I SHOULD be unable to write anything more regarding my inner state; I will not do it, having no words to express what is entirely disconnected from all that can fall under feeling, expression, or human conception. I shall only say that, after the state when I came back to life, I found myself for some years, before being placed in what is called the Apostolic state—that of a Mission to help others, the selfhood having been entirely consumed in the purgatory I had passed through—I found myself, I say, in a happiness equal to that of the Blessed, save for the Beatific Vision; nothing here below affected me; and neither at present do I see anything in heaven or in earth which can trouble me as regards myself. The happiness of a soul in this state cannot be understood without experience, and those who die without being employed in helping their neighbours, die in supreme felicity; although overwhelmed with external crosses. But when it pleased God to honour me with his Mission, he made me understand that the true father in Jesus Christ, and the Apostolic pastor, must suffer like him for men, bear their languors, pay their debts, clothe himself with their weaknesses. In truth, God does not do these sorts of things without asking from the soul her consent; but how sure he is this soul will not refuse him what he asks! He himself inclines the heart for that he wishes to obtain. It seems he then impresses upon it these words: “I was happy, I possessed glory, I was God; but I have quitted all that, I have subjected myself to pain, to contempt, to ignominy, to punishment. I became man to save man. If thou art willing to finish what remains lacking of my Passion and that I should make in thee an extension of my quality of Redeemer, it is necessary thou consent to lose the happiness thou dost enjoy; to be subjected to wants, to weaknesses, in order to bear the languors of those with whom I shall charge thee, to pay their debts, and finally to be exposed, not only to all the interior pains from which thou hast been delivered for thyself, but to all the most violent persecutions. If I had remained in my private life, I should never have suffered any persecution; only those are persecuted who are employed to help souls.” There was needed, then, a consent of immolation to enter into all the designs of God regarding the souls he destines for himself.
He made me understand that he did not call me, as had been thought, to a propagation of the external of the Church, which consists in winning heretics, but to the propagation of his Spirit, which is no other than the interior Spirit, and that it would be for this Spirit I should suffer. He does not even destine me for the first conversion of sinners; but to introduce those who are already touched with the desire of being converted, into the perfect conversion, which is none other than this interior Spirit. Since that time our Lord has not charged me with any soul without having asked my consent, and, after having accepted that soul in me, without having immolated me to suffer for her. It is well to explain the nature of this suffering, and the difference between it and what one suffers on one’s own account.
The nature of this suffering is something most inward, most powerful, and most special. It is an excessive torment, one knows not where it is, nor in what part of the soul it resides. It is never caused by reflection, nor can it produce any. It causes neither disturbance, nor embarrassment; it does not purify: and, for this reason, the soul finds it gives her nothing. Its excess does not hinder an enjoyment, without enjoyment, and a perfect peace. It takes away nothing from the sense of largeness. One is not ignorant that it is for souls one is suffering, and very often one knows the person: one finds one’s self during this time united to him in a painful manner, as a criminal is attached to the instrument of his punishment. One often bears the weaknesses that those persons ought to feel; but ordinarily it is a general indistinct pain, which oftentimes has a certain relation to the heart causing extreme pain to the heart, but violent pains, as if one pressed it, or pierced it with a sword: this pain, purely spiritual, has its seat in the same place which is occupied by the Presence of God. It is more powerful than all corporal pains, and it is yet so insensible, and so removed from sentiment, that the person who is overwhelmed by it, if he was capable of reflection, would believe that it has no existence, and that he is deceiving himself. Since God willed me to participate in the Apostolic state, what have I not suffered! But however excessive my sufferings, and whatever weakness I may have had in the senses, I have never desired to be delivered from it: on the contrary, the charity for those souls augments in proportion as the suffering becomes greater, and the love one has for them increases with the pain.
There are two kinds of pains: the one caused by the actual unfaithfulness of the souls; the other, which is for the purpose of purifying them and making them advance. The former contracts the heart, afflicts it, weakens the sentiments, causes a certain agony, and as it were a pulling; just as if God were drawing it to one side and the soul to the other, so that it tore the heart: this pain is more insupportable than any other, although it is not more deep. The pain of purification for another is a general indistinct pain, which tranquillizes and unites with the person for whom one suffers, and with God. It is a difference which experience alone can make intelligible. Everyone with experience will understand me. Nothing equals what one suffers for persons, who very often are ignorant of it, or for others, who far from being grateful, have a repugnance to those who are consuming themselves for them through charity. All this does not diminish that charity, and there is not any death or torment one would not suffer with the utmost pleasure, to make them what God desires.
