Chapter 1-21

ABOUT this time I fell into a state of total privation, very great and very long; in a state of weakness and entire desertion, which lasted near seven years. O grief the most violent of griefs! This heart, which was occupied only with its God, found itself no longer occupied but with the creature. It seemed to be cast down from the throne of God to live, like Nebuchadnezzar, for seven years with the beasts. But before describing this deplorable state, which, through the altogether admirable use Divine Wisdom made of it, was advantageous to me, I must tell the infidelities I committed in it.

As I commenced to lose you, O my God, and to lose you utterly—at least as far as perceptible sentiment (because for a considerable time there was no question of the sensible or the distinct); as I commenced, I say, to lose you in this way, O my Love, it appeared to me that I fell each day into the purely natural, and that I no longer loved you at all—a thing which I had only experienced by alternations. For although, before entering into this state, I had experienced long privations, almost continual towards the close, I had however, from time to time, inflowings of your Divinity, so profound and so inward, so quick and so penetrating, that it was easy for me to judge that you were only concealed for me, but not lost. Although during the time of privations it appeared to me that I had lost you totally, a certain profound support nevertheless subsisted, without the soul thinking she had it, and she has recognized this support only by its entire absence in the sequel. All the times that you returned with greater goodness and power, you returned also with greater magnificence, so that you re-established in a few hours the ruins of my infidelities, and you profusely compensated for my losses; but it was not the same during the whole time of which I am about to speak.

During the other privations my soul continually sought him whom she had lost. Her searching, though caused by her loss, and by a loss that she believed to arise from her own fault, was still a guarantee of her love; for one seeks not that which one does not love, and the languor she suffered from seeing herself deprived of her love was a mark of the fidelity of that same love. Moreover, she had a very great support, though it did not appear to her, which was that the heart was void of all love, and that she could say to her God, “If I love not you, I am confident I love nothing else;” but here it is quite the contrary; not only does it appear one no longer loves, but this heart so loving and so beloved finds itself filled only with the love of creatures and of itself. At all the other times one was not deprived of every facility for doing good; though one did it in a languishing and tasteless manner, often even with repugnance, one nevertheless did it; but here it is no longer repugnance, but impotence—an impotence of such a nature that the soul does not know her impotence; it appears only as an unwillingness to do it.

I have always remarked, these eighteen years back, that the time of great festivals, of those even for which I had a singular affection, was that when interiorly I was most forsaken. What will appear surprising is that when I communicated, however penetrated by God I might previously be, dryness took the place of abundance, and emptiness that of plenitude. At present I know very well its cause, which was that, as my road was a road of death and of faith, the great festivals and the reception of the Sacrament operated in me according to the designs of God, death, faith, cross, spoliation, annihilation; for our God operates through his mysteries and through his Sacraments that which he operates through himself, so that if the state is entirely in the sentiments, the Sacraments and the mysteries celebrated at the festivals operate quick and tender sentiments of God. If the state is in light, they operate admirable lights, either active or passive, according to the degree of the soul. If it is faith, they will operate dryness, obscurity, more or less, according to the degree of faith, and so with the rest. They operate crosses, spoliation, annihilation, according to the designs of God for the souls and the degree of each one. It is the same with prayer—it is dry, obscure, crucifying, despoiling, annihilating, etc. Those who complain of prayer (supposing fidelity), and what they experience at the reception of the Sacraments, do it only for want of light; for there is always given to them what is needful for them, although not what they wish and desire. If one was thoroughly convinced of these truths, far from passing all his life in complaining of God and of himself, one would employ it only in making use in death and dying fidelity of all these different dispositions in which God places us, so that by causing death to us they would procure for us life.

For it is an admirable thing how all our welfare, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, consists in abandoning ourselves to God, leaving him to do in us and with us all that shall please him, with so much greater willingness as things satisfy us less; so that, by this submission and dependence upon the Spirit of God, all is given us, and in the hand of God all serves us admirably, even our weaknesses, our paltriness and defects—I say more, our sins, which are a fruit and a source of death, oftentimes become in the hand of God a source of life through the humiliation they cause us. If the soul was faithful to leave herself in the hand of God, sustaining all his operations, gratifying and crucifying, leaving herself from moment to moment to be conducted and destroyed by the strokes and leadings of his divine providence, without complaining of God, nor wishing anything else but what she has, she would soon attain to the experience of eternal truth, although she should know only later the ways and the leadings of God with her.

But the misfortune is that we wish to conduct God, far from allowing ourselves to be conducted by him. We wish to point out a road in place of blindly following that which he traces for us; and this is the cause why many souls, which would be destined to enjoy even God in himself, and not his gifts in them, pass all their life in running after little consolations and feasting on them, confining themselves to that, and even making their happiness consist in that. For you, my dear children, if my chains and my captivity touch you, I pray you, they may serve to engage you to seek God only for himself; never to wish to possess him save by the death of all that you are, to enjoy him only in loss. Never aim to be anything in the ways of the intellect, but yield to the most profound annihilation.

I fell then into the purely natural; yet my infidelities were of a kind that would have appeared a good and virtue to any other but to my God, who does not judge virtue by the name people give it, but by the purity and uprightness of the heart that practises it. I felt my inclination grow each day, and that my heart, which previously was occupied and filled with its God alone, was full and occupied only with creatures. I used all sorts of penances, prayers, pilgrimages, and vows. It seemed, O my God, I found an increase of my ill in all that I took as a remedy for it, so that I entered upon an inconceivable desolation. I can say tears became my drink, and grief my nourishment. Whereas your love, O my God, had put in my heart a peace as profound as it seemed unalterable, this inclination brought trouble and confusion into my heart with so much force that I could not resist the violence.

