DISTINGUÉE CONTREFACÇONS DIABOLIQUES ANALOGIES HUMAINES

BY M-J- RIBET HONORARY CHANOINE

nn — MYSTICAL PHENOMENES TOME FIRST CONTEMPLATION

PARIS LIBRAIRIE CH. POUSSIELGUE RUE CASSETTE, 15 :

1895 Tous droits réservés

49025 DES TS RONS XIII

HIERONYMO RIBET, CANONICO

Beloved son, greeting and Apostolic benediction.

You rightly had no doubt at all that We would receive with willing assent both the disposition you cherish toward Us and the volumes sent as a gift. For nothing could be more desired than to have a son wholly obedient, as you profess and prove yourself to be, attentive to true goods, piously offering to his father the honest fruits of his labors. Truly praiseworthy are your merits, you who, having for many years devoted a youth given over to sacred things to higher studies and piety, have moreover, through weighty published writings, furnished further aids concerning the light of your doctrine and the ardor of your spirit.

BREF

À L'AUTEUR

DILECTO FILIO

TOLOSAM

...we hope may correspond; and that from this you may draw strength and courage, so as to devote yourself all the more zealously and to all the more, in like manner. In this it will greatly help you to have weighed both how much the times stand in need of the works of the priestly order, full of prudence and virtue, and how great rewards the priestly order itself will bring back, if not from the world, then certainly in the memory of the Church and before God.

Now for the gifts and good wishes with which you have honored Us on the fiftieth anniversary of your episcopate, We render heartfelt thanks, in witness of which We impart to you and yours the Apostolic Benediction with all benevolence.

Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 25th day of March in the year 1892, of Our pontificate the sixteenth. BREF

PS SD EON e XLE

ATERN UETRUR

A NOTRE CHER FILS

JÉRÔME RIBET, CHANOINE

TOULOUSE

LÉON XIII, PAPE

Cher fils, salut et bénédiction Apostolique.

You could not doubt that We will gladly receive a tribute from your feelings towards Us, and the gracious gift you have given Us of your works. Nothing, in fact, can answer Our desires like having a son, such as you do the profession of being and show yourself, respectful and submissive, cultivating the true goods and piously offering his father the precious fruits of his labors. Your merit is certainly worthy of praise: after training, for many years, in high studies and piety, the youth dedicated to the priesthood, you have given him new services by publishing important works, emanating from the light of your science and from the flame of your mind.

We hope that the results will respond to your intentions and hard work, and that you will build on the success of a renewed effort and courage to work even more zealously and profitably. Nothing is more likely to encourage you than the consideration, both of the urgent necessity, in the present times, of this prudent and valiant competition, of the Priestly Order, than of the great rewards which will come from it to the workers, if not from the world, at least in the memory of the Church and before God.

And now, in return for the homage of your books and the wishes you send us on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Our promotion to the Episcopate, We grant you and yours, with a loving heart, the Apostolic blessing.

Given in Rome, near St Peter, on 25 March of the year 1893, the sixteenth of Our Pontificate.

LÉON XIII, Pape LETTRE

DE S. ÉM. THE BOURTH CARDINAL, THE EVENT OF RODEZ

AT THE AUTHORITY OF CHRISTIAN ASCETICS

AND DIVINE MYSTICS

Rodez, le 17 décembre 1894.

Mon cher monsieur Ribet,

After the magnificent letter of approval that the venerable cardinal of Toulouse put at the head of your volume entitled the Christian Ascetic, I would really only have to adhere to it purely and simply, not being able to think anything better about this book, nor to say the best.

Like the bold men, you started by climbing the peaks, and you gave us in three volumes, which were very tasted by the religious audience, a highly developed study on high mysticity and its various manifestations.

In your book on Asceticism, you take the subject back from the base; and, after clearly defining Christian perfection, leaving it free from its annexes and similarities, you indicate to us the internal and external means of achieving and maintaining it. This is a natural framework in such a subject; but, what I must add, is that your theological knowledge allowed you to treat it in a very competent way, and that practice has confirmed in you, which is even better, theory.

I wish good fortune to this new treaty, which will have to take place next to the three volumes, its elders, in all the libraries of seminaries and houses that apply to Christian perfection; and, wishing good fortune to the book, I also congratulate the author.

I am very proud and happy to have been, through my study programmes, imposed on our seminarians, somewhat the initiator of these useful and scholarly works. What one could not have done himself becomes in some way a personal work, when one imagines that one could have been for something in the idea and in the impulse of the worker who accomplished the task and led it to a successful conclusion.

Please accept, dear Mr Ribet, the assurance of my most devoted feelings in Our Lord.

+ ERNEST, card. BOURRET,

Évêque de Rodez. VE HER T ESS i : es =

APPROBATION DE M‘ COULLIE

ÉVÊQUE D'ORLÉANS

Cher monsieur le Directeur,

I have a very competent man examine the manuscript that you propose to publish under this title: THE DIVINE MYSTICS, DISTINGED FROM DIABOLIC COUNTERFACTIONS AND HUMAN ANALOGIES.

The very favourable comments which have been given to this review have been recorded in a conscientious and detailed report which has been presented to me; I have read with great interest, and I do not hesitate to give your work my full approval.

A well-designed plan, a rigorous method, numerous and varied researches, controlled by a wise critic; a reliable doctrine, a simple and clear style, albeit always high and correct: this is the rare set of qualities that we were happy to meet in this book, and by which he recommends himself to the attention of serious readers.

There were many difficulties ahead of you. Vous les avez surmontées. And, thanks to the perseverance of your efforts and your patient analysis, you have succeeded in bringing there light on one of the darkest and least studied objects of sacred science.

So receive, dear Mr. Director, my congratulations on your beautiful and interesting work.

By making, as you have done, the secrets of mystical Theology accessible to all, you have carried out an eminently useful work of which you will appreciate, not only the confessors and directors to whom you will serve as guide, but the godly souls themselves, who will draw from the reading of your book a greater esteem for perfect life, and precious encouragements to move on more and more.

You know, dear Director, my affectionate and devoted feelings in N.S.

+ Pierre, Evêque d'Orléans. 5 RAPPORT

PRÉSENTÉ A MG DUPANLOUP ET A MG COULLIÉ

BY THE THEOLOGIAN OFFICIALLY CONCERNING THE REVIEW

DU PRÉSENT OUVRAGE

Monseigneur,

The book Your Greatness, my commissioned to examine, seems to me worthy of your approval and seems to me to respond to a real need. By the interest and light he sheds on all the questions of mystical Theology, he is destined to make this study easy and attractive.

This study is perhaps too unknown today. It is useful to the directors of souls; although mystical states are quite rare, they can nevertheless meet sometimes, even among the simple faithful, for the arm of God is not shortened in the distribution of his gifts. This knowledge is more necessary for the directors of religious communities: the souls they lead are in more favourable conditions, are more suitable and more willing to these kinds of favors. The ignorance of mystical science compromises the perfection and security of these souls; the director could, by unwise advice, upset the operations of grace, take for divine effects evil illusions or mere misconceptions of imagination. Saint Teresa tells us, in her life, how much she had to suffer from the ignorance _ of her first directors, and the spiritual damage she suffered.

The godly souls whom God does not call to these sublime states, especially priests, will not study these wonders of divine love without experiencing a powerful desire for inner purification and pro_stone in perfection. Who would not feel the need to become better, seeing how generous and magnificent God is toward loving souls, and considering the extreme purity he demands before raising them to this grace of union?

The study of Mystics is particularly necessary at the time we are. One of the most disastrous doctrines of our time, positivist materialism, which rejects anything that goes beyond the limits of our experimental faculties, could, even if it remains faithful to its principle, find in the mystical phenomena, duly observed, an experimental proof of this science which it rejects a priori. Second, how many Christians, by latent unbelief, reject, first of all, the supernatural facts, at least those that are not recorded in the Bible? They too will learn, through the most truthful testimonies, that God, the master of his most prodigious gifts, is pleased to communicate them to his saints, to bring forth in them the wonders of his liberality and power. Finally, Mystics will draw the rules for appreciating the nature, causes, effects and morality of contemporary spiritism, which may be given too little attention, and whose evil character escapes so many people, yet where it bursts with full evidence.

The philosopher, even rationalist, finds in Mystics the subject of an interesting psychological study. Can there really exist an intermediate state between the knowledge of God as we read here below, and the glorious vision of heaven; between the love that unites us with God during the trial, and the one that beatifies us in eternity? Can God now make himself known to the soul, without the help of reasoning and the word, connect with it by a mysterious, immediate, clear, yet not yet glorious knowledge? Does he have any special touches to reveal his presence, to make himself feel and taste, to unite with the soul in a more intimate and suave way, to ignite a more ardent love, to remove it from herself by ecstasy and to transform it into him?

In reality, the possibility of these operations did not entirely escape human reason, and the history of philosophy tells us of several schools that claimed to arrive at the knowledge of God and union with him without the intermediary of reasoning, using mysterious processes that connected more immediately, more directly with the Divinity. To cite only one well-known example of everyone, it is enough to recall the Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria. Modern philosophers, too, have taken care of mysticism. Les uns, comme MM. Cousin et J. Simon, denatured Catholic theology on this point and directed undeserved reproaches against it; others, like Maine de Biran, appreciated better, recognized there one of the highest tendencies of human mind, the satisfaction of one of the needs of our heart; and this doctrine did not serve much to bring them closer to Christianity.

But it is time to look at the special usefulness of the book that we have to appreciate, and to show the advantages that it presents for the study of Mystics.

The books dealing with mystical theology itself are relatively rare, obscure, insufficient. The authoritative ascetic books, easy to obtain books, which would hardly be equal either for the background or for the form, are numerous. Rodriguez, Saint-Jure, Granada, Saint Francis de Sales, etc., are known to all. But the same is not true of mystical theologians; many of these authors, already ancient, have not been reprinted and are found only in difficulty; most are written in Latin, and therefore cannot be placed in the hands of many godly persons, to whom these works could nevertheless be useful; moreover, they are usually long, diffuse, abundant in digressions (some reaching up to six volumes in-40), incomplete, not having this order and these logical divisions that embrace all points of view; and finally, because of their seniority, foreign to the discussions that are being discussed today.

The author we are looking at has tried, and successfully, to avoid these defects of the mystic theologians we know, and to fill their gaps. He wrote his book in French; the many texts he cites are all translated into the body of the book, and returned to the bottom of the page. A logical division preserves it from any major omission, and however the work will remain in relatively small proportions. So there is no need to fear the lengths, and the mind is satisfied, seeing itself lead straight to the goal by a short and easy way. It is hoped that this book will become a manual of mystical theology, especially useful to young priests who, during the course of their ecclesiastical education, have not had time to study this so interesting part of priestly science, and so he will be able to supplement a course of Mystics that lack of time does not allow to establish in most seminars.

Let us now consider the qualities of the book envisaged in itself.

A careful examination of the doctrine convinced us of its solidity, its orthodoxy, and its perfect conformity with the teaching of the most authorized mystics. The author was perfectly prepared for this kind of work. After long teaching philosophy, which learns to analyze the most intimate operations of the soul, he found, in teaching theology for several years, this science of dogma and morals, necessary to judge the mysterious operations that are the subject of his book.

In charge of doing a course in Mystics, he spared, we see, no work to possess perfectly the subjects he had to teach. When we go through this book, we are afraid of the number of books that the author has had to read to find all the texts, all the authorities, all the facts that he claims.

The Mystic has depths, darknesss where it would be easy to get astray; but the author called for two helpers who had to guarantee him against error. The first is the scholastic theology, which appears in numerous quotations of St.Thomas, Suarez, etc., and thus brings control of the revealed doctrine to the experiences and facts attested by the saints and mystic authors. The Scolastic, it is true, does not make known the mystical phenomena; but it can compare them with the dogma that it teaches, and judge their conformity or opposition. Second, the author makes even more frequent use of the most authorized mystics in the Church. On each page, we see numerous and long quotations from Saint Bonaventure, Richard and Hugues de Saint-Victor, Gerson, Saint Térèse, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Francis of Sales, Alvarez de Paz, Philip of the Most Holy Trinity, Scaramelli, Schram, etc. It is based on so certain authorities that he proceeds in exposing the mysterious facts of contemplation and union; all that he advances is proved by many quotations from these authors, whose text he reproduces even in his notes. Seeing only these notes, it would seem that this book is only a compilation, since we could have the entire doctrine by reading only the texts mentioned; but these texts are so well translated and so fused in the body of the book, that, if we ignore these authorities, we find there an original work by the whole and the continuation of the materials, by order of the different parts, by clear explanations, by sober reflections that characterize the work.

All we have to do is talk about the shape of the book. The main quality of a work of this kind will be found there; despite the elevation of the materials treated, it is clear and easy to understand, and can be read without effort or restraint. The mind, guided by the heading of the chapters, is satisfied by the simple and unobstructed walk, and first sees the goal where it is driven. The words too abstract, the technical terms are avoided and replaced by simple expressions that put the doctrine within the reach of any poorly cultivated intelligence, and in my opinion one of the main merits of authorship is to dominate its matter so perfectly, that it has been able to make it so accessible to the large number. The foregoing indicates rather that the style is clear, correct, precise; but at the same time there is a moderate heat, a movement that makes this reading attractive, and supports the attention, naturally difficult in a subject so raised.

What we have just said applies above all to the first part, which forms as the main body of the building and the work, since it deals with the two essential and constituent acts of mystical theology: contemplation and union; and trials that prepare the soul for these ascensions. But the second part, which deals with the extraordinary phenomena that precede or accompany the union, is no less praiseworthy or interesting. The qualities of the style are the same: clarity, warmth, happiness of expression to translate the many stories borrowed from the hagiographs. If the first part shows the perfect knowledge that the author had of mystics from the speculative point of view, controlling and weighing their assertions by the teachings of scholasticism and the strongest principles of philosophy; the second shows that he is also capable of the most extensive research of erudition. Having to talk about these phenomena so varied and so numerous that are the ordinary accompaniment of contemplation, he applied himself to produce none that was made sensitive and certified by many examples. These examples he borrowed from the safest sources: the Acts of Saints edited and discussed by the Bollandist scholars, or from other sources of recognized authority. The alleged facts are almost innumerable; and they will give the book an interest that would be sought in vain in the books that deal with the same subject.

We have no doubt that this second part, like the first, offers a keen attraction to people who want to learn this mystical science too unknown to priests, godly souls, and I will even say secular scholars, who often make fun of what they ignore. We therefore believe that success is assured.

All we have to do is ask the author to crown his work in one last part, where, with his usual science and talent, he will show us, in the evil mystic, the counterfeit of the divine work, and at the same time give us the means to discern one from the other. He will then have to examine the extraordinary facts of the natural order that seem to confine himself to the mystical order, and draw up sure rules to distinguish them from truly supernatural phenomena. And, at the end of his task, he will be able to bear witness to having contributed through this remarkable work to facilitate the study of a science too neglected in our time.

This is my impression of the book Your Greatness entrusted to me with the examination. I must say that I was approaching this reading with a certain prevention; patience seemed very necessary to me to read to the end a book dealing with an object so raised and so obscure in itself; but the opposite happened: I read without effort, with interest, with taste, and came to the end not only without fatigue, but with the enjoyment that the serious and luminous works of the mind give. So, to sum it up in two words, I believe that the substance and form of this book ensure its full success.

Please accept the deep respect with which I have the honour of being,

Monseigneur,

De Votre Grandeur,

The very humble and obedient servant, PREFACE

DE LA PREMIÈRE ÉDITION

Our first duty, in presenting this work to the public, is to let him know how we were led to undertake it.

We began to make spirituality on our own behalf, reading to build up ourselves, collecting here and there sentences, facts, testimonies, everything that promised a good thought to the mind, and to the heart a pious emotion.

We glancing in this way, without looking to the future, when Providence laid us on a soil rich in faith, where a prelate, a friend of science, would implant, as a new culture, the study of ascetic and mystical Theology; and, by an unexpected fortune, we were charged to inaugurate this classical teaching. The part of the sacred doctrine which formulates the rules of active and common perfection occupied us first; the Mystics came next: and thus, step by step, but certainly not without labor, we went through the career. It is believed that the teaching of spirituality, as we have conceived it, i.e. logically linked to supernatural science, carried out in a method, enlightened by the facts, established on the most severe theology, will be useful to the perfected souls and the directors responsible for leading them. That is what we decide to produce on the full day of advertising.

And, in order not to scare the reader, we will proceed with measure and degree. Today we present to him a new and complete exhibition of mystical phenomena; tomorrow we will discuss the causes that claim these facts; later, if God plucks us life, and the public any favor, we will study the laws of common perfection, and we will crown our work with the history of Christian Ascetics and Mystics.

But ıl may seem strange, not to say illogical, that we begin with the Mystic, which forms the climax of spiritual life.

We have our reasons, and these reasons, here they are.

From this mysterious world where God and soul meet, Mystique is without a doubt the most ignored region, I dare say the most unknown, probably because of the darkness that makes it difficult and perilous. However, it seemed possible to facilitate its approach, to reveal, or at least to give a sense of its magnificence, by a wider and more methodical exhibition, by a sober and luminous mixture of facts and doctrine, history and theology.

If we have managed to clear these avenues,

To lighten these dark passages, to make these steep peaks affordable, we will be grateful to have started there; for while the guides abound to lead in the common ways, they are few who have explored these harsh peaks, who know their paths and can report their abysses.

Another attraction is that they will understand who knows the emotions of the master and the priest.

On these heights of mystical life, all the rays of heaven and earth seem to converge together: he makes harmonious echoes of what God tells of Himself, of souls, of time and of eternity; of all that man thinks, believes, feels, loves, says, teaches here of great and pure. In deepening this set of questions that touch upon all sciences and mysteries, bringing them together as they come together in these pages that state and summarize them, it seemed to us in turn to find our first and our last disciples, all the sons of our priesthood; with them we re-entered what together we had studied of philosophy, of the Holy Word, of dogmatic and moral theology, of poetry itself and of eloquence; we remembered these espouses of the soul that make the priesthood a true fatherhood. These delicious memories, what amazes us that we are looking forward to returning them to those who give them to us?

Finally, the great bishop of Orléans, Bishop Dupanloup, who with his soul and voice encouraged all the workers of God, had also encouraged us, and it was our Mystique that he wanted to bless first.

He will bless her from heaven.

Before it arrives to our masters as a witness of gratitude, to our disciples as an affectionate memory, to our friends who are waiting for it, to our brothers in the priesthood to serve them, to the pious souls to build them: we pay homage to them to so many Saints and Saints whom we have greeted in our narratives; to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God and ours; to the divine Spouse of souls, Jesus Christ Our Lord; to the adorable Trinity, our grace and our glory, to whom are due, now and in the centuries, the praise, the blessing

MYSTICS Mystics in general. — Its own concept, and its place in ascetic theology. — Reservations on the distinction of the three states of perfection and on the relationship of mystical facts with each of them. — Mystics as experience and as science. — Experimental Mystics according to Saint Bonaventure, Gerson, Bona, Saint Francis de Sales. — Dernière formule. — Contrefaçons diaboliques et analogies naturelles. — Definition of Doctrinal or Scientific Mystics. — Necessity and usefulness of mystical Theology. — Ses difficultés. — Plan and division of the work. — Sources authentiques des récits. — Autorités doctrinales. We begin to describe the various forms of mystical life and to attach these phenomena to their causes. Above all, we must define the field that we will have to go through, and recognize its position in the vast expanse of sacred sciences. Mystique derives its name, like its etymology, from mystery!. Who is initiated into mysteries is a mystic, and the science that deals with mysteries can also be called Mystics? 1 Muoruxéc, puorproy, from uÿw, close, hide. 2 The word of mystic has originally the acceptance of a qualifier. The idea But is the mystery, as the vulgar understands, anything that escapes man's investigations? The mystery would then be everywhere: in God, in nature, in man himself; and, if this is the field of Mystics, it will have to be held for the most universal of sciences.

This word, which, in its common meaning and in its greatest generality, indicates the hidden things that are difficult to know, has less extensive and more precise meanings in the traditional language. It refers first of all to the truths inaccessible to the created understanding, whose formulas God delivers by positive revelation; and, better still, to the supernatural, secret relations, usually invisible to the very consciousness, by which God raises the creature above his sphere, and introduces him into a higher world, whose access is naturally forbidden to him.

On this ineffable encounter, one can consider what God does to speak and give himself to man, and what man must do to rise up and unite with God.

Christian Theology embraces all these aspects. But, as she deals with the existence of divine revelation, the affirmations it contains and the union of God with souls, for the theoretical purpose of coordinating these facts and truths in the body of science, it is purely dogmatic. When she studies this divine condescendence to admire its greatness, beauty, love, and to deduce from it practical rules that raise and fix the soul in God, she becomes mystic.

Undoubtedly the theory that methodically examines the confidences and effaces escaped from God's heart to his creature; which collects, discusses, organizes all supernatural statements made to man on divine mysteries, presents the essential characteristics of mystical science. However, this denomination is preferable to the second point of view of the Christian Theology, to that which deals with the return of the soul to God, by the reason that shadows and veils make this journey a continuous mystery, until the final term where shines upon the consciousness on the full day of glory.

II

Mystic forms therefore one of the branches of theology considered as a whole; and, in keeping with the general understanding that we have just assigned to it, it would embrace this whole part of the sacred science which sets out the principles and formulates the rules of Christian perfection, that is, of the ascension of the soul to God.

Thus understood, it is confused with ascetic theology. And yet there is not yet its special and characteristic meaning; for, in its own and narrow sense, Mystics only enumerates one of the aspects of spiritual life, of all the highest, and which we will specify just now.

Ascetic Theology, Mystical Theology: one commonly confuses these denominations, which supposes or brings, by an inevitable consequence, confusion in the things themselves.

It seems useful to us to unravel them, indicating clearly- -A Voss, Direct. Myst. Scanameccr, Compend. Not. Gen. 6, p. 24: Not to mention their difference and their relationship: the notion of Mystics will detach lucid, complete, definitive.

To this end, it is necessary to recall that the masters of spiritual life distinguish three successive stages in the ascension of the soul to God, which they call Ascetic T, and which constitutes the object of ascetic theology. At the first, the Christian works hard to break away from the bonds and habits of sin; he fights against the living temptations, the most powerful of which is in the senses, in order to preserve the charity they threaten to delight him. It is the purgative or militant state whose dominant virtue is fear, and which suits beginners.

During the second, the soul, freer on the side of the senses and more mistress of itself, is less busy considering its enemies in order to fight them, than the eternal goods to which it aspires, and the divine model, Jesus Christ Our Lord, which it must reproduce in order to reach the desired term. Meditation of the divine truths that show him the purpose, makes in the soul a usual illumination that excites him to the work of virtues; and this is why this state is called illuminative or progressive, and has as its own virtues faith and hope, the hope primarily, that is, the firm assurance that God is our end, and that, in order to achieve it, his grace will not be missed.

Finally, charity becomes dominant and unifies with divine goodwill. The soul then thinks less of avoiding hell and winning heaven than of pleasing the Beloved; its usual desire is to escape from all that is not God, to leave even the world and life in order to enjoy fully and indissolublely God. This is less the effort of the Re:

MYSTICS 17 travels and fights, as possession, rest and term, which makes this apogee of life unitive or perfect, although it does not yet realize the union and perfection consumed of the homeland.

This distinction of the three paths that respond to the beginning, progress and the end of spiritual life is part of the common teaching of theology?; and, according to Fr. Scaramelli ë, it cannot be rejected without recklessness, especially after the sanction it received from the Holy See against the invectives of Molinos +.

But this is more important to our subject.

At the third stage of perfection, spiritual ascension takes two forms: in the common and ordinary moon, the soul is more active than passive; it produces acts of virtue with full possession of itself, through its own energy aided by supernatural grace.

In the other, the soul is rather passive rather than active: God subjects it to an extraordinary action that no human effort can achieve; it bleeds, luminates, lenflames, and often lets burst on the senses of the wonderful attacks of his intimate operations.

It is this second face of one-sided life that constitutes

1 S. But in every human pursuit there is a beginning, a middle, and an end to be reckoned; and it follows accordingly that the state of spiritual servitude and liberty is distinguished according to three, namely: according to the beginning, to which pertains the state of beginners; the middle, to which pertains the state of those making progress; and the end, to which pertains the state of the perfect.

Mystical theologians are accustomed to distinguish three ways: the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive.

3 Dirett. ascet. Tratt. 4, n. 31, p. 46: Nel camino della perfezione si va per tre vie al fini della nostra celeste patria: the prima della quali chiamasi purgativa, the seconda illuminativa e la terza unitiva; distinzione giusta e convenevole ammesa da tutti gli Scrittori ascetici e Dottori mistici, che senza grave temerità non puo disapprovasi.

4 Prop. 26, damn. ab Innoc. XI. Constitut. Cælestis Pastor (1687): Tres illæ viæ: purgativa, illuminativa and unitiva is absurdum maximum quod the true mystical theology, according to the general interpretation of the doctors, whether they consider it in its own statement!, or whether they bring it back to passive union? or to infuse contemplation ê, that they declare one and the other to do only one thing with mystical theology *.

II

However, a few reservations should be formulated here, both on the order and dependence of the three states of perfection, and on the relationship of mystical facts with these various degrees.

The regular walk is that the soul gradually rises to perfect union through purification and illumination. But these laws are nothing absolute, and a miraculous and all-powerful intervention of grace can suddenly carry a soul of the deepest abject morals to the highest peaks of charity, as seen in Saint Mary Magdalene and other famous converts.

A second comment, no less important, concerns:

1 Pmrpr. À SS. Trinit. Sum, theol. myst. ...may obtain as its own; yet it is set as a preface to this whole work, both because the sweetness of mystical theology is very often mingled with the other ways, if not perpetually, yet transiently.

2 Benenicr. XIV, De Servor. This perfect mystical union is regularly found in the perfect contemplative who, long exercised in the purgative and illuminative life — that is, the meditative and contemplative — has by a special favor of God been raised to infused contemplation.

3 GAUDIR, De natura and statibus perfect. P. 4, sect. 3, ©: 4, p. 430, in-fol. Paris, 1643: That contemplation is proper to the third state (namely, of union), although it is sometimes found in the others.

4 Joann. And thus the purgative and illuminative way correspond, by a fitting agreement, to the active life, and the unitive to the contemplative... From these things, then, which we have asserted, it is easily gathered to what degree or state of charity mystical theology belongs; for since it is a genuine knowledge of God elicited through union, we clearly perceive that it belongs, beyond doubt, to the third state or way, to which contemplation is proper. [French fragment, apparently disconnected:] ...the complete gratuitousness and relative rarity of the mystical favors that serve as the apex of the unitive life. The grace of God is always gratuitous; however, the progressive development of spiritual life through activity, from the purgation of sin to the love of benevolence, is a law of supernatural providence that applies to all who enter and walk in the path of perfection. Those who begin and persevere, after passing through the anxieties of fear, will come to the illuminations of hope and the pure ardour of charity.

The same is not true of mystical ways. Unless there is a special vocation, which is neither due nor promised to anyone, one cannot rise to these sublime communications where God, through a victorious action of his grace, subjugates the soul to the point of reducing it to a sweet and fruitful passivity. As we shall say later, many, whom God would bring to these heights of the sacred dilection, obstruct it by their fault and resist the first advances of divine goodness; it is no less true that these gifts are purely gratuitous, and that God refuses them even to the very faithful ones who have walked generously through the stages of purgative and illuminative life, and who grow up in pure charity that makes the essence and crowning of perfection.

Finally, one last observation that will allow us to hear what we will have to say in the next, is that these various states of perfection are not so distinct that it does not appear in the moon, taken separately, nothing from the other two. In all and in each one one struggles and one keeps the soul to guard against sin, which is the proper thing of purification; one exercises himself to the virtues, and from this exercise results light and progress; one gives up to God to have only one life with him, which is at least the beginning of union. The distinctive and distinctive character of these different states derives from the dominant form of soul working perfection. When struggle and fear prevail, it is still the purgative way; when it is ardent to move forward in the virtues and the attraction of hope, one walks in the illuminative way. If charity prevails, then it is the unitary state; but, as long as this mortal life lasts, for great or weak whether perfection is acquired, there is always work of purgation, enlightenment and union!.

Similarly, the supernatural phenomena that are the object of the Mystic regularly belong to the state of the perfect and form it as the crowning. Some even, for example, spiritual marriage, so clearly presuppose one-sided life, that one cannot conceive them in one or the other of the lower degrees of perfection. But many of these divine favors, such as ecstasy, visions, divine touches, can meet, by way of exception, from the first steps or in the simple progress of spiritual life. They are then attached to the general law, as they are, in divine thought, a pressing excitement to move forward in the perfect ways, and the promise that one will soon reach, if one is faithful, the heights where these kinds of graces have as their habitual residence? LA MYSTIQUE i 21

Thus Mystics, as a special science, is part of ascetic theology. It embraces the three purgative, illuminating and one-sided ways through which the soul rises to perfection. The one-way path includes a first aspect, ordinary and common, where the sustained human activity of grace prevails, and another, in which man is reduced to passivity through the sovereign action of God t. It is this last aspect, extraordinary, wonderful, where divine charity surpasses, astonishes our conceptions and desires, which constitute Mystics.

IV

To obtain a precise and luminous notion of mystical theology, it must be considered in turn as experience and as science. In the absence of a clear distinction between these two points of view, it is difficult to understand certain statements, whose immediate conclusion seems to be that this part of sacred theology is closed to anyone who has not received the insignia of contemplation, and that the direction of contemplatives is forbidden to others than contemplatives. By doing the part of experience and the part of doctrine in the expressions of doctors, one escapes these exorbitant and erroneous conclusions.

In fact, they often call the mystical theology God's supernatural work on the soul, and thus they designate the experimental Mystics. At other times they make it a teaching that groups together and formulates in the body of doctrine the facts and laws that interest these supernatural communications: it is then the Doctrinal Mystics or the very science of Mystics. Blessed Hierotheus, of whom St. Denis the Areopagitus spoke with great admiration, brought together these two aspects of mystical theology: he learned it by study and the SUFFRAIT by experience; he was SAVEN and PATIENT in this science of divine things.

From a subjective and experimental point of view, mystical theology has been defined in various ways.

Saint Denis, in his book of the divine Names, analysing the way in which the mind rises to the notion of God, describes the science of which he is regarded as the father: "He is a knowledge of God very divine, which is obtained by ignorance, by means of a union superior to intelligence, when the intelligence, withdrawing from all beings and abandoning itself, unites itself with the splendors that shine above it, and from every part flooded with clarity, illuminates itself with the inscrutable abhorrence of Wisdom?"

And at the beginning of his MYSTICAL THEOLOGY addressed to Timothy, the Areopagit teaches his disciple about the mystical life and the method to follow in order to move forward. After an invocation to the Trinity, abhors of light and darkness, where holy souls enjoy claritys inaccessible to the senses: "For you, dear Timothy, does he say to him?, exercise yourselves tirelessly in mystical contemplations, abandon the intellectual senses and operations, all sensitive and intelligible, the being and the non-being, and through this universal ignorance rise as much as possible to the union of Him who is above all substance and knowledge. Through this frank, whole and pure ecstasy out of you and everything, stripped and freed from everything, you will rise to the supersubstantial splendor of the divine darkness."

Saint Bonaventure, or the author of the MYSTICAL THEOLOGY so often inscribed under his name, calls him "an extension of love in God by the very desire of love!"

Gerson ? reproduces this vague and obscure definition, and assigns some others a little less undecided. According to him, "mystical theology is an anagogic movement, that is, that raises the soul in God, through a fervent and pure love"; or "an experimental knowledge that one has of God, in the burning of united love"; or otherwise "a tasty notion of God acquired by the adherence and union of love the most sublime of the affective power with God". He adds the following, which he attributes to Saint Denis, and which is found in substance in this author: "Mystical theology is an unreasonable, foolish and foolish wisdom, which exceeds all praise." 24 INTRODUCTION

These extreme expressions betray, according to the judicious remark of Cardinal Bona!, the difficulty of circumscribing this delicate and divine operation within precise limits, and of subjecting it to the common rules of dialectics. This is not an ordinary science. If one considers it as a permanent habit, mystical theology, continues this learned author, is not distinguished from wisdom, gift of the Holy Spirit, communicated to the soul at its highest degree; and, as a transitional act, it is nothing other than the fixedness of the spirit in God, admiration of his majesty, the suspension of the soul on the immense and eternal light, a view of the Divinity that transfigures through love and in peace.

As we can see, experimental Mystics is a supernatural elevation of the soul in God through love. This is why St Francis de Sales makes no difference between mystical theology and prayer.

"Do we estimate from quoy in prayer," said this kind doctor?, "what is the subject of our interview? Theotime, plexum. Otherwise stated: mystical theology is wisdom, that is, a savorous knowledge had of God, when the supreme apex of the rational affective power is joined and united to him through love. Or thus, according to Dionysius, [Bk. VII] on the Divine Names: mystical theology is an irrational, mindless, and foolish wisdom, surpassing those who praise it.

By this way of quiet, withdrawal, and abstraction one arrives at mystical theology, namely at that untaught wisdom superior to all human wisdom, by which the mind knows its God without discursive reasoning, and, as it were, touches and tastes him without ratiocination. Mystical theology is the most secret converse of the mind with God, etc., etc... Elsewhere others hand down other definitions which coincide with the foregoing. For a matter so abstruse, difficult, and utterly divine cannot be confined within fixed bounds, nor concluded by the rules of the dialecticians.

It is clear from this that mystical theology is not properly a science, insofar as science is an acquired habit. But if it is taken for the act, it is nothing other than the mind's very fixing upon God, admiration of majesty, suspension of the soul in immense and eternal light; a most fervent, most tranquil, and transformative contemplation of the Deity. But if it is taken for the habit, it is really the same as that most excellent gift of the Holy Spirit which is called wisdom, according to its highest degree.

2 Treaty of the Love of God, L. 6, c. 4, Col. 455. wy speaks only of God; for of quoy rots to estimate and maintain love, if not of the Beloved? And for this reason theoration and mystical theology are only one thing.

"It is called theology, because, as speculatory theology has God for its object, it also speaks only of God, but with three differences. For 40 this one treats God as God, and this one speaks of him as sovereignly kind; that is, she looks at the divinity of the supreme Goodness, and this one the supreme goodness of the Divinity. 20 The specuculative treats God with men and between men; the mystic speaks of God, with God and in God mesme. 5° The specuculative tends to the connoisseurship of God, and the mystic to the love of God; so that this one renders his escoliers savans, doctes and theologists; but this one renders his own ardens, affectionate, lovers of God, and Philothies or Theophiles.

"Now it is called mystical, because the conversation is all secret, and says nothing in icelle between God and Love but from heart to heart, by uncommunicable communication to any other than to those who make it. The language of amans is so special, that no one can hear but themselves. In short, prayer and mystical theology is nothing other than a conservation by which blade speaks in love with God of his very kind kindness, to unite and join in icelle."

It is true that mystical theology, in its narrow sense, is a kind of prayer; but any prayer does not realize mystical theology; it takes this superior prayer which removes the soul from itself to throw it into the depths of divine light, that is, contemplation is necessary, as the mystics t generally teach.

The time has not yet come to propose and discuss this concept. But based on the data we have just collected, mystical theology, from a subjective and experimental point of view, seems to us to be able to be defined: a supernatural and passive attraction from the soul to God, coming from an inner illumination and burning, which prevent reflection, surpass human effort, and may have a wonderful and irresistible resounding on the body.

This concept is substantially consistent with most of those brought by mystical authors, except for what we have added from the glaring of intimate facts about organs. Since these external radiances are the backlash and the extension of mystical operations that are consumed in the soul, is it not appropriate to state them in a complete definition of mystical theology?

yI

It is true that the definition is not yet complete. Next to the experimental divine Mystic rises a hideous forgery, which has as author the prince of darkness.

The devil, who poses himself as a rival of God and never ceases to dispute with him souls, monkey in the world divine action and mixes, when he can, his own action with that of dir meglio, nel chiaro oscuro dscondulazione, insieme, con un amore esperimentale si intimo, che la fa pertere tutta a sè stesa, per unirla e transformarla in Dio. :

t Joann. a Jesu Mama, Theol. myst c. 1, t. 2, p. 5: Same (Dionysius Carthus. )... docet mysticam theologicam esse præstantissimum donum SpiriDieu with so much subtlety and perfidy that it becomes more difficult, at least at the point of departure, to discern which is ba that acts.

These two Mystics go, in their development in the opposite direction, one to the full development of good and love, the other to the last excesses of evil and hatred. It is therefore important to recognize from the first steps what will be the outcome of the road ahead.

That's not all.

Human nature itself has mysterious leaps and bursts in which, without coming out of its sphere, it touches, through the manifestations of good and beautiful, near the divine world; and, through the appearances or audacity of evil, to the diabolical regions. It is no less necessary to point out these eccentricities of nature, so that they are not confused with truly supernatural productions.

Fool these aspects thus complement the science of Mystics. For though this word, in its own sense, expresses the divine influences that reduce the soul to a holy and delicious passivity; although the salanic intervention is only a contradiction, or, to put it better, the counterpart of the divine action, and that the human phenomena that draw closer to the authentically mystical facts can never go beyond a distant analogy and mere similarities, it is no less obvious that the serious and complete study of Mystics embraces all these points of view, and that they must find place in a general definition of this objectively considered science. VII

We now have all the elements of this definition.

From the doctrinal and objective point of view, Mystics can therefore be defined: the science that deals with supernatural phenomena, whether intimate or external, that prepares, accompanies or follows the passive attraction of souls to God and by God, that is, divine contemplation; that coordinates them and justifies them by the authority of Scripture, of doctors and of reason; distinguishes them from parallel phenomena due to Satan's action, and from purely natural analogous facts; finally, that traces practical rules for the conduct of souls in these sublime but perilous ascensions.

Thus, the experimental mystic found, discussed, codified, and by this rational work constituted as a body of science, becomes doctrinal. When contemplatives claim that mystical theology is a science of infusion, that it is a free gift of God, they intend to state the subjective side of these divine experiences. But they do not claim to reject any acquired and reasoned science of these phenomena; for without it one would have only scattered knowledge and as the materials of a science; it is the methodical grouping and discussion of these facts according to suitable principles that make it a science itself.

This scientific mystic rules and controls experimental Mystics in the Church. It is an axiom of spiritual life, that there is no soul so high and perfect that is not subject to the law of leadership; and it is in principles and doctrine, rather than in facts and experiments, that the directors must seek their lights and base their judgments!

VIII

Le P. Alvarez de Paz? places in two classes those to whom the knowledge of mystical science is useful or necessary: the souls raised to these extraordinary states and the directors who lead them.

We do not dispute that contemplative souls cannot find light and comfort in the reading of authors who deal with these matters with competence and authority. It is always very useful for them to learn how many pitfalls and illusions these paths are sown. But, in the end, the last word of these situations is the director of consciousness.

For him, this study becomes an absolute obligation.

1 SCARAMELLI, Tratt. 1, n. 28, p. 42 : Ma s-egli è vero che non vi è anima si elevata, che non abbia ne nécessà di dipendere dalla direzione di qualche Padre spirituale ; converrà dire che non vi sia Padre spirituale che non abbia bisogno di appigliarsi allo studio della mistica dottrinale, da cui si ricevono tutti quei lumi che sono necessarj ad entendere l'opere straordinarie della divina grazia, e si somministrano tutte le regole che sono opportune per farne buon uso.

one of these concerning those souls who are raised to perfect and wholly supernatural contemplation, the other concerning those who govern and direct them. Those need some knowledge of this wisdom, lest they fear, lest they weep as deceived when they are not, or, on the contrary, ensnared by some deceit of the adversary, rejoice as though not deluded when in fact they are; and so that they may recognize the gifts they receive and give thanks for them, and gird themselves toward purity of life corresponding to these gifts. These also need [this knowledge], since it is certain that not a few of the faithful of both sexes, especially in religious congregations, are raised to the most perfect contemplation; their superiors and directors would not guide them as is fitting, if they were utterly ignorant of this doctrine, and had received no notion of it either through experience or through speculation.

3 Jos. Lopez EZQUERRA, Lucern. myst. Proleg. n. 3, p. 4: Quamobrem, sicut animabus necessarium is Magistro ductore proceduree, ita Magistris ~ necessarium est nihil eorum quae in hac via virtutis et perfectionis occrerere A 30 INTRODUCTION If he is not instructed of these facts and supernatural states, at least enough to know doubt and ask advice, he will mislead instead of driving, he will treat delusions of God's operations in souls; or, too credulous, he will be deceived by hallucinations of sick brains, deceitfulness of ill-intentioned persons, and, worse, perfidies of Satan.

"There are confessors and spiritual fathers," says St John of the Cross, "who, without the knowledge and experience of these ways, bring to these souls more obstacles than of help, like the workers who built the tower of Babel, who, not hearing the tongue of one another, gave materials different from those needed, and in this way could not complete their work."

Let us add, with Scaramelli?, testifying to his own experience, that, while the souls called to these sublime ways meet more or less everywhere, the guides who hear and direct them are very rare?

IX

We will not insist on the excellence of this study, the main purpose of which is to tell the ineffable tenpossunt penitus ignorare, ut in tam diversis eventibus, laboribus, obscuritatibus, temptationibus, and purgationibus, case ducere, consolari, and proficere valeant.

1 Montée du Carmel, Préf., p. xevr:

2 Dirett. mis. And yet I confess the truth: that this desire to benefit contemplative souls with the present Work was born in my heart from the sacred missions; for I have understood, and almost touched with my hands, two things through the long exercise of this sacred ministry. The first, that in almost every place there is found some soul whom God leads by these extraordinary paths to a high perfection; the second, that very rare are those experienced confessors who well understand the conduct that God exercises over such souls along the ways of contemplation. E percio o temono giustamente d'imprenterne la cura, o temerariamente la imprendono TL aa aa CN Te OS T OO OS ARE CET ar Fe 5 =" ae. ie. TS `raises from God towards his faithful creature, and everything that can spring from love and enthusiasm for God from the bottom of the human soul, which lets glimpse in delicious firstfruits what will be the radiation of glory and the drunkenness of heaven; but we must not silence how great are its difficulties and its shadows.

The entry of this divine world is so much above the regions where the senses are stirred, and even those where reason unfolds, that the senses and reason, while trying to penetrate it, lose capacity and see only darkness. It is a kind of axiom among the masters that mystical theology proceeds, in order to reach its object, by means of elimination and negation. According to St Denis the Areopagit t, the mystic, in order to meet God and unite with him, must come out of oneself and from the world created, and sink by faith, adoration and love, into the deep darkness of the Being who keeps ever more in himself than he can communicate to the universality of things that begin.

These abstractions, prolonged to the limits of infinity, doubtless raise the mind by drawing it closer more and more to God; but they also plunge it into shadows where it is hard for him to see clearly his own thought, and through which he runs a great risk of getting lost.

Moreover, under the penalty of not asserting itself, mystical science must resort to human formulas and create a language related to the strange things that it tries to tell.

Let's hear about this Cardinal Bona?. "The height of heavenly gifts often exceeds the strength and meaning of all the terms that men have instituted to express their thoughts, and if anyone wants to open himself to his director, as he must, of these divine impressions, the common language will not suffice to his mind. Therefore he will have to invent new terms and new expressions to make known the singular gifts that he has received from God; and fleshly men, not hearing this language, do not fail, with their ordinary haste, to tax him error. This is the grievance that some people articulate against mystical Theology, which they accuse of containing obscure, horrible, unbelieving, unintelligible words, in disagreement with the teachings of philosophers and theologians, and which they mock as having no meaning, if they do not see there a repetition of the errors long condemned by the Beguards and the [lights. Mystical Theology must have its terms, as all the arts and sciences have. And, since it is entirely supernatural, its principle, its end, its means and its ways to tend to its end, and similarly its words and its expressions surpass the order and the forces of nature, and the language of human wisdom."Therefore, an overflowing source of darkness for anyone who devotes himself to the study of this divine science.

To these difficulties inherent in the things themselves comes the lack of personal experience in most of those who have to deal with these subjects. Even those who have suffered these supernatural phenomena experience some kind of torture when they want to translate what they have seen or felt. They go through the series of things known to search for the image of what they have seen, and it is hardly if, using comparisons and figures, they can express something of these divine impressions.

To exaggerate nothing, let's say that the difficulty is not always equal. A number of mystical facts, such as ravishing, stigmatizing, suave smells and many other miraculous derogations, fall under the senses, which can at least see their existence; sensitive visions and positive revelations are subject to the control of ordinary theology and that of reason. But even in these external manifestations which seem to offer nothing unattainable, error is easy, and the slope that leads to slippery excesses , as the aberrations and turpitudes of false mystics attest. = In the secret of the soul, darkness is otherwise deep. No one knows himself well; but it can be said that he is made at the bottom of every soul of the reserves which she never delivers entirely. This is especially true of women, and St.Terèse mocks herself with as much mind as it is for some confessors who pretended to know women thoroughly for having confessed them two or three times. And yet it is in women, we will later say the reason, that the wonders of the mystical order usually meet. Whatever these shadows and pitfalls, a careful study, combined with humble and fervent prayer, succeeds in giving these supernatural states sufficient knowledge so that one can surely lead the souls that pass through them, at least sufficient to cast doubt on his own lights and resort to the advice of more experienced and educated guides. No doubt happy who can unite experience with science; but, once again, the science of mystical facts is possible to a great extent without personal experimentation: a deep and careful study, continued and repeated in the very exercise of the priestly ministry, in the presence of the complications and lessons of practice, is the normal way to raise to this knowledge, and to acquire there the prestige of a great and sure authority.

Our purpose, in the publication of this book, was to facilitate this learning of the directors and their initiation to the problems of Mystics, taking into their eyes all the phenomena which affect this order of spiritual life with a method, and formulating, under the inspiration of the most tried masters, precise rules by which they will surely distinguish the action of God from the artifices of the demon and natural superfetations.

The great difficulty is to draw his walk.

Rieñ, in fact, is more difficult to dispose of materials so diverse, so complex, sometimes so related, and often so disparate: Quañd on one side, light seems to have to be better replenished by a äutre. More than in any other science, the full light can come, in this one, only from the whole; but, before obtaining the synthesis, we must classify details which assume each other, or so alien to each other, that we know how to bring them closer and connect them between them.

Most of Mystique's works are evidence of this so embarrassing complication, by the diversity of their exposure, the weak evidence of their continuation, and by the darkness hovering on their general prescription.

We allow ourselves these remarks, not for a purpose of criticism or with the pretension to do better, but rather to warn the reader against too severe a logic, and also in order to reconcile his indulgence in favour of the plan that we are going to propose to him.

We start from this basic data of all methodical teaching, which must be initiated step by step, from the mere exposure of the facts to the last reason of their origin in the causes they proceed, and first drawing the main part, to better attach it to the secondary dependents.

In accordance with this method, we will begin by exposing the phenomena of the mystical order.

Ces faits se rangent en deux classes. Some perform to the most intimate of the soul, in a supernatural, silent, imperceptibly increasing elevation, which bears the glorious name of Contemplation. The autrés consist of separate, precise acts, mostly external at least by their manifestations, lesque, without indissolubly confounding with the contemplative suspension, usually prepare, accompany or follow it, but can also occur separately.

Contemplation, being the fundamental object of mystical science and as the body of the edifice, presents itself logically in the first place; the other facts 36 INTRODUCTION which group around this main act or are independent of it then appear. The order to be followed in the enumeration of phenomena is thus determined.

After exposing the multiple aspects of mystical life in the twofold form that we have just indicated, we will have to look for the various causes to which these effects can be attributed.

In principle, the true mystical life emanates from God, and from God alone; but we have said that the demon clings to Singer God, and that nature presents eccentricities that seem to be close to supernatural states. In the presence of a fact with mystical characters or appearances, the question therefore inevitably arises: Is this fact divine, diabolical or only human? And unless Mystics is the world of confusion and traps, there must be signs that can unravel these influences and qualify these situations.

The last part of our book will be devoted to highlighting these authentic marks of divine action, the nature and extent of the evil interventions, the human anomalies that have some resemblance to the true miracles, and the difference that separates and characterizes these three orders of phenomena. These distinctions will serve as an answer to the free assumptions, to the misleading and often childish interpretations, with the help of which rationalism strives to reduce to natural proportions the mystical facts which it cannot contest the existence.

Our plan is therefore drawing with complete obviousness.

Il embrasse trois parties :

The first will include the series of intimate facts, from the announcements of contemplation to its full development. less external, distinct from contemplation.

The third will deal with the causes of these effects.

The increasing clarity of our exposure will hopefully justify the order we have just adopted.

XI

To realize this plan, to paint in a way in the eyes of these various forms of mystical life, we thought that nothing would be more effective than to show them in action in living and historical accounts. That will not be the slightest part of our task. Facts can be found everywhere; but finding out who answers countless situations and all assumptions, we have some right to say it, it is not done without work.

We will borrow all our legends from ACTA SANCTORUM of the Bollandists t. After reading a considerable number of particular stories, we soon convinced ourselves that most have their source or confluence in this vast collection?, the greatest erudition that has been undertaken and realized, at least of this kind. And, in order to put more uniformity in the many quotations that we had to produce, we thought it preferable to take them, as far as possible, from the same source.

However, when we claim the holy Fathers and the most famous ecclesiastical writers, our indications refer immediately to their works, although these testimonies are almost always recorded in the immense collection of the Bollandists. More importantly, when it comes to traits that these collectors have not spoken of, we refer to the works where we have collected them. Among these books, we will mention the recent publication by the Visitation de Paray-leMonial on the Life and Works of Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, and the Life of Venerable Mother Agnes de Langeac, perhaps the richest monument in mystical wonders.

Many of our stories would make the unbeliever smile, if he were to read us. It is not for the unbeliever that we write: with him we would refrain from beginning with mystical confidences; our first som would be to put him in order with common sense and history. It is true, in fact from Mystic, the unbelievers are more numerous than one thinks, and such who makes a high profession of religion and even piety believes to show the strength of his mind and the virility of his faith by laughing, too, at what scandalizes lincredulity. For us, we consider, with the famous Bollandus!, past master and judge MYSTICAL , 39 in this matter, that there is lightness, presumptiveness and inconvenience to treat as ridiculous or unbelievable all that is not in human manner and measure, and false all that seems unimaginable to our way of conceiving. In history, we proceed differently: we first see the fact, then we look for the reason; and whether we find it or not, the fact remains.

Let us add that these disdain for Mystics, in those who claim to be believers, show little memory or logic on their part. When one admits the supernatural of Bible accounts as a whole and their details, as it is necessary to do without Christian belief, one retains the right to recite, to mock, in the presence of similar or similar facts and often much less strange, than if one also retained the right to contradict one another. What wonders surpass or even equal those that are read in the Bible about Adam and Eve, about Abraham, Moses, Job, Tobias, most of the Prophets? Why worship for one another, and laugh for the other? Why here more than elsewhere double standards? All we have the right to claim is a sufficient application of the rules of historical criticism: the authors we follow seem to us to satisfy these requirements.

The Bollandists, who provide us with most of our stories, make it an open profession, by the pen of their leader, not to include in their acts any document that one might suspect to be fabulous and controuvé, or to come from suspicious hands t. If, in the details, there are dangerous assertions from the point of view of doctrine or history, they are careful, in the notes following each chapter, to clarify or reject them. We have complied with these indications, omitting the line or indicating reservations.

The Life of Mother Agnes, to which we make so many loans, also seems to us to fulfil the conditions of historical confidence. The author, M. de Lantages, who left in the Church of France and in the Society of Saint Sulpice a sweet fragrance of holiness, wrote this story on his knees. By this we can judge the scrupulous care that he had to take to inquire into the facts and to make no progress which seemed to him to be in conformity with the truth? In 1863, Fr.Labbé Lucot re-edited this book, introducing valuable and conscientious additions and annotations. Our excerpts are taken from this last and excellent edition.

For the writings of the Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, it is mainly of her life written by herself that we have made use, and we understand what

I say, therefore, first, that there are no lives in this work which anyone could suspect, even in the slightest degree, to be wholly fabricated, since some Martyrology or other sure authority always attests to them. Next, that there are none which it is probable have been corrupted in any part by heretics or other ill-disposed men.

2 M. Faton, Life of M. de Lantages, L. 4, n. 22, p. 205: Although M. de Lantages found a very delicate complexion, and this Life was quite extensive, he always wrote it on his knees, and with such great feelings of religion, that he first grazed in the bottom of his heart what he then put in writing the feelings and virtues of this venerable prioress. Since the life of Mother Agnes was filled with very extraordinary events, M. de Lantages, so circumspect and so judicious in prodigies, wanted to ascertain the truth of the facts before; and we see, by the count of the authorities on which he relied, that neither he nor the vicar general of Saint-Flour (M. Chomel), wont cru légèrement tant de choses merveilleuses. It was easy for him to obtain all the necessary documents in a time when there were still many people who had had great authority, giving this document the recent beatification of its author. "The Church has studied this account with the severity that it brings to this kind of examination, and has solemnly found the authenticity of it!"

XII

The facts that we cite therefore deserve to be addressed. However, regardless of the abundance and authenticity of these stories, we should not misunderstand our purpose. This is not a history of the wonders of Mystics that we have undertaken: this work is done in part in the sixty in-folio volumes of Bolland scholars. Our more modest purpose is to group and coordinate these facts into a body of doctrine. More often than not we will cite only one or two examples, when there are a thousand of them of the same kind. Moreover, since the principles are independent of such or such application, among the alleged facts it would encounter materially false, that the doctrine remains out of reach; for, it is important to note, in general, the doctrinal assertion relates less to contingent achievements than to the possibility. And when the design itself presents difficulties, we will try to clarify them, less by claiming questionable facts, than by a rigorous discussion of principles. Similarly, if the doctrine were based on facts, then we would insist on the strength of the testimonies that guarantee its authenticity. But, above all, we wanted to do a theological and doctrinal work.

We therefore had to rely primarily on masters in doctrine and theology. The number and nature of quotations will be judged if we have been faithful to them. We simply confess, there is nothing, or almost nothing of us in this book, except the work of conception and the work of realization. Even when we seem to speak on our behalf, it is the voice of the great representatives of the Christian tradition, of the scholastic and mystical theology, which one hears.

The Fathers will often be invoked, especially St Augustine, who raises and clarifies so many problems about God, about the soul and their relationship; and St Gregory the Great, whose science extends to everything, but becomes exceptionally luminous and suave, when it penetrates and exposes the secrets of contemplative life.

Among the mystics whose names reappear frequently, are St. Denis the Areopagitus, the father and the prince of Mystics; St. Bernard, the doctor of unctuous piety, doctor mellifluus; the two great lights of the contemplative school of St.Victor, Hugues and Richard; the seraphic doctor Saint Bonaventure, the pious Gerson, Rickel or Denis the Chartreux, nicknamed the ecstatic doctor, the Seraphic Teresis!, "that the Church almost ranks doctors by celebrating the sublimitity of his doctrine?" his emulation Saint John of the Cross, the mystical doctor; St. Francis of Sales, whom the Church has just decorated with the title of doctor for the elevation of his teachings and the suavity of his direction; Fr. Alvarez de Paz of the Society of Jesus, whose writings are an inexhaustible mine of the most solid spirituality; Fr. Philip of the Most Holy Trinity, the son and spiritual disciple of Saint Teresus; closer to us, the learned Cardi1 We are from those who hold that the true spelling of this name is Teresus and not TueResus, and that 4, which eventually became traditional among us, is an all-French superfetation that was point of raison d'être.

2 Bossunt, Instruct. on the weather conditions, L: 9, n.3,t. 6, p. 1892. Aay j ` a PU S ` A nes

x r D ere

THE MYSTICS 4 RAS AS nal Bona, Pope Benedict XIV, whom his magisterial work on the BEATIFICATION and CaNONISATION of the Saints placed first in the matter of miracles and Mystics; Benedictine Schram, who was appropriated by a faithful translation of the Mystical Theology of the Spanish Jesuit Michel Godinez; Fr. Scaramelli, another Italian Jesuit, who well deserved pious souls by drawing them safe rules for common life in his ASCETICAL DIRECTORY; and, for the extraordinary ways, in his MYSTICAL DIRECTORY, where one often finds the trace of Joseph Lopez Ezquerra, author of a well-known book in Spain and elsewhere, entitled the MYSTICAL LAMP:

If the scholastic theologians appear less numerous, they are widely represented by the same angel of the school, Saint Thoras of Aquinas, and by Suarez, in whom, according to the fair praise of Bossuet, we hear the whole school: we use their authority in all encounters.

Tels sont nos guides. The texts reproduced at the bottom of the pages will allow the reader to appreciate the extent to which we have been a faithful interpreter. We make only one reservation, that of the whole good faith; on this point we recuse in advance any unfavourable stop, and until mere suspicion.

It may be surprising that we allege so rarely Görres, the learned author of DIVINE, NATURAL AND DIABOLIC MYSTICS. This book, we readily recognize, is a monument of hagiographic science, and there would be ingratitude on our part to conceal that we owe it much. If we almost never invoke the testimony of the famous German writer, here are the reasons.

We could not ask about the mysteries of contemplation; that he seems to have seen only by their phenotenal and accidental side, and faith in their intimate, vital, truly supernatural causality; similar to those tourists who admire the outsides of the temple without entering; or who, if they penetrate it, merely consider the boldness, magnitude, elegance of the outer forms, and do not tell of their raison d'être or their destination, nor of the powerful faith that inspired them.

For the facts he tells, he leaves the reader more than once in a painful indecision about the source and value of his stories, and most often he borrows them, as we have done ourselves, to the inexhaustible treasure of the Bollandists. Wherever we have taken it, we have made a law to report the authorities, and, as far as we have been able, to reproduce their statements in full. Any other indication became superfluous.

The narratives succeed the interpretations, and on this point Görres, whatever the rightness of his intentions, could only inspire us just mistrust. Wide, sometimes too broad, in the admission of facts, his criticism, always more or less marked by rationalism, seems to take on the task of suppressing or distorting the supernatural. Respectful and easy to excess for the legend, he ignored or misconceived Christian theology, to which he substituted a vague and fanciful psychology, whose preliminary discussion would be infinitely more laborious than, for a calm and judicious mind, traditional demonstrations in honor in Catholic schools. Of the two parts of this book, facts and doctrine, the first received well-deserved praise, with which we almost fully associate. It is not the same for the second, which seems to us not only questionable, but also suspicious: we dare to say it, theology has failed Görres.

Should we be surprised? Görres was a simple layman, taking a very active part in the political agitations of France and Germany during the first twenty years of this century, and who occupied himself with religion, at least from the point of view of Mystics, only at the age of forty years past. It was a little late for a complete theological initiation. Thus, the impulses of a sincerely converted soul often mix, without his knowledge, the prejudices of a spirit that is too long independent.

The very frontispiece of his work: The DIVINE, NATURAL AND DIABOLIC MYSTiQuE contains, in our opinion, a counter-sense and a mistake. There is no more natural Mystics, than there is of a supernatural nature, and the demon, whatever its constitutive power and its mad ambition, cause and consequence of its fall, cannot exceed its own sphere; whatever it tries, it makes only natural, never supernatural. But the first character of Mystics is extra-natural; God alone, therefore, can be the author of it: the true Mystics is essentially divine. Let there be on the limits of the nature of the appearances of supernatural, and let the proud spirit strive to sing the divine, one does not refuse to admit, on the condition of holding these manifestations for what they are in reality: in the human world for pure analogies, in the evil world for counterfeits of the true Mystics: reason demands that one apply, not to confuse, but to untangle these things. That's why we called our work: DIVINE MYSTICS DISTINGED FROM DIABOLIC CONTRACTIONS AND HUMAN ANALOGIES.

This is the work undertaken by us with the help of God, and that we submit with a filial and docile heart to the judgment of our mother, the Holy Roman Church. LES PHÉNOMÈNES MYSTIQUES

— 5 #4

PREMIÈRE PARTIE

DE LA CONTEMPLATION

PREAMBLE The Contemplation occupies the first place in mystical theology.

— Three points of view embrace the whole matter: Contemplation

in general, its degrees, the purifications that precede it.

The Contemplation forms the fundamental object of the mystical Theology: the definitions that one brings of one and the other reveal their affinity where concluded to their identity.

Mystical phenomena are, in fact, grouped around contemplation as preliminary, essential, concurrent or subsequent parts of a principal act, and we have already pointed out that the facts referred to in Part II of this book are almost all happening in the very exercise of contemplation. If we treat apart from this suave elevation of the soul in God by God himself, it is to better draw its characters and gradations, ët, Eh dispelling it from the accessories that surround it, if not bring it into full light, at least in part decrease, by the clarity of exposure, the natural darkness that envelops these mysteries of sacred love and steals them from the eyes of humans, especially those who have never experienced their ineffable sweetness.

We are one of these, and we are admitting without a doubt that our work is reduced to the labors and the trial of human study. We have collected, with the most faithful attention, the statements of the holy souls who have told their own experiences, and the affirmations of the masters who have received, controlled and coordinated these admirable accounts.

Mystical facts meet everywhere; but it is to the masters that we must ask for doctrine, and it is to them primarily that we will address ourselves.

All are unanimous when they assign the general characteristics of contemplation, although they differ in the presentation and discussion of particular points of view. They also agree to recognize in the march of contemplation a series of degrees by which the soul gradually rises up to the perfect union; they divide themselves on the number and nature of these ascensiones. Finally, they all point out, as prerequisites for contemplative prayer, purifying trials by which God calls and prepares souls for this delicious trade, or disposes them to pass from lower degrees to more sublime communications.

These three aspects, namely: contemplation in general, its varying degrees and the passive purgations which announce, prepare and activate it, summarize all the questions that interest mystical prayer.

The degrees of contemplation can only be spoken of after determining its concept, and the study of the ‘preparatory trials' will gain to come, by reason that it will benefit from the light of the solutions acquired, while, clarified, it would contribute little to enlightening the points of view that precede it.

We will therefore have to study successively:

1o Contemplation in general;

20 Ses degrés ;

30 The purifications that precede it. CHAPITRE PREMIER

OF THE CONTEMPLATION IN GENERAL

HIS NOTION Various acceptances: this is only the theological contemplation,

— Its definition according to the main mystics. — Ses deux éléments

constitutifs, l'intuition et lamour. — How it differs from philosophical contemplation, — from simple thought and meditation.

The general overview which opens this first part covers a large number of questions which can be brought back to the following statements: concept and excellence, species, object, causes and effects, duration, subject of contemplation.

This chapter responds to the first of these statements.

I. — The word of contemplation expresses the idea of a great spectacle that attracts attention and attention. The vastness of the ocean, the radiance and expanse of the heavens, the vast horizons of the mountains, and in general, as well as the remark Cicero *, all that, in nature, offers a bait to the admiration of the spirit and satisfies his greed to know.

In a narrower and more precise sense, contemplation means a deep absorption of the mind, determined by the vivid, striking and admiring intuition of the truth.

When this knowledge mingled with admiration for the object of the natural world or when it is confined to speculation, contemplation is purely philosophical. It becomes theological and mystical, when it is exercised over the supernatural and tends less to the consideration of the mind than to the emotional attachment of the heart.

We are dealing here only with theological contemplation.

Il. — The authors define it differently; but from this diversity of statements a clear, precise, complete notion emerges.

The book pe L'ESPRIT ET DE L'Améme, long attributed to Saint Augustine, but by an author after Boèce, gives contemplation of this definition as fair as it is concise: "It is a delicious admiration of the brilliant truth!"

Saint Augustine, who has often spoken of contemplation in his writings, defines it in the xth book against Faust: "A holy drunkenness which removes the soul from the fluidity of temporal things, and which has as principle the intuition of eternal light of Wisdom?"

The unknown author of the book SCALA CLAUSTRALIUM, or treated in the way of prayer, attributed by many to Saint Bernard, calls contemplation "an elevation and suspension of the spirit in God, which is a foretaste of the joys of eternal sweetness è".

The holy abbot of Clairvaux gives, in the second book of the ConsIDERATION, the following notion, vague, too general, and containing nothing proper to mystic contemplation: "It is, he said, a true and certain look of the mind on any thing, or an apprehension of the true excluding doubt."

Hugues de Saint-Victor is more explicit, but without achieving sufficient precision. According to him, "Contemplation is a deep and mind-free intuition, which penetrates the things he wants to know on all sides?"

It is true that elsewhere * it merely reproduces the already reported definition of the book of Esprit and AME.

His disciple Richard sees in contemplation "a clear and penetrating look of the spirit, which hangs with admiration at the performances of the divine Wisdom".

Gerson, basing these definitions of St.Victor's two illustrious mystics in one, brings them back to the following: "Contemplation is a insightful, free and mind-free look, penetrating from all sides in the spiritual things that he considers, and suspended from divine spectacles."

The Angelic Doctor ê teaches that contemplation is "a simple view of the truth, ending in an emotional movement?"

Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité stops at the first

On Consideration, ch. 2: Contemplation can indeed be defined as: the true and certain gaze of the mind upon any matter whatsoever, or an undoubting apprehension of the truth.

2 Hom. 1 in Eccl. Contemplation is the keen and free gaze of the mind, extended in every direction toward the things to be discerned.

3 Instit. monast. de Anima, 1. 2, c. 24. 4 Benjamin Major, 1. 4, ¢. 4. Migne, t. 496, col. 67: Contempliatio is part of this definition, and we thus seem to omit an essential element!.

Saint Bonaventure reproduces ? the too general notion given by Saint Bernard ; but in the opuscule entitled : DES SEVEN CHEMINS DE L'ÉTERNITY *, assuming his work, he brings another more extensive one, which makes it fully heard in what consists of contemplation : "It is, he says, an act of intelligence, which, free from all obstacles and purified by grace, directs his gaze on the spectacle of eternal things and remains suspended there by admiration."

Alvarez de Paz +, whose authority is so considerable in matters of spirituality, calls contemplation "a free, penetrating and certain intuition of God and heavenly things, which produces admiration, goes to love and proceeds from love".

According to Saint Francis de Sales, "Contemplation is nothing but a love, simple and permanent attention of the mind to divine things."

Cardinal Bona ê, one of the most secure mystics of the penultimate century, the fact consists "in a vision

1 Sum. Theol. myst. But if we wish to fit this definition (of St. Thomas) to the contemplation of the saints, then contemplation will be called an intuition of divine truth.

2 Centiloquium, part. 3, sect. 46.

Contemplation... is an act of the intellect, unimpeded, healed by grace, directed toward eternal sights, suspended in admiration.

4 De natura Contemplat. 1. 5, part. 2, €. 1, t. 6. Ed. Vivès, p. 482: Contemplation, as it seems to us, is a free, penetrating, and certain intuition of God and of heavenly things, producing admiration, ending in love, and proceeding from love.

5 Treatise of God's love, 6 c. 8.

6 Via compendii ad Deum, ©. 9, n. 4, p. 124. Constantit autem in visione quadam suavi, quieta et amabili veritatis æternæ, quam sine discursuum suave, tranquil and kind of eternal Truth, that spirit perceives through a pure look, without the multiplicity of reasonings; and that it penetrates with great love and equal admiration, with so much certainty and clarity, that it is elevated to God's facial intuition; not yet to the glory of the blessed, but in a lesser light, still obscure, and supported by faith, which finds there its perfection and great clarity."

Schram + and Scaramelli? present an absolutely identical definition: ue in terms, except a single word that does not alter the substance of the statement. Let us still be allowed this quotation, which will be the last: "The mystical contemplatatior, say these two authors, is an elevation of spirit in God and divine things, by a simple admirative gaze suavely and ardently in love with divine things."

IT. — From these various statements clearly emerge the constitutive characters of contemplation.

They can be brought back to these two: first, it is a simple intuition of the truth, that is, it occurs without prior effort on the part of the mind and without any work of reasoning; second, this intuitive look does not stop at a pure vision of understanding; it determines in the will an emotional movement that assigns to this operation of the mind its end and its raison d'être.

Thus freed from any complication of principle, effects and circumstances, contemplation is what Saint Thomas defines it: a simple look at the truth ending in an emotional movement of the heart.

But this loving view of the truth is always accompanied by two effects that contribute to its characterization, one of which comes from knowledge, the other from love: admiration and joy '.

The magnitude and unforeseeableness of the vision, the greatness and majesty of its object throws the soul into astonishment and astonishment. As St Thomas observes?, admiration is a kind of fear that takes hold of us in the presence of something that exceeds our power. This is the cause of the grasping that makes us experience the sight of a sublime truth that surpasses our conceptions.

The encounter of the object by love produces the delight, a sweet and quiet delight. Enjoying, indeed, what else is to possess the object loved without fear of losing it? The soul raised to contemplation experiences the drunkenness celebrated in the hymns, and tastes on the bosom of God even a delicious rest.

These suavities usually burst into the senses and reach the flesh itself, as the psalmist attests, when he says: "My heart and my flesh have braided in the living God." However, as we will more fully say in his place, these effects of love may not exceed the upper part of the soul, and leave the lower parts in desolation and anguish.

Contemplation therefore consists in a simple, loving, admiring and suave intuition of the truth.

IV. — Rigourously interpreted, this concept also seems to be suitable for philosophical contemplation and supernatural contemplation, and yet it is the last one to be defined here.

To remove any ambiguity, let us insist on the emotional and practical character, which is the end of Christian contemplation, as Albert the Great points out!

