Chapter 3-13

SOME of my friends thought it would be advisable for me to see the Bishop of Meaux, who was reported not to be opposed to spiritual religion. I knew that, eight or ten years before, he had read the “Short Method” and the “Canticles,” and that he had thought them very good. This made me consent to it with pleasure; but, O my Lord, how have I experienced in my life that everything which is done through consideration and human views, although good, turns into confusion, shame, and suffering! At that time I flattered myself (and I accused myself of my faithlessness) that he would support me against those who were attacking me. But how far was I from knowing him! And how subject to error is that which one does not see in your light, and which you do not yourself disclose!

One of my friends, of the highest rank, the D— de Ch— [Duke of Chevreuse ], brought the Bishop of Meaux to my house. The conversation soon fell upon that which formed the subject of his visit. They spoke of the “Short Method,” and this Prelate told me that he had once read it and also the “Canticles,” and that he had thought them very good. What I say here is not to support those books, which I have submitted with all my heart and which I still submit, but in order to give a simple account of all that is past, as I have been required to do. The D— de Ch— gave him the “Torrents,” on which he made some remarks: not of things to be condemned, but which needed elucidation. The D— de Ch— had the kindness to remain present. This Prelate said to us such strong things on the interior way and the authority of God over the soul, I was surprised. He gave us even examples of persons he had known, whom he deemed saints, that had killed themselves. I confess I was startled by all this talk of the Bishop of Meaux. I knew that in the primitive Church some virgins had caused their own deaths in order to keep themselves pure; but I did not believe, in this age, where there is neither violence nor tyrants, a man could be approved for such an action. The D— de Ch— gave him my history of my life, that he might know me thoroughly; which he thought so good, that he wrote to him, saying, “he found in it an unction he found nowhere else; that he had been three days reading it without losing the presence of God.” These are, if I remember rightly, the exact words of one of his letters. What will appear astonishing is, that the Bishop of Meaux, who had had such holy dispositions while reading the history of my life, and who valued it while it remained in his hands, saw in it, a year after it had left them, things he had not seen before: which he even retailed, as if in reality I had written them.

He afterwards wrote to the D— de Ch—, that he had just learned a thing which had been written to him from the abbey of Clairets, and which confirmed the interior way. A nun of Clairets, on the point of death, as they held the holy candle to her, called her Superior, and said to her, “My Mother, God wishes at present to be served by an entire stripping of self and the destruction of the whole selfhood. It is the way that he has chosen;” and as a proof she was speaking the truth, she made known to them, though in a manner they did not at first understand, that she should not die until that holy candle was burned down. According to ordinary rules she could not live more than a quarter of an hour; her pulse had entirely ceased. The Superior having extinguished the holy candle, she was three days in that state, without any change in her pulse, with the same signs of death. They caused the holy candle to be lit again, and she died when it burned down. I merely relate what was in the letter. I omit the reflections of the Bishop of Meaux on such a strange case, having forgotten them; but it is certain that, after this, he did not believe there could be any doubt of the most interior ways. I forgot to say the Bishop of Meaux had requested me to observe secrecy as to his visiting me. As I have always inviolably preserved it for my greatest enemies, I was not likely to fail in it for him. The reason he alleged for the secrecy he wished observed is, that he was not on good terms with the Bishop of Paris; but he himself went and told what he had begged me to be silent on. My silence and his talk have been the source of all the trouble I have since suffered.

The Bishop of Meaux, having then accepted the proposal to examine my writings, I caused them to be placed in his hands; not only those printed, but all the commentaries on Holy Scriptures. I had previously given them to M. Charon the Official, by one of my maids; but the fear they should be lost—as, in fact, they were, the Official having never returned them—led that girl to distribute them among a number of copyists, who made the copy that was afterwards given to the Bishop of Meaux. It was a great labour for him, and he required four or five months to have leisure to go to the bottom of everything, which with much exactitude he did in his country house, where he had gone to escape interruption. To show the more confidence in him, and lay open the inmost recesses of my heart, I made over to him, as I have said, the history of my life, where my most secret dispositions were noted with much simplicity. On that I asked from him the secrecy of the confessional; he promised an inviolable. He read everything with attention, and, at the end of the time stipulated, was in a position to hear my explanations and offer his objections.

