BEFORE I came to Grenoble, on the road, I went into a convent of the nuns of the Visitation. Suddenly I was struck by a picture of Jesus Christ in the garden, with these words: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass; however, your will be done.” At once I understood that this was addressed to me, and I sacrificed myself to the will of God. There I experienced a very extraordinary thing; it is, that among so great a number of souls all good and with grace, and for whom our Lord, through me, did much, some were given me as simple plants to cultivate, in whom I did not feel our Lord desired me to take any interest. I knew their state; but I did not feel in myself that absolute authority, and they did not in especial manner belong to me. Here I understood better the true maternity. The others were given to me as children, and for these I always had something to pay, and I had authority over their souls and their bodies. Of these children some were faithful, and I knew they would be so, and they were united with me in charity. Others were unfaithful, and I knew that of these last some would never recover from their faithlessness, and they were taken away from me; as for others, that it would be merely a temporary straying. For both the one and the other I suffered heart-pains that are inconceivable, as if they were being drawn out of my heart. These are not those heart-pains which are called failure or faintness of the heart. It was a violent pain in the region of the heart, which was yet spiritual, but so violent that it made me cry out with all my strength, and reduced me to my bed. In this state I could not take food, but I had to allow myself to be devoured by a strange pain. When these same children left me, and by cowardice, lack of courage to die to themselves, they gave up everything, they were torn from my heart with much pain.
It was then I understood that all the predestinated came forth from the heart of Jesus Christ, and that he gave birth to them on Calvary in pangs that are inconceivable, and it was for this reason he wished his heart to be opened externally, to show that there was the fountain whence came forth all the predestinated. O heart which has brought me forth, it will be in thee we shall be received for ever! Our Lord, amongst so many who followed him, had so few true children. It is for that reason he said to his Father, “I have lost none of those whom thou hast given me, except the son of perdition,” making us thereby see that he did not lose, not only any of the Apostles, although they made so many false steps, but even of those whom he was about to bring forth on Calvary by the opening of his heart. O my Love, I can say that you have made me a participator in all your mysteries, making me experience them in an ineffable manner. I was then associated in this divine maternity in Jesus Christ, and it has been that which caused me most suffering; for two hours of this suffering changed me more than several days’ continued fever. I have sometimes so borne these pains as for two or three days to cry out with all my strength, “The heart!” The maid who attended me saw that the ailment was not natural, but she did not know what caused it. If we could understand the least of the pangs we have cost Jesus Christ, we should be in amazement.
Amongst the various monks who came to see me, there was one order which felt more than any other the effects of grace; and it was some members of this very order who had been to a small town where Father La Combe had held a mission, and by a false zeal troubled all the worthy souls who had given themselves sincerely to God, tormenting them inconceivably, burning all their books which spoke of prayer, refusing absolution to those who used it, throwing into consternation, and even despair, those who had withdrawn from a criminal life and preserved themselves in grace by means of prayer, and lived in a perfect manner. Those monks proceeded to such excess in their indiscreet zeal that they caused a sedition in the town, and in the open street they had a respectable and meritorious Father of the Oratory beaten with sticks, because he used prayer at evening, and on Sundays made a short and fervent prayer, which insensibly accustomed those good souls to use prayer.
I have never in my life had so much consolation as in seeing in that little town so many good souls who vied with each other in giving themselves to God with their whole heart. There were young girls of twelve and thirteen years of age, who worked all day in silence in order to converse with God, and who had acquired a great habit of it. As they were poor girls, they joined in couples; and those who knew how to read, read out something to those who could not read. It was a revival of the innocence of the early Christians. There was a poor washerwoman, who had five children and a husband paralysed in the right arm, but more halt in his spirit than in his body: he had no strength except to beat her. Nevertheless, this poor woman, with the sweetness of an angel, endured it all, and gained subsistence for that man and her five children. This woman had a wonderful gift of prayer, preserving the presence of God and equanimity in the greatest miseries and the most extreme poverty. There was also the wife of a shopkeeper greatly influenced by God, and the wife of a locksmith. They were three friends. Both of them sometimes read for that washerwoman, and they were surprised how she was instructed by our Lord in all they read for her, and how she spoke of it divinely. These monks sent for this woman, and threatened her if she would not give up prayer, saying it was only for monks, and that she was very audacious to use prayer. She answered them—or, rather, he who taught her, for she was in herself very ignorant—that our Lord had told all to pray; and that he had said, “I say unto you all,”not specifying either priests or monks; that without prayer she could never support the crosses, nor the poverty she was in; that she had formerly been without prayer, and she was a demon; and that since she used it, she had loved God with all her heart; and therefore to give up prayer was to renounce her salvation, which she never could do. She added, let them take twenty persons who have never used prayer, and twenty of those who use it; then, said she, make yourselves acquainted with their lives, and you will see if you have reason in condemning prayer. Such words as those from a woman of that condition ought to have convinced them; they only served to embitter them. They assured her she should not have absolution unless she promised to give up prayer. She said it did not depend on her, and that our Lord was the Master to communicate himself to his creature, and to do what pleased him. They refused her absolution; and after having gone so far as to abuse a worthy tailor, who served God with all his heart, they had brought to them all the books which treated of prayer, without any exception, and themselves burned them in the public place. They were greatly puffed up with their expedition; but the town rose up because of the blows given to the Father of the Oratory; and the principal men went to the Bishop of Geneva, to tell him the scandal created by these new missionaries, so different from the others, alluding to Father La Combe, who had on another occasion been there on a mission; and it was said that the only object of sending these last was to destroy the work he had done. The Bishop of Geneva was obliged himself to come to that town, and to get into the pulpit, protesting that he had no part in it—that the Fathers had pushed their zeal too far. The monks, on the other hand, said that they had done everything under orders. There were also at Tonon girls who had withdrawn together into retirement; they were poor village girls, who, in order the better to gain their subsistence and serve God, had several in number joined together. There was one who read from time to time, while the others worked; and they never went out without asking leave to go out from the senior. They made ribbons; they spun and gained a livelihood, each in her own trade: the strong supported the weak. These poor girls were separated, and others also, and dispersed among several villages; they drove them away from the Church. It was, then, monks of this same order of whom our Lord made use to establish prayer in I know not how many places, and they carried a hundred times more books on prayer into the places where they went than their brothers had burnt. God appears to me wonderful in these things. I had then opportunity of knowing these monks in the way which I am about to tell.
