Chapter 1-8

AT last, after long debility, I recovered my former health, and I lost my mother, who died like an angel. For God, who willed to commence even in this life to recompense her great almsgiving, gave her such a grace of detachment, that, although she was only twenty-four hours ill, she left all that was most dear to her without grief. Many things happened during this time that I suppress, Sir, as being of no utility either in making me known to you, or for your own use. It was a continuation of daily crosses and occasions for vanity. However, I still pursued my little course of prayer, which I never failed to offer twice a day. I watched over myself, continually conquering myself, and I gave much alms. I went to the houses of the poor, and I assisted them in their illnesses. I did, according to my light, all the good I knew, being punctual at church and remaining before the Holy Sacrament, having adopted for it a perpetual adoration. You increased, O my God, my love and my patience in proportion as you increased my sufferings. The temporal advantages that my mother procured for my brother above me, at which I was no way vexed, nevertheless caused me crosses, for at home they blamed me for everything. I was also much indisposed in a second pregnancy, and even sometime ill of a double-tertian fever. I was still weak, and I did not yet serve you, O my God, with that vigour that you soon afterwards gave me. I would have liked to reconcile your love with the love of myself and of creatures; for I was so unfortunate, that I still found persons who loved me and whom I could not hinder myself from wishing to please—not that I loved them, but from the love I bore myself.

You permitted, O my God, that Madame de Ch—, who was exiled, came to my father, and he offered her a portion of the house, which she accepted, and she lived there some time. This lady was of singular piety and very spiritual. As I often used to see her, and she had a friendship for me, because she saw I wished to love God, and that I employed myself in external works of charity, she remarked that I had the virtues of the active and complex life, but that it was not in the simplicity of prayer in which she was. She sometimes dropped a word to me on this subject, but as the hour was not yet come, I did not understand her. She was more useful to me from her example than from her words. I saw on her face something that showed a very great presence of God, and I remarked in her what I had never yet seen in anyone. I endeavoured, through my head and thoughts, to give myself a continual presence of God. I gave myself much trouble, and made no advance. I wished to have by an effort what I could not acquire save in ceasing all effort. This worthy lady charmed me by her virtue, which I saw to be far above the ordinary. Seeing me so complex, she often said something to me; but it was not time—I did not understand her. I spoke of it to my confessor, who told me the exact opposite, and as I discovered to her what my confessor had said thereon, she did not venture to open herself to me.

My father’s nephew, of whom I have spoken, who had gone to Cochin China with M. de Heliopolis, arrived. He came to Europe to fetch priests. I was delighted to see him, for I remembered the good his former visit had brought me. Madame de Ch- was no less pleased than I to see him, for they quickly understood each other, and they had one and the same spiritual language, which was also known to the prioress of a convent of Benedictines, named Genevieve Granger, one of the holiest women of her time. The virtue of this excellent relative charmed me, and I admired his continual prayer, without being able to understand it. I forced myself to meditate continually, to think unceasingly of you, O my God, to repeat prayers and utter ejaculations; but I could not by all these various things give myself what you yourself give, and which is experienced only in simplicity. I was surprised at his telling me that he thought of nothing in prayer, and I wondered at what I could not comprehend. He did all he could to attach me more strongly to you, O my God. He assured me, if he was so happy as to endure martyrdom—as, in fact, he endured it—he would offer it to you to obtain for me a great gift of prayer. We used to repeat together the Office of the Holy Virgin. Often he stopped quite short, because the violence of the attraction closed his mouth, and then he ceased those vocal prayers. I did not at that time know what it was. He had an incredible affection for me. The alienation from the corruption of the century which he saw in me, the horror of sin at an age when others only commence to taste its pleasures (for I was not eighteen years old), gave him tenderness for me. I complained of my faults with much ingenuousness, for I have always been clear enough thereon; but as the difficulty I found in entirely correcting them made me lose courage, he supported me, and exhorted me to support myself, and he would have liked to give me another method of prayer, which would have been more efficacious to rid me of myself; but I gave no opening for that. I believe his prayers were more efficacious than his words, for he was no sooner out of my father’s house than you had compassion on me, O my Divine Love. The desire I had to please you, the tears I shed, my great labour and the little fruit I reaped from it, moved your compassion. You gave me in a moment, through your grace and through your goodness alone, what I had been unable to give myself through all my efforts. In this state was my soul, when by a goodness the greater in proportion as I had rendered myself unworthy of it, without paying regard either to your graces rejected, or to my sins, any more than to my extreme ingratitude, seeing me rowing with so much toil, helpless, you sent, O my Divine Saviour, the favourable wind of your divine working to make me proceed at full sail upon that sea of afflictions. The thing happened as I am about to tell.

I often spoke to my confessor of the trouble I had at not being able to meditate or imagine anything to myself. Subjects of prayer too extended were useless to me, and I did not comprehend anything in them. Those that were very short and full of unction suited me better. This worthy Father did not understand me. At last God permitted that a monk, very spiritual, of the Order of St. Francis, traveled by where we were. He wanted to go by another way, as well to shorten the journey as to avail himself of the ease of water-carriage, but a secret force made him change his plan, and obliged him to pass through the place where I dwelt. He at once saw there was there something for him to do. He fancied that God called him for the conversion of a man of consideration in this neighbourhood, but his efforts were useless. It was the conquest of my soul that you wished to effect through him. O my God, it seems that you forgot all the rest to think only of this ungrateful and faithless heart. As soon as this worthy monk had arrived in the country, he went to see my father, who was very glad of it, and who about that time being ill, was near dying. I was then laid up with my second son. For some time they concealed from me my father’s illness, through fear for my health, yet an indiscreet person having informed me, ill as I was, I got up and went to see him. The haste with which I had gone about after my confinement caused me a dangerous illness. My father recovered, not perfectly, but enough to give me new marks of his affection. I told him my desire to love you, O my God, and the grief I was in at not being able to do it according to my desire. My father, who singularly loved me, thought he could not give me a more solid proof of it than in procuring for me the acquaintance of this monk. He told me what he knew of this holy man, and that he wished me to see him. I at first made much difficulty, because I never used to go to see monks. I believed I was bound so to act in order to observe the rules of the most scrupulous prudence; yet my father’s urgency took with me the place of an absolute command. I thought no harm could come to me from a thing I did only to obey him.