It was at the commencement of the year 1694: he wished to see me at the house of one of his friends, who lived near the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament. He said the Mass in that Community, and gave me there the Communion: afterwards he dined. This conference, that according to him was to be so secret, was known to all the world. Many persons sent to beg him to go to the convent of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament, that they might speak to him. He went there, and they took care to prejudice him; as he appeared to be so when in the evening he returned and spoke to me. He was not the same man. He had brought all his extracts and a memoir, containing more than twenty articles, to which all his objections were reduced. God assisted me, so that I satisfied him on everything that had relation to the dogma of the Church and the purity of doctrine. But there were some passages on which I could not satisfy him. As he spoke with extreme vivacity, and hardly gave me time to explain my thoughts, it was not possible for me to make him change upon some of those articles, as I had done upon others. We separated very late, and I left that conference with a head so exhausted, and in such a state of prostration, I was ill from it for several days. I wrote to him, however, several letters, in which I explained, the best I could, those difficulties that had arrested him; and I received one from him of more than twenty pages, from which it appeared that he was only arrested by the novelty to him of the subject and the slight acquaintance he had with the interior ways; of which one can hardly judge except by experience.

I will repeat here, as well as memory allows me, the greater part of those difficulties. He thought, for example, that I rejected and condemned as imperfect, distinct acts, such as specific requests, good desires, etc. this I was far from doing, since the contrary is scattered through all my writings, if anyone will give attention to them. But as I had experienced incapacities to do those discursive acts, incapacities common to certain souls, and on which they had need to be warned in order to be faithful to the Spirit of God, who was calling them to something more perfect, I endeavoured, as well as I was able, to aid them in those straits of the spiritual life; where, for want of a guide who has passed through, souls are often stopped, and exposed to be deceived as to what God wishes of them. It is easy, methinks, to conceive that a person who places his happiness in God alone can no longer desire his “own” happiness. No one can place all his happiness in God alone but he who dwells in God through charity. When the soul is there, she no longer desires any other felicity but that of God, in himself and for himself. No longer desiring any other felicity, all “own” felicity, even the glory of heaven for herself, is no longer that which can render her happy; nor consequently the object of her desire. The desire necessarily follows the love. If my love is in God alone and for God alone, without self-regard, my desire is in God alone, without relation to me.

This desire in God has no longer the vivacity of an amorous desire, which is not in the enjoyment of what it desires; but it has the repose of a desire, filled and satisfied: for God being infinitely perfect and happy, and the happiness of that soul being in the perfection and in the happiness of her God, her desire cannot have the activity of an ordinary desire, which awaits what it desires; but it has the repose of that which has what it desires. Here, then, is the centre root of the state of the soul, and the reason why she no longer perceives all the good desires, as do those who love God in relation to themselves, or those who love themselves and seek themselves in the love they have for God.

Now, this does not prevent God from changing the dispositions, making the soul for moments feel the weight of her body, which shall make her say, “I desire to depart and to be with Christ.” At another time, feeling only a disposition of charity towards her brothers without regard or relation to herself, she “will desire to be anathema and separated from Jesus Christ for her brethren.” These dispositions, which seem to be opposed, agree very well in a central depth, which does not vary; so that though the beatitude of God in himself and for himself, into which the sensible desires of the soul have, as it were, flowed and reposed, makes the essential happiness of this soul, God does not cease to waken those desires when it pleases him. These desires are no longer the desires of former times, which are in the “own” will, but desires stirred and excited by God himself, without the soul reflecting on herself; because God, who holds her directly turned towards himself, renders her desires as her other acts non-reflective; so that she cannot see them if he does not show them, or if her own words do not give her some knowledge of them, while giving it to others. It is certain, to desire for herself she must will for herself. Now all the care of God being to sink the will of the creature in his own, he absorbs also every known desire in the love of his divine will.

There is still another reason which makes God take away and put into the soul sensible desires as it pleases him: it is, that, God wishing to dispense something to this soul, he makes her desire it in order to have a ground for giving it to her, and for hearing her: for it is indubitable “he hears the desire of this soul and the preparation of her heart;” and even, the Holy Spirit desiring for her and in her, her desires are the prayers and requests of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ says in this soul, “I know that you hear me always.” A vehement desire of death in such a soul would be almost a certainty of death. To desire humiliation is far below desiring the enjoyment of God. Nevertheless, when it has pleased God to greatly humiliate me by calumny, he has given me a hunger for humiliation. I call it hunger, to distinguish it from desire. At another time he inspires this soul to pray for specific things. She feels at that moment her prayer is not formed by her will, but by the will of God; for she is not even free to pray for whom she pleases, nor when she pleases; but when she prays she is always heard. She takes no credit to herself for this; but she knows that it is he, who possesses her, who hears himself in her. It seems to me I conceive this infinitely better than I explain it.