Mystical contemplation, says Suarez?, differs from the common and natural contemplation, in that it is purely speculative, while it is practical both with regard to the contemplating truth and with regard to the intention of the contemplating one. Even when contemplation has as its object the attributes of

1 Deadhær. Deo Lib. t. 21 ad cale., p. 6, ¢. 9. One must note here the difference between the contemplation of Catholic believers and that of pagan philosophers, because the contemplation of the philosophers is for the sake of the perfection of the one contemplating, and therefore it rests in the intellect, and so their end in this is the knowledge of the intellect. But the contemplation of the saints, which is that of Catholics, is for the sake of love of the very God contemplated; therefore it does not rest, as its ultimate end, in the intellect through knowledge, but passes over to the affection through love. Hence the saints, in their contemplation, have the love of God as that which is principally intended.

2 De Relig. This Christian contemplation differs from the common, philosophical kind, in that it is not merely speculative but must be practical, both by reason of the truth contemplated and by reason of the intention of the one performing it... And I explain the first point thus: because this contemplation, even when it concerns God himself, whose majesty, goodness, or other attributes it considers, does not stop at God as he is intelligible, but weighs him also as he is worthy of glory, honor, etc., and unless it extends to this, it does not deserve the name of contemplation that is a part of mental prayer or pertains to this exercise. Because the end of this contemplation must be union with God, it is therefore necessary that one contemplate God himself not only speculatively but also practically, that is, insofar as God himself is practically considerable. Whence also, by reason of the intention of the one performing it, that contemplation must be practical, that is, ordered to true holiness. God, which seems speculative, does not consider God merely as intelligible, but as worthy of honor, praise, love, otherwise it is not true contemplation. Similarly, in the intention of the contemplating one, the goal to be aimed and achieved is, not an exercise of intelligence and knowledge, but union with God and holiness.

To this difference taken from the end, he adds another no less characteristic. Supernatural contemplation, we said, consists in a simple look at the mind, which suspends the exercise of reasoning. This suspension of rational deduction and knowledge by pure intuition, although absolutely possible in the natural order, are very rare facts which only occur from far and far in some men gifted with great power of conception and exceptional capacity of inner concentration, such as Socrates, according to Plato in his Banquet, Plato himself, to the testimony of Xenocrate, and Plotin, if one believes Porphyre his disciple. In the mystical order, on the contrary, this phenomenon happens frequently, and it would be difficult to number the souls in whom this sublime mode of prayer is daily and familiar.

Finally, assuming that the natural intuition could operate in a plan of love and action, philosophical contemplation and supernatural contemplation would always be distinguished between them by the principle and the means that realize them, one accomplishing by the simple effort of the natural powers, while the other is the fruit of grace, which enhances man above himself.

In the final analysis, mystical contemplation would therefore be a simple and emotional view, accompanied by admiration and joy, and fulfilling in supernatural clarity 1. With more sharpness, let us indicate how it differs from mere thought and meditation.

Hugues de Saint-Victor sketches the first this interesting parallel t; Richard, his disciple, takes him back and finishes him with so much sagacity and happiness, that the mystics to come will have nothing to change and very little to add. Saint Francis de Sales ?, with his loose mind and rich in comparisons, will still be able to present it under some new faces; but the background will remain the same.

This parallel, here it is in essence:

The object or matter of these three operations of the mind may be the same, but each proceeds in its own way. One thing is thought, which sees; another is meditation, which digs; another is contemplation, which admires. The thought runs and wanders here and there, with no purpose determined. Meditation tends, through obstacles and asperities, towards a precise end and involves it to reach all the resources of the mind. The contemplation goes, from a free and easy flight, wherever the door divine impetuousness. Thought snakes and makes a thousand circuits. La méditation marche, et,

1 Hom. 1 in Ecclesiasten. Migne, Patr. lat., t. 175, col. 116.

2 Treaty of the Love of God, I. 6, chap. 2, 3, 5 and 6.

3 Ricuarp de Samr-Vicror, Benjamin major, l. 1, €. 3 et 4. Migne, t. 175, col. 66 et 99. It must therefore be known that we behold one and the same matter one way through thought, search it out another way through meditation, and marvel at it yet another way through contemplation. These three differ greatly from one another in manner, although they sometimes agree in matter. Concerning one and the same matter, thought acts one way, meditation another, and contemplation acts in a far different way still. Thought wanders here and there at random through byways with slow step, without regard for arriving. Meditation strives, often through steep and rough paths, toward the goal of its direction with great effort of mind. Contemplation is carried about with wondrous agility in free flight, whithersoever impulse bears it. Thought creeps, meditation walks, and at most runs. But contemplation flies around all things, and, when it wishes, poises itself on the heights. Thought is without labor and without fruit; in meditation, however, there is labor with fruit; contemplation remains without labor, with fruit. In thought, wandering; in meditation, investigation; in contemplation, wonder. From imagination, thought; from reason, meditation; from intelligence, contemplation. Ecce tria ista, imaginatio, ratio, intelligentia, etc. at most, short. Contemplation flies in all senses, and whenever it wants, hovers and swings like the eagle to the most sublime of the air. Thought is without work and fruit; meditation works with fruit; contemplation fruitifies without work. Thought diverges, meditation seeks, contemplation admires. Thought nourishes imagination, meditation of reasoning, contemplation of intelligence '.

And because reason, besides its own object, fully captures the lower world of imagination, and that intelligence also embraces the domain of imagination and that of reason, it follows that contemplation includes eminently all the knowledge provided by thought and meditation, that it extends and radiates from the higher heights to the smallest extremities, without losing anything of its radiance, of its vivacity, of its obviousness, of its certainty.

If thought is fixed and strives to penetrate into the things that cause its curiosity, it moves to meditation. And, when meditation has finally met the truth, that it considers it greedily and adheres to it at length in the drunkenness of admiration, meditation itself becomes contemplation. CHAPITRE II

EXCELLENCE OF CONTEMPLATION The excellence of contemplation comes from its nature, its object, from:

its origin, its end, its effects. — Contemplative life and life

active. — Superity of the first over the second. — Contemplation is not essential to perfection.

I. — Contemplation is the most noble act, the most perfect that it is given to man to accomplish here below.

This excellence emerges from the very notion of contemplation. It is, we have said, a simple intuition that is consumed by the splendour of divine light, born of Pamour, produces love, and throws the whole man into the drunkenness of admiration and joy.

All the goods of man are there: light, love, bliss. He will be able to meet more meritorious acts in his life, because they will be the fruit of effort and labor; but no other is more noble in itself, more in harmony with its nature and aspirations.

If one considers the object of contemplation, his excellence is even more visible. The main object of this delicious intuition, we will say more fully, is God T, and God is the sovereign good. "I will show you all the good," he said to Moses, in giving him a vision where he would reveal himself.

The contemplation still derives from its origin and its purpose an outstanding perfection, having as a starting point and as a point of arrival the queen of virtues, charity. It actually proceeds, tells us the mystics ? and the theologians*, of charity, and it leads to charity. But charity is the par excellence of soul +, the master virtue that inspires, rules and dominates all virtues, the very foundation of Christian perfection.

The exercise of charity under the rays of divine enlightenment is a foretaste of beatific life, where God, revealing himself face to face, will excite the soul to eternal love by the charm of its beauty and goodness. Heaven, what is anything other than vision and dilectiveness in their fullness? Hence it is easy to conclude that contemplation, which plunges into light and delights in love, becomes for the soul the prelude of glory, at the same time as it is the most effective exciting of its sanctification.

1 Exod. xxxm, 19.

2 ALVAREZ DE PAZ, t. 6, p. 482. Ending in love and proceeding from love.

3 S. S. Thomas, II-II, q. 180, a. 7, ad 4: The contemplative life, although it consists essentially in the intellect, nevertheless has its principle in the affection, inasmuch as one is incited to the contemplation of God by charity. And because the end corresponds to the beginning, hence it is that even the term and end of the contemplative life has its being in the affections.

For the best thing of this life is the charity of God, especially when it is enkindled and fervent, as it is wont to be in contemplation arising from the consideration of God.

5 5. And therefore the perfection of the Christian life is regarded simply according to charity, but according to the other virtues only in a certain respect. And because that which is simply such is the most principal and greatest with respect to other things, hence it is that the perfection of charity is the most principal with respect to the perfection that is regarded according to the other virtues.

6 ALVAREZ DE Paz, 1.5, P. 2, ©. 3, t. 6, p. 494. Contemplation indeed is a certain foretaste and participation of that supreme beatitude which the soul hopes for in the heavenly homeland.

7 RicHarD de Samnr-Vicror. Benjamin major. l. 4, ©. 1, t. 478, col. 65. Hæc EREA

-EXCELLENCE |

Its effects are no less wonderful. They will later be the subject of a more careful and extensive study. Let us now simply point out its most immediate consequence: delight, a delight that prevails over all the enjoyments of the senses, and the most vivid, the most natural, the most complete that man can feel, the closest to the supreme bliss.

II. — That is why all mystics give preference to contemplative life over active life.

These two lives are distinguished by the diversity of their ends. The purpose of the first is to consider the truth; that of the second is external work, work that embraces the practice of moral virtues?, and in particular works of mercy*. One seeks God in is pars quae electis and perfectis nunquam aufertur. This business indeed which is terminated by no end. For the contemplation of truth is begun in this life, but in the life to come it is celebrated in unending perpetuity. Through the contemplation of truth, man is indeed instructed unto justice and made perfect unto glory... O how singular a grace! O singularly to be preferred, by which in the present we are sanctified and in the future we are made blessed.

1S. THOM., 2. 2. q. 180, a. 7. It must be said that a certain contemplation can be delightful in two ways. In one way, by reason of the operation itself, because to each one the operation that is fitting to him according to his proper nature or habit is delightful. Now the contemplation of truth belongs to man according to his nature, inasmuch as he is a rational animal... In another way contemplation is rendered delightful on the part of the object, namely in that one contemplates the thing loved... Since therefore the contemplative life consists chiefly in the contemplation of God, to which charity moves, hence it is that in the contemplative life there is delight not only by reason of the contemplation itself, but by reason of the divine love itself. And as to both, its delight exceeds every human delight, etc.

2 S. Tuom., 2. 2. q. 484, a. 4. The active and contemplative life are distinguished according to the different pursuits of men tending to different ends, of which one is the consideration of truth, which is the end of the contemplative life, and the other is exterior work, to which the active life is ordered. Now it is manifest that in the moral virtues the contemplation of truth is not principally sought, but they are ordered to acting... Whence it is manifest that the moral virtues belong essentially to the active life.

3 Liber de modo bene vivendi, c. 53, n. 126. (Inter op. S. BERNARD.) — Migne, Patr., t. 484, col. 4277. Between the active life and the contemplative there is the greatest difference. Activa vita is panem esurienti dare, verbum sapientiæ proximos docere, errantem. correct, ad viam humilitatis super darkness of faith and the effort of virtue, the other rest in God by vision and love.

The contemplative life thus removes the soul from the external exercise of charity, much more so because of the bonds and concerns of the century, to apply it to the consideration and love of eternal truths and divine mysteries. Active life, on the contrary, engages in human labors and devotions, and makes it consist of perfection, less to look at and admire God's truth, than to spend for God in the service of neighbor.

During the journey, these two lives are never so distinct and separated that one can survive without having anything else. The conditions of mortality do not allow man to completely abstract from outside life; and, on the other hand, what would be the value of action and work without regard to God and without prayer?

To be human and Christian, these two lives therefore imply a certain reciprocal mixture'. Each derives its character and its denomination from what dominates it. The almost equal combination of the two elements constitutes the mixed life, where one turns from prayer to action and from action to prayer.

HI. — Although, in trial, active life forms the common vocation, and contemplation is the part of the small number, it is declared by all Doctors preferable to it. Saint Thomas! expressly teaches this superiority, and motivates it by a set of reasons taken from the various points of view we have just pointed out and several others. We can bring them all back to the following three: Contemplation brings to man the goods and the enjoyments most in accordance with his nature and his destiny; it is, of itself, more effective and fruitful for the work of sanctification; it is stable and permanent as eternity.

Many Fathers have seen an image of the two lives we are talking about, in the two sisters whom the patriarch Jacob successively marries. Saint Augustine in particular affirms this spiritual similarity, and develops with a kind of complacency this charming parallel to the xxile book against Fauste the Manichean. Lia, whose name means laborious, with his chassious eyes?, sad, ugly and despised, but fruitful, represents work, tears, the darkness of active life and trial, with the multiplicity of his works and his fruits. Rachel, whose name can be translated the principle seen or the intuition of the principle, beautiful, passionately loved, eagerly desired for seven years, mother of two children; who, seeing the first one be born, obtains and dies by giving him the day °, Rachel depicts the contemplative and glorious life where the soul, after the labors of active life, reaches the vision of eternal beauty, simmers of holy choice, and, lost in the womb of God, ceases to live of his own life. Whatever the allegorical meaning of the two wives of Jacob seen by St Augustine, and after him by several doctors, among others by St Gregory the Great! and by St Thomas?, Scripture presents us with another fact whose immediate and literal interpretation gives preference to contemplative life over active life.

This is the memorable scene where St Luke shows us Mary Madeleine sitting at Jesus' feet in the stillness of contemplation, and Martha who shakes, works and complains about her sister's inaction. And the Saviour excuses Mary, saying, "She has chosen the best portion, the portion that will not be taken away from her."

Now what did Mary do? She contemplated. What was Martha doing? It is therefore to contemplation that Our Lord bestows the palm, without, however, condemning the work and efforts of action.

The Christian tradition is unanimous * to see in the two sisters of Lazarus whom Jesus loved and loved Jesus, the personification of contemplative life and active life, and to interpret the Saviour's words in the sense of preference given to the former over the latter.

"What is it, indeed," says St. Gregory, "what then is... of human and mortal life in which we live by faith, doing many laborious works, uncertain by what outcome they will turn out for the benefit of those whom we wish to help; this is Leah, the first wife of Jacob; and by this it is also recorded that she was weak of eye..." But the hope of the eternal contemplation of God, having a sure and delightful understanding of the truth, is Rachel herself: whence also she is said to be of good countenance and beautiful appearance, etc.

Since there are two virtues of the human soul, one active, the other contemplative... these two virtues are understood to be figured in the two wives of Jacob, etc.

1 Moral- 126, C37, t75; Col 764.

NI OA O K eair A BRG

3 Luc. x, 42. #7

4 Suarez, l. 1, de Varietate religionum in genere, ¢. 5, n. 3, Vivès, t. 16, p. 456. Thus the Fathers of the Church understood that passage, who accordingly said that in those two sisters two ways of life were signified.

ë Moral., 1. 6, n. 61. Migne, t 75, col, 764. Quid enim per Mariam quae Marie listening, seated, to the words of the Lord, if not contemplative life? What is Martha occupied with external services, if not active life? Martha's care is not blamed, but Mary's care is praised, because, if the merits of active life are great, those of contemplative life are preferable. Therefore it is said that Mary's share will not be taken away from her, the operations of active life passing with the body, while the joys of contemplative life find in the very end their full development."

Contemplation thus places the soul on the object and in the attitude that it must have for eternity. From this point of view, no other occupation can be compared.

It is still a wonderful source of sanctification ' and glorification, for the reward of the term is proportional to the merit of the test; but this merit is measured not only by the human effort that accompanies it, but also and mainly by the love that inspires it and the grace that God gives; and the grace superabunds in contemplation, as well as the love reaches its greatest intensity.

"Divine contemplation," we say with Cassian? "is this unique thing that must be preferred to all the merits of justification, to all the efforts of virtue... Just as tin, for example, has its usefulness and its pleasure taken in itself, but has no more value close to silver; that silver is without brilliance compared to gold; that gold loses its price from precious stones, and that the most beautiful stones are not worth one pearl; so all the merits of holiness, though good and useful for present life and for eternity, become nevertheless, if compared to the fruits of divine contemplation, vile things, and those, so to speak, of which one must undo."

IV. — From the preeminence of contemplative life to active life, it would be wrong to conclude that contemplation is necessary to realize Christian life and perfect £. The number of predestined persons who have had neither the grace nor the merits of a sublime prayer is infinitely greater than that of the souls who have enjoyed this favor, and it cannot be doubted that among the saints who have not been known or who have received only rarely the grace of contemplation, many nevertheless surpassed in merit and in glory of great and famous contemplatives?.

The masters of spiritual life agree on this point. They even believe that there is more safety to walk in the way of common virtues than in the extraordinary elevations of passive prayer. The supreme law of perfection is to fulfill God's will in demeaning and in love.

"With humility, mortification, detachment and other virtues," said Térèse to his daughters, "there is always more confidence, and nothing to fear; and do not be afraid of not achieving perfection as well as the great contemplatives. Saint Martha was holy, although it is not said that she was contemplative. And what more do you want than to be able to look like this blessed woman who deserved to receive Our Lord so many times in his house, to give him food, to serve him, to eat perhaps at his table and even of his dish? If it had been absorbed like the Madeleine, who would have treated the divine Host? [Imagine therefore that this little congregation is the house of Saint Martha, and that there must be of everything. May those who are led by the way of active life not murmur to see other dives into contemplative life, forgetful of themselves and of all created things, since they know well that, if they remain silent, the Lord will answer for them!"

Saint Vincent de Paul, in whom Christian common sense is so high, professed and practised in his direction the same principles. He felt, says the historian of his life ?, that perfection does not consist in a particular mode of prayer, but in charity, which can be more ardent with a common prayer than with a higher prayer.

Saint Francis de Sales observes, with as much grace as it is right, that a soul may have in its state.

1 Path of perfection, chapter 26. Usually a charity more intense than any other in the very act of ecstasy. Similarly, the grace accumulated by the repeated exercises of active life can greatly surpass that which is received in the effusions of contemplation.

"Let us conclude," says Bossuet!, "that it is a mistake to put merit and perfection to be active or passive. It is to God to judge the merit of souls that he promotes his graces, according to the various provisions that he inspires them and according to the degrees of divine love that are known only to him." CHAPTER II

GENERAL FORMS OF CONTEMPLATION The three modes of Richard de Saint-Victor. — La contemplation surnaturelle

est acquise ou infuse , — Chérubique ou séraphique , — Unitive ou gratuitement donnée, — Imaginaire ou intellectuelle,

I. "Richard de Saint-Victor!" distinguishes three kinds of contemplation: he calls the first dilation, the second an elevation, and the third an alienation of the spirit.

Dilation consists in a natural effort of the mind which sharpens its tip and penetrates before the things it considers, but without exceeding the limits of the human industry.

The elevation takes place when, at the effort of the intelligence,

1 Benjamin major, |. 5, €. 2, col. 469. But in three ways, as it seems to me, the quality of contemplation varies. For at one time it comes about by dilation of the mind, at another by elevation of the mind, and sometimes by alienation of the mind. Dilation of the mind is when the keenness of the soul is expanded more widely and sharpened more vehemently, yet in no way surpasses the measure of human effort. Elevation of the mind is when the liveliness of the understanding, divinely irradiated, transcends the bounds of human effort, yet does not pass over into alienation of the mind, so that what it sees is above itself, and yet it does not withdraw entirely from its accustomed state. Alienation of the mind is when the memory of present things departs from the mind, and it passes, through the transfiguring action of God, into a certain foreign state of soul inaccessible to human effort.

These three modes of contemplation are experienced by those who often deserve to be raised up to the highest citadel of grace of this kind. Primus emerges ex industria humana, tertius ex sola gratia divina; medius autem ex utriusque permixtione, humanæ scilicet industriae and. gratiæ divinæ. joins the divine irradiation of grace that makes pass the bounds of pure natural energy, in such a way that man is raised above himself, yet without ceasing to act again in the human way.

There is alienation when the soul loses the feeling of the present things, and when transfigured by the divine operation, it moves to a completely foreign state and inaccessible to the forces of nature.

Of these three ascents, the first is the act of human industry, the third is the exclusive work of divine action, the second is the fusion of these two principles: the energy of man and the grace of God.

This is tantamount to saying that there are at first two general species of contemplation, the first purely natural, and the second supernatural; that it takes two different forms: in the one, there is a mixture and an agreement of grace and human work; in the other, it is the divine action that subjugates the soul and reduces it to a delicious and fruitful passivity.

We have already eliminated mere natural contemplation, as a stranger to our purpose; here we speak only of theological and Christian contemplation. Of the three forms reported by the famous Victorin, therefore, only the last two have to be examined.

II. — The mystics distinguish, in fact, two kinds of contemplation: one which they call acquired, natural, active, ordinary; the other, which they call infuse, mystic, passive, extraordinary! It is important to have a precise notion of these two general species of contemplation, and to see exactly their relationships and differences.

The least perfect of these two forms consists in a simple and admiring look at a truth discussed and elaborated by meditation, but which, under divine enlightenment of grace, suddenly takes such a glimmer of evidence, that it suspends the discursive work of the soul, fixes it and absorbs it whole in a delicious feeling of admiration and love.

The other is a divine absorption, unexpected and sudden, alien to any preparation and industry on the part of man, raising the soul to a simple and resplendent intuition, which throws it out of itself in the drunkenness of love and admiration. "Here," said Saint John of the Cross, "God is the chief agent, and communicates to the soul, through supernatural infusion, the knowledge and love of himself, in an eminent degree. The soul receives all these spiritual goods without producing from its bottom other acts than its consent."

The first mode therefore has as its starting point the religious meditation, and although it does not proceed rigorously from the discursive and emotional consideration, it is as the fruit and reward.

That's why this contemplation is said to be acquired or won, not in the sense of rigorous merit, God granting this gift only out of pure liberality to a few souls who exercise and persevere in the work of meditation, but in contrast to the other kind of contemplation, where human industry is for nothing as a direct and effective means, not even as a forthcoming preparation; which makes it nickname infuse contemplation. Saint Thomas of Aquinas! describes obviously the contemplation acquired when he puts this difference between Lange and Man from the point of view of knowledge, that the angel approaches the truth by a pure intuition, while man arrives at this simple gaze only by a laborious and successive walk, the last step of which is the contemplation of the truth.

As in meditation man mixes his efforts with divine grace, and this exercise of natural forces extends to the very act of contemplation, which is the fruit and crowning of it, this contemplation is described as natural and active; less, however, to affirm the result of human nature and activity, which, for a little, count in the admiring and affective fixedness of the soul in God, than to distinguish this inferior contemplation from the divine attraction which prevents all human efforts and reduces the soul to a blessed passivity, which makes it call supernatural and passive.

Finally this passage from laborious meditation to simple, gentle and emotional intuition, although gratuitous from God, does not however go beyond the regular and providential laws of supernatural progress; therefore several mystics? call this kind of contemplation ordinary, but mainly in the light of infuse and passive contemplation, which God grants more rarely to whomever he pleases, and which these authors call extraordinary. These expressions must not be understood in this sense; many souls practice with constant fervor the exercise of discursive and laborious prayer, and +4 plation. We say it again here, perfection holds no Molinos and its adherents!'. Many, said Saint Bernard?, tend to it all their life without ever achieving it, and obtain only after their death these drunkennesses of love.

The two kinds of contemplation that we come from the other a pure, affective and delectable intuition, and that they can have the same objects, God sometimes showing in contemplative light the truths on which meditation dissects.

But the differences are more notable than the reports. While ordinary contemplation is subject to the slowness of the meditation that precedes and prepares it, infuse contemplation suddenly illuminates, ignites and delights the soul without any natural preparation.

One occurs only in the isolation and calmness of prayer, and has as its object the very subject of meditation. The other captures and delights interchangeably in the oration or often superior to the thoughts and conceptions of

1 Prop. 68 damn. ab Innoc. XI. — Constr. Cœlestis Pastor. To assert that in prayer one must help oneself by discursive reasoning and by thoughts, when God is not speaking to the soul, is ignorance, etc. — 31. No one who meditates exercises true internal virtues; ... they ought not be known by the senses. It is necessary to lose the virtues.

2 Serm. 3, de Cireume. t. 2, p. 180. It is true that few, unless I am mistaken, attain to this perfection in this life... But many, throughout their whole life, toward this... man. That is why, while it is easy to account for the intuition that is accomplished in the acquired contemplation, the manifestations of mystical contemplation are sometimes so sublime, that they are indefensible!

The disproportion of clarity and attraction is an even more characteristic diversity. Passive contemplation takes precedence over active contemplation by the abundance and brightness of light, resulting in a difference in admiration and the transports of joy. The first often ravishes the soul until the alienation of the senses and until the suspension of the impregnated inner faculties; the second leaves the use of the bodily organs and the freedom to break the charm which immobilizes in pure and simple intuition of the truth that the mind considers.

III. — Contemplation, either active or passive, is subdivided by a few authors into cherubic and seraphic.

Contemplation consists in a pure intellectual intuition, ending with the adherence and suavities of Pamour. But we must not forget that it is God who dispenses, according to his wisdom, and light and impulse. He can give, if he wishes, to enlightenment a resplendentness that prevails over the ardours of love, and he can also bring forth, in the emotional part, impetuousness that surpasses the claritys of vision. Now, in the GENERAL FORMS nn EU heavenly hierarchy, the cherubim represent the brilliance of science, and the Seraphim the fires of love. Therefore, depending on whether illumination or ignition will dominate in contemplation, it will be cherubic or seraphic.

It seems, at first glance, that there must be balance between vision and love; that at least love cannot exceed the proportions of vision.

In the first place, it is beyond doubt that love does not always reach the proportions of knowledge, and that between seeing and wanting there are abysses that often one does not cross. In these cases, contemplation is more cherubic than seraphic.

What may seem more surprising is that love extends beyond vision. On this point it is important to explain well.

Several mystics of great authority claimed that act of contemplation could be accomplished without prior knowledge and be consumed only in the adherence of the will.

Saint Denis seems to profess this feeling when he exalts the holy darknesss of love and describes mystical wisdom as mad, unreasonable and unthinkable. This is at least that of Saint Bonaventure? or of the author of the MYSTICAL THEOLOGY often inscribed UNDER his name, in particular by Gerson ê, who shares his way of view on the present question; and one and the other honor it to the Areopagit. But, to tell the truth, the prince of mystics recognizes a light in these divine darkness where reason 1 Div. Nom. €. 7, $S 1. Migne, Patr. G., t.8, ©. 867. Therefore, extolling this wisdom devoid of reason, and mad, and foolish, ... let us say... [French:] those who admit a love without knowledge.

Le P. Alvarez de Paz? agrees, although on the other hand he is inclined to believe possible an emotional supernatural prayer that would not be preceded by any knowledge, and he invokes in support of this feeling the authority of contemplatives, no less competent, according to him, in this matter, than scholastic doctors.

However, taken in all its rigor, the assertion that love occurs without prior knowledge seems unacceptable, for love is only an act of will, and the will only moves in the footsteps of intelligence. Most theologians, and even mystics, agree to assert this connection, and look at intellectual vision as the condition of reasonable life.

1 Theol. Myst. c. 1 initio. Migne, t. 5, col. 997. The highest summit, where the simple and absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are disclosed, shines forth [in something] more than most clearly, etc.

2 De affect. or. ment. l. 4, part. 3, ©. 8, t. 6, p. 301. Therefore we cannot gather from Dionysius that love exists without some understanding. But we perceive that spiritual men who have advanced to the perfection of affective prayer sometimes have a most ardent love of God without any prior or concomitant knowledge. And indeed, just as it is not lawful for spiritual men to despise scholastic doctors, so too it is not lawful for scholastic doctors to scorn, in this matter, men abounding in the gift of contemplation, but rather to hear them patiently, and not to condemn their sayings at once with a hardened mind. These men constantly affirm that they sometimes have love without prior knowledge, and that their will is stirred to love immediately by God, without any act of the intellect, and that they have learned this by experience, etc. Indeed I knew a certain man well versed in philosophical matters and richly adorned with divine gifts and purity of life, who thought that love was often present in him, without any knowledge, no less evidently than the noonday light.

3 Suarez, De Relig. 1. 2, ¢. 13, n. 8, p. 178. Igitur assertio posita communior theologorum est.

4 GERSON, De myst. theol. Consid. 10, col. 426. Nevertheless, in every act of love, especially one that is elicited and meritorious, knowledge naturally precedes and accompanies love — if not reflex knowledge, then at least right knowledge. This is the tradition of all, philosophers as well as theologians and moralists, agreeing with experience, who say in the words of Augustine: we can love things unseen, but never things unknown. Te ë rs Er 2 7 pea

LES FORMES GÉNÉRALES ~ :9

It seems to us that these various and apparently contradictory statements can be reconciled.

The simple reason suffices to demonstrate God's infinity, and as soon as God is recognized as infinite, this knowledge opens an immense field to love. Once in the presence of infinity, whatever the clarity that reveals it, the loving being can exhaust all his ability to love on this object. And if it is assumed that by their obedienceal power to divine action, as the School expresses itself, the native faculties are likely to increase indefinitely, it becomes evident that the proportions of love can be anything other than that of knowledge; that the part of the heart, as Hugues de Saint-Victor says!, prevails over that of intelligence, and that the choice will enter where science does not penetrate.

"Although the will cannot naturally love what understanding does not know," says St John of the Cross? "it can nevertheless supernaturally love God more and more ardently, although the knowledge of understanding does not grow: a lesser and less distinct knowledge suffices for greater love. That is why many souls love God much more than they know him; and on the contrary, many know him much more than they love him. It is even often that those who are less enlightened about the greatness of God are inflamed with a more ardent and consuming love, because the only faith is sufficient for them to know God, and then give all their will to divine love, without repainting themselves with speculative and curious knowledge."

But, it will be said, in all that St John of the Cross affirms, the vision always seems mixed with love, and the exclusive mystics want a love without cognitive act.

We do not argue that love is never entirely separated from knowledge, and we even think with Suarez! that it is difficult, if not impossible, to see experimentally in itself a similar situation; for, thinking about it, it would be knowing that we love and what we love. But if one remembers that the end of contemplation is to be absorbed in love, one will understand that the feeling of knowledge can be less vivid than that of emotional adherence, and that sometimes it even disappears completely: in the great transports of love, do one know that one thinks and sees that one loves?

Whatever the inseparability of knowledge and love, when love prevails over knowledge, contemplation holds more of the Seraphim than of the Cherubin, and can, because of this character, be called seraphic.

From the point of view of appearance, cherubic contemplation precedes seraphic contemplation. For, just as the vision of the mind rationally precedes the movement of the will, so the first phase of contemplative life derives more from the principle that makes it begin than from the one that gives it its consumption. The light first illuminates and then warms up. From the first hour of the day the sun flooded the earth with its rays, but it was only in the second half of its race that it made its fires feel arduous. IV. — In addition to the forms and divisions of contemplation which we have just mentioned, there are a few others which it is important to make known. LES FORMES GÉNÉRALES - sl

The most general is that which divides contemplation into one and free of charge given, free of charge. The first sanctifies the subject that receives it, the second is destined for the instruction and utility of the neighbor.

In principle, infuse contemplation is of the order of graces called free given, and the external wonders that accompany it are directed towards the edification of others. That is why sanctifying grace and inner merit are not always united with the mystical phenomena that occur in contemplation, such as visions, words, revelations.

However, we haveten to say, this separation is rare and in supernatural order constitutes a monstrous anomaly. In general, the grace of union and charity is attached to the gratuitous grace of supernatural enlightenment.

V. — Contemplative illumination is imaginary or intellectual. From there two kinds of contemplation, one of which is performed by vision or imaginary speech, and the other by vision or intellectual speech.

We do not intend to decide whether pure intellectual visions occur, that is, that would not be preceded, accompanied or followed by any exercise of imagination. According to Scaramelli!, it is very rare, even in the most sublime contemplation, that visions and intellectual words are accomplished without a mixture of sensitive operation. Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité?, all in recon1 Dirett. Myst. Tratt. 2, ©. 17, n. 189, p. 118. Let the reader be advised that when we speak... of purely intellectual visions, we do not mean to speak of those which, neither before nor after, have any accompaniment of imagination — for these are found only very rarely, even in the minds of the most sublime contemplatives — but only of those with which the images do not cooperate... [page break: '...and of contemplation'] ...from which the rarity of the fact arises, [the author] points out and develops the reasons that demonstrate its possibility and existence.

The common law is that these two kinds of divine communications mix and appear simultaneously. When the part of one and the other is notable, contemplation can be called mixed!.

However, although the ideal and sensitive temperate knowledge is, to speak of it, more human and more in harmony with the present condition of man, the difficulty, so much debated by the scholastics, of pure intellectuals, is, in our view, exaggerated, and has no other reason to be but a subtle psychology that we do not have to CHAPTER IV.

THE OBJECT OF CONTEMPLING God and His Attributes. — The holy humanity of Jesus Christ. — La B. Vierge

Marie et les Saints. — Christian truths and mysteries. — L'Église

glorious and militant, souls. — Ordre de ces manifestations. — Les

three circular, straight and oblique movements from the soul to God.

I. — St Thomas! teaches that the main object of contemplation is the divine truth, and that the creatures, as they bring us to the knowledge of the primary cause which is God, are the secondary object.

Suarez? says more expressly that contemplation has God as its first object and that it is exercised secondaryly on the divine things, the creative and providential operations of God, and on all the effects of his power as they contribute to making him known to us.

According to this universally accepted principle, therefore, God is

1 Sum. 2. 2. q. 1480, a. 4. Something pertains to the contemplative life in two ways: in one way principally; in another way secondarily or dispositively. Principally indeed, the contemplation of divine truth pertains to the contemplative life, since contemplation of this kind is the end of the whole of human life... But because we are led by the hand to the contemplation of God through his effects, according to that saying (Rom. 1:20): The invisible things of God are understood and perceived through the things that are made — hence it is that the contemplation of divine effects also pertains, secondarily, to the contemplative life, inasmuch as by this a man is led by the hand to the knowledge of God.

2 De Relig. Tr. 4,1. 2, ©. 9, n. 6, p. 157. Theological contemplation, however, is concerned only with God, primarily and for His own sake, and secondarily with divine things, or the works or benefits of God, or their effects, insofar as they lead to knowledge of Him — He is the first and great object of contemplation, and creatures appear there only to manifest and exalt the different attributes of God, to whom they serve as mirrors and witnesses.

But God can be considered in the mystery of his essence and in the multiplicity of his attributes. He reveals himself in this double view to contemplative souls.

It is a constant teaching among mystics that the sight of the adorable Trinity is the principal act of contemplation and its own object.

This vision occurs to varying degrees. "When contemplative souls, says Schram*, consider the mystery of the Holy Trinity in the darkness of faith and aiding the light of theology, they sometimes come upon this mystery with a certain light, clear, warm, resplendent, pacifying and pleasant, which represents its depths with great vivacity."

Sometimes you enter further into these abyss of divine life. Saint Teresus tells of herself that she was granted to see how the people of the Holy Trinity are united and distinct in infinite essence.

"Reciting one day," she said, "the Symbol of Saint Athanasius, "it was given to me to hear how he wiy has only one God and three people in God, but so clearly that I remained greatly astonished and comforted. This THE PURPOSE OF CONTEMPLATIO 85 served me a great deal to better understand the greatness of God and his wonders. Also, when I think of the Most Holy Trinity, or hear of it, it seems to me that I understand how it can be, and I feel a great satisfaction."

We will later say that the contemplative vision of the Trinity regularly belongs to the last stage of mystical life.

Second, contemplation feeds even more frequently from the sight of God's attributes. God, in turn, reveals his simplicity, his greatness, his wisdom, his power, his immensity, his righteousness, his mercy, his bliss. It appears above all as life, as truth, as beauty, as goodness, as holiness, as infinity, as absolute perfection. This last aspect, which forms the distinctive character of God and embraces all its attributes, is the ordinary spectacle of contemplatives.

Saint Bernard! sums up the different ways in which God manifests himself in contemplation: "Those who, together with Mary Magdalene, are concerned only with God, considering what he is in the world, in men and angels, in himself, in the reproved, perceive by this contemplative intuition that God is the providence and government of the world, the liberator and support of men, the sweetness and splendour of angels: in himself, the principle and the end; for the damned, object of terror and horror; admirable in creatures, kind in creatures, friendly in contemplation.

1 De divers. serm. 48. De Paupert. volunt. t. 3, p. 95. Those who, with Mary, give themselves to God alone, considering what God is in the world, what He is in men, what in the Angels, what in Himself, what in the reprobate, contemplate that God is the ruler and governor of the world, the liberator and helper of men, the savor and beauty of the angels, in Himself the beginning and the end, the terror of the reprobate — [loveable] in men, desirable in the angels, incomprehensible in Himself, intolerable in the reprobate.

According to the mystics, one rises to the knowledge of God by a double process, namely: by affirmation and by negation, or, as the scholastics express themselves, by position and by ablation, per positionem and per ablationem.

In the first, the spirit affirms from God all that he sees in the creature, adding still infinite. By the second, considering in being created his own character of finite and limited, he concludes, by the very negation of the end and the limit, God, whose essential and fundamental attribute is to be without limits or restrictions, simply to be.

Saint Denis is the first who proposed, praised and followed the path of negation as the most direct, effective and perfect way to give the true notion of God. It can be said that it forms the dominant idea of its MYSTICAL THEOLOGY.

Here is how he himself exposes in this passage Pivin Names, already mentioned, but which should be mentioned again:

< There is a very divine knowledge of God that is obtained by ignorance, by means of a union superior to intelligence, when the spirit, emerging from all beings and devoid of itself, unites itself with the brightness that shines above, and there, immersed in these splendors, illuminates with the inscrutable abhorrence of Wisdom."

The Fathers, scholastic and mystical doctors admitted and explained this definition of Aeropagitis?. Among the Fathers, we will mention in particular Saint Augustine * and Saint John Damascene!; among the theologians, the Angelic Doctor ? and the Seraphic Doctor °; among the mystics, Gerson * and Alvarez de Paz. The latter, developing a comparison provided by Saint Denis, makes it clear what the process of affirmation and denial, of position and of ablation consists of.

"The image of a king," he said, "can be obtained from two mothers: through painting and sculpture. The painting proceed by addition, and the sculpture by subtraction. One superimposed on colours, the other cut off from stone or wood, until the image is drawn and finished. Similarly, we form the concept of God by a double means. By the first, like painters, we apply to God, like so many colors, the perfections of creatures. That's how we say that Dicu is wise, just, and so on, and we say true, because it really is all that. By the second, as the sculptors do, we cut off from God, as superfluous parts, the same duties that we had assigned to him. Thus we say that God is neither being, nor life, nor wisdom, nor power, nor goodness, nor anything that is not He, and we do not deceive ourselves: God, in reality, is nothing of all these things, the way we conceive them; therefore, according to the wisely observed Saint Denis, these assertions and denials are not opposed. When, for example, we attribute wisdom to God, we hear that perfection by which God knows and knows all things; and when we deny wisdom in him, it is the limited wisdom as we conceive it."

II. — The false mystics wanted to exclude the holy humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the field of contemplation, as unworthy of the purity and sublimitity of this divine operation. According to the Beguards!, the perfect ones had to refrain from any sign of respect towards the body of the Saviour at the elevation of the host and the chalice during the sacrifice; and descending from the heights of contemplation to take care of the sacrament of the Eucharist or the mystery of the Passion, was an imperfection.

Molinos? placed among the weaknesses of sensitive love the emotional acts towards the holy humanity of the Redeemer.

This is not the teaching of the true Doctors.

Saint Paul, to whom God had not refused the grace of contemplation, since he speaks to us himself of his visions and revelations °, nevertheless made it a profession to know only one thing: Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified *.

In his example, the Aréopagite exalts the mystery of the Incarnation in terms that do not allow to doubt that he placed it among the most worthy objects of supernatural contemplation. "What is most manifest in all theology, says 1l!, Jesus clothed in the divinity of our flesh, cannot be expressed by any word, nor conceived by any intelligence, not even by the first and most august angels!"And further on, citing his master, the Most Holy Hierotheus: "The divinity of Jesus, cause and consummation of all, maintains the agreement of the parties with all...; it defines all principles and orders, and sits beyond all principle and order... It is unspeakable and ineffable over intelligence, over life, over substance... By falling down out of love for man up to his nature, taking in truth our substance, calling himself man, he the supreme God, Jesus nevertheless kept what surpasses the nature and substance of man, not only because he has associated himself with humanity, without losing anything of his overabundant fullness in this inescapable annihilation, but also, wonder of the wonders! because he was supernatural in us all things, all that is ours by us, and all that is above us."

Undoubtedly, these emphatic expressions look at the Divinity, whose infinite perfection saves the human language from any exaggeration; but, as the remark of Saint Denis, since the hypostatic union of the Word with human nature, man does not separate himself from God, nor God from man; it is Man-God*.

Cassien in turn points out, among the ordinary objects of 1 De Div. Nom. c. 2, § 9. Migne, t. 3, col. 648. 2 De Div. Nom. €. 2, § 10. Migne, t. 3. | 3 ALVAREZ PéLace, De Planctu Eccl. |. 2, ¢. 52, f. ccxxv, Lyon, 1517. What these accursed men (the Beghards) say — that they would fall from the perfection of their contemplation if they thought anything about the flesh of Christ or his Passion — is manifestly insane and of diabolical arrogance, because in seeing the body of Christ they see God through faith, and his divinity, which is joined to the flesh of Christ. [fragment, French:] ...contemplation, the mystery of the incarnate Word. Saint Bernard? proclaims that Christ has come to illuminate our understanding, and has operated so many wonders as to detach our mind from the things of this world, to occupy him constantly with the wonders of his charity, and to make him an inexhaustible treasure of holy thoughts. Saint Térèse ? rises with strength against those who would turn away perfect souls - to consider the humanity of Jesus Christ, and declares that, having been herself for some time in this false persuasion, her soul felt the greatest damage.

One can object that these testimonies of Saint Bernard and Saint Teresus concern meditation, and that this is contemplation.

To this we will answer that the acquired contemplation has the same object as meditation, and that if the meditation of the most perfect souls is exercised on the holy humanity of the Saviour, we do not see why this sacred object would be excluded from contemplation. Moreover the Seraphic Teresis, far from distinguishing between active prayer and contemplation, supposes that the loving consideration of the life or passion of Our Lord can determine ecstasy, which is eminently an act of contemplation.

"This impotence of speech," she says, "makes them believe that they cannot even think of the sufferings of the Saviour, in which they are mistaken. So, if they don't think about it often, let them try to do it; I know that the most sublime prayer will not prevent them. If while they think of a mystery of the life or passion of Our Lord, the divine Master will bring them in, despite them, in ecstasy, at the right time, that they will yield, etc..."

As for infuse contemplation, it is a fact of experience a thousand times repeated, that Jesus Christ frequently appears there as a man. What is the contemplative that did not see in his transports the divine Crucified, his sacred wounds, his adorable face, his burning heart? These kinds of manifestations are read on every page in the lives of St Francis of Assisi, St Philip of Neri, St Joseph of Copertino, St Brigitte, St Catherine of Siena, St Teresa and so many others.

By dealing in our second part with the apparitions of the Saviour, we will produce many facts, and we will notice in particular that the sacrament of the Eucharist is the ordinary scene of the bodily manifestations of Jesus Christ.

And in what way would the sacred flesh of God-Man and his holy soul repulsive to contemplation? Blessed ones do not have in heaven, after God's, a sweeter vision. "They first look at the divinity of Jesus Christ," said St Thomas, "but then they rest on his humanity, and, in contemplation of one and the other, they find a delight that makes their beatitude."This is the doctrine professed by the Fathers: St Augustine‘, St Leo?, St Gregory the Great, Cassian 4, St Bernard; and by the most renowned spiritual doctors: Thaulef, Rusbroch, Louis de Blois ê, St John of the Cross, Alvarez de Paz‘, Schram!, and Scaraintel.

The only difficulty that one can oppose comes from the expressions and affirmations of some mystics, which seem to indicate that the consideration of the humanity of Jesus Christ is only suitable for beginnings.

It is wrong to claim the authority of the Areopagit to say to Timothy at the beginning of his MYSTICAL THEOLOGY ®: "For you, dear Timothy, practice constantly at mystical shows, leaving aside the intellectual senses and operations, all sensitive and intelligible, all non-being and being, and, through the agnost, rise above all substance and gnosis as much as possible." Saint Denis describes here the mystical process of raising to the knowledge of God by means of negation, which he calls agnosia or ignorance, and not the complete objective of contemplation. What we have quoted from him on the rank

Sermon 55, On the Words of the Lord.

2 Serm. 16, de Passione.

3 Moral. 1. 31, €. 49-52. Migne, t. 76, col. 627.

4/Coll C: 15; Col 505

ë Loc. cit. et serm. 7, in Cœn. Dom.

[fragment illegible: "...to alt..."]

7 De ornatu spirit. nupt. 1. 9, ©. 62, p. 353.

SMN pir C0. De 412.

9 Montée du Carmel, 1. 3, ch. 4.

0 De Natur contempl. 15n Part O C nOD EST

11 Theol. myst. § 279, t.4, p. 468.

12 Dirett. Mist. Tratt.12, C 11, p- 84.

13 Theol. myst. c. 1. Migne, t. 3, Col. 997: Tu vero, chare Timothy, in mysticis contempiationibus intenta exercitatione, et sensus relinque, et intellectuales opérationses, et sensibilita et intelligibilita omnia, et ea quae L'OBJET DE LA CONTEMPLATION 5 au 93 qu ́il assigné au mystoire de l'homme-Dieu, dans la théologie, sufficiently contradicts the interpretation of false mystics.

In support of this so-called spiritual axiom Saint Bernard‘, Thauler?, Saint John of the Cross, is also quoted. These authors seem to recommend to meditatives and beginners the in-depth, repeated, laborious consideration of the Saviour's sufferings and sacred wounds, while they advise contemplatives to give up to the simple, peaceful and emotional intuition that delights them, without any sensitive effort to resist or attract.

Saint Bonaventure seems more explicit in his Menitations, if the work is of him, for he says that "the contemplation of the humanity of Christ is for the beginnings and imperfectes". But the Seraphic Doctor understands, as St Bernard, whom he quotes at length, of the work of meditation, as he explains in the sequel, and he is careful not to forbid this kind of consideration to the perfect: it is rather the pure sight of God, ordinary to contemplatives, which is denied to the beginnings. The only conclusion that can be deduced from this is that the holy humanity of Jesus Christ feeds not less meditation than contemplation, while contemplation further expands into horizons that meditation does not address. Pen My > age IA g 94 OF THE CONTEMPLATION

III. — We will say about the apparitions that the Blessed Virgin Mary, angels and saints frequently intervene in contemplative visions.

It is still a false principle of spirituality reproved by the Church, that to want to eliminate the most holy Mother of the Saviour and the blessed from pure devotion and contemplative prayer. Strange aberration, let's say with the P. Scaramelli?, to imagine that devotion to the Queen and the happy inhabitants of heaven prevents contemplation! Whether we consider this act in itself or under the conditions that prepare it, intervention by the glorious Virgin and the saints who contemplate the eternal splendors, far from being an obstacle, is, on the contrary, a means fully in relation to the very nature of this superlevation of spirit in God.

Angels form the procession of the King of glory and are his regular intermediaries between him and the lower creatures. That is why theology attributes to them the execution of most of the divine manifestations. It is therefore natural that these heavenly messengers often appear in supernatural visions.

IV. — All Christian truths and the very world of nature, seen from the side of faith, can occupy and fix the gaze of contemplative.

Cassian summarizes, in chapter xve of his first conference °, the main aspects of God or creatures that contemplation can manifest. The benefits of God in the sanctification of the predestined, the wonders of his power and of his providence over the world, his knowledge to which nothing escapes in the present, the past and the future, S has gratuited from predestination toward his elect and the wisdom of the means that he uses to realize it, his liberality to reward the righteous and the beatitude of which he intoxicates them; the inconceivable work of the Incarnation with the multitude of graces and wonders contained in this mystery; and finally, even God revealing himself in a thousand ways to the sleek gazes of mind, or giving himself to the soul by an inescapable communication: these are, according to Cassian, the ordinary spectacles of contemplatives.

Among these visions it is worth mentioning, as the most frequent and common, that of the mysteries of life, death and glory of Jesus Christ and his holy Mother.

In dealing with stigma, we will show the divine Crucified associating the most loved and loving souls, not only with knowledge, but also with the mystical participation of his pains. In addition to this fundamental mystery of Christianity, the Saviour also reveals to them the other public circumstances and the most secret intimacys of his mortal and glorious life. The privileged souls who received these divine confidences are innumerable. Of those who had the greatest share, Saint Brigitte, Saint Gertrude, Blessed Osanne of Mantua, Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge. The latter!, in addition to the painful scenes of the Passion, whose view was usual to her, saw the mysteries of the Incarnation, the Nativity, the Epiphany, the Presentation to the temple, with the part of the Most Holy Virgin in each one of them, unfolded in turn.

V. — Another spectacle often revealed to contemplatives is the world of glory and grace. To show to the soul the splendors and beatitudes of heaven is to ignite with love and holy desires toward the God who communicates with so much kindness and magnificence to his elect. A simple gaze of contemplation discovers more about the condition of the blessed than one could penetrate for several years of meditation!.

It is enough to open the history of the most famous contemplatives to see how frequent are the manifestations that God makes about glory and bliss, in this luminous and delicious interview that serves as a prelude to him.

In it, God reveals the state of the traveling souls, the holiness, the trials and triumphs of the militant Church.

The divine life spread in souls by the still veiled light of faith, and by the intimate and hidden fire of charity, uniting them by a mysterious cementation, as parts of the same body to Jesus Christ, in which this life resides in fullness, and in which it expands on each of its members, as the blood flows from the heart to the ends of the body, to revive them; outside, the beauty, the sense and the eloquence of worship, the organization of hierarchy, the infallibility and holiness permanently within the general corruption and with the help of infirm and miserable instruments: after the abysses of infinity and the splendors of glory, can one conceive a spectacle more worthy of divine contemplation?? THE OBJECT OF THE CONTEMPLATION 97th

Finally, this merciful elevation having as its supreme purpose the sanctification of the soul and its entire consumption in God, one understands that the illumination also bursts upon the soul itself, to reveal to it its misery, the operations of grace, the wonders of supernatural providence towards it, so that, annihilated, dilated, transported under these divine claritys, it will abandon itself to the lowerings of humility, to the impulses of gratitude and to the ardour of love!

VI. — Having recognized the objects of contemplation, one may wonder whether there exists in their manifestation a hierarchical order.

God is not bound to any law inflexible in the concession of his gifts; he dispenses them and measures them at his own discretion, according to the purposes of his supernatural providence upon souls. Removing freedom in love is to suppress love itself.

However, without imposing them as a necessity, God follows laws in his mystical relationship with souls. But because of the gratuitous nature of these gifts, the law is difficult to detach and is not rigorous.

The normal gradation of the acquired contemplation responds, in principle, to the very order of meditation, and this order seems to be to first consider the Christian truths that enlighten the mind and regulate practically life; then to study in Jesus Christ the perfect model, then bujus matris nostræ dignitas and sanctitas. How ardently she is loved by God her spouse, how powerfully she is defended from all falsehood and made a pillar of truth, how faithfully she is freed from the temptations and persecutions of tyrants and heretics, how abundantly she is filled with holy and perfect men, how mercifully she is borne with in her rebellious children, that is, in sinners, how infallibly she is called, in the predestined, to their reward... The face of the Church is one thing when it is looked at inadvertently, and another when it is seen through the light of contemplation.

1 ALVAREZ DE Paz, de Nat. contempl., p. 490. Contempliatio is of nobismetipsis: in qua innotescit nobis who and quales simus, quid operaturi simus, and quid de benignitate Domini sperare debeamus. rise to the admiration of the relative and absolute attributes of God, and finally of his intimate constitution in the trinity of people. = Now the acquired contemplation, usually succeeding to meditation only when it reached its apogee, it is God who is the most ordinary objective of it. But, in fact, the attractions that the Holy Spirit throws into the soul are so diverse, and divine intervention that moves from reasoning to pure intuition so varied, that it is morally impossible to specify general and constant rules. There are souls who spend their whole lives meditating on a unique subject, the Saviour's Passion, for example, the mystery of the Eucharist, the goodness and wisdom of Providence, such or such Christian virtue. Others, after starting with considerations about God and his attributes, on nature or on speculative truths of religion, come only late to meditate on the sufferings of Man-God, and are astonished to have so little tasted a subject so capable of exciting faith and love. = The march of infuse contemplation is no less difficult to determine. Undoubtedly imaginary visions, as less perfect, regularly precede intellectual visions; but in both the same objects may appear, albeit in a different way. There is, however, a point on which the statements of the masters are sufficiently constant, namely that the manifestation of God as Trinity is reserved for the apogee of the mystical ascension.

In short, according to the doctrine of theologians and mystics, God is the principal object of contemplation, and all creatures and truths, as they lead to God, are the secondary object of contemplation; according to the law of human knowledge, the phenomena of the lower order appear before the facts of the divine order, and mainly before the mystery of the Augustus Trinity, which thus consumes the mystical life in the creature, as it is in God the last expression of the essential and infinite perfection.

VII. — Saint Denis the Areopagitus brings intellectual operations back to the ascension to God to the three circular, straight and oblique movements.

These kinds of conceptions and formulas were too well suited to the scholastics method, so that none of them could believe that they were not to be reproduced, so we too will quote this Famous passage; here it is literally translated!

"The heavenly intelligences move, it is said, circularly, when they unite with the splendors without beginning or end of the beautiful and the good; directly, when, applying to the providence of the inferior beings, they direct everything in a straight line; obliquely, while, coming in aid of the subordinates and remaining firm in their immobility on the very principle that produces it, the beautiful and the good, they rotate around this center without ever stopping.

1 Nom. div. ¢. 4, §§ 8 et 9, Migne, t. 3, co). 703 et sqq. Divine minds are said to be moved circularly indeed, when, lacking beginning and end, they are united to the splendors of the beautiful and the good; directly, however, when they proceed to the providence of lower things, rightly directing all things; obliquely, however, when, taking counsel for lower things, they remain perpetually in the same state, always turning about the good and beautiful cause of that same state. The orbicular motion of the soul, moreover, is its entrance from external things into itself, and the uniform inflection of its spiritual faculties, which grants it a motion fixed as it were in a circle and free from all error, and turns and gathers it from many external things, first toward itself, then, its faculties now joined in a single manner, as it were rendered of one effect, unites them, and thus at last leads it to the beautiful and the good, which is above all things that are, one and the same, and without beginning and without end. But the soul is moved obliquely when, according to its capacity, it is illumined by divine notions, not indeed in a spiritually unified manner, but by thinking and discoursing, as it were with mixed and flowing actions. — Directe vero moveur quando, non ad seipsum ingreditor, neu only singulari motu spiritali fertur, nam hic motus circularis est, ut dixi, sed ad ea quae ipsi vicina sunt progreditor, et a rebus externis, non sécus ac signis quibus--dam varis ac multiplicibus, ad simplicites and unitas contemplationes revo- "The soul also has a circular movement by which, external things, it folds itself, collects in unity its spiritual powers, to lock itself in a circle where it cannot wander, and, free from the external multiplicity, gathered in itself, concentrates its powers in a perfect unity, and thus reaches the beautiful and the good, above all beings, one and identical, without beginning and without end.

"It then has an oblique movement, in that it is enlightened, according to its ability, of divine notions, not through intuition and unity, but through reasoning and deductive work, and as by the effect of complex and transient operations.

"Finally, it has a direct movement, not as it enters into itself and walks through an intuitive look, for as I have said, there would be circular movement; but as it gravitates towards what surrounds it, and as external objects, like various and multiple symbols, it rises up to simple contemplations and one."

Saint Thomas! and all the spiritual authors gathered this interpretation of the great mystic, and applied the

1 Sum. 2. 2. q. 180, a. 6. The operation of the intellect in which contemplation essentially consists is called movement, according as movement is the act of a perfect thing. But because it is through sensible things that we arrive at the knowledge of intelligible things, and sensible operations do not occur without movement, hence it is that intelligible operations too are described as a kind of movement, and their difference is assigned according to the likeness of the various movements. But among corporeal movements the most perfect and the first are local movements; and therefore the chief intelligible operations are described under their likeness. Of these there are three kinds: for one is circular, according to which something is moved uniformly about the same center. Another is straight, according to which something proceeds from one thing to another. The third is oblique, as it were composed of both. And therefore, in intelligible operations, that which has uniformity absolutely is attributed to circular movement; the intelligible operation by which one proceeds from one thing to another is attributed to straight movement; the intelligible operation having something of uniformity together with pro[gression] — [text breaks off here]. [Following text appears to be a French page heading/caption, not part of the quotation: "THE OBJECT OF CONTEMPLATION: 104 — threefold movement of which he speaks, corresponding to the three modes by which the soul climbs the ladder of contemplation."]

In the circular movement, the soul moves around God through a very pure, delicious, uniform love movement, like around a unique center that lurks and delights her.

Through the right movement, the soul moves from the contemplation of creatures to the admiration of God, in whom it is fixed and rested in love.

The movement obliques her from God's vision to that of creatures, to return to her first intuition, with a repetition of admiring and loving intoxication.

The first movement is especially suitable for infuse contemplation, although it may meet temporarily in acquired contemplation.

Rather, the second characterizes the acquired contemplation, because it holds from the discursive walk of Ja meditation.

The third, the oblique, can meet in one and the other contemplation. CHAPITRE V

LES CAUSES. DE LA CONTEMPLATION

MAN'S PART Two principles: God and man. — Man's participation in contemplation either passive or active. — We can desire, ask and hope for the contemplation we have acquired. — Is there a presumption to claim infuse contemplation as well?

l. — The two principles that enter into action in contemplation are God and man. In order to accurately assign the part that belongs to one and the other, one must understand the various meanings contained under this word of cause.

Taken in general, causality can mean preparation, even remote, or immediate and efficient influence. Indeed, the true cause is always efficient. The remote preparation is either negative or positive, depending on whether it merely removes obstacles or provides direct and effective assistance.

It is no less important to distinguish between the tale1 Le Gaupier, De Natura et statibus perfectionis, P. 1, sect. 3, €. 3, in fol. p. 130. Therefore its efficient cause is twofold, God and man, yet in such a way that God himself does almost everything here; but for the most part man contributes so little that he seems... rather to be merely passive. MAN'S SHARE OF 103 infuse plation and ordinary contemplation; for the way to reach one is not that which leads to the other.

These distinctions made, let us seek to what extent God and man are involved in contemplative operations.

The man's share being negative or at most preparatory, let's start with man.

I. — In passive contemplation, man's action is reduced to removing obstacles.

The first and greatest of these obstacles is sin. Although contemplation, as enlightenment of the spirit, belongs to the order of graces freely given, and as such can absolutely meet in sinners, the general law is that this favor is granted only to sanctified souls. "The wisdom," says the Scripture, "will not enter into a soul that is delivered to evil, and shall not dwell in a body that is subject to sin."Contemplation, which is like an outpouring of divine wisdom, casts away the darkness and contradictions of moral evil.

Another obstacle is attaching to creatures. "If there are so few contemplatives," said the author of the Imirarion?, "they are in small numbers those who know how to separate themselves from the perishable and created things, and without this universal clearance, the spirit cannot rise up or fix itself to the divine things."

The escape from sin and the mortification of the passions that precipitate us to the sensitive goods get through the practice of moral virtues. That is why St.Thomas * reports them as provisions that prepare for contemplative life. A purified soul, master of the flesh, who abhors everything that defiles and darkens, is a living tabernacle where God can descend and shine. Effective charity has disposed to the drunkenness of affective charity, which is the sharing of contemplation: by emerging from the creature it draws closer to God, and by pushing from the foot the earth rises up towards heaven.

But holiness, however sublime it may be, is never but a purely negative condition, which gives no right or assurance to achieve infuse contemplation. Here everything depends on God, and his liberality can replace in an instant this distant preparation which comes from man.

At the moment when she receives the grace of supernatural contemplation, Pam is therefore in one of these two situations. Or, already prepared by the practice of moral virtues and united with God through charity, she is invited to pass from laborious life to the rest of contemplation; or, even in the abyss of sin, in the bonds of creatures, she is suddenly taken away and raised by the mercy and all-power of God, from hatred or warmth, to the transport of love. These sudden transitions are rare, but they meet. The law is that of gradual and meritorious preparation; and from this point of view, infuse contemplation is close to the acquired contemplation, where man's share is greater, as indicated by the qualifiers of acquired, active, natural, which serve to designate and distinguish it. °

In the latter, in fact, not only does man rule out that which prevents or delays the adhesion of the soul to God, he can still settle down to the simple intuition by a calm and generous virtue that purifies, softens and raises the soul, and also by yielding to the emotional and admirative movements that arise from meditation and prelude to contemplation.

The arrangements that prepare and support contemplative prayer can be reduced to six.

The first is a knowledge, at least general and confused, of contemplation, and the will to surrender to it as soon as God deigns to introduce it. To determine the soul to the effort and immolation that this elevation imposes, it is good to consider its excellence, its fruits and its sweetness t.

The purity of the heart is even more effective and important to dispose of contemplative life. This purity includes the absence, not only of any serious sin, but also of any slight fault? and of any non-exiguam virtutem animæ postulate, ut luce illa supernaturali divinæ sapientiæ perfundat. By that first reason few are drawn — indeed rare ones — not that they should remain stuck in the rough path of their vices, but that they may attain perfection more swiftly, more effectively, and more happily; by this [other reason] many are led and called, that, preparing themselves through divine grace, they may be granted the gift of contemplation.

1 T.S.-Triniré Pnuppe, Sum. Th. myst P. 2, Tr. 1, D. 1, à. 3, t. 2, p. 18. Prima igitur dispositio ad vitam contemplativam est cognitio 106 LES CAUSES DE LA CONTEMPLATION délibéré. The smallest fetu who penetrates where is sufficient to disturb the sight and prevent the clear vision of the outer objects; likewise any deliberate stain darkens the eye of the soul and becomes an obstacle to the intuition of divine things'. That is why the Saviour recommended purity of heart to those who want to see God?

The third provision is a continuous mortification of passions, which establishes in a full and serene possession of itself the upper part of the soul where contemplation is consumed °.

Another provision that precedes and also accompanies contemplative life is the constant exercise of moral virtues. Before receiving the extraordinary impulses of God's spirit, the soul must be fully subject to the laws of reason, and this empire is exercised and obtained by the moral virtues" and inclinationatur ad terram. The weight must be cast off, so that your mind, already inclined enough toward earth through its association with the body, may be lifted up to heavenly things. Do not suppose this is said only of greater sins, since lesser ones too, which we do not resist, stand in the way of the grace of contemplation. For only the clean and the pure are admitted to the embrace of God; but those who have cause to mourn are first placed in a lower position, that they may be healed of their wounds.

1 SCARAMELLI, Dirett. Mist. tr. 2, €. 21, n. 237, p. 186. The terza disposizione è la purità del cuore e la mondezza della coscienza, non solo da ogni peccato grave, ma anche de ogni colpa leggiera e mancamento volontario; perchè siccome ogni piccola macchia che entri nell'occhio basta ad intorbidargli la vista, sicche non posa più con chiarezza mirare gli oggetti, cosi ogni macchia di colpa volontariamente contractta è bastevole ad offuscare locchio della mente, onde non posa in contemplazione vedere le divine perfezioni.

2 Matth. v, 8.

3? T.S.-T.D. Pare, Sum. Th. myst. p. 21. The fifth disposition is continual mortification and austerity of life, both in food and in dress; whence contemplation and mortification are, as it were, two most beloved sisters, mutually accompanying and leading one another... The reason for this is that the higher part [of the soul] is not perfectly in possession of itself, nor free for the contemplation of the divine mysteries, unless it has the lower part perfectly subjected to it.

4 T.S.T.T. Panir. Ibid. p. 20. The fourth disposition, partly prior and antecedent, partly simultaneous and concomitant, is that the contemplative man should have acquired the moral virtues and should always [continue] in the exercise of them... The fifth condition is solitude! As long as the soul remains spread over creatures, it is as if out of itself, and it is within, to the most intimate of the being, that enlightenment and contemplative fixedness occur; that is where the divine appointment is. For this universal release and internal concentration, retirement and silence are absolutely necessary.

But to withdraw from the external things to give up in one's own mind to all the divagations is to move from a noisy and captivating world to another even more tumultuous and more fascinate. The recollection is real only as much as it is inner, as it separates us from existing creatures and imaginary ghosts, to put ourselves alone before God. So the usual practice of God's presence is the most serious preparation for the merciful and gratuitous encounter of contemplation?

HI. — Since man brings a certain positive contribution in active contemplation, he is therefore allowed to aspire to this kind of prayer, and even to ask for grace from God as a very effective means of advancing in perfection, provided that he subordinates his desire and prayer to the good will of God and to the greatest usefulness 108 THE CAUSES OF CONTEMPLATION

But we must not be delusional: it is a completely gratuitous divine action that raises to contemplation, even ordinary, and not the natural and human effort, the same one that common grace accompanies el sanctified. In essence, there is man in this ascension only the acts of virtue that precede and dispose of it, and the free consent that accepts and maintains it!.

Nothing prevents, if one wishes, from looking at active contemplation as the fruit and reward of meditation, on the condition that one will see there, not a rigorous merit, but simply a merit of convenience, a merit of congruo, as the theologians say*. Despite the most ardent desires, the most fervent prayer and the very holiness of life, one may not obtain the grace of contemplation °.

Therefore, it is astounding to set a time when, in meditation, contemplation must succeed. It all depends here on the pure will of God. Some receive these divine favors at the beginning, others after long years; more, not less raised in perfection and aspired to obtain them, never succeed, as did St Bernard's remark. The man only has to stand down 4 z ž And

MAN'S PART is, 109 by the constant practice of virtues and by an entire docility to grace: God comes whenever he wants!.

Saint Térèse, while exhorting her daughters to make themselves worthy, through the work of virtues and fidelity to meditation, to be raised to the sweetness of contemplation, warns them that trying to achieve it through natural efforts is to waste his time and his sorrow. "If the spring that produces this water does not cause it to spring, it is of little use for us to get tired; all our meditations, all our eagerness, all our tears will not give it to us." God alone spreads it to whomever he wants, and often even when the soul least thinks about it."

IV. — This is particularly true of infuse and extraordinary prayer. To reach it by the human industry, even assisted by the common grace, is both childish and dangerous. It is, says Alvarez de Paz, as if we were trying to fly without wings, or if, because we want rain, we were trying to bring water down from the sky to the earth. We may well desire meditation,

1 SCARAMELLI, Tratt. 2, €. 6, n. 67, p. 68. La contemplazione, o sia infusa o acquisita, è un favore straordinario in cui Iddio non ha voluto star sottoposto nè a' regole, nè a leggi; la vuol dare a chi gli pare, e como e quando gli piace, secondo gli altissimi fini della sua provvidenza.

2 Château intérieur. 4e Dem., ch. 2, ad finem.

8 Lib. 5, Part. 2, c. 13, t. 6, p. 537. In the business, then, of perfect contemplation, the desire for it and its petition, pleasing to God, are good; yet vain and ridiculous is the application of intellect and will, as if you wished to hold the intellect fixed on one thing, and to suspend yourself upon that one thing after the manner of those in contemplation. In this this kind of prayer is distinguished from meditation and from the others: that we can indeed desire meditation and apply effort to attain it; but as for contemplation, the desire is good, the effort superfluous.

This will be made clear by two comparisons... Thus, then, meditation is as it were a walking, or a running, or even a leaping, by which you raise yourself a little from the earth; it is as it were the drawing of water from a well or from a river: for this you have the powers of grace aiding your nature. Conatum adhibe, ete... But perfect contemplation, by which God holds the intellect fixed on one thing without discursive reasoning, and raises it up with the elevation of suspension, wonder, and delight, and kindles it with love rather than merely affecting it, is a flight, is rain falling from heaven. Hæc desiderabis, hæc postulabis...; sed si ipse alas non dederit, si pluviam non misérit, in vanum conaberis perfecte contemplari. and, through our efforts, realize it: but for contemplation, we cannot go beyond desire and prayer. It is in vain that the soul will want to suspend the course of reasoning, fix the mind's gaze on a single object, produce in it the drunkenness of love and immobility of admiration; it will result only in sterile fatigue or in terrible illusions. The illuminations that would result from these attempts must be regarded as suspicious: they can come only from prestiges of lying spirit or from the heating of the brain.

But is it permissible, at least, to desire and ask for the grace of supernatural contemplation?

Le P. Philip of the Most Holy Trinity openly pronounces himself for the affirmative and goes so far as to say that all those who have the concern for virtue and perfection must aspire to these divine communications, because of the goods they bring to the soul that receives them, to others and to the whole Church!

Alvarez de Paz distinguishes in contemplation the intimate grace of elevation and adherence to God, and the external graces that accompany this union, as are ecstasy, stigma, apparitions. Humility defends, according to him, to desire and ask for these external favors which attach themselves to contemplation; and making an effort to reach it would be superb and inept. Moreover, when granted, one must strive to withdraw from it with prudence and humility, and ask God to lead to heaven by the royal way of faith and the cross. But, for the suspension of love, this learned author believes that she is worthy of all our vows and that we can humbly pray to God to grant it to us, if he judges send it for our salvation and for his glory. There is a very powerful way of perfection, and if we have to be eager for the end itself, why could we not be able to be the way that leads to it!?

The spiritual authors agree to teach that it is neither necessary to desire nor to ask for the external and miraculous phenomena of the mystical states, unless it is not driven by an extraordinary impulse of the Holy Spirit?, as has been seen in a few rare servants of God, for example, in the Blessed Osanne of Mantua, who, by means of desires and prayers, obtains the stigmas, with

1L. 5, Part. 2, c. 13, t. 6, p. 536. Let us now speak of perfect contemplation. By this term, moreover, we can understand two things. First, indeed, those singular gifts comprehended under the name of contemplation, with which the Lord is wont to heap up certain pious souls, such as ecstasies, raptures, bodily or imaginary apparitions, and other things of this kind. But it is not lawful to desire these, nor to ask for them, and much less to strive after them, which would be prideful and ridiculous. Rather, if such things should befall him, a man ought prudently and humbly to withdraw himself, and ask the Lord to lead him to heaven by the royal road.