One day that I was ill a friar, who is well versed in the treatment of sick persons, came begging, and having learnt I was ill, came in. Our Lord made use of him to give me the proper remedies for my illness, and permitted that we entered into a conversation, which woke up in him the love which he had for God, and which was, according to him, stifled by his important occupations. I made him understand that there is no occupation which could hinder him from loving God, or thinking of him. He had no trouble in believing me, having already much piety and disposition for spiritual religion. Our Lord showed him great grace, and gave him to me as one of my true children. What is admirable is, that all those whom our Lord has given me in this way, I felt that he accepted them in me to be my children; for it is he who accepts them, and who gives them. I only bring them forth upon the cross, as he has brought forth all the predestinated on the cross; and it is further in this sense that he makes me “fill up what remains wanting of his passion,” which is the application of the divine filiation. O goodness of a God, to associate poor petty creatures in such great mysteries!
When our Lord gives me some children of this kind, he gives them, without my having ever exhibited anything of this, very great inclination for me; and without themselves knowing why or how, they cannot help calling me their mother—a thing which has happened to many persons of merit, priests, monks, pious girls, and even to an ecclesiastical dignitary, who all, without my having ever spoken to them, regard me as their mother—and our Lord has had the goodness to accept them in me, and to give them the same graces as if I was in the habit of seeing them. One day a person who was in a very trying state, and in manifest danger, without thinking what she did, cried aloud, “My mother, my mother!” thinking of me. She was at once delivered, with a fresh certainty that I was her mother, and that our Lord would have the goodness to succour her in all her needs through me. Many whom I knew only by letters, have seen me in dreams answer all their difficulties, and those who are more spiritual took part in the conversation, or intimate union of unity; but these last are few in number, who at a distance have no need for letters nor for discourses to understand; the others are interiorly nourished from the grace which our Lord abundantly communicates to them through me, feeling themselves filled from that outflow of grace.
For when our Lord honours a soul with spiritual fecundity, and associates her in his maternity, he gives her what is necessary to nourish and sustain her children according to their degree. It is in this way that, willing to bring forth all the predestinated, he gives them his flesh to eat. It is for this reason those who eat his flesh and drink his blood dwell in him and he in them, and they are thereby made his children; but those who do not eat the flesh cannot be his children, because they are not associated in the divine filiation, the new bond of which is effected in his blood, at least, unless by their conversion at death the efficacy of that blood be applied to them. It is true that to the holy Anchorites the Word communicated himself from the centre, and gave them through the central depth the food of angels, which is no other than himself as Word, although they may have been unable to eat his flesh with the bodily mouth.
I say, then, that when Jesus Christ associates anyone in spiritual maternity he provides a means of communicating himself; and it is this communication of pure spirit which forms the nourishment and essential support of souls, but a sustenance which they taste, and which they find by experience to be all they need. I know that I shall not be understood, for only experience can make this intelligible. I was sometimes so full of these pure and divine communications, which flow out from “that fountain of living water which shall spring up to eternal life,” mentioned by St. John the Evangelist, that I used to say, “O Lord, give me hearts on whom I may discharge from my abundance, otherwise I must die,” for these outflowings from the Divinity into the centre of my soul were sometimes so powerful that they reacted even on the body, so that I was ill from it. When some of those whom our Lord had given me as children approached, or he gave me new ones in whom grace was already strong, I felt myself gradually relieved, and they experienced in themselves an inconceivable plenitude of grace and a greater gift of prayer, which was communicated to them according to their degrees; and it surprised them much at the commencement, but afterwards by their experience they understood this mystery, and they felt a great need of me; and when necessity separated me from them, or—as I have said—I was unacquainted with them, from not having seen them, things were communicated to them from a distance.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 