It is the same with the sensible inclination, or even the perceived, which is much less than the sensible. When a sheet of water is on a different level from another which discharges into it, this takes place with a rapid movement and a perceptible noise; but when the two waters are on a level the inclination is no longer perceived: there is one, however, but it is imperceptible; so that it is true to say, in one sense, that there is none. As long as the soul is not entirely united to her God by a union which I call permanent, to distinguish it from transitory unions, she feels her inclination for God. The impetuosity of this inclination, far from being a perfect thing, as unenlightened persons think it, is a defect and marks the distance between God and the soul. But when God has united the soul to himself, so that he has received her into him, “where he holds her, hidden with Jesus Christ,” the soul finds a repose which excludes all sensible inclination, and which is such that experience alone can make it understood. It is not a repose in peace tasted, in the sweetness and mildness of a perceived presence of God; but it is a repose in God himself which participates of his immensity, so much has it of vastness, simplicity, and purity. The light of the sun which should be limited by mirrors would have something more dazzling than the pure light of the air; yet those same mirrors which enhance its brilliance, limit it, and deprive it of its purity. When the ray is limited by anything, it fills itself with atoms, and makes itself more distinguishable than when in the air; but it is very far from having its purity and simplicity. The more things are simple and pure, the more of vastness they have. Nothing more simple than water, nothing more pure: but this water has a wonderful extent, owing to its fluidity. It has also a quality, that having no quality of its own, it takes all sorts of impressions. It has no taste; it takes all tastes. It has no colour, and it takes all colours. The intellect and the will in this state are so pure and so simple that God gives them such a colour and such a taste as pleases him; like the water which is sometimes red, sometimes blue, in short impressed with any colour, or any taste, one wishes to give it. It is certain, though one gives to the water the diverse colours one pleases in virtue of its simplicity and purity, it is not, however, correct to say that the water in itself has taste and colour, since it is in its nature without taste and without colour, and it is this absence of taste and colour that renders it susceptible of every taste and every colour. It is this I experience in my soul. She has nothing she can distinguish or know in her, or as belonging to her, and it is this which constitutes her purity: but she has everything that is given to her, and as it is given to her, without retaining anything thereof for herself. If you ask the water what is its quality, it would answer you that it is to have none. You would say to it, “But I have seen you red.” “Very likely, but I am not, however, red. It is not my nature. I do not even think of what they do to me, of all the tastes and all the colours they give me.” It is the same with the form as with the colour. As the water is fluid, and without consistence, it takes all the forms of the places where it is put—of a vessel either round or square. If it had a consistence of its own it could not take all forms, all tastes, all odours, and all colours.

Souls are good for but little as long as they preserve their own consistence; all the design of God being to make them lose by the death of themselves all that they have of the “own” in order to act, to move, to change and to impress them, as it pleases him: so that it is true they have none. And this is the reason that, feeling only their simple nature, pure and without specific impression, when they speak or write of themselves, they deny all forms being in them, not speaking according to the variable dispositions in which they are put. They pay no attention to these, but to the root of that which they are, which is their state always subsisting. If one could show the soul like the face I would not, methinks, conceal any of her spots—I submit the whole. I believe, further, what causes the soul to be unable to desire anything is, that God fills her capacity. I shall be told the same is said of heaven. There is this difference, that in heaven not only the capacity of the soul is filled, but, further, that capacity is fixed, and can no longer increase. If it grew, the saints would augment in holiness and in merit. In this life, when by his goodness God has purified a soul, he fills this capacity: this it is which causes a certain satiety, but, at the same time, he enlarges and augments the capacity: while enlarging it, he purifies it; and it is this causes the suffering and the interior purification. In this suffering and purification life is painful: the body is a burden. In the plenitude nothing is wanting to the soul, she can desire nothing. A second reason why the soul can desire nothing is, that the soul is, as it were, absorbed in God, in a sea of love; so that, forgetting herself, she can only think of her love. All care of herself is a burden to her: an Object which far exceeds her capacity absorbs her and hinders her from turning towards self. We must say of these souls what is said of the children of Wisdom: “It is a nation which is only obedience and love.” The soul is incapable of other reason, other view, other thought, than love and obedience. It is not that one condemns the other states, by no means; and thereon I explained myself to the Bishop of Meaux in a manner that ought not, I think, to leave him any doubt thereon.