The divine justice applied to a soul to make her suffer while purifying others, does not cease to make her suffer, when it is for an actual unfaithfulness, until this unfaithfulness has ceased. It is not the same in the case of purification: that takes place at intervals, and one has a respite after having suffered. One finds one acquires a certain ease with that soul, which shows that what one has suffered has purified and, for the present moment, placed the soul in the condition God wishes her. When the souls are in the right path and nothing arrests them this goes on quite evenly; but when they are arrested, there is something within which makes it known.
The justice of God causes suffering from time to time for certain souls until their entire purification. As soon as they have arrived where God wishes them, one suffers no longer anything for them; and the union which had been often covered with clouds, is cleared up in such a manner that it becomes like a very pure atmosphere, penetrated everywhere, without distinction, by the light of the sun. As M. — has been given to me in a more intimate manner than any other, what I have suffered, what I am suffering, and what I shall suffer for him, surpasses anything that can be told. The least partition between him and me, between him and God, is like a little dirt in the eye, which causes it an extreme pain, and which would not inconvenience any other part of the body where it might be put. What I suffer for him is very different from what I suffer for others; but I am unable to discover the cause, unless it be, God has united me to him more intimately than to any other, and that God has greater designs for him than for the others.
When I am suffering for a soul, and I merely hear the name of this person pronounced, I feel a renewal of extreme pain. Although for many years I am in a state equally naked and void in appearance, owing to the depth of the plenitude, nevertheless, I am very full. Water filling a basin to the utmost limits it can contain, offers nothing to distinguish its plenitude; but when one pours in more upon it, it must discharge itself. I never feel anything for myself, but when anything stirs that depth, infinitely full and tranquil, this makes the plenitude felt with such excess that it gushes over on the senses. This is the reason that makes me avoid hearing certain passages read or repeated: not that anything comes to me by external things, but it is that a word heard stirs the depth: anything said of the truth, or against the truth, stirs it in the same way, and would make it break out if continued.
It may be thought that, because, during all the time, while faith is pleasant to the taste, one has difficulty in reading, what I speak of here will be the same thing; that would be a mistake. In these last states it is impossible to avoid using an expression which has some signification analogous to that of the earlier states, owing to the paucity of terms, and only experience can clear up all this: for all persons who are in the states of simple faith, accompanied by some support, and some deep savour, believe themselves at the point I mention. These last are concentrated, or rather feel stirring in them through reading or what is said to them, a certain occupation of God, which closes their mouth and often the eyes, preventing them from pursuing the reading. It is not the same here: here it is an overflowing of plenitude, a bursting up from a brimming depth, always full for all the souls who have need of drawing water from this plenitude: here it is the divine reservoir, where the children of Wisdom incessantly draw what is needed for them, when they are well disposed; not that they always feel what they draw there, but I indeed feel it. The things which are written must not be interpreted according to the strictness of the words; for, if so understood, there is hardly a perfected state which a soul of a certain degree might not believe herself to have experienced: but patience; she will herself hereafter see this infinite difference. Even souls of the inferior degree will often appear more perfect than those souls perfected in love and through love; because God, who wills these last to live with other men, and to withdraw from them the sight of so great a treasure, covers their exterior with visible weaknesses, which, like mean dirt, cover infinite treasures, and prevent their loss.
