IT seemed, O my God, that while working by your providence to make me leave all, you daily made my ties stronger and my departure more blamable. For, in short, one could not receive greater kindness from one’s own mother than what my mother-in-law showed me at this time. The least petty ailment I had threw her into mortal disquietude. She said she had veneration for the virtue you had placed in me. I believe that what not a little contributed to this change was that she learned from people who, without thinking of it, addressed themselves to her, that three persons had sought me in marriage; and as I had refused them, although they were of a rank much above mine, and with great advantages, she was surprised at it; but what most struck her was that she remembered she had said to me at the time these persons were wooing me, that if I did not marry it was because I did not get the chance, and that I had not answered her a word to let her know it only depended on me to do so most advantageously. She thought that such harsh treatment as she had dealt me might perhaps induce me to yield to the proposals in order to deliver myself honourably from the tyranny. She well enough saw the injury this would be to my children. In short, you opened her eyes, and changed her harshness to tenderness.
I fell extremely ill. I thought, O my God, you were pleased with the will of my sacrifice, and you wished that of my life. It was in this illness my mother-in-law showed me the tenderness she had for me. She hardly stirred from my bedside, and the tears she shed showed the sincerity of her affection. I felt very grateful to her, and it seemed to me I loved her as a true mother. Why should I leave her when she loved me so much, and was so advanced in years? That maid, who hitherto had been my plague, took an inconceivable affection for me. She praised me everywhere, saying I was a true saint, although I was so far from it. She served me with extraordinary respect; begged my pardon for what she had made me suffer. She died of regret after my departure.
There was a priest of worth, and spiritually minded, who had accepted an employment, contrary to advice I had given him. I could not believe God wished it for him. It was that he engaged himself with the man with whom I had formerly been connected, and who so much persecuted me. He did it secretly, after having told me he would not do so. Our Lord, who wished to save him, made him soon die. I saw him gradually fall from his grace through this infidelity, at the time of the persecution by that person, with whom he dwelt. I learned that he had adopted what he told him of me; that he had even jested on it with him. I took no notice, and did not even see him. I was in the country when he died. I had no necessity to be informed of his death. For forty-eight hours I bore him under a pain of purgatory and great terrors. It was given me to understand that he came to perform a purgatory with me, because he had been a partisan in the calumny. I communicated for him, and I no longer felt him. I have never borne purgatory so sensibly as that.
There was a nun in a convent I often went to. During six months I was in the country this woman had entered into a state of purification that everyone in the house regarded as madness. They shut her up even with violence, and this nearly ruined her. All persons they had shown her to said it was madness. On my return I went into that house. They told me she had become mad. I knew she was a holy woman. I asked to see her. As soon as she approached me, I felt the impression as from a soul in purgatory. I understood at once it was not madness, but a state of purification. I said to the Superior, I begged they would not shut her up; that they would not show her to anyone; and that she would have the kindness to trust her to me; that I hoped things would change. I understood her greatest trouble was to pass as mad; that she had a very great repugnance for this; and that when the state of madness presented itself to her mind with the thought of sacrificing herself to it, far from doing so, she resisted and became quite furious. I counselled her to sacrifice herself to bear the state of madness, which Jesus Christ had been willing to bear before Herod. This sacrifice gave her at once more calm; but as God wished to purify this soul, he purified her from all things to which she had had most attachment. She had for her Superior a very strong attachment. She experienced as regards her a strange trouble, which was a desire of seeing her and being near her, and as soon as she approached her, a frightful hatred and opposition. It was the same in all her spiritual exercises for which she had had attachment. She formerly passed days before the Holy Sacrament; and now she could not continue there a single instant. This convinced them still more she was mad. I had in my central depth an instinct of just judgment, which did not deceive me, and I asserted the contrary; but as to the impression of her state as that of purgatory, it was given me when she approached me. At last, after having suffered strangely, her Superior wrote me that I had been right, and that she had emerged from it purified as an angel. God permitted I was the only person who knew her state. You commenced to give me at this time, O my God, the discernment of spirits.
The winter preceding the year of my departure was one of the longest and most severe there had been for many years. It was in 1680. There was extreme want, which furnished me with the opportunity of exercising large charities; for besides what I gave in secret to respectable persons in poverty, who were very numerous, that which was done at the house in distributing bread to all the rest was very great. My mother-in-law shared in that of the house, and we joined together for the purpose. She contributed to it with much kindness and charity; and I found her so changed I was surprised and delighted at it. We used to give away at the house ninety-six dozen loaves every week; but the secret charities were larger. I had girls and little boys put to a trade. All this caused my departure to be much blamed, and the more so as my charities had been striking. At this time I did not find anything difficult, and you gave, O my God, such a blessing to my alms that I did not find it cost anything to my family, which extremely surprised me. Previous to the death of my husband, my mother-in-law having told him I would ruin him through my charities (although he was himself so charitable that in a year of scarcity, while he was yet unmarried, he distributed a very considerable sum)—as, however, my mother-in-law said this to him very often (and certainly I used to give excessively), he told me that he wished absolutely I should write down all I expended—what I gave for the expense of the house, all that I caused to be bought, in order he might judge of what I gave to the poor. This new obligation appeared to me the more harsh that during the eleven years I had been married, they had not thought of it. It was not the affront that hurt me, Ithink; it was rather the fear of not having the means of giving. I, however, submitted to it without retrenching anything from my charities. Wonder of your providence, O my God! I did not write any of my alms, and my expense was found right without a shilling more or less. I was amazed, and I saw that my charities were given from your capital. This made me still more liberal of a wealth which did not belong to me; Oh, if people only knew how charities, far from inconveniencing, bring plenty, they would be charmed at it. What useless extravagance there is which might maintain the poor, and which God would even repay to the families!
During the time of my great troubles, some years after my widowhood, the servants of the house came to tell me that there was on the road a poor soldier dying; for I was in the country. I made them bring him, and having had a bed prepared in a separate place, I kept him for more than fifteen days. I made him receive the Sacraments. His ailment was a dysentery caught in the army. He was so stinking, so poisonous, that although they were charitable enough in the house, no one could approach him. I continued to attend on him, and through your goodness, O my God, you did not permit any harm to happen to me. I sometimes used to keep poor persons to dress their wounds, but that cost me nothing. This smell was the most terrible I have ever experienced in my life, and he died of the disease.
What caused me still more trouble was the tenderness I had for my children, especially for my younger son, whom I had reason to love. I saw him disposed to good, and it seemed to me that everything in his natural disposition favoured the hopes I had conceived of him. It was a great risk to leave him to be educated by others, and this cost me more trouble in leaving him than all the rest. I would have wished to take my daughter with me. I did not think I ought to leave her, but she was suffering for three years from a triple-quartan fever, so that it appeared out of the question to take her. Yet, O my God, you, through your providence, caused her health to be restored so suddenly and so perfectly, four months before my departure, that I found her in a state to go with me.
The bonds by which you held me united to you, O my God, were infinitely stronger than those of flesh and blood. It seemed to me my only duty was to do your will, and, though I should not have been yours in virtue of my creation, and through the engagement of my redemption; the laws of my sacred marriage, are they not to leave all to follow the Spouse? I had then to follow you where you called me, for, although I hesitated much before setting out, I have never doubted afterwards it was your will, and although men who judge things according to the measure of success they appear to have, have taken the opportunity of my defeat and my disgraces to judge my call, and to convict it of error, illusion, and falsity, it is this very overthrow, and the strange multitude of crosses it has drawn upon me, which have made me convinced of its truth; so that, although the prison where I now am be a consequence of it, I am more convinced than ever that the abandonment I have made of all things has been according to your will. If it was not so, your Gospel would not be true, where it promises a hundred-fold in this life and persecutions to those who will quit all for your love. Have I not had the hundred-fold infinitely through the entire possession you have taken of me; through the unshaken firmness you give me in my sufferings; through perfect tranquillity in the midst of the most furious tempest with which I am beaten from every side; through a joy, largeness, and infinite liberty in the closest and strictest imprisonment? What persecutions have burst upon me, as will be seen, and which I am not yet at the end of, since I am still a prisoner! I do not desire my prison to cease; I love my chains. All is alike to me, since I have no other will nor other love than the love and the will of him who possesses me, and into whom I am passed. It must not be thought he gives me a sensible taste for my crosses. My heart is far removed from that. They are all borne very purely, but with a firmness which is not in me, or of me, but in him who is our life, since I dare to say with my Apostle, “I no longer live, but Jesus Christ lives in me.” “It is in him we live, we move, and have our being.”
To return to the subject, from which I often wander without thinking of it. I say then that what caused me the most trouble, was not so much going away, as binding myself to the New Catholics. I wished to find in myself an attraction towards them. I sought it and I found nothing. This institution was opposed to my mind and to my heart; not that I would not love to contribute to the conversion of erring souls, since I had for their conversion as much attraction as I was capable of, considering how very dead and annihilated I was as to my central depth; but the manner of life and spirit of this institution did not suit me, and when I wished to conquer myself in this point, and connect myself with them, my soul lost her peace. I might have thought I should have been well suited to them, since you had made use of me, O my God, before my departure to convert entire families, one of which was composed of eleven or twelve persons. Besides, Father La Combe had told me to make use of this opportunity for starting, and did not tell me whether I should bind myself to them or not; thus it was the providence of my God alone, to which I had given myself up without reserve, that hindered me from binding myself with them.
One day that through infidelity I reflected on this enterprise, I was a little disturbed by the fear of being mistaken, which increased when the house ecclesiastic, who was the only person to whom I had confided my secret, told me I was badly advised, that I certainly had not properly explained myself. Being a little cast down I had a movement to open Isaiah. On opening the book I found this passage: “Fear not, O Jacob, who art a little worm, and you Israel, who are as it were dead. It will be I who shall lead you. Fear not, for you are mine. When yon shall walk through the water, I will he with you.” I had a very great courage to go, but I could not persuade myself it was in order to be with the New Catholics. It was, however, necessary that, before setting out, I should see Sister Garnier, Superior of the New Catholics at Paris, in order to take measure with her; but I could not go to Paris because this journey would have prevented my making another at the time it would have been necessary for me to start. Although this person was very ailing, she resolved to come and see me; but, O my God, you conducted things in such a manner through your providence, to make everything come to the point of your will, that I saw every day new miracles which charmed me; for with paternal kindness you took care of the smallest things. When she was about to set out she fell ill, and you permitted it so to give time for a person who would have discovered everything to go on a journey. At last she started, still very weak, and, as she had informed me of the day of her departure, when on that day I saw it was excessively hot, and so close that I fancied, petted, as she was, in her own community, that she would not be let start (which was true, as she herself has since told me), I addressed myself to our Lord to give some wind to moderate the heat, and enable the worthy woman to come. Hardly had I said this when there suddenly sprung up a wind so cool I was astonished at it, and this wind did not cease during her whole journey, until after her return.
I went to meet her, and took her to a country house, so that she was not seen or recognized by anybody. What embarrassed me a little was, I had two servants who knew her; but as I was engaged on the conversion of a lady, I led the conversation so that they easily thought it was for this purpose I had made her come, and that it was necessary to keep the secret in order this lady might not be deterred from coming by knowing who she was. You caused, O my God, that, although I was no controversialist, I yet answered all her doubts, so that she could not help yielding. Sister Garnier had much talent and grace, but her words did not produce in that soul the effect those you made me speak produced, as she has herself assured me. She could not even help saying so. I felt a movement to ask her from you as a testimony of your holy will. You granted her to me, O my God, although she did not make her abjuration until after my departure, and not before it; as you wished to make me start without other assurance than this, that the Divine Providence conducted all things. The Sister was four days without declaring her thoughts to me; on the fourth, she told me she would not come with me. I was the more surprised at it, as I had been persuaded, God, without having regard to my abjectness, would give to her virtue what he would refuse to my ill-deserts. Besides, the subjects she proposed to me appeared without supernatural grace, and quite human. This made me hesitate some moments; then, taking new courage through the abandonment of my entire self, I said to her, “I am not going there for you. I will, none the less, go there without you.” She was surprised, as she confessed to me; for she thought as soon as she decided not to go I would be no longer willing. I arranged everything; and I wrote on a paper the terms of the contract of association with them. I had no sooner done it than, after the Communion, I felt dreadful burnings and trouble. I went to see Sister Garnier; and as I knew she had the Spirit of God, I made no difficulty of telling her my pain. I made her understand that I had no doubt God called me to Geneva; but I did not know if he wished me of their congregation. She asked until after the Mass and the Communion; and she would tell me what God wished of me. You made use of her, in spite of her own interests and against her inclination, to make me know your will, my Lord. She told me then I ought not to bind myself with her, and that it was not your design; that I should go simply with the Sisters; and when I should be there, Father La Combe (whose letter she had seen) would signify to me your will. I acquiesced at once in this advice, and my soul recovered her peace.
My first design, or, rather, my first thought had been, before learning that the New Catholics were going to Gex, to go to Geneva, where at that time there were Catholics in service and otherwise, and to settle in a small room without eclat, and without at first declaring myself; and as I knew how to make various ointments, to dress wounds, especially king’s-evil, which was very prevalent in that place, and for which I had a very certain remedy, I would have thus quietly insinuated myself; besides the charities I would have given them. In this way I would have gained there many persons. I do not doubt if I had adopted this course things might perhaps have succeeded better. Yet I believed I would do better in following the opinion of the Bishop than my own lights. But what am I saying, O my God; has not your eternal design been realized and accomplished in me? We speak humanly because we are human; but, O God, when we regard things in you, we see them with other eyes. Yes, my Lord, your design was to give Geneva not to my labour and my words, but to my sufferings; for the more desperate I see things, the more I expect the conversion of that town, by a way known to you alone. Yes, Geneva, you will see within your walls the truth again flourish, which has been banished by error; and those beautiful words which are written on your Town Hall, “After darkness, Light,” will be happily verified for you. And although at present you take them in a quite contrary sense, it is certain you will be one day illuminated with the light of truth, and that fine temple of St. Peter will again have the advantage of enclosing in its bosom our redoubtable mysteries. How true in one sense it is, O my Lord, that you have made me daughter of the Cross of Geneva, and that I would cheerfully give my blood to see your cross erected there. Father La Combe has since told me that he had had on his side a strong movement to tell me not to bind myself with the New Catholics; that he did not believe it was the will of God, but he forgot it. I could no longer consult M. Bertot, for he died four months before my departure. I had some sign of his death. I was the only person to whom he addressed himself. It has seemed to me that he communicated to me his spirit to assist his children. A fear seized me that the repugnance I had felt of stripping myself in favour of the New Catholics of what I destined for Geneva was a trick of nature, which was unwilling to despoil itself. I wrote to Sister Garnier to have a contract drawn up according to my first memorandum. You permitted me, O my God, to commit this fault to make me recognize better your protection over me.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 