By the second name is understood that perfect contemplation which is a simple knowledge of God lacking discursive reasoning, proceeding from the gift of wisdom, inducing an elevation, suspension, wonder, and delight of the mind, and kindling a most ardent love. But souls called to this perfection, and adorned with no small practice of mortification and with zeal for virtue and common prayer, ought to dispose themselves through greater purity and through the things written above; likewise they can ardently desire it and humbly ask for it, if it be expedient for them — why not? This is the most efficacious instrument for attaining perfection: for we may be desirous of that which is the end; why not of that which is the means to the end? etc., etc.

2 Scuram, Theol. myst. § 260, p. 450. Extraordinary contemplation, with its favors of raptures, visions, etc., strictly speaking, is not to be desired nor to be asked of God, but at most accidentally and rarely, when an extraordinary impulse of God drives one to it.

3 F. Sycvesrre, BB. 48 jun. t. 24, p. 579, n. 102: Quare impetrata corona , jam fidens animi, rursus ad implorandas in singulos dies universes ejus scars, hac tamen lege ut omnes homines laterent. the express reservation that his humility put there, that they would not be visible; similarly in the venerable Gertrude d'Oosten!, who, after receiving these sacred prints, frightened of the contest that was taking place around her to admire this prodigy, asks that they disappear; and, when they were withdrawn, pushed by love, begs, but in vain, that they be returned to her.

But this is only the exception. The history of the holy souls who have enjoyed these favors attests, on the contrary, that they have desired and asked to be delivered from it?, desiring only one thing, union with the sovereign Good through charity, and fearing above all the gifts that expose to the terrible dilatations of self-love and the illusions of lying angel.

Unitive contemplation presents fewer perils, and it is the source of so many graces, it has so much efficiency in detaching creatures and uniting with God; in a word, it achieves spiritual perfection with so much speed and power, that souls concerned with achieving it cannot sigh towards this incomparable good, provided, however, that they will aim only at the grace of union and not at the wonderful effects that can accompany it.

But such is man's infirmity, that he makes difficult distinctions to rule out what flatters nature and only take what brings to God. Any elevation becomes an opportunity for vain complacency. So several authors observe that, even to consider only the one-sided virtue of supernatural contemplation, it is rarely expedient to aspire to these extraordinary ascensions, and that they should be asked only in a hurry by an inner attraction of the Holy Spirit!

It seems, indeed, that there is some presumption to ambition these insignias of supernatural order. To look only at good and utility, why could we not desire and also ask for the most sublime communications of grace, and yet these kinds of aspiration and prayers rarely meet in the saints themselves. Rather, they reputate themselves worthy of all abandonments and all punishments, and the spontaneous cry of their souls is the humble word of St Peter: "Do you leave me, Lord, because I am only a sinner?"

That is why we will conclude, with Fr. Scaramelliÿ, that, although it is lawful to desire and even to ask for a good end the ascension of infuse contemplation, it may be more perfect and safer to consider it unworthy and to stand indifferent under the hand of God, without neglecting to put oneself in the proper dispositions to receive these favors, please God to do them to us. CHAPITRE VI

THE CAUSES OF CONTEMPLATION

GOD'S PART The contemplative vocation. Dispositions naturelles. — Appel surnaturel;

ses signes. — One must give in to divine attraction after washing under the control of the direction. — In intermittances, meditation resumes

son cours. — The divine action in the very act of contemplation and

in each of its elements: suspension, admiration and Pamour.

I. — Man can dispose, to a certain extent that we have just determined, to contemplation; but it is God who calls him and reduces him, by an all-powerful action of his grace, to this blessed passivity. The divine virtue is thus manifested in the vocation to contemplative life and in the admirative absorption which constitutes the very act of contemplation.

Nature cannot give contemplative vocation; at most it confers favorable provisions, and so to speak, sympathetic to divine action. An open mind, of a peaceful and loving complexion, is, of course, more suitable for the elevation and passivity of contemplation than another having little penetration, of a turbulent mood, worried and hard. Without being an absolute law, it is one of the harmonies of supernatural providence to associate grace and nature. The heavy and stupid minds tend to descend rather than ascend. The melancholic ones who allow themselves to be dominated by anxiety are naturally concentrated and meditative; but, if they know how to contain themselves in silence and peace, the sadness even relieves them from creatures and disposes them to contemplative fixedness. The ardent, active, impetuous temperaments go to action and movement; those who are mild and emotional are more proper to rest, admiration and love of contemplation?.

From there, the advice that St.Gregoire? gives to the active and anxious minds to engage in labor in order to be less self-sufficient; and to the peaceful souls, not to engage in immoderate occupations where they could find nothing but trouble and fatigue. To some the external activity is suitable, to others the silent and contemplative life.

But grace supplanted from nature and corrects it, and God, who measures virtue to effort, takes less account

Although divine grace can overcome the, as it were, natural incapacity of the subject, ordinarily however it accommodates itself to it, and therefore, in the exercise of this kind of contemplation, account must also be taken of the natural constitution and capacity.

2 ALvaRez DE Paz, l- 5, P. 1, app. 4, ©. 2, t. 6, p. 397. For those who are of a restless and hard nature, and whose heart is inclined to external things, should devote themselves to mental prayer in such a way that they spend the greater part of their time in the good works of the active life. But those who have been allotted a quiet, placid, and gentle nature are usually admitted to contemplation by him who disposes all things sweetly.

3 Moral. 1. 6, e. 37. But among these things it must be carefully understood that the temperaments of souls differ greatly from one another. For some men are of so idle a mind that if the labor of an occupation should take hold of them, they give way at the very beginning of the work; and some are so restless that if they have leisure from labor, they labor the more grievously, because they endure worse tumults of heart the more freely leisure is given them for thoughts. Whence it is necessary that neither should the quiet mind expand itself to the practice of immoderate work, nor should the restless mind be constrained to the pursuit of contemplation. For often those who could have peacefully contemplated God fell, weighed down by their occupations; and often those who, though occupied, might have lived well amid human affairs, perished by the sword — more from their own vicious inclinations than from the resistance set against them. Therefore, the desire and hope for contemplation should not be absolutely prohibited for impetuous and active souls.' Wisdom undoubtedly commands that, unless there is a pronounced attraction, these souls do not engage in a state where they would irrevocably be devoted to contemplative life?; for man must behave according to the data of rational and Christian prudence, while God takes counsel only of himself, his will, and his love. Native provisions are, at most, only negative conditions to which supernatural grace can substitute and derogate. It all depends here on the divine call.

II. — This extranatural vocation, the only real and decisive one, consists in an inner attraction, pressing and suave, which fixes the soul in God and suspends in it the discursive life.

Saint John of the Cross, whose doctrine on this point has become common, brings to three the marks of Ja contemplative vocation.

Citons textuellement :

« Or il y a trois signes. The first is when one recognizes that one can no longer meditate or use the imagination, not absolutely in his natural operations, but towards God in supernatural contemplation; when one finds no taste or food in the soul as before, but rather that one suffers there from the aridity in things where one used to nourish the senses, and where one drew from the sue and spiritual pasture. However, while the spiritual man can reason by meditating and tasting some inner sweets, he should not give up meditation, if not perhaps when his soul has settled in perfect tranquillity.

"The second is when the spiritual man feels no desire to apply imagination to particular things, internal or external. However, I am not talking about the misalignment of this faculty, which is so stolen, that at the very time of the most severe recollection it goes on all sides; but I only mean that the soul no longer takes pleasure in employing imagination in other things.

"The third sign, which is the most certain of all, is when the soul pleases to remain alone in its substance, to pay loving attention to God, without taking care of any particular consideration, and to enjoy a great inner peace and deep rest; without making any developed, extended or formal act, either of memory, of understanding or of the will; for it is then penetrated by a general and affectionate knowledge of God without conceiving anything particular, and it stands attached to it by the gentle transport of peaceful and free love from any other object.

"The spiritual man must surely notice in himself these three signs, in order to resolve himself to be led from meditation to extraordinary contemplation. The former is not alone enough to make him make this change. The difficulty or impotence he would have to operate by imagination and meditate on divine things could come from his distractions and neglect. That is why it is necessary that he still discovers in himself the second sign, which consists of not feeling any desire to think of other foreign things or distant from his object, which is God. Indeed, when misguided minds and warmness prevent a person from fixing his imagination and understanding in heavenly things, he wears himself .incontinent and clings to different objects, which distance him from the contemplation of God.

"However, it's not enough to be convinced that we have the first and the second brand, we must have the third one. For, though one was persuaded by his own experience that one could neither speak nor meditate, and that one would have no desire to think of other objects, however, it might come from melancholy or from some other mood that would fill the brain or heart, and that would so suspend the operation of the senses, that one would not want to apply to meditation, and that one would only like to remain in this pleasant transport or in this sweet slumber. It is therefore about having the third sign, i.e. to be in a position to give a loving attention to the Lord with great inner tranquillity."

The fixedness of the soul in God, accompanied by a great disgust of creatures and a sort of impotence to meditate, are, according to St John of the Cross, the signs of the call to contemplation. Suspension in God, which is only the introduction and initiation to contemplation, is the main condition that determines the other two. If the meditation is interrupted, it is that the spirit adheres, with a simple glance, to the divine truth, and if the heart feels nothing but disgust for perishable things, it is that it rests suavely on the eternal and infinite Good.

Therefore, one should not think himself called to contemplative prayer unless one is grasped by the thought of God without being able to argue, and as in a happy impotence to escape from this simple and loving intuition. This is the feeling of the most renowned mystical authors!.

To the signs that we have just indicated, we must add another one that makes it even more certain to judge whether the attraction to contemplation comes from God: is it that the soul who is experiencing it has been purified by the passive trials that we will talk about later?

These marks are especially characteristic of infuse prayer; but they are also suitable, albeit with less evidence, for active contemplation, since the soul reaches this elevation, not by its efforts, but by the effect of the divine attraction which second them, and that contemplation begins only when meditation is suspended.

II. — As soon as the soul is warned by the difficulty of meditating and by its affectionate concentration in God, which his goodness invites him to the feast of contemplation, it must yield and give up without resistance to the action of grace.

"We must receive the gifts of God in the manner that he makes them," said St John of the Cross, "in order to preserve them. Hence it can be seen that if the soul did not leave its first habit of reasoning in meditation, it would receive very little benefit from God, who would then do it only with great reserve. For they are supernaturally infused into the soul; so it cannot receive them in a small, tight, imperfect and disproportionate way to such great gifts."

These words require serious attention. They come back to saying that God directs everyone his way, and that he

1 Bossuer, Mystici in tuto, €. 8-12.

2 SCHRAM, § 273, t. 1, p. 461. Unless she has been purified by interior and exterior mortification and progress in the way of God, [and] has made satisfaction for her sins... [the author] sets out, in this direction, the gradations of the means for reaching the goal. To refuse to enter the path in which God calls us is certainly to expose oneself to a reduction of graces, perhaps even to compromise the decisive grace of salvation. To remain in the exercise of meditation, when God proposes to raise up to contemplation, would be, not humility, but pusillanimity and laziness that would deprive the soul of the most precious goods and cause him inestimable damage."

This attraction and the signs which attest to it must, whatever their obvious nature, be subject to the supervision of a wise and experienced director. Indispensable to all points and conditions of spiritual life?, direction is absolute necessity and special in mystical life, because of the illusions to which souls are exposed in these extraordinary states. * To relate to an inner persuasion that seems to give full certainty is to stray and give up defenceless to the spirit of lies.

When it is established regarding this special calling, it must be obeyed, and one must cooperate with it, by way of contemplation, as with a most special grace. For since, speaking in itself, the way of prayer through contemplation is much more perfect than through meditation, and God wishes by it to move the spirit, it would be not humility but pusillanimity and sloth to resist the divine calling — not without great loss of gain forgone and harm perhaps arising.

2 John of the Cross, Sent. spir. 6 and 7. The soul that walks alone and without director in the spiritual ways is like a lit coal, but separated from the others, which, instead of simmering more, is completely extinguished. He who goes alone and without guidance and falls alone on the way remains alone in his fall, and he shows that he does little in the state of his soul, since he dares to trust himself.

3 ALVAREZ DE Paz, l. 2, P. 1,0. 4,t.5, p. 301. Moreover, the use of another's teaching and the hearing of a spiritual master is not equally necessary for all. For beginners need this most... But those already advanced in spirit and enriched with the gift of prayer do not depend so much on frequent communication with a director, although they ought not to live entirely without a director. But if they experience supernatural things and are raised from the common manner of praying to a singular one, they must go to a master, by whose counsel they may examine what is communicated to them; otherwise they will expose themselves to the dangers of many deceptions. It is not enough to have a director to whom one opens himself with all the aspirations and all the internal movements; he must be able to hear and lead those who resort to his lights; if he has not the knowledge and experience of the mystical ways, he cannot give advice to the souls whom God wants to introduce! In such cases, common sense requires him to return and relate to other more skilled ones.

"Not all directors are usually so consumed in this science, that they can direct all kinds of souls in all kinds of states. There are even so limited, that they imagine that God will not lead a soul to a perfection more complete than the one where they find it... So those who are not sufficiently enlightened in these divine paths must find good that the souls who have submitted to their direction consult others; they must receive them pleasantly when they return; they must even advise them to take other spiritual fathers when they no longer profit under their direction."

IV. — The call to contemplation does not entail the subsequent exclusion of meditation.

The grace of contemplation is never so continuous in this life that it totally suspends the discursive consideration: it is a decided point against the exaggerations of pure love, so beautifully repaired by the pious and immortal archbishop of Cambrai.

1 Gomez, Practitioner of the Th. M., 1. 6, c. 17, n. 2, p. 261. The unica regla es buscar un maestro voitido en estas materias, ete.

2 S. Jean de la Croix, Long flame, 3° cant., 3° v., § 11, p. 378.

3 RicuarDp de Samrt-Vicror, Benjamin minor, ¢. 76. Migne, t. 196, col. 55. Rarum valde in hune montem ascendere; sed multo rarius in ejus verWe a Ne 7 can ask, he says!, if those whom God begins to introduce into supernatural contemplation should no longer resume ordinary meditation, nor speeches, nor other operations of their powers. It is said that the doctrine that we have explained so far must not be understood in such a way that those who begin to enjoy this loving knowledge must never use meditation or try to return to it. They do not, in these beginnings, have such a perfect habit of this loving knowledge that they can, when they wish, do the acts or establish themselves there and remain there constantly. They are not so far away from meditation as they still did not have the power to meditate as they meditated before, and to reason sometimes to discover new truths."

It is therefore especially in the beginnings that contemplation undergoes intermittances that force to resume meditation?.

No matter how painful this change may seem, as soon as the supernatural attraction ceases, Pasme must return to the common prayer, where she will find, if not the joys of contemplative prayer, at least no less precious graces and often superior merits °. One hundred XII: Datur status contemplationis adeo sublimis adeoque perfectæ, ut fiat habitualis: ita ut, quoties anima actu orat, sua oratio sit contemplativa, non discursiva. Then he no longer needs to return to meditation and its methodical acts.

1 Montée du Carmel, 1. 2, ch. 15, p. 78.

25. Laurent Jusriex, De discipl. et perf. vilæ monast. €. 18. One must dwell in this dance of love, namely contemplation, for as long as the affection perseveres; when it fails or grows cold, one must return to the interposed exercises of meditation.

3 St. Térèse, Inner Castle, 6° dem., ch. 9, ad finem: As for what is worth more, Our Lord does not make it dependent on these kinds of graces, since there are several holy people who have never received any, and others, who are not holy, who have received them. Days the first trials of contemplative life, there occur more considerable suspensions. = Sometimes God withdraws the grace from contemplation of a _ definitive way, either to punish the infidelity of the soul that had received it, or because, in his purposes, he wanted to grant only by passing, in order to accelerate the march in perfection, and also to better attest the gratuitousness of his gifts.

Generally, deprivation is only temporary, and it can have for light faults that God wants to punish, the test of fidelity and excitement to a greater love, a secret warning to better appreciate this benefit and to preserve it by a deep humility, a release that the body needs, or even the passive test that has for more sublime ascents t.

V. — God is therefore the true cause of the contemplative vocation: His influence in the Covenant itself of contemplation is neither less widespread nor less manifest. To convince yourself, it is enough to examine all aspects of this operation.

Contemplation, we said, is a loving and admiring suspension of the mind on an object supernaturally manifested.

Awe can be seen as an effect of vision, as we will say in the next chapter. So only the two essential elements of contemplationa1 Voss, Compend. ScaramEeLLr, Direct. myst. P. 4, 1.4, €. 3, p. 460. The principal reasons why God sometimes withdraws from the soul contemplation, whether acquired or infused, are: first, that he may purge the soul more fully and dispose it toward a more sublime contemplation; second, that he may punish it for some slight fault; third, that he may take a proof of its fidelity and constancy; fourth, that he may keep it humble and lowly; fifth, that he may preserve its salvation... [text breaks off] ...a simple gaze upon truth ending in love.

Now this suspensive intuition and this love adhesion come immediately from God and belong to the order of extraordinary and gratuitous graces.

Even in the acquired contemplation, the common grace is not enough to determine in the mind that vision that suspends reasoning and sometimes absorbs all the powers of the soul; it requires a special and gratuitous gift that God gives to whomever he wants. If one imputes this elevation and fixedness of understanding to the increasing but ordinary claritys of the faith, one must also admit that the light and warmth of this virtue, reached to a certain degree, regularly lead to the admiring suspension of contemplation, which contradicts both the experience and the doctrine of the masters.

It is a fact sanctioned by the teaching of the doctors, that one can have an ardent and active faith, without for this one achieving contemplation; and that divine Villumination of contemplation sometimes meets, at least transiently, in souls whose belief is weak, languishing, even extinct!

From the point of view of logic, it would be better to argue that the intuitive fixedness that occurs as a result of meditation is a natural consequence of the concentration of the mind, rather than seeing it as a regular and normal progress of faith. But then contemplation, which is the climax of spiritual life and as the prelude of heaven, would no longer be heard from the simple gaze that stops the course of reasoning, but from an operation of nature: false and inadmissible interpretation. That if one wants to talk about the ligature of powers that accompanies illumination, one can admit, with Suarez ?, that it is a natural effect

1 Bossuer, Mystici in tuto, n. 45 et sqq.

2De Relig. Tract. 4, 12e 45,028 te O

Uidir is RTE M ee in mL true us rite of vision and love, as we will say again in dealing with ecstasy; but the vision that causes this suspension must be regarded as a free and extraordinary supernatural, which escapes the laws of common grace.

More importantly, the infuse contemplation presupposes a supernatural and gratuitous intervention of God. Here man is passive and keeps no other initiative than that of being able to escape divine action before she fully subjugated milk. God alone is the effective and complete cause of this inner enlightenment that lifts the soul out of the natural circle of its understanding, if not by the realities that are shown to it, at least by the light that surrounds them and manifests them.

In contemplation, love is to knowledge what the end is by means. If therefore the first element is supernatural, the second element will be supernatural, the means and the end being essentially of the same order.

Another reasoning provides the same conclusion. Contemplative love is the result of the natural effort of the will, or that of the regular course of grace, or a purely gratuitous effect of divine liberality. The first hypothesis robs Christian contemplation of any supernatural character. The second, as we have already observed in speaking of the vision, contradicts the experience and authority: that souls reach perfect charity without having experienced this divine attraction!This is consistent with the constant and unanimous statements of Christian doctors on the possibility of perfection through the common ways of work and meditation. However, the emotional adherence to contemplation is the result of a non-common and ordinary grace.

However, the character of gratuitousness is more prominent in infuse contemplation than in active contemplation. In this one, the soul is predisposed to emotional movements by careful study of meditation and by the exercise of virtues, and the heat that lukewarms under the rays of contemplation seems to be a natural continuation of the momentum that precedes it. In this, on the contrary, the soul is suddenly seized by divine enlightenment, which fatally determines the suspension and admiration of the mind, but may not penetrate to the heart, leave it cold and insensitive, so that it meets, like other graces, in sinners. These cases are rare, very rare; but neither their possibility nor their existence can be challenged, "at least as temporary visions that reach only understanding.

By all we have just said, we see what God's share in contemplation is, either acquired or infuse. In one and the other, especially in the second, it is God who calls, subjugates and transforms: he asks man only to be defeated. CHAPITRE VII

THE EFFECTS OF CONTEMPLATION t

pension de l'esprit. — L’admiration. — La délectation. — Les fruits qui

are born of contemplation: peace, purification, humility,

strength and patience, hunger and thirst for justice, detachment and

defiance of created things, desire and impatience to be to God.

I. — Spiritual authors have exalted the effects of contemplation. We will try, without going from the general point of view, to group them together and describe them as precisely as the matter involves; for it is difficult to submit to a complete analysis and to a "regular generalization of the results in themselves varied and complex, and which the most renowned authors in Mystics, from whom we must collect them, have exposed with a diversity that still complicates the work.

However, they seem to fit in two distinct parts, depending on whether they appear in the very act of contemplation, or whether they are fruits of holiness that arise from this happy encounter between God and the soul.

The effects of the first kind include elevation and

1 Cf. Ste Térèse, passim, principalement au Chât. int. — S. John of the spirit suspension, admiration and delight. These are more properties than influences of contemplation: for this supernatural trade cannot be established without the spirit being raised and suspended in God, without him experiencing, to a varying extent, the tressations of admiration and joy. If we remove them from the pure notion of contemplative act, it is that they seem to us to be the result of the simple and emotional look, which, in our view, constitutes the essential part of contemplation.

II. — The first effect of contemplation is to raise the soul in God.

All prayer is an ascension to God. ' But the one we are talking about is quick, instant, sweet, sublime; it has nothing to do with the slowness, the effort, the short views of common prayer. It leaves on the earth and in the darkness of traveling life; it lifts up to heaven, and serves as a prelude to the vision of the homeland.

This elevation seems to precede the intuitive look, and if so, it should be seen as the cause or condition, not as a consequence of contemplative intuition. But if one carefully considers the play of soul operations in this encounter with God, one will see that it begins with illumination, and that this illumination has the immediate effect of captivating the soul and attracting it to the very object from which the light bursts.

The suspension is only the continued elevation and the sequel THE EFFECTS It is a fixed, absorbing attention to the object of the vision, and a more or less complete forget of all the lower things t.

This suave absorption can have a dual cause: the splendors of light or the ardours of devotion?. The first captures and fixes intelligence; the second attracts, subjugates and ignites the heart.

II. — Awesomeness follows the suspension, and according to St Thomas, results from an unexpected knowledge that exceeds our ability.

When this impotence comes only from the suddenness and novelty of the spectacle, admiration ceases as soon as the mind has become master of the vision. But if the object is manifested or the clarity that surrounds it surpasses the intellectual forces of the subject, admiration perseveres as long as the vision itself.

Although ignorance is the cause of admiration, the admiration of the mind falls rather on what it grasps rather than on what escapes it, and it is all the deeper, as light floods and dazzles the understanding of brighter splendors. The vision takes on its proportions of what is seen and what is seen: what is seen to be fixed and nourished the mind; what it sees increases, by erasing the limits, the greatness and the immensity of what it can see.

1 ALVAREZ DE Paz, l. 5, P.2,c. 8, p. 520. This elevation is followed, in contemplation, by a suspension of the mind, which is nothing other than a most perfect attention to that which we contemplate, and a forgetting of all lower things.

2 Voss, Compend. SCARAMELLI, p. 130. The causes of this suspension are the divine light, which, representing the object with clarity, not only fixes the mind upon it but also keeps it immobile, and love, which so gathers all the powers of the soul around the beloved object that it is wholly immersed in it.

SCARAMELLI, Dirett. Mist. Tratt. 2, €. 20, p. 128.

3 ALVAREZ DE Paz, de Nat. cont. 1. 5, €. 9, p. 522. Just as suspension follows the elevation of the mind, so too, as it seems to me, admiration follows suspension.

Admiration is a species of fear consequent upon the apprehension of something exceeding our capacity. Unde admiredAs he sets himself on the contemplated truth and enters it further, he discovers increasing depths where he simmers; in the effort he makes to probe them, he puts himself as if out of him; and, feeling defeated, he cannot defend himself from an instinctive tremor in front of the immensity that dominates him. The habit, and better still, the full knowledge of the object, gives him the possession of himself and the calmness of the vision. At the beginning of the contemplative life, in fact, admiration is more lively and frequent; it then decreases and can cease almost entirely, at least in ordinary visions; for there are those who so surpass the human capacity and created, that they always throw into the astonishment.

Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité, believes that admiration ceases in perfect contemplation. We will discuss later if, at its peak, contemplation excludes ecstatic grasping. But let us observe here, with Alvarez de Paz?, that the high contemplation, where God reveals himself in his splendour, cannot fail to produce on the soul this delight which Saint Bernard calls the admiration of the Majesty. We don't get used to such shows. As the Church sings, the angels and the blessed of heaven are eternally in the trembling of admiration; more importantly, is this trembling taking place in the contemplative vision.

There are obviously degrees in this surprise of the soul. Excessly carried, it is a stupor that makes her mute and takes away from her, as to the queen of Saba before Solomon, the feeling of herself. But the admiration that arises from contemplation goes to love, and that is why, as soon as the spirit regains sufficient freedom, it bursts into thanksgiving, praise, passionate expressions of tenderness and devotion, thus doubling the momentum of the soul towards truth and making it flourish and as blending, through a delicious flow, on the object of vision. *

IV. — It is understood that this expansion of the soul is sovereignly delectable. So all mystics teach that delight is inseparable from contemplative intuition. According to St.Thomas, * this enjoyment comes from admiration, not by the ignorance that accompanies it, but, on the contrary, by the desire to know that it sharpens and leads the mind to new knowledge, or at least that gives it the hope to achieve it.

1 De Considerat. 1. 5, ©. 14, n. 32. The first and greatest contemplation is admiration of the Majesty.

2 Præf. Miss. Tremunt Potestates.

3 [IT Reg. x, 4 et 5.

4 ALVAREZ DE Paz, de Nat. cont. 1. 5, ©. 9, p. 524. But the effects of admiration are wondrous. For sometimes stupor passes into an act of thanksgiving..., sometimes into an affection of love and intimate devotion... But contemplation, by the medium of admiration, is wont to involve within itself a most sweet delight.

8 Sum. 1. 2. q. 32, a. 8. Admiration is a cause of delight insofar as it has joined to it the hope of attaining knowledge of that which one desires to know. And for this reason all desirable things are delightful.

6 Jbid. ad 1. Admiratio non est delectabilis in quantum habet ignorantiam, sed in quantum habet desiderium addiscendi causam, et in quantum Cependant le plaisir céleste qui résulte de la contemplation a une autre cause plus efficace encore, c'est Pamour. Love beatifies the soul and throws it in suaves transports, delivering to it the object of his life. And, when the communication of life is supernatural and superabundant, these transports are more intoxicating and ineffable. Richard de Saint-Victor compares the soul in this state to a young girl surprised by drunkenness, who no longer has the strength to support herself, and, in his excess, loses sight of everything that surrounds him; explaining by this comparison the allegory of the saints Songs who represent us the sacred bride intoxicated with delights and supported by his beloved?. To express how much is alive the pure and divine voluptuousness that contemplation pours into the soul, mystics make it a foretaste of the joys of heaven, and one of them*, in particular, calls it the arrogance of eternal bliss. "It is so great," said Richard de Saint-Victor +, "that no natural enjoyment can be compared to it, and that it disgusts, on the contrary, the soul of all the external primers of pleasure and vanity."

This delight can be purely spiritual. It does not then exceed the innermost of the soul, and it is the will that tastes these sweets alone, sometimes in the very midst of the most desolating droughts and aridities of the lower part. But the laws of human organization bring spiritual joy to the body, like all other inner feelings, and it is only by a purpose of his supernatural providence that God sometimes dilates the secret depths of the soul without it appearing outside.

Sensitive manifestations take on the various forms of spiritual joy and devotion, which we will describe in more detail in the second part of this book, such as jubilation, tears, ecstasy; or those of mystical transports, which we will have to discuss in dealing with the degrees of contemplation. What we have said and what we will say later is exempt from extending ourselves further on these influences that the soul intoxicated by love brings back to the body.

V. — We bring back to the following the fruits that mystics attribute to contemplation: peace, purification, humility, strength and patience, hunger and thirst for justice, detachment and contempt for created things, desire and impatience to be God.

The first good that comes from contemplation is peace.

Saint Augustine defines peace, peace of order?. To have peace, one must come and rest in order, two conditions that are always realized in the conapie union The soul meets the truth there, which ends its life and finds on its bosom the appeasement of its desires. " God manifests himself to the soul, seizes his two master powers, intelligence and will, and, by fixing them upon himself, establishes them in the essential order. Once on the object of his life, the being has nothing to be desired, except to possess it forever. Contemplation brings with it the two elements of perfect peace, the brilliant view of truth and full inner satiety?.

Its second effect is a growing purification of the soul,

We are not currently talking about the trials that prepare for contemplation, but only about the effects that accompany or follow it.

Contemplation is a light that floods the soul and shows it two extremes, the holiness of God and his own misery. Under this divine illumination, the soul aspires to an impetuous movement to an entire purification that makes stop this contrast of its ugliness and infinite beauty; and, restored to active life, it multiplys its atonements to erase all that is staining in it, and to extract from its bottom to the last fibers of sin.

But contemplation is not only a light that enlightens and reveals, it is still a burning fire. To cut down a forest, said Fr. Scaramelli5, you can use iron or fire. The use of iron requires more time and fatigue and leaves the roots to stand, which does not burn, it will soon be reduced to ashes, and there will hardly be any offspring left. Iron is the work of meditation; fire is the ardour of contemplation: comparison makes it clear how effective it is to remove from our soul the branches and roots of our passions.

From enlightenment and contemplative adherence still arises humility, the moral virtue that brings the creature closer to God, by making him recognize, confess and love the truth. Humility is, in fact, according to Saint Bernard t, the virtue that makes man, knowing what he is, stand as a vile man in his own eyes.

Contemplation produces as naturally in soul this knowledge and this disposition. The closer one gets to God, the more clearly one sees that everything emanates from his power and goodness, that the creature itself is a nothingness worthy of all forgetfulness, and the sinner an even more vile nothingness, which calls for contempt and punishment. This view is all the more profound and persuasive, as the light that produces it is brighter, higher, wider. In contemplation, it takes on the proportions of evidence, and evidence that believes with contemplation itself, so that the higher the soul rises in the light, the more it must tend to be subdued?, if it is faithful to truth, order and justice.

Contemplation brings with it the grace of this fidelity to the extent that it unites soul to God in the Covenant itself which constitutes it, and, after this act, in that of the impression that it exerts on the spirit and the grace of adherence that it leaves to the will.

That's why true contemplatives are as eager for lowliness and abjections as worldly people are for honors and glory. The memory of what they have seen of God, and of all that is not God, the ineffaçable feeling of their nothingness and misery, brings them to annihilate before the divine Majesty and the eyes of every creature t. This sincere effort destroys in them the selfish and personal life, the remains of their own judgment and wisdom?, renders them of perfect docility and self-denial, and in fact in the hands of God passive instruments, ready, for his love and for his glory, to all laborers and to all immolations.

The strength and patience are, in fact, inseparable from humility in the favored soul from the lights of contemplation; the feeling of his profound indignity convinces him that she deserves more contradictions, pain and contempt than it can happen to him. But Pamour does no less help to soak the contemplative soul strongly, to communicate to him an indomitable energy and untiring patience.

Love attaches to the object loved and resists all the shocks that threaten this union. When one has tasted how sweet the Lord is, one no longer wants to separate himself from his goodness, and one comes, as the Apostle è, to defy every creature to break the knot of divine charity; like THE EFFECTS 137 he ‘, one puts his joy and glory in tribulations and sufferings, because they give rise to the witness of love, because, purifying, they make more and more worthy of love?.

Finally, love for Jesus Christ crucified, after God the main object of contemplation, ignites a holy desire to become conform to this divine model, to participate in his mind and work of reparation.

The hunger and thirst for justice, which Our Lord is among the laborious beatitudes of virtue, also find in contemplation a wonderful increase.

To love righteousness is to love God, and the interview of contemplation lights in the heart the flame of divine love. God reveals himself there and communicates himself to the soul, but not in the fullness and indissolubility of glory; he shows himself and gives himself a moment to then hide his gaze and feeling. This fugitive vision and this transient contact excite the desires of the soul, which is becoming increasingly hungry and altered by the divine truth. By understanding, through what she has seen, the price of grace that Punicates to God and he is a pledge of his eternal possession, she multiplies with a holy greed the acts of virtue, which call and increase in her this grace.

As she receives and assimilates this heavenly food, her hunger and thirst repeat, for it is her own

4 Gal. vi, 14. I Cor. vu, 4.

2 ALVAREZ DE Paz, De Nat. cont. l. 5, €. 6, p. 517. But contemplation itself willingly endures tribulations and whatever adversities. For it is pleasing, for the sake of one loved, both to do great things and to endure adversities. It is also accounted a great thing to endure certain troubles, so that that sweetness perceived from the sight and love of God may increase. And the soul which above all [desires] purity, that it may be more beautiful... [text breaks off]... of wisdom, to sharpen the hunger of those who eat, and to make more ardent the thirst of those who drink at its source!

The natural backlash of this momentum towards God is the detachment and contempt of created things.

The same light that reveals the greatness of God and the price of eternal goods reveals with the same obviousness the nothing of creatures and the frivolity of what passes. Similarly, the movement that raises and makes adhere to God

TON i detachs so much of the lower things. Every contemplative soul instinctively utters the cry of Saint Ignatius: "That the earth is vile when I look at the sky!"It emerges from the bonds that hold the human multitude captive, both because it sees an servitude and a peril, and because it discovers its vanity and its caducity?

Thus, this release is carried out, without effort, by an irresistible attraction of the heart in a contrary sense, and by the only clear flash that imposes in mind the law of contempt. The more you climb, the more you move away from the lower regions; and the more ascental strength prevails over the resistance, the faster, easier, and delicious the ascent. The grace of contemplation has a wonderful, incomparable virtue to free from the tyranny of creatures and break their fascination?.

A last fruit proceeding from contemplation, and which is

Ecclus. xxiv, 29: They that eat me shall yet hunger, and they that drink me shall yet thirst.

2 Own of T.S.-Trnmé, Pars 1, Tract. 1, D. 1, s. 6.6. 2, p- 36. For he who enjoys the sweetness of contemplation turns his mind away from all temporal goods, as being inferior and unworthy, especially when, enlightened by that same contemplation, he perceives that they are wholly incompatible with the interior recollection of the mind.

35. Bervard, Medit. ©. 7, ad fin. Nil tamen in hac vita delcius Setit nil avidius AET nil it mentem amore mundi separat, nil sic animam God of an irresistible movement; all that is not _ God is disgust and boredom to him; God is the unique term of contemplative splendors, that half veiled, rarely, furtively, like a quick flash in a long Pasm, and every disappearance brings back an indefinable torment. What can she want in these alternatives, except that the light and love are no longer interrupted, and that her union with the God whom she loves becomes total, constant, irrevocable!?

Thus contemplation takes hold first of all of the soul, the pupil and staring in God, thrilling with admiration, joy and love. For its part, the soul, suavely illuminated and dominated, rests on the truth that fascinates and calms it, plunges itself as in a cleansing bath within the light that floods, forgets every creature, forgets grace and justice, eager to die and live CHAPTER VIII

CONTEMPLATION DURATION Considered in general, contemplation can last a long time. — Comme

acte, elle dure peu. — Temps précis. — Interruptions et reprises.

I. — Taking in itself and in all its operations, contemplation can last a long time. This is reflected in the nature of its object and in the provisions of the subject matter.

The object is the divine, the immutable, the eternal. He cannot fail or fail the eye that contemplates him, and by the multiplicity and depth of his aspects, he is inexhaustible.

The subject, in turn, can for a long time support his gaze on the divine things: a soul which sees, in fact, is, of itself, incorruptible and immortal, and, by the upper part of itself, it has a connatural affinity with all intellectual vision, it finds its development and its rest there; and what responds to nature and has nothing incorruptible is, by this very way, likely to be prolonged.

Moreover, contemplative operations, taken in themselves, do not entail any physical intervention or fatigue, are not subject to the suspensions and release required by organic life. We will soon see, however, that contemplation has an effect on the body that prevents its duration. This is the teaching of Saint Thomas!

, faithfully followed by mystics ? and theologians.

This doctrine is necessary, however, provided that it is understood, as well as the Suarez fact, of contemplative life with all its operations, and not of contemplative act or of this simple and uniform intuition that suspends the successive work of reasoning, and fixes the will in an affective adherence to truth.

IL. — Indeed, the Covenant itself of contemplation does not have a long duration. It is whole, we have just said, in pure intuition and in the admiring and loving suspension of the soul on the object of the vision. This is what the Angelic Doctor calls the summit or the climax of contemplation, and he declares that, considered at this climax, it cannot sustain itself for long {.

Saint Gregory the Great is one of the first doctors who clearly taught P instability of contemplative adhesion during the present life.

1 Sum. 2. 2. q. 180, a. 8. A thing can be called lasting in two ways: in one way, according to its own nature; in another way, with respect to us. In itself, indeed, it is clear that the contemplative life is lasting in two ways: in one way, because it is occupied with incorruptible and immutable things; in another way, because it has no contrary — for to the delight that is in contemplating, nothing is contrary. But with respect to us also, the contemplative life is lasting, both because it belongs to us according to the action of the incorruptible part of the soul, namely according to the intellect, whence it can endure after this life; and also because in the works of contemplation we do not labor bodily, whence we are able to persist more continuously in works of this kind.

2 ALVAREZ DE PAZ, 1. 5, P. 2, €. 11, p. 527. — Pnr. a SS. Trix. Pars 2, Trach MA D ta V6" p34.

3 De Relig. 1. 2, €. 10, n. 10 et 11, p. 163. Yet it is one thing to speak of the contemplative life together with all the activities of the mind which it embraces, another to speak of contemplation most properly so called, which consists in that uniform and simple gaze which Dionysius called circular motion. In the former sense it is rightly understood that the contemplative life is long-lasting... At vero de proprio actu contemplationis, non est possibile bomini in hac vita diu in illa actione durare.

4 Sum. 2. 2. q. 180, a. 8, ad 2. No action can long endure at its own highest pitch. But the highest point of contemplation is that it attain to the uniformity of divine contemplation, as Dionysius says. THE NETHERLANDS

That leap, he sees in their slow and successive walk an image of meditation and active life; and that of contemplation, in the rapid and short elevation by flight and jumps. Like these insects, in their impulses,

EEA SEEN E di remain little time in the air, but fall almost immediately on their feet, so soul quickly descends from the sublimitity of contemplation °.

Higher, in this same work of his Morales, the learned Pontiff affirms the impossibility for spirit to stand long in the contemplative suspension, and he assigns for reason the linfirmity of the flesh, that the brilliance of the light dazzles and that his own weight bows towards the earth ê.

These assertions, Suarez actually makes the remark #,

39:20: Will you startle him like the locusts?

2 Moral. 1. 31, €. 25, n. 49, t. 76, col. 600. Such indeed are holy men, who, while seeking after heavenly things, first rest upon the good works of the active life, and then at last raise themselves in flight to the heights by the leap of contemplation. They fix their legs and put forth their wings, because by acting rightly they steady themselves, and by right living are lifted up on high. Those placed in this life cannot remain long in divine contemplation, but, after the manner of locusts, catch themselves back onto their feet from the leap they had made, when after the heights of contemplation they return to the necessities of the active life.

3 Moral. 1. 5, €. 39, n. 57 et ©. 33, n. 58, t. 75, col. 711. But when the mind is suspended in contemplation, when, overcoming the straits of the flesh, it discerns through the power of speculation something of the freedom of inward security, it cannot stand long above itself; because although the spirit raises it to the heights, the flesh still presses it downward by the very weight of its corruption. Whence it is also added: "And when the Spirit passed before me, the hairs of my flesh stood up." (Job 4:15.) — The Spirit passes before us when we come to know invisible things; and yet we see these not steadily, but in a fleeting glimpse. For the mind is not long fixed in the sweetness of inward contemplation, because, struck back by the very immensity of the light, it is recalled to itself. And when she tastes the inner sweetness, she burns with love, and strives to go beyond herself; but broken, she falls back into the darkness of her weakness, etc.

It must be considered that Gregory does not absolutely deny that the contemplative life can be lasting, or more lasting than the active; but he teaches that it cannot always be uniform... [text garbled/interleaved with a French passage: '...taken as a whole, may be prolonged for a long time; the mind's intent gaze, which cannot always be kept wholly and uniformly.']

The man's organization opposes it. This is, in fact, the body, that they co-operate in each of their operations, the body living only by soul, and the soul associating the body, through feeling, with its life of thought and love. Any derogation from this law seems to compromise the union between the two men's parties, and by dividing them, throws them into violence and malaise.

Indeed the theft of contemplation removes the soul from the region of the senses, suspends in it all discursive work and absorbs by a simple view of an invisible and supernatural higher world. The sensitive part suffers, less by the effort it exerts than by the neglect to which it is subjected, extreme violence t.

With the malaise of abstention, contemplation also imposes on the body fatigue of work. There is no contradiction here, with movement and rest taking place from various points of view.

While, on the one hand, the soul absorbed by divine vision leaves the external senses in inaction, it continues to preside over vital functions and exert its influence on the whole body. And this backlash of the soul's intimate operations on the envelope that it animates is all the more resounding, as life moves inside, more intense and more impetuous. As always, intellectual activity affects the brain, and affectionate impulses echo the heart, mainly when drunkenness bursts outside. One can judge by what happens in ecstasy, where the body reflects with admirable vivacity illumination and interior transport. If, after these upheavals, the organization finds itself without fatigue, it is simply a miraculous effect.

It would therefore take a kind of continuous miracle for body forces to suffice for the prolonged emotions of contemplative life. Ge prodigy, moreover, which takes place in the delights, does not also occur at all degrees of mystical prayer, which sometimes makes it necessary a suspension of contemplation!, as we have already pointed out in one of the previous chapters.

Thus the body obstructs the continuity of contemplative abstraction, either because of the part that it takes, or mainly because of the one refused to it; for a being is less violent by excess of action, when it is in conformity with its nature, than by the very suspension of the movement that makes its life.

The still traveling soul itself has difficulty maintaining itself for a long time in the intensity of action and elevation where contemplation the door. After reaching its peak, any movement tends to come down and slow down?, to resume its race under impulse II. — The suspensive adherence of contemplation lasts little; but what is the precise time of its duration?

Saint Térèse said of the prayer of quietness, which was granted to her from her first year of religion, that "this union lasted very little; I don't even know, if it was the time of a Ave Maria."And elsewhere, speaking of the theft of mind, "It is to be noticed, at least in my opinion, that this suspension of all powers never lasts long; it is much when it goes up to half an hour, and I don't think it has lasted so long?"

Before Saint Teresus, the unknown author of the book OF THE MANIÈRE DE BIEVEN VIVRE, falsely attributed to Saint Bernard, applies to contemplation what is said, in Revelation*, of the mysterious silence which occurred in heaven, for about half an hour, after opening the seventh seal?.

Suarez *, as well as most theologians and mystics, invokes this testimony and that of Saint Gregory, to establish the short duration of contemplation. Bossuet, in particular, maintained these traditional claims in his struggle against false mystics. After quoting Saint Teresus, he still alleged the authority of St Augustine, St Gregory, St Bernard, St Thomas and others whom he did not name, and he conordinates very short!

However some authors grant Fier Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité assigns, not half an hour, but an hour, as the extreme limit which is not usually exceeded °.

Alvarez de Paz, while admitting as a general rule that contemplation is of short duration, except for extraordinary cases that meet more than once in the lives of the saints. The divine overabundance makes easy what is impossible to the forces of nature, and even what exceeds the conditions of ordinary grace. ă

Suarez * makes the same remark, and rightly observes

1 Mystici in tuto, P. 1, ¢. 7, n. 14. In this passage she (St. Teresa) relates her own experiences; for us, however, it suffices that these acts are rapid and swift, which St. Augustine, Gregory, Bernard, Thomas, and others likewise always insist upon. Those very brief moments are evidence of an extraordinary divine operation.

2 Theol. myst. Pt. 2, Tract. 1, D. 1, a. 6, vol. 5, p. 35: It is nevertheless true that contemplation cannot long endure at its height in the state of mortal life, because the necessities and occupations of the present life disturb the mind, and call it back from its inmost retreat to outward things; hence, although in so perfect an act it scarcely perseveres for an hour, at least ordinarily, it can nevertheless persevere in other acts of contemplation.

But let us return to perfect contemplation. And indeed in it, if we are helped only by the common aids by which those praying are wont to be helped, it is certain that the mind cannot endure for a long time... These are the common [aids]; but if the soul is uplifted by extraordinary aids, it is no less certain that it can persist for a long time in most perfect contemplation and be held in suspension by one simple intuition and one act of divine love. We have learned this from the report of certain men of most approved virtue, who constantly affirm that for one or several hours of the day or night they persist in perfect union with God and in an unchanging knowledge and love of God, with unspeakable sweetness. We read this in the histories of the saints, for the contemplation of some is described in such a way that it seems to bear this out. Such was that of the great Anthony, etc... This finally we presume concerning the divine kindness toward his dearest ones, who is able and willing to move their understandings, not indeed against nature, but to perfect them above nature... What nature, then, denies, grace grants; and what man does not obtain by common assistance, he attains by singular aids,

4 De Orat. €. 10, n. 13, p. 164. It is true, however, that this whole matter depends chiefly on divine grace, to which nothing is impossible; but we explain it according to what seems consonant with nature, and thus ordinary. The exceptions, however, do not invalidate the rule, and one may admit as a principle that contemplation is of short duration, and that it rarely exceeds half an hour.

IV. — The weight of mortality therefore does not allow the soul to maintain itself for a long time in the passive adhesion which suspends. any discursive act; but contemplation, for a moment interrupted, can soon resume, under the charm of a new attraction, in such a way that it seems to constitute, despite the succession and variety of acts, one and the same operation. According to St.Grégoire, Pâme delighted in God, as the locusts to which he compares her, rises for a moment, falls on herself to soon resume her flight and fall again.

Thus contemplation slows down and rekindles, according to the spirit of God. These repeated repetitions, in which intervals the soul finds itself only incompletely, as a person who awakens half under the external excitement, and returns to his sleep, whole days, even weeks. Cassian? reports that St.Antoine spent the nights in contemplation, and that at dawn he complained in the sun of what he soon came to interrupt his sweet union with the true Light.

Later we will propose with more expanse the remarkable interpretation of Saint Teresus! on alternatives to ecstasy: it applies from any point to contemplation in general, and is reduced to this: At the height of union, the powers of the soul are fixed, together with the will, on the object of the vision. Gradually the adhesion relaxes, the flying faculties of imagination and understanding resume their course, without the will, less inconstant, being entirely detached. But a new attraction, caused by a resurgence of light or by acts of praise, actions of grace, desire, can occur and bring back the will and powers impereled to suspensive adherence.

Suarez provides a slightly different, or at least more extensive, explanation. Contemplation, according to the famous theologian, can extend beyond its peak in two ways, either by one or the other of its two constituent elements, intuition and love. As the gaze perseveres, pure and simple, the will engages in various acts: worship, praise, gratitude, love, admiration and similar. Similarly, as the mind moves from one point to another, the heart remains fixed and motionless, or at least does not detach itself entirely. When the contemplative suspension of all powers ceases, the adhesion is not necessarily interrupted in each of them; the soul can hold itself long on its object, sometimes by the constant fixedness of the mind being greater than that of the will, rather it is in it that the adhesion goes on!.

In short, the proper act of contemplation is fleeting and rapid; but the suspension of powers can be renewed several times, before they have all been completely detached. More importantly, is contemplative life, considered as a whole and in the multiplicity of its movements, likely to constitute a permanent state.

1 Suarez, l. 2, de Orat. c. 10, n. 13, p. 164. That this operation, then, may become in some way lasting, it is necessary that above all love be joined to that intention. And I think it is very rare for the mind to rest for long in one simple, continuous act of love without any change, because it naturally delights in variety and change. For if the operation remains unvaried, it is scarcely perceived by the one performing it, and so it neither brings the soul rest nor delight. Therefore love itself is always either kindled or renewed, or exercised through new acts... And these acts can vary in the will, while the same gaze of the intellect remains fixed, if the affections themselves are occupied with that same object in different ways and for different reasons. But sometimes, and more often, regarding that truth which the mind contemplates, it works at the same time through the gifts of the Holy Spirit: illuminating that truth for itself, confirming it, and rendering it lovable. The experience of the very affections that are felt in contemplation itself is usually of the greatest help toward this. And in this way I judge contemplation to be often long-lasting; but perseverance in one simple act to be rare. CHAPITRE IX

THE SUBJECT OF THE CONTEMPLATION Required Perfection: In principle, contemplation is granted only to

and to the perfect; it can meet in the beginnings and

les progressants. — No honest condition excludes contemplative life. — Preferences for simple people, — women, — virgins

chrétiennes, — des religieuses.

Į. — The subject of contemplation can be considered from the two points of view of the acquired perfection and the external condition.

What perfection presupposes the grace of contemplation in the soul that receives it?

In order to respond accurately, it is necessary to distimulate between act and habit of contemplation.

The isolated act is reduced to one or a few visions, either imaginary or intellectual. We will say later, and we are already saying here, that intellectual vision is generally granted only to the perfect, but that the imaginary vision can be met in still fabled souls, in sinners, and even in unfaithful ones; and so, that transient contemplative acts are not: incompatible with imperfection and sin.

It is not the same of contemplation envisaged as a state of prayer. The peculiarity of this prayer is to be one-sided. It not only illuminates intelligence, it did not exist, it seems that it would operate by virtue. When the will is united with God through love, it cannot at the same time be separated from it by hatred: there would be a clear contradiction there.

By admitting that the inseparability of justice and contemplation may be challenged in the early stages of supernatural prayer, when God only reveals his presence, it cannot be challenged in the higher degrees that bring to the soul, until clearly, the feeling of his union with God.

Not only is the usual and unitive contemplation addressed to the righteous and not to sinners, but in general it is granted only to the perfect ones.

And this, first, because it is the most beautiful and sweetest reward that God can grant to those who serve it with love; and, although it depends entirely on his goodness to give his gifts to whomever he wants, it nevertheless seems more appropriate whether it is to the most worthy and most willing souls!

Second, because the exercise of contemplative prayer requires, if it is only acquired, a great work of holiness and a long habit of meditation; and, when it is infuse, passive purifications more or less intense, in the first sense and from the first ascension; then, in the spirit, if it is called to the higher degrees of union. All this assumes that before reaching contemplation the soul is raised above the coarse struggles of the original virtue, that it is more flexible and more clear than it is from the first steps in the illuminative path, and that it has arrived or touched the calm of the united life t.

However, this grace, God gives it to whomever he wants, and while he often refuses it to the perfect, he sometimes grants to the beginnings?. But then it is a sign that God wants to lead certain souls, still weak and languishing, to a high perfection, by the gentle and rapid way of contemplative life °.

It should not be concluded that God grants this grace from childhood, that the souls who receive it are still in the first efforts of virtue: God raises to his will at the highest peaks, without any prior merit. And then, innocent souls are especially the object of divine complacency and intimate effusions of grace. Blessed Osanne of Mantua receives the gift of contemplation barely six years old. * Blessed Christine of Stommeln was engaged at the age of ten, for an ecstasy of three days; and the first apparitions of Our Lord began for this privileged child at the age of five*. The historian of the venerable Mary of Agréda tells that she received very sublime illuminations from her first childhood. These kinds of examples are so numerous that they don't count.

It is especially for those souls who have been warned so early that contemplation is the proclamation of an eminent holiness, provided, however, that they will be faithful to the prevenances of God's goodness.

Let us add, with Philip of the Most Holy Trinity?, that when God grants this grace to the imperfect, it is by mercy, to wean them more effectively from the false meekness of the world and to make them move them forward with a rapid step towards holiness; and that, when he refuses it to the perfect, it is still out of mercy, wanting to leave them the merit of effort and combat; for, better than we, he knows what is appropriate for the salvation of each one and for his own glory.

IĮ. — As for the various human conditions, none of them exclude contemplative life, provided that it was nothing incompatible with honesty and holiness. Men and women, scholars and ignorant people, the poor and rich, married people and those who observe continence, secular and religious, priests and simple faithful, all, in a word, regardless of the rank they occupy, the functions they perform, their education and their way of life, can be called to rest and to the honor of contemplation. Here, God owes nothing to anyone; he gives to whom he pleases, and his infinite liberality, in accord with his wisdom, hovers above the reserves, disdain and impossibility of worldly prudence. [ES l DE LA CONTEMPLATION]

Saint Gregory the Great, mystically explaining the description of the temple by Ezekiel, hears the many windows that opened all around, face and obliquely, on all the inner parts and even in the vestibule, of the light of contemplation, which God makes shine upon whom he wishes, with a diversity that disconcertes human predictions and judgments, sometimes on those who are at the top of the hierarchy, sometimes on the members of the poor and obscure Church: no condition, no office, no grandeur, no smallness, insuring nor excluding from this divine illumination, always unforeseen and sovereignly free.

Of all the states, the least suitable for these kinds of communications that hold more from heaven than from earth is that of marriage, because it binds as by duty to the creature, to work and to the concerns of working life. And yet, even in the bonds and servitudes of conjugal life, can meet the grace of the highest contemplation.

Our century has offered us a remarkable example in the venerable Anna-Maria Taigi, to whom God has given, in the midst of the duties and duties of motherhood, the most extraordinary gifts of contemplative life. "His heart, these superhuman attractions which belong to the Church only to the great contemplatives, and which formed in the mystical school, in the midst of the most austere virtues, the most holyly tender and tenderly loving souls. An ignorant and poor woman, but faithful to grace, became the emule of Saint Teresus, Saint Bonaventure,

\k Saint John of the Cross... When she went into prayer, the delight was as natural to her as it is to us as a simple prayer, and her soul was so seized, that it would have been said that she would have wanted to get out of her body."

IHI. — Although contemplation is not prohibited on any honest condition, God nevertheless seems to affect preferences.

According to Gerson?, the simple move forward in mystical theology, which he declares elsewhere to be one with contemplation, faster and deeper by the exercise of faith, hope and charity, than the scholars paid in the study of scholastic and discursive theology. The cause he assigns is that their minds are less troubled by the noise of opinions and diverse thoughts, and that God loves to communicate to the humble and the small, while he treads the pretensions of the superb ones.

Saint Diègue or Didace °, first pâtre, then brother lai in the order of Saint Francis, joined with admirable simplicity the gift of a very high contemplation and almost cons1 The Ven. servant of God Anna-Maria Taigi, by Fr. Gabriel Bouffier, 4865 , 1.2, c. 13, p.120 -et 421.

2 De myst. Theol. et ejus elucid. cons. 9, col. 469. Stat simplices idiotas ` ~ tinuelle. We could cite in many such examples; for it is a constant fact that most contemplatives were devoid of any literary culture, and without any instruction other than that of the mysteries of faith, God putting a kind of jealousy to be their only master, and pleasing himself to teach everything to pure and humble souls, who want to know nothing but by him and only him.

Science, says St Thomas!, brings man to trust in himself, and, on the other hand, not to give himself completely to God; hence it results that it sometimes becomes an obstacle to devotion; but, when science joins the moral qualities that make avoid this pitfall, far from reducing fervour, study can only increase.

The same must be said of contemplation, under penalty of the condemnation against Michel Molinos?, which claimed that the theologian had less ability to contemplative state than the ignorant man, for several reasons, who may occasionally be true, but who, erected in principles and absolutely affirmed, are false, insulting to science and to scientists.

IV. - Another equally certain preference is in favour of women.

In the third part, we will point out the just mistrusts and wise precautions that women's stories, including SUBJECT 157, require on this subject.

To is eager for emotion, brilliance, influence. This is no less an undeniable fact that they have the greatest share in the extraordinary graces of mystical life, and in particular of contemplation.

Saint Térèse! declares that the number of women to whom the number of men; and to her own experience, she adds the authority of St Peter of Alcantara, who attested to her that the people of sex are moving far more than men in these ways.

There are several reasons for this preference. In general, women are less distracted than men by external occupations of study, business, and are better disposed, therefore, to the silence and rest of contemplative life. On the other hand, their innocence, protected by natural modesty, is better preserved, and brings them closer to God, who communicates with preference to pure souls. Third, their sensitive and affectionate organization makes them more flexible with supernatural impulses, or, if desired, makes them offer less resistance to the action of love. divine, which is the dominant character of contemplation. There is a more pronounced negative provision than it is usually in men. The feeling of the native weakness of their mind predisposes them to a more faithful and confident adherence to the inner light of God's spirit, and the inconstancy of their will has a special need for extraordinary help that fixes them in the good and raises them to holiness.

From these considerations, we borrow the substance from P. Scaramelli?, perhaps we could add the following: = is that God pours more spiritual sweetness upon women and calls them to a greater participation of free graces, to compensate for the deprivation of priestly grace that they cannot receive.

V. — Among women, the best part of the gifts of contemplative life belongs to the Christian virgins.

Through these Christian virgins, we do not hear people who live in Christianity without materially losing their bodily integrity, but only those who keep this treasure only to consecrate it to the Bridegroom of souls, Jesus Christ Our Lord. The Holy Fathers! teach that true virginity resides more in the soul than in the body, more in the resolution to love than God, than in the abstention of external pleasures.

This voluntary release of sensitive voluptuousness raises to the condition of the angels, and even above, according to the remark of St John Chrysostom °, since the angels, having no body, can only be immaculate, while rio... hujusmodi dona mulieribus reapse uberius impertiri quam viris. Talis est experientia omnium temporum, quæ confirmatur ctiam ratione... Women are more disposed to contemplation and to all the graces of the contemplative life, or, to speak more fittingly, less indisposed to it than men. For by nature woman is already more inclined than man to love, which is the principle and foundation of contemplation... This first disposition to contemplation is accompanied in women by a second, which is more precious than the first and governs it, namely an inclination to devotion and piety. Rightly are women honored by holy mother Church with the title of the devout sex. From this natural disposition to piety and devotion is born a love of solitude, and especially of an innocent life. Not rarely are girls found who keep the robe of their innocence unstained; but rarely young men who have not yet lost the innocence received in baptism. But where innocence is present, other virtues also flourish, all of which dispose one to receive the graces of God. To all these reasons a final one can be added, drawn from the weakness of woman: since by nature women are weak, fragile, timid, inconstant, following imagination more than intellect, and taking counsel of feeling more than of reason, it seems necessary that, if God wishes to raise any one of them to sanctity, he must employ extraordinary means.

Basin. lib. de Virginit. — Hierox. In cap. 7 Jerem. — Epist. xxm. — l. t adv. Jovin. — Avevsr. lib. de Virgin. — Grecor. L 8 Moral., 30.

Z Lib. of Virgin. ©. 10. that it is difficult to live in pure spirit in a corruptible and revolting flesh. Who sees how much this clearance predisposes to the glorious ascension of contemplation?

Add to this that one cannot reach and stand at these heights where the senses remain silent, only by a constant application to prayer; and the faithful practice of prayer, together with a great purity of heart, is, of all the preparations, the most suitable for introducing into contemplative life.

Finally, Jesus Christ loves with special love the souls who renounce the pleasures and servitudes of the flesh so that he may be their only husband: should they not come first in the most brilliant testimonies that this kind Saviour can give in this world of his predilection, that is, in these mystical communications which are a foretaste of heaven?

VI. — Finally, among the Christian virgins, one must point out a privileged category, on which God spreads with a kind of magnificence the effects of contemplative grace: it is the one who has taken refuge in the cloisters, to dedicate himself to the love of God and to the meditation of eternal thoughts.

Everything in these holy asylums contributes to the realization of the release of the soul that has at its disposal the flight of contemplation: the separation and contempt of the world, the silence, the repeated meditations, the frequent use of the divine Eucharist, the usual renunciation of the own will by obedience, the stripping of external goods by poverty, the subjugation of the flesh by the vow of perpetual continence and by body macerations of all kinds. Under these rigours, willingly and joyfully accepted, of religious discipline, nature succumbs; the spirit, on the contrary, finds its momentum and something of the freedom of the angel; for one can hear from monastic life what 160 OF THE CONTEMPLATION Saint John Climaque! said of chastity: "He who has overcome his body or his flesh has conquered nature; he who has conquered nature is above nature, and he who is above nature is very near to angels, I almost dare say that he does not differ in anything from angels."

Man, though less disposed by nature to contemplation, finds himself prepared by this work which substitutes supernatural life for the inclinations of the senses. Saint Anthony, Saint Arsene, Saint Hilarion, Saint Pacôme, in the desert; Saint Benedict, Saint Bruno, Saint Francis of Assisi, in the solitude of the cloister, were contemplative. But it is above all the woman whom religious life transforms and raises as without effort to the sublime and suave abstractions of contemplative life. Under the persevering action of these many powerful means of sanctification, the woman, already naturally more pudic and more passive than the man, desecrates completely, and soon he survives only the sensitivity, love, devotion in what they have more exquisitely, and concentrated in God alone. The supernatural light only shines in its soul; it is ready to receive it and to simmer its rays.

This preparation, it completes, is linked to the grace of contemplation neither logically nor by God's promise: everything here remains free and dependent on divine goodwill.

We will not finish these indications on the ordinary subjects of contemplation, without making a special mention of the heroic penitents and pious widows, who find in the tears of humility the privileges that God gives to holy virginity. Marie-Madeleine, Thais, Zoe, Pelagia, Marguerite de Cortona, among the converted sins; Saint Brigitte, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the venerable Mary of Oignies, Saint Angèle de Foligno, Saint Chantal, among the widows; and many others, in one and the other condition, which we do not name, are memorable examples of the mystical favors that God CHAPTER X

THE DEGREES OF THE EXISTING CONTEMPLATION AND EUMERATION OF THOSE MISCELLANEOUS DEGREES Gradual step of contemplation. — Dieu garde sa liberté. — Difficultés d'une classification. — Nomenclatures diverses : Richard de Saint-Victor, — Saint Bonaventure, — Gerson, — Sainte Térèse, — Saint François de

Sales, — Alvarez de Paz, — Philip of the Most Holy Trinity, — Joseph

Lopez Ezquerra, — Saint Alphonse de Liguori, — Fr. Godinez et le

P. Schram, — le P. Scaramelli, — Classification définitive.

I. — Contemplation follows an ascending step, and gradually invades the soul. These successive degrees make up various states in mystical prayer.

It is the providential order that the creature gradually rises to the perfection to which it is destined. God observes this law of time in his action on finite beings, to produce them, to govern them and to perfect them, and to subject all nature to it. The brightest day is announced by weak lights that grow to the full light of the noon. All living beings come from a germ where life is hidden, and where it comes from by slow and insensitive efforts. In essence, this law is universal, for every contingent existence has a beginning, a continuation and an end.

If this is the case with creation and nature, why else would it be the perfect supernatural and mystical action at birth, and only happens through successive increments at its completion."

Experience attests, in fact, that contemplation, like purely natural operations, appears as a germ, develops through various peripets, and is consumed in a supreme embrace of divine charity. Anyone who has seen the souls under this mysterious work of grace has seen these multiple and varied elevations, as difficult to characterize as to ignore. That is why all mystics admit in contemplative prayer successive states or increasing degrees which are as many steps towards the consumption of love.

II. — God, who never alienates his freedom of action, when he judges it appropriate, passes from this law of succession, both in the order of grace, by raising a soul, suddenly and without transition, from the abyss of sin to the highest peaks of perfection, as in that of nature through miracles. Mystical gradation, therefore, is not an absolute, inexorable law; God derogates from it at his own discretion. Through the powerful action of grace, he transports souls, according to the purposes of his liberality and wisdom, from the bottom of the ladder to the very dot of spiritual life; he sometimes lets them move forward slowly, and then makes them run by giant steps towards consumption.

1 S. Grec. Moral. l. 22, c. 19, n. 45. But among these things it must be known that, when we ponder the precepts of that same sacred Word, and when we turn the mind away from love of this corruptible life, we hasten, as it were by certain footsteps of the heart, toward the things within. But no one, by abandoning weak things, suddenly becomes the highest, because in order to obtain the merit of perfection — while the mind is daily led on high — one arrives at this, without doubt, as if by certain steps of an ascent.

2 In 1 Ep. Joann. Tract. 5, n. 4. But [illegible] — as soon as it is born, is charity perfect? In order to be perfected, it is born; when it has been born, it is nourished; when it has been nourished, it is strengthened; when it has been strengthened, it is perfected; when it comes to perfection... [text breaks off] At other times, they are seen to cross the first distances in unaccustomed leaps, and then to remain stationary or to follow a gradual progression through the intermediate degrees.

"It may seem," said Saint Terèse!, referring to mystical ascents, "that in order to reach this new home it is necessary to have been in others for a long time. Although, for the ordinary, it is true that we must have passed through the one we have just spoken of, there is nevertheless no certain rule, you have heard many times; and this, because God gives when he pleases him, as he pleases him and as he pleases him; these things being his, he does not harm anyone."

We would therefore be wrong, as noted by Fr. Godinez?, if one wanted to apply to contemplation the absolute laws of logic and science. The spirit of God is not bound by any necessity in the operations of grace; it gives and withdraws, it pushes or retains, at the heart of its love; as the Scripture says, "the Spirit breaths wherever it wants."But, whatever the exceptions, the rule remains, and according to this rule, contemplative life advances in successive degrees, from the first seizing to the supreme absorption of love.

IE. — These gradual ascensions, how can we distinguish them, to see them in the depths of souls +?

Nature's beings, especially living beings, develop and walk towards their destiny through an imperceptible series of variations and transformations. In the impotence where one is to grasp them one by one and number them, one groups them into a few distinct phases, the more notable differences of which can be easily appreciated and stated. The work of vegetation, for example, is diversified by germination, flowering and fruiting; human life takes place in successive periods of childhood, youth, mature age and old age.

This is the case with mystical life. The divine influence, which subjugates, cleanses, raises and divinates the soul, is accomplished by infinite gradations'. Recognizing them all and counting them is as impossible as it is to follow the development of the germ, the flowers and the fruits from the eye; but as in natural germination and human life, one can surprise sufficiently appreciable and constant variations, which for us are diverse and distinct states.

This classification presents extreme difficulties.

The first arises from the very nature of the operations which are to be grouped and qualified. If it is difficult to distinguish and reduce into formulas the changes of the material world that fall under the senses, how much more will it be to extend his gaze to these mysterious depths of the soul, where God operates by wrapping veils? There is probably a sensitive resounding in the consciousness; 466 OF THE CONTEMPLATION, but, besides that the feeling belongs exclusively to the subject who is experiencing, this order of emotions is so different from those given by nature, that it is not known how to find a faithful expression in human language.

To this difficulty is added, for most theologians who seek to grasp the laws of Mystics, that of the personal experience of these divine passions. They know them only by reading or by the confidences of souls who walk in these ways. How can we describe a path that has never been travelled, and whose various aspects, despite the exact descriptions, if one wishes, remain nevertheless, for those who have not seen or felt, impenetrable puzzles?

God's diversity in the same kind of phenomena complicates the generalization that formulates laws; and, when these laws are strictly stated, their application to the particular cases that they govern. But the variety of divine action is perhaps greater in the free influences of the mystical order than in those of nature and ordinary grace. Hence an increase in shadows and complications.

All these difficulties brought together lead to one last, the most disturbing and perhaps the most insurmountable, namely, the differences of theologians in enumeration of the degrees of contemplation. What happens to a question that can only be decided by authority, and on which the masters themselves are strangely divided?

The extent of these darks can be judged by the brief description of some of the most famous classifications. We indicate them here, not for the pleasure of reporting shadows, but to prepare a more luminous and well-founded solution; or at least to reconcile Pindulgence with the impartial reader. Richard de Saint-Victor, one of the most illustrious representatives of mystic theology.

The first title is: DEGREES OF CHARITY; it is insurmountable in combat, insatiable in enjoyment, indefatigable in vision, inseparable in union ?.

The other, entitled: FOUR DEGREES OF VIOLENT CHARITY, Or violence of charity, is more explicit, and brings to four the degrees of charity, namely: engagement, marriage, union and fertility.

To the first degree, God presents himself to soul, and the soul returns to itself. In the second, the soul rises above itself and ascends to God. In the third, it is fully absorbed into God. In the fourth, she leaves her rest to engage in action and to spend herself for the God she loves.

Of these four ascensions only two interest contemplative prayer, namely: the second, which introduces the soul into contemplation, and the third, in which, under the fire of contemplation, the soul transforms and liquefies itself. The first degree refers to simple meditation, and the last to active life exercises.

In short, Richard de Saint-Victor's purpose in these two treatises on charity was only to indicate the general characteristics and the ascending step of spiritual perfection, and not to describe the various forms of contemplation.

V.— Saint Bonaventure, or the author of the opusculum entitled: SEVEN DEGREES OF THE CONTEMPLATION, counts, as this title indicates, seven degrees, which he calls: fire, anointing, ecstasy, contemplation, taste, rest and glory.

The first six can be reached during the journey, not suddenly, but gradually; the last is reserved for the homeland?.

VI. — Gerson applies to mystical theology and prayer the three properties and gradations of love in general, which are: to delight, unify and satisfy.

1 De quatuor grad. viol. char. col. 1217. In the first it enters by meditation, in the second it ascends by contemplation, in the third it is led back in jubilation, in the fourth it goes forth by compassion.