If God had not entirely separated the exterior of these souls from their interior, they could no longer converse with men. One experiences that in the new life. It seems nothing more remains than to die. One finds one’s self so remote from the rest of men, and they think so differently from what one thinks, that the neighbour would become insupportable; the soul would then willingly say, “O my God, let your servant die in peace, since mine eyes have seen my Saviour.” Souls arrived at this point are in an actual accomplished perfection, and they ordinarily die in this state, when they are not destined to aid others; but when they are so destined, God divides the Godlike central depth from the exterior, and hands over the exterior to childlike weaknesses, which keeps the soul in a continual abstraction and total ignorance of what she is; unless this central depth, of which we have spoken, should be stirred, and that for the good of others: then one has a strange experience, but to tell what it is baffles expression. The exterior weaknesses of those souls serve them as a covering, and even hinder them from serving as support to others in the path of death, by which they are conducting them. They are all childlike weaknesses. If the souls who are conducted by those persons could penetrate below this weak exterior, to the depth of their grace, they would regard them with too much respect, and would not die to the support that such a conducting would afford them. If the Jews had penetrated beneath the commonplace exterior of Jesus Christ, they would never have persecuted him, and they would have been in a state of continual admiration. These persons are a paradox both to their own eyes and to the eyes of all who see them; for one sees in them only a coarse bark, though oftentimes there proceeds from it a divine sap; and thus those who will judge of them by the eyes of reason, know not how to go about it. Oh divine wisdom, oh savoury knowledge, you flow incessantly from the heart and from the mouth of these souls, like a stream of divine sap, which communicates life to an infinity of branches, although one sees only a coarse and moss-covered bark. “What do you see in the Shulamite,” this choice soul, you others who are watching her, says the sacred Bridegroom, “except the companies of an army in array?” No, you will only see that in her. Do not therefore form any judgment, oh you who are not thus far, and be assured that, “although I am black I am very beautiful; that my sun, by his burning looks, has discoloured me in this way to preserve me for himself, and to withdraw me from the sight of all creatures.” To attack those souls is to wound the heart of God. To judge them is to judge God. Those who do it err in their judgments. It is this which makes them dare, as the Apostle St. Jude says, to utter maledictions against holy things, and to blaspheme the sacred mysteries of the interior. The soul in this state knows nothing of herself, as she is unknown by others. When she speaks or writes touching herself, she does it as in the case of divine things—she speaks and writes only by the actual light given at the present moment, and which lasts only as long as is necessary for her speaking or writing, without any possibility of her seeing or thinking afterwards of that which she previously saw; unless, indeed, the actual light of it should be restored. It is like a person to whom one opens a cabinet, full of treasures, who sees them as long as it is open, and ceases to see them when it is shut again. Therefore this soul is the fountain sealed; the Bridegroom alone opens: no one else shuts; no one else opens. Such a soul has no care for honour, wealth, or life; not only as to the will, but as to the real practice: therefore she has no longer anything to be careful for. If she was not such, she would be unable to serve souls in all the extent of the designs of God. The least circumspection hinders the effect of grace. Oh, how few are the souls who are willing to give themselves up for another without any self-respecting regard or reflection, ready to do and to suffer for others! The charity of an Apostolic soul cannot be understood. It is the charity of Jesus Christ himself. Oh, depth of this charity, free from zeal and feeling, who would be able to comprehend thee?
All the greatest crosses come in this Apostolic state (if one can call them crosses), because hell and all men are stirred up to hinder the good which is being done in souls. If Jesus Christ had not come out from his private life, he would not have been persecuted by the Jews and crucified. If God left these souls concealed in the secret of his countenance, they would be secure from the persecution of men. But how cheerfully would one suffer the wheel or the fire even for a single soul! We must not be astonished if the devils stir up all the regions of their dominion against Apostolic souls. It is because the Devil well knows that one soul of this kind, once listened to, would destroy his empire. All devotions hurt him but moderately, for in the self-love of the devout he gets compensation for what they make him lose by their regulated practices; but there is nothing to be gained by him from a soul devoted to the truth of God and to his pure love, who allows herself to be annihilated by the sovereign dominion of God, and who, no longer subsisting in herself, gives full power to God continually to extend more widely his empire. The Devil cannot approach these souls except at a distance. The rage with which he is animated against them has no bounds. Oh, how mistaken we are when we judge devotion by exterior actions! To be devout, or to be devoted to God, we must have neither choice nor preference for one action more than for another. People form ideas and imagine that a soul which is God’s in a certain manner, ought to be such and such; and when they see the opposite to the ideas they had formed for themselves, they conclude God is not there; while it is often where he especially is. Oh, sovereign independence of my God! you would not be God if you did not know how to glorify yourself by that which apparently dishonours you. God has his pleasure in all which renders us supple and small. He values not any virtue so much as to have in his hand a soul which he may elevate to the clouds and bury in the mire without her changing her situation in the slightest. A state which depends upon some goodness which one may distinguish or conceive, is indeed a virtuous state, but not a divine state.