I took with me one of my relatives and went there. When he saw me at a distance he was quite confused; for he was very particular in never seeing women, and a solitude of five years, which he had just left, had made them not a little strangers to him. He was then very much surprised that I was the first who addressed herself to him, and what I told him increased his surprise, as he has since acknowledged to me, assuring me that my appearance and manner of saying things had confused him, so that he did not know if he was dreaming. He hardly advanced, and was a long time without being able to speak to me. I knew not to what to attribute his silence. I continued to speak to him, and to tell him in a few words my difficulties about prayer. He answered me at once: “It is, Madame, because you seek outside what you have within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your heart, and you will find him there.” On finishing these words, he left me.

The next morning he was very greatly astonished when I went to see him, and when I told him the effect his words had produced in my soul; for it is true they were for me like an arrow that pierced my heart through and through. I felt in that moment a very deep wound, as delicious, as full of love, a wound so sweet, I desired never to be healed of it. Those words put into my heart what I was seeking so many years, or rather they made me discover what was there, and which I did not enjoy for want of knowing it. O my Lord, you were in my heart, and you asked from me only a simple turning inward to make me feel your presence. O Infinite Goodness, you were so near, and I went running here and there to look for you, and I did not find you. My life was miserable, and my happiness was within me. I was in poverty in the midst of riches, and I was dying of hunger near a table spread and a continual feast. O Beauty ancient and new, why have I known you so late? Alas! I was seeking you where you were not, and I did not seek you where you were. It was for want of understanding those words of your Gospel when you say, “The kingdom of God is not here or there, but the kingdom of God is within you.” I experienced it at once, since henceforth you were my King, and my heart was your kingdom, where you commanded as Sovereign, and where you carried out all your wills; for what you do in a soul when you come there as a King, is the same which you did when you came into the world to be King of the Jews. “It is written of me,” said that divine King, “at the head of the book, that I will do your will.” It is what he writes at once on the entrance of the heart where he comes to reign.

I told this worthy Father that I did not know what he had done to me; that my heart was quite changed; that God was there, and I had no longer any trouble to find him; for from that moment I was given an experience of his presence in my central depth, not through thought or application of the mind, but as a thing one possesses really in a very sweet manner. I experienced those words of the spouse of the Canticles, “Your name is like oil poured out; therefore the young girls have loved you.” For I experienced in my soul an unction which, like a soothing balm, healed all my wounds, and which even spread itself so powerfully over my senses, that I could hardly open my mouth or my eyes. I did not sleep at all the whole of that night, because your love, O my God, was not only for me like a delightful oil, but also like a devouring fire, which kindled in my soul such a flame that it seemed bound to devour everything in an instant. I was all of a sudden so changed that I was no longer recognizable either by myself or by others. I no longer found either those faults or those dislikes. All appeared to me consumed like straw in a great fire.

This worthy Father, however, could not make up his mind to undertake my direction, although he had seen so surprising a change effected by God. Many reasons led him to decline it: my appearance, which gave him much apprehension; my extreme youth, for I was only nineteen years old; and a promise he had made to God, through distrust of himself, never to undertake the direction of any female unless our Lord imposed it upon him by a special providence. On my urging him, then, to take me under his direction, he told me to pray to God about it; that he would do so on his side. When he was in prayer, it was said to him, “Do not fear to take charge of her: she is my spouse.” O my God, permit me to say to you, that you did not mean it. What? your spouse! this frightful monster of filth and iniquity, who had done nothing but offend you, abuse your graces, and pay your goodness with ingratitude? This worthy Father then told me that he was willing to direct me.

Nothing was now more easy for me than to pray. Hours were to me no more than moments, and I was unable not to do it. Love left me not a moment of respite. I said to him, “O my Love, it is enough: leave me.” My prayer was, from the moment of which I have spoken, void of all forms, species, and images. Nothing of my prayer passed into my head, but it was a prayer of enjoyment and possession in the will, where the delight of God was so great, so pure, and so simple, that it attracted and absorbed the other two powers of the soul in profound concentration, without act or speech. I had, however, sometimes freedom to say some words of love to my Beloved, but then everything was taken from me. It was a prayer of faith, which excluded all distinction; for I had not any view of Jesus Christ or the divine attributes. Everything was absorbed in a delicious faith, where all distinctions were lost to give love room for loving with more expansion, without motives or reasons for loving. That sovereign of the powers—the will—swallowed up the two others, and took from them every distinct object to unite them the better in it, in order that the distinct should not arrest them, and thus take from them the uniting force and hinder them from losing themselves in love. It is not that they did not subsist in their unconscious and passive operations, but it is that the light of faith, like a general light, similar to that of the sun, absorbs all distinct lights, and throws them into obscurity to our eyes, because the excess of his light surpasses them all.