On the seven degrees of contemplation. Vivès, t. 12, p. 183. I have judged that the seven degrees — all the more glorious the more they are proven by the knowledge of experience — should be set forth here... Let us then call the first fire; the second, unction; the third, ecstasy; the fourth, contemplation; the fifth, taste; the sixth, quiet; the seventh, glory. For first the soul is set afire; being afire, it is anointed; being anointed, it is ravished; being ravished, it beholds or contemplates; contemplating, it tastes; tasting, it rests. These can be acquired in this life, yet not suddenly, but by degrees. But he who exercises himself more frequently in spiritual things experiences these more quickly. The seventh is bestowed more abundantly in the homeland upon those who have exercised themselves in the preceding degrees.

3 Myst. theol. specul. P. 7, consid. 35, t. 3, col. 390. The rational spirit, like a sailor instructed by mystical theology, arrives from the sea of sensuality at the shore of eternity — that is, from carnal things to spiritual things — only when the Lord calls and secret inspirations drive the sail of the mind... This too becomes clearer from the properties of love, of which it will suffice for the present to touch upon three. For love ravishes, unites, satisfies. First, indeed, love ravishes toward the beloved, and thence produces ecstasy. Secondly, love joins with the beloved and makes them, as it were, one. Thirdly, it suffices to itself, and seeks nothing besides loving... (Consid. 43, col. 396.) The properties and conditions of love and of mystical theology stated above can fittingly be ascribed also to perfect prayer. The reason for this is that in the contemplative soul, love, and mystical theology, and perfect prayer, either are the same thing, or presuppose one another. LES DEGRÉS 169

In the developments he gives to these statements, Gerson places ecstasy and ravishing to the first degree, union to the second?, and transformation to the third ?. Among the effects of union, he pointed to peace of mind.

VII. — Holy Teresus, authority without rival in matters of contemplation, described in detail in his works the ascensional march of supernatural prayer.

In a valuable letter to Fr. Rodrigue Alvarez, of the Society of Jesus, one of her confessors, the saint enumerates the various states in which she passed. It signals inner recollection, quietness, sleep of powers, union, which can only reach the will or extend to all powers; suspension and rapture, which it distinguishes from rapt°; the theft of mind and Pimpetuousness of the mind?; the wound of love, which precedes, ditelle, ravishes and impetuous movements. She speaks, in finishing, of a mode of prayer which is like the prelude of contemplation, and which she says to be a presence of God unaccompanied by vision, and which consists in a very great ease of putting herself before God$.

In her VIE written by herself, the virgin seraphic of Carmel describes the prayer of recollection and quietness, that of union ‘, of delight and ecstasy!!, and indicates, as one of the most remarkable effects of rapture, -I theft of spirit! of which she seems to make a special mode of prayer.

The PERFECTION CHECK deals with the prayer of collection?; but perhaps it is the active collection rather than the infused collection. The prayer of tranquillity is described at length, and also that of union and pleasure.

It is mainly in his DEMERES, or Inner Castle, that Saint Teresus exposes the gradual ascension of the soul to God. Each degree forms a new home.

The first dwelling is that of souls who, snatching to sin by the knowledge of their memes and of God, attain to the grace of justification, but are still in the attachments and concerns of the century. The second contains the souls to whom God gives the grace to understand and feel that they must come out of the first, and who do not know how to break with the opportunities that hold them. The third is characterized by serious work of virtue and generous momentum towards perfection. In the fourth, the soul, after having tasted the suavities and contentments of meditation, passes to the prayer of contemplation! and to that of tranquillity. The fifth residence is reserved for union prayer. The sixth includes the trials and wounds of love, which precede, accompany or follow the delights, among which is reported, for its excellence and sublimitity, the theft of mind ©. Finally, in the seventh and fourth

DEGREED - + > A7 last dwelling, the soul is united to God through spiritual marriage.

One can see, by the rapid analysis of that of his writings in which Saint Teresus expressly deals with the gradual ascension of the soul in the perfect ways, that the contemplative prayer appears only in the fourth dwelling, that it begins with recollection and quietness, continues with union, the wound of love and delight, and is consumed in spiritual marriage.

VII. — Saint Francis de Sales composed his TREATY OF GOD'S LOVE to guide his dear daughters of the Visitation and the souls taken from holy love in the extraordinary ways. Although his descriptions seem to relate more to active contemplation than to infuse prayer, the characters he assigns can absolutely fit one and the other. It is not doubtful at least that he does not touch passive union when he talks about ecstasy and rapture.

Now, this is the gradation indicated by the Holy Bishop of Geneva in the progress of contemplative prayer. In the first place appears the recollection!, the tranquillity succeeds him, and presents different forms: the simple rest, the silence, the drunkenness?; then come the flow or the liquefaction ê, the wound of love +, the languor of love; and finally the union, which includes the simple union and the ecstatic union*.

IX. — Le P. Alvarez de Paz, who treated this matter with extreme care and authority of the greatest masters, counts fifteen degrees that he deduces from the various denominations used by the ascetic authors to designate contemplation.

These names and degrees are!: intuition of the truth, retreat or inner concentration of the forces of the soul, silence, rest, union, hearing of the word of God, spiritual sleep, ecstasy, delight, body appearance, imaginary appearance, intellectual vision, divine darkness, manifestation of God, intuitive vision of God.

To each or most of these degrees comes the sensitive suavity that accompanies them.

X. — Le P. Philip of the Most Holy Trinity lists six main degrees of passive prayer: recollection, quietness, ordinary union, divine impulse, delight, spiritual marriage?.

The disciple of St. Térèse notes that the other degrees that are usually attached to the preceding ones, such as visions and words, are only circumstances that accompany these elates. *

1 De grad. contempl. 1. 5, P. 3, Introd., t. 6, p. 542: Nam quæ de hac materia ex Patribus et viris spiritualibus indefesso studio decerpsi, iterum intensissime legam et nunquam ante præviam orationem aliquid scribam... I find, then, fifteen names pertaining to contemplation among ascetical writers, which seem to me to designate as many degrees of contemplation.

These are: 1° intuition of truth; 2° withdrawal of the powers of the soul into the interior; 3° silence; 4° quiet; 5° union; 6° hearing the speech of God; 7° spiritual sleep; 8° ecstasy; 9° rapture; 10° bodily apparition; 11° imaginary apparition; 12° spiritual beholding; 13° divine darkness; 14° manifestation of God; 15° the intuitive vision of God.

Ac tandem agendum est de suavitate sensibili quæ his omnibus gradibus aut pluribus eorum solet adjungi.

2 Sum. Theol. myst. P. 3. Tract. 3. D. 3, a. 5, t. 3, p. 103. The first degree, then, is in the prayer of recollection; the second, in the prayer of quiet; the third, in the prayer of ordinary union; the fourth, in the prayer of impulse; the fifth, in the prayer of rapture; the sixth and highest, in the prayer of special union, which occurs in the spiritual marriage; although these are not spoken of in exactly the same order, but with the order slightly altered, according to the demands of the subject matter.

3 Jb. Other degrees of prayer are usually assigned, which, however, are rather certain accompanying circumstances of the aforesaid... Deus alloquitur alitique, under this title: MISCELLANEOUS DEGREES OF THE SURNATURAL CONTEMPLATION. This score is not of interest to contemplative states, we do not have to report them here.

XI. — Joseph Lopez Ezquerra, one of the most famous Spanish mystics, who composed his MYSTICAL LAMP at the end of the 19th century, lists the supernatural and infused gifts that God makes to souls. Without distinguishing them from contemplation, or confounding them absolutely with it, he places them in the following order: Visions and their species?; the different kinds of supernatural words*; revelations; mystical sensations *; infuse touches 5; the gift of tears, the spiritual impetuousness $; organic failure *; ecstasy!°: ravishing"; mystical sleep or death °; drunkenness and healthy madness of mind #; God's inextinguishable thirst ‘; the divine tongue #; the wound or wound of love'; engagements"; spiritual marriage #.

If one had to count as various forms and ascenquando animam in aliquo ex prædictis gradibus orationis constitutam... God also communicates himself... through various visions.

Pars S aTr. 35 Diso 2, t2. pP: 344 et sef.

2 Lucerna AR 15% 3 qe + 85-99. Fe DE LA CONTEMPLATION

I _sional of contemplation the different kinds of supernatural visions and words, this enumeration would go to more than twenty degrees.

XI. — The saint and illustrious Italian doctor Alphonse de Liguori, whose doctrine the Church holds in such great honour, and who, during his study and long life, touched all branches of ecclesiastical science, distinguishes the preliminary and preparatory acts of contemplation, from the truly contemplative operations.

At the beginning there is active recollection, which is like God's call to these glorious ascensions!. Passive purifications then come, variously spaced: those of the senses first, which prepare for the first communications; later those of the mind, before the more sublime favors of mystic union?.

This prayer consists of three successive degrees: recollection, tranquillity and union. The union unfolds in a triple gradation, namely: simple union, engagement and spiritual marriage!. The engagements are diversified in the three ascending forms of ecstasy, rapture and theft. In summary, this classification assigns seven degrees to contemplation.

XIII. — Le P. Schram presents an extensive and complicated nomenclature of mystical states, the background of which is borrowed from the Spanish Jesuit Godinez. But it seems to have less in sight the degrees of supernatural prayer than the diversity of its forms. After describing the trials that have at the contemplation itself, he divides it into cherubic and seraphic. The first is characterized by the predominance of light, and embraces, first, the main aspects of the supernatural vision, namely: the mystery of the Trinity, those of the Incarnation and the Eucharist, the attributes of God; then the inner divine words, and finally the prayer of silence and tranquillity.

The second includes the ardour, the impulses, the wounds and the wonderful effects of mystical love, and in this statement lies igneous contemplation, that of flame, resignation and nudity, emotional loneliness, soloquists, spiritual cloud, freedom of the mind, dark contemplation, the wound of love, passive flow and mystical transformation.

Schram adopts these divisions and assumes a gradual disposition, but warns that the gradation here has nothing rigorous. He distinguishes two kinds of union with God, dark and painful moon, the other luminous and suave, which occurs through contemplation, flow and transformation?. All mystical states come under The first embraces the two general species of contemplation admitted by the P. Godinez, with their subdivisions, know: 4° the cherubic contemplation, which is exercised on the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity, the Incarnation and the Eucharist; the attributes of God in his works, in the symbolic visions and inner words, in the oration of silence and quietness!; 20 seraphic contemplation, which includes ten degrees: igneous and inflamed contemplation, conformity or resignation, nudity, emotional loneliness, solilocus, spiritual cloud, freedom of mind, dark contemplation, the tongue of love?.

The union of flow or passive contemplation has three degrees: mystical death and annihilation, and passive flow? also called engagement, kissing, kissing +.

Finally, the mystical transformation * is confused with spiritual marriage 6.

XIV. — Le P. Scaramelli lists twelve degrees of infuse prayer, i.e.: recollection?, spiritual silence$, la and made per delictionem seu purgationem passivam... There is another sweet union which comes about either through contemplation, or through an inflowing, or through transformation.

cherubic contemplation concerning the mystery of the Most Holy [Trinity] Trinitatis!, Incarnationis, Eucharistiæ, etc. ($ 277-291), versari potest.

2 Ib. § 294, p. 491. Seraphic contemplation is divided into various degrees. Horum primus est contemplatio ignea, etc. etc., § 294. — $ 319.

The degrees of passive contemplation come in a manner of asserting and explaining, of which the first is the mystical death. Secundus gradus contemplationis passivæ est annihilatio mystica. Tertius gra- , dus contemplationis passivæ est illapsus passivus.

4 Ib. § 329, schol. 2, p. 546. The union of passive inflowing is rightly called espousal, kiss, and chaste embrace.

ë Ib. § 332, p. 551. The fourth union of the soul with God consists in the supreme degree of contemplation through passive mystical transformation.

6 Ib. § 333, schol. 2, p. 555. Passive mystical transformation is also called by the mystics spiritual marriage.

7 Dirett. Mist. Tratt: 3, ch. 4, p. 150.

emo Teh. ap: 153. peace of mind, drunkenness of love?, spiritual sleep è, anxiety and thirst for love *, divine touches *, mystic union in general‘, simple union, ecstasy, delight, stable and perfect union £.

What the Italian author says about mystic union in general is suitable for the last four forms of supernatural prayer, and does not seem to us, even in his thought, to constitute a special degree of contemplation. So there would be only 11 degrees left.

La nomenclature du P. Scaramelli is fully reproduced by Fr. Seraphim ‘!, and also by the Father. C. Verhaege, except a slight transposition. *

XV. — We can judge by all these variants of darkness that hover on the gradation of mystical states. However, when we look carefully at these multiple classifications, two conclusions stand out, which bring unity closer and justify intermediate ascents by delivering the secret of the end towards which they are directed.

The first result of this comparative examination is to indicate a number of common points, and to raise a classification based on the simultaneous consent of the masters who provide the elements.

Most place at the beginning the recollection or recollection of powers under the charm of divine appearance,

1 Dirett. Mist. Tratt. ch. 5, p. 155.

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5 16. ch. 13, p. 185.

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8 Ib. ch. 19, p. 206.

MTO eh. 21, p. 216.

10 Jb. ch. 23, p. 223.

11 Principes de théologie mystique (Casterman, 1873), 2° partie, p. 63 et suiv. .

12 Manuel de théologie mystique (chez V. Palmé, 1877), 1. 2, 1° sect. and the respectful silence of the soul before God. All report the tranquillity or rest of the soul in God, and the transports that lukewarm and cause it to faint. They are still unanimous in asserting a state of union where the soul remains first in possession of itself, then flowing into God through ecstasy and ravishing, and finally being consumed in divine charity by an ineffable hymen.

The second conclusion reveals the very reason for this hierarchical and increasing disposition of contemplative states, from recollection to supernatural marriage.

This reason derives from the final term to which these divine attractions tend, which is God's mystical covenant with the soul.

Like human marriage, mystical marriage has foreplay that prepares it. The two future spouses are first introduced to each other, they talk to each other, taste each other, bond with each other, and in these reciprocal communications become impatient to give one another. As soon as the union is resolved, the relationships become more intimate, and it comes to the promises of the engagement, which are a reciprocal guarantee of fidelity and already form a public bond. Finally Punion is realized, the marriage is accomplished.

So is it, in a way, between God and the soul. But there is this profound difference between mystical marriage and corporeal marriage, which, in this one, all ends and occurs by reciprocity between the two lovers, while, in the other, God does everything, and the soul, delighted, undergoes with a delicious impulse the attraction, promises and caresses of this incomparable Spouse.

Above these suave communications that God makes to the traveling soul, one remains only the beatific contemplation of glory.

Using these statements and clarifications borrowed from mystical authors, we can draw and contemplate.

It opens with the supernatural call and grasping of Pâme, and the soul, summoning all its powers on the object that fascinates it, gathers and concentrates in silent attitude of admiration and love.

Love, growing, sets the will in God in rest or quietness. This delicious face-to-face penetrates the soul of loving traits that wound her sweetly, carry her, drunken her, throw her into a languor and a sleep of love that have her at union.

The union begins without losing to the soul the feeling of itself; it is the simple union. It continues with ecstasy and delight, and ends in spiritual marriage.

Does this union go down here until the contemplation of . glory, if not as a permanent state, at least as a transient manifestation? That is one final question to consider.

We can therefore bring the various degrees of contemplative prayer back to the following:

10 Le Recueillement,

20 La Quiétude,

30 Les Transports,

4° L'Union simple,

9° L’Extase,

60 Le Ravissement,

7° La Vision béatifique.

The first six ascensiones inadvertently awaken the thought of the six days of creation, during which the divine work is perfected; and the last, who does not see it? is confused with the seventh day, which appears on the eternal Sabbath. In the operations of nature and grace, it is always the same harmony. CHAPITRE XI

THE FIRST DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

THE LIABILITY RECRUITMENT Its concept. — How it differs from active gathering. — Degrés divers. —

Is silence a special form of contemplation? —

Effects of passive recollection. — Sa durée. — Déductions pratiques.

I. — Let us first say what contemplative contemplation is.

When God wants to raise a soul to mystical communications, he would abstract external things, return it, so to speak, whole within, and draw it by a delicious feeling of his presence to the deepest of itself. Before conversing with her, he takes in this inner solitude, and as soon as she has entered it, he already speaks to her heart through the suavities of which he langues!, while waiting for him to give himself to her in the inescapable intimacy of union.

This inner call, which suddenly withdraws, without industry or human effort, the powers of soul from the outer occupations and divagations, to concentrate them within, bow them sweetly and make them attentive to a mysterious presence of God in the intimate of the soul, constitutes the first degree of supernatural prayer, and is called by mystics recollection or infused collection.

According to Saint Térèse!, this supernatural concentration of soul seems to give it new meanings within itself to see and enjoy the presence of God, as it has from outside to relate with material things; and the divine inclination that calls within it prevails over natural inclination that carries outside.

"It is a recollection," she said elsewhere? "which also seems to me to be supernatural; for it does not arise by retreating into the darkness or by closing its eyes, and does not depend on any external thing, since without will the eyes close, and one tends to loneliness. So, without any industry on our part, lifts up the vestibule of the prayer of divine tastes, and it seems that the senses and external things lose their rights, so that the soul will recover the one it had lost."

Under the divine action that lurks, subjugates and pacifies, the soul finds itself, it does not know in what way, suddenly absorbed in an indistinct, but penetrating, thought of God, as if he warned that his voice would be heard, or as if his hand collected its powers in the way of the mother who gathers the little body of his child between her arms and on her breast.

Saint Térèse compares this intimate call of God to the whistle of the pastor who gathers his sheep, and this signal of the master has so much strength on the senses and powers of the soul that they abandon the external things that absorb them and are contained within the castle. "It seems to me, she adds, that I may never explain this so well that at this time ÿ." =, SN Se z z NET 482 THE FIRST DEGREE OF THE CONTEMPLATION

This is the first degree of contemplation. - The reformer of Carmel, in her letter several times quoted in Fr. Rodrigue Alvarez, seems to indicate that there is another supernatural mode of prayer, which would precede all the others.

"I remember," she said in closing her letter, "another prayer that occurs before the one of recollection. It is a presence of God which is by no means a vision, and which consists of an extreme ease for the soul to find God as soon as she desires, even if only to pray vocally, except however the time of droughts."

Scaramelli! rightly points out that this ease of placing oneself in the presence of God does not constitute a passive prayer; it is rather, in fact, an extraordinary grace that prepares, if desired, for infused contemplation, and thus serves as a prelude to contemplation.

lI. — In order not to confuse mystical recollection with natural recollection, here, regardless of the diversity of effects we will discuss later, are the characteristics that distinguish them.

Active recollection results from the natural application of the mind, and is obtained only through the calm and silence of meditation. Passive recollection is sudden, unexpected, and also occurs in the hour of prayer and in the midst of outside occupations. The first is the fruit of human effort and divine grace, like ordinary supernatural acts, and can even be purely natural. The second is entirely due to the inner and extraordinary action of grace.

However, in one and the other, the soul exercises its freedom, albeit in a different way. It is through initiative and the energy of reflection that this one begins and continues, while the other occurs without the help of soul, although the soul can escape it by its free will, by bringing its powers back to the external things.

Let us hear St Francis de Sales! describe to us, with his usual clarity and grace, how passive recollection differs from active recollection.

"I am not speaking here, Theotime, of the recollection by which those who want to pray put themselves in the presence of God, retranslating into themselves and withdrawing, in a way of saying, their soul in their hearts, to speak to God. For this recollection is done by the command of love, which, provoking us to prayer, makes us take this means of doing it right: so that we do ourselves this withdrawal from our mind. But the recollection of which I intend to speak, is not done by the commandment of love, do not by Pamour mesme; that is, we do not do it ourselves by election, especially since it is not in our power to wash when we want, and do not depend on our care; but God does it in us when he pleases him, by his most holy grace. Celuy, says the blessed mother Therese of Jesus, who has left by writing that the prayer of recollection is done as when a herisson or a tortue withdraws within soy, hears well, except that these beasts withdraw within them when they want: but the recollection does not gist in our will, it happens to us when it passes to God to make us this grace.

"And so it is. Nothing is so natural to good that to unite and draw to be the things that can feel it, as our souls do, which draw alliours and go to their thresor, that is to say to what they love. It is therefore sometimes that Nostre-Lord repand imperceptibly, at 184 THE FIRST DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION bottoms of the heart, a certain sweet suavity, which bears witness to its presence, and at the moment the powers, even the external senses of the blade, with a certain secret consent, turn from the cost of this intimate part, where is the tresaimable and very dear Espoux. For all as well as a new seine or honeyfly spear, when he wants to flee and change his païs, is recalled by the sound which he makes gently on basins, or by the smell of the emmielated wine, or by the smell of some fragrant herbs, so that he will simmer by the beginning of these sweets and enter into the hive which he has prepared: of the same Nostre-Lord, uttering some secret word of his love, or repanding the smell of the wine of his dilectiveness, more precious than honey, or evaporating the fragrances of his jackets, that is, some sensations of his celestous consolations in our hearts, and by this way making them feel his very fond presence, he removes from soy all the faculties of our soul, which gather around luy, and sarrestinate as in their very desirable object. And as one who puts a piece of eye between several needles, makes it clear that suddenly all their tips turn from the cost of their beloved aymant, and come to attach themselves to luy: also when Our Lord makes feel in the midst of ours his very delicious presence, all our facultez return their points of this cost-la, to come to join this incomparable sweetness."

HI. — Seizure and absorption of the soul are carried out to varying degrees. Il en est deux entre tous qu’il importe de remarquer.

Sometimes the soul feels drawn to God in such a way that its powers each retain its own action and movement. The intelligence pursues fugitive thoughts or his work of deduction, the imagination voltigates, the external senses have their full exercise. Nevertheless, the soul is highly abstract from sensitive things, and feels a suave attraction that calls it in.

This recollection without suspension of powers may be the announcement of passive prayer; but it seems that there is not yet contemplation in the strict sense of the word, i.e. in love and suspensive intuition. In this simple contemplation one does not see, one does not hear, or at least the gaze of the soul is exercised only on the object and by the work of meditation; but one feels an inner attraction that fixes the mind and the heart: God begins to discover himself by the vague feeling that he gives of his presence. The soul is warned, God only has to reveal himself: she is ready to consider him, to listen to him, to admire him.

When this manifestation takes place, contemplation begins. Then the inner light becomes so bright and penetrating that it suspends the natural play of the faculties. The reasoning stops discouraging, which is enough for the suspension; organic impressions go unnoticed; often, the imagination rising above the images that captivate it, the eye of the soul attaches itself to the inner object and holds it whole in the immobileness of admiration.

At this first degree of contemplation, the attraction, though suave and energizing, does not require. The soul can turn away and break the gentle pressure that removes it from the outside and absorbs it into it; it does not lose consciousness either of itself or of its freedom. However, mildness is such that the soul only withdraws from it with a heart and with a kind of violence.

The attitude of the body feels internal absorption. The eyes close spontaneously, the ears seem to refuse to hear any external noise, and the soul, to better ensure the possession of the object that charms it, condemns body IV. — The suspension of powers is referred to by mystics as silence. The language of each faculty is its own exercise, and when this function is suspended, it can be said that the faculty no longer speaks, that it is silent.

A few authors make this silence a special degree of prayer, among others Alvarez de Paz? and Scaramelli*, who refers on this point to the authority of the previous one.

It seems to us that it is wrong that we want to see here a distinct state of contemplation; for the suspension that characterizes silence is also found in peace and union, which would make it necessary to distinguish as many kinds of spiritual silences as there are contemplative forms that carry the suspension of powers. Thus Saint Francis of Sales "in the quiet prayer of quietness points to the supernatural silence, which also occurs in the simple union; more importantly in the ecstasy and the delight where the suspension is more powerful and complete.

V. — In addition to the suave attraction which brings the soul into itself and gathers its powers under the gaze of God, the infused recollection is still characterized by its effects. A = 7 Es REC RE

LE RECUEILLEMENT PASSIF 487.

We will often notice that divine interventions that reduce the soul to passivity result in an activity and energy that surpasses the effects of common grace. This effectiveness is felt from the beginning of mystical ascension, and can be used to distinguish passive recollection from natural recollection.

It is mainly translated into a great ease to detach oneself from the passing things, a generous impulse towards God, a merveious attraction that bows to loneliness, and as a pressing need for prayer. "If this recollection is true," says Térèse!, "it is clearly seen by a certain effect that I do not know how to express; but whoever has experienced it will hear well: the soul, in this state, feels so dilated and so high, that it already sees the nothingness of the things of this world. As in its best time, and to the limitation of those who withdraw into a fortress to cover themselves with enemies, it withdraws its senses from the external things, with such an empire that, without reflection, the eyes of the body close so as not to see them, so that those of the soul may open more."

This infused feeling of divine presence has the second effect of spreading joy and suavities, delicious milk that God gives to the soul to attract into solitude and dispose it to the holy communications of his word °.

VI. — On the duration of the mystical recollection we have nothing to add to what we have said about the duration of the contemplation in general. The time for the suspension of powers is very short and hardly more than half an hour. But, distracted from the object of contemplation, the flying faculties can be brought back to it by a new illumination or attraction, and in these successive recollections the recollection can be prolonged for a long time.

VII. — From all we have just said, there are practical conclusions about the course to be taken in this first degree of contemplation.

The inner call that gathers the powers calls for silence and retreat. The soul thus warned must yield to this invitation suave. It can resist and turn away; but by doing so, it would hurt and rebuke Ja's jealous delicacy of God who comes to seek it.

Let her withdraw in herself, at this divine signal, to worship the God who only gives her the feeling of her presence to draw her out of the whirlwind of passing things.' Let it even suspend, as soon as the attraction begins, the meditation and the vocal prayer, to give up to the simple and gentle gaze of contemplation, or at least keep itself from trouble and haste?.

More than that, when the soul received this first visit from God, it must, through a severe mortification of the senses, a detachment that does nothing but nothing, the practice of silence and retreat, the preparations and efforts of the vigi1 5. In this state the soul is not to be forced to suspend that tranquil discourse which the light itself might perhaps sweetly suggest to it — just as it ought not to dwell upon consideration of particular things or upon determinations which it is able to make. Nec debet curiosius investare quidnam sit interior ea spiritus recollectio; sed sinat se dirigi a Deo ad considerandas res illosque actus fatiendos ad quos lance, a deep humility, it must usually be gathered, all ready to enter the first signal in this appointment where God draws!. However, this expectation must not degenerate into concerns and concerns.

Although, in the opinion of a wise director, one can give longer time to prayer, one must contain within just limits the appeal that one feels for this exercise, and measure it to the occupations of his condition, the forces of the body and other circumstances. It is also important to keep moderation in the suavities that accompany the contemplative attraction. By giving up without restraint to a kind of spiritual intemperance that rushes towards sweetness rather than to the hand that dispenses them, one runs a great risk of tarnishing the source and falling into the illusion °.

The drunkenness that fills soul exposes to another peril, that of communicating and spreading outside by indiscreet effusions. The most certain sign that these favors come from God, and the most effective way to preserve and increase them is humility, humility that results in annihilation and confusion before God, silence and erasure before men. THE SECOND DEGREE OF THE CONTEMPLATION

WHO STUDY Concept and description. — Two degrees: suspension of the will alone, or of all powers. — Silence et sommeil. — Durée de la quiétude. — How it differs from mystical recollection and from natural drowsiness. — Effets : amour désintéressé, dégagement de toutes choses sensibles, joie spirituelle. — Practical advice: beware of disturbing the peace of will by worrying about the mobility of other powers. — Avoid return to oneself during this rest. — Do not suspend the meditation entirely or engage in the exercise of prayer immoderately. — Perfection required or conferred by tranquillity. I. — The Quietness was reported by all mystics, if not as a special form of passive prayer, at least as one of its first effects. But since Saint Térèse, who has treated excellently and in many places his writings of this mode of prayer, it is agreed to consider it, no longer as a simple effect, but as a distinct and well characterized degree of contemplative ascension. Either before or after Saint Térèse, this state was named under the various names of quietness, rest, taste!, silence, sleep, death, sepulchre ?. 1 St. Terèse, Chdt. int. 4 D., c. 2: What I call the name of taste, and which I have named elsewhere from the name of peace of mind, ete. 2 SCHRAM, $ 284, sch. 2, t. 1, p. 478. The prayer of silence is expressed by mystical writers under various names. It is called the prayer of quiet..., the leisure of the soul..., prayer in darkness..., sleep, death, and the tomb. Saint Francis de Sales! describes it by the pure and naive comparison of the child who falls asleep by sucking his mother's breast, Comparison borrowed from Saint Teresus.

"This is a comparison which Our Lord put in my mind in a prayer of this nature, which seems very right to me, and which, in my opinion, makes it clear what peace of mind is. In this state, the soul is like a little child still to the breast, to whom his mother to caress him, when he is between his arms, makes the milk distill in his mouth without only stirring his lips. It is the same here: without work of understanding, the will loves, and Our Lord wants that, without thinking about it, she knows that she is with Him, that she simply sucks the milk that Her Majesty pours into her mouth, that she savors this dou1 Tr. of the Am. of God, 1.6, c. 9. Have you ever taken care, Theotime, of the ardentness with which the little children sometimes cling to the tetins of their mothers when they are hungry? But after the strawcher of the laict has in no way soothed the appetizing heat of their little breasts, and the pleasant vapors which he sends to their brains begin to fall asleep; Theotime, you would see them close their little eyes and ceder little by little to sleep, without leaving the tetin, on which they do no action but that of a slow and almost insensitive movement of lips, by which they draw alliours the laict which they swallow imperceptibly; and that they do it without thinking about it, but not without pleasure: for if they are dared the tetin before the deep sleep has overtaken them, they wake up and weep bitterly, temoignans by the pain which they have in deprivation, that they see much sweetness in possession, but not without pleasure: for if they are oste the tetin before the deep sleep has overtaken them, they wake up and weep bitterly, tumbled by the pain which they have in the deprivation, that they see in the face of any one thing, and do not disturb it by any way, that it almost insensitible, that the sweetness If this poor little puppy is inconvenient and you want to oster the puppy, especially as she seems to be asleep, she monsters well while she sleeps for all the rest of the things, she does not sleep for this one: for she perceives the evil of this separation and fascishes, thus showing the pleasure she enjoys, quoyque without thinking about it, the good that she possesses. The Blessed Mother Therese, having written that she is so familiar with this similarity, I wanted to declare it.

2 Way of the perfect., Ch. 31. who is not even aware that it comes to him from the Lord. Happy to enjoy it, that she does not seek to know how she enjoys it, or what good she enjoys; that she disinterests herself, convinced that He who is with her will not fail to provide for all that suits her."

The prayer of quietness is therefore a feeling of the presence of God which is born to the most intimate of the soul and in which the will rests and delights in union with the other powers, or despite the mobility of these powers. It is by the will, which constitutes the substance of the soul, that the soul tastes, in the mystical peace of mind, the presence of God, that she tastes its sweetness, that she sets herself and sleeps on this sweet object, as the psalmist expresses!: "I will fall asleep and rest in him in peace."

Quietness is, therefore, in reality only an act of love and abandonment towards God present, not simply by faith or by sensitive suavities, but by a supernatural impression, which, penetrating the depths of the soul, seizes the master faculty, charm and captive.

We must not confuse the state of peace with the peace that God often makes taste of the faithful soul out of contemplation; it is here a mystical favor and a precise form of contemplative life. "Would they be cut into pieces by penances, prayers, or works of any kind to reach this prayer," said Saint Teresus? "If Our Lord does not want to give it, it is of little use. To manifest his greatness to the soul, God makes him hear that he is so close to her, that she does not need to send messengers to her, that she can speak to her herself and without raising her voice, because he is so close that to the simple movement he hears it."

Sensitive suavities and tranquillity, which occur WHO STUDY 193 in common life, are neither the origin nor the form of supernatural tranquillity.

II. — This rest is more or less intense, more or less complete. The essential differences can be reduced to the two that we have already reported in the collection prayer t.

At the first degree of quietness, the will is fixed and suspended; the other faculties remain free and carry out their own operations. "This prayer," said Saint Térèse?, "perpetrates by a contemplation of powers within oneself, to enjoy with more taste the contentment that God gives; these powers, nevertheless, are neither lost nor asleep; only the will is occupied, and, without seeing how captive it is, acquiesce to the sweet chains that God imposes upon it, knowing well that it is captive to Him whom she loves."

Voici le second degré. Sometimes the captivity reaches the imperated powers, either by direct command of the will, or rather by a counter-cut of its complete absorption, which extends to all the operations of the soul, or by the brightness of the light that invades and fascinates the intellectual faculties. But this suspension is only temporary: thefts of their nature, these faculties, as soon as they are no longer imperatively fixed, resume their adventurous course.

Saint Térèse? repeatedly discusses these alternatives of union and disjunction between the will and the other powers. But let us listen to St Francis de Sales: "Now this rest, he says, passes a few times if before in his tranquillity, that all blade and all the diicelle powers remain as asleep, without making any movement ny action, if not the only will, which mesine does no other thing but receive ease and the satisfaction that the presence of the Beloved Luy gives. And what's even more admirable is that the will doesn't catch up with that comfort and contentment that she receives, enjoying insensitively d'iceluy; especially since she doesn't think of soy, but to which the presence luy gives this pleasure, as it happens many times that surprised with a light sleep, we enter only what our friends say around us, or feel the caresses that they do to us, almost imperceptibly, without feeling that we feel."

It also happens, in the testimony of Saint Teresus?, that, while the will remains united, the other faculties regain their freedom, but only with regard to the service of God. We will return to this point when we discuss the duration of the peace of mind.

At one and the other of these degrees, the soul remains in possession of itself and retains the freedom to escape from the divine object that charms it. Her union with God is not yet complete; she can, though not without pain, separate herself and return to ordinary action. Until in the seizing which binds all powers, da will can, by an effort of its free will, free itself and detach with it the enslaved faculties.

In a word, this is not yet the imperative ligature of ecstasy, at least regularly, although it may sometimes occur by passing, before the soul has emerged from the state of tranquillity. The deeper the absorption of the soul, the more violent and painful the separation.

III. — When the suspension is general, the soul is in a state of silence or sleep.

The silence that is being discussed here is not only in the attitude of astonishment and admiration; it is still and above all the suspensive attention that is watching and listening. God speaks; he speaks to the eyes and ears, that is, by visions or by words!

The holy bishop of Geneva describes in this way the various forms and degrees of this supernatural silence: "Some times she not only sighs from the presence of God, but she listens to it by some clartez and interior persuasion, which take the place of words: no time she feels him speaking and speaks to him reciprocously, but so secretly, so softly, so beautifully, that without it she loses the holy peace and quietness; so that without waking, she watches with luy, that is, she watches and speaks to her beloved heart, with so much sweet tranquillity and gratious rest, as if she sleeps slowly. And other times she feels she speaks Espoux, but she does not speak to her, because the comfort of the ouir, or the reverence that she wears, holds her in silence: or because she is in drought and so alangouria of mind, that she has strength only for where and not to speak, as it happens a few times to those who begin to fall asleep, or who are greatly affluent by some disease."

The complete absorption of powers can be accomplished by the attraction of love alone, and then the suspension is less a silence than a sleep; one sinks and turns to the object loved, rather than being fixed and 196 THE SECOND DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION does not listen to it. "The same is so gathered in itself, in God or before God," said St Francis de Sales! "sometimes makes himself so gently attentive to the goodness of his Beloved, "that it seems that his attention is almost unattended, as it is simply and delicately exercised, as it happens in certain rivers that flow so sweetly and so also, that it seems to those who look at them or navigate on ice, not to see there feel any movement, because they are not blinded in any way to float there. And it is this kind rest of the same which the Blessed Virgin Therese of Jesus calls quiet prayer, not wary different from that which she calls herself sleep of powers, if all times I think it is well."

We will talk further about the climax of this sleep, dealing with the transports where divine love throws the soul, and we will quote the words of Saint Teresus to which the bishop of Geneva is currently referring.

Let us only note here that it is sleep and silence; it meets with a variety of intensity in several mystical states.

IV. — The duration of quietness varies considerably, depending on whether it is the mere rest of the will or the simultaneous suspension of the will and other powers.

The immobility of these is almost never only momentary and rapid, as we have said in speaking of the contemplative suspension; and we have heard St. Térèse, speaking of the prayer of quietness as she had experienced it, saying to us "that this union lasted only very little", hardly "the time of a Ave Maria?".

This is not the case with the permanence of will. This accession, which is strictly speaking the quee1 of the Am. of God, 1. 6, ch. 8.

2 Sa Vie, ch. 14.

"ETT /, 27 QUIET STUDY e 197 tude, can extend for a long time, for whole hours, and even one or more days.

It is still Saint Teresus who attests to us herself: "In this state, she says to us, we sometimes take one hour to say the Pater once."And shortly after she adds: "God also makes in this prayer another favor very difficult to hear, unless we have a great experience of it. But those who have experienced it will understand it without difficulty, and it will not be a small consolation for them to know what it is; and I believe that God often joins this grace with the prayer I speak of. When this quietness is great and lasts for a long time, it seems to me that if the will were not linked to something, it could not be maintained in this peace and satisfaction, which last, indeed, a day or two, without one understanding how it takes place. One does, that the main lack, know: the will, which, in my opinion, is united with God and leaves the other powers free only to go about the things of his service, which they then do with great ease; but if it is the things of the world, they remain numb and sometimes as forbidden."

V. — According to these notions, we can indicate the differences between mystical recollection and tranquillity.

In the first degree, soul experiences an attraction that calls and concentrates it at the bottom of itself, separates it from the agitation and external noise, and tends to return in a way its senses within, so that it sees, hears, tastes and touches only spiritual things. Thus removed, the soul remains attentive and suspenseful under the rays of the light that bleeds; and, if the inner illumination becomes radiant to the point of suspending the exercise of powers, it enters into the state of silence; but this suspension and silence come more from the light than from Pamour.

Quietness goes further. It seizes the will, fixes it in the feeling that the soul feels of God present in it, holds it captive under the bonds of Pamour, in a complete and suave abandonment to this suave presence.

The recollection mainly captures intelligence and fixes attention; quietness is addressed to the will and provokes love!

The recollection is, on the part of God, the invitation to the rendezvous where he wants to communicate to the soul, and, on the part of the soul, the concentration that this call produces on his powers. Quietness operates a beginning of enjoyment and membership. Not only does the soul gather and aspire to the sovereign Good, but it encounters it, it owns it, it enjoys it to a degree that is still, to the truth, that begun and imperfect, — the union itself will only come later; — but at last the soul is already in the presence of the Beloved, it sees, it hears, it tastes the sweetness of its first communications; and the suaves accents of its voice, the sweet emanations of light and grace that escape from its still veiled face and its ready-to-give heart, it squeaks, simmers, illuminates and prepares itself for union. In the state of peace of mind, "soul," says Térèse?, "means in a very different way than that which is done through the external senses, that she is already close to her God, and that as soon as she approaches her more, she dares by union with him."

We will say in its place what makes the difference between Punion and quietness. Let us add to the distinctive signs we have just pointed out, some indications that prevent us from confounding tranquillity with purely natural somnolence.

The habit of concentration, an intense effort to prolong the inner impression of the sensitive devotion and to suspend any other feeling, the body debility that does not allow to sustain without failure a lively and pleasant emotion, can determine a state of torpor and fixedness similar to the suspension that occurs in the mystical quietness. * The preliminary examination of temperament, habits, inner occupations during meditation, and even more that of the effects following this rest and its duration, are necessary to recognize surely whether it comes from nature or grace.

If it was found that there is an illusion, the precise cause of the error would have to be corrected by suitable opposites, without going so far as to suppress oraison, the extreme that Our Lord does not approve, to the testimony of Saint Teresus?.

VI. — The effects of quietness are remarkable, and can serve as a touchstone to distinguish it from any other state, either natural or supernatural.

The first of its effects is to excite a pure love in the heart. Saint Térèse compares this prayer with a spark that lights the fire of charity. It cannot be otherwise. The quietness consisting in the adherence of the will to God now, and God being the principle of Pamour as the will is the seat and the home, this adherence cannot occur without the result of a proportional burning.

From this love proceeds another no less precious effect, which is a generous release of the sensitive things and a perfect self-denial of the soul, to depend only on the good will of God. Nothing, in fact, releases soul from perishable ties as to experience how sweet it is to be to God and with God. It then seems, as Saint Teresus still testifies, that we are no longer of this world, and it is written with St Peter in Tabor: "Lord, let us make three tents here!"

This abandonment to the good will of God leads the soul to forget itself, to stand before God without any desire other than that of being in his presence. This is one of the most enviable effects of the holy quietness, to the sentiment of Saint Francis de Sales, who painted this soul indifference rested in God by a comparison that remained famous?.

"My dear Theotime, let us still have the freedom to do this imagination. If a statue which the sculptor would have nestled in the gallery of some great prince, was full of understanding, and which she could speak and speak, and which she was asked, O beautiful state, say, why are you there in this niche? "Because," she replied, "my mantre colloquéed me there: "and if we go back, why do you stay there without doing anything?" "Because," she said, "my mantle has placed me so that I may do anything, only so that I may be still there." "What if it is taken over, saying, "But, poor state, does it serve you to be so?" — Hé! God, she resonates, I am not here for my interest and my service, but to obey and serve the will of my Lord and sculptor, and that is enough for me... O Lord, that it is a good way to "hold in the presence of God, to be and to want to be forever and forever to be in his good pleasure!... Now this quietness in which the will n'agist only by a very simple acquiescence to the good divine pleasure, it is a quietness sovereignly excellent, especially since it is pure of all kinds of interest, etc."

A third effect, which arises from the feeling of God's presence and the charity that he lights up in the soul, is a great spiritual enjoyment.

Saint Térèse describes it as follows: "It is like an internal and external fainting, during which the outside man, I speak of the body, would like not to move; as well as the traveller who, being almost at the end of the path, restes at ease and of hope, the body is filled with pleasure and contentment. The soul, too, seeing itself so close to the fountain of life, is so happy that, even without drinking, it is satisfied. It seems she has nothing to be desired. His powers enjoy such a rest that they would never want to leave; everything seems to threaten their love. They are not lost, however, since they can think with whom they are, and two remain free. The will alone is captive, and if she can then feel some pain, it is to understand that she will have to regain her freedom. The understanding would like to see only this object, and memory cares only for itself: there is the only necessary... Sometimes tears flow, not with pain, but, on the contrary, with great suavity."

The sweets of quietness are not always sensitive; sometimes they are purely internal, and as refugees in the tip of mind and will, as Saint Francis de Sales expresses itself.

This joy reaches its highest point when, as the dependent powers unite with the will, the whole soul surrenders to the feeling of God's presence. It is less, regularly, when the will alone is at rest, and it often happens that the soul simpatient of the divagations of the mind, and, in its trouble, diminishes the peace of will, and sometimes suspends it.

VII. "Holy Teresis!" recommended to his daughters not to worry about the mobility of thought, and to protect the rest of the will from these agitations by a perfect indifference.

According to Saint Francis de Sales, wanting to force the mind to the immobility where God fixes the heart is to try the impossible and expose himself to draw the heart itself from his rest. "And note that then the will, held back in quietness by the pleasure which it takes in the divine presence, it does not remote itself to bring back the other powers that are guarded, especially since, if it wanted to undertake this, it perverts its rest, shirking away from its beloved Beloved, and perverts its trouble to run here and there to catch these flying powers!"

VII. — Not only must we undergo without trouble the involuntary mishaps of thought, we must also avoid vains. return to what is happening in the soul in this gentle rest of quietness, and free ourselves, as far as possible, from external excitement and tumult, but always without concern or concern.

There are, said pleasantly- Saint Francis de Sales ?, active, fertile and abundant minds in consideration. There are some who are flexible, folded, and who greatly like to feel what they are doing, who want to see everything and peel what is happening in them, always returning their widowed on themselves to receive their advancement. There are others who don't content themselves with contension, if they don't feel, look and enjoy their contentment... Now all these spirits are usually subject to trouble in the sound of prayer: for if God gives them the sacred rest of his presence, they leave him willingly to see how they behave in Iceluy and to examine whether they are contented with it; anxious to see if their peace is well quiet and their quiet quiet quietness: so that instead of slowly occupying their will to feel the suavits of the divine presence, they employ their understanding to dissect on the sentmens they have... The soul, therefore, to whom God gives the peace of love in prayer, must abstain as long as it can look at itself, even his rest, which, to be kept, must not be curiously looked at; for, who loves him too much, loses him; and the just rule of loving him is not to affect him. And like the child who to see where he is DAS: has his feet dared his test from his mother's womb, returns to it incontinent, because he is strong; so it is necessary that if we find ourselves distracted by curiosity to see what we are doing in prayer, suddenly we put our hearts back into the sweet and peaceful attention of the presence of God, from which we were entertained."

IX. — Let us note yet another double pitfall, to which are exposed the intoxicated souls of the suavities of mystical peace.

The first is the disgust of meditation: "It is not necessary here to abandon the entire mental prayer, says Saint Térèse!, nor to stop using a few words, even vocal ones if you want it, or rather if you can; for if quietness is great, you can only speak with great sorrow."

When we say that the soul can continue its meditation during the rest of the will, we want to talk about the application of other faculties remaining free to the religious subject that occupies them. For the will, one must respect its silence and immobility; but it can protect and nourish its adherence even through the visions that follow one another in mind, without detach oneself in any way, on the pretext of producing emotional acts in relation to the thoughts of understanding. Making an effort to pray would compromise the rest of contemplation?.

The second danger to which the sensitive consolations which one tastes in quietness expose, is to go to prayer with excessive greed, detrimental to inner freedom, health and state obligations.

The more the soul seeks and gives way to the concern of enjoyment, the less playful it is to God. This is elementary in spiritual life.

People with a delicate complexion who feel the concentration and sweetness of quietness, often fall into a kind of natural fainting, which they sometimes take for ecstasy and which they prolong for long hours, to the great detriment of their health. These people must be measured the time of prayer, and they must be instructed to engage in outside occupations and relaxations, if they do not want to make themselves in a short time also incapable of any natural and supernatural application !.

At last, it often happens, mainly to women, that the sweetness of contemplation leads them to neglect their duties of state, to give themselves tirelessly to prayer. We must remind them that the first and indispensable means of sanctification is the sacrifice of his tastes to the will of God, and that it would be messy to make contemplation a refinement of sensuality and egoism? These tendencies and weaknesses, not repressed, would lead to the suppression of these favors, assuming them divine; or rather E 206 THE SECOND DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION they already denounce these enjoyments as artifices of the lying spirit or as exaltations of nature.

X. — Touching the perfection required to achieve quiet prayer, it is impossible to specify anything. When this contemplative state is the reward of a long meditation exercise, it obviously assumes an advanced virtue. But often this favor is purely infuse, and it can then be granted at the beginning of the spiritual life, as it can only appear in its progress or completion +.

Le P. Scaramelli? recommends with too many instances to spare the weakness of souls who have come to peace, to: hold these souls as already strongly rooted in good. Moreover, he expressly says that they are still in spiritual childhood. It seems difficult, however, that they enter this rest before they have emerged from the violent struggles of purgative life; if they have not yet reached the equality of perfect life, they are at least in progress and they are walking hard. We will also say later that one is regularly elevated to contemplation only after having undergone a more or less rigorous passive purification.

To any degree of virtue that has been achieved, quietness does not make impeccable. "I do not claim, said Santé Terèse, that these souls are free from the offense of God, although it is reasonable, after receiving such great favors, that they try to preserve it; THE WHOY STUDY THE 207

Finally the same holy remark that it is few souls that rise higher than quietness, in contemplative prayer, and it attributes not to divine parsimony, but rather to the infidelity of Phom:ixe. In these mystical communications, God affects a holy jealousy: the slightest resistance on the part of the soul cools him, and if he is disdained, he withdraws!.

1 Sa Vie, ch. 15. There are many souls who arrive at this state, and few who go further; I do not know to whom the fault. Certainly, it is not God who is lacking; for his divine majesty giving us the grace to lead us to this point, I believe that she would go even further, if there were no fault on our part. It is very important that the soul, raised so high, know the great dignity where it is, the insignia that Our Lord has done to it, and how righteous it is that it is no longer of the earth. CHAPITRE XIII

THIRD DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

LES TRANSPORTS

FIRST TRANSPORT: SPIRITUAL LIMITATION Transport links quietness to union. — Spiritual drunkenness, its various forms. — Deux espèces. — Perfect intoxication: its concept and its effects. — It does not go to the training of ecstasy. — Ses degrés. — Sa durée. — Precautions to be taken in sensitive intoxication. I. — Recollection is the call and the meeting; quietness is the interview and the first brawl of a delicious trade. Before the mystic union takes place or at least is consumed, the soul enters into lively transports, in holy impatiences that bleed, ignite and precipitate it to God with the vivacity of the long-captive flame. We would like to describe these happy dilations and suave impulses. Judging by the differences of the authors who have dealt with these movements of contemplative soul, we touch on the most nebulous point of mystical ascension. It is generally agreed to report under various names the states we are talking about, and to note that they are confined to quietness or union. Do we have to see separate intermediate degrees, or to which of the two above mentioned times should they be reported? A difficult problem, but whose solution, in our view, was of limited importance. It is sufficient to know, on the one hand, that these favors usually erupt at the height of tranquillity or at the first attempts of union; and on the other, that, if God dispenses them according to his love and gives them the elevation and intensity appropriate to the purposes of his Providence, all nevertheless contribute to inflaming the soul and making it more suitable for mystical union.

This is why we group these variable forms of contemplative prayer here under the general aspect which best reveals its character and raison d'être, under the common name of transport, and place them under one of the following four statements: drunkenness, sleep, divine touches, the wound of love.

We can see, if we want, with most mystics, so many degrees of contemplative prayer, although it seems to us better to bring them back to unity through this logical point of view that they announce, prepare and realize the state of union. That is why we understand them in a single degree, without, however, challenging their distinction or even a certain degree of gradation. The order in our statement is true, and here is the justification.

Since sleep is like the excess and the climax of drunkenness, it must come before it, and the injury of love being part of the divine touches, it is necessary to study the genus before treating the species. On the other hand, what the authors say of mystical touches, which they usually assume to belong to union, seems to place them above drunkenness and sleep, which are considered as an intermediary between this state of union and tranquillity.

This is the reason for the exhibition we will follow. yellow Re r MO ka ARTE 240 THIRD DEGREE: TRANSPORT

II. — In the first place, then, seems spiritual drunkenness.

This drunkenness is a jubilation excited in soul by excess of love, and soul, overflowing over the senses with external effects that recall the prophecies and inconsistencies of material drunkenness.

The signs by which this exaltation of the soul is manifested are: shouts, burning and interspersed words, tears, sighs, laughter, singing, improvised hymns?, braidings that shake the whole body, sometimes extreme acceleration of the heart, jumps, impetuous movements that express the inner violence of Pamour; in a word, spiritual drunkenness translates into this set of phenomena, which we will describe more fully by speaking of mystical jubilation.

Ces élans naissent de lamour. Love shakes the soul, dilate, precipitates it to the object that charms it, makes it mad of the desire and joy of possessing it. Love, as the author of the Imitation says, in this admirable chapter entitled: THE EFFECTS OF DIVINE LOVE, love knows no measure; it bubbles and overflows with every part.

"O God!" said Saint Teresis, "how the soul is in this sweet drunkenness! She wants to be all converted.

1 S5. Amsr. De Noe et arca, €. 29, n. 111. Migne, t. 14, col. 410. There are thus two kinds of intoxication: one which brings unsteadiness to the body, trips up its steps, and disturbs the senses; the other which suffuses the mind with the vapor of virtue's grace and seems to avert all infirmity... (n. 448, col. 413): "For it is a splendid cup that inebriates the just."

2 It was in one of these transports that Saint Teresus composed the ardent strophes which all ended with this cry of love:

« Je me meurs de ne point mourir! »

That muero porque no muero! And it is for herself that the saint speaks in her life (cf. 46), when she says: "I know a person who, to exhale his complaints, immediately did, without being a poet, couplets full of feeling: it was not the work of his spirit, ete."

5L.3,C. 5, n. 4 : Amor modum sæpe nescit, sed super omnem modum en langue pour louer le Seigneur. She says a thousand holy extravagances, which are intended only to satisfy the One who puts her in this state. I know a person who, to exhale his complaints, immediately did, without being a poet, couplets full of feelings. These verses were not the work of his spirit; it was only to enjoy the glory that caused him such a delightful pain, that she complained to his God. She would have wanted her body and soul to break into pieces to bring out the joy of which this pain was mixed. What torments could be presented to her then, that she did not delight in suffering them for her Lord?"

II. — The mystics report two kinds of drunkenness: imperfect moon, perfect moon.

In the first, the transport of the soul reaches mainly the senses, although the cause that produces it is the inner devotion. These are sensitive bursts of fervour that often make more noise outside than they accuse of truth and holiness within.

In the second, it is the soul above all that is shaken and shaken to its depths by the slenderness of love; and, if the body receives its share, it is by the effect of the inner overflow. The enjoyment is here located in the very soul, while that of imperfect drunkenness has its seat in the sensual and organic appetite.

The external manifestations are also quieter and more contained, except for exceptions where one sees the occurrence, under the intensity of love, of holy and ardent souls, of agitations and excesses similar to those that accompany imperfect drunkenness, and often even more vehement. St Francis of Assisi, St Philip of Neri, St Joseph of Copertino, St Madeleine of Pazzi, and others, are memorable examples of this. Qualifying these kinds of exultations, as do PES ES 7 A

FeS D he 212 THIRD DEGREE: Transporting several mystics is, in our opinion, misunderstood. For in the servants of God whose names we have quoted, they are seen, not only in the first trials of their virtue, but also in the climax of their contemplative life. Ge that these outer shrapnel had violent and eccentric must therefore be attributed, not to imperfection, but to the only vehemence of inner love; and it is wrong that such drunkenness would be deemed imperfect.

Saint John of the Cross uses a comparison that makes clear the difference between these two drunkennesses heard in the sense that we have just made clear.

"We can compare, " he said, "to the new wine those who begin to love God, and to the old wine those who have long loved him. As the new wine, which is not yet made, must boil in the barrel so that it throws its foam and its garbage, so those who begin to bitter God must, in their first fervor, purify themselves from their natural vices and imperfections. And since this wine is still neither pure nor tasteful nor healthy, so these people are neither strengthened in the service of God, nor a pure and exquisite taste in spiritual things, nor proper to the holiness of the soul, because they are full of natural feelings, sensual tastes, etc. On the contrary, those who have practiced for a long time in the love of God are similar to the old wine which is pure, healthy, firm, of good taste, without mixture of lee, without fermentation, without fleeing from the barrel, without breaking it. Thus these old friends of God are cleansed of sensitive fervors, unsettled rages of devotion, lightness and changes in virtue, too hot ardour, etc."

Imperfect drunkenness is therefore part of the spiritual and sensitive sweetness that God has custom of giving to those who begin to serve him, and supposes the soul still struggling with the tyranny of the senses. In order to achieve, on the contrary, perfect drunkenness, the soul must have undergone the passive purification which serves as a prelude to contemplation t. That is to say that drunkenness which intervenes in contemplative prayer can generally be only perfect drunkenness, and that the sensitive jubilation occurs only out of contemplation, or, at most, only after some transitional acts of contemplative suspension.

So all we have to talk about here is the perfect drunkenness.

IV. — It can be defined: A very high infuse state of prayer, where a fiery love is lit in the soul that detachs it from all external things, and, carrying it out of itself, throws it in a happy delirium and in a divine extravagance, according to the expression of Saint Teresis?.

The proper effect of this intimate exultation is to bring the soul to burst its love by heroic acts, to rush to God with a holy impetuousness, to praise, to bless through the word, the song and all the testimonies that it can imagine, this God who causes its drunkenness*. It is the drunkenness of St.Andreus at the sight of the cross, of St.Ignatius of Antioch going to martyrdom, of the Lawrence, of the Vincent, of the Pionius, in the midst of torments. MO R E NES ENS EE 214 -THIRD DEGREE : TRANSPORT

"This mixed wine," says Saint John of the Cross explaining his seventeenth song, "expresses another gift more excellent than the first. God sometimes favors souls advanced in perfection, in order to intoxicate them with a love full of charms, like a tasty and very powerful wine. This love is mixed with many virtues, as this wine is made up of several odoriferous drugs. The intoxicated soul so sends to God sighs, flames of love, praises, ardent desires to do everything and to suffer everything for him, as the extremely strong wine sends a lot of smoke to the head."

V. — Although the intoxicated soul rarely reaches ecstasy, it no longer has its usual freedom.

"The powers of soul, in this degree of prayer," says Scaramelli?, "are not entirely bound and lost, nor are they entirely free and free. They are not entirely bound, because the drunken aforesaid does not come to union, and even less to rapture, where the powers are totally lost in God; it is only, as I said, a quiet prayer, but to a very high degree. Nor are these faculties completely free and free, because, while they retain the power not to care for God by their own actions, they cannot be applied to other occupations or distracted from anything else."

Sainte Terèse is even more explicit:* "The powers, she says, are unable to apply to anything other than God. It seems like not a dare to move. To distract them, it would take a great effort, and again I do not think that it could then be achieved entirely."

VI. — Tandis que le P. Scaramelli considers mystical drunkenness as a high degree of quietness, St.Terèse points out in this spiritual jubilation two degrees, corresponding one to the prayer of quietness, the other to a higher form of prayer which limits to union; an important testimony which attests that these transports form the transition between one and the other of these two orations.

"Sometimes," says Carmel's virgin seraphic describing the effects of tranquillity, "we shed tears, not pain, but, on the contrary, great suavity. All the desire of these souls is that the name of God be sanctified. It seems to them that they are no longer of this world; they would like to see it no longer and to hear only God alone. Nothing hurts them or seems to be able to give them any. Finally, as long as this satisfaction and these delights last, they are so intoxicated (embebidas), so absorbed, that they do not even think that there is something else to be desired, and with good heart they would cry out with St Peter: "Lord, let us set up here three tabernacles."

In this inner jubilation where the soul, oblivious to itself and the rest of the world, soothes and brawls in God, it is difficult not to see spiritual drunkenness, if not complete, at least begun. The completion will be accomplished before the union or in union itself.

Let us listen, indeed, to Saint Térèse ?, on another prayer, intermediate between union and peace of mind.

"Let's talk now," she said, about the third water that waters the garden... The soul then does not know what to do, for it does not know whether it speaks, whether it is silent, whether it laughs, whether it weeps. £ 216 THIRD DEGREE: TRANSPORT It is a glorious extravagance, a heavenly madness, where it learns true wisdom; finally, it is a way for the soul to enjoy sovereignly delicious.

"For five or six years, I believe, Our Lord has often given me this prayer in abundance; but I could not understand it or express it. So I had resolved in myself, when I came to this place of my relationship, to talk about it little or no at all. I saw that it was not entirely the union of all the powers, and clearly, that there was more than in the previous prayer, knowing, peace; but, I confess, I could not clarify or understand what the difference was. As a reward, I believe, for the humility that led you to use a smallness as great as mine, Our Lord brought me into today, at the moment when I had just been in communion, into this prayer, without I having been able to pass over; he put these comparisons in mind, taught me how to speak about this state, and what the soul must do about it. I felt a fearful saint, for I understood everything in an instant. I had often seen myself carried away from this madness and intoxicated with this love, but without being able to know how it was done. I could see that it was God, but I could not understand how he operated in me. Indeed, the powers are almost entirely united, but not so absorbed, that they still act. I've finally heard it, and I'm at the height of joy. Blessed be the Lord, who gives me such a sweet blessing!"

The simplest and truest reconciliation of these differences is in the full freedom with which God sets aside these supernatural favors, in the imperceptible transitions that connect these gradual ascensions of contemplative life, and more particularly in the very nature of the state we are talking about, which, being only an excessive shaking of the soul under the fire of love, tends to reproduce every time God subjects the soul to an energetic and delicious action that ignites it.

VII. — Divine drunkenness may extend beyond two or three days, although regularly it perseveres less long, but with slowings and successive returns more or less accentuated!

"This divine gift is kept longer in the soul than the other gifts," says Saint John of the Cross? "It often remains there two or three days; sometimes it is felt more strongly; sometimes it seems more languishing and sweeter, without the soul contributing to increase or decrease its strength."

Let us add, with the same author, that "the effects of this drunken love sometimes remain in the soul longer than the very drunkenness; sometimes also the drunkenness persists without its effects bursting out".

VI. — Perfect, well-recognized intoxication presents no danger to the perfection of the souls it carries. They can give up fully in the usual hour of prayer or at any other time, without any other precaution than that of a repetition of intimate humility, and, when these transports are planned and burst outside, from a retreat that robs all eyes. This law of darkness and silence must be strictly imposed on those who are subjected to this divine violence."

Imperfect drunkenness leads to more inconveniences, and requires great discernment and careful vigilance.

The first peril to which it exposes is to make a supernatural state take what is perhaps only an effervescence of nature. The impressionable, exalted, emotional temperaments easily fall into these kinds of illusions, making especially women highly suspicious in this matter, as does Joseph Lopez Ezquerra ?. Wherein it should not be concluded, according to the wise restriction of the same author °, that, in them, spiritual drunkenness is always misleading. A modest natural, dignified and quiet, and a virtue based on mortification and PhuWe say nothing about the deception, with which we must count +*+. Vanity or even more perverse purposes have inspired more than once the resounding exteriors of fervour.

Whatever the rightness of intentions, humility is still perilous in these kinds of favors, and the beginnings, seeing themselves drunken in this way, are hard to escape the temptation to believe themselves already of saints. can still compromise the physical health of those who give up without moderation. The enjoyment that they experience brings them back instinctively and exhausts their forces without supernatural profit, unless they make them a merit of the spiritual voluptuousness they get drunk about. On the contrary, they must temper these excitalions by a wise meditation that diverts the mind from tender and emotional considerations, and fixes it on others colder and no less useful. Fallüt-1l reduces the duration of the prayer, even suspending this exercise for some time, there is no need to hesitate if all other precautions remain ineffective‘. It would be better to resort momentarily to this extreme measure, rather than to let the body weaken into disastrous tremors, the backlash of which soon reaches the soul and reduces it to impotence.

This is true even of the sensitive shaking determined by perfect intoxication. Saint Térèse? expressly recommended to her sisters to moderate the impetuousness of the transports that the soul feels in contemplation, diverting thought on some other subject, otherwise, she says, one would completely ruin his health.

Thus the movements and radiances of the sensitive devotion, which is for the soul a kind of drunkenness, must be subject, as all organic pleasures, to the empire of reason; for, as the Angelic Doctor teaches,

And should it be necessary to forbid her still — not forever, for that would not be fitting, but for some determined time — the exercise of her meditations; thus, by withdrawing all fuel from her fire, its excessive ardor will come to be mitigated.

2 Path of the perf., c. 19.

2 Sum. 4. 2. q. 34, a. 5, ad. 3. Bodily delights pertain to the sensitive part, which is regulated by reason; and therefore they need to be tempered and restrained by reason. But spiritual delights pertain to the mind, which is itself the rule; hence they are, of themselves, sober and moderate.

THIRD DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

LES TRANSPORTS

SECOND TRANSPORT: THE MYSTICAL SUMMER Its concept and its relationship to body sleep. — Its causes; luminous immersion and the absorption of will. — How it differs from contemplative silence, drunkenness, and ecstasy. — Sleep occurs at the peak of drunkenness or without drunkenness. — Two degrees: simple drowsiness and lethargy, to which liquefaction or discharge is attached. — Durée du sommeil mystique. — Marques caractéristiques. — Effets. - Perfection and security of this state. I. — "From the prayer of quietness," says Térèse!, "it is customary to carry out a sleep which is called powers, which are neither absorbed nor so suspended as to be able to see the rapture there, nor is it entirely union."In the example of Saint Terèse, several mystics point to spiritual sleep among the degrees of contemplative prayer. We can quote Saint John of the Cross, Alvarez de Paz, * Scaramelli, 4. 1 Letter to Fr. Rodrigue Alvarez, Carta 18.) 2 Montée du Carmel, 1. 2, ©. 14, pD. 117.

k 3 De grad: contempl. 1. 5, p. 3, ©. 7,t. 6, p. 574. 4 Dirett. Mist. Tratt. 3,0. 9, p. 173. Long before all these authors, Richard de Saint-Victor indicated the relationship between mystical sleep and body sleep. The latter softens the external organs and suspends the exercise, the latter subjugates the inner senses and all mental powers: it is a delicious rest of the soul in the bosom of God '.

Two things, in fact, characterize one and the other sleep: the absence of reflex knowledge and rest. Spiritual sleep therefore consists in an unconscious intuition of the Sovereign Good and in a suave and loving fixedness on this divine object. What should not be understood as adherence to God without prior knowledge; for the look of the mind always precedes the movement of reasonable activity; but only in this sense that the very brightness of light or the vivacity of attraction draw so strongly the soul out of itself, that it is all in the object of its vision and love, without any reflection on what is happening in it during this intellectual and affective operation.

IT. — Either of these two causes, acting separately or simultaneously, namely: the immersion of the soul in the light, or its absorption by love, explain mystical sleep and its varying degrees.

Saint John of the Cross admirably describes the suspension of the conscious life of the soul by the effect of inner irradiation.

"Sometimes," he said, "this divine light strikes the soul with so much strength and fills it so intimately, that the soul does not recognize the darkness where it was before or the light that illuminates it; it even seems to him that it does not understand anything about this darkness, nor what looks at this light. That is why she is buried in a deep oblivion of all things, not knowing what she did, nor how long this operation lasted. She remains in this state for several hours, which only seems to her for a moment when she has returned to herself.

"The cause of this forgetfulness is none other than the purity and simplicity of this light, which, being spread in Passus, renders it pure and simple as it is, by emptying it from all the images of the senses and the memory which it used in its operations; and in this way the soul continues to remain in its oblivion, without making any reflection on the length or the brevity of time. Thus this prayer, though very long, seems to him very short, because soul does it in a very spiritual and very clean knowledge of any material idea. And it's this short prayer that is commonly said to penetrate Heaven. We call it short because we don't take care of its duration. It is said that it penetrates Heaven, because the soul is united with God in an all heavenly knowledge, knowledge that makes in the soul great effects, which preserve in it when it emerges from this sweet sleep...

"So the sacred bride puts ignorance or oblivion of the things created between the effects that this mysterious sleep has produced in her, when she says: I did not know (Cant. vi, 41), i.e. I did not know where it came from. Nevertheless, although it seems to the bride that being full of this light she does nothing, especially since she does not operate by the senses, she surely convinces herself that she does not waste time. Indeed, although the operations of his powers cease with regard to bodily things, his intelligence continues without interruption.

"So much so that this careful Wife herself responds to the objection that one can make on this subject, saying that she is sleeping, and that her heart is watching (Cant. v, 2). It means that in truth it sleeps, according to the condition of nature, by ceasing to act, but that its heart supernaturally watches, being raised to a supernatural knowledge. The mark that one can thus have to judge whether this knowledge of God, secret, intimate and supernatural, is communicated to the soul, is when the soul no longer desires to know anything created, either great or small, or noble or abject and despicable."

The second form of mystical slumber occurs through the adhesion of the will.

This master faculty can, under the light of inner enlightenment or by a special attraction that fascinates it, go to God with impetuousness that suspends the functions of other faculties and absorbs the whole soul. In this absorption, the soul keeps from its life only a vague feeling that it is to God, that it is lost in the abyss of its goodness, but without being able to say in what way.

He follows from there, according to the remark of Saint John of the Cross!, that the enjoyment of the will always leaves in soul a certain knowledge of his intimate operations, and therefore that the spiritual sleep is conceived more complete and complete with the only illumination of the mind than with the loving absorption of the will.

HI. — The unconsciousness of the state in which one is thus forming the characteristic trait of sleep, and it is mainly by this aspect that it differs from the supernatural suspension, which we have called silence.

In silence as in sleep, the play of the powers is suspended, but the soul does not cease to see what is happening in it; it keeps the feeling of stopping impregnated powers and the enjoyment of the will. In sleep, on the contrary, the consciousness of the contemplative suspension disappears or remains only confused and indefinable, as happens to those who already no longer watch, and who do not sleep entirely yet.

Here too is the reason for the difference between sleep and simple drunkenness. The intoxicated soul shakes, braids, and by the vivacity of its slenderness and the tenderness of its complaints betrays the flame of love that devours it. But she still sees, and often the holy madness of which she seems agitated arises from the impotence she feels to translate outside the transport that dominates her. When the soul sleeps, it no longer feels; all vibrations calm down, and life, though no less active and powerful, circulates silently, Suavely, concentrated on the object of love.

Finally, it is still by unconsciousness that sleep differs from ecstasy itself. In ecstasy, indeed, the soul, though immersed in the light, does not lose the feeling of its intimate acts; the memory of what struck its eyes and of the movements which contemplation has determined in it remains engraved in its memory, while sleep leaves no trace in the mind, or, at most, only confused impressions *. 226 THIRD DEGREE: TRANSPORTATION

It follows from this that the sleep we are talking about does not involve any special divine communication, as often happens in ecstasy. If positive revelations occurred, either by vision or by word, it would no longer be spiritual sleep, but that which the authors call prophetic, and which we will have to talk about by exposing the various forms of divine revelations.

The suspension of the external senses, which is not as deep in sleep as in ecstasy, is another difference between these two states. During ecstasy, the senses are completely suspended, and no external excitement is able to awaken them.

In mystical sleep, they can be bound to increasing degrees. The first is numbness as experienced in sleepiness, which serves as a transition from sleep to sleep. The second suspends the organs, as in ordinary sleep; they no longer exercise, but energetic excitement would remind them to themselves. Finally they are immersed in complete insensitivity, as in ecstasy*. In this state, the body usually remains motionless, in the attitude where contemplation surprises it; THE MYSTICAL SUMMEIL

SECOND TRANSPORT: but sometimes it falls to the ground, as abandoned by life.

This latter case, however, must be rare, because mystics usually make this reservation that sleep does not bind entirely, like ecstasy, either mental powers or external senses. This ligature was complete, the second of these states, as we have already said, were intimate.

A final difference is that mystical sleep occurs only in the time of recollection and prayer, while ecstasy can invade the soul outside of prayer t.

In summary, except for the characteristic note of unconsciousness or memory, there are between one and the other the greatest analogies, and as the remark Alvarez de Paz?, one can consider sleep as an ecstasy begun.

IV. — The sleep of the powers is the ordinary sequel and the culmination of mystical drunkenness. Just as the excess of natural intoxication plunges into drowsiness and insensitivity, spiritual intoxication, brought to its peak, also leads to a more or less complete inner absorption, to a delicious and silent rest in God, and to a perfect forgetfulness of all that is not this kind object. The soul comes as far as to ignore it; all in it seems to sleep; everything, except the heart, as it sings in its joy the bride of the sacred SONGS: "I sleep, but my heart is awake."Life withdraws from all that is external, and the absorption of love suspends until the feeling of attention and knowledge; or rather it is God who, after intoxicating the soul, plunges it, without his knowledge and without any effort on his part, into this admirable rest."

Mystical sleep is not always preceded by drunkenness. God throws, when he pleases him, the soul into this blessed ignorance of herself, within the light and Pamour. Without any emotional shaking that has announced or prepared this rest, the soul gathered before God is suddenly wrapped in light, captivated and absorbed in love, to the point that she does not know or cannot turn to herself, to realize the Pillumination and attraction that she undergoes.

V. — Whether sleep appears as a result of drunkenness or without drunkenness, it involves this double gradation: simple drowsiness or a real lethargy?

It is mainly to this last degree that we seem to operate the phenomenon called by mystics SHORTLY Where LIQUEFACTION. At least Saint Francis of Sales, whom we follow here, places this state after quietness and before the wound of love, which precedes union. It would be, if we hear it well, a sort of soul delicacy, in which she seems to abandon her own life in order to dive into God's life. To the first ardour that consumes it, the soul boils first and is agitated by violent movements, such as the liquid that the flame boils: it is drunkenness. Under the persevering action of the sacred fire of love, the soul, liquefied, flows over the very home that transforms it to become united with it: then it is sleep, the prelude to mystic union. But let us listen to Saint Francis of Sales! painting us how this flow of soul is accomplished in God.

"My soul," said the sacred lover (Cant. v, 6), "has been so deep that my Beloved has spoken; and what is to say, it has melted, otherwise it has no longer been contained in itself, nor has it come to its divine lover?... But how does this sacred soul-sucking come about in his Beloved One? An extreme complacency of laminating in the beloved thing produces a certain spiritual impotence, which makes the soul no longer feel any power to remain in harmony. It is for that reason, like a melted balm which has no more firmness ny of solidity, it lets itself go and swollen in what it loves, it does not throw itself in a way of lancement (intoxication), ny it does not tighten in a manner of union (so this is not yet union), but it goes gently flowing, as a fluid and liquid thing in the Divinity that it loves. And as we see that the clouds, which are strewn by the wind of midy, are melted and converted without rain, can no longer remain in them, fall and sigh down, meslanes so intimately with the earth which they detrempent, that they are no more but a mesme thing with icelle; so blade, which, quoy quaimante, still demerges in itself, comes out by this sacred ecclesiastical and fluidity, and leaves itself so-so, not only to unite with the Beloved, but to meddle all together and to detreminate with luy.

"You see, Theotime, therefore, that the flow of a soul into his God is something other than a true ecstasy, by which the soul is all out of its bounds, of its natural hold, all measured, absorbed and swallowed up in its God... The soul swollen in God does not die; for as it rots to die from being abysmal in life? But she lives without living in herself, because, like the stars, without losing their light, no longer shine in the presence of the sun...; also the soul, without losing its life, no longer lives, being meditated with God, God lives in it."

As Saint Francis de Sales insinuates, this flow constitutes a kind of death for the soul, in that it loses consciousness of its own action and is so absorbed in divine life that the very feeling of its absorption escapes it. In itself, sleep is the image of death!; how does this mystical lethargy, where the soul ceases to belong and feel, where it deserts consciousness and senses, not evoke the thought of death and does it not take the name of it??

VI. — What is particularly remarkable in this sleep is its duration.

Saint John of the Cross has already told us that "the soul remains in this state for several hours, which appears to it only for a moment when it has returned to itself". Le P. Scaramelli, in his MYSTICAL DIRECTORY, repeatedly reproduces this important assertion.

God is free in his gifts, and when an order of fact is found, it is permitted to infer the characters of a state. But it must be recognized that this length of mystical sleep, assuming it is so considerable, would present an exception to the general law on the time granted to contemplative suspension.

Perhaps it is not contrary to these grave authorities to bring their testimony back to the common order, with the help of a double restriction. The first would be to see only rare exceptions in these multi-hour prayers. But, basically, this is a matter of experience. If, in reality, the contemplation of sleep usually lasts for long hours, there is more than just to record the facts and conclude with the law.

The second explanation is to distinguish in mystical sleep, as in all other kinds of contemplation, the climax and the release of suspension. The top of this imperfect ecstasy would be subject to the same conditions of duration as other mystical prayer!. After stopping, this suspension can start again, fall back and resume again. In the intervals, soul, without regaining normal exercise of its senses and faculties, would pass from sleep itself to sleepiness, or from deep drowsiness to another less unconscious. These alternatives, by renewing themselves, can embrace a remarkable time, without the soul noticing and measuring the duration. The indistinct visions which then operate in the mind providing no point of reference, whole hours go unnoticed and appear only for a moment.

The absence of any memory at awakening is not sufficient proof that there has been no touch in sleep; for, as well as at the time when one falls asleep or when one

1S. Bonavent. De Profect. relig. 1.2, c. 63. Vivès, t. 12, p. 499. For this sleep is like that of those who are beginning to doze off, etc... For the love of God, joined with pure understanding, inebriates the mind and, having withdrawn it from external things, by its power binds and joins it to God; and the more vehement, intelligent, and lucid the love, the more powerfully it draws the mind into itself, until at last, having wholly forgotten all that is beneath God, [it rests] in the divine [...] alone. ...one half-wakes, one utters words and feels impressions of which memory retains no trace; likewise, in the intervals of spiritual sleep, the soul can have thoughts and feelings, but so lightly and so vaguely that consciousness effaces them at once.

VII. — This lack of memory often becomes a cause of concern for souls who enter this mystical state: they wonder whether this suspension comes from God, man or demon. It is therefore important to assign precise marks to which one can recognize its nature.

We must first ensure that we do not enter this rest by a natural effort of concentration. If one admits that there is thoughtful desire and tendency, active recollection and voluntary silence of powers, it is a sign that sleep is the result of natural industry. The excess of food, and more often, the immoderate penances and the weakness of the physical complexion, can also determine this drowsiness!.

Saint Térèse denounces the confusion of contemplative sleep with natural drowsiness as quite common among people who practice prayer, mainly among women dedicated to piety, but weak in mind and body.

"I want to warn you," she said to her sisters?, "of a peril that I have already reported, and in which I have seen people falling from prayer, especially women; the fragility of our sex predisposes them, and that is why what I am going to say suits them more.

"It is only a few, as a result of their great SECOND TRANSPORT: THE MYSTICAL SUMMER 2331 penances, their oraisons, their watches, or even only because of the weakness of their complexion, cannot receive an inner consolation without their nature being overcome; and, feeling within some delight, and in the body a sort of failure, when with it comes a sleep called spiritual and which goes a little beyond what I have said, they imagine that one is no different from the other, and let himself go to this drunkenness. Then this increasing drunkenness, because nature becomes increasingly weakened, they take it for a delight, and call it what is pure waste of time and ruin of health. I know a person who sometimes stays eight hours in this state, without losing the feeling and without having any of God's. By making her sleep and eating, and by removing her excessive penances, she is healed of this evil."

VII. — The effects that follow this sleep form its most distinctive and surest mark.

The proper of divine sleep is to strengthen the soul, to make it capable of the greatest sacrifices. It emerges from this mysterious rest animated by a new, generous and inflamed life for good, Invinciblely drawn to divine things, detached and disgusted from all that is not God. " If the body does not draw from it an excess of forces and energy for action, at least it loses nothing of its strength?. On the contrary, the natural drowsiness weighs the mind and the emptiness of holy thoughts?; it cools the heart _ overexcites the senses, inspires the disgust of things surna- = oesturals, sometimes delivers to obstinate obsessions. ] ; Therefore, if, as a result of sleep, the soul is plagued by darkness, lukewarmness, fatigue that weighs the heart by exhausting the body, it must not be doubted that such sleep is nothing divine, but that it is either natural or artificially caused by Satan.

IX. — Finally, another sign that characterizes the 7 spiritual sleep is the already advanced perfection of souls. who receive this favor? It is granted only to those who, not only have emerged victorious from the inferior struggles of virtue, but have also crossed the first degrees of Re life and touched upon mystic union. Imperfect souls do not know this saint and profitably rest in God. ‘

As soon as one has recognized the divine operation, one can safely abandon himself to his influence; or rather, as Joseph Lopez Ezquerra notes, all tardy, ut contingit cum homo expergistur, which vix potest a se somnumexcutere.

1 Ste TÉRÈSE, loc. cit.

2 Jos. Lopez EZQUERRA, Luc. myst. For the discernment of this (sleep), let him first attend to their state; for if they are beginners and not yet established in supernatural prayer, that frequent sleep will not be a true one; for it is a communication [granted] to the perfect and to those who advance by the passive way. SCARAMELLI, Tr. 3, c. 10, n. 88, p. 177. Essendo in sonno spirituale un的 orazione molto vicina all unione mistica e fruitiva amore, non si suole da Dio concedere, senonchè dopo un lungo esercizio di contemplazione infusa. = 4 ALVAREZ. de Paz, l. 5, P.3, €. 7, t. 6, p. 577. O sleep, then, truly blessed, in which the soul recovers her strength for labor, and which the Lord himself diligently watches over in her. For he says to the young maidens, that is, to those more imperfect souls who have not yet known this sleep by experience: I adjure you, etc.

5 Lucern. myst. This (slumber), since it can neither be procured nor prevented, nothing in it is to be rejected or done, if [text corrupted/illegible] ...it be recognized as having been true sleep: but [it should be] enjoined upon the soul that she not hinder sleep from coming upon her amid her discursive thoughts and meditations; but when she feels herself moved and called by the Bridegroom to his couch, let her abandon and surrender herself to be lulled to sleep. The idea dd GE dr dE or $2.

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CES CHAPITRE XV

THIRD DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

LES TRANSPORTS

THIRD TRANSPORT: DIVINE TOUCH General concept. — Deep sympathy between the soul and God. — Les touches

are an attempt at union, if not the union itself. — Leurs formes diverses.

— Their effects on the soul and body. - The main conclusions are:

characters, that God alone can produce them.

I. — To dispose of the mystical union the soul already intoxicated and asleep in the transports of love, God causes it to seek it by holy slenderness which completes to break all the earthly bonds and leave it free to flourish towards heaven; he gives it, for this purpose, views and feelings as delicious as it is urgent and irrefutable of its action and of its choice. Before surrendering to her ineffable possession, he makes her haletante, impatient, dying of desire. The soul has more attraction for God, light and truth, than the senses have for the bodies. As soon as she sees it, she rushes to this object of her life with the spontaneity of instinct.

The impulses and ardour we are talking about here are not the fruit of the soul's own activity; they are supernatural in any way, and it is God himself who determines them by a special action of his grace!

Mystical authors do not agree on the number and nature of these divine excitements. The cause of their differences seems to us to be due not only to the pure gratuity of these kinds of graces, which God grants to the will of his choice?, but also to their regular appearance, both in the passive states that precede or follow union, and in the union itself, and with a variety of forms that render their classification and enunciation of extreme difficulty. Hence a great variety of names and formulas.

However, whether these supernatural impressions announce, accompany or follow the union, they offer a general and common aspect exactly rendered by the word of Mystical Touches: through them, God makes himself feel and taste the most intimate of the soul, in the light and sweetness of contemplation.

One of these keys, perhaps the easiest to hear, and wonderfully effective, is the love wound. We will study it separately in the next chapter. Let us now stop at the other forms of these divine excitements.

Scaramelli? defines them: real and real sensations, but purely spiritual, through which soul feels God to the most intimate of itself and tastes it with great delight. This feeling is not only about the

1 Pumpr. a SS. Troir: P. 2, Tract. 3, D. 4, a. 6, t. 2, p. 423. Touch, moreover, is taken either actively or passively. Touch, taken actively, implies the action of God intimately touching the soul. Tactus passive sumptus importat immediatum hujus intimæ actionis performed in anima, which owns dicit sensum the action and the very contact of God.

The suavity of these favors indicates that they are mainly intended for the will. "These feelings, taken in the meaning we give them here," says St John of the Cross, "do not look at understanding, but at will... It must be known, therefore, that he reflects these feelings, that is, and lasting, he rejalls, I say, in the understanding, a taste that one has of God."

Il. — What is this divine touching? No one, no doubt, can understand it but the one who tried it. However, is it not true that the contact that best responds to the nature of the reasonable, greedy and insatiable soul infinity is the contact of God, who alone is infinite?? And this becomes even more obvious, considering that, by grace, soul becomes partaker of nature and divine life, as well as commonly taught by theologians; and that, therefore, grace is not conceived without God's contact. During the duration of the trial, this divine contact is not felt; the knowledge of this wonderful union appears in the full day of consciousness only in the glory of heaven.

The various phenomena of contemplation are only essays and foretaste of the final revelation. Without the shadows of faith dissipating, the soul that receives these heavenly ble aata r a r ù de mentes he promises.

We will later point out the role of the gifts of the Holy One to see that the spiritual touches have as their object La adia diaa bn at €; to excite an inner impression immediately produced by God himself, and in which results for the soul a delicious feeling of his presence and his action. union at least transient, and that is why Saint John of the Cross, who excels in dealing with divine touches, observes that they are only suitable for mystical union. in love, he says!, before enjoying the divine union, sit in a certain spiritual touch that is done between God and the soul: for it is God himself who is seen and tasted. And although this view is not so clear as it is in the glory of paradise, however this spiritual touch is so sublime, that it penetrates all within, or, to speak in this way, all the marrow of the soul." the union to which we desire to lead the soul."

Is it therefore necessary to conclude that the divine touches never meet in souls that have not yet been raised to union? Scaramelli hears it with this rigor ê. Le P. Seraphim "considers this conclusion excessive, and interprets the statements of St John of the Cross with the highest touches.

Whatever the case may be with this interpretation, in our opinion, not very well founded, so much St John of the Cross seems precise and formal, it seems to us that, based on the principle of the complete gratuitousness of these divine favors and on their most extensive notion, there is no contradiction in admitting their pre-existence to the state of union as we will soon define it? But it must be recognized that if these keys are not even union, they are the prelude, and that they are one of the most powerful ways to prepare the soul for the sublimitity of these last ascents.

IV. — Let us add in favor of the feeling which admits these supernatural excitations in the mystical states before union, which the authors who have dealt with these matters, in particular Saint John of the Cross ?, signal a great variety in the divine touches, one being more sensitive, more intense, more sublime than the other.

The most perfect are called substantial, not that they alone reach the substance of the soul or that they enter it without the functioning of the faculties, but because of their outstanding excellence. As they carry their divine influence further into the soul, only they are supposed to be in multiples that they take on, sometimes it is the light that dominates, sometimes the attraction of the will; other times, they seize the soul without leaving it any other feeling than that of this blessed encounter with God. It is mainly then that they are said to be substantial.

These kinds of impressions represent what is highest in God's mystical relationship with the soul, and that is why they do not occur until the very height of mystical life, that is to say, spiritual marriage.

Spiritual touches reach the soul in a sudden and unexpected way, sometimes on the occasion of a religious memory, of a word of Scripture, of a pious exhortation, of any object that makes you think of God; most often without any external thought or excitement that calls them.

Thus Saint John of the Cross notes, in this regard, that the soul would vainly attempt to excite these wonderful emotions. Let's hear it? Summarize this whole doctrine.

"The soul cannot rise to this knowledge and to these divine touches by its cooperation or by the efforts of its imagination: for this knowledge is above all things, and God produces them in it without it contributing by its powers or by its capacity. He grants them to her when she thinks about it and wants it the least. It takes only a slight memory of divine majesty or something else, albeit very small, to excite all these movements in it... [they are sometimes born in the soul when the soul hears a word of Scripture wherever it is spoken of God; but they are weaker and more languishing, and do not have EC's.

Ea 242 THIRD DEGREE: TRANSPORT; even efficient and the same sweetness. They are nevertheless of greater strength, and they must be valued more than all the knowledge of God's creatures and works.

"And because these lights and touches come from God suddenly and without waiting for the consent of the will, the soul must not strive to obtain them or to acquire them through its work; but it must humble itself and resign itself to its orders, for it will complete its work in the manner that it pleases. I do not say that the soul must stand in a purely negative state with regard to these operations, as I said with regard to other knowledge, because these are a part of the union to which we desire to lead soul."

V. — On the effects of the divine touches, let us let St John of the Cross speak again.

"Some of this knowledge and inner touches that God pours into the soul," he says, "enrich in such a way that only one is enough, not only to deliver it all at once from the imperfections that she had not been able to overcome throughout her life, but also to adorn with abundance Christian virtues and divine gifts. These sacred movements are so pleasant, and give the soul such sweet consolation, that all the sorrows of his life and all his pains seem to him well rewarded. She becomes so courageous, and she is so animated to suffer for God, that she grieves when she is not besieged by all kinds of suffering."

Elsewhere, portraying the suavity and effectiveness of the substantial touches, he thus comments these verses of his Vive € O MAN, who, being no less generous than powerful and rich, spread your gifts abundantly upon me! O MAN DOUCE, all the more pleasant to my soul when you touch it, that you would be wonderful to him if you struck it sharply!... All these gifts, O my God, are the effects of your mercy and liberality, and you have granted me these graces through the divine touching of your Son, who is the splendour of your glory and the impression of your substance (Hebr. 1:3). It is through him that you have touched me; and, as it is your wisdom, it is through him that you conduct all things from their beginning to their end, with equal strength and gentleness. O eternal Word, may you touch purely! may you subtly penetrate the substance of my soul, because of the purity and sublimitity of your substance! Oh, what divine sweetness then make you taste it! Being as powerful and as fearsome as you are, you communicate to the soul with admirable sweetness. Happy souls who receive such gentle treatments, publish them throughout the earth, give knowledge of them to the world. But no, don't tell him about it; he doesn't know what these divine pleasures are; he can neither understand them nor enjoy them; and whatever you may say, he won't listen to you. O my God and my life, these will see you and feel you in the delicateness of your inner touches, which, emerging from material things, have made themselves spiritual enough and subtle enough to receive your impressions...

"O thousand times DELICIOUS ATTUCHMENT, who consume the soul by the strength of your subtlety, who take away the taste of all creatures, who bind to you alone, who print you in his heart in such a charming way, that the touches of the lower or higher things, earthly or heavenly, seem harsh and offensive to him, that she. can only hardly speak of them or taste them, even. very slightly... © DELICIOUS ATTUCHING, just as you have nothing bodily, you penetrate more my soul; you deliver it from material images, and, through the impression of your all divine being, you render it all divine human. That's why she still says:

Who's on the way to life.

"You can feel in this touch a taste of paradise, although you don't feel it in a perfect and con--sommed degree. This is not incredible, since God can give substance to the soul, as he has given himself to many saints in this life. From there, one cannot explain the inconceivable delight that comes from this divine communication... These delights have this of their own that he who tastes them has some understanding for himself; he feels them, he rejoices; but he is obliged to hide them in silence, cannot explain them... All we can say is that he tastes eternal life in advance. For, although in this life "this divine touching does not lift us up to the same perfec-ion that we will have in the glory of the blessed, nean- "less it impresses us the taste of future and immortal life. Thus the soul is in an admirable way participating in "God's things; it senses their sweetness; it possesses, through supernatural infusion, strength, wisdom, love, beauty, grace, goodness, many other heavenly goods. For since God alone is all these things, when he communicates to the soul through these sacred flows of himself, he enriches with all these gifts, and he tastes them in a sovereign degree of excellence. The abundance of these graces and tenderness of mind spreads even over the body and slips into the bone marrow, which seem to say to him, according to the language of David (Ps. xxxiv, 10): "Lord, who can be like you?"

The end of this long and beautiful quotation warns us that the body receives from this blessed contact on the other hand than that which comes from inner exuberance and shaking.

The vehemence of the excitations produced on the soul can be such that not only the body receives a simple rejaillation, but that it is agitated, overturned, deprived of feeling, and it is not uncommon for these kinds of impressions to lead to the actual delight.

At other times, emotion is entirely circumscribed in the soul's intimateness, whether the intensity is less, or: even because of its perfection, as we shall say; speaking of the consummated state of mystical covenant.

We have in support of this doctrine the express statements of St John of the Cross. To have his accurate and complete testimony on this point, let us add the following!:

"These movements are sometimes so sensitive and so powerful that they pass to the body, and cause it to tremble almost in all its parts. Other times, they make themselves felt in the mind when he is quiet, with all divine pleasure and without causing any tremor in the body."-

VI. — To sum up the characteristics of God's keys, we will say that they consist of an impression: and in a contact made by God himself on the soul, by which he warns not only that he is present, but also that he acts upon it and communicates himself to its substance.

Therefore, if the soul that receives these favors does not enjoy union, it is the announcement that it is about to achieve it.

These divine impulses are addressed directly to the soul; and if their vivacity rejalls on the senses, the soul does not give it any attention; it remains absorbed in its inner and purely spiritual emotion.

Finally, these mystical graces offer no safer guarantee of their existence and their heavenly origin than the effects of transformation and holiness that accompany or follow them.

To all these signs it is easy to recognize the hand of God, for God alone can thus penetrate the soul and make shine in it these shrapnel of holiness. May the demon excite sensitive and fleeting suavities, acting on the organs, there is nothing impossible there; but he cannot reach these depths of the soul where God makes himself felt, and he has nothing in common with the solid fruits of virtue: that grace there.exceres t.

"The devil," said Saint John of the Cross? "can't interfere in these divine operations, having no power to do anything like it, since there is nothing that can be compared to such a greedy good. Nor can he pour into the soul such sweetness and equal pleasure; for this knowledge makes taste in some way the divine essence and eternal life.

"However," says this mystical doctor, "the demon could sometimes represent to the soul sensitive perfections and tastes that would seem to be the rassacker and fill her; he could still strive to persuade her that it would be God herself that she would feel; but he could not cause these false images and imaginary consolations to flow into the bottom of the soul, nor would he suddenly ignite Pamour of God, as God's sweets usually do."

Nature is even more powerless to realize similar impressions and results.

If we were to meet people who were still imperfect and barely entered into the contemplative life, more emotional outside than in the depths of the soul, especially if we were to find in them concern and effort to provoke these so-called divine touches, we must hold for certain that they are in bad faith, in an involuntary illusion, or under the perfidious action of Satan.

Moreover, those alone may be subject to worry, who have not experienced the true spiritual touches; for whoever experiences it remains invinciblely convinced that the impression received is real and that it comes from God."

As soon as this intimate persuasion is endowed with the sanction of the director, soul only has to give up with humility and gratitude to the divine action, avoiding also and resisting it and wanting to activate it by natural effort. On his part, everything must be limited to consenting ?. CHAPITRE XVI

THIRD DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

LES TRANSPORTS

FOURTH TRANSPORT: THE BLESSURE OF LOVE The injury referred to here differs from the cleansing tests. — Mélange de suavité et de douleur. — Love ep is the principle in different ways. — Its three forms: transfixion, spark, sweet and bitter liquor. — Its effects on the soul: burning, disgust of all that is not God, anguish and thirst for love. — Its effects on the body: languor, vehement movements, ecstasy, stigma. — Holy Teresis wounded by the seraphim. — Subject of the mystical wound. — Dieu seul peut l'opérer. I. — Those who know the joys and pains of emotional life know that unsatisfied love leaves the heart hurt. This injury is conceived in two different forms: depending on whether the object loved is absent, remote, and that it is feared that it will not be reached; or that it is present, soliciting itself, ready to give itself, without giving itself again.

In the first case, the wound is only pain and desolation; in the second, it is a mixture of both mild and cruel impatience and love, in which the soul suffers from not having yet, but tress to the hope of enjoying soon and already getting drunk of the anticipated enjoyment that comes to it from the presence and promises of the Beloved.

This double wound is found in mystical ascension. One is part of the purifying trials which prepare for contemplative union, and of which we will have to speak; the other belongs to contemplation itself, and forms, according to most masters, one of the degrees of the mystical scale.

We are currently dealing only with this second injury.

It is, at the bottom, that a divine touch through which God deliciously penetrates the soul, in its most intimate depths, into a kind of flaming trait and making it sigh with incredible ardour towards the divine Bridegroom who calls him and hurts her by calling him.

It is a supernatural impulse that makes itself felt in the very center of the soul and communicates to it an irresistible impulse towards God?.

II. — By what she has and by what is promised to her, the soul tastes a delicious braiding: what she has not yet and pursues with her most ardent desires causes her ineffable anxieties, not only in her body, as the Father claims. Scaramelli, but in the deepest, "Theotime," said Saint Francis of Sales, "of course Pamour is a complacency, and therefore he is very pleasant, seeing that he does not leave in our hearts the sting of the desire; but when he leaves him, he leaves with iceluy a great pain. It is true that this pain comes from Pamour, and therefore it is a friendly and kind pain...

"This heart in love with its God, desiring infinitely to love, voides though yet he cannot yet ny like ny enough to desire. But this desire, which cannot be met, is like a dart in the side of a generationous spirit: but the pain that one receives does not leave it to be kind, especially as anyone who wants to love well, likes to desire as well, and considers it the most miserable of universes, if he would not continually desire to love what is so sovereignly kind. Desiring to love, he receives pain; but loving to desire, he receives sweetness."

And further on?: "But, as it is, this is admirable in wounds received by the divine love, that the pain is acceptable, and all those who feel it consent to it, and do not want to change this pain to all the softness of the universe. There is no pain emmy love, or if there is pain, it is a beloved pain."

Admirable mixture that flourishes the soul and luterates, intoxicates and desolates it, precipitates the movement of its life and throws it into the anguish of death! He alone can talk about it that has experienced these suavities and rigors of sure, but this in several different ways.

Sometimes it is in the form of a question which seems to question the fidelity of the soul, as when Our Lord, after his resurrection, asks three times the prince of the apostles: "Peter, do you love?"

Sometimes it is the gentle complaint, the tender reproach, as when the Saviour takes up the sister too eagerly of Lazarus and Madeleine, by these bright and sweet words: "Marthe, Martha, your solicitudes fall on too many things?" — or that he complains to the souls of being alone in the torments and anguishes of his Passion: "I waited for someone who wanted to be attributed with me, and he did not come?" Or even when he reveals moving contrast of his goodness and the ingratitude of men, as he did to the Blessed Marguerite-Marie: "This, he said to him, this Heart which loved men so much, that he spared nothing, until he exhausted himself and consumed himself to show them his love! And in return I receive from most only ingratitudes."

Sometimes Our Lord addresses a word of satisfaction and thanks for the zeal and faithfulness which he has displayed in his service, as in the vision where he said to the Angelic Doctor: "You have written well of me, Thomas; what do you want as a reward {?»

Most often, it is a word by which the divine Spouse invites the soul to follow him, to love him, to be faithful to him; declares his love to him as he does to the sacred Sunamite: "You have wounded my Heart, my sister, my wife";" simply reveals to him his presence as to Madeleine at the tomb?, or as to the apostles, when he appears to them after his resurrection °.

At other times, the blow that hurts the soul seems to come from the soul itself. It is a memory that glitters and pierces, a memory of a grace received or disdained; it is a thought that suddenly shines in it and the Jet in transports; it is a movement of zeal that rises in its depths and the consumption, as the psalmist tells it * of himself.

IV. — One can still consider the aspect of the divine wound of love in itself.

It is difficult to express these kinds of impressions in human language, and, moreover, we must not forget that "all these words in love are drawn from the resemblance between the affections of the heart and the passions of the body".

The most ordinary form is transfixion. It seems that love pierces the soul of an invisible and mysterious sting, and this, not only in the mystical operations that are being discussed here, but even from the natural point of view. Mythology represented the son of Venus with a quiver filled with fiery arrows, and, in the opinion of men, love is supposed to penetrate the heart only by wounding it.

The love, said Saint Francis of Sales 5, is the first, to be the principle and origin of all passions. It's for what it's like to be the first one in the heart, and FOURTH TRANSPORT: THE BLESSURE OF LOVE 253 where he has his seat, it is said that he hurts the heart. He is acute, says the apostate of France (saint Denis l'Aréopagite), and enters very intimately into the mind. Other lamour disorders: for it is luy that piercing the heart, makes the passage; it is only the tip of the dart that hurts; the rest only enlarges the wound and the pain."

It therefore seems to the soul that God sinks into his flanks: a burning dart, which both beatify and torture "to the bottom of his bowels, according to the expression of Saint Teresus, and it is as if they were taken away from him, when his divine Husband removes from it the dart from which he wounded him, so great is the feeling of lamour +".

It is mainly in this way for love to make the soul vibrate, that came to the divine touch that we are currently dealing with the name of a love wound.

Saint Térèse also compares it with a spark that would spring from the infinite home, from God, on the soul, not to spray and consume it, but only to inspire it the feeling and desire of these delicious flames.

"It is now coming to my mind," she said, "that it is as if he were escaping from the fiery fire, which is my God, a spark, which falls into his soul, would make him feel the power of this fire, but which, being unable to fire entirely, leaves him, with the delectable impression of his ardours, the trouble of not being consumed with it. This is the best comparison I have ever found to express this divine operation. This tasty pain is not pain. It is not always equal; sometimes it lasts a long time, and sometimes little, depending on whether it pleases Our Lord to communicate it, without any human effort being able to contribute to it. If sometimes it lasts long enough, it is not in a continuous way; it goes and comes. Finally, it does not persevere in the same state, and thus, the soul is never completely burned; at the moment when it begins to ignite, the spark is extinguished, leaving it with a very ardent desire to suffer again this pain of love that it caused him."

Elsewhere, recounting his own experiences, Saint Térèse still brings together the two images of the piercing arrow and the burning spark, to paint these violences of love.

A third form of this mystical wound arises from the comparison of a bitter liqueur and at the same time delicious which, spreading over the substance and soaking all the fibers of the being, determines the simultaneous impression of bitterness and delight.

"Pomegranates," said Saint Francis de Sales? "still so graceful in his comparisons, by their vermilla colour, by the multitude of their grains well tighten and tidy, and by their beautiful crowns, represent naively, as said sanctity Gregoire, the very holy charity all vermilla, because of its ardour towards God, filled with all the variety of virtues, and which alone obtains and bears the crown of eternal rewards. But the sugar of the grenades, which, as we see, is so pleasant to the healthy and the sick, is so mellow with bitterness and sweetness, that it does not make any difference whether it rejoicings the taste, or because it has its sweet sourness, or because it has an aigrette sweetness. — (Certes, Theotime, love is so so bitter-sweet, and while we are in this world, it never has a perfectly sweet sweetness, because it is not perfect, never purely supple and satisfied; -FOURTH TRANSPORT: THE LOVE BLESSURE 233 and none the less it does not allow to be greatly pleasant, its sourness refining the suavity of its sweetness, as its sweetness sharpens the grace of its sourness."

Le P. Godinez! uses the comparison of a drop of strong water that first feels like a freshness, but soon eats flesh, causes itching and pain. This is the so delicate and subtle caustic of divine love, which penetrates into the most intimate of the heart and produces an intolerable and delicious cooking.

Isn't this also the bouquet of myrrh that the sacred wife put in the middle of her breast, and who was intoxicating with bitterness and the sweetness of her perfume?

We say nothing here about the wound of love, although the wound of redoubling naturally produces a wound: it is enough to talk about it instead of the passive purifications carried out by the violence of love.

V.—In whatever form the injury of love appears, the effects on the soul and body are admirable. Let us consider, first of all, those who burst into souls.

The first is to ignite, to ignite, to give him an impetuous and irresistible rise to God, and constitutes, we can judge by everything we have said about it, as the essence of this divine impulse.

The second is to untie the soul, distract it and disgust it from everything, apart from the divine Husband who charms it and calls it. As it rises in these regions of holy love, the lower things move away, regress, disappear, and the dominant cause of the pain that pierces it is to see itself still in the bonds of mortality.

"At the same time as she is powerfully drawn to fly towards her Beloved One," observes St Francis de Sales! "She is also powerfully restrained and cannot fly, as attached to the low bets of this mortal life and her own impotence: she desires dove wings to fly in her rest (Ps. Liv, 7), and she's not treuve. So here she is brutally tormented between the violence of her eslans and that of her impotence."

The natural consequence of these ardent aspirations towards God and of this disgust for all that passes, is to communicate a holy greed for mortifications, to inspire the desire for death?, and to cast the soul into the state of fatigue and languor spoken of by the Bride of SONGS, when she says: "Support me; I defame with love."The soul is plagued by ardours that consume it; it is hungry and thirsty for God.

So it seems to us that the thirst and emotional anguish of which some mystics * make a special degree of prayer

1 Treaty of the Love of God, 1. 6, ch. 13.

2 Ste Térèse, sa Vie, ch. 29. When the impetuousness of his transports is not so great, it seems: that the pain calms down a little by the use of some penances. At least the soul, which knows nothing to do with its evil, seeks by this way to lighten it. But she made the blood leak under the blows, she does not feel anything more than if the body was deprived of life. She is tired of inventing new ways of suffering something for God; the first pain is so great, that I believe there is no bodily torment that can remove her feeling. Finding no remedy there, because there is none here below, to heal a evil come from heaven, the only thing that can soften his trouble is to ask God for the remedy; and she sees no other than death, because she alone can put it to the enjoyment of her sovereign good.

Song of Songs 2:5: Stay me with flowers, compass me about with apples, for I languish with love.

4 Jos. Lopez EZQUERRA, Luc. myst. This thirst, although it sometimes has impulses and drives as companions..., yet more often this thirst of which we speak turns not into external impulses, but into an inward ardor and dropsy, and is a special degree of prayer. — Item SCAMARELLI, Dir. mist. Tratt. 3, ©. 11, p. 178. contemplative, could be placed among the effects of the injury of love.

According to Scaramelli!, between the anguish and thirst that is being discussed here, there is this difference that one is an acute but transient impatience; and the other a less violent but continuous desire. The first is in the second what the flame is in the home: it is permanent and more intense; it has more vivacity and less persistence.

The very nature of this hunger and thirst is that it cannot be satisfied.

"Whatever she does, whatever is done for her," said Richard de Saint-Victor? "the soul is not able to master or satisfy its desires. Altered, she drinks; but far from quenching her thirst, while drinking, she repeats it; the more she drinks, the more thirst she eats. The same applies to his hunger, nothing calms him. It is cruel that forbearance does not temper and that even drunkenness does not manage to quench! Hunger worthy of admiration: and pity that nothing can neither contain nor satisfy! Badly incu-- and desperate that the cure itself only enlarges!"

This growing insatiability has a dual cause.

The first is in the reciprocal influence that occurs

1 SCARAMELLI, Dir. mist. Tratt. 3, ©. 11, n. 96, p. 180: Se l'appetito razionale s-innalzi a Dio con qualche desiderio impaziente, ma passaggiero ,. questo si chiama ansia d'amore. Ma si lo stesso desiderio ansioso se ne stia sempre radicato e fisso nel senso dell-anima, quello allora si chiama sete di amore. E però fra lansia e la sete vi è quella proporzione che passa fra Ja fiamma che esce dal legno accesso e poi se estinge, e il fuoco isso che se ne stà immobilie e fermo nella materia del legno, nè se parte non l'abbia ridotto in cenere.

2 De quatuor. grad. viol. charit. Migne, col. 1242. Whatever it does, whatever is done to it, does not satisfy the desire of the burning soul: it thirsts and drinks; yet by drinking it does not extinguish its thirst, but the more it drinks, the more it thirsts. For the thirst or hunger of an eager, nay insatiable, soul is not calmed but is irritated while it enjoys its wish according to its wish... What, I ask, is more troublesome, or what more bitter, since it can neither temper its thirst by resisting, nor extinguish it by becoming drunk? A wondrous, indeed pitiable, craving, which is expelled by no [...], nor calmed by any satisfaction. An incurable and utterly hopeless malady, in which a remedy is always sought and nowhere found; indeed, whatever is presumed to be a remedy for its healing turns instead into an increase of the fury... between love and desire, the one kindling the other, until the full possession of the object loved and longed for. The more the soul loves God, the more she desires it; and the more she calls it, the more her charity increases. As God digs a void, he fills it, and filling it makes it a new ability to receive. "When God, said Saint Teresis, gives this water to a soul in great abundance, he makes it able to drink much, just as he who makes a vase makes it able to contain what he wants to put in it."

The second cause is the nature of the object of love and desire. Get object is God himself, infinite, whose possession by the creature can never be limited, and therefore likely to increase.

VI. — The share of the West body is neither less varied nor less prodigious.

The:natural counter-cut of the wound of the soul is de-alanguir I body and reduce it to a kind of consumption. Several saints are mentioned who died in these anguishes of love. "It's quite a bumpy thing," said Saint Francis de Sales, "that human love has the strength, not only to hurt the heart, but to make the body sick until death... Of course, I know well, Theotime, that Plato thus spoke of the abject, vile and chetif love of the worldly. But, nevertheless, these owners do not allow us to tremble in the love of the Celeste and divine."

The stress and violence of the body, in these divine attacks which the soul shares with him, translates into burning words, cries, sighs, tears, vehement and precipitated palpitations of the heart, ardours that stir and burn, to the point that one must resort to Det. ED ER are EDS LT E

SLT <a £ s Tree RAS

FOURTH TRANSPORT: THE BLESSURE OF LOVE 259 to refrigerants who tempered the vivacity of it; in a word, by this set of phenomena that we will describe further in talking about the mystical jubilation and the fire of love.

According to Saint Térèse? speaking of herself, "this is sometimes the liveliness of transport, which it renders incapable of any action, and which the paralyzed body cannot move neither the feet nor the hands. If one is standing, one falls on oneself, as if one no longer belonged, and it is hardly possible to breathe. We grow only a few sighs, almost insensitive outside, but very sharp within."

Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité* observes that these kinds of impetuousness usually lead to ecstasy.

Among these wonders, the most wonderful are probably the stigmas and other supernatural marks printed on the body by love.

Against the allegations of false mystics, who exclude from the contemplation of the holy humanity of Jesus Christ, usually it is the appearance of this divine Savior who causes this wound. Its name alone is for the loving soul a sharp arrow that penetrates it and makes it braid. The scenes and pains of the Passion above all, excite a delicious and desolating sympathy. Under the repeated blows of these deep emotions, the soul receives in some way in its substance mysterious prints that make it an image of the Beloved; and, from the depths of the soul, God sometimes allows these prints to appear sensitive on the body. The blessed name of Jesus is engraved in golden letters

1 Gopneez, Pract. de la théol. myst. 1.6, ©. 42, p. 245 : De esta llaga se causa a vezes un muy regalado desfalleseimiento, a donde el amor está enxerto en dolor, y los frutos de este enxerto son suspirarostiernos, requieou de feu dans le cœur même ou sur la pôtre; les sores du Crucifié s'impriment aux pieds, au mains et au cour; les instruments de la Passion sont reproduction par des resemblantes images sur la foncité que habite et informe une soul que l'amour identifier avec Jesus Christ.

These miraculous effects of love on the body, when God's hand operates them, are always accompanied by a corresponding wound in the soul; but the intimate wound may not be followed, and this is the ordinary law, of these external manifestations. From the fact that the injury is not apparent, it is not allowed to contest absolutely the existence of the injury.

Saint Teresus received, in a prayer similar to the one we are trying to describe, a wound which Our Lord gave to renew several times, and which she thus tells us in her Life written by herself!:

"I saw an angel on my left side in a bodily form... He was not great, but small and very beautiful; with his flaming face, he seemed to belong to this category of angels who are all kindled and called cherubins; for these spirits do not tell me their names... I saw in his hands a long dart that was golden, and whose tip, at its end, appeared of fire. From time to time he plunged him through my heart and shoved him down to the bowels; by removing him he seemed to tear them away from me with iron, and left me with a great love of God. The pain was so intense that it made me grow those weak sighs that I used to speak of; but the suavity that came to me from this extreme pain was so great, that I could neither desire the end of it nor rest on something that was less than God. It is not bodily pain, but spiritual, although the body also participates, and even greatly."

This way of expressing oneself might make it seem that the wound that 1 is involved was purely spiritual, and perhaps Saint Teresis believed it herself. In fact, it is quite different. The inspection of the heart of the saint, after her death, the legal investigations, and the authorization granted to the religious and religious of Carmel to celebrate this miraculous TRANSVERBÉRATION with a special feast and a special office, do not allow in this regard any hesitation. Even today, we can see, through the globe where the heart is enclosed, several openings made by the stern of the Seraphim. centimetres wide, and seems to have passed almost entirely through this main viscera of life. Et pourtant Térèse de Jésus survécut près de vingt ans à celte blessure mortelle ! ! God hangs here at his will the common laws of grace; is it surprising that he still suspends those of nature?

VII. — God grants these extraordinary testimonies of his choice as a reward or as a promise. When they burst after a long enjoyment of supernatural prayer, mainly after the union began", they knew the ecclesiastical authority, which did not fail to blame intrepid converse, while relating and admiring the prodigy. — The obvious traces of the transfixion carried out by the Angel could therefore be seen.

A crystal globe, hermetically closed, received the precious larceny; but a force of inner expansion soon made it burst, and it had to be replaced several times, until the moment when it was thought to practice at the upper part some openings by which this heart, still alive, could, in a way, breathe.

Around 1795, at the request of the Reformed Carmelites of Spain and Italy to celebrate with a feast the Transverberation of the heart of their holy Mother, took place legal and careful information to ascertain the very truth of the fact; and, following a favorable examination, Pope Benedict XIII instituted, in 1732, the requested feast, and fixed it for August 27th. Benoit XIV, by a brief of August 8, 1744, granted a perpetual plenary indulgence to all the faithful who would visit the churches of Carmel, from the first vespers to the sunset on this feast of the Transverberation.

But this is the most wonderful.

On the night of March 48-19, 1836, a thorn was seen in the lower part of the heart of St.Teresis, and on the very day of St.Joseph of the same year, a second was seen. Ges thorns, then very small, now measure more than two inches.

On August 27, 1864, the day the Carmel celebrated the feast. of the Transverberation, appeared the third, first as a pinhead, now about an inch long. A fourth appeared or soon appeared.

Since then it has deposited at the bottom of the jar a kind of detritus, where, along with other undecided forms of vegetation, germinate new thorns. There are almost fifteen of them.

Several commissions of theologians and doctors, doctors and professors of faculties, were called to examine the prodigy in its various circumstances, and, after a thorough and conscientious discussion, they could not contradict it or explain it naturally. — (Cf. Santa Teresa de Jesus, y las Espinas de su Corazon that will come in el monasterio de Carmelilas descualzas de Alba de Tormes, por N. ©. y B., presbytero de la congregacion de la M. — Valencia, 1876.)

1 F. V. Voss, Compend. SCARAMELLI, p. 341. Let the director note that, apart from the wounds of love, [other] wounds and other impressions of love can have a place even before the state of perfect union... [they] serve as the crowning of the grace of contemplation. But they can occur from the first ascents, and even, albeit very rarely, before the grace of infuse prayer. In these cases, we must see in it the announcement of an imminent rise to the greatest favors of mystical life.

This explains why the authors place the mystical phenomenon of injury so diversely. However, as described above, it immediately precedes or accompanies the state of union. It is not doubtful at least that God grants such privileges only to souls already advanced in the perfect ways, if not in contemplative prayer t.

VIT. — We will make one final remark, with all mystic theologians, on the origin of the injury of love and the external effects that may result.

If we consider these effects in what they have of body and sensitive, the demon can absolutely produce them?; and, if they are confined to simple emotions, some could be the fruit of a fiery imagination, such as it meets mainly among melancholic temperaments.

But it is not the same with the inner wound taken with this set of conditions and effects that we have described, in these depths of the soul where it suddenly becomes felt, and where God alone can approach?, However, we must report, with Saint Teresis!, the danger of engaging, under the guise of the divine wound, in indiscreet penances that ruin the health of the body, and external manifestations that compromise humility. These excesses have as principle a kind of unconscious sensuality of the soul and the malignant suggestions of the demon, which almost always wins to the ruin of health. quod ex intimo dimanant animæ centro, sæpius nulla præcedente reflectione; natura vero rationalis non velut a casu potest operari, humoraut melancholicus suas fictiones tantum habet in imaginatione.

That they do not proceed from the demon is clearly evident: both because the demon cannot cause such delightful pains — he can cause pains, as also certain tastes, but he cannot join so great a taste with so excessive a pain; the pains he causes are restless, and for the most part insipid; and because pains of this kind are in the very center of the soul, where the demon has no dominion; and because from them arises the greatest progress of the soul and manifold good effect, namely a desire to suffer, a flight from temporal delights, or something similar; but so evil a tree as the demon is, according to the Lord's saying, cannot produce such good fruits.

1 Way of the perf., c. 19. CHAPITRE XVII

FOURTH DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

L'UNION MYSTIQUE

THE MYSTICAL UNION IN GENERAL Contemplation tends to mystic union. — God unites with the creature in two ways: naturally, through creation and providence; supernaturally, through sanctifying grace. — The supernatural union, unconscious in grace, bursting in the full day of glory. — Between the darkness of faith and the radiance of glory, the feeling that characterizes mystic union is placed. Sa notion. — Although it does not differ substantially from ordinary grace, it is nevertheless a special favor of God to the faithful soul. — Its three degrees: simple union, ecstatic union, permanent union. I. — Uniting the soul with God is the ultimate goal of contemplating it to prepare and achieve this supreme result? By impressions, illuminations and multi1 attractions Suarez, De Relig. The end of this (theological) contemplation must be union with God. Licvor. Prag. Confess. n. 136, p. 182. After these stages the Lord causes the soul to pass over into union. Unicus enim animæ scopus hisses debet, PE res 266 FOURTH DEGREE: THE UNION =€ folded above, God calls, disposes and leads the soul to this ineffable conjunction where he takes the title of spouse and gives to the soul that of wife.

God exhausts, with regard to the reasonable creature whom he raises to the participation of his life, all forms, all expressions of goodness and love. He is called in turn master and lord, pastor, doctor, father, friend; but the name he prefers over all is that of husband, because he expresses more strongly his tenderness towards us, and the sacred union that his grace establishes between Him and our souls!

No matter how strange it may appear to those who do not have the sense of heavenly things, and who do not hear, as Saint Bernard says?, the language of divine love, these expressions, borrowed from an order in which human thought is maintained so clumsyly pure and clear, we encounter them so multiplied in Scripture, that those alone can ignore them who have never travelled through these holy pages. Mystical theology, in particular, so expressly affirms this union, that, in the language of the masters, contemplative union and mystical theology merge into a single reality. *

1 Rica A S. Vicror. Explic. in Cantica Cant. Prolog. Migne, col. 408. And it should be noted that sometimes in Sacred Scripture the Lord calls himself lord, sometimes father, sometimes spouse. For when he wishes to be feared, he calls himself lord; when he wishes to be honored, father; when he wishes to be loved, spouse... For inasmuch as honor is a more worthy thing than fear, so much more does God rejoice to be called father than lord. And inasmuch as love is dearer than honor, so much more does God rejoice to be called spouse than father... When he calls himself lord, he indicates that we are created; when he calls himself father, he indicates that we are adopted; when he calls himself spouse, he indicates that we are joined to him. But it is a greater thing to be joined to God than to be created and adopted.

2 Serm. 19 in Cant. n. 1, p. 412. For just as one who does not know Greek does not understand one speaking Greek, nor one speaking Latin if he is not [a Latin speaker], and so with the rest: so the language of love will be barbarous to one who does not love, and will be...

If it is to be astonished here, it is the excess of divine goodness, which, to excite us to his love, descends to the images of our misery; and also, let us say, of human infirmity, scandalizing itself from the very condescendences of a God who, in order to draw closer to us and to translate more vigorously his tenderness, uses the great boldness of the language we speak. Instead of rubbing us with as much indecency as ingratitude, let's try to understand, because everything is pure and adorable in these mysteries t.

II. — To better clarify these holy darknesss, let us consider how many ways God can unite with the creature, and among these modes recognize the one who constitutes mystical life.

God unites and touches the creature in these two general ways: natural presence and supernatural grace?. The supernatural union of grace remains unconscious and veiled beneath the shadows of faith, or else bursts forth in enjoyment. This is because, in the contemplative soul, love, mystical theology, and perfect prayer are either the same thing, or presuppose one another.

1 RıcHardD a S. Vicror. Æxplic. in Cantica Cant. Prolog. Migne, col. 405. In these words Sacred Scripture is not to be mocked, but rather the greater mercy of God is to be considered; for in naming the members of the body, it thereby calls to love. It is to be noted that he deals with us wonderfully and mercifully, who, that he might enkindle our heart to the prompting of sacred love, descended even to the wor[ds] of our base love.

2 S. JEAN DE LA Croix, 14° Cant., 4th v., p. 491. God can be present with souls in three different ways. The first presence is essential. T is of this kind, not only in the righteous, but also in sinners and in all creatures; and it is by this presence that he gives them being and life; so that if he ceased to be so present, they would fall into nothingness. The soul continually enjoys it as the rest of the created things.

The second presence is spiritual. It depends on sanctifying grace, since it is through it that God abides with pleasure in the soul. But it is not common to all men; those who are defiled with mortal sins are deprived of it.

The third is the work of: Spiritual RE. God gives it to many souls to fill them with his most sensitive consolations. But in any way he's present, he doesn't get seen as he is... feeling. These radiances reach all their intensity and splendour in glory, or betray themselves by a more or less incomplete radiance in the suavities of contemplation.

Let us discuss this ascending nomenclature, in order to detach clearly from it what characterizes the mystic union.

God is present to all beings, in natural order, through his creative and conservative action. According to the School's expression, it touches the creature by its essence, its presence and its power, to give it the being, to accompany it with its gaze and to govern it with its gold.

He is especially present to the intelligent creature `by intellectual and ideal radiance, according to this word of St John defining the Word: "He was the light that enlightens every man coming into this world?"Sufficiently explicit word by himself, and heard by the Christian tradition of the double enlightenment of nature and faith è. But it is impossible to project on a being a true influence of light and action without uniting with him in any way.

But union which consists simply of acting to dispen1 Paripe. A SS. TRT. P. 3, D. 1, a. 4, t. 3, p. 8. The first mode of union is that by which God, by reason of his immensity, is in all things through essence, presence, and power. By essence, as giving being to all things; by presence, as beholding all things; by power, as disposing of all things. For which reason it is said, Acts 17: For in him we live, and move, and are; and in this way he so glides into all things, and so penetrates all things, that he is much more united, present, and intimate to each thing than light to air, or the soul to the body. But this union of the soul with God is general, common to all, and of the natural order.

John 1:9: That was the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world.

3 S. Tuom. AQUN. Caten. aur. in Joan. c. 1. Lect. 3. And the life was the light of men. Now the whole may be expounded in two ways. In one way, according to the influx of natural knowledge; in another way, according to the influx of the communication of grace... Iluminat omnem hominem : Iluminatio seu illuminari per Verbum intelligur duplicater, scilicet de lumina naturalis cognitionis.e ser l ́être et la lumière, sfface vis-à-vis that which associates two beings in a common life. One is extrinsic and leaves the terms distinct and separate; the other makes them understand and merge into the same act, without however absorbing the individual identity of each.

The sanctifying grace realizes a union of this nature between God and the soul. It is not God who abandons his life to share that of man; it is man who, by ineffable condescendence, is raised up to God by God himself to become partakers of his intimate life, of the life which is plendid in the adorable Trinity!, For, by grace, the whole Trinity dwells in our souls?; and if our sanctification is best attributed to the Holy Spirit, it is because it is above all a work of love, and the Holy Spirit is, in the Trinity, the personification of love ê.

This doctrine, so beautiful, so high, which makes grace a participation in divine life, is common among the Fathers and theologians. The masters of spiritual life only have one voice to assert that Christian perfection has no object other than to unite the soul with God and to associate them in one life. As for the Mystics themselves, they cannot hear and state the wonders that are the subject of their studies without resorting to this

1 Parer. a SS. Tru. The second mode of union of the contemplative soul with God is through sanctifying grace, by which we are made partakers of the divine nature, as the apostle Peter says... God is joined to us in this special manner, not only as a principle causing such participation, but also as a term united in this participation. 2 S. Tuom. 1 p., q. 43, a. 3. It must be said that through sanctifying grace, the whole Trinity dwells in the mind, according to that [saying] of John 14: 'We will come to him and make our abode with him.' — Suarez, On Grace. Proleg. 3, ¢. 3, n. 4, t. 7, p. 137. Whence the very person of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the whole Trinity, is true uncreated grace, insofar as it is bestowed in a peculiar manner upon the just... Spiritus autem sanctus solum appropriate, sublime theology, or rather without assuming it as axioms from where their science is deduced t.

We are currently limiting ourselves to these summary statements, reserving ourselves to give this crucial thesis the extent it entails, when we discuss the causality of mystical phenomena.

IHH. — The divine life communicated to our souls regularly hides, as long as it is hard, from the feeling of consciousness; it is hardly if, from afar, this sacred fire attests its presence by the dilatätions and suavities of fervor; usually, it reveals itself only by the energy of which it animates souls for the struggles and triumphs of virtue. God hides behind the tight trellis of faith, or leaves only parsimonious and pale rays to escape. We believe, but we live in shadow, or at least we grasp only imperfectly and enigma: the face-to-face not of this world; it is reserved for glory.

One day the veils will fall, the shadows will dissipate; God will appear to us united to our souls, flooding them with his light, penetrating them in his life, and the measure of this enlightenment and divine understanding will be that of our splendour and our bliss for eternity. It will be glorious life.

Thus grace and glory belong to the same order. One is the germ, the other is the full bloom and fruitification; the first is the dark, silent, unconscious union; the other, the full day and total enjoyment. "The life of grace and glory is the same," said Bossuet, "all the more so as there will be no difference between one and the other than that between adolescence and the strength of age. There it is consumed, here it is in a state of perfection; but it is the same life... Glory is something other than a certain discovery which is made of our life hidden in this world, but which will appear in the whole world."

IV. — Between the darkness of faith and the full light of glory, the enjoyments of mystic union are placed.

Without fully revealing himself, God can give to the soul to which he unites a more or less vivid feeling of this encounter, so that the soul, not only will believe by the adherence of faith to the communication of divine life that grace brings to it, but will see, feel, will enjoy the ineffable union that is accomplished between it and God.

The consciousness of this union, as experienced by the contemplative soul, is, however, different from that tasted by Blessed Soul; it is neither as complete nor as radiant. Faith has not disappeared; for, in more than one aspect, vision and enjoyment do not yet exist. Yet it is not even more pure faith with its darkness: the light and possession begin, and sometimes the clarity will become so resplendent and the transports so intoxicating, that one will wonder if they do not carry a momentary elevation to the vision and truly beatific Pamour.

Of these two elements that determine eternal bliss, clear vision and love, it is the second that seems to predominate in united contemplation?. That is why this union is called by the FRUITIVE mystics!, to express that the soul enters it into the enjoyment of God, the term of grace, and that she feels and savors this divine association even better than she has the full intuition.

V. — This state consists of giving in a view, and mainly in a delicious feeling that God is united with the soul, absorbing all his attention and all his inner activity, and making her partaker of his life: union so penetrating and so deep, that she resolves herself in a transformation that substitutes in the soul the divine life for his own life, without yet destroying, as claimed by false mystics, created individuality. It is a flow as sweet as it is mysterious, which makes the soul pass into God and God into the soul, to melt them into communion of life. So the Mystics call it the kiss and embrace of God to the soul; the passive flow, the death and annihilation of the soul in God?. Images expressive and exact for depicting the supernatural absorption of the soul, but which would become erroneous and absurd if understood in the strict sense of a confusion of substance and an absolute identification. ...of this way, the difference is found in this: that perfect beatitude essentially consists in the clear vision and intuitive contemplation of God in himself, and only fruitive love is required as its complement; whereas inchoate beatitude consists principally in the fruitive love of God present rather than in the contemplation of him.

1 Panir. a SS. TRN. Ibid., a. 1, p. 9: The third mode of union is that of the contemplative soul with God through a certain substantial contact of God with the soul, by which he is felt to be present and united; and this union is perfected when the spiritual powers of the soul also, so far as the state of the present life allows, adhere to God — the intellect through a knowledge almost continuous and as it were evident, the will indeed through love, not only of desire, but in a certain manner of satiety and fruition.

All mystics agree that a special union of the soul with God is given, which they call passive infusion, mystical union, annihilation, spiritual espousal, the kiss, and the chaste embrace of the soul.

This union of the soul with God does not take place in substance, as though it meant... that the soul [loses/exchanges] its own proper being... Such a feeling can only produce in the soul a beatitude that approaches that of heaven, and which is, as it were, its prelude. Saint Augustine! assigns to the beatitude three conditions, which meet admirably here: that the well coveted be excellent, that he be loved, that he be possessed. The object of passive union is God himself, God loved and possessed by the soul. The soul therefore finds in it the full enjoyment of happiness.

VI. — It should not be misunderstood; what is most precious in this union is not the resulting feeling and beatification, but the union itself, that is, the flow of God into the soul and the transformation of the soul into God.

Now this conjunction really exists in every soul that has sanctifying grace, and its true measure is taken, not of the sensitive enjoyment that one can receive in this world, but of the inner and real degree that will be revealed in the homeland?.

Hence it follows that the passive union, as we envision here, that is, with this reflection of intimate grace that it brings to consciousness, is in no way necessary, neither for sanctification nor holiness, and that the active virtue can be just as meritorious and no less effective in achieving Christian perfection!, even in what it has higher?.

The mystic union nevertheless remains one of the most outstanding graces that God grants to the traveling creature. It meets only in souls, by the effort of their virtue or by the effect of free concessions, to a high degree of perfection.

It itself opens an abundant source of divine life upon the soul that receives it. This soul will become the bride of God, in a special way, by the anticipated feeling given to him of his union with the Holy Trinity: it is a high convenency that God first fills him with gifts and riches, to make her worthy of this incomparable covenant. So Passive Punion does not only imply the entry into the enjoyment of grace already received; it is mainly understood by God's present condescendency, and therefore by a new and extraordinary infusion of inner grace.

And to indicate here that its most general effect, common to all the degrees of this union, it establishes the soul in a wonderful activity of love, which returns and rests all its powers in God. It is then above all that the soul feels that God is its object, its center, its life, its whole!.

VIT. — Passive union is subject to the law of succession and progress; it begins, continues and ends. God, no doubt, we have already observed it, can free himself from this law; but he rarely does so, and his ordinary rule is that the soul gradually enters and progresses in these glorious transformations of mystical life. To return to a comparison that serves as a figure to these mysterious wonders of love, something happens between the soul and God of what takes place in the foreplay and the conclusion of human alliances, that is, openings, engagement and marriage.

God presents himself to the soul in the lower degrees of contemplation; and, when the soul is kindled with holy desires, he begins, as with trials, to communicate and unite; then, in a more intimate embrace, he gives the assurance that the union will soon be stable and definitive, and finally the bond becomes permanent and indissoluble?

1 S. Boxavenr. De prof. religios. 1. 2, ©. 73. This is man's more sublime perfection in this life: so to cleave to God that the whole soul, with all its powers and faculties gathered into God, becomes one spirit with him, so that it remembers nothing but God, feels or understands nothing but God, and all its affections, united in the joy of love, rest sweetly in the fruition of the Creator alone... Hence the perfection of prayer is when the soul obtains that toward which it strives in praying, so that, wholly withdrawn from the lowest things, it is united only to things divine, neither willing nor able to feel anything but God. There indeed the soul rests, delights in itself in the splendor of light, in the pleasantness of divine sweetness, and in the security of peace.

2 PHILIPP. À SS. TRN: P. 3, Tr. 4, D. 1, a. 3, t. 3, p. 28. Just as, therefore, when someone chooses as his bride a virgin whom he loves most deeply, he sweetly entices her, with many gifts, precious presents, and clearer signs of love, toward the bond of betrothal and bodily marriage, so that from mutual union and perfect conformity of wills they may become no longer two but one flesh, and may live joined together indissolubly; many visits precede, and mutual conversations of love; but once the betrothal has been entered upon, chaste embraces and honorable kisses follow; and at last, when the marriage has been celebrated, the greatest union now comes about and an indissoluble conjunction.

Sie dum Christus Dominus devotam aliquam animam sihi in sponsam elegit, post multa concessa spiritualia munera, post dona virtum pretiosa, post exhibita amoris signa in via illuminativa, suaviter illam ad "You have often heard that God spiritually marries souls," said the virgin seraphic Teresis to his sisters!; blessed be his mercy, which deigns so demeaning! No matter how rude this comparison is, I find no other one who expresses my thought better than the sacrament of marriage... But it seems to me that union still does not happen to spiritual marriage, but that it happens as when in the world two people want to marry. They first examine whether they agree, if they want to, and then come to interviews to be more confident that they will be satisfied with one another. So it is in spiritual marriage."

The mystical alliance therefore assumes three degrees, which form as many species of unions, and the first of which was called SIMPLE UNION; the second, the FIANÇALLES; the third, SPIRITUAL MARIAGE °.

These degrees differ between them by their progressive perfection, and by the more or less intimate rapprochement they assume with God. In each there is union, that is, the feeling that God associates the soul with his life and that the soul flows into the bosom of God. But this fusion of soul with God manifests itself in different proportions. If it reveals itself as an intimate union, in a temporary and abstract way, the soul outside the region of the senses, it is the union OF THE MYSTICAL UNION IN GENERAL 9277 simple. When she bursts with a vivacity that suspends any other feeling, it's ecstatic Punion. Having become permanent and uninterrupted, it is the indissoluble union of marriage.

To express this gradual introduction of God into the soul and soul into God, Richard de Saint-Victor! uses another no less striking comparison, which makes the identity of union heard and the diversity of degrees heard. Iron, subjected to the action of fire, identifies with fire: it is union. But this iron can be more or less ardent, more or less identified with fire. It first becomes burning, half iron and half fire; soon it is all burning and seems only fire; finally it liquefies and offers no more resistance. So is the soul gradually absorbed by love.

1 De Quat. grad. violent. charit. See what a difference there is between iron and iron; between cold iron and hot iron, that is, between soul and soul, between a lukewarm soul and a soul inflamed with divine fire. For when iron is cast into the fire, it doubtless appears at first both cold and black. But while it remains in the burning of the fire, [CHAPTER XVIII]

FOURTH DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

THE SIMPLE MYSTICAL UNION How simple union differs from the mystical states that precede it

and of those who follow her. — Sometimes it suspends all powers,

tantôt seulement la volonté. — Sa durée. — It only accidentally reaches ecstasy. — Its effects on the body. — Les formes diverses par

which it reveals to the soul. — The effects it produces. — Elle ne

makes it not impeccable and is not free of perils. — Les signes auxquels

on peut la reconnaitre.

I. — This first degree contains only the essential part of the mystical union, namely, an inner feeling, whereby the soul is warned that God unites with it and makes it partaker of his life.

"It is done, according to Saint John of the Cross, not by the substantial presence of God to all creatures to give them and preserve their being, but by the love that transforms the soul into God, so that there is a resemblance of love between God and the soul: that is why it is called a union of resemblance, because the will of soul and the will of God are so similar and so uniform, that the soul wants everything that God wants, and that it does not want everything that is not in accordance with God's will." EU SIMPLE 279

By adding that the soul receives the feeling of this divine association, one has a complete notion of this kind of prayer.

In the lower degrees of contemplation, God simply manifested his presence to the soul: here he appears to him as intimately united and making only one life of his own life and that of the soul, or rather the soul seems to renounce his own life, to live only from that of God. So far God was bowing to the soul, and the soul was stinging towards God; now God and the soul meet in an admirable communion of life.

According to Saint Térèse!, "between the prayer of quietness and that of union, there is this difference that, in the first, God gives himself and unites with the soul outwardly, while in the second, he appears in the soul itself as a food that would be found in the body without any prior act of apprehension and swallowing."

We have, in fact, defined tranquillity: a delicious feeling of the presence of God in the soul, which holds in suspense on this divine object, if not all powers, at least the will.

The intermediate states between quietness and union, transport, are like the consequences of the moon and the preliminary ones of the other. God makes himself felt at the soul by intimate touches that press her to give herself, by penetrating traits that hurt and charm her. Under these sweet and irresistible excitements, the soul enters a holy drunkenness whose excess goes as far as to fall asleep in a mystical sleep. The mere presence and loving requests of God to the soul are sufficient to explain these drunkennesses: there may not yet be any union proper, or the compenetration of the soul by God, vital and conscious communion with God from the soul. If we look above, the simple union differs from the ecstatic union in that it does not lead, like rapture and ecstasy, to the suspension of the external senses; and from the spiritual marriage, in that it is not permanent, but momentary and transient.

To this intrinsic difference is joined the variety of effects that result from these various states. The results of the union reveal a greater intensity of supernatural life than the lower degrees; similarly the last two forms of union are distinguished by a repetition of grace and by a more effective and deeper transformation.

II. — Several authors, among others Saint Alphonsus of Liguori t, and Fr. Scaramelli? who invokes the support of Saint Teresus, claim that the union leads to the complete suspension of the inner powers.

Sainte Terèse seems to admit, in a few places of his works, the total absorption of powers; but in several others, explaining and clarifying his thought, she expressly declares that this law is not absolute, and that sometimes, often even, union binds only the will. Thus, in the chapter xvne of her Life, she sees "in this prayer a very manifest union of all soul with God"; and, immediately after, she adds: "Sometimes, and very often, the will alone is bound, in perfect enjoyment and quietness, and on the other hand, that understanding and memory retain enough freedom to take care of business and apply to works of charity."

1 Prax. confess., n. 135, p. 187: In simplici unione suspenduntur potentiæ, sed non sensus corporei.

2 Dirett. Mist. Tratt. 3, ©. 47, n. 160, p. 200: Nel? unione sempliee, no This is also the sentiment of Saint Francis de Sales, who describes with his ordinary clarity the different modes and degrees of this union:

"Sometimes," he said, "union is done by the will and by the will alone, and no time is it understood, because the will attracts after soy and applies to its object, giving it a special pleasure to watch it, as we see that love gives a deep and special attention in our bodily eyes, to stop them from seeing what we love.

"Sometimes this union is made of all the facultes of the blade, which all gather around the will, not to unite themselves with God, but to give more convenience to the will to make one's union: for if the others facultise are applied one to each to his own object, the soul, operating by icelles, does not so perfectly manage to employ to the action by which union is made with God. This is the variety of unions."

According to Saint Francis de Sales, the essential part of union is thus realized in the will; but the other faculties may participate in this suspension, in which case Punion is complete, and there is no longer but the ligature of the external senses for it to arrive at ecstasy.

Note, however, that the grasping of the will and other faculties, in union, no longer operates in an extrinsic way, if it can be expressed in this way, or by the fascination of an outer object that attracts and suspends them, but by the taking of possession that God makes of the soul within itself, in its center and substance; and it is doubtless in this sense that Saint Teresis and other mystical doctors understand that the soul, in a state of union, is entirely lost in God. As for the total and simultaneous suspension of powers, it seems, according to the testimonies we have just heard, that it is of union as of recollection and tranquillity, where this complete absorption, which we have called silence and sleep, is not essential to these various states; it forms re but it is not what characterizes them.

Also, the union, at its highest point, fixes all the inner powers and constitutes them in a state of silence or sleep, without always rising up until then. To get as close as possible to masters who deserve to be owed, perhaps one could look at this apogee as more frequent in union than in previous degrees, which does not contradict the declarations of Saint Teresus and Saint Francis of Sales. In any case, everyone agrees that the total suspension is short!.

II. — If the union, at its summit, lasts little, it can be extended for a long time only with the support of the will.

On this point, let us still listen to the Holy Reformer of Carmel?.

"To the truth, if I judge by my experience, this prayer is in the beginnings of so short a time, that it is revealed less by the outward marks and by the lack of feeling, than by the abundance of graces; for the fire of the Sun which enlightened the soul has had to be quite ardent, since it does not have to be seen in the light.

1F. V. Voss, Compend. At the time of mystical union all the powers of the soul remain in some way suspended, as St. Teresa and other mystical doctors teach. The intellect is suspended, so that it can turn neither to other objects nor reflect upon its own acts... [thus] the soul, so liquefied. It is to be noted, at least in my opinion, that in its greatest duration this suspension of all the powers of soul is very short. When she goes half an hour, it's a lot, and I don't think she's ever been so long. It is true, it is difficult to judge, since then one is deprived of feeling: I assure however that there is little time to pass without one of the powers returning to it. The will is the one that maintains the canvas, but the other two soon resume their importunities. As the will remains calm, it brings them back and suspends them again; they stop a little more and then resume their natural agitation. With these alternatives, the prayer can be prolonged and actually extended for a few hours. Once they have intoxicated themselves with this heavenly wine of which they have tasted, these two flying powers easily come back together and get lost with the will, to enjoy a happiness that they do not find elsewhere; they therefore join in the will, and the three powers then enjoy together. But this complete absorption of all the powers, even of imagination, which I think is entirely lost, is, I repeat, of short duration; I will even add that, returning to them only imperfectly, they can remain in a sort of delusion within a few hours, during which God from time to time delights them again and fixes them in him."