There are the saints of the Lord, who are sanctified, not like other saints by the practice of virtues, but by the Lord himself, and by an unlimited suppleness, which is the real possession of all virtue. They are all the more the saints of God, since they are only holy in him and for him. They are holy in his style, not in the style of men. O my Love, you have so many souls who serve you in order to be holy: make for yourself a troop of children who serve you because you are holy; who serve you in your style! These are the children for whom you have sanctified yourself, and that suffices for them. Oh, what a horrible monster, Selfhood! Yes, my God, let me at least be the plaything of your will! Let there be neither virtue nor sanctity for me, but singing with the Church, “Thou alone art holy,” let me sing the same thing for myself, and for those you have given me; in order that you may be glorified and sanctified, not in them, but in you and for you. O pure Love, to what dost thou reduce thy subject!
The souls of which I speak are incapable of any sort of preference or predilection: but they are moved by a necessity, which, not being in them, for they are free, has its seat in God himself, after the sacrifice of this same liberty. They have not any natural love, but an infinite charity, applied and stirred more powerfully for certain subjects than for others, according to the design of God, the need of the persons, and the closeness of the union that God wills they should have with them. This strong, even apparently ardent love, is not in the powers as other inclinations; but in that same central depth which is God himself. He governs as a sovereign and inclines this same central depth, indistinguishably from himself, towards the thing he wishes one should love, and to which one is united; and this love is he; so that it cannot be distinguished from God, although it terminates in a particular subject. This central depth stirred towards this person, causes an attraction towards him as if towards God; and as everything which stirs this central depth renders God perceptible (which otherwise he would not be, owing to the transformation), so the radical inclination stirred towards that creature renders God perceptible, but in a manner so much the more powerful, more pure, more detached from the sensible, as the soul is in an eminent degree. One feels something which might seem to have relation to this from the commencement of the way, where everything which carries us toward. God causes a sensible inclination emanating from God; but these things are in the senses, or in the powers, according to the degree of the soul. It is not at all that which I mean. This is in the very central depth inaccessible to any other than God himself.
There is no state so perfected which a soul in these commencements might not attribute to herself, especially those who, in the language of Scripture, “go from faith to faith.” For as one has from the commencement the first fruits of the Spirit, and it is the same faith which grows deeper and purifies itself, expands and spreads until the perfect consummation, it is also the same from the commencement, and has almost the same effects. All the difference is, that it resides in the powers all along the way, until it loses itself in the inmost central depth, which is none other than God himself, who perfects everything in his divine unity. Even the interior movement which ought to be the sole director of souls of faith, discovers itself from the commencement in those persons destined to an eminent faith. This movement is more sensible, more distinct, more in the powers at the commencement; but finally it is this which directs and leads them to mortify themselves, to renounce themselves, to speak and to keep silence, to strip themselves until it destroys them with itself in that God-depth. Then it changes its nature, and becomes in such a way natural that it loses all which made it distinguished apart from God: then the creature acts as naturally as she breathes, her suppleness is infinite.
It is well to explain here a matter which might cause great mistakes to souls. It is, that the soul sunk in God, and become infinitely supple in relation to God, may seem either reserved, or to have difficulty in saying certain things to others. It is not now a defect which is in her in regard to herself, but this constraint comes from the person to whom one should speak: for God makes felt as if by anticipation, all the dispositions of the soul to whom one should speak: and although that soul, if one asked, would assert confidently, there was no repugnance to receive what should be said (because, in fact, the will is so disposed), yet it is certain that, whatever the good will, the matters are repugnant, whether because they exceed the present scope of that person, or because there are still lurking secret ideas of a virtue based on reason. It is, therefore, the narrowness of the person to whom one speaks which causes the repugnance to speak. Moreover the exterior state of childhood has a thousand little things which might pass for unfaithfulnesses, similar to those of persons who through self-love do not say the things which are distasteful to them; but it is easy to see that this is not the case, because they have passed through a state which did not permit them reserve of a thought, whatever it might cost. Souls of this state must be judged by that which God has made them pass through, rather than by what one sees; for otherwise one would judge them in relation to one’s own state, and not by that which they are. That which is weak in God is stronger than the greatest strength, because this weakness does not come from not having acquired all strength, virtuous and understood by reason; but because, having infinitely passed beyond this, it is lost in the divine strength, and this it is which causes those opposites, that unite so well although they appear incompatible, of the divine strength and of the child’s weakness.
A.D. 1688.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON 