supplied artisans and shopkeepers with the means of keeping up their shops. It would be hardly possible to carry charity further than our Lord made me carry it, according to my state, both as wife and widow.
Our Lord, in order to purify me more thoroughly from the mixture I might make of his gifts with my “own”-love, placed me under very severe interior trials. I began to experience that the virtue, which had been so sweet and so easy for me, became an insupportable weight, not that I did not extremely love it, but I found myself powerless to practise it as I had learned it. The more I loved it, the more I struggled to acquire some virtue I saw lacking to me, I fell, it seemed to me, into the very opposite of it. There was only one thing in which you had always afforded me a visible protection—it was chastity. You gave me a very great love for it, and you placed its effects in my soul, putting away, even during my marriage, by providences, sicknesses, and other means, that which might weaken it even innocently; so that, from the second year of my marriage, God so alienated my heart from all sensual pleasures, that marriage has been for me in every way a very severe trial. For many years, it seems to me that my heart and spirit are so separated from my body, that it does things as if it did not do them. If it eats or refreshes itself, it is done with such an aloofness that I am astonished at it, and with an entire mortification of vivacity of sentiment for all natural functions. I believe I say enough to make myself understood.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 