IV. — Does the simple union go as far as ecstasy without coming out of its radius?

It is accepted by all that, already at this first degree, the senses no longer have their full exercise; that they remain, at least usually, numb and paralyzed, which constitutes a beginning of suspension or ecstasy '. But can the suspension become complete without thereby crossing the limits of simple union?

Il suffit de s'entendre. When external senses are totally suspended, it is obvious that there is ecstatic union, at least as a separate phenomenon. But a phenomenon does not constitute a state. Therefore, if one considers the simple union and the ecstatic union as distinct degrees, one imagines that a soul, still in the first, touches by transitional acts to the second, without it being possible to say for this that it has changed state.

Moreover, the transitions from one degree to another are imperceptible, as we have observed in its place, so it will inevitably happen that the end of one will be the beginning of another.

But if the phenomenon of suspension were to recur in a persevering way, it should no longer be considered an accident or a transitional test of the higher degree; it would be a state, the state of ecstasy, and hence the simple union would have ceased to give way to the ecstatic union.

V. — Saint Teresus described the attitude of the body during this prayer of the simple mystic union.

"As she thus seeks her God, the soul," she said, "feels, with a very lively and sweet pleasure, fainting almost entirely, by a kind of fainting, which gradually takes away from the body the breath and all the forces. She can't even, without a very painful effort, shake her hands. The eyes close without her wanting to close them; and if she keeps them open, she sees almost nothing. If she reads, she does not manage to articulate a letter, or even to distinguish it well. She sees characters, but, as understanding does not ugly, she can no longer read, for as long as she wishes. She hears, but does not understand what she hears. Also, far from serving her, her senses Pincommodate and she are rather an obstacle that prevents the full enjoyment of what she has inside. It is in vain that she would try to speak: she cannot form a word; and if she could do so, she would lack the forces to speak it; for all the external forces abandon, and those in them grow, on the contrary, to give her a more perfect enjoyment of her glory. Hence a very lively and very apparent external delight. As long as this prayer lasts, it never harms health, at least I have never received any damage, and I do not remember that God did this favor, for sick as I was, without experiencing a much more sensitive one. Comment un si grand bien pourrait-il causer quelque mal? The external effects are so bright, that one cannot doubt, I have experienced, that if this prayer temporarily removes the forces by the excess of pleasure, it is for him then leave greater ones."

At the height of union the body is therefore as reduced to impotence. When it relaxes, the external senses, as well as the inner faculties other than the will, regain a little more play and action, without regaining their full freedom.

VI. — Although the soul is passive, even at this first degree of mystic union, this does not prevent some cooperation, if not in the act itself, at least by the free consent it gives to the divine embrace. And, in the feeling of this encounter, sometimes it is the spontaneous movement of the soul, sometimes the suave attraction of God, which seems to dominate: in essence, it is always God who operates.

Let us still hear the gracious bishop of Geneva: "Now, in prayer, union is often done in the manner of small but frequens eslancemens and advancemens of the same in God; and if you take care of the little children united and joined to the tetins of their mothers, you will see that from time to time they rush and tighten themselves with little eslans that the pleasure of tettering gives them. Thus in prayer, the heart united to his God repeatedly makes some search for union through movements with which he clasps and presses more in the divine sweetness... But other times the union is made, not by splendors repaint, in the manner of a continuous insensitive press and advance of the heart in the divine Goodness: for as we see that a great and heavy mass of lead, of brass or of stone, quoy that we do not push it, tightens, sinks and presses so against the earth on which it is laid, that finally with time we tremble it all buried because of the inclination of its weight, which by its gravity makes it tender in the center: so our heart is once joined to his God, if he abides in this union and does not entertain it, he will continually simmer by an insensitive progress of union until it is all in God, because of the sacred inclination that the healthy love gives him to unite all things more with the sovereign Goodness!"

And in the next chapter?: "The union is sometimes done without our cooperation, if not by a simple sequence, letting us unite without resistance to the divine goodness, as a little child in love with his mother's womb, but so alangoury that he can make no movement to go there, ny to tighten himself when he is there; but only is it easy to be caught and pulled between the arms of his mother and to be pressed by her on her chest. Sometimes we cooperate, when we shoot, we run willingly to support the sweet strength of goodness that pulls us and tightens us.The SIMPLE 287 MYSTICAL UNION is soy by its love. Sometimes it seems to us that we begin to join and embrace God before he joins us, because we feel the action of the union of our costed one without feeling that which is made by God, which, no doubt, warns us all, although all of us do not feel his prevention; for, if he does not unite with us, we would never unite with him: he chooses us all and seizes us all before we choose to deny ourselves.

"But when, following these imperceptible attractions, we begin to unite with one another, he sometimes progresses from our union, running our impeccableness and becoming appreciably luy-mesme to us; so that we feel him entering and penetrating our hearts by an incomparable suavity. And a few times too, as he has drawn us insensitively to union, he continues insensitively to ayder us and rescue us...

"Never, this union is made so insensitively, that our hearts do not feel any divine operation in us, nor do we cooperate; in these he trevers the only union insensitively all made, to the imitation of Jacob, who, without thinking about it, married with Lia... At other times we feel the clerics, the union being made by sensitive actions, both on the part of God and on the part of ours."

There can be no doubt that Saint Francis of Sales wanted to describe here the passive union: he himself expressly declares in the foregoing the first of these two quotations. After giving a comparison of the child that the mother holds on her breast and who cooperates as best as possible with this gentle and pure union, he applies it in these terms:

"So, Theotime, Nostre-Lord, showing the very kind bosom of his divine love to the devote, he pulls it all to the side, picks it up, and by way of saying, he folds all the powers of icelle in the girth of his sweetness 288 FOURTH DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION more than maternal... Then the soul, initiated from the delights of these favors, not only consents and is ready to the union that God makes, but from all its power it cooperates, striving to join and tighten more and more to the divine goodness; so, all the time, that it recognates well that its union and connection to this sovereign sweetness depends all upon divine operation, without which it does not only make the least attempt in the world to unite with icelle."

Let us carefully note this declaration of the holy bishop, because it states one of the characteristics of the state of union. In whatever form this divine association is revealed, the soul knows with a certainty that goes beyond any other feeling that God is the author and the consumer.

The immediate consequence of this conviction is to give the soul full assurance that it is united with God by grace; for the evidence of union clearly leads to that of sanctification. There would be contradiction, as we have observed elsewhere, in assuming the soul united to God by love, and at the same time separated from God by sin.

VII. (ii) The effect on the preceding degrees of union is far greater than that of union.

The first effect that characterizes it is the transformation ? of the soul, a transformation that consists in giving it a more vivid feeling of his life in God than of his own, and to make burst outside the reflection of this divine absorption. © THE SIMPLE MYSTICAL UNION 289

Saint Térèse compares this wonderful transfiguration to that of the silkworm, which dies in the sepulchre which it has made to itself and which comes out in a new form, changed to white and light butterfly.

Now see, she says, continuing her comparison!, what becomes of this worm, when, after having died in the world in this prayer, it converts into a small white butterfly. O greatness of God! in what state comes a soul that has been plunged into the abyss of this greatness, which has been so closely united with God for a short space of time that never happens to me at half an hour! I tell you in truth that this soul no longer knows itself; between what it was and what it is, there is as much difference as between a deformed worm and a white butterfly. She does not know how she could have earned such a great good, nor where he could have come to her; for she cannot doubt that he is above her merits. She sees herself with such a desire to praise the Lord, whom she would want to cut to pieces and die for Him of a thousand dead. She soon felt an ardour that tormented her to undertake great works, without being able to satisfy her. She feels her desire for penance, for loneliness, for God to be known to all, from where she comes an extreme pain of offended knowledge...

"Oh! who could see without praise God the worry of this little butterfly, whatever he has ever tasted of his life more calm and peace? He does not know where to go or where to stop; and after enjoying such a good, all that he sees on earth disenchanted him, especially when God has given him on several occasions of this wine which bleeds, and which, each time, repeats its wonderful effects. He now counts for nothing the work he was doing, still being a worm, which consisted of gradually forming the fabric of his hull. Des ailes lui

1 Chât. int., 5° Dem., ch. 2. came: how, being able to fly, would he content himself to go step by step? All that he can do for God seems to him nothing, considering his desires. He is hardly astonished at what the Saints have endured, already knowing from experience how Our Lord attends and transforms so much a soul, that she no longer seems to be the same or to retain her figure, as the weakness that she once felt for penance is changed into strength. The attachment to parents, friends, to the things of this world, whose actions, resolutions, or desires could not be overcome, and which seemed to her to redouble as she made more efforts to break it, now she dominates it so well, that, if something costs her, it is the relationships she is obliged to keep in order not to go against God. All fatigue, because she has experienced that creatures cannot give her true rest."

Joy always accompanies this ineffable encounter; but it may burst outside, or remain contained in the secret of the soul. Its intensity usually produces the transport of drunkenness, which, as we have already said, can be a preparation for mystic union and can also be a continuation of it.

Finally, in the union we find the effects of all the preceding oraisons, but brought to a degree on HIV. — As great as the intimacy between God and the soul in the state of union is, it does not go so far as to make it impeccable. As long as the trial lasts, man keeps the sad power to get away from God.

This is in particular what Saint Teresus affirms; but she declares that the grace of union is such, that God cannot allow it to be useless; and that, if it does not serve the subject that receives it, it will benefit other £.

And elsewhere?, the saint, speaking to the souls who have been raised to this state, speaks to them: "Christian lovers whom the Lord has brought to these heights, for his love, I exhort you, do not neglect you, but avoid opportunities of fall; for the soul in this state is not so strong that it can put itself in jeopardy, as it could do after the conclusion of the marriage, which forms the sixth dwelling. Here, divine communication was, as it is said, only a first interview, and there is no effort that the demon does not attempt to prevent its effects and through this covenant. When it is made, seeing the soul completely submissive to the Bridegroom, it is no longer so bold; it dreads its fidelity, because it knows from experience that the assaults turn to its shame and benefit those whom it attacks. I have known, my daughters, very high souls, who have come to this state, that the devil has gained again by his prestiges and tricks, all hell contributing to this ruin; for, I have said to you many times, it is not a soul that is lost here, but a multitude. The enemy already has experience of it; he knows as we do the great number of souls that God draws to him by one." - The first way in which the demon has custom to tempt these souls, Holy Teresis has just told us, is to exaggerate their strength and their security, and to engage them in difficult occasions where they will succumb. ` 1 Chât. interér., 5th Dem., ch. 3. Another equally perilous temptation, which Saint Teresis also points out, is to insinuate the neglect of small things. These light infidelities gradually obscure the understanding, cool the will, revive the natural tendencies, in particular the spirit of the mind, which from the heart bows to the creatures?, until finally God, no longer being the master, withdraws and separates.

When it fails to throw into dangerous occasions and inspire contempt for the lesser things, the enemy tries at least to bring the soul to some inner complacency, and nothing may be controversy and distance the divine Husband as the dilatations of vanity in a totally supernatural and gratuitous operation, where everything is due to his liberality and his love.

IX. — The set of characters that we have just assigned to union may suffice to make it recognize, when the soul has passed successively the degrees that precede it. But this ascension does not take place as methodically in souls as in the treatises of Mystics; that is why, in most cases, appreciation would be of extreme difficulty, if it were to be pronounced only on the basis of the notions and effects that we have exposed. The effects of union are, basically, the same as those of the lower states, except for the intensity, which follows increasing proportions. But there is no repulsiveness for the results of peace of mind, for example, to be, or appear to be, brighter in one soul than in another, those of union.

Similarly, distinguishing union from mere presence is not as easy in the secret of the soul as when it comes to bodies. From the first suavities of infuse prayer, and even of active contemplation, it seems to most of the souls who receive these favors that God understands them, and that it is in the depths of themselves that he pours out these delights that intoxicate them. How can we not believe in union within such enjoyments?

Aussi, observe le P. Scaramelli!, "is there hardly a soul that, after beginning to taste God in some infuse degree of prayer, of quietness, of recollection, of silence, of drunkenness, of spiritual sleep, does not believe itself, to the first feeling of inner suavity that she experiences, already united to God with a close union of love."

In order to recognise this union we must therefore use more authentic and decisive signs.

The Italian author, whom we have just quoted, tells the spiritual director several.

He first points out to her that few souls arrive to union, and that it is never until after having undergone the most severe purifications and being greatly advanced in perfection?

Whether the fact is rare, it matters and enlightens little: the cases at 29% FOURTH DEGREE OF THE CONTEMPLATION decide may be those where union exists. High perfection is at most a negative mark, and God can accelerate the walk of the soul by the exceptional abundance of his grace and by the rigour of passive purifications.

These passive tests themselves do not always inform infallibly. It is true that union prayer is granted only to souls who have undergone the purification of the senses and that of the spirit. As long as this test is not completed, it can be assumed that the union does not exist, if not as a transitory event, which could absolutely take place outside ordinary conditions, at least as a state of prayer. But the purification of the mind that must precede the mystic union, can precede it and occur at the very beginning of contemplation.

This first mark would therefore not be entirely and constantly peremptory.

Another, brought by the same author, seems even less practical. It consists in that the united soul is lost in God with all its powers!. For first we have already, with Saint Teresus and Saint Francis of Sales, challenged to union this distinctive character of linking all powers; and second, would Punion carry this ligature, how can we distinguish the loss of powers that would be in this state, from the total suspension that can take place in peace, drunkenness and other mystical transports?

To consider only the fullness of the suspension, it seems difficult to clarify the difference.

The third mark is the intimate, profound, unshakeable certainty given to the soul in union, that God is not only present to him, but united, truly united. Of the MYSTICAL UNION SIMPLE 7908 all the clues, this one seems to us the safest and the most differentiated.

This appearance of God at the very centre of the soul brings with it his testimony and his evidence, to the extent that it becomes impossible for the soul to doubt for a moment that God is in her, as Saint Teresis attests to us herself, and that she declares it several times

ans ses écrits.

"God," she said, "is self-established within this soul in such a way that when it returns to it, it is impossible for him to doubt that she wanted to be in God and God in her; and this truth remains so firmly imprinted upon her, that, while she spent several years without receiving this grace from God, she cannot forget or doubt it, regardless of the effects we will talk about later, because it is a point of great importance.

"But," you will tell me, "how did the soul see or hear this, since in this state it does not see or hear?""I reply that she does not see it then, but that she sees it clearly afterwards, not by a vision, but by a certainty that remains in the soul, and that God alone can put it. How can what we have not seen remain with this certainty? To this I have nothing to answer, except that it is the work of God; what I know well is that I am telling the truth; and who will not have this certainty, I assure that it has not been in the whole union of the soul with God, but only of one of the powers, or by some other of the rirssi is the anima che dice essere unita a Dio nell-orazione, his veramente già pervenita all unione dimore, ha da essere l'osservare se in una tal anima dopo l'orazione rimanga una certezza inflebile ed indelebile che ella è stata con Dio e Iddio con esso lei, di modo che non possere una tal verità, ancorchè voglia, e anchorchè siale da altri contrastata » BAT , e Quantunque passino mesi ò annifolde, anchorcè, e anchorchè siale da altribale da alterstata » BAT , e

However, these subjective and personal statements cannot be the last word of certainty and direction: it remains to be discussed if the person is truly trustworthy and free from illusion, and for this reason we must assess the situation as a whole, the trials suffered, the first beginnings, the journey travelled, the intimate conviction that the union has been achieved, the results which attest.

In short, when a soul, raised to contemplation and in which everything reveals sincerity, a solid virtue, divine domination, has traversed the double purification of the senses and the spirit, and that it has, for a more or less time, stationed in the first degrees of infuse prayer; that, on the other hand, it affirms with the accent of a full and indestructible certainty, no longer only the presence, but the inward and real union of God in the deepest of itself, and that wonderful effects of transformation betray a new and more sublime ascension, it is no longer permitted to doubt that this soul had FIFTH DEGREE OF THE CONTEMPLATION

EXTATIC UNION The ecstatic union leads to the total alienation of the external senses. — Ses

three degrees: ecstasy, rapture and theft of mind; their difference

et leurs rapports. — Spiritual engagement and ceremonial engagement. —

The effects of ecstatic union. — Perfection qu'elle requiert ou qu'elle

apporte.

I. — The simple union leaves the external senses free or suspends them only half, by a kind of numbness . and drowsiness. The ecstatic union binds them entirely, concentrating all the activity of the soul on the inner object of contemplation.

The feeling of divine union is thus becoming more intense here, and absorbs at this point the forces of the soul, that it goes as far as to remove from it the consciousness of its organic and vital operations in the body. Sometimes even it seems to remove it altogether, either by breaking the bond between them, which some doctors look as possible; or, which seems more likely, at least in principle, because the soul becomes unable to produce any appreciable manifestation in the organism that it inhabits and that it revives. We will later consider the ecstasy as a simple mystical phenomenon, and we will specify its characters, causes, effects, duration. We are currently considering as a form and state of contemplative life. Very important distinction; for one can undergo ecstasy before being raised to ecstatic union, without even being given to achieve it.

As a special degree of passive prayer, ecstasy consists in such a vivid feeling of divine union that it leads to complete alienation of the senses. This transport that removes the soul from the organic region to absorb into the invisible world, it is God himself who determines and operates it by a sort of assemblage of the soul above herself, under the rays of supernatural light that floods and the ardour of Pamour that invites and the press.

IL. — Three degrees are distinguished in the ecstatic union: ecstasy itself, rapture and theft of mind.

The ecstasy removes the soul from the external things, the pupil and makes it flow into God insensitively and quietly, as if she were falling asleep on the bosom of her goodness.

The rapture takes hold of the soul with impetuousness and violence, suddenly abstracts all external impressions, and precipitates it, thrilling with a kind of divine stupor where wonder and love mix together, towards the vision that subjugates it with its grandeur, its radiance and its beauty.

The theft of mind, which Saint Teresis mentions on various occasions in his writings, is a delight of a special energy that produces in the soul a deeper absorption and a more sublime elevation.

Mystical authors often confuse these denominass equal?, observes that they are frequently applied to one and the same reality. "I wish, with the help of God," she said in her Life, "that I could explain the difference between union and rapture or elevation, or what is called theft of spirit, or rapture, which is a whole; for these different names, to which we must join that of ecstasy, express the same thing."

However the saint carefully distinguishes them as various ways for God to invade the soul and dominate it, and we can, according to his teaching, specify the difference that characterizes these degrees.

The ecstatic union differs from the simple union in that it leaves a certain consciousness of organic life, as we said in the previous chapter, while ecstasy always takes away the total alienation of the senses.

The ecstasy is distinguished from the ecstasy itself by the way in which mental suspension is carried out. In the one, it occurs with a mild and calm suavity, like a kind of quiet and delicious flow in God, which removes soul without his knowledge from the external trade of creatures; in the other, God suddenly fell on the soul and wrenched it out with impetuous and intoxicating violence to the feeling of bodily and sensitive life. Saint Térèse compares this prayer with a whirlwind that lifts and carries, and an eagle that drags into his flight. "Any resistance," she says, "is imposed1 Pare. a SS. Trin. The prayer of rapture is, among the mystical doctors, entirely the same as the flight or elevation of the spirit, and ecstasy.

2 S. JEAN DE LA Croix, Cant. spir. 43° Cant., p. 429: This would be the place to talk about these different ecstasy. But, since I intend only to explain these songs, I leave this work to someone else who will do it better than I do. Joint that our Blessed Mother Térèse of Jesus wrote sible; for most often, without any thought to warn or dispose, it is such a sudden and strong impetuousness that we feel taken away by this cloud or by this powerful eagle, and carried away we do not know where."

When the eruption occurs with a violence that throws the soul into the stupor and a shudder of involuntary fear, the rapture becomes elevation or theft of mind. At the moment when it is thus invaded and absorbed, the soul feels under the empire of an irresistible power; sometimes even the body follows the movement that takes the soul, and is lifted up from the earth as by a divine attraction that frees from the laws of gravity.

"There is another kind of delight that I call theft of spirit," said St.Terèse, the same, as to substance, but nevertheless quite different by the way it is felt inside. It is that sometimes the soul suddenly feels such a prompt movement, and the mind is carried away with such speed, that it experiences great fear, especially in the beginnings... Do you think it is a slight trouble for a person in full possession of himself, to be taken away his soul, and sometimes his body with him, as we read from a few saints, without knowing where he is going, who is taking him away, or how it is done? For, at the moment when this instant movement is declared, one does not have a complete certainty that he comes from God. But, you say, there is no way to resist? No, in any way; and it is even worse when one tries it, what I know of a person who experienced it." — It is of itself that the saint speaks here.

Let us not forget that we are dealing with mystic union. To each of these three degrees, the soul, completely removed from external impressions, feels not only transported into God, but, it is the proper of these states, united to God: in ecstasy, by a gentle and quiet flow; with a strong and sudden vehemence, in rapture; finally, in the flight of mind, by an impetuous and irresistible eruption.

Although we should come back to this point, when we describe the effects of ecstasy, let us note here that it can determine in the soul a growing elevation, first removing it from the servitude of the organs and leaving the imagination free; then suspending the exercise of the inner senses and plungeing the soul into a purely intellectual light; finally raising it to heights that approach or are part of the beatific vision.

If one wanted to put between the three ecstatic forms that we have indicated, not only a difference in fashion, but also a gradation of perfection, one could call ecstasy the simple alienation of the senses; ravishing, the suspension of the inner powers; and mind flight, these sublime communications that hold more of glory than mere contemplation, although it seems more accurate to stick to the commonly assigned distinction.

But then would these three forms also be part of the ecstatic union? — There can be no doubt that with regard to simple ecstasy, and the question comes back to this: does the state of union lead to the suspension of all internal powers? Question already asked and resolved in a negative sense, in the previous chapter.

It is necessary to admit with all mystics that as we move towards united and consummated contemplation, the imagination is increasingly linked, and that mystical life participates in the release and elevation of pure spirits. But from there to exclude any imagination operation, either natural or miraculous, there is a long way away. This is precisely what confirms us in our feeling, for it would be easy for us to establish by the facts! that several contemplative souls, in particular Saint Teresus, have more than once enjoyed union and ecstasy without any suspension than that of the will, and that in this state they have received imaginary visions and words; yet it is known that at the highest point of ecstasy and with the entire ligature of powers, soul is accessible only through intellectual communications.

IH. — Mystical authors generally agree to place spiritual engagements in ecstatic union.

"To conclude these engagements, what I consider to be taking place in the delights that he gives to the soul," said Saint Terèse, "God removes it from his senses, because she could not, by remaining united in it, see herself so close to this supreme Majesty without entering into a fear that might cost her life."

Engagement is the reciprocal promise of a next marriage. On the part of God, it is the assurance given to the soul that he will soon raise him up to the glorious title of wife, and that he will associate himself in a stable and permanent union.

It's usually in an intellectual vision that s'ac--complements this ineffable prelude of mystical alliance. Everything here is spiritual and divine: it is understood that God presents himself to the soul only free from all the sensitive images 4. At these heights where the demon does not reach, the ecstasy is always sure, and the soul cannot doubt that it is God himself who meets him.

And indeed we know these to have been granted for that reason to St. Pietro, S. John, to Ezekiel, to other prophets, and to other souls of very eminent sanctity.

2 SCHRAM, § 229, schol. 2, t. 4, p. 546. — SCARAMELLI, Tratt. 3, €. 22,- n. 210, p. 220. — VERHAEGE, l. 2, sect. 1, Ch. 11, p. 216.

3 Chât. int., 6° Dem., ch. 4.

4 SCARAMELLI, Tratt. 3, €. 22, n. 219, p. 220 : Essendo Iddio puro spirito,. non può l'anima unirsi a lui in visione oculare o immaginaria; ma deve unirsi in estasi ed in ratto col puro spirito : e però non in altro modo che in puro spirito possono propriamente celebrarsi tali sponsali.

5 Jos. LOPEZ EZQUERRA, Luc. myst. Tr. 5, n: 222, p. 444: Exceded hs Sometimes however engagements "are accomplished in a high imaginary vision where Our Lord reveals himself under sensitive outsides, or even in a body appearance. The history of holy souls frequently presents these kinds of stories and makes us know the ordinary ceremonial of these divine promises.

Holy [vette!, recluse, is adorned by the angels and presented to his Husband in a suave ravishing. The Child Jesus appears to Saint Rose of Lima?, and addresses these sweet words to him: "Rose of my heart, be my wife."

Saint Gertrude ê, already engaged, received several times, in his soul, a kiss of an incomparable suavity. Those who have read the inspired pages of Sacred Song 4, and those especially who have studied the symbols and mysteries of mystical life, will not be surprised by these human forms of divine love.

Saint Catherine of Bologna herself gives the kiss to Child Jesus, in a delicious appearance, and, after centuries, the miraculous trace of it still remains on the lips and face of the Blessed, including the flesh omnem dæmonis potentiam, which did not immediate sibi spirituales potentias subripere; nec similiter bonus angelus potest; hoc enim solius Dei est.

She testified that she was thus adorned about with variety and crowned with glory and honor, escorted by the homage of angels, and led before the throne of God and the Lamb, the Angels offering her thus prepared and adorned to the Lord as a bride to her husband.

At length the little child Jesus broke forth into this dramatic song: 'Rose of my heart! Be my bride.'

3 JEAN LansrerG, Revel. S. Gertrud., lib. 2, c. 22, p. 135. And I have very often experienced (for which I offer you thanks in the union of mutual love of the ever-venerable Trinity) the condescension of your most sweet kiss, to such an extent that sometimes, as I sat and attended to you inwardly, and read the Canonical Hours, or the vigils for the dead, you often, within a single psalm, ten times or more, fixed a most sweet kiss upon the mouth of my soul, a kiss surpassing all spices and a cup of honey. [4. Song of Songs 1:4.] Osculetur me osculo oris sui. -š Cf. Martm. Kempius, De Osculis, Dissert. 3. De Osculo mystico, p. 26. 4 LR | 2" 4

ms re 304 FIFTH DEGRÉ DE LA CONTEMPLATION virginale, always free of corruption, but discoloured, keeps at this place a brighter tint. Here is in substance this wonder, according to the relationship that the saint made of it herself.

On the Christmas night of the year 1435, while praying in the church of her monastery, at midnight, it is believed that the Saviour was born, the divine Mother appeared to her, holding between her arms adorable Child wrapped in tangential like newborns. She came to her, and with extreme kindness she laid her Son in her hands. The handmaid of God, delighted to possess the One whom she recognized for the true Son of the eternal Father, strangled him with unspeakable joy, pressed him against his heart and approached his face with his divine mouth, causing him such a drunkenness, that his soul seemed to melt with pleasure, as wax melted with the rays of the sun. "This vision," said the saint, "was not in a dream; it was not imaginary, nor seen in a transport of the spirit; it was a true and real appearance, without image and without veil." However, when the virgin approached her face from the Child's mouth, he immediately disappeared, leaving her flooded with ineffable suavity, whose only memory produced an extraordinary braiding in her heart and throughout her body.

God was pleased to show how real and divine this favor had been. The lips and cheek that had touched the face of the Saviour remained coloured with a charming redness

The venerable Mother of God was present to her, holding the little Jesus in her embrace, wrapped in swaddling bands as newly born infants usually are, and approaching the aforesaid handmaid of Christ, she gave him over into her embrace with the utmost kindness. She, knowing him to be the true Son of the eternal Father, took him into her embrace with incredible joy, pressed him to her breast, and brought her face close to his mouth... For this vision was not in sleep, not imaginary, not through an excess of mind; but was manifested openly and truly, without any phantasm or veil. Yet when she lowered her mouth to the Infant's face, that whole vision vanished... Labra eaque faiei pars quae sacras genes contantere meruerunt, insolitum ex eo conque la même observatoire; and this, his biographer adds, is all the more wonderful since the Blessed, during her life, had a tanned complexion, and after her death her face became a livid and dark color. Moreover, from that moment on, her breath exhaled such a sweet smell that the nuns and others with whom she was conversing were in admiration. That which was even more sensitive the very night when the apparition was made; for as soon as Catherine appeared in the midst of her sisters to sing Matines, the choir suddenly found itself embalmed with a heavenly perfume that delighted the senses and spread in souls a salutary joy.

Thus God justifies with miracles the miracles of his tenderness toward souls.

The most frequently repeated sensitive sign in the spiritual engagement is that of the ring.

It is narrated from Saint Colette that she received him from the hands of Saint John the Evangelist. The Blessed Osanne of Mantua?, the Blessed Marguerite Faventine è, Saint Madeleine de Pazzi‘, Saint Angèle de Folignoÿ, the Venerable Mother Agnes de Langeacf, and others were hono1 Er. That most sweet John the Evangelist... brought to her a certain golden ring, on behalf of the supreme King, presenting it to her and placing it on her finger as his betrothed, he who is the prince of virginity and purity.

2 F. The Virgin Mary, taking Osanna's hand, held it out to her Son: he indeed, placing the ring upon her ring finger, declared her his bride with no small acclaim... Even to her last days she wore on her finger the ring given to her by Christ, and it was visible to her own eyes, though it remained hidden from others.

3 PIERRE DE FLORENCE, BB. 26 Aug., p. 39, p. 850, n. 44: Apparens ei Sponsus ejus cum multa jucunditate, annulum pretiosum in manu tenens, reborn by Our Lord himself of this symbol of bridal fidelity.

Blessed Raymond de Capoue!Lets us know with what pomp this favor was granted to Saint Catherine de Siena. The Saviour appeared to him escorted by the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, the Apostle Saint Paul, his father in the religion of Saint Dominique, and David carrying the sacred psalm. As this prophet drew harmonious chords from his instrument, the Mother of God, taking the right hand of the virgin and presenting her to her Son, asked her to raise her to the dignity of wife. The eternal Word accepted this prayer, took from his hand a golden ring inlaid all around four pearls and in the midst of a diamond of great beauty, and passed it to the ring finger of the virgin, saying, "I give you my wife, the wife of your Creator and your Savior, in the faith that you will keep inviolable until the day that you celebrate your eternal wedding with me in heaven."And the vision disappeared; but the ring remained at the finger of the blessed bride, visible to her alone, but for her always visible. In the presence of the mother Prioress and the whole community, she pronounced the holy vows, and received the black veil with a ring on her finger for the mark of the holy marriage she contracted with the Son of God. At the same time as it happened, Our Lord appeared to him, who, invisible to the world, gave him another ring incomparably more beautiful. It was clear from her contemplation and from the tears she shed throughout the action that her divine Husband performed in her some great effects of grace.

NI AI E I EDOD IT)

The Virgin Mother of God took the virgin's right hand in her own most sacred hand, and showing her fingers to her Son, asked that he deign to betroth her to himself in faith. To this the only-begotten Son of God, most graciously assenting, brought forth a golden ring having set in its band four pearls and a most beautiful adamantine gem

...enclosed at the summit. Placing it upon the ring finger of the virgin's right hand with her own most sacred right hand, she said: Behold, I betroth thee to thy Creator and Savior, in a faith which shall always be kept inviolate until thou shalt celebrate with me in heaven thy everlasting nuptials... When these things had been said, the vision disappeared, but that ring always remained on her finger — not indeed according to the vision...

'

M There is almost the same ceremonial in the engagement of another daughter of Saint Dominique, of the same name, Saint Catherine of Ricci £.

"On 9 April 1549, on Easter Day, Catherine, standing in her cell, about morning dawn, Jesus Christ appeared to her covered with glory with a shining cross on her shoulder and a magnificent crown on her head, accompanied by the glorious Virgin Mary her Mother, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Thomas of Aquinas and another blessed of her order. His cell immediately filled with dazzling light and a multitude of gracefully dressed angels, who stood tidy in the air, carrying various musical instruments in their hands. At the sight of so much majesty, Catherine was seized with great fear, and, having fulfilled the requirements of obedience, she bowed three times to the earth to worship Jesus. Then the most holy Mother of God prayed to her divine Son to take Catherine for her wife. Jesus readily consented to it, and while the Most Holy Virgin presented her with the hand of her humble fiancée, he drew with his own ring finger a brilliant ring, which he placed himself at the index of Catherine's left hand, saying to her: "My daughter, receive this ring as a pledge and a testimony that you are mine and that you will always be mine."And as Catherine, wishing to show her gratitude, could not find an expression that responded to the favor she had just received, the angels suddenly drew from their musical instruments a melody so suave, that it seemed to her that her cell had become paradise. Jesus then exhorted to the practice of humility, of 308 FIFTH DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION, obedience, of all Christian virtues, and, after having made him taste some of the pure and intoxicating joys of the spirit which he reserves to his beloved wives, he disappeared with all his procession."

Here is a last trait that offers less historical debt than the previous one, but so full of charm, that we do not resist the desire to share it with the reader.

It is narrated from Saint Catherine, martyrdom of Alexandria, that before she had received baptism and was still hesitant about the Christian faith, she saw in a dream the Blessed Virgin Mary carrying the Child Jesus between her arms. The divine Mother offered the still pagan virgin to her Son; but he turned away saying that she was not beautiful. Catherine awakened and understood the meaning of this vision. She therefore received the sacrament of regeneration; after which Our Lord appeared to her a second time during her sleep, in the presence of her glorious Mother and a multitude of angels, and trusted her by giving her a ring that the virgin found in her hand when she woke up!

No matter how extraordinary they may seem, the facts of this kind are so numerous that there would be recklessness to contest their existence, and a ridiculous prudence to make a scandal of their only possibility.

But we can, if we want, admit, with Scaramelli and others, that these sensitive manifestations presuppose and attest, but do not constitute the very act of marriage, which, according to them, is always accomplished in a high intellectual vision.

IV. — We will indicate elsewhere the backlash of ecstasy on the body, and its general effect on the soul. We must now report on the effects of the ecstatic union. Better than all other signs, they are used to characterize and make it recognize.

We find first, but enlarged, the effects that follow Simple Punion, namely: the transformation of the soul into God and supernatural jubilation. In ecstasy, the flow in God is such that it removes the soul from the organic functions, and the drunkenness that bleeds so great, that it remains suspended entirely on the object that delights it.

In addition to these fruits, we will also note the following, of which we borrow the precise from the P. Philippe de la TrèsSainte-Trinité t, because it seems to us to summarize what the authors. mystics, and in particular Saint Teresus, wrote on matter.

Il en compte sept. The first concerns the body; we will not say anything about it here. The second is an ardent desire to serve God, a desire that surpasses those whom one may have experienced in the lower degrees of contemplation. The soul that has seen and tasted God in ecstasy would like all creation to burst out in admiration and praise, and it would gladly sound its voice in all the universe to celebrate divine grandeur and friendliness. The third is a sovereign release and contempt of all that is earthly and finite; creatures are priceless as much as they lead and raise up to God. The fourth, which we believe should appear in the first line, is a resplendent knowledge of God, and, on the other hand, an intimate view of human infirmity. These are, so to speak, two parallel tables, one of which shrinks as the other grows. The fifth is a burning thirst for God, an extreme desire to possess him without reservation or interruption. The sixth is a painful and delicious wound at the same time, by which the soul becomes taken away and distressed by God. This wound can immediately precede the mystic union, as we have said in speaking of this divine touch; but it is mainly in the ecstatic union that it occurs and that it is deep. Finally, the seventh is mystical joy, which we have already reported.

Saint Térèse sums up almost all of these effects in the xIx chapter of her life, in which she tells of the wonderful state in which she was delighted. "This prayer and union, she says, leave in the soul such a great tenderness, that she would want to melt, not of pain, but of joyful tears that she sheds. She finds herself bathed in these tears without having felt them, and without knowing when or how they sank. She has an indescribable pleasure in seeing the impetuousness of this fire soothed by water that activates. This will appear to be Arabic, but it does.

"Sometimes, in this degree of prayer, I found myself so out of my mind, that I didn't know whether it was a dream, or whether the glory I had felt was a reality. But when I saw all the water flooded with tears, which flowed out of my eyes without any pain, and THE EXTATIC UNION = 311 with such impetuousness and abundance that this cloud of heaven seemed to pour it through torrents, I could see that it was not a dream. This took place in the beginnings, while this prayer lasted very little.

"The soul remains so courageous, that if at this moment it were to be cut to pieces for God, it would be a great consolation to him. These are the heroic promises and resolutions, the vivacity of desires, a sincere horror of the world and the clear sight of its nothingness, and this with more advantage and sublimitity than in previous prayers, resulting in an increase of humility in particular for the soul. For she clearly sees that this excessive and grand favor is not the fruit of her industry, and that she has nothing to do neither to attract it nor to retain it. So she recognizes herself sovereignly unworthy; and, as where the sun gives in full, spider webs cannot remain unnoticed, here the soul likewise penetrates the bottom of her misery; and the vain glory is so far away, that it seems to her that she can have. She sees with her eyes the little or nothing that she has given; for it is hardly if there has been from her simple consent, or rather it is in spite of her, so to speak, that we have closed the door to the senses, so that she can enjoy more perfectly with her God. Being alone with Him, what else does she have to do if she doesn't love him? She no longer sees, she no longer hears anything, unless she makes extreme violence; and few things are able to distract her and please her."

V. — These magnificent effects say enough what perfection supposes and brings mystical delight into the soul. Sensitive and spiritual purifications, indispensable for achieving a simple union, precede ecstatic prayer more strongly, and accuse in the subject who receives it an advanced virtue. To this it must be added that contemplation rarely begins with such a high prayer, and that it prepares the soul for this sublime ascension by making it climb at least some of the intermediate degrees beforehand. But, indeed, it is not the duration of time, it is rather the divine outpouring of faithfully accepted grace, which is the true measure of inner sanctification. Through the abundance and intensity of his gifts, God can replace in a short space of time, in a moment, if he wants, with a long effort of virtue. He preferably performs this prodigy in pure souls, in which the brightness of innocence has never been tarnished.

At whatever height of holiness the souls raised to ecstasy have come to, this favor is not a sure guarantee of fidelity and perseverance. We have observed it by appreciating the lower states; we will even have to say it again, speaking of marriage, which forms the climax of mystical life: as long as the journey lasts, it has neither absolute certainty nor definitive security. SIXTH DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

LE MARIAGE SPIRITUEL

EXISTENCE AND CEREMONIAL Through sanctifying grace, God becomes the bridegroom of our souls. — The usual feeling of this union is mystical marriage. — Difference between this state and the precedents. — Restrictions touchant sa perfection et sa permanence. — How this sacred marriage is celebrated and concluded: the appearance of the Most Holy Trinity and union with the Word. — Justification by the theology of the descent and cohabitation of the Trinity in the soul, — and of the title of Spouse attributed to the Word. — These mysteries are accomplished at the very centre of the soul. — Cette cérémonie se renouvelle. I. — These are the most holy things that the creature is given to conceive and declare: it is necessary to raise his mind and heart up to heaven to be up to the height, to the light, to the purity that is appropriate for such a subject. Saint Teresis, who the first fully characterized this state, and his worthy emulation Saint John of the Cross ?, decide only by trembling and protesting their impotence to tell about this apogee of contemplation what the personal experience had taught them: what will the sinners who are still in the darkness and the labors of common prayer say? 1 Chât. int., 1st D.,eh.1: 2 Vive Flame, Pref., p. 335. Our path is marked out. Here as elsewhere, and more than anywhere else, we will listen and reproduce the masters of mystical life, especially the two we have just named, Saint Teresus and Saint John of the Cross.

To better understand what the mystical covenant between God and the soul is, let us recall what has already been said, that sanctifying grace operates an admirable union where God is the bridegroom and faithful soul.

The Song of Songs is the epithalamus inspired by the Holy Spirit to celebrate this glorious hymen. That is why Saint Denis calls the sweet poem of divine loves!, and all commentators? apply this sacred song to the union of God with the Church, that is, with our souls.

The comparison of the wedding is repeatedly used by Our Lord, in the Gospel, to express the gifts of grace and glory. Saint Paul reminded the Corinthians that he had engaged their souls to Jesus Christ*; and in his epistle to the Ephesians * he established a formal parallel between the Saviour's union with his Church and the union of man and woman; and he concluded that this covenant between Jesus Christ and the Church is a sacrament full of mystery and greatness ^.

Christian tradition has faithfully maintained these formulas, which are enshrined in the divine Scriptures. The writings of the holy doctors contain countless passages in which they call marriage the union of the soul with God. A famous Spanish mystic, Louis de Léon, who wisely wrote about the names of Jesus Christ, after quoting Theodoret and Saint John Chrysostom applying the title of bridegroom to Our Lord in the Eucharist, adds: "It is not only Theodore, it is not only St John Chrysostom who held this language; it is almost all the holy Fathers: St Irenaeus, St Hilaire, St Cyprien, St Augustine, Tertullian, St Ignatius of Antioch, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Cyrille, St Leo, Photius and Theophylact."

To these names we can add no less illustrious names, those mainly of the many commentators of the sacred Canticus, such as: Origen, who, to the testimony of St Jerome?, seems to have surpassed himself in his six homilies on the poem of Solomon; St.Ambroise, St.Anselm, St. Bernard, the pious Rupert, Hugues and Richard of St.Victor, St.Thomas, Denis the Chartreux, Gerson, and with them the innumerable crowd of exegetes. We say nothing about mystical authors, all unanimous in professing and justifying this magnificent teaching.

Bossuet celebrates this great mystery in a special speech ê, where his knowledge of tradition, his profound theology, his ardent faith and the incomparable genius of his word burst out. Let's just mention the entry into the matter.

"The bride's name is the most compelling and sweetest of whom Jesus Christ can honor the souls whom he calls to the holiness of his love; and he could not choose a name cleaner than that of a bridegroom, to express the love that he brings to the soul, and Pam that the soul must have for each other for him. It remains to be seen where their covenant is made, and how they unite together."

To dissipate from these images, therefore, is to deny Scripture and the entire Christian tradition.

IL. — Hugues de Saint-Victor! goes so far as to claim that spiritual marriage is not a mere comparison having less reality and truth than human marriage; but that it is rather the latter which is shadow and the figure. If marriage is great, it is especially between Jesus Christ and the Church. All that comes with intimacy, fruitfulness, joy and greatness in the earthly unions, is coldness, impotence, sadness and lowness, compared to the union of God with our souls.

We have already said, this incomparable union is accomplished in the mystery of grace, and the enjoyment of it is reserved for glory. Grace is the promise and like the deposit of eternal weddings, as Hugues de Saint-Victor expresses himself in another place. That is why St John shows us, in the illuminations of glory, the Lamb's Bride adorned for these divine weddings, which all sanctified souls will enjoy after the supreme judgment which will suspend and crown all trials, and which each one already celebrates by taking possession of the bliss of heaven.

However, even here below, God gives, when and to whom he pleases, a more or less vivid feeling of his covenant with Vas the soul. When this consciousness is transitory, it constitutes a simple union or ecstatic union, depending on whether it leaves the soul mastery of itself or throws it into a transport that stops the exercise of its senses and powers. If it becomes continuous and permanent, it is the spiritual marriage, a sublime and special state whose existence is expressly affirmed by Saint Bernard?, Richard de Saint-Victor, Saint Laurent Justinien‘, Saint Térèse, Saint John of the Cross, and by all the mystical authors who came after them".

This degree that consumes mystical ascension can therefore be defined: a supernatural and permanent feeling of God's presence in the soul, and of his union with it. The proper character of spiritual marriage is in this stability and in this continuity of consciousness, which is given to the soul, of its union with God. nerati sumus, quod remissionem peccatorum consecuti sumus, quod charismata virtutum accepimus.

1 Apoc. xx, 9. Come, and I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.

2 Serm. in Cant. passim.

3 De quatuor grad. viol. charit. Migne, col. 1216.

On the spiritual and chaste marriage of the Word and the soul. Paris, 1554, fol. xem.

8 Chåt. int., 7e Dem.

6 Vive Flamme et Cantiques spirituels de láme et de Jésus-Christ son époux. ;

7 ŠCARAMELLI, Tratt. 3, C. 23, n. 221, p. 223. Nothing other than this did the S[.] intend to signify — Bernardo, S. Lorenzo Giustiniani, S. Teresa, S. Gio318 SIXTH DEGREE OF THE CONTEMPLATION

HT. — It is easy, from this notion, to establish the difference between the perfect union and the simple union and the ecstatic union.

The simple union gives the soul a profound but fugitive feeling of its union with God, without the abstract entirely from the region of the senses. In ecstasy, this enjoyment becomes so lively and compelling that it absorbs all the attention and all the forces of the soul, which deserts the body to dive into and lose itself in the supernatural vision that delights it. But in one and the other of these states, the consciousness of union is temporary, and ceases with the divine touch that determines it. In marriage, on the contrary, it becomes stable or at least usual.

It must be understood, says Saint Térèse!, that there is a very great difference between the vision of this house and that of the previous ones, and that the spiritual engagement does not differ less from this divine marriage than the condition of the brides does not differ from the condition of those who can no longer separate... In the engagement one separates quite often; and, although there is union, this favor passes quickly and the soul is without this company of Our Lord, I mean that she no longer has the feeling. But in marriage it is not so; the soul always abides with God in this center of itself where he resides."

IV. — Two reservations, however, are to be made here: one concerning the perfection of this mystical union, the other concerning its permanence.

First of all, it is indisputable that the consciousness of God's union, whether alive or bright, does not reach, at least as a habit, the clarity and enjoyment of glory. God makes himself felt, he reveals himself even in half a day to the loving soul; but he does show himself $1 4 - DRE

THE SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE 319 not face to face; it is not possessed with the fullness of mystics!, borrowed elsewhere from the Sacred Song, these are rather repeated visits and the caresses of hope than the perfect enjoyment of love.

If God's communications sometimes rise to glorious vision, it is never just a transient phenomenon, while the marriage in question here is a state, a state whose dominant character is to be stable and usual. So there is not yet, neither in light nor in joy, the supreme fullness. This is what makes theologians say that mystic marriage is to the glory what the marriage concluded (ratum) is to the consummate marriage. The consumption of spiritual marriage is therefore reserved for glory?.

The continuity of the feeling that reveals union with God is not so perfect either, that it does not suffer any interruption.

Saint Teresus, who had the experience of this holy state, points out that "this presence of the Holy Trinity does not constantly manifest itself with perfection and evidence of the first time and of some occasions where it pleases the divine Goodness to renew this favor, because, if it were, the soul could no longer care for anything else, nor even live among humans. But, although it is not always with the same clarity, the soul, according to her, finds itself, whenever she thinks about it, with this divine company. It can be said that the soul is like a person who, being with others in a very clear apartment, would cease to see them, if the windows were closed, without she ceasing to be sure of their presence. You might ask me if it depends on her to find the light and vision when she wants it? "No, it is not in his power; it is Our Lord who opens the window of understanding at his own discretion. He has given her a sufficiently great mercy never to withdraw from her, and to want her to know so clearly!"

This cohabitation, or rather this feeling of divine presence and union, therefore does not exclude any interruption, either through sleep, which suspends the regular exercise of conscious life, or during the day before?, by external occupations that call attention to the outside. According to Schram °'s remark, made also before and after him by other authors, it is only by comparison with the lower states, in which God only rarely appears and stealthly, and because of the relative frequency of his manifestations in the state of marriage, that, in the state of marriage, union is said to be stable and permanent, although it does not persevere appreciably with absolute continuity, as well as loving and faithful spouses, who do not distance one from the other but rarely, are supposed to live together and never separate. We will examine further, speaking of its effects, whether this perfect union can be broken, either from God or from the soul.

We will add here, together with Alvarez de Paz!, that perseverance and the intensity of union are not equal in all: more than in any other matter, absolute laws are forbidden in these high regions where love knows no law other than itself.

V. — How does this mysterious and sacred marriage come about?

According to Saint Terèse, who described to us at the last residence of his INTERNAL CHATEAU the way in which the mystical covenant is celebrated, the ceremony opens with the visit and cohabitation of the Holy Trinity in the very center of the soul; it continues and ends with the apparition, the proposal and the acceptance of the Word of God as a bridegroom.

"The soul is therefore introduced into this home by an intellectual vision. Then, by a certain representation of the truth, the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity appear to him, with a radiance of flames that, like a brilliant cloud of light, go first to his mind. She knows, by an admirable knowledge given to her, that these Persons are distinct, and she hears with a sovereign truth that they are all three but one substance, one power, one wisdom and one God; so that, what we know by faith, the soul knows it here, we can say it, by sight, although the soul sees nothing from his eyes of the body or his inner eyes; for there is no imaginary vision here. There the three Persons communicate to the soul, speak to him, and give him the understanding of these words that Our Lord says in the Gospel, that He, his Father and the Holy Spirit will come to dwell in the soul that loves and keeps his commandments!"

The appearance of the Augustus Trinity is only the prelude or condition of the spiritual contract: the covenant itself is concluded between the soul and the Word. Saint Bernard ? expressly affirms this wonderful conjunction, and indicates the reasons for it. Saint Laurent Justinien has titled one of his most important writings on spiritual life: SPIRITUAL AND CHASTE MARIAGE OF THE VERBE AND THEAME°. The reformer of Carmel is very explicit * on this point, and all the mystics who followed reproduce this doctrine.

This teaching is not surprising.

And first, let the Holy Trinity descend and appear in the contemplative soul, is it surprising, since it is a doctrine commonly professed in theology that, by sanctifying grace, the three Divine Persons take possession of our souls and dwell there as in their temple? The testimonies recorded in Scripture are numerous: this is not the place to produce them; even more are those whom one can collect from Catholic tradition, and it would be a long work that we would undertake if we wanted to quote the statements of the Fathers and Doctors. Origen, St.Pasile, St.Gregory of Nazianze, St.Ambroise, St.Gregory the Great, St.Bernard, then the multitude of turns in favor of this cohabitation of the divine Trinity in our souls by grace.

It is true that the Mystics do not merely assert that the soul, in these sacred weddings, receives the feeling of the Trinity already present in it; they speak of a present coming and of a special presence of the three Persons, because of the alliance between the Word and the soul.

These assertions are consistent with the most severe theology concerning grace and the Trinity. Supernatural grace is, in essence, a participation in the divine life that constitutes and connects the People of the adorable Trinity. This communication, having the dominant character of being a work of love, is attributed by appropriation to the Holy Spirit, who represents in the divine essence the movement of Pamour, and forms his temporary mission in souls.

But the theologians wonder whether it is necessary to count, on the part of the sanctifying Spirit, as many new missions as it is made of internal increments of grace, and they commonly answer that, if the common and regular increments do not constitute missions, at least one must look as such at the extraordinary effusions?, among which they especially rank the gratuitous graces, and consequently the transition from one mystical state to another significantly superior'. The elevation to spiritual marriage clearly fulfils these conditions, and therefore it is easy to interpret why this new state, the most sublime in the order of grace, takes a present and prominent descent from the Most Holy Trinity to the most intimate of the soul.

VI. — Theology also explains why the title of spiritual husband is particularly suitable for the Word. The reasons she claims to establish the propriety of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity are sufficient to justify the title of Spouse of the souls she is still given; and, indeed, these reasons seem to be more convincing here.

Marriage combines two similar beings and melts them into a common life. Now, of the three divine Persons, the closest to creatures, mainly reasonable creatures, is the Word, type of creation, the idea in which God the Father contemplates his divinity and according to which he realizes all that he does outside. The Word is therefore the husband best suited to the reasonable creature.

Autre raison. Elevated by grace to the participation of divine nature, intelligent beings become the children of God and heirs of his possessions, enjoying the light, life, the beatitude of the Holy Trinity, of which the Father is the first principle. That is why the Father has taken as an example and mediator of this new filiation the very Son whom he begets in the splendors of eternity, thus making the sonship freely realized in time, the continuation and the effect of the essential and eternal filiation. Through this union, the Word will communicate the life which he receives from his Father, and thus become the procreator of divine life in souls.

This beautiful theology, which is that of the Fathers! and the Doctors?, makes heard and fully justifies why mystic marriage always ends with the Word.

And as what distinguishes this divine covenant from the common grace that unites all sanctified souls with God, it is a certain consciousness of this union and its permanence, this insignia favor always presupposes a supernatural manifestation of the Word to the soul, by which he declares himself his Spouse and declares her his wife. "There really is between the soul and the Word the contract of a spiritual and holy marriage," exclaims Saint Bernard; "it is not enough to say a contract, it is a perfect union."And further on, "When you see a soul abandoning all things to adhere to the Word of all its vows, living only for the Word, acting by the Word, conceiving by the Word what it must bear for the Word, and which can say: "Jesus Christ is my life, and dying "is a gain," greet the wife, wife of the Word."

Indeed, it is not only the Word, the Divine Person, but the Word clothed with our humanity, Jesus Christ Our Lord, who becomes the true husband of souls. This union of the Word incarnate with souls is only the extension and conclusion of its union with human nature; for the Word is united with the flesh only to reach souls, to make them partakers of his life, and to bring with them and with them all creation to his Father.

Saint Térèse says that this apparition of the Saviour is first representative, and ends with an intellectual vision. "The first time Our Lord has done this grace, His Majesty wants to show himself to the soul through an imaginary vision of his most holy humanity, so that she cannot doubt the insignia of which he honors. For others, it may be in another form; but so it appeared to the person whom I am speaking about, as she had just communed, with that splendour, beauty and majesty that burst in him after his resurrection; and he told him that it was time to think only about what looked at him, that he would take care of her, and other words that it is easier to feel than to express... He appears in the centre of the soul, not by an imaginary vision, but by an intellectual vision even more delicate than the previous one, in the way that, without entering through the door, he presented himself to the apostles when he addressed these words: "Peace be with you."

It was so for Saint Teresus; but it may be otherwise, as she herself observes it in this place. Nor does it seem essential to us that the Word always appear with the outsides of humanity, although for the ordinary it is Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, who appears and takes the title of bridegroom.

In short, let's say with the Father. Scaramelli?, only two things seem essential to the perfect union of which it is concerned: the first is the intellectual manifestation of the Most Holy Trinity and the consciousness of its cohabitation at the very centre of the soul; the second, the revelation of the Word, still by intellectual vision, with words and testimonies that warn the soul that it raises it to the dignity of wife. It does not matter whether the two apparitions are simultaneous or whether one occurs before the other, provided that the covenant between the soul and the Word contracts in the presence of the Augustus Trinity. At least in the logical order, it is the Trinity that appears the first to prepare and witness this holy union.

VII. — Holy Teresis! adds that the revelation of the three divine Persons and the adorable Husband is accomplished in the very center of the soul, as St John of the Cross expresses by the substance of the soul. Holy Angel of Foligno? reverses the expression to render the same idea; according to her, it is the soul that is plunged and lost in the middle of the Trinity. tuale del divino Verbo insieme con qualche locuzione medesimamente intellettuale, che in qualche senso sia mutuo consenso e scambievole tradizione di ambedue, e che poi Siegua tra questi due spiriti l ́unione strettissima ed insolubile di amore. Quinso vi sia tutto questo, già pare che vi sia quanto basti alla sostanza di questa divina unione, ancorchè manchi la vista di Gesù glorioso.

1 Chåt. int., 7th Dem., ch. 4: "When therefore it pleases Our Lord to grant to a soul the grace of this divine marriage, he causes her first to enter into his dwelling place, and he wants to be to her in a manner other than in the delights which he has already favored and in which he united her to his Majesty, and in the prayer which I have called of union, where it does not seem to the soul that she is called of God to enter, as in this dwelling place, to the same, but only to her upper part.

2 48e Cant., p. 444... The usual union she has with God according to its substance.

3 ARNAUD. BB. 4 jan., t. 4, p. 197 et 498, n. 76, 78: Video enim sanctam Trinitatem in tenebra, et in ipsa Trinitate quam video in tanta tenebra, videtur mihi quod ego stem et maneam in ejus medio... Consequent, postea elevata sum in spiritu et inveni me totam intus in Deo, modo alio quam nunquam consueverim et viebatur mihi quod eram in medio TriAll these formulas are intended to translate, as far as is permitted to the infirmity of our human language, the intimacy of the union that occurs between God and the soul. However Saint John of the Cross attributes to this expression, "the deepest center of the soul," a particular interpretation to the mystic, which we must not hide.

Commenting on this verse of his Vive FLAMM! :

THE MOST CENTRE OF MY FAMILY,

"The soul," he said, "assuring that it is struck in its deepest center, suggests that it has other less profound centers...

"We call here the deepest center of the soul, the last bounds where its nature, its virtue, the strength of its operation and its movement can reach, without being able to pass further; in the same way as the last term where the stone can arrive by its natural property, without going beyond, is its center. But as the stone can remain in several depths of the earth, without going down to the last, where its gravity could precipitate it, and thus it can be assigned several centers, deeper than each other, likewise the soul has several centers, which we will expose in this way. God is his center; if she arrives to Him, according to all her essence and all the virtue of her operations, it is certain that she has come to her deepest center; which is true when she knows God, that she loves Him with all her strength, and that she has full enjoyment of it. But if she has not yet ascended to this high degree of perfection, she abides well in God by her grace and by the communication that he makes of herself; but she still has the power to move beyond this measure, and thus she is not in her deepest center. In order to enter, she must pass through several degrees of love. For it is the love that leads to it, which finally is very perfect to God. And as there are several degrees in this love, the more the soul has gone through, the more deeply it is in God; and these different progresses or different dwelling places in God make the different centres of soul. Some are deeper than others, in proportion to the degree of love being more perfect; and when the last degree is in its consummation, the soul is in its deepest center of all, that is, it is all penetrated by the lights of God, all burning with the flames of its love, and in some way similar to it... Thus, when the soul says that the flame of divine love touches it into its deepest centre, this language means that God's love makes it very deep wounds in its substance, in its virtue and in its strength."

VII. — The ceremony of this union is repeated several times, at the discretion of the Heavenly Husband. Sante Terèse has already taught us that God's Goodness renews this favor from time to time!.

It is narrated in the life of Saint Gertrude, by John Lansperg °, that this admirable virgin who once expressed to Our Lord, at the moment of communion, the desire to renew in this sacrament the spiritual marriage which she had contracted with Him through faith, religion and virgi1 Chât. int., 7° Dem., ch. 1. 2 Vilæ and Revelationum S. On the Tuesday of Easter week, as she was about to communicate, she desired of the Lord that through that same life-giving sacrament he would deign to renew in her soul the spiritual marriage by which she had been betrothed to him in spirit through faith and religion, and also through the integrity of virginal purity; the Lord answered with gentle serenity, saying: 'This I will do without doubt.' And so, bowing to her most graciously with the tenderest affection, drawing her to himself, he fixed a most sweet kiss upon her soul: through the kiss renewing in her the interior exercise of the spirit, and through the embrace he seemed to imprint upon her breast a certain splendid [necklace]... With this tenderness, the divine Spouse bowed toward her soul with delightful gentleness, gave her once more the pledge of their union, and left her, as so many precious pearls, the most abundant spiritual gifts.

A similar fact is read in the life of Saint Angèle de Foligno, dictated by herself to Brother Arnaud, his confessor, Franciscan religious. "In a sickness," said this blessed woman, "as I very much desired to be in communion, one day of the feast of the holy angels, and that there was no one to bring me the sacred Body of the Lord, I felt an extreme pain. To temper my sorrow and desire, I began to think of the angels, whose feast it was, the praises they give to God, and the ministry they fulfill before his throne. All of a sudden I find myself raised up and led by a multitude of these heavenly spirits before an altar: "This is it," they said to me, the altar of the angels!" and they showed me above their own praise, that is, He who is all praise; and they added to my soul, "In Him who is on the altar, there is perfection and the complement of the sacrifice in which you desire to take part. So prepare yourselves to receive the Bridegroom who has already given you the ring of his covenant and who has declared to you his wife: he wants to renew this divine marriage at this time."I cannot say what I felt with joy, for my soul felt the whole truth of these words and received a delicious failure which cannot be expressed."

These wonders of God's love for his creature confuse human thought, and yet the sanctified souls carry in them all these glorious mysteries, whose clear vision will make the delight and beatitude of eternity. CHAPITRE XXI

SIXTH DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

LE MARIAGE SPIRITUEL

HIS EFFECTS God reigns over the soul through his illuminations and inspirations, and, making it like him, imparts to him a wonderful beauty. — Touches surnaturelles et substantielles. — Les plaies d'amour. — Paix profonde, égalité constante, vertus héroïques. — Inner Suavities; does spiritual marriage exclude ecstatic transport? — It confers relative impeccability, but not absolute. — The role of the Eucharist in the mystical alliance. I. — All that God can spread of gifts and riches upon the soul sanctified by his grace, before entering into the splendors of glory, meets at the height of the mystical ascension of which we speak. A first observation, which we have already made in considering union in general, is that all the favours of the previous states are found at this summit, but enlarged, supermindful, consumed; and, moreover, this state calls for others that are of its own. Cependant, si magni4 Pricxpp. À SS. TRN. P. 3, Tr. 1, D. 4, a.6,t. 3, p. 130 Tandem omnes alii performed precedentium orationis unitivæ graduated possunt unioni 332 SIXTH DEGREE: THE SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE may be, these spiritual goods are always susceptible to increase, and present themselves with a great variety in the privileged ones that reach these sublime heights.

We can only sum up the wonderful effects of mystic marriage, indicating to those who would like to deepen its various points of view the admirable pages of Saint Teresis and Saint John of the Cross on this subject.

The first effect, the most immediate effect of the divine covenant, is to establish, between the Word and the soul his wife, a perfect community of goods. On the one hand, the Bridegroom communicates to the bride all her merits and all her riches, and she lives only to provide the glory of her Bridegroom. Écoutons sainte Térèse :

"Our Lord, she wrote, showing himself to me in the most intimate of my soul, in an imaginary vision, as he had often done, gave me his right hand and said to me: "Look at this nail; it is the mark and pledge that from this day you will be my wife; until now you have not washed deserved; from now on you will have care for my honor, not only seeing in me your creator, your king and your God, but also looking at yourself as my true wife. From this moment on, my honor is yours, and your honor is mine."

And soon after: "While I was at the foundation of the monastery of Seville, Our Lord said to me: "You know the spiritual marriage that exists between you and me; by this bond, this His EFFECTS is not the 333 that I possess is yours, and so I give you all the pains and works that I endured. By virtue of this gift, you can ask my Father, as if you were asking for your own good." I already knew that we were partakers of the sufferings and works of Our Lord, but I understood him then in a very different way; it seemed to me that I remained with a great apanage or empire; and the friendship with which the divine Master granted me this favor was such that it was impossible for me to express it here. I saw that the eternal Father admitted this gift; and from that time on I considered in a very different way what Our Lord had suffered; I looked upon him as a good which belonged to me, and my soul drew a great consolation from it."

Another consequence of perfect union is that God reigns as ruler over the soul that has become his wife. He reigns by a powerful illumination, where he communicates intimate secrets to the wife whom his tenderness identifies with himself, revealing to him what is hidden in the highest mysteries of faith, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, grace and glory. He reigns over her by the holy inspirations that rule her and direct her; for in this state, without the direction by her ministers receiving any harm, in the end, it is God who is the only guide of this soul?

This brightness of the divine face in the depths of the soul makes it an atmosphere of light that penetrates the intimacy of its substance and gives it an incomparable 334 SIXTH DEGREE: THE SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE Beauty The gaze of the soul plunges into the abyss of divine perfections, and God in turn rests with complacency his eyes on the creature enriched with the gifts of his love. Then occur between the Bridegroom and the bride these reciprocal exchanges of admiration and praise which we read in the Holy Songs, where the sacred Sunamite celebrates with transport the beauty of her Beloved?, and the mystic Solomon, in a language that scandalizes the fleshly men, because they do not hear it, exalts the beauty of his wife.

In fact, God's beauty becomes the beauty of the soul, and the beauty of the soul makes God's beauty shine out in this union where divine life flows over the creature until it makes it perfectly similar to its principle. The Apostle's word is already fulfilled: "When he appears to us, we will be like him, because we will see him as he is."If the resemblance is not yet complete, it is that the vision will be complete only in glory.

Let us hear St John of the Cross explaining this verse in one of his songs *:

Let's look at each other in your beauty.

"Behold," he said, "the meaning of these words, "If you change me into your beauty, I will see you in your beauty, and you shall be

PHILIPP: À SS. TRN. P. 3, T. 4, D. 4, a. 6, t. 3, p. 198 : Quintus effectus est perfectissima animæ in Deo suaviter unitæ pulchritudo.

Wonderfully does the contemplative soul commend the beauty of her Bridegroom; and not once, but often; not only speaking to him, but also addressing others, not only in general words, but even in descriptions marvelously expressed.

3 Ibid., a. 4, p. 438. Not only does the bride praise her Bridegroom, but in turn she is praised by him, and more frequently and more fully... Propterea, cum in sacro Canticorum Cantico sponsa tantum semel et iterum laudet Sponsi pulchritudinem, qui tali laude crescere non potest, Sponsus ipse passim sponsæ pulchritudinem exaltat, ita ut nullum sit caput in quo talis pulchritudinis will also see me in your beauty; you will see yourself in me in your beauty, and I will see myself in you in your beauty: so it will seem to me in your beauty that I will be yourself and you will be myself; it will seem that your beauty will be mine, and mine will be yours; and that in your beauty I will be one thing with you, and that you will be one thing with me."

If all this seems subtle, it is less to the mystical authors that one should take it than to the very nature of these intimate operations of divine love, and to those infinite delicacy that despair the human language.

IE. — So filled, beautified, impatient and desired, what can the soul do, if not rush and get lost in the infinite abyss of divine perfections? To activate this movement, God himself turns it on and calls it with supernatural touches of incomparable power and sweetness.

Indeed, according to Saint John of the Cross, the most perfect substantial touches are part of the testimonies of love given to his wife by the divine Husband. "The bride tells us this mystical doctor," calls SOUFFLE OF THE VENT the ability she asks to love God in a very perfect way, "because this breath is something other than a touch of God or a feeling that the Holy Spirit gives her by communicating to her. Then he lifts it up and carries it up, so that it sends to God sighs of love, imitating the mutual love of the Father and the Word, whose substantial term is the Holy Spirit which is given to the soul in this transformation, which would not be consumed if the soul were not united with the Holy Spirit and transformed into him. It is true that the lowness of this mortal life prevents the transformation from being made in a clear and manifest way; but the soul does not allow to receive such extraordinary glory and joy that no one can understand or explain them."

And the reason for these sublime touches is to produce a movement in the soul that lifts it up and blends it with the reciprocal relationships of the three divine Persons. "It is not to be astonished," says St John of the Cross, "that the soul can do such a high thing; for since God himself leads her to the divine union in the Most Holy Trinity, why, I pray you, would it seem incredible that she herself would produce acts of knowledge and love in the Trinity and with the Trinity that have some connection with the Trinity itself, although she does all this only through participation and the cooperation of God? If one asks how this is done, one cannot answer anything else, except that the Son of God has earned us this admirable elevation and we have obtained it from his Father, when he said (Joan. xvu, 24): "Father, I desire that those whom you have given me be where I am," knowing, by doing by participation what I am doing... God accomplishes all this by communicating to perfect men the love which he communicates to his Son, not by nature as well as to his Son, but by the unity and transformation of love. The Son does not also ask that they be one by essence and by nature, as the Father and the Son are one, but by union of love, as the Father and the Son are one by unity of love. Hence souls possess by participation what God has by nature, and that they are in any way God through the participation of the divine nature."

The full enjoyment of this divine life spread in our souls through the grace of Jesus Christ is the sharing of glory; only souls raised to mystic union receive from here below an anticipated feeling, which is to them IT. — The divine touches, reaching the soul, make it look like an injury, as we have said in speaking of these kinds of keys called love wounds. But in the stable state of marriage, it is no longer a transient and rapid excitation, it is repeated blows that mark in the soul, no longer wounds, but wounds, and eventually multiply to make the whole soul a single wound. Suave and blessed prayer, which mortifies the living forces of nature and removes from it any other feeling than that of life and divine love.

But let us let talk about these mysteries of holy love the doctor who best described them after Saint Teresus: "O DELICIEOUS PLAIE!" exclaims Saint John of the Cross! He who makes the plague heals her himself, and he heals her when he does it. It is, in some way, like an iron all red of fire; when it is applied on a wound it increases, and it makes it a wound of fire; and if one continues to apply it, the wound widens and deepens in such a way, that it finally destroys the body that received it. Similarly the cautery of divine love heals the plague of love that he has made to the soul, and it increases every time it is applied. For the remedy that love uses to heal the soul that he has injured is to hurt her more, and multiply her wounds until the soul is only a universal wound. In this way, the soul being more than just a questo stato grazie si alte e si sublimi che non solo sono fabatto rimote da ogni cooperazione de ensei, ma sono anche superiori al ministerio isistso degli Angeli... Of this kind are certain touches that God makes in the substance of the soul. Già da questo se intende che l-anima dildo in questi tocchi a diletto molto similar al gaudio de-beati, e un saggio della patria celeste. 1 Vive Flame, 2 Cant.,

O cauterio suave!

O regalada plaga !

O mano blanda! O toque delicada !

That in vida eterna sabe,

Y toda.deuda paga,

Matando, muerte en vida lo has trocado.