I had two enemies equally powerful, who never gained the victory one over the other, so that they mutually combated with the more obstinacy as the advantage never turned to either side. It was the desire of pleasing you, O my God, and the fear of displeasing you—a leaning of my whole centre towards you, O my supreme Felicity, and an impulse of my whole self towards the creature; but as this latter was strongly felt, the other appeared to me only as a thing that was not. Whenever I was alone, I shed torrents of tears, and I said with equal dryness and desolation, “Is it possible that I have received so many graces from God only to lose them; that I have loved him with so much ardour only to hate him eternally; that his benefits have served as matter for my ingratitude? His fidelity, shall it only be requited by my infidelity? Has my heart been so long filled with him alone, only in order to be the more empty of him; and has it been emptied of all created objects, only to be more strongly filled with them?” On the other hand, I could not find pleasure in conversations which I sought as if in spite of myself. I had within me an executioner, who tormented me without relaxation. I felt within me a pain that I could never make understood save by those who have experienced it.

I lost all prayer, being utterly unable to use any. The time I took for it was filled only with creatures, and quite void of God. It served only to make me better feel my loss and my misfortune, because then there was no diversion. I could no longer mortify myself, and my appetite woke up again for a thousand things, and when I used them I found therein no taste; so there remained to me only disgust at having peen unfaithful, without having the satisfaction I had promised myself. I could not express what I suffered, and the infidelities I committed during this time. I believed myself lost: for all I had for exterior and interior was taken from me. M. Bertot gave me no help, and God permitted that he misunderstood one of my letters, and even abandoned me for a long time in my greatest need, as I shall tell in its place.

What could I do in this state? The heaven was shut for me, and it seemed to me it was with justice. I could neither console myself nor complain of it. I had not any creature on earth to whom I could address myself, and if I wished to address myself to some saint, besides that I had not any facility, since for many years I found them only in God, I then found them only full of the fury of God. The Holy Virgin, for whom I had had a very great and tender devotion from my youth, appeared to me inaccessible. I knew not to whom to address myself, or where to find help; there was none either in heaven or on earth. If I wished to seek it in my central depth, and to find him who once possessed it so powerfully, not only did I find nothing there, but I was even rejected with violence. I was banished from all beings, without being able to find support or refuge in anything. This is a grief the most terrible of all, and which also causes death. I could no more practise any virtue, and the virtues which had been most familiar to me had more utterly abandoned me.

There was no longer for me a God, Husband, Father, Lover—if I dared to call him so. There was only a rigorous Judge, whose anger appeared to kindle every day. Oh, if I had been able to find in the abyss a place to conceal me from his fury, without withdrawing me from his justice; I would have availed myself of it. I could no more go to see the poor; either I forgot them entirely, or I no longer found the time for it, or I had a disgust for it that amounted to opposition. If I would do violence to myself, to go to them in spite of my repugnance, I found myself most part of the time in veritable impotence. If, in short, I sometimes made an effort to go to them, I could not remain there a moment, and if I wished to speak to them, it was impossible for me. When I would force myself, I said absurdities that had not common sense. I could no longer remain a moment at church, and whereas formerly it was torture to me not to have time to pray, my torture then was to have time and to be obliged to be at church. I neither took in, nor heard anything. The Mass went on without my being able to pay any attention. I sometimes heard several in succession, in order to make up by the one the defect of that which had preceded, but it was still worse. My eyes, which formerly of themselves closed in spite of me, then continued open, without it being possible for me to close them or to concentrate myself a moment.

All creatures leagued themselves against me, and external crosses redoubled in proportion as those within increased. I would have liked to have practised penances, but besides that they had been forbidden to me at this time, in the disposition I was in, it was as if impossible for me to perform them. I had not the courage, and when I wished to try, everything fell from my hands. It seemed that God had given me M. Bertot only to deprive me of supports, and not for me to use. For after I had entered on this state, without his knowing anything of it, he forbade me all kinds of penances, and told me that I was not worthy of practising them. It was not hard to persuade me of this, since I thought there was not upon the earth a more wicked person than I. These sentiments were so keen at the commencement that there was not a criminal in the world I did not justify in my mind, while condemning myself: for that those men had offended God, and were offending him, while not knowing him, this appeared to me endurable by your goodness, O my God; but that a creature who had known you, who had loved you, and on whom you had bestowed graces enough to save an entire world, should have become what I was, that appeared to me frightful.

I sometimes gave way to exterior hastiness, without any power to control myself. I could no longer restrain my tongue. I was like those children who cannot help themselves from falling. I made some verses which were subjects of infidelity for me. I resolved to make no more, but my resolutions were barren. It was enough for me to have formed a resolution, to immediately do the contrary. You deprived me of all facility for carrying it out. I could no longer speak of you, O my God; I envied all those who loved you. Oh, is it possible this heart, all fire, should have become ice; that this heart, so loving, should have fallen into the most utter indifference? It seemed to me at every moment as if hell were about to open to swallow me up, and that which then caused me so much terror would have afterwards been the object of my wishes; for it must be understood I believed myself guilty of all the sins of which I had the sentiments, and as I had the sentiment of all sins I believed myself to have the reality. I could not believe, O my God, that you should ever pardon me. Everything was so effaced from my mind that I no longer regarded myself but as a victim destined to hell. The illness I previously endured with pleasure became insupportable to me. A slight headache made me shudder; I felt in myself only movements of impatience. In place of that peace of paradise there was a trouble of hell. Formerly I rejoiced before my lying-in because I must suffer in it, and then I feared the shadow of pain.