DOI SH i

15 wounds of love, and by this means being all changed to plague and love, she is healed. For it is the nature of this divine disease that the one who is most wounded is the healthiest, and the one who is all covered and all penetrated with wounds is healthy in all its parts. Gela does not prevent this divine cauterus from exercising his virtue over the soul every wounded and every healed; for he softens his wounds, he rejoices in his healing in the way we have explained. That's why she exclaims: O DELICIOUS PLATE! So it is so sweeter and more delicious that it comes from a more sublime and eminent love fire. It is the Holy Spirit who is the author of it, who does it, so that the soul may be swallowed up in a sea of delight. O happy plague, since the hand that makes you heals you! O pleasant wound, since you cause to soul only inconceivable pleasures! Thou art exceedingly great, because He that maketh thee is infinite; the joys which thou spreadest in Pâme are boundless, because the fire of divine love is boundless. So, with a delicate wound, and all the more exquisitely delicate as you descend deeper into the center of the soul, so that this sacred fire may fill with ardour and pleasure all its substance and all its powers! It can be said, after that, that this cautery and wound are the highest degree of love where one can ascend in this state. There are, however, several others, which are not so high nor similar to it. For it is God who flows into the soul and touches it, without using ghosts that the imagination can form."

IV.—God's sovereign dominion over the soul, now his wife, establishes him in a holy equality that no longer knows the fluctuations and troubles of the lower part. The senses remain submissive and silent, both inside and outside. Passions suspend their movements or act only with tranquility and sweetness‘. The waves of human impressions and futility do not disturb or import it, nor do the rivers that flow into the sea increase it or cause it to overflow, according to the comparison of Saint John of the Cross 4.

Detached from all that sevanonates, from all that does not interest the honor of her Husband, she feels no desire but to obtain her glory. She stopped being to herself, she only lives by her conformity of thought and will with the God who possesses her, governs her and animates her?.

From there results to the deepest of itself a peace imperturbable, a kind of impassibility that no excitement manages to disturb, a serene immobility sheltered from winds and thunderstorms °.

Dead to herself, living only for the God she loves, the soul enters as naturally into the exercise of heroic virtues. For details of practical applications, we refer to P. Philip of the Most Holy Trinity, who devotes a whole treatise of his mystical theology to this interesting subject. Let us only note that this heroism has as its principle the love of God until oblivion and contempt for oneself, and the invitation that the bridegroom makes to the bride in the day of their wedding to take care only of the interests of her glory."

V. — The inner suavities brought by the illuminations and caresses of the heavenly Husband are inexpressible? This divine joy is without concussion, without external noise or radiance, it penetrates and intoxicates soul; but, far from agitating it, it adds to the serenity and assurance of its rest, through the feeling that it gives it of the intimacy and stability of its union with God. Everything is quiet and silent within the soul, as it was in the past during the construction of the temple of Solomon, where no sound of stone or hammer was heard: this is the comparison used by Saint Teresa. From the intimate background where God resides springs a peaceful but overabundant source, of ineffable voluptuousness +, which floods the soul and bliss.

Are these drunkennesses going as far as ecstasy? This is a controversial point among mystics.

We do not know any author who completely excludes ecstatic transports from the state of spiritual marriage. The greatest number merely affirm the rarity of these phenomena at the last degree of union. Saint Térèse ÿ, Saint John of the Cross, Alvarez de Paz, Philip of the Most Holy Trinity*, profess this sentiment.

1 Ste Térèse, Chât. int., Te Dem., ch. 3. This soul has such an oblivion of self, that it seems that it no longer has to be, because the transformation that has taken place in it is so total, that it no longer knows itself. She does not think of the bliss of heaven, nor of life, nor of honor; but she is all concerned with the glory of God. We see in his life the faithful fulfillment of these words that Our Lord said to him: "Take care of my interests Joseph Lopez Ezquerra t obviously assumes the opposite, since he discusses the characters and causes of the ecstatic ascension which, according to him, is customarily occurring in the state of spiritual marriage.

Le P. Scaramelli is in the same direction, but he does not dare openly contradict the previous authorities. He claims in his favour a remarkable passage from Saint Bernard*, and historical facts; then he tries a conciliation between the two assertions, apparently very opposite, by reducing the exclusion of the above-mentioned masters to the impetuous delights only; and he concludes by recommending to the directors not to be surprised if they meet, at these heights, souls who no longer have ecstasy, and others who still experience it.

This practical conclusion breathes wisdom.

On the one hand, it is in no way repulsive that the highest contemplation should occur without alienation of the senses: Our Lord has enjoyed in his mortal life the beatific vision without ever suffering the flaws of ecstasy, and the elect will keep in the bliss of heaven the full use of all their outer and inner powers, as well as teaching the theologians #. The cause of the ecstatic suspension being in the insufficiency of the forces of the soul to respond at the same time to the vision that delights it within and to the organic functions of the outside, it is understood that the increase of the internal forces, the habit of supernatural communications can free from these failures, and that, reaching the top of the perfect life, the soul contemplates with unalterable serenity the visions that once threw it into the violence of rapture.

However, as long as the soul is in the infirmity of the journey, it would have reached the highest point of perfection, it is likely to receive divine illuminations and impulses that exceed its strength and force it to desert the senses!.

The last word is the facts. If, after surely having seen the elevation to the perfect mystic union, we still see ravishing, we will only have to affirm also one and the other. Let us be careful only not to argue the existence of spiritual marriage from outside of a great virtue: there is no necessary connection between these two states, which can survive one without the other. Free facts don't prove themselves, they show themselves.

VI. — Whatever close union with God in spiritual marriage, whatever wonderful transformations the soul undergoes in this state, it is not entirely assured against the inherent failures of the traveling creature. It still remains subject to imperfections and to surprise venial faults; but God preserves it from deliberate venial sins!, and places it in a kind of moral impotence to separate itself from it by mortal sin?. The extraordinary and overabundant graces that the divine Husband spreads upon her are a surety of inviolable fidelity.

However, impeccability is not absolute, not only with regard to slight faults committed with full advertence, but also with regard to serious sins that give death to the soul and separate it from God.

Saint Teresis summarizes all this teaching in the following words: "Neither do you think that, despite these great desires and this resolve to commit for nothing in the world an imperfection, these souls do not happen to commit many, and even sins; not, however, with advertence; for Our Lord must give them special assistance for this purpose. I speak of venial sins; as for mortals, in what they can see, they are free of them; though not assured of not having them who escape their knowledge, which is not a little torment to them. Another, no less, is to see souls lost, and though they have great hope

1: ScARAMELLI, T. 3, ©. 25, n. 250, p. 233: Quest: anime avvertentemente non peccano mai, neppur venialmente. I said "advertently" deliberately, because when full advertence is lacking, they too commit many imperfections and even venial sins.

2 Ibid., ©. 23, n. 226, p. 225 : E chi non vede che in tali anime vi è un’ impossibilità morale a fare il male, purchè lo conoscano, ed a lasciare la via della perfezione, a cui sono quasi connaturalmente inclinate per abito, e si fortemente incitate da una potentissima grazia? E pero convien dire che sia in esse un的 antecedente impassività, non fisica che distractgerebbe la loro libertà, ma morale, a separarsi da Dio, recata loro da quel! unione perfettissima, che con lo stesso Dio le ha si strettamente congiunte. de n ́être not of this number, nevertheless, when they come to think of some of which the Scripture speaks, who seemed to be the object of divine favors, as a Solomon, who had such sublime communications with God, they cannot defend themselves, as I said, from a feeling of fear. Thus the one among you who believes himself to be the most confident must fear more, according to the words of David: "Blessed is the man who fears the Lord!" May the divine Master always keep us! The begging that he will give us the grace to never offend, is the greatest assurance we can have."

Philip of the Most Holy Trinity!, a faithful interpreter of his seraphic mother Teresis, hears this fear of salvation in the soul raised to fruitive union, of the moments when the divine Spouse takes away from him the feeling of his presence and union, to test his fidelity, to add to his merits, and to restore it to the common condition of the journey where fear is always mixed with love; and he declares that, according to the

1 Theol. myst. The fifth question is whether, in this sublime degree of mystical theology, by which the soul attains to the fruitive union of God, it is made certain that it is in the state of grace and among the number of the elect. — The answer is that no one knows, without a special revelation, whether he is worthy of love or of hatred, and much less can he know, without the aforesaid revelation, that he is among the number of the elect; yet this sublime state, in which God so familiarly manifests himself to the soul as to a bride, in a manner to be seen, and communicates himself to be enjoyed, requires that God should evidently reveal to that same soul that it is in the state of grace, and that, being numbered among the elect, it will attain to the crown of glory. Thus the mystical doctors more commonly affirm. This is expressly taught by St. Lawrence Justinian, in the Treatise on the Chaste Marriage of the Word and the Soul, ch. 14, saying: "He is properly made certain, etc..." and ch. 25: "The bride ascends from the bridal chamber into heaven, and continually descends from heaven into the bridal chamber; not fearful, not uncertain of her salvation, the bride enters into the dwelling of the heavenly ones, but as into the house of her beloved and into her own possession." Which is effectively urged by a certain analogical reasoning, etc... Although these things are true, yet it more often happens that, after so sublime an exercise of mystical theology has passed, so precious a knowledge of her own sanctification and election revealed to her withdraws from the soul, while at times her most beloved spouse lies hidden, etc... Hence although in this sublime state, while love is most perfect in act, it wholly excludes fear..., yet when the act of so perfect a love is relaxed, fear is sometimes wont to return. KE LA VISION BÉATIFIQUE | 353

> who form all the divine essence? Is not the sight of the Word and its ineffable union with the soul?

What's missing?

He lacks perfect intuition and full enjoyment of the divine essence. It lacks absolute certainty that we will not fall from this happy state. It lacks deliverance from the bonds of the body, whose animality is still an obstacle, and which could not long sustain the entire and continuous radiance of glory.

But in this essay in which God begins to reveal himself, why can't the light burst sometimes until it gives the soul a glimpse, a half-view of the final beatitude?

God's veiled essence is claimed to any mortal man. But the true divine essence is not a God in three people, and have we not found that the supreme degree of mystical ascension regularly carries away, from the confession of all, a view and manifestation of this mystery?

The words of Scripture, the word of God to Moses, are invoked: "No man can see me and live," and that of Saint John?: "No one has ever seen God."

The law is formal, it is true; but is it absolute and without exception of any kind? There is room for doubt. Isn't it also a law that, when you die, you don't come back to life until the day of the general resurrection? And yet Scripture and history show us many facts of the dead recalled from the tomb.

But our flesh, it will be said, cannot sustain the brilliant irradiation of the beatific vision. — It may be difficult to demonstrate rigorously this radical infirmity of the body. Our Lord's soul was glorified from the first moment of its existence, and nevertheless linked to a responsible flesh. That if one uses a perpetual miracle to explain in Man-God the coincidence of passibility and glory, could not the same coincidence occur transiently in a mere mortal, by virtue of a rare and temporary derogation?

The possibility, moreover, being doctrinally out of the question, the whole question comes down to this: Did God declare that the act of glorious intuition, although it does not in itself involve repulsiveness, will never be realized in any living man, without exception any? — An absolutely exclusive answer would seem to us to be severe and questionable.

These exceptions, moreover, cannot be numerous, because of the privileges of the mystical alliance, because, on the one hand, the elevation to this sublime state is very rare; and, on the other, in this very state, the concession of the clear view of heaven is even more rare.

One last remark, which seems important to us, is that knowledge of the divine essence does not exclude gradations, and that it can occur without going to fullness, without reaching to the finished proportions of glory. Just as there are degrees between the vision of one blessed and that of another, there may be, in the same subject, between such and such an act of intuition, although all these intuitions also concern the divine essence.

It doesn't matter whether one looks at contemplation as inseparable from sanctifying grace, or whether one places it among the free graces compatible with the state of sin. Whether the light whose soul is invested in the contemplative degrees is a resplendentness of the inner grace or the effect of an extrinsic illumination, the result remains what it is; and in particular, the one who characterizes spiritual marriage, amounts to the revelation that the soul receives from the presence of the three divine Persons at the centre of itself, from its special union with the Word, and from the permanent feeling that it keeps of this presence and this union. If God can make communications of this nature to an unsanctified soul, why can he not give him the view of the divine essence temporarily?

Moreover, to those who would claim that the soul defiled with sin is inaccessible to the illumination of glory, far from opposing any denial, we would merely remind them that, in our view, united contemplation, even more than the purely intellectual knowledge of glory, is incompatible with sin.

The definitive conclusion that we draw with the majority of theologians therefore amounts to saying that the manifestation of the divine essence does not belong to the regular series of mystical graces; with this reservation however that contemplation goes, through its natural progress, to the revelation of glory, and that God can sometimes grant this favor, either fully, or partially, but always in a transitional way.

The facts which are alleged in this sense are therefore, in our view, questionable, and must be rejected only because of a lack of testimonial evidence, and not solely because of the considerations of principle and doctrine.

IV. — Let us, in closing this chapter, look back at the successive gradations of contemplative prayer, to recognize its unity and harmony.

Unity is in purpose, and that goal is union.

God first calls the soul, collects it and makes it attentive to the intimate and supernatural manifestation of its presence. He fills it with graces, in this divine trade, and he ignites holy desires, making the feeling of his presence more and more vivid. From this feeling he lifts up to the consciousness of union, consciousness at first rapid and contained, then irresistible and absorbing, though still temporary, at last almost uninterrupted, but calmer and deeper at the same time, gaining in serenity what it gains in height. It's the hall of heaven.

Is the soul ever introduced into the temple, before the end of the journey, to contemplate there face to face, even with a stealthy look, the mysteries of which it already receives at the bottom of itself a partial revelation? The reader knows what we think, what he is allowed to think about this momentary anticipation of glory and this apogee of contemplation. CHAPITRE XXIII

DES PURIFICATIONS PASSIVES

GENERAL OVERVIEW Why one places the study of the conditions that precede contemplation after that of contemplation itself. — Nécessité des purifications passives. — Rigueur de ces épreuves. — their diversity from the point of view of intensity, — the moment when they appear, their duration, their continuity. — The means used to achieve them. The main is the suppression of the radiation of inner devotion, on the senses in sensitive purification, and on the spirit in spiritual purification, — The absolute necessity, for souls undergoing passive purification, of prudent and skilful direction. — Signs of contemplation. — Conduite du directeur. I — We have made known the contemplation, its successive ascension, its splendors and its suavities; we have yet to describe the terrible trials that must be experienced before we taste this delicious rest. It may seem strange that we have dealt with contemplation before assigning the conditions that precede it. The reason for this reversal is that, on the one hand, the trials which prepare for contemplative prayer are full of shadows and practical difficulties, and nevertheless of vital importance in the direction of souls; and, on the other hand, the knowledge of these preliminary ones would bring little light to the study of contemplation itself, while it makes it clearer, more precise and easier. It is the proper demonstration of a well-conducted demonstration of the contribution of the clarity acquired to the clarification of what remains obscure.

Moreover, contemplation is the term and the end, and the purifying trials are the way, the means; and the way is only well drawn when one looks at the term; the mean wa of meaning and scope only by its relation to the end.

II. — It is the unanimous teaching of the Mystics that a soul is raised to the various states of contemplation only after having been subjected to prior purifications that destroy in it obstacles to divine action.

Who does not know it? Sin has deeply disturbed our nature. The revolt of the spirit against God has had the result of the revolt of the senses against the spirit. By the first fall, man detachs himself from God and falls in some way upon himself; by the second he falls even lower, and his reasonable soul descends to the rank of the brute, whose whole life is in the flesh t. Man is plagued with pride and sensuality, constantly stumbling between these foolish elevations where he is equal to God, and these ignoble downs where he is equal to the beast.

Through the effort of virtue and the help of grace, he rises up, rehabilitates himself, and as he reorders in his soul, he brings peace and dignity back to it; he attaches himself to God through obedience and humility, and subjects his senses to the yoke of reason through the exercise of temperance.

1 Bossuer, Traité de la concupiscence, c. 15, p. 316: So this is the fall of the whole man: like a water which flows from a high mountain first on a rock baut, where it is scattered, so to speak, to the infinity, and rushes to the deepest of the abyss, the reasonable soul falls on itself from God and is rushed to what is from the lowest. This is a true picture of the fall of our nature, We feel the last effect of it in this body that afflicts us, and in the pleasures of the senses that captivate us. We find ourselves below all this, and truly slaves of bodily nature, we who were This work of purification and restoration lasts all life; but in the beginnings it is harsher and more difficult. First of all it is the direct resistance to the flesh to subject it to the spirit; then it is the repression of the unreasonable ascension of the spirit against God. A bitter struggle, full of perils and anxieties, in which the Christian fights against himself and emerges from the gross slags of sin. This first phase of virtue was, for this reason, called purgative state, in the sequel, it is the light that predominates;

? 2 later, lamour: hence the names of illuminative life and of unitive life given to the last two transformations. In short, active perfection is an ascending step towards union with God and a gradual preparation for the fullness of divine life that will burst into glory. Only then will purification, enlightenment and union be consumed.

However, we have already pointed out that contemplation is in the order of one life, and that it is like a prelude to glory. It therefore requires a very advanced purification, all the more profound and effective since it is itself higher and more perfect. It is a general law with few exceptions +.

To accomplish this purification to the proper degree, human effort?, aided by common grace, is not enough,

Hence it is very rare for a contemplative abounding in delights not to have passed through some path of desolation; wherefore if contemplation should come without this disposition, either it will not be lasting, or it is an exception to the general rule.

2 Purp. À SS. Trix. Sum. theol. myst. P. 1, Tr. 3. Summa theologiæ mysticæ, Preamble, t. 4, p. 347: Although, aided by the blessings of a merciful God and cooperating with him, we may by our own effort purify both our affections and our thoughts, this purification will nevertheless be quite superficial and rather imperfect unless God himself takes up the whole work of purification as his own, so that he alone is the first and proximate, universal and particular agent; and we, strengthened by his grace, undergoing his purifying action... so that, thus purged of evil dispositions and unburdened of the weight of our faults, [we may] easily and fruit[fully attain the heights] — no more than the mere impulse of active virtue suffices to raise one to the heights of contemplation. God must put his hand in it, and through a special action of his supernatural providence, he must cleanse the soul, free it from the servitude of the senses and illusions of the spirit, and give it a free and full rise to the divine things. That is why the trials of contemplation are called by the PASSIVE Purging Mystics or Purifications.

They consist! in a series of external and inner tribulations, which fill the soul with anguish, give it to all the assaults of concupiscence, men and demons; throw it as in a burning crucible that consumes its defilements, its fleshly instincts, its own life, and from where it comes out pure, resistant and brilliant as Por, animated by a new life, entirely flexible to the action and inspirations of God.

They are intended to restore in man the balance broken by sin, by subjecting the flesh to the spirit and spirit to God; for there man is whole, with the two elements that make up his being, in harmony and subordination commanded by reason.

There are therefore two purifications to be accomplished in man to raise him up and unite with God: the purification of the senses and the purification of the spirit. The first ends the division that wrestles the two parts of man, the second completely subjects man to God.

As he is subject to the impressions of the senses, man lives a bodily and animal life; as he feels the most common of doctors, the most perfect union, which constitutes the culmination of mystical theology, carries not only the certainty of the state of grace, but also the assurance of predestination to glory. He relies in particular on the authority of Saint Laurent Jusünien, whose statements are express in this regard.

This would then be the special revelation spoken of by the Council of Trent, without which no one can be sure of its justification, even more so because of its perseverance.

VII. — We will not complete this rapid enumeration of the effects and wonders associated with the glorious state of spiritual marriage, without indicating the main source from which they emanate and the centre to which they converge, namely, the divine Eucharist.

Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité, who excelly points out and develops this point of view, presents the sacrament of lamour as the means by which the soul contracts his divine marriage?, and calls it the wedding banquet è, the pantry 4 and the mystical layer We re346 SIXTH DEGREE: SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE let's not stop at these sublime and delicious considerations. Let us suffice to affirm that most of the supernatural wonders that we have just described, and especially those that concern the coronation of mystical life, begin, maintain and consume themselves in the Eucharist and in the Eucharist.

It is usually after Holy Communion that Our Lord celebrates this sacred marriage with the soul, and renews, when he pleases him, its impression; it is at the moment of sacramental union that the soul receives the deepest feeling of his indissoluble covenant, and that she feels it with more vivacity and power CHAPTER XXII

THE SEVENTH DEGREE OF CONTEMPLATION

BEATIFIC VISION The glorious vision is not part of the regular gradations of the oraison

Mystical, and, according to the greatest number, is never granted to any

homme vivant. — Plusieurs admettent des exceptions. — The common opinion, true in principle, is perhaps severe as an absolute negation:

Natural connection between grace, glory and contemplation. — Coup

d'œil rétrospectif.

I. — Above the ineffable covenant which makes the faithful soul the bride of the Word, he has more than God's vision and blissful possession. This is the last term of contemplation, as well as the sign Alvarez de Paz!, following the princes of theology, Saint Thomas? and Saint Bonaventure*. And Philippe de la Trèés-Sainte-Trinité * adds

1 L. 5, P. 3, c. 45, p. 614: Ex his contemplationis gradibus non habet anima sancta quo amplius ascendat, nisi ad claram et facialem visionem Dei. Which, although it belongs to that other life to which we tend and for whose attainment we sigh, is most rightly placed as a degree of contemplation, since it is the highest and most perfect, whereby God is possessed and in which the mind is established in intellect and affection. Nor are we singular in this, but we follow the Seraphic Doctor Bonaventure, who distinguishes only seven degrees of contemplation, and makes this seventh and last one that of the clear vision of God... Indeed, what is more, Thomas Aquinas admits the same manner of speaking.

21209 e A75 at 40 2

3 De septem gradibus contempl., t. 12, p. 183.

4 P. 2, Tr. 3, D. 4, a. 5, t. 2, p. 343. Sed esto nullus viator purus claram that this is the teaching of Scripture, the councils, the holy Fathers and the whole School.

But theology still teaches, with the certainty of faith, that the intuition of the divine essence is not part of the ascending degrees of the test, and that it has never been granted, at least as a habit, to any living man, with the sole exception of Jesus Christ Our Lord!.

There is therefore no reason to speak of the beatific vision as a state of mystical prayer.

However, if it is certain that the usual view which makes the blessed is denied to the travelling man, it is not also that he cannot, by a special privilege of God, cast a quick and furtil look at his essence, and therefore enjoy, in a momentary way, the glorious vision? ...he had the vision of God here, yet it always remains that supernatural contemplation attains, in the homeland, to the clear and quidditative vision of God. This the Catholic faith — sacred Scripture, the councils, the holy Fathers, and commonly all theologians — affirms.

By common law and power, the clear vision of the divine essence is not granted to mortal men. Est assertio D. Thomæ: 1 P., q. 12, à. 11 et 19, —q. 5, a. 3, — 2.9., q. 180,a.5 ; estque de fide.

2 Bexenicr. XIV. — De serv. It is a question among theologians whether any man, in the state of wayfaring, has seen the essence of God; and the question concerns the mere man, for it is certain by faith that Christ the Lord saw the essence of God while he dwelt among mortals, from the first instant of his conception, since from the first instant of his conception he was blessed. Their common opinion is that a mere man in the state of wayfaring cannot naturally attain to the clear vision of God; for as long as the soul remains in the body, it naturally knows nothing except things having form in matter. It is manifest that a clear vision of God cannot be had through nature and the likenesses of material things, and that the knowledge of God which is had through likeness is not knowledge of God through his essence, or of the essence of God. The same theologians also commonly admit that God can, by an extraordinary way and special privilege, raise up a man in this mortal life to a clear vision of God; for God, the author and lord of nature, can release someone from the law of operating and knowing through the works of the senses — either by restraining the external senses from acting, or by giving the intellect the light of glory in a transient manner, or in a permanent manner, as he gave it to Christ. But whether the matter stood thus in the above-mentioned vision of Paul, as also in the other vision of Moses treated in Numbers 12 and Exodus 33, is still disputed among these same theologians. LA VISION BÉATIFIQUE 3 349

The absolute possibility of this favor cannot be challenged, whatever opinion is expressed about the facts. This assertion, according to Suarez?, must be regarded as very certain in theology. The whole question therefore boils down to whether, in fact, God has sometimes derogated from the general law which sets at the end of the test the revelation of glory.

The general feeling is for the negative °.

Il. — Several, however, while professing the general principle of the rarity of these graces, admit exceptions.

The first is due to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Suarez, though sharing the common rigor on this point, deals with the pious and probable feelings of the serious authors who teach that the Mother of God has been raised from time to time, during her mortal life, to the clear vision of the divine essence." Among these serious authors, whose testimonies we will refrain from producing here, he quotes St Antonin, Rupertf, and others no less competent, such as Gerson, who hold this feeling, no longer as a pious belief, as Suarez thinks and expresses himself, but as a certain doctrine.

And it is certain among all theologians that this can be done by God — namely, that God grant to a mortal man a clear and intuitive vision of himself... But whether this, which can happen without any ambiguity, has ever actually happened — this is the task, this the labor.

Briefly, however, it must first be said that it is not absolutely impossible for a man, while in a mortal body, to be raised up in mind so as to see God clearly. Hæc est assertio certissima in theologia.

Hence most theologians here embrace the general negative opinion, for which the conclusion stands: to no mortal, for as long as he was among the living, has the intuitive vision of God been granted.

4 De Christo. Disp. 49, sect. 4, n. 2, t. 49, p. 304. I say therefore, first, that it can be piously and probably believed that B... Virginem in hac vita interdum elevatam Several Fathers and Doctors! also admit that Moses, in the apparition where God revealed his glory to him?, and Saint Paul, delighted until the third heaven°, enjoyed intuitive vision. Saint Gregory the Great, and after him Saint Bernard, say the same of Saint Benedict. Some authors hear in the sense of a manifestation of glory the delight of Saint Augustine and his pious mother, told by himself in Book IX of his Conressions. There is no doubt that the holy doctor speaks of a certain revelation of heavenly bliss?; perhaps, however, his thought is exceeded by interpreting his account of a clear vision of the divine essence.

There are many, perhaps too many, of the holy characters who would have received this exceptional favor. To Moses and Saint Paul, St John of the Cross joins the founder of Carmel, the prophet Elijah. Le

18. Auc., Ep. 119, c. 12 et 13. — De Gen. ad litt. L. 19, c. 27. — S. AMBR. Hexameron. l. 1, ©. 2. — S. Bası. Hexameron. hom. 1. — Huc. A S. VICTOR. q. 34 in 2 ad Cor. — S. AnseLx. In 2 ad Cor. — S. Tom. 2. 2., q. 175, a. 3.

2 Exod. xxx, 13, 18, 29.

SME Cor. x, 2-4.

4 Dialog. 1. 2, c. 35. Migne, Patrol. t. 66, col. 198.

5 Serm. 9, de diversis, n. 1, p. 21.

In a swift thought we touched the eternal wisdom flowing above all things; if this were to continue, and the other visions of a far lesser kind were withdrawn, and this one alone were to seize and absorb its beholder and hide him away in inward joys, so that everlasting life should be such as was this moment of understanding for which we sighed — is this not: "Enter into the joy of your Lord"?

7 BoucauD, Histoire de sainte Monique, 1866, ©. 45, p. 381.

8 Mounted Carmel, 1. 2, c. 24, p. 415. As for the vision of the divine essence, it is the proper of the only blessed; it does not communicate to anyone in this world, except perhaps by passing, God using a singular dispensation, or preserving life to man, and raising his mind above his ordinary way of operating, as it may have happened to Saint Paul, who said of himself that he was delighted to the third heaven. It is also likely that God, wishing to discover his essence to Moses... made himself see this prophet... There is some appearance that God's sight was also given to Elijah, our father (III Reg. xx, 13), when, being at the entrance of a cave, he covered his face, hearing the sound of a sweet and pleasant wind that marked the presence of God. Mais, après tout P. Alvarez de Paz‘, a Jesuit, believes that, if this privilege has never been granted, there is reason to believe that it was granted to his illustrious Father, Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

The Franciscan annals report that Blessed Gilles d'Assisi, Saint Francis' third companion, said for himself that he no longer had faith, since God had given him the grace of his appearance. And his companion having asked him how he would do, if he had to celebrate Mass, to say: CREDO IN Unum Deum; Brother Gilles, for every answer, began to sing aloud and with a radiant face these words: CoGnasco UNUM DEUM, PATREM OMNIPOENTEM; that is, I know one God, the Almighty Father?

It would be difficult to accord this fact, by hearing it from the clear vision of God, with the demands of theology; for it is not more of a fleeting act that it is here, but of a state that would have lasted more than thirty years. It is therefore necessary to revoke it in doubt, or to reduce it to smaller proportions.

To these stories we could add many more. Nothing is more frequent, in the history of the saints favored by extraordinary graces, than the revelations of glory and these visions are very rare, and God only favors very few people, who are the strong spirits of the Church and the great observers and defenders of the law of God, as were the three we have just reported.

But if a clear and perspicuous vision is to be attributed to anyone, it can not improbably be attributed to Ignatius our father, etc.

2 BB. 23 april., t. 42, p. 235, n. 56 : Dixit quoque Fr. Giles [said] that he had been born four times. First, he says, I was born of my mother according to the flesh; second, in the sacrament of Baptism; third, when I entered this Religious Order; fourth, when the Lord granted me the mercy of His apparition. And the aforesaid brother said to him: If I were to go to distant parts and were asked whether I knew you, I could say thus: It is thirty-two years since Brother F. Giles was born, and before he was born he had faith (this concerns the fourth birth), and after he was born he lost faith. He replied: As you have said, so it is true... Dixitque alius : If you don't have fidem , what you face so much of the bliss of heaven. But the difficulty is to establish that the spirit rises up to the intuitive contemplation of the divine essence and reaches the clear vision of the Blessed.

THI. — The common assertions and hesitations of the masters, which seem to relax from the general severity, make us timid. However, let us be allowed to insinuate our opinion. It is evident from our way of conceiving grace, glory and contemplation.

In our view, and in this we do not come out of traditional teaching, grace and glory do not differ essentially: in one and the other, it is God associating us with his life, and all their difference is in the consciousness or unconsciousness of this intimate participation in divine life. During the trial, God is veiled; hardly let us feel his presence by the strength which he gives us for good and by the consolations of virtue; but when the trial is over, God reveals himself and gives us the whole knowledge of his union with us; of grace he becomes glory.

But contemplation is for the soul a kind of glorification begun. As its light expands, it dissipates the darkness of faith. It first makes the feeling of God's presence flourish in the soul; then, in degrees, it gives him the feeling of union, which increases to the usual consciousness of the divine covenant. If glorification is not complete, isn't it at least already roughed? Do we not have the sight of the three Persons, think, that he sees and wants the ideal things, divine, eternal, he lives from his most noble life, from the one that responds to the best part of himself, reason. These are the two homes of his life. That is why the masters of spiritual life have carefully distinguished, in us, the lower and upper parts, the two regions of senses and spirit.

Passive purifications extend to one and the other of these two faces of man, in the sense and spirit. We will study these two points of view separately; but we must first indicate the general aspects and the common characters.

II. — Let us first say how frightening are the trials to which God subjects the souls whom he calls for contemplation.

Mystical authors compare them to purgatory. "God lowers the soul a lot to raise it a lot," said Saint John of the Cross! "and if he did not quickly moderate the feelings that the soul so strongly impressed in the mind, she would abandon her body in a few days. But the fire of these punishments only makes itself felt from time to time, and not continuously; it is nevertheless sometimes so violent, that the soul believes that hell is open under it and ready to engulf. These kinds of people are those who descend all living in hell and are purified there as in purgatory, since this is the purgation that each one must make of his faults, although they are only venial. Thus it can be said with probability that a soul who has passed through this spiritual purgatory, or will not enter into the purgatory of the other world, or will not stay there for long; for an hour that she spends in the first. purgatory benefits her more, because of the merits that she acquires ‘and the satisfaction that she brings to God's righteousness, that several hours would serve her in the last purgatory, because she would not deserve it, and that God would give her nothing of her sufferings.'

John Thauler! calls these kinds of sorrows a spiritual martyr, and St.Angèle de Foligno assured that she would have exchanged them for all the torments of this life, for any other kind of martyrdom?. There are some who go so far as to claim that this torture equals that of hell, and several saints have indeed, in the midst of these anxieties, addressed to God the complaint of the psalmist#: "The pains of hell mount around."

The purification of the mind above all sometimes exceeds all that one can imagine in fact of temptations, desolations and neglects; and, in general, this inner torment by which God cleanses the soul by releasing it from creatures and from itself takes on an acuity that the most intense pains of the common life do not have.

Gerson ê emploie plusieurs comparaisons pour faire en1 In festo plurim. And because we are speaking of martyrs — that martyrdom, that is, suffering, is twofold — this must be noted by you, beloved. For a man becomes a martyr by the sword from without, and by mortifying love from within... Duplex porro vitæ morientis crux seu afflictio est. Prima externa est, dum quis voluptatibus ac vitiis suis reluctatur... The other is a certain spiritual pressure, a leanness or aridity and privation of sensible grace, in which a man loses himself most of all, and is sometimes compelled by this more than by anything else to turn himself to God.

ARNAUD, BB. 4 Jan., §. 2, n. 44, t. 1, p. 192: Whence, in exchange for the aforesaid torments and temptations, and that God might take the aforesaid things from me, I would willingly choose and wish to endure all evils and all infirmities and all sorrows that occur in all the bodies of men; and I would believe that lighter and lesser evils would be to me than the aforesaid torments. Whence I have often said that, in exchange for the aforesaid torments, I would choose to endure every kind of martyrdom.

3 Bona, De discr. spir. ©. 144, n. 7, p. 274: Hoc horribile tormentum pænis inferni assimilant qui experti sunt.

4 Ps. xvu, 6.

5 Parce. À SS. Tin. Scarcely can it be expressed in words, even by those who have experienced it, how great are the anguishes of this night, how great the horror, and how deep the tribulation of the afflicted spirit.

6 De Myst. theol, pract. Consid. 9, col, 415. Hæc is anti-peristasis that GENERAL OVERVIEW does not 363 tend the reason and purpose of this ordeal. He calls it a kind of antiperistasis! spiritual that strengthens its opposite, the stone that sharpens iron, the absinth that sows children and rips them off from the softness of the mother's breast, the hammer that dilates and spreads, the lime that polishes, purifies, derails and makes sparkling, the furnace where gold stripes its slags and takes all its brightness, the rod that strikes it delivers from hell.

In turn, Cardinal Bona? groups the expressions by which the authors have designated passive purification: they call it a spiritual death, a struggle between the spirit of God and ours, despair, inner anguish, infernal tongue, division of soul and spirit, terrible martyrdom, horrific and indescribable torment, purgatory and hell. l

Before reaching these heights of contemplation where supernatural life bursts out and dominates, the soul must strip away its carnal and selfish instincts, let nature be defeated, terrified, and if not still dead entirely, at least shot down, submissive, silent.

IV. However the true measure of these trials — a spiritual [...] which strengthens what is contrary — is a whetstone sharpening iron; this is the wormwood weaning children and tearing them from the breast; a hammer widening and stretching... This is the file polishing, cleansing, scouring away rust, clarifying; this is the furnace in which gold is purified that it may glow red; this is the rod by whose stroke one is snatched from hell.

1 Dict. de l’Acad. Axnrérisrase. Terme didactique. The action of two contrary qualities, one of which increases the strength of another.

2 Via compend. ad Deum, €. 40, n. 3, p. 128. Here there is no joy, but inexplicable torment. Let those who have experienced it say what it is. The Honey-sweet Doctor compares this state to a spiritual death, which they call the death of the Angels. Ruysbroeck calls it a strife between the divine spirit and ours, and a kind of despair; Tauler, an inward pressure; Harphius, an infernal languor and a division of soul and spirit; Barbanson, likewise a division of nature and spirit; Maria Vela, the Cistercian nun, a terrible martyrdom; Bl. Catherine of Genoa, a horrible and unspeakable torment. John of the Cross depicts it under the symbol of the dark night and likens it to purgatory; Thomas a Jesu likewise says it is a purgatory occurring along the way. B. Angela de Fulgineo maluisset in inferno esse quam talem privationem sustinere quæ in ipsa mirabilis fuit. 7 } c'est moins à l'élévation du but à atteindre qu’à la volonté de Dieu qu’il faut la demander.

God can absolutely carry the soul, by instant sanctification, from the abyss of sin to the dot of contemplation; but this is not the ordinary march of his providence, which proceeds in slow and progressive degrees. What is more common in this introduction as in the continuation of mystical life is the variety of gradations and progress. Sometimes these purifications are rigorous, long, uninterrupted; other times, benign, transient, tempered by alternatives of rest and sweetness. Such passes through the most terrible traverses, and stops at the first degrees of contemplation: another reaches the summit with less tribulation and suffering.

"God purifies the soul more or less rigorously," says Saint John of the Cross! "and he employs more or less time in relation to the quality of the union that he sets for him. This purgation is not always an equal force: it is sometimes harder, sometimes softer, because God does not allow this obscure contemplation to touch the soul and penetrate it in a purgative way, but in an illuminative and loving way. And then the soul comes out of the terrible prison where it was before, and it enters into the enjoyment of great freedom, of pleasant peace, of communication with God easy, in love, intimate, strong spiritual."

He follows from there, according to the remark of P. Scaramelli ?, that it is difficult to formulate absolute rules on the substance, manner or time of these tests. However, let us try to specify the ordinary mode they follow in their appearance, their continuity and their duration.

V. — In principle, the purification of the senses responds to the states of contemplation inferior to union; and that of the spirit, to union and to its various degrees!

The first thus ahead, at least by some trials, the elevation to contemplative prayer, and the second does or begins before union. One, however, may be preceded by some acts of contemplation and some supernatural favours, such as - visions, revelations, ecstasy; the other, by some attempts at union; but these acts and effects do not constitute states, which first require proper intimate purgation.

Moreover, although the two purgations are distinct, and the senses usually precede the spirit, they can be realized at the same time?. It is even difficult for them to be completely separated, as well as the rightly observed Philip of the Most Holy Trinity?. "These two parts, the sensual and the spiritual," said St John of the Cross +, "are fed the same food, each according to its nature. In this way, they agree to endure the rigorous purging of the mind that they must soon feel in order to be perfectly delivered from their imperfections. For one is never purified exactly without the other, and the whole purgation of the senses is accomplished only when the spirit begins. So that the night of the senses must be called rather the reformation and moderation of passions, than the deliverance of their imperfections. The reason is that the disorders of the animal part have their strength and root in mind."

Let us add with Scaramelli that the cleansing of the mind always has a painful and salutary impact on the senses!, while the cleansing of the senses reacts less on mind.

This mixture, which can make both tests simultaneous, leaves to stand the general law by virtue of which the purification of the senses comes before that of the mind ?. It seems at least certain that this one never precedes this one. Following Joseph Lopez Ezquerra °, God would suddenly carry abhorrences of sin to the heights of perfection, as he did in Paul and Madeleine, rather than the GENERAL OVERVIEW or place the cleansing of the mind before that of the senses. It is difficult, in fact, to conceive a soul free of everything, free and completely purified in the upper part of itself, and, by the sensitive part, still in the face of: assaults of coarse passions.

VI. — Sensitive purifications usually last longer than spiritual purifications.

In fact, it is impossible to specify anything, either on the duration in general or on the respective duration of each of these two tests. Saint Angèle de Foligno undergoes one and the other for more than two years; the same applies to Mr. Olier?. Saint Madeleine de Pazzi? was, according to Our Lord's announcement, in such a torment, the space of five years. Michel Godinez 4 states that he saw him continue for fourteen, fifteen, and even twenty years; Scaramelli attests to having encountered cases of twelve and nineteen continuous years of neglect?. Schram® poses in general thesis that it is impossible to assign a certain limit to these tests and that they can last for twenty years or more.

And the aforesaid state of these torments and temptations began some time before the pontificate of Pope Celestine, and lasted more than two years.

2 FalLLon, Vie de M. Olier, 1° P., 1. 7, t. 4, p. 304: After eighteen months or more, God began to allow me the freedom to raise myself from time to time to him.

3 Vincent. Know also that from then on, for five years, as I have told you elsewhere, I will deprive you of the sense of my grace, yet not of the grace itself, which will always remain with you.

4 Pratica de la theol. myst., 1. 3, ©. 44. How long does abandonment usually last? — Resp. No tiene tiempo limitado; conoci algunas personas que catorze, 15 y vonte años estubieron desamparandäs; y estas recibieron despues altisimo don de contemplacion. 5 Tratt. 5, ©. 13, n. 146, p. 395: Ho conosciute persone che anno proseguito a penare in questo stato purgativo, quali dodeci, quali diecinove anni continui. 6 Theol. myst. t. 4, § 246, n. 3, p. 425: Derelictio non habet certum temporis terminum; per viginti et pres annos subinde durat, usquedum lite and mystical and which seems to have made a special study from the point of view that occupies us, accurately assigns the duration of the passive tests in several famous contemplatives whose names*t. Hubertin of Casali spent fifteen years in these purifying anxieties; Saint Térèse, eighteen; Saint Francis of Assisi, only two; Blessed Claire of Montefalco, fifteen; Saint Catherine of Bologna, five; Saint Mary of Egypt, seventeen; Saint Madeleine of Pazzi, five years first, then sixteen others; Blessed Henri Suso, ten; Fr. Balthasar Alvarez, sixteen years, too. It must therefore be concluded, with Saint John of the Cross ?, that "about the length of time, one cannot surely say how long this mortification lasts, because not all are treated in the same way and do not suffer the same trials. The only will of God gives them their measure differently, depending on whether each one has more or less imperfections to destroy, or according to the degree of union to which God wants to raise the soul; thus he holds it more or less time in the exercises of humility."

VII. — These trials are sometimes continued until complete purgation; in most cases they present relaxations that allow the soul to breathe and retrench its courage.

The interruptions are simple suspensions of inner anguish or sensitive refreshments of grace. These delicious rest are still of two kinds: either God gives back to the tested soul the feeling of devotion and fervor; or he raises it, which is rarer, to the very acts of contemplation.

The common law is, that to the passive purification of the senses respond the first degrees of infuse prayer, and that the soul is raised to union only after having undergone the purification of the mind. Now, as the number of those who come to union is small, few too are those who go through the test of the purification of the spirit: "The night that purifies the senses is common to many, and especially to the beginnings," says St.John of the Cross; "the night that purifies the spirit is the own only of few people, that is, of those who have advanced in the inner life and who have exercised themselves for a long time in this way."

The same saint adds further? that when spiritual purification occurs, it is usually following the sensitive purification: "So this is what is the night or purgation of the senses... Those whom she purifies come out commonly only to enter into the night of the spirit, which is more difficult and more unfortunate, and they walk there to reach the union of love with God; but there are few ordinarily that succeed."

Saint Liguori? seems to affirm that the most general law

1 The Dark Night, 1. 1, c. 7, p. 258.

2 I6., Ch. 44, p. 276.

3 See above, p. 365, note 1. The purgation of the senses therefore being completed and the sensible aridity brought to its end, God places the soul in the state of contemplation. — And n. 137, p. 185: Hanc unionem solet ordinarie præcedere ariditas substantialis, that would be that to the purification of the senses succeed immediately. The prayer of passive recollection, and that the purification of the mind is placed between the lower degrees and that of union. One can claim facts in support of one and the other assertion, in which it follows that there may be no general law and that it is necessary in this order to simply record the facts.

In some souls, we even encounter an amazing mixture of the most frightening trials and the most sublime favors of contemplation; we see them in turn as a result of the most sharp features of divine justice, and a little before or soon after, drunkenness of the holy exultations of love. Blessed Marguerite-Marie! offers a memorable example of these repeated alternatives of rigor and enjoyment.

VIII. — The main means used by God to purify either the sensitive part or the intellectual part of man is to extract the feeling of devotion. G point is of such importance in the present question, that it is absolutely essential to bring it to the full.

The Angelic Doctor? defines devotion as a generous disposition of the will that makes him quickly embrace all that is in God's service. Or, after Saint Francis of Sales è: "votion is something other than agility and spiritual vivacity by means of which charity does its actions in us, or we through it, promptly and affectionately."

The essential part of devotion therefore lies in will. To want to be God's, obey him and please him without delay or reserve, is the best way to be devoted to him, it is to have the very substance of devotion. According to St.Thomas's wise remark, while joy is one of the direct and principal effects of devotion, it also accidentally and secondaryly produces sadness. Joy stems from the consideration of divine goodness, a term to which the generous act of will tends. Sadness arises from the sight of our miseries to which the will strives to escape in the act of devotion. Devotion is the source and the feeling of joy and the feeling of sadness, and these two effects can also be reflected on the reasonable part of man and on the sensitive part, as the psalmist says: "My heart and my flesh have braided in the living God."But this radiation is purely accidental; when it disappears or does not appear, devotion does not cease for this, provided that the will continues its accelerated movement towards God. It is a Christian truth guaranteed by the unanimous teaching of doctors and by universal experience, that faith and charity can survive and act in the soul without any other testimony of their presence than that of the action itself and works.

In short, the substance of devotion lies in will and is inseparable from the acts produced by will. It results in joy and sadness; and the manifestation of this dual feeling is confined to the upper and intellectual part of the soul, or extends to the lower part. But neither of these manifestations belongs to the essence of devotion; therefore, they may not exist without the disappearance of devotion.

That being said, we can give reason for the two ways in which passive cleansing of the soul is carried out.

In the sensitive purification, the delectable radiance that is born of love does not come out of the upper enclosure of the soul, and does not extend to the senses, while that of sadness, on the contrary, dominates it without mixing. The purification of the mind removes all joyous rejailment both within and outside, and leaves to the devotion of other manifestation than that of sadness and anguish!; or, after having revealed itself to the soul and washed wounded with love, God withdraws and abandons him in the grip of ardour and desires that consume him.

To this deprivation of the suavities that accompany the devotion and the feeling of divine presence, which constitutes the principal and fundamental penalty of passive purification, come the assaults of the demon, the opposition of men, misfortunes and tortures of all kinds. God cleanses the soul by separating it from everything that is not him, and disgusts the creatures by the bitterness that it allows them to drink.

Finally, purification ends with love, whose painful ardour will consume the last traces of selfish and natural life.

IX.—The soul, in these trials, has an absolute need for a wise and skilful director." She's like a blind man who can't do without a friendly hand that guides him; like a ship beaten by the storm, and that only an experienced pilot can save from the shipwreck. Always morally necessary, the help of the management becomes indispensable here.

"If they do not then have a director who fully understands their interior, and who leads them with great caution," observes St.John of the Cross?, speaking of those who suffer these tribulations, "they retreat instead of moving forward; they leave the right path, they relax in their exercises, they prevent themselves from going further in the path of virtue."

This is the unanimous feeling of the masters.

Sainte Terèse? recommends addressing a holy and enlightened director; that if one has to choose between a pious but uneducated man, and another, learned and less perfect, one should prefer the one who has science to the one who has only piety. In another place, the same saint declares that the worst directors are the half-scientists: "I know it by experience," she said; "it is better, when they are good people and holy people, that they have no education at all than to have mediocre ones, because then they are wary of themselves just as I would myself, and ask for advice from others more educated. Scientists have never deceived me."

It is therefore very important that the directors all have some knowledge of the various trials by which God disposes souls to contemplation, and that many have on these subjects the eminent science to which less informed directors or souls themselves can resort in these difficult circumstances.

X.—The first precaution to be taken is to recognize that the trials that one undergoes are in the order of contemplation. It meets souls who are delivered to the bitterest inner desolations, in the face of adversities of all kinds, which, however, are not called to passive prayer. The conduct to be held with these distressed souls is not the one suitable for the elect of mystical life.

Saint John of the Cross, faithfully followed by the spiritual authors who came after him, among others by Philip of the Most Holy Trinity!, Schram? and Scaramelli*, brings to three the distinctive marks of passive purifications. It is true that in the places we will quote, this doctor deals particularly with the aridities that accompany the purgation of the senses; but the conditions which he assigns to the prelude of contemplation are general, and also suitable for one and the other passive purification.

"The first mark," says the famous Spanish mystic, "is when the one to whom divine things do not give any appreciable satisfaction finds no contentment in creatures as well. When God puts the soul in the dark night, he deprives it of all kinds of pleasures, in order to purify its passions. And then it is a clear sign that his disgust and his general APERCD 20 7 38 bitterness flow from this source and do not come from his sins or imperfections... But this disgust of natural and supernatural things can have as principle melancholy, which does not allow us to take any pleasure.

"The second mark of the dark night or the purgation of the senses is that this night raises spirit to God and that she often puts God in memory, with sorrow nevertheless and with pain, because the soul always believes, being always removed from its first consolations, that it does not serve God well, and that instead of advancing it recedes. By this we see that it is not the lukewarmness and the looseness that cause him this trouble. For it is the proper of the lukewarm and cowardly to have no care for God's things or eagerness to perfect themselves. From there we easily draw the difference that is between aridity and warmth...

"The third mark consists in that the soul can no longer, any effort that it makes, neither meditate nor discourage, using imagination as before to arouse and move. For God then begins to communicate to the soul, not by the senses and reasonings, but by the mind, pure and without discourse, and by a simple contemplation to which the inner and outer senses of the lower part cannot reach. That is why imagination and fantasy no longer have anything to support themselves, and cannot give the beginning of meditation, nor continue it if it is begun, nor contribute in any way to it."

So when darkness has the effect of disgusting creatures and making God's thought almost continuous, and it translates into moral or absolute impotence to meditate, one can hold for certain that the soul has entered into the passive purification that heralds contemplation.

Of these three marks, the last one seems to us to be decisive. For there may be souls that God sanctifies in the common way of meditation, by the deprivation of all sensible consolation and all contentment in creatures; that he fills with the continual thought of his presence, less to comfort and rejoice them, than to purify and ignite them. But, when to these two signs is added the impotence of discouraging through meditation and the fixedness of the mind on a single thought, it becomes evident that God wants to withdraw from discursive prayer and establish in the passivity of contemplation.

XI. — As soon as this impotence to disturb is found, the director must advise to a soul who feels he must undergo without resistance contemplative immobility.

"The way to govern oneself in the night of the senses," says Saint John of the Cross, "is not to put oneself in pain of meditation and speech, since it is no longer the time to use it, but to give up to the rest and tranquillity where God puts the soul, although it seems that nothing is done, that we waste time, and that we live in warmth, which prevents us from having any good thought in prayer, nor any tender and affectionate feeling. Those whom God treats in this way will do much to patiently endure their desolation and to be constant in mental prayer. All that is asked of them at that time is that they leave their souls in peace, that they release them from all knowledge and feelings, that they do not worry about what they can meditate on, that they merely pay a calm and loving attention to God. They must persist in this state, without care, without effort, without the desire of God in themselves and to taste it. All these eagernesses would disturb them and keep them away from the loving idleness of the contemplation that God communicates to the soul."

To this wise decision to suspend vain and painful efforts to continue the discursive prayer, the director joins- © OVERVIEW GENERAL A1 -dra ! a compassionate, gentle and firm charity towards the souls who suffer these desolating anxieties. He will comfort them with all the motives that inspire trust in God and that defend him from ever despairing of his goodness. He will listen to them patiently and without giving any sign of astonishment or embarrassment; on the contrary, he will reassure them by his own assurance, and command them with calmness and authority.

But let him not promise them a future deliverance or quick relief; for the duration of these trials depends entirely on God's good will. Even less will he make them see contemplation as the high reward of their trials, so as not to expose them to the peril of vain complacency; and also because, despite the favourable signs, God remains absolute master of his gifts, and free to refuse them or to dispense them at his will, when and as he pleases. CHAPITRE XXIV

THE PURIFICATION OF SENSES

HIS NATURE Necessity of purging the senses because of imperfections mixed with sensitive enjoyments, even in the order of piety. — Difficulties in discerning the principle from which these enjoyments proceed, and their falsified impact on the body. — Passive purifications of the senses include the struggle against pleasures of temperance and chastity; — and the painful deprivation of sensitive goods: through the droughts of the soul, diseases and infirmities of the body, the loss of relatives and friends, the loss of wealth, honours and reputation. I. — As we have already said, this purification reformes the lower part of man, and subjects it to reason through a series of struggles and bitterness that disgust the soul of sensitive goods and pleasures.

It is inconceivable how alive and irresistible the slope of nature toward sensual delectations. Contained within limits that do not contradict reason, these enjoyments are nothing delicacy, and they can become one of the powerful baits of virtue. It is an ordinary law of sanctification that the beginnings of spiritual life are accompanied by sensitive suavities that, by attracting to God by the charm of pure voluptuousness, divert from gross and disorderly pleasures of the senses, ignite a NATURE ER RSA ©; A 319 generous courage to fight against anything that threatens the fidelity of love. And when this help of the sensible fervour is lacking to the beginnings, God, according to the remark of Thauler!, besupplies it with a special grace that saves them from the imminent peril of sin.

"After the soul is determined to embrace the divine service," says St John of the Cross? "God nourishes her spiritually with as much sweetness and caress as the most passionate mother feeds her child. This mother warms up in her breast; she gives her the sweetest milk and the most delicate food she can have; she carries it between her arms, she flatters it, she delights him in all possible ways... God makes similar treatments to the soul in his first fervors; he makes him taste in the exercises of the inner life a spiritual milk, sweet and tasty, and sensitive consolations."

But this virtue, determined by pleasure, is without consistency and subject to many imperfections, as well as the mystical doctor we have just quoted in the same place. And, to better establish what he is moving forward, he enumerates at length, afterward, the ordinary faults and falls of the beginnings lured by these sensitive consolations. Going through the seven capital sins, he points out the returns and complacency of vanity, the misgivings against oneself after the failures, the severe judgments: on the neighbor, reckless comparisons and preferences, an excessive attachment to the external testimonies of devotion; a kind of spiritual lust that leads to abandoning the delectable emotions of the sensitive fervor, soon and almost always exposes and leads, through a hidden slope, to carnal rebellions; impatience to the smallest imperfections that one sees in itself or in others; an immoderate appetite for the sweetness of piety, and a eagerness, unchecked by prudence, to resort to the means of increasing them or finding them; the envy of the spiritual goods granted to others; and, finally, torpor and laziness to fulfil the obligations for which one does not feel attractive or sensitive taste.

Thus, even assuming that sensitive suavities have a pure source, and that they come from divine grace, they are mingled with natural imperfections that delay the entire gift of the soul to God, and they expose to failures that can sink back into the abyss of sin.

JI. — These disadvantages and perils are considerably increased by the difficulty of recognizing the true principle of these elections.

The demon can be the author: the Apostle warns us 1 that this deceitful spirit is transformed into an angel of light to seduce us and rush us into evil by slopes that seem the avenues of good and holiness?

The danger will appear much greater if we pay attention to the ease with which we assume the passage of the fervour sensitive to the extraordinary graces of mystical life. (It is, in fact, one of the pitfalls of the beginnings to take the living emotions of piety for contemplative impressions of life; and Satan is always ready to simulate, with souls eager to enjoy, the sacred embraces of divine union è. The consequences of these contempts are incalculable.

AL OOGST 14.

2 Pauipr. A SS. TRI. The angel of Satan, transforming himself into an angel of light in communications of sensible grace, can, with God permitting, insinuate himself and lead incautious or conceited beginners into error, indeed even into ruin, as is proven by the doctrine of the holy Fathers, by the manifold testimony of sacred Scripture, and also by frequent experience.

3 S. Laurenr. Justo. Lib. of discipline and perfect. monast. conversationis, These enjoyments can also be an effect of temperament. They are then reduced to a refined and purely natural sensuality, more similar to sensual voluptuousness than to the charity of the di as Richard de Saint-Victor excellently says.

From whatever source the sensitive devotion proceeds, it has the direct consequence of shaking the body, and, if it is not wisely contained, weakens the body's forces. The ordinary backlash of excesses that ruin body health is to turn away from piety. How, above all, could the body support the shaking of a vehement contemplation and the extreme tremors of ecstasy: if one supposes the soul still struggling with the sensitive enjoyments?

The purity, safety, holiness of divine contemplation therefore require that the soul called to this sublime elevation be previously freed from organic servitudes and purified in the dark night of the senses.

Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité ? summarizes princ. 8, fo. LXV: But before the soul is imbued with wisdom, before it is joined to the Word of God by the bond of love, it often falls, accepting error for truth; yet for the most part, with the Bridegroom permitting it — so that he may unite her, more ardently beloved, to himself, or raise her to higher things, or render her more prudent — Satan is transformed into an angel of light, and mingles with her as in holy companionship: and when the soul, still ignorant of heavenly visions, has admitted the spirit of error, and has as it were submitted herself to him as to the Lord, the Bridegroom withdraws without delay, and darkness at once follows, along with a certain dull obscurity of mind; the soul immediately grows hardened; and is struck down by its own confusion, and from what it suffers, clearly understands that the spirit it received was an enemy.

Sweet affection toward God is in a certain way carnal and deceptive, and sometimes belongs more to humanity than to grace, more to the heart than to the spirit, more to sensuality than to reason, so that it sometimes inclines more toward the lesser good, and less toward the greater, and toward something that savors more than is expedient... Thus someone carnal and imperfect is sometimes affectionately drawn toward God, not because he loves greatly, but because he tastes the sweetness of grace, which helps only as long as it lasts; as long as the sweetness lasts, so long does the love last. Sed non agnoscetur in bonis amicus. i - 2P. 14, Tr. 3, D. 1, a. 3, t. 4, p. 363 : Hæc sunt præcipua motiva, propter quaæ Deus per substractionem gratiæ sensibilities, incipientes ad noctem obscuram: sensus reducit: per ipsam enim. yult partem sensitivam diyinæ unioni præcipales reasons which demonstrate the necessity of this purification: it disposes of the sensual part to the divine union, shields from the traps of the demon, makes discern the supernatural communications of the operations of nature, removes ordinary gifts from the righteous, and to the sinners the common graces, to grant them greater ones greater; removes what is less and imperfect, to dispense liberally with the greater and sublime favors; removes the opportunities of pride; it is a safeguard against the defilements of the flesh and other dangers capable of injuring the purity of the soul; and finally, it provides for the health of the body.

II. — The field of sensitive purification embraces, in the form of pleasure, everything that rejoices and flatters sensual appetite, and, in the form of pain, everything that tortures and crucifies him.

The first of these forms is the most formidable. It interests temperance as a special virtue, and chastity.

The excesses in drinking and eating are rarely temptations strong enough to take place among the passive trials, which precede contemplation. However, activated by the demon, they can reach this degree of intensity and importunity. The lives of the saints provide some examples of these kinds of evil obsessions t. _ HIS NATURE 383

Chastity fighting is otherwise common, multiplied and violent. There are few souls who do not pass through this crucible, of all the most cruel and perilous; hardly can we mention a few saints who have been freed from it by an exemption which is due to the miracle t. But in the passive trials these temptations sometimes take on unprecedented proportions. Thoughts, images, uprisings and upheavals of nature inside and outside, everything seems to come together to obsess the soul, to torture it under stings so difficult to suppress pleasure, to throw it into anxieties about the fidelity of resistance, all the more terrible as the soul retains a more delicate and jealous love of purity; for, in its fear and delicacy, it seems to her that she weakens, that she succumbs, that she defiles herself, lost and submerged in the swath.

What adds to the frequency, vivacity and peril of these temptations is that all the enemies of man help to awaken them, to nourish them, to activate them: the flesh, which naturally tends to revolt and here pursues its supreme lust; the world, which erects in principle the domination and satisfaction of the flesh, and, by its pumps and examples, is the staging and as the permanent apotheosis of impureness; the devil who, knowing that the filth extinguishes the beautiful flame of charity and prayer, tries the last efforts to deliver everything to its invaders.

Well sustained, this struggle has a great efficiency. to purify the soul, to give it a deep feeling of its misery, to free it from sensual attachments and primers, to rush it to God with an incessant and penetrating prayer!,

IV. — Painful trials include involuntary suppression of a sensitive good.

In the first place comes the subtraction of the sensitive devotion, which delivers the soul to drought, desolation, to the fear of having lost God, makes it laborious and painful the acts of good; and, although it can still preserve in the upper part of itself the feeling of light, fidelity and peace, soul nevertheless remains, in the lower part, wrapped in darkness, worried, shaken, tormented up to anguish. There is, undeniably, the principal and most painful crucification of the flesh. With the sensitive consolations of piety, the other sorrows appear light and can become a new source of inner joy, witnesses the martyrs; while, together with darkness and spiritual desolation, the external afflictions are always a bitter addition to sadness and suffering?

1 PHLPP. À SS. TRIN. P. 1, Tr. 3, D. 2, à. 4, t. 1, p. 380: Unde tentatio These trials, if they are not faithful and attentive, tend to a disastrous consequence, to the disgust of spiritual life, to discouragement and cowardice, and finally to the abandonment of piety and virtue!

Diseases, infirmities and bodily pain are almost always part of the sensitive purgation. These kinds of afflictions embrace everything that affects the well-being of the body, its beauty, and the full use of its limbs?. They occur in multiple forms; but most often they have strange characters that disconcert science and medical resources, which is one of the notes of mystical diseases. If they appear suddenly and vanish just as suddenly; if they strike the senses and organs that may have been the cause or occasion of sins committed, these too are so many signs of supernatural intervention. ...the abundance of [those] goods grows bitter, as Bernard says in his sermons on the Canticle: 'To him for whom Christ begins to grow sweet, the world must of necessity grow bitter.' But in this passive purgation of the sensitive part, the devout man, through the withdrawal of sensible grace, is so wrapped in darkness that he judges himself rather forsaken and an enemy of God than a friend, believes himself rather displeasing to God than pleasing, so that he comes to fear all his own works.

1 PuLipP. A SS. TRIN. On the temptation to cease from good works. This temptation is very frequent and almost universal in the passive purgation of the sensitive part, but not in the purgation of the intellective part. The reason for both is: because the passive purgation of the sensitive part, preceding that of the intellective, belongs only to beginners not yet firmly established in virtue, who are led rather by the love of concupiscence and by the motive of the spiritual sweetness which they enjoy in the exercise of the virtues, than by the love of friendship, or by the sole motive of pleasing God, and thus are terrified at the greatest difficulty and are tempted to cease from good works.

2 PmLIPP. A SS. Tri. Among the goods of the body we count the following: namely, perfect health, the connatural use of all the members, the unimpeded operations of the five senses, becoming beauty, and other such things in which men — carnal men especially — place a great part of happiness, and sometimes the whole of happiness; and even spiritual men, ... Whence upon some he sends ordinary, and sometimes continuous, infirmities; upon others the lack of some member; upon others the privation of some sense; and upon others, finally, bodily deformity, by which he may sanctify them once perfectly purified, as is evident in the histories of the Saints.

I 17 The test, moreover, could offer miraculous characters, without it being for this purpose the prelude of contemplative life; as also of what a disease would be part of passive purification, it should not be concluded that it is supernatural. These two things are perfectly distinct, and one can meet without another. We have sufficiently indicated the signs of passive purgation; we will describe elsewhere more along the characteristic marks of mystical sufferings. `

It is another trial that holds the middle between the purification of the senses and the spirit, and that consists in that the bodily and spiritual faculties are removed from the empire of the soul. On en trouve un remarquable exemple en M. Olier, founder of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice. He himself described this kind of supernatural purification with so much sharpness, which the reader will be grateful to reproduce here the principal of this passage:

"Thus, wanting to cleanse me of the superb motives that I was attacked with," he said, "God began by pointing out to me that our body was not at our disposal, and that we could not live, stand, or move except through it and through its assistance. This is difficult to conceive, unless God himself teaches us, because this influence of God in us is not sensitive, and it seems to be man's, coming out of God's hands, like our works, which no longer depend on the workers once they have come out of their hands. But God's goodness often made me experience it, by appreciably removing from me this vigour from the body, and this virtue which sustains it, and which proceeds from the sovereign and universal cause, which preserves it and preserves all things. destined for my use, as if I could see the water of a channel removed by means of a pump, or the liquor of a vase with a torch. At least, God seemed to withdraw this virtue and replace it in some other way, so that, after these apparent subtractions, I no longer knew how to walk; and, as I felt that a certain virtue had withdrawn me, if I came to set one foot in front of the other, I did not know what power it was, nor even how to support me. I was always ready to fall, and similar to those men taken from wine who have strength and know how to serve them. I was surprised that the others were so confident and firm, and that they had at their disposal the freedom and conduct of their bodies. Sometimes I felt this impotence in the use of the things most necessary for life: I didn't know how to eat, I almost lost the habit. I admired that the others enjoyed their meals with ease, and it seemed to me that I gave these foods to a dead body, feeling that the natural virtue was taken away from me. [It also seemed to me that my soul was no longer, or at least was no longer doing its natural functions, and remained as being deprived of the use of all its powers. You gave me this conviction, O my God! O my dear Jesus! to teach me out of necessity to muse with these faculties only according to your good pleasure, and to wait for a principle of action other than that which had led me in the past. You wanted me to learn that my soul is not in my hands, but in yours, to my All! who are the only and only Master.

"What God's goodness had done with regard to bodily faculties, it also did in relation to the spiritual faculties of my soul, and it left me in tongues, stupidities, and hebeticness, which can only be understood by those who have experienced them. My good Master did this grace for a long time: my mind was then surrounded by such darkness, that I could not renew myself from anything; I didn't even know what I was saying; I heard the world speak as a deaf man would do, without holding back or understanding; I could not express any thought, even things that I had understood in the past; I sought in my mind, and found nothing: often the thought appeared and withdrew immediately, so that, beginning to express it, I no longer knew where I was. This embarrassment and impotence were not only the object of science and study, but also the most indifferent and affluent things, such as hearing about business, to converse with my friends. I was so committed, that I could not say a word; I remained all forbidden and the spirit suspended, almost as one sees fools in company, who, hearing speaking, do not conceive or answer anything, and remain hebetic in looking at the world. My mother, when she saw me in this state, said of me: You would say that he became foolish and foolish. I could not do otherwise; I even thought I would be reduced for ever to this state, and often I offered myself to God in good heart to lose, if he wanted, completely minded and become crazy. I still remember that I was reduced to such an end, that I could not write; sometimes trying to do so, I remained full hours to write two or three lines, and again was all wrong. I was deprived, for my conduct, of all inner light, and almost all outer counsel; for I could not expose the matters on which I would have sought to consult, holding nothing and understanding no more. If I visited for myself or for the company that we formed with my friends, I missed the people that I was going to see, or I succeeded so badly, that everyone had reason to believe that Our Lord was not with me, and that his divine Spirit had abandoned me. Above all, I was forced to be driven by my servant into the streets, always having the misfortune to forget my way, because of this mental weakening that accompanied my sorrows."The bonds of family t and friendship form one of the most vivid enjoyments of human sensitivity, and their rupture often causes more pain than illnesses and bodily infirmities. On the pretext that nature inspires and controls these affections, qwen themselves they want nothing disordered, we abandon it with an greed that delays the soul's momentum towards divine things. One becomes a slave without even being aware of these excesses, and one lives unreservedly and remorseful of a natural life that holds away from God.

That is why God almost always brings into the tribulations that predispose the sacrifice of all these goods to passive prayer. Since the aim of these trials is to free the heart, it is appropriate that they focus more on affections than on organic life itself. The stories of the saints overabund in fact of this kind, and one sees divine jealousy breaking one by one the bonds that hold the soul captive and prevent rest only in God.

The loss of material property further eases the soul and releases it from gross attachments that embarrass and paralyze it. In order to make the caducity of external wealth feel better and to give the soul all its freedom, God, when he pleases him, suddenly passes from the radiance of Populence to the abandonment and anguish of poverty. Job is an admirable example of these divine rigors and of the high virtue of the faithful soul, who, in such trials, knows how to see God's purposes and bless his paternal hand.

Finally, the counting of material property must be combined with that of public honours, charges and dignitys; the even more significant loss of reputation by real faults, or, more frequently, under the blows of malice, undeserved assumptions CHAPTER XXV

THE PURIFICATION OF SENSES

AGENTS AND EFFECTS Purifying agents are: God, by himself or through second causes; — men: wicked, close and friends, good people; — demon, by temptations and obsession, rarely by possession. — Conduct and advice of the Director at these meetings. — Effects: reduction of sensual appetite, self-knowledge, progress of virtues, inner vitality.

I. — The agents of passive purifications are: God, men and the demon.

God is, by himself or by the second causes, the author of trials that do not lead to injustice or moral disorder.

In the first place it must be held to be the only true and immediate cause of the withdrawal of the sensitive fervor, which is the fundamental penalty of passive purification. He makes his action and presence feel as he pleases, sometimes on the mind and on the senses, sometimes restricting the feeling in the sphere of the mind, and, whenever he wants, totally suppressing it. The mystics teach that the suppression of the sensitive devotion is accomplished with the help of a light which they call purgative and which God pours into the soul to draw it and fix it in him, without any feeling that warns of its presence. By this clarity the soul has a keener awareness of the disordered tendencies of sensual appetite and purity to which it must strive; therefore, of the struggle that it must sustain to resist the depraved instincts of the flesh.

We see it, it is God himself who works here purification by multiplying the inner light without betraying his presence and leaving to the tested soul only the feeling of the revolt of the senses and their sufferings. And, although Pspirit still remains calm and enlightened, the effort of the struggle against sensitivity is such, that the soul suffers more from what is lacking in its flesh than from what consoles and rejoices its spirit.

God still intervenes in this purification work by means of the natural causes which he involves and directs towards this end. Illnesses, bodily suffering, loss of parents, friends, protectors, setbacks of fortune, these thousand incidents that do not cause by themselves any moral disorder, God can directly target them as very effective means to purify and sanctify souls. Creatures are, in their realization, only the instruments of His Providence.

Finally, God allows evil to the demon and to the world, and, when evil is laid down, he makes it serve the work of purification of which he is no longer immediate agent, but the indirect cause.

II. — Persecution of men is also a crucible where the soul depletes and deposits any alloy before being raised to contemplation +.

The contact and trade of men is for all an opportunity of trial, patience and mortification. But these difficulties constitute a true martyrdom more painful to endure than the evils of the body, the separations of the heart, and even the vexations of demons!.

The wicked? persecute those who obstruct their perversity, or who are only so, through the purity of their lives, contradiction and censorship. The world, which is an incarnation of Satan, does not stand the protest of virtue, and rather sashes against holiness.

Sometimes the impetuous and indiscreet zeal of the beginnings gives rise to oppositions that can become all the more bitter, since one is accused by the good of having aroused them recklessly.

The pain caused by these tribulations is greater when they come from relatives and friends, even more acute when they come from the superiors to whom we owe obedience and respect. We can disdain and explain the malice of strangers and enemies; we always suffer when we see ourselves facing the prosecution of those whom we love and who are revered, whether in good faith or ill-intentioned.

But the most difficult test to bear is that which comes from the good people, the righteous, the grave and the godly people, and mainly the directors of conscience. Saint Teresis tells how much she had to suffer from this kind of upsetness, and having opened herself on this point to St Peter of Alcantara, this great servant of God comforted her beautiful1 Ppictpp. A SS. TRN. Sum. Theol. myst. P. 1, Tract. 3, D. 2, à. 3, t. 4, p. 388: Sensitivity nonnunquam is hominum persecutio quam dæmonum. i 2 SCHRAM, § 201, t. 4, p. 360: Persecutions etiam pro purgatione sua, submissive animabus perfectioni studentibus moventur ab improbis catholicis. > blow telling her that "this contradiction that she received from the people of good was one of the greatest pains that one could experience in this life!".

Perhaps another more painful and crucifying one is to live in a religious community and be confronted with suspicion, harassment, mockery and violence. One rightly wondered whether the cenobitic persecution was not the cruelst of all? These can answer who know by experience how bitter and unbearable the vexations of community life are to nature.

IL. — It is rare that the demon does not ostensibly intervene in the work of purifying the senses.

The evil persecution is carried out in three degrees: by ordinary temptations, by obsession and by possession.

In simple temptation, the evil mind raises and activates concupiscence by acting directly on the organs or by implementing external agents to make them opportunities for sin, but in one and the other case by concealing its presence and excitement.

In the obsession, his attack, although still outside, is more lively and more open. Here he reveals himself either by the violence itself and by the duration of the temptation, inexplicable without an extrinsic agent; or by external manifestations that do not allow to doubt his intervention: he speaks, moves the members, stirs up the material objects, shows himself in various forms able to frighten or seduce, is agitated, according to the expression of St Peter, as a roaring lion, around the prey that he covets; but he remains outside; he makes the seat, he is not yet the master and the possessor.

Possession, indeed, goes further. It introduces the devil into the body of man and subjects him to his power as a thing that belongs to him, which he moves in his name and at his will, so that in the act of possession it is not man who speaks, walks, acts, but the demon who uses organs and members of man as a body that is his own.

Simple temptations are always part of the means of inner purification; but, like this kind of attack wa only ordinary and common, we will say nothing of it here, and we refer on this point to the notions and advices of ascetic theology.

We will specifically address possessions and obsessions in the third part of this book, when we discuss the various modes of the evil supernatural. At present, we will limit ourselves to these two forms to the reflections necessary to enlighten the matter of passive purifications.

Possession does not belong regularly to the trials that prepare for contemplation t. The reason is that possession, suspending the use of reason and freedom, prevents the exercise of perfection, while passive purification is, on the contrary, accomplished by free and meritorious acts?. That is why Saint Augustine assigns the

4 SCARAMELLI, Tr. 5, ©. 7, n. 70, p. 366. Dico che la detta possessione non si appropriée alle purghe del senso, di cui ragioniamo nel presente trattato, voglio dire, che non si appropriée à quel purghe che sono indrizzate alla perfezione del saggetto, e bene spesso all acquisto della divina contemplazione.

The reason is that the state of one seized [by a demon] greatly impedes the exercise of perfection, as will appear from the impediments to be reviewed shortly, and appears sufficiently from the disturbed and overturned use of reason in that state — which, however, is entirely required for increasing merits and for promoting perfection through them, this being the whole purpose of testing and perfecting holy souls through diabolical vexations; and this is the reason why holy souls rather through possession... [text breaks off into a garbled French fragment concerning sin as the habitual cause of possessions] The rare examples of God's servants subjected to this trial, such as the holy abbot Moses!, the nun Saint Gregory the Great speaks of, and a few others, do not prove that these possessions were destined to prepare contemplation; but rather to punish, as these accounts attest, the slight mistakes which God wanted to inspire to these faithful souls an extreme horror. *

So if possession is found in the preludes of contemplation, it is just as important to say that contemplation has occurred despite possession, as it is to see possession as a preparation for contemplation. However, it is not absolutely repulsive that this evil tyranny enters among the means of passive purgation: God knows how to draw good from evil and to give a punishment the purifying virtue that meets the purposes of his righteousness and goodness.

Lobsession, on the contrary, is one of the ordinary forms of soul purification.

Not only does the demon intervene by occult action in the disturbances of the imagination and the uprisings of the senses to give them an extreme intensity f, but

1 Cassrex, Coll. 7, ©. 27, Migne, t. 49, col. 706.

2 Dialog. 1. 1, ©. 4. Migne, t. 77, col. 468.

3 GORRES, Mystique, l. 6, ©. 12, t. 4, p. 352.

4 SCARAMELLI, Tr. 5, ©. 7, n. 73, p. 367 : Sebbene le predette possessioni diaboliche accaddero in persone sante, non furono però loro permesse dia Dio direttamente, come purghe conducenti a gradi di più sublime perfezione e di alta contemplazione..., ma solo in pena di alcuni peccati, di quei gran servi di Dio, che sebbene non erano gravi, ma soltanto leggieri, ciò non ostante però in persone di tanto merito erano considerabili.

It can also happen that even holier persons are tried and purged through possession by demons.

6 S. JOHN OF THE Cross, the Dark Night, 1. 1, ch. 44, p. 276: During this terrible night, the angel of Satan, who is the spirit of fornication, attacks some of them and tired their senses of abominable and very strong temptations; he fills their minds with disgusting thoughts, he infects their imaginations with very vivid representations, he finally makes them suffer more cruel torments than death. Sometimes the blasphemous mind joins in the mind THE AGENTS AND THE TAR EFFECTS and reduces it by its terrible injunctions or false promises. Sometimes it takes frightening forms, threatening with all its vengeance if it is abandoned the practices of piety and mortification, the exercise of prayer, the relations with the director; sometimes it appears under seductive and voluptuous outsides, while by secret action it excites outside and within the movements of passions.

Often it comes to ill-treatment, striking, injuring, paralyzing the limbs and organs, inflicting on the body all kinds of torture, reducing them to an end by real or imaginary diseases.

Sometimes demons appear ostensibly by troops and assault God's servants with inexpressible violence. Such facts are very common in contemplatives. It is enough to read what Saint Teresus wrote of herself, and what is narrated in the lives of Saint Hilarion?, Saint Anthony, Saint Benedict, Seraphic Francis of Assisi, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Madeleine of Pazzi, holy unclean. He suggests execrable blasphemies and prints them so vividly in the imagination, that they often pass to the tongue and appear to be pronounced. Which gives an inexplicable penalty. At other times they are beaten with the spirit of vertigo that overturns their sense so much, that it fills them with a thousand scruples and a thousand embarrassing doubts, so that they can neither satisfy themselves nor submit themselves to the judgment of others. This spirit has something more horrible and horrible than anything that happens on this spiritual night.

2SaVie,.ch..31:

2 S, Hreronym. Vila S: Hilarion.. Erem., n. 6 et 7. Migne, t. 93, col. 31.

3 S. ATHANAS. Vila S. Anton., n. 5. et seq. Migne, t. 26, col. 846 et seq.

4S. GREG. M. Dialog. 1. 2, c. 2. Migne, T. 66, Col. 132. 398 THE PURIFICATION OF THE SENSE Angèle de Foligno, of the venerable Mother Agnes °, of the Blessed Marguerite-Marie °.

IV. — These evil assaults are highly effective in purifying the soul by fear and extreme bitterness. Under the influence of these audacity and vexations, the soul looks at itself as being subjected to the righteousness of God, who punishes his faults by abandoning himself to the wrath of demons. The feeling that then prevails in her and that stifles all others is that of her inner misery, where the fear of God's judgments and the humble supplication of prayer are instinctively born.

The danger is in the weakness of the flesh, which can yield to the violence of these attacks, and in the collapse of despair where this struggle can throw.

After God who assists with a powerful grace, it is the director who presents to these souls the strongest support. He must comfort and reassure them, not by showing the high rewards of contemplative life, but the secret merits of a faithfully sustained fight. He will remind them that it is not the temptation that defiles, but the free consent that is given to him; that the devil probably makes so much noise outside only because he is not in the place; that, from sin, the senses are no longer under the absolute empire of man, and that, from all his faculties, only the will remains always free and master itself; that the saints have been violently assailed and mistreated by Satan, without ceasing for this to be God's friends; that God hides himself to be sought and called.

After exhorting and comforting, he will advise the use of the means put by Jesus Christ at the disposal of the Church and the faithful against the infernal powers: prayer, mortifications, sacramentals, especially the holy water and the sign of the cross, and, if necessary, the precarious exorcisms. We will return to this subject by indicating the remedies against obsession, and we will then make known the differences of theologians and mystics concerning the use of exorcisms. - Thus conduct, the purification of the senses goes straight to the goal, and surely realizes more quickly the effects of transformation that it is intended to produce.

V. -— The main and most direct is the reduction of the sensual appetite that constantly struggles and revolts against reason. The natural impetuousness that carries the soul to pleasure slows down and tempers itself, the impressions and movements of the instinct sever and moderate under the guillon of this expiating suffering. The soul now knows what it costs, curses it and withdraws from it; it frees itself from the servitude and tyranny of the senses.

1 S, JEAN DE LA CROIX. la Nurt obscurée, l. 1, ©. 11, p. 268: As God only introduces the soul into that night to purify the senses of the lower part and to subdue them and unite them with the spirit, she derives such great advantages, that she counts for an extreme happiness that she has come out on that night from the close ties of the animal part, which makes her : RA ASSEIN PRE A du 400

This defeat of the lower part removes the obstacles which the senses oppose contemplation, corrects the imperfections indicated above by Saint John of the Cross in the first enjoyments of the sensitive fervour, warns against the vain imaginations and against the illusions of the spirit of lie, even has the body to support without prejudice the manifestations and bursts of mystic joy.

But these are only negative effects that make evil go away. The positive fruits listed by the masters! are in large numbers, one can bring them back to the following three: the knowledge of God and of oneself, advancement in virtues and an increasingly increasing inner strength.

The uprisings of sensual appetite, and its undeniable connivance with the demon and with the world, inevitably bring the soul that is subjected to these storms to the feeling of its native corruption, to the conviction of its irremediable misery, to the contempt of itself and man. On the other hand, God's holiness appears more manifest and his justice more terrible, to the supernatural light that envelops the soul without his knowledge and shows him, in a striking contrast, the weakness and abjection of man, the majesty and unalterable stability of God. The sight of the corruption and frailty of the flesh produces humility; the sight of God holy, righteous and great, inspires reverential fear.

Disillusioned with herself and invinciblely carried, though trembling, towards the invariable, the incorruptible and the eternal, THE AGENTS AND EFFECTS 401 soul sneezes toward God, his end and his salvation, through humble and ardent prayer, comes out of herself to take refuge and be lost in God, is ready to abandon love and to the astonishment of admiration. "It is therefore constant, let us say with St John of the Cross, that the knowledge of oneself and that of God flow from this dark night as from their source."This is the first positive result of the test that cleanses the senses.

The second is the improvement of Christian virtues, through the active exercise that it gives them. "Another fruit of this night of sense," adds the mystical doctor we have just quoted?, "is that the soul is exercised at the same time in all virtues. These are patience..., Pamour of God..., strength; finally all the theologal, cardinal and moral virtues reign during these aridities."

Indeed, in the darkness that envelops, the soul is guided only by the light of faith, which, paralyzing the efforts of reasoning, becomes a prelude to contemplative fixedness. Anxieties where God himself, the only single medium and term of salvation, seems to escape the soul, can only be sustained by the heroism of hope. The neglect of sensitivity warns that God wants to be served, not for enjoyment, but for pure love, which excites and ignites charity.

Moral virtues also grow and perfect under this purifying fire. This must be; for moral virtues regulate the movements of passions in accordance with the requirements of reason, and sensitive purgation is precisely to subject the instinctive part of man to the reasonable part.

Among the virtues that strengthen themselves in these trials we have already pointed to humility, which Saint Bernard defines the knowledge and the confession of our own misery. With humility, those who shine with a brighter shine are chastity and patience.

As For comes out purer from the crucible where he has suffered the action of fire, the holy and kind virtue of purity acquires all its lust and perfect beauty when it traverses without defilement the perilous flame of temptations, mainly violent and exceptional temptations that we are talking about here.

Similarly, the virtue that makes us endure with a constant equality the evils that are necessary, always finds to be exercised. in the midst of tribulations and anxieties by which the sensitive purification takes place. In this struggle against the flesh, the world and hell, patience is as necessary as it is effective. There is no point in agitating and disturbing oneself: the only means of salvation are calm, prayer and an invincible trust that God will not give up. But the sensitive help of grace is long to come; by patience, the soul is contained, hopes against all hope, and waits in peace for the hour of deliverance; for, according to the thought of St Augustine?, what inspires and sustains patience, it is hope to arrive at eternal goods.

Detached from herself, united to God, in continuous exercise of virtue, it is possible that the soul only strengthens itself, that it stripes away the tongues and delicacy of the child and does not clothe the energy and attitude of manhood.

This is the purpose of passive trials, namely, to heal the soul of its tenderness and attachment for the false and childish enjoyments of the senses, of the

1 De grad. humilit. ©. 1, n. 2, t. 1, p. 472 : Humilitas est virtus qua homo verissima sui agnitione sibi ipsi vilescit.

2 De Patientia, ©. 2, t. 16, p. 4. The patience of man... is said to be that by which we tolerate evils with an even mind, lest with an uneven mind we abandon the goods through which we arrive at...

THE AGENTS AND EFFECTS 403 wean from this milk of the children, to give him the strong and substantial food of the made men.

Two causes contribute to this result: the infusion of the supernatural gifts that God makes to the soul, and the reduction of passions, which, by their whims and their revolts against reason, are compared to childhood, still under the empire of instinct!.

In this way passive cleaning of the senses is carried out. We still have to tell how the spirit works.

1 Parupr. A SS. Tan. The second fruit is strength of soul, in that it weans the soul from sensible grace, which is the milk of beginners, of little children in the spiritual life; for it leads it back from the thinner nourishment of infancy to the solid food of the virtues, and impels it, from the slow manner of proceeding of infants, toward running the way of perfection... This strength of the soul flows from a twofold principle: namely, from the infusion of supernatural charisms in this night of obscure contemplation, and from the moderation of the passions, the removal of sins and imperfections, and the extirpation of vices — all of which distract and weaken the soul's power in various directions. CHAPITRE XXVI

PURIFICATION OF SPIRIT

NEESSITY AND NATURE OF SUCH TESTS Purification of the mind has the soul to union. — Four reasons for its necessity: to complete the purgation of the senses, to remove the inner stains and imperfections, to realize the resemblance with Jesus Christ, to enrich graces and merits. — Nature of spiritual neglect: the greatest torment is the deprivation of any feeling of devotion. — This aridity is complicated by horrific temptations, mainly against faith and trust in God. — Hence, other temptations, murmur, fatigue. — Comment on sort triomphant de ces épreuves. I. — When contemplation does not exceed the lower degrees, the passive test which tames the flesh suffices; if it must rise up to union, a second purgation becomes necessary, that of the spirit. "The reason for this, says St John of the Cross t, is that the affections and knowledge of the mind purified and raised to perfection are of a higher rank than the affections and natural knowledge: they are supernatural and divine; so that, in order to acquire the acts and habits of them, it is necessary that those who do not come out of the bounds of nature be extinguished. That is why it is great 1 The Dark Night, 1. 2, ch. 9, p. 296. utility in this matter, let the spirit lose in this night its natural knowledge, to be clothed with this very subtle and all divine light, and to become himself in some way all divine in his union with the wisdom of God. This night or darkness must therefore last as long as it takes to enter into a practical habit of this supernatural light.

"We have to say the same thing about the will. She is obliged to get rid of all the affections which attach her to natural objects, to receive the admirable effects of love, which is extremely spiritual, subtle, delicate, intimate, which surpasses all the natural feelings and affections of the will, which is, in a word, all divine; and so that it is all transformed into this love by the union which is granted to her in the loss of all her natural goods."

The night of the senses is therefore intended to reduce the sensual appetite under the yoke of reason; the night of the spirit subjects reason itself to the higher reason of God. The first causes order to reign between the two elements that make up man; the second substitutes supernatural and divine life for human and rational life. One pacifizes the lower region, the other unites the upper part to God and makes him a new life.

And as much as the distance between God and man surpasses that which divides the spirit of the flesh, so much the night of the spirit takes it in depth, in darkness, in bitterness on the night of the flesh.

Let us first highlight the raison d'être of these anxieties, which, by torturing the mind, cleanse it, release it, give it the activity and brightness of the flame, bring it closer to God, pure and infinite flame of charity, and dispose it to union, to the ineffable absorption of love with God and in God.

II. — The first reason is the complete completion of the purification of the senses. The instinct of sensitive pleasure is so rooted in man, that man manages to dominate him only by rising above nature, and leaving in some way of himself to live a higher life.

Second, in addition to the weaknesses which arise directly from the senses, there is still after the first purification of the more imperceptible and subtle stains and imperfections, which hold more of the mind, and which delay the union of the soul with God +. Usual defects: on the side of understanding, in distractions and divagations that withdraw from God's thought and bring back to creatures; on the part of the heart, innate love of self and excessive attachment to spiritual tastes. Present defects: such as a perilous ease to misunderstand in the judgments that one carries extraordinary graces, and the presumptuous, selfish, reckless feelings that one thinks can abandon by a strange abuse of these divine communications, which themselves tend rather to humility, love, filial fear?. Il faut qu’à

1 S. JEAN DE LA CROIX, la Nuit obscurée, l. 1, ©. 2, p. 280: Those who profit in the inner life have two kinds of imperfections, the usual ones, the current ones. The usual ones are imperfect affections and habits which have remained as roots in the mind and which the purging of the senses could remove. There is the same difference between the present imperfections and the usual imperfections as between the ease of cutting a small tree branch and removing a new spot, and the difficulty of tearing a large root and removing an old spot. For the purgation of the senses is only the beginning and the door, so to speak, of the contemplation that falls into the mind, and it serves more to subject the meaning to the mind than the spirit to God.

2 PHLPP. A SS. Trin. P. 1, Tr. 3, D. 3, a. 3, t. 1, p. 423: Primum motivum est, ut imperfectiones et defectus, tam actuales quam habituales, in anima remanentes, quos purgatio passiva partis sensitivæ non potuit eradicare, penitus evacuentur... Hujusmodi autem defectus habituales sunt, ex parte intellectus , distractio et evagatio spiritus a Deo ad creaturas; ex parte vero the clarity of the supernatural light where it is plunged, the soul perceives, fights and expiates these injustices, represses these excesses, dispels these illusions, and that is damaged in the consciousness of its nothingness and misery, it no longer comes to oppose resistance to the vocation and divine action of grace. Then she'll be ready for union.

A third reason, which explains and justifies the purifying test of the spirit, derives from the need, for the Sancüfication and glorification, to resemble Jesus Christ. One is not a Christian, one is perfect only to the extent that one resembles Jesus Christ: it is the very law of predestination, formulated by Saint Paul in his epistle to the Romans!

But if Jesus Christ, to atone for our crimes, suffered the most cruel neglect of mind, is it surprising that the true culprits must participate in this kind of anxieties ?? affectionate, innatus amor propinus, and nimia ad gustus spirituales adhæsio. The actual defects on the part of the intellect are: to be frequently deceived in visions and revelations, in locutions and prophecies, and to judge true things false, and false things true. On the part of the affections, however, are presumption, pride, arrogance and boldness, proceeding from the abuse of divine communications, which by their own nature rather incline one to humility, love, and filial fear of God, etc.

1 Rom. vm, 29 et 30. Whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be made conformable to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And whom he predestined, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

2 Panmr. À SS. Trix. P. 4, Tr. 3, d. 3, a. 3, t. 1, p. 424: The fourth motive is that the special sons of God who are destined for the highest sanctity should be perfectly conformed to Christ the Lord, the firstborn among many brethren and the only-begotten natural Son; for those whom he thus foreknew, he predestined to be made conformable to the image of his Son. Now Christ the Lord was in this most bitter purgation, especially at the time of his most holy passion, when he said to the apostles: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death'; and when on the cross he cried out to the Father: 'God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' For the commentators commonly teach that at that time he suffered the greatest sorrow. But if Christ the Lord drank so bitter a purgation in order to purge the infirmities of others, what kind of purgation must men undergo in order to purge their own infirmities? Unde Christus Dominus omnibus ad se venientibus præcipiebat tollere cru408 ; ; PURIFICATION PASSIVE DE L'ESPRIT

Most Christians await, in order to undergo these atonements and realize this resemblance with the Redeemer, the exit from the test and the end of the present life; but the privileged souls, whom God calls to taste here below the preludes of glory through the consciousness of mystic union, must first reproduce in them the divine Crucified.

These considerations will appear more well-founded and more pressing to whom will remember that the spiritual marriage is contracted between the Incarnate Word and the faithful soul, and that the propriety of this union requires a perfect resemblance between the bride and the Bridegroom. Every soul that does not have the seal of the cross, Jesus Christ will not recognize it, as he declared in his Gospel; on the contrary, the more a soul reproduces the traits of the Crucified, the more it is entitled to its predilection.

Finally, the law of proportions and proprieties still requires that the soul destined to unite with the Word be adorned with supernatural gifts that make it worthy of this union; and, in the providential plan of sanctification, it is through the work of virtue and by personal merits" united with the merits of Jesus Christ, that this relative fullness of grace is realized in the soul. Who therefore sees the reason for the supernatural neglect of the spirit, of all the sources of grace and of the highest and most abundant merit? The soul enriches and transforms in the very proportion of the bitterness that water, the fidelity and the love with which it drinks this chalice of tribulation.

These are the main motives that make it necessary to purgate the mind, before the soul is raised to the grace of mystic union. Let us now say what this ordeal is and what its results are. IT. — In order to explain more precisely what the acts, means and fruits of passive purification of mind are, we must distinguish between two very different phases! In the first, the soul is plagued by the cruel uncertainties and poignant bitterness of neglect; it believes itself abandoned, repulsed, cursed. Here, we see, everything is darkness, desolation and anguish. In the second, the torment of the soul comes to him less from shadow than from light, less from uncertainty and fear than from impatience and desire. God reveals himself to the soul and then disappears, letting it burn in the ardour and eagerness of love that has lost its object, that pursues it and calls it.

This chapter and the following relate to the first form of spiritual purgation, arid, obscure, sorry. We will then deal with the second form, which mystics call the purification of love, which is less a preparation for contemplation, than contemplation even already in activity.

The fundamental torment of the dark purgation of the mind consists in the total suppression of accidental devotion, that is, as we have already stated, in the absence of the pleasant feeling that accompanies usually and attests to the generous movement of charity. The soul seeks God, goes to God, is to God; and yet she is aware only of the effort she makes to produce these acts, but not to have met the God whom she desires and whom she loves.

4 SCARAMELLI, Tratt. 5, ©. 21, n. 229, p. 495: La purga perfetta dello spirito si fa principalmente con due luci di contemplazione : una che oscura l-anima con folte tenebre e fissandola nella vista. desui peccati e miserie, la riempie di gravissimi affilizioni; laltra che rappresenta all anima vivamente lamabilità di Dio, non per dargliene posesso di amore, ma solo per eccitare in lei desiderj acutissimi che la trafiggggano e la riducano a pene While God remains veiled and wrapped in his own light, the soul, with the rays of the same clarity, sees his weakness, his imperfections, his faults, with evidence that frightens him and his fault. It is necessary that, by being sinful, wretched, devoid of everything, by searching for the emptiness and the nothingness of every creature, she manages to hate herself and to understand that God alone is her salvation, that only he is just and good.

"Every one penetrated with a very keen feeling of his suffering... she will have no way of softening them, until Our Lord completes purifying her in the way and in the time that she pleases. She looks like a man we hold, with our hands and feet tied together, in a dark prison; he can neither move nor see anything nor receive any relief. Likewise, the soul groaned in irons, in the cross, in darkness, still, without help, until the spirit was softened, humiliated, purified, so freed from material and sensitive things, so subtle, so simple, that it could become in some way the same spirit with the spirit of God, according to the nature and degree of union of love to which divine mercy wishes to raise it £."

The memory of the abundance and joys of the past adds to the deprivation and aridity of the present. "To these sorrows," said St John of the Cross again? "we must join the recollection of past prosperitys. For men who feel the bitterness of this night have usually been warned of divine sweetness, and have rendered great service to God. The deprivation of such a happy state and the apparent impossibility of recovering it pierce the heart of infinitely sensitive pain."

IV. — This spiritual aridity is complicated by the most pressing and often the most atrocious temptations. It is rare that faith, which is the basis of supernatural life, would not want to suffer the most terrible assaults. There arise a thousand objections that one is unable to resolve, either because of their subtlety, or because, in these kinds of trials, the mind is reduced to gravity, to darkness that paralyzes it. All her activity is exhausted in problems and negations, so that the soul seems to succumb and consent to these cruel perplexities of doubt, to which she can oppose only an act of the will barely felt. You have to have experienced such thunderstorms to appreciate all that they have frightening. Sometimes the difficulties concern only a certain point of our mysteries; but, constantly renaissant, they obsess and fatigue the mind to the equal of temptations that vary in succession.

The best way to combat these suggestions is to adhere by internal acts to the threatened truth, to strengthen oneself by the consideration of authority! which guarantees faith, and the particular motives that establish its divine character; last but not least, to avoid any discussion with oneself and others.

These temptations against faith often take the form of blasphemy. Not only does the spirit fill with doubts and anxiety, but it is also in the soul of uprisings which, if not contained, would burst into shouts of rage and curse. It is mainly, we will soon say, under the oppressive action of the demon that these explosions tend to occur.

The most torturing anxiety comes from thought, and almost

1 Prirrre. À SS. TRIN. P. 1, Tr. 3, D. 4, a. 1, t- 1, p. 453. But for greater firmness of faith, although one who is tempted ought to have but a single formal ground for believing — namely, obscure revelation and the proposition of the Catholic Church — as a condition without which not, and as it were a rule of what is to be believed, he can nevertheless laudably inquire into certain motives that efficaciously demonstrate that the dogmas of faith proposed by the Roman Church were revealed by God, and that the Roman Church is the true catholic Church. [French, apparently unconnected fragment:] ...of a kind of persuasion that one is abandoned by God, exposed to his justice and his anathemas. "The greatest torment of the soul," says St John of the Cross, "is to believe that God hates her, abandons her, and throws her for this reason into darkness. When the contemplation that God uses to purify the soul mortifies it by stripping it of everything, the soul experiences with a penetrating vivacity all the horror that death causes, and all the pains and moanings of hell; because, in this state, it seems to know by a sensitive experience that God is angry with it, that he punishes it in the ardour of his anger, that he has rejected it and that he is no longer with it. She even fears, with a lot of appearance according to what she feels, that he will treat her forever with the same severity."

Can you imagine anything harder, more horrible for a soul who loves God and wants to serve him? Jeremiah presents, in his LAMENTATIONS ?, a completed model of the soul thus abandoned and continued by divine indignation. Several mystics, among others Saint John of the Cross and Philip of the Most Holy Trinity +, have excelled in commenting on these complaints of the prophet, applying them to the soul subjected to the purification of the spirit. The story of Job * contains another no less admirable example, of which it is easy to apply to the spiritual test we are talking about.

Still if, like Job, the abandoned soul could keep the feeling of his innocence. But passive purification is rarely accompanied by bitter perplexities of scruples t. Everything is shadow and obstacle; everywhere one sees evil, imperfection, opportunities for falling; to any act AS one finds or imagines a selfish and perverse intention that corrupts him, or at least a defective aspect that weakens. We no longer know on which side to turn our gazes: the past is an inexhaustible source of anxiety and remorse; the future, a deep night where we see only ghosts and pitfalls, anger and curse; and the present is made of these bitter memories and poignant apprehensions.

V. — These storms and darknesss that overwhelm the mind and disconcerte the will, spontaneously arise more real and perhaps even more formidable temptations.

The first is that of impatience and murmuring against God and his providence. On the one hand, one feels at the bottom of oneself a devouring desire to be to God, and they call him with extreme ardour; on the other, it seems that God is deaf to all prayers, that he resists, that he rejects, that he curses. From there comes naturally the thought that God is cruel, implacable, even unjust, and this thought tends to spread over the heart in bitterness, in complaints, in anger. The anguish of despair sometimes becomes so pressing, that one is tempted to give himself death.

If the will gave way to these movements of revolt, prayer would give way to blasphemy, and the soul, instead of rising up and uniting with God, would rush into the abyss of sin.

1 Pare. A SS. Tri. There are many who, during the time of the intellectual purgation, are vexed by the persistence of scruples.

2 S. BonavenT. There follows another grave temptation of impatience against God, asking why he is so hard and merciless to the afflicted, why so sparing in giving grace to the needy, and to one who asks so anxiously and knocks so importunately. And hec tentatio quandoque tam valida est, quod quasi insanit homo et palpitat ex vehementi mærore ; quia ibi non invenit solatium quod deberet ei esse unicum refugia, sciWithout going as far as to break with God as with a declared enemy, the soul could come to fatigue, discouragement, and, to emerge from a trial that seems to hold to the d'oraison life, renounce the very oraison and the work of perfection, at least to the loneliness of the inner life: temptation more perilous than the previous one, according to Saint Bonaventure t, because it is less felt, which removes from the sources of grace and brings back to the creature by specious and no less funest pretexts.

VI. — God, who assists these souls with an exceptional grace such as the trial they undergo, usually preserves them from these lamentable defections; but since they can defuse, reaching the serenity of contemplation, how could they be immune from any failure in the violent tremors and bitterness of temptation?

To escape this misfortune, these passively tested souls must persevere in humble and confident prayer, call upon all the principles of faith and hope to stand with complete submissiveness under the hand of God, who punishes and feels only to purify and bless, which associates, out of love, with the sufferings, humiliations and neglects of the crucified Saviour.

Above all, as we have already noted, it is important that a prudent, knowledgeable and experienced director should be conducted.

For his part, the director must give to these desolate souls, who see nothing in the light, his compassion and all his care, supporting them by the maxims of faith, the words of the divine Scripture, the examples of the saints, by all the industries of his mind and heart. CHAPITRE XXVII

PURIFICATION OF SPIRIT

CAUSES AND EFFECTS The causes: men contribute to spiritual purification, especially those who are expected to be sympathetic and helpful. — The demon intervenes with violent suggestions and temptations. — God is the true agent of this purification by a penetrating light that reveals to the soul his miseries. — The effects are: self - contempt, adherence to God, — The perfection of virtues to heroism. — This progress is slow and successive: comparison of Saint John of the Cross and Hugues of Saint-Victor. J. — The causes of the purification of the mind are those which we have assigned to sensitive purgation, but with essential differences which must be noted. The world and the demon have less share in the purification of the mind than in the purification of the senses. They may, however, be instruments of contradictions and moral suffering, which are directed rather to the reasonable party than to the sensitive party.

Men compete to the test of the spirit in many ways, mainly in three kinds of circumstances.

First, when by his acts, his omissions, his words, the tested person inadvertently provides the opportunity or pretext to do wrong. It is a great subject of desolation for the delicate consciences who abhor God's own offense, to have to recognize that they are for others a cause of fall and scandal.

The same is true when one is confronted with the contradiction, the reproaches, the reprobation of good people, either by the effect of illusions or misunderstandings so frequent among poor humans, or by the faults or imperfections that God permits to provoke oppositions and resistances.

Finally there is a special bitterness that rarely misses the holy souls, in these trials of mystical life, it is the persecution of the directors who should console and support them. The venerable Mother Agnes de Langeac had to wipe all sorts of scraps from Fr. Panassière, son confesseur +. Saint Térèse often recalls, in his writings, the crosses that came to her from the priests whom she consulted on the state of her soul and on his revelations. The confessions of Blessed Raymond de Capoue ?, on the mistrusts inspired by the first openings of his illustrious penitent Catherine de Siena, are neither less explicit nor less instructive.

II. — The demon * also intervenes in temptations that torment the spirit and threaten to raise it against God.

1 De LanrTAGes, Life of the Mother Agnes of Jesus, 11° P., ch. 18, n. 6, t.1, p. 242: The only person in the world in which she could seek some consolation was certainly her director, who was, after God, the true It is not that he can act directly on thought; but, by means of signs and sensitive concussions, he brings the mind to the subjects that can be a cause of his fall, and keeps it in spite of him.

In general, the serious and exorbitant temptations of pride have as instigator rebellious and maddened Lange. The violent suggestions contrary to faith, the stubborn thoughts of hatred and blasphemy, the attacks of despair that lead to suicide, and, in principle, all the temptations that by their violence and their duration signify obsession, thus betray the presence of Satan!

One cannot doubt when, at the agitations of the spirit, an external passivity is joined which makes one realize in part and as mechanically, by a kind of necessity and physical impulse, the intimate thoughts, for example, if the temptation of contempt against Jesus Christ or against the saints is accompanied by involuntary signs which express it, when the lips partly utter the intimate thoughts of revolt and curse; if, in the access of despair, one strikes one with his own hands, one begins the act of suicide; and that after these temptations one stops, surprised, sorry as a man who awakens and becomes aware of himself. There are many examples of these kinds of obsessions in the lives of the Saints, especially those of Saint Teresis t, Saint Angèle de Foligno ?, Saint Mary Magdalene de Pazzi 3.

Scaramelli 4 following Lopez Ezquerra warns the directors that they must be careful to make too severe judgments towards those subjected to these evil obsessions: these external acts are most often indeliberated, unconscious, totally or largely involuntary.

One can judge by what Saint Teresus himself says: "Another time," she says, "after speaking of such appearances, the demon tormented me in the space of five hours with such terrible pains and internal and external trouble, that I did not think I could resist it any longer. The sisters present were terrified, and knew nothing more than to become. J'ai

1 Sa Vie, ch. 31.

But the torments and sufferings of the soul, which I say are beyond comparison more bitter and more numerous than those of the body, I suffer almost continually from the demons themselves... Sometimes such anger comes upon me that I can scarcely restrain myself from tearing myself entirely apart; and sometimes I cannot restrain myself from striking myself horribly, and by striking myself I have sometimes swollen my head and other limbs. And when the soul sees all virtues falling away and departing, there arises a lament of the soul, and I cry out to my God, almost without ceasing: My God, my God, do not forsake me, etc.

3 Vic. Puconr. BB. 25 mali, ©. 5, 6, 7, Pr Mtt,

4 Diret. Mist. But let the Director not believe that such persons sin gravely in such transports; for, as Lopez Ezquerra rightly notes (Luc. myst. Tr. 6, ¢. 3), tali attacki o sono violenti, o indeliberati, essendo la ragione prevenita da quell ¢. 3), tali attacki o sono violenti, o indeliberati, essendo la ragione preventa da quell ¢. impeto di vemente passione: E si deduce da questo, ch的 il mai non conpiscono gli atti feroci, con cui avevano presi ad uccidersi, o a farsi altro grave male: ma nell atto di eseguirli si riscuotano quasi da un profonso sonno, ritrano in sè stesse, desistono dal male incominciato, e rimangono con dolore e con iscrupolo di quei lori furiosi trasporti: segno chiaro che primo non avvertivano, meno con plena cognizione, a ciò che facevano; metre al primo lampo di custom, in This time again, I sought in these acts and resolutions a relief from the harsh embraces that I felt, when it pleased Our Lord to let me know that all this came from the demon. For I saw near me a negrillon of a horrible figure, grinning teeth, as desperate to lose where he thought he would win. When I saw him I began to laugh and did not fear, having with me some sisters, who knew nothing to do or what remedy to bring to such a great torment. It was such that I gave myself terrible blows, moving, with the body, with the head: and with the arms. But the worst thing was the violence of inner trouble, which allowed me no rest. I dared to ask for holy water, for fear of frightening my companions and making them know what was happening."

In these evil kinds of obsessions, we must not rush to blame the disorderly external acts committed by those who suffer these vexations. Unless they have their confessions that they have committed them knowingly, with perfect deliberation and full consent, one will be much closer to truth and justice by attributing them to disturbing angel.

II. — The truly effective cause of spiritual purification is God, who in this trial disposes the soul by itself to mystic union. We have already said many times, to be raised to this absorption with God, it is necessary that the soul be dead to its own life, that it does not oppose any more resistance to supernatural action, to the reign of the Holy Spirit in it; it must be freed from all bond with the creature, that it cleanse itself from all the filth of sin, that it become this immaculate virgin presented to the King Savior to be his wife t. The demon and the world are detestable instruments of purification; in the end, the true purification is God who is the one who is operating.

He operates with the help of a light which he sheds into the soul and by which he reveals to him with terrifying evidence his sins, his corruption, the spoils which enter under his steps. He himself appears there, but only by the aspect of his holiness, of his majesty, of his righteousness. To this contrast of greatness and weakness, purity and defilement, justice and iniquity, trembling soul does not know where to take refuge: in itself, it is misery and death; below, the abyss of hell where its crimes are brought forth; above, the God who judges and condemns it. Là, cependant, est son salut. She tends to it, she aspires to it, she rests there by pure faith, by heroic hope, by charity stronger than death. To save herself from the wrath of God, she takes refuge in God himself, according to the word of St Augustine?.

In short, this divine light intended to reveal to man his nothingness, his impotence, his infirmities, his ingratitudes, under the gaze of a severe and incorruptible judge, seems to him less clear than a thick night when he feels plunged and lost. He sees only to see that he goes astray and that he has no way out before him other than the eternal abyss. If he takes refuge in the deeper damage of mercy, it is not by what he sees, but by what he believes. 422 PURIFICATION PASSIVE OF SPIRIT

To learn more about the nature of this light that purifies the spirit, let us listen to the mystical doctor, Saint John of the Cross, who speaks about it with the authority and the sereneness of a master who tells his visions and experiences.

Explaining the first verse of his first song:

PENDANT UNE NUIT OBSCURE

"This dark night," he said, "is an influence of God on the soul, which saves it from its ignorances and its usual imperfections, natural and spiritual. Contemplatives call it infuse contemplation, or mystical theology, and God secretly teaches the soul and perfects it in his love. But on his part, the soul only applies itself lovingly to God, to listen to him and to receive his lights, without however understanding how this contemplation is going on, because it is in love wisdom of God that produces these special effects in the soul, having it at union by purity and by the clarity that it gives him. Hence the same wisdom that purifies the blessed spirits and illuminates them, also purifies the soul and illuminates it in this state.

"If anyone asks why the soul gives the name of the night to the divine light that dispels its ignorances, I answer that this divine wisdom is not only the night of the soul, but also its torment, for two reasons. The first is that the sublimitity of divine wisdom so surpasses the capacity of the soul, that it is only night and darkness for it. The second, the lowness and impurity of the soul are such, that this wisdom fills it with sorrow and darkness.

"To hear the first reason, it is necessary to suppose the doctrine of the philosopher who teaches that, the more things are naturally obscure and hidden to the soul: like the light, the brighter and brighter it is, the more dazzling and blind the owl; and, as a person stares at the sun, the more he covers the eyes of darkness, because of the excess of the rays that strike them, and the weakness of his sight. Thus when the divine light of this contemplation enters the soul that is not yet well lit, it spreads spiritual darkness upon it that deprives it of its natural intelligence. For this reason, Saint Denis and other mystic theologians call the infuse contemplation of the rays of darkness towards the soul that is not purified and illuminated, because the excessive light of this contemplation surpasses and extinguishes the natural forces of understanding...

"That this RP by its eminent light and excellence, causes great sorrow to the soul, is a certain and manifest thing; for this light is extremely bright and pure. On the contrary, the soul on which it falls vehemently has a lot of darkness and impurity. So, when she receives it, she suffers a violent pain: as well as eyes loaded with malignant moods feel a painful acrimony when a bright light strikes them very strongly and suddenly. This punishment is very great when the soul is illuminated and strongly penetrated by this divine light. For she sees herself so impure and so wretched that she believes that God is contrary to her, and that she herself is opposed to her; which afflicts her to the point of imagining that he has completely abandoned her... The soul sees so clearly, through this light, its impureness, that it considers itself very unworthy of God and his creatures. And what torments her more is that she fears that she will never be able to deserve her good graces, and that she has already lost all her spiritual possessions. The cause and the source of these feelings is that she has damaged her mind in the knowledge of herself and her own misery; for this divine light, though obscure, discovers them all distinctly to her, and persuades her that she herself has only evil...

"The second kind of torment that the soul suffers in this state comes from its natural infirmity and spiritual weakness. This divine contemplation is communicated to him in such a strong and impetuous way, with the intention of strengthening her by taming her, that her weakness cannot bear her, and that she even faints in some way, especially when the vehemence of the light is too great. For the sense and the spirit suffer as if they were oppressed with an immense and invisible burden, and they fall into such cruel agony, that death then seems a true relief... It is indeed a thing worthy of admiration and pain, to see that the soul has so much weakness and imperfection in this state, that it finds the hand of God so hard and so heavy, whatever it is so soft and so light, and that it touches the soul only very delicately. For God treats her in this way only to enrich her with her gifts and not to punish her."

IV. — The effects of the purification of the mind correspond to the purpose which it must achieve, namely: mystical union. To achieve this goal, the soul must renounce its own life, raise itself up and set itself in God by a heroic, inviolable and tranquil fidelity.

These are in reality the fruits of spiritual purification, which can be brought back to the following three: self-despite, continued adherence to God, a growing effect of virtue.

The contempt of self arises from the full knowledge that divine light gives to the soul of itself, that is, from its nothingness, from its misery, from its impureness, The sun reveals in the eyes of the body an infinity of atoms hitherto invisible, which one sees swirling with its rays. In the same way the purifying claritys that God throws upon the soul reveal to him in it a whole world of thoughts, feelings, desires, acts that tend to evil, and clearly attest to him what it is and what it is worth!. This view causes him a deep affliction, hatred and disgust of herself: how to live without horror in this receptacle of abominations and immondices?

The creature also appears to him with his powerlessness, poverty, injustices. She sees that relying on a nothingness that cannot give her more than she finds in herself is madness.

By coming out of oneself and from all that is created, where will the soul take refuge, if not in God? Her adherence to infinity is necessarily in proportion to the disgust she feels for her own misery and her detachment from perishable things °.

V. — This continuing effort to renounce his natural life and the objects that feed him, and this momentum towards God

1 Pair. A SS. Trinir. The first effect, or fruit, of this purgation is therefore a clear knowledge of oneself, accompanied by humility and the greatest affliction. The reason for this is: because the light of infused contemplation, which is the principle of this purgation, by divine disposition pervades all the secrets of one's own conscience, and manifests all the stains and specks of whatever imperfections, otherwise hidden. This is shown by the example of material light, which, when a ray of the sun is more intensely communicated to the air, reveals the smallest material specks flying about, which were imperceptible in ordinary light: from this manifestation of so many of its own defects it follows that the soul, thus contemplating itself as impure and wretched, holds the vilest and most abject estimation of itself.

2 Panum. a SS. Trt. The third effect is the continual memory or presence of God: for knowledge of oneself and the perpetual contemplation of one's own wretchedness in this state cause a perfect knowledge of God, since human misery cries out for divine mercy... This knowledge of God, however, is too obscure, and often imperceptible, and while it is perceived, it remains confused in a certain generality; for distinct knowledge of God, and particular contemplation of the divine perfections, is reserved for the state of union. Quartus performed is ardens quidam amor and multo major illo that in purgation passiva parties sensitivæ vigebat. raise the soul to the highest degree of virtue. Not only does it renounce, as in the passive purgation of the senses, the disorderly attractions of the flesh to subject it to the law of the spirit, it still immolates its own spirit to the spirit of God, its reason for faith, the whole natural life to the divine life.

From then on virtues come out of ordinary and common proportions to assume the character of heroism where the Holy Spirit portals through the communication of his gifts.

We can only touch summarily from this point of view so interesting, developed with complacency and rare happiness by the P. Philippe de la Très-Sainte-Trinité!

Faith rises up to the practical contempt of all that is not God or leads to God, brings in and moves in the path of humiliation and suffering, and it comes to the cry of St Paul: "Nothing else I glorify myself than in the cross of Jesus Christ Our Lord?" to the motto of Saint Teresa è: "Suffer or die!" to that of St Madeleine de Pazzi +: "Suffer and not die!" or to that of St John of the Cross è: "Lord, suffer and be despised for you!"

The hope remains firm and unwavering despite all the impossibility and impossibility of man, and, even under the blows of divine anger, it resteth in his mercy, as the patriarch Job did, when he said, "Will he give me the blow of death, in him would still be my hope f;" and as Abraham, who "hoped against hope 7?". S LE ž $

CAUSES AND EFFECTS 427

Charity sneezes toward God through holy transports, abandons itself to the complaints and impatiences of desire. For God, she is capable of everything, of all sacrifices, of all fatigues, of all boldness. On the activity of divine love we do not know a description that surpasses that of the author of ImiTATIoN in chapter fifth of the third book t. We must have known these holy ardours to paint them with such vivacity, colour and flame.

To serve, to help and to save the neighbor whom she idenüfies with God, charity knows no obstacle. She observes, not only the precepts, but the slightest nuances of the council; she makes herself all to all, to win them all to Jesus Christ, and to serve Jesus Christ in all, fully realizing the portrait drawn by St Paul, in his first to the Corinthians?, of his patience, his benignness, his prudence, his humility, his disinterest, his mildness, his righteousness, his simplicity, his love of good and the truth. His heroism, in a word, is translated into these words of the same apostle to the Romans! "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? tribulation? anguish? hunger? nakedness, peril, persecution? sword? None of this; for neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor present things, nor future things, nor strength, nor height, nor depth, nor any creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."She sometimes goes further, to excesses that seem incomprehensible and hardly excusable: she accepts to be anathema, and to spend eternity in the torments of hell, if that could be the good pleasure of God. Supreme madness beyond which one no longer conceives anything +.

According to Saint Francis de Sales?, the perfect indifferent "loves hell better with the will of God, than Paradise without the will of God. Even so, he preferred hell in Paradise, if he saw that there was a little more good divine pleasure in this than in this: so that if, by imagination of something impossible, he knew that his damnation was a little more acceptable to God than his salvation, he left his salvation and ran to his damnation."

These ways of speaking meet quite often in the mouth of mystics; but we must not forget that it is a pure fiction of love, and that "this indifference is impossible in man, as Bossuet è assures, since the only thing that could do it, that is, the separation of the good pleasure of God from paradise, cannot be".

Moral virtues also dilate to heroism, to the ardour of the supernatural purifications of the mind. The humility that sighs from the abjection, the obedience that knows no other limit than that of evil, the poverty that stripes itself of everything, the mortification that crucifies the flesh, the patience that rejoices from the persecutions, the mildness that contains the least movements of the irascible instinct, the chastity that prefers death to the permitted reliefs, above all a surrender and a complete resignation to the good will of God in time and in eternity; in a word, all human virtues, by the side that most repugnant to nature, and with a perfection that surpasses the demands and counsels of reason, burst forth in this night of the spirit that precedes the higher contemplation.

VI. — It is pointless to point out that the soul moves towards this perfection only in degrees, for otherwise purification would be instantaneous; it is only under the increasingly penetrating fire of purifying grace that the transformation takes place.

Saint John of the Cross makes you hear this progression by a comparison which we will report in full, finishing this chapter. "This night, this contemplation or light that we are talking about," he says, "purifies the soul and disposes of it at union with God, in the same way as the fire transforms the wood that it burns. First the fire removes moisture from the wood and the dry, then it blackens it and defiles it with fumes and smoke. Then he consumes all that he finds in it contrary and rude. He flames at last and changes it in himself; he makes it beautiful, bright, bursting; nevertheless, so that the wood no longer only receives the action of the fire without acting itself in that state; and then it is clothed with all the qualities of its victor: it is dry and dries; it is hot and warm, it shines and lights; it is lighter than it was, and it is the fire that produces all these effects.

"We must reason in the same way the fire of this dark contemplation and this divine love. Before he unites his soul to himself, he discharges it from the weight of all his imperfections; he covers it with blackness and ugliness; which makes it appear in his eyes more wicked than aupaai MST PURIFICATION PASSIVE OF RADENT SPIRIT, because this brilliant fire shows him his faults which were hidden and unknown to him; he throws it into the darkness. After that, he began to spread the glow of his rays over her, until, having filled her with light and warmth, he transformed her into himself without her operating, and communicated to her the perfect union of divine love.

"To give more light to this truth, it must be noted, first of all, that, as it is the same fire that prepares the wood and ends changing it, so it is the same divine light that has the soul and leads it to Punion.

< It should be noted, second, that as the fire causes the wood to suffer because of its dispositions contrary to the activity of the fire, so this divine fire causes the soul to suffer, because of its imperfections opposite to the impression of God...

"Third, we can conjecture from there, in a way, how souls suffer in purgatory. For as the souls who pass here through the fire of that night or contemplation are so afflicted, that when all their imperfections are erased and consumed, they are delivered from their sorrows, because there is no more matter left, and they enter into the enjoyment of God as much as is possible in this life: likewise, souls are tormented in purgatory, until the fire has cleansed them from the stains of their sins, and has thus prepared them to take possession of the kingdom of their Creator.

"In the fourth place we learn from this that as wood receives the heat of fire with increments proportional to its dispositions, so the soul is inflamed little by little with the love that purifies it according to the measure of its dispositions, and the purity that this divine fire gives it. Nevertheless, the soul does not always know the ardour of love that burns; it understands it only when this contemplation does not light up so vehemently... While the flame acts on the wood and the surrounding, we do not see well all that it has consumed, nor the progress that it has made; but when it ceases to cover it on all sides, we better see its effect, and we use this wood more easily. Thus the soul ignores what happens in it when the operation is strong and occupies it as a whole; it knows it when the operation is interrupted and weakened; and then it enjoys the fruit that it draws from it.

"Fifthly, the same comparison still makes us understand how souls, after tasting these small consolations, fall back into new sufferings greater than the former. For, like fire, the more he penetrates into the wood, the more he consumes the inside up to the marrow: just as, after the fire of love has purged the soul of his external flaws, he undertakes his imperfections more interior, more spiritual, more subtle; he consumes them; and by this sharper action he afflicts the soul in a more fixed, more acute and more penetrating way.

"In the sixth place, we infer from this principle that, although the soul has intervals of joy that make it hope that its afflictions will not come back, however it still feels within itself I do not know what fund that prevents it from fully enjoying this pleasure; it seems to him to hear I do not know what threatens her with a new sorrow. She clearly sees that there is still something left in her interior to purify, and that this is where her new pains must be born. In this it is similar to wood, where it is distinguished, from what is burned in the outer parts, which remains to be burned in the inner parts. However when this spiritual purgation is done in what the soul has most intimately, the soul, penetrated by new pains, no longer sees in it any good, and despairs of returning to the possession of those that it had previously enjoyed."

Long before Saint John of the Cross, Hugues de Saint-Victor ! had used and beautifully developed this same comparison of fire which envelops, works and transforms the wood, to make hear the progressive action of contemplation on the soul. The extent of this comment does not allow us to reproduce it here.

1 In Ecclesiasten. hom. 19. Just as fire in green wood at first catches with difficulty, but when it has been roused by a more vehement blast and begins to blaze more fiercely into the material beneath it, then certain great billows of smoky darkness arise, etc. Thus fire was seen first with flame and smoke, then fire with flame without smoke, and finally pure fire without flame and smoke. Thus indeed the carnal heart is like green wood, etc. LAST PURIFICATION OF SPIRIT

THE PURIFICATION OF LOVE Nature of this supreme purification. — Three degrees: the injury,

plaies, — l’agonie amour. - Diversity in violence and duration. —

The Effects of Purifying Love, and its Ten Echelons, after Saint John

de la Croix.

I. — The comparison of Saint John of the Cross, what to take that the passive purification of the mind leads to an ardent love that ends up purifying the soul and introducing it into the mystery of contemplation. The fire that penetrates into its intimate fibers remains initially hidden, but gradually it manifests itself outside by the radiation of heat and by the incandescence of its flame. As long as the darkness lasts, the soul ignores the fire that consumes and transforms it; when the smoke has dissipated and the light flame appears, it becomes aware of itself, and its purification continues with a repetition of activity and a painful mixture of light, desires and hopes.

On this last trial, which prepares for the most sublime ascents of contemplative life, let us still listen to Saint John of the Cross! "We see from this how great the ardour of love that ignites the spirit is. This is the centre where God gathers together to love his Creator... So when the soul is thus kindled with divine flames, who can understand the excesses and tenderness of love that spread in all its powers? This love does not, however, fully satisfy her; there is always some doubt and some darkness; and the more God communicates to her, the more she feels of hunger and desire to love. The attraction of this love and of this divine fire dries, so to speak, spirit and inflame its affections in such a way that the heart makes every effort to relieve its ardour, and to quench its thirst. A thousand times the soul turns and folds in itself; it desires God and seeks him in a thousand ways... She feels this love and desire at all times and in all places; she takes no rest; she burns it and hurts it, the press constantly... His affliction, moreover, grew in the ardour of love, for two reasons. The first is that the spiritual darkness of which it is surrounded tires it of doubts and worries. The second is that the divine love lembers, hurts her in the heart, and the consumption of a devouring and insatiable fire."

These transports and impatiences have nothing to do with the noise and agitation of the senses: the deprivation of the goods after which the soul sighs is felt in the upper part, which alone can appreciate.

"As this ardour and thirst for love come from the Holy Spirit," adds the mystical doctor, whom we do not tire of citing in a matter where he surpasses all the others, "they are very different from those we have spoken of in the dark night of meaning. For, although the meaning has somewhere to this ardour, because the pains of the mind glorify to the very sense, however the cause and vivacity of this thirst for love reside in the upper part of the soul, I mean in spirit; and then the soul recognizes that it is deprived of the things that it wishes: so that it makes no statement of the pain of the sense, although it is incomparably greater than it was in the first night of the senses."

The torment of the soul comes from the enlightenment of the mind or the eagerness of the will; sometimes it is the light that dominates, sometimes it is love. "Sometimes the soul is enlightened in the midst of this darkness, and this light falls upon the understanding: the will also participates in it in some way. But this communication is made according to the different feelings that one has of God, and it sometimes touches the will so strongly, that Pamour lights up with great tenderness, strength and elevation!"

However Joseph Lopez Ezquerra? notes with great accuracy that this supreme purification reaches above all the will, in order to consume the least attachments, to remove up to the last fibers of clean and natural life, to fix in God with a deep, serene and invincible energy. Feeling that she still belongs, that she is not all in God and that God is not all in her, is to the soul a more cruel torment a thousand times than death; according to the cry of Saint Teresus, she then dies not to die. This purifying love can follow as it can precede the exercise of contemplation. When it precedes, it consists, as we have just said, in the feeling of the divine fire that purifies the soul and that turns into an ardent desire to meet and taste God, to see the shadows that hide his presence dissipate and fill the distances that prevent union. These ardours follow contemplation and are the fruit of it, when God, after showing himself to the soul in the gentle embrace of a union begun, disappears, leaving only a memory full of bearing absence and separation. However, since nothing is more able to achieve the perfect disappropriation required in mystic marriage, than this impatience that brings the soul out of itself and the ardour that carries it to God with an irresistible momentum, this last purification has never more activity than between the spiritual engagement and the definitive covenant."

II. — Purificatory ardours that light up in contemplation follow a progression whose degrees, by diversifying themselves, constitute successive states which are distinctly distinct between them. The mystics report three: the wound, the wounds and the agony of love?

1 J. And although this sublimation or purgation of love continues from the state of her betrothal to the state of marriage and there ends, nevertheless it must be known that even in the state of marriage (because God is ever more and more communicable) He continually purges and disposes her to receive further favors, etc.

2 S. JEAN DE LA Croix, ed. 1875, 7° Stanza, p. 163. By this we see that the sufferings that the love of the Beloved one endures to the soul are of three kinds, which respond to the three degrees of knowledge that one can have of him.

The first one is called a light wound that lasts a short time... The second is called wound, because, deeper and longer lasting, elie truly pierces the soul of love... Tamour's third suffering is like death. The wound has become cruelly inflamed, and the whole soul sees itself in this unfortunate state: its life is only a continuous death until love, giving it the last blow, the We have already spoken of the wound of love + and we have observed that it can be delicious or painful, depending on whether the object loved is present and asks to give itself, or whether it is absent and veiled. We have studied the first form, which, according to several mystics, constitutes one of the degrees of infuse prayer. So we must now deal with the second, which belongs to the passive trials of the spirit.

Scaramelli defines it: "A burning and burning touch of love by which God suddenly lifts the soul up to the emotional and felt possession of himself, and withdraws immediately?"

The object loved, by giving itself to disappear then, cannot fail to hurt, to pierce, to desolate the loving heart.

Who can measure, indeed, this torment of the soul to whom God is all and who, after long desires, finally meets this supreme Good, but to lose it immediately? She absorbs herself into the thought of the Beloved that she has seen and into the feeling of the wound that causes her absence, for this disappearance is like an arrow that pierces her and torture." Saint Térèse describes the depth and pain of this injury with the vivacity that one puts to tell his own experiences. "In this state," she said, "soul is so inflamed that very often, at the slightest thought, at the slightest word that reminds her that death is delayed, suddenly, without her knowing where or how, she feels struck like a lightning strike or as pierced by an arrow of fire. I'm not saying that it's an arrow; but, whatever it may be, it's clear that it's not something that comes from our nature; nor am I saying that it's a lightning strike, because the wound we receive is even more penetrating. And this wound, in my opinion, is not done in the place where we feel ordinary pains, but in the deepest and most intimate of the soul, in the place where this ray of fire, which passes quickly, reduces to powder all that it encounters of our earthly nature, for during this time it is impossible to think of nothing of what belongs to our being. From the first moment, the powers of the soul are bound, to the point of not keeping freedom for anything, except for what must increase this pain.

"Don't take this as an exaggeration; I see, on the contrary, clearly that I don't say enough, the thing being such that she can't express herself. It is, I repeat, a delight of the senses and powers with regard to everything that does not help to make this grief felt. For understanding has a great vivacity to hear with how much reason the soul is saddened to be absent from his God; and God adds to it, by a very lively knowledge of himself, which increases the pain to such a degree, that the person who suffers it comes to utter great shouts. For patient and accustomed to suffering as she is, she cannot do otherwise, because, as I said, this impression is not felt in the body, but within the soul. This person, of which I have already spoken, then learned how much the pains of the soul are worse than those of the body, and he knew that it is in this way that one suffers in purgatory, where the absence of the body does not prevent suffering much greater than all that one can endure with the body in this life. I saw a person reduced to that end, and I really thought she was going to die, which would not have been very surprising, for there is a great danger of death. Thus, although it lasts little, the body remains as dislocated; Pulse is as weak as if it were about to make the soul to God, no less than that. The reason is that natural heat is lacking, and that the soul simmers to the point that it does not care that God fulfills his desires of death. It is not that she feels pain, small or large, in her body, which nevertheless, as I have already said, remains all dislocated, so that, for two or three days, he does not even have the strength to write, is in deep pain, and remains, in what I believe, more stupid than before."

II. — This prolonged and repeated divine touch produces the languor and the wounds of love. These are purely free graces that God gives with the intensity and frequency that he pleases. If, after striking and inflaming the soul, he leaves the feeling of his wound and the flame that consumes it, or renews it with increasing vivacity, the first passive impression of the soul will become a languor and a wound.

Let us allow Saint John of the Cross to speak, who had experienced these admirable crueltys of love. "In addition to several visits perfected in his love, he usually arouses in his heart the movements of a love which he pierces through as many arrows of fire. It's what it's called proper love wounds... This is how this bitter pain forms in his heart. When God hurts the soul with the burning traits of his love, the soul aspires incontinent to the possession of his beloved whose movement she has felt. But she immediately deplores her distance and gives up on moaning and sighing. For these visits are not similar to those where God rejoices the soul and the satisfaction of quiet and continuous pleasures. He then visits her, not on purpose to heal her, but to cover her with wounds; not to satisfy her, but to cause her new pain, because he wants to increase her knowledge, her desires and her pain. As these new plagues of love fill her with contentment, she would gladly die a thousand times, if it were possible, to obtain the enjoyment of her God."

IV. — Finally, these assaults of love can become so intense and so pressing that the soul is reduced to a kind of agony. If she does not manage to escape from the body she animates, it is that God, by his will and by his grace, retains it. She lives, so to speak, always dying, less attached by natural instinct to organic life than she is driven by an irresistible impulse towards God, the only object of her love, of her happiness, of her life.

Holy Térèse! painted in the brightest colors these anxieties as she felt them herself. She calls them an agony, a martyrdom, and compares them to the torment of a man suspended, the rope on the neck, between heaven and earth; pain so great, according to her, that she surpasses all others, THE PURIFICATION OF LOVE =- 4 infinitely more cruel than death, since, to put an end to it, one desires nothing but to die.

Although this torment is in the soul, the body receives the backlash: "I have been sometimes," said Saint Teresis £, without almost having a pulse, to what my sisters who approach and who now have more knowledge of my condition claim. I have my bones as if it were dislocated, and my hands are sometimes so stiff that I can't reach them, and I have so much left until the next day, in the arteries and throughout the body, a pain so violent that it seems to me to be all dislocated. Sometimes it comes to my mind that if this continues in this way, God will give me the grace to find in this torment the end of my life, for he is violent enough to give death, if I was not unworthy of such a great favor. Only one desire then consumes me, that of dying."

These anguishes of love, so tearing and so bitter, are at the same time so sweet and so dear to soul, that she would spend all life there, even eternity, if such was the good will of God, as Saint Teresis expresses herself at the very place that we have just reported. The reason is, according to Scaramelli?, that these sharp arrows that pierce so painfully, are soaked in the very sweet flames of charity, from where their strange suavity comes to them.

V. — This martyrdom of spirit is sometimes greater, sometimes less. The measure of these various trials is entirely in the divine will, the sole source and rule of these rigorous favors. However the injury of love is in itself more acute than the state of languor; its first injury especially is usually very painful.

The duration is difficult to specify. Sometimes it is a quick blow; other times the dart makes itself feel full hours and the suffering then is such, that the body is in danger of dying t."In its greatest intensity, says Saint Teresis speaking indirectly of itself?, this pain lasts little: no more, it seems to me, of three or four hours, for if it were prolonged for a long time, the natural weakness could not bear it, unless a miracle. It lasted only a quarter of an hour, and this person remained completely broken. It is true that this eruption was so violent that it made him lose all feeling."

In the tongue, violence is less impetuous, but more continuous, and this continuity can bring the soul to the same ends. The ordinary cause of this is that it comes from burning traits, very sharp slenderness, which accelerates the ardour and emotional movements.

Prolonged, these extreme anxieties constitute what mystics rightly call the agony of the soul, a qualification that is better suited to a persistent situation than to isolated and rapid phenomena.

In general, the languor resulting from the love wound is longer than the agony, and the agony lasts longer than the injury itself.

VI. — The effects that come from the purification of love are wonderful and powerfully effective in preparing and consuming the mystic union between the soul and God. THE PURIFICATION OF LOVE: 72,448) degrees to heroic charity, namely: the languor who usefully consumes, the incessant search, the continuous action, the tireless work, the impatient desire, the accelerated race, the vehement audacity, the embrace that defies any separation, the fire that burns Suavely, the total assimilation.

Saint John of the Cross, as a result of these doctors, counts ten degrees which are as many progressive ascensions made by love. If all these degrees do not belong to the passive trials, at least all contribute to sanctification through love, as can be seen from the summary statement we make here.

"One last reason why contemplation is the rise of the soul is that it contains the science of divine love. This science is, strictly speaking, the knowledge of the infuse and affectionate God, who enlightens the soul and ignites it, until it reaches its Creator in degrees, since it is love alone that unites with God. So that we can see these things more distinctly, we will mark the degrees of this sacred ladder by detailing the effects and characters of each step, so that the soul can conjecture from there how far it is. But, since it is naturally impossible to know them and God alone can put them before our eyes, I will content myself, with St Bernard and St Thomas, to say what effects they pro1 Opusc. 61. Love is a great thing, but there are degrees in it. Speaking, then, somewhat more morally than really, we can distinguish ten degrees of this perfect love, by which one comes to ascend in order from this highest state of the way to the state of the homeland. Primus, in quo facit languere utiliter ; secundus, in quo quærere incessanter; tertius, in quo operari indesinenter ; quartus, in quo sustinere infatigabiliter; quintus, in quo appetere impatienhhk = PURIFICATION PASSIVE DE L'ESPRIT duisent dans l’âme, et comment ils l’élèvent vers Dieu.

"The first of the ten steps, which make up the scale of God's love, is to weaken the soul in itself, as the sacred Wife felt when she said: "I urge you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, to tell him that I languish with love."But this languor is not mortal; this holy soul suffers only for the glory of God, for it is this spiritual disease that causes her to die to sin and to all that is not God, and to ignite with divine love. This is what David says: "My spirit, he said, is dead to all creatures, and my soul seeks only you, to my salvation and my help."For as a sick man loses the taste and appetite of meats, and changes his face, likewise, when the soul is affected by this love, it no longer tastes or appetites for created things; it changes in colour and face as a lover carried away from his passion. This infirmity only happens to the soul when it receives this excessive heat, which I can call, in any way, a spiritual and mystical fever...

"From there it passes to the second step or the second degree, seeking God without interruption. This degree of love inspires the soul to care so eagerly for its God, that it seeks him everywhere, and that all his thoughts, all his words, all his actions tend only to him... But, because she regains her strength in this second degree of love, she then climbs up to the third step.

"This third degree causes her to operate with courage and vibe with a lively and comforting warmth that prevents her from getting tired of her pursuits and abandoning them... Some great actions that she does for the love of her beloved, she considers them very small, and some time while she consumes in her service, it only seems to her for a moment, as she is kindled with love... Whatever she does for God, she looks at herself as useless and as the most wicked and vile of all creatures, either because Pamour discovers to her the greatness of God and the honor he deserves, or because she notices great defects in her works and a very low and unworthy way of acting of divine majesty. What covers her with confusion, the burden of punishment and distances her from vain glory, presumption and judgment disadvantageous to her neighbor. This third degree of love makes all these effects in the soul with several others of the same nature, which make it stronger to rise to the fourth echelon.

"For the fourth degree is a source of suffering, which the soul endures for his beloved, without getting tired, with generosity and with perseverance... It no longer offers itself comfort or taste, either in God or in the creature; it does not ask for the gifts of heaven in this life. She brings back her thoughts, her purposes, her cares, to the point of doing God's good pleasure, because of her infinite merits and her blessings... This degree of love is very sublime; for the soul is constantly brought to God by a true love and a sincere desire to be charged with the cross for him. Nevertheless God's goodness often rewards his sufferings with delicious joy, as the extreme love of Jesus Christ for his wives cannot see them in afflictions without helping them...

"The fifth degree inspires the soul a holy impatience and eagerness to possess God, so much so that the slightest delay seems to him long and difficult to bear: she always imagines that she will find her beloved at every step she takes. But when she sees that her hopes are in vain, she falls into failure and engulfment, according to the language of the prophesy king. In this degree of love, the soul must possess his beloved or suffer the agonies of death... The soul hungered and thirsted only for love, nourished itself and satisfied itself only with love; and that is what leads it to the sixth step of God's love.

"The sixth degree of Pamour makes the soul run very quickly towards God, and his hope, sustained by the wings of love, flies there with strength and speed. "For those who hope in the Lord," said Isaiah, speaking of this degree, "will chanser by force; they will take wings like eagles; they will run and fly without difficulty; they will constantly advance."The cause of the agility and speed which the soul acquires in this degree love is none other than the extent of his charity, and the perfect purity which God has communicated to him by passing it through these trials."

"The seventh degree of this rise gives the soul boldness, courage and vehemence in its endeavours. This vehementness prevents him from following the rules of judgment when he has to wait for the answers she wishes, and taking advice when he has to change his purpose; the very shame and modesty are not able to stop the execution of his plans, for the favors that God gives him and the love that he gives to him make her intrepid and ardent in his actions. Moses practiced the maxims of this degree, when he said to God, with great boldness: "Or forgive them this crime, or erase me from the book that you wrote..." The bride even dared to say, "Let him give me a kiss from his mouth."

"This freedom with God has it in the eighth degree, the very one of which is to commit the soul to embrace God and to attach itself inseparably to him, as the Holy Wife says of herself?"I found the one whom I love: I let him go and will never leave him."In this degree of union, the soul fulfills all his desires: nevertheless, it slips from P interruption, since some of those who have come to this term are withdrawing incontinent. Indeed, if they were to persevere, they would enjoy the glory of the blessed in some way from this life. So it is true that the soul remains very little time in this state...

"The ninth degree of love, which is the degree of the perfect, leads the soul to ardour full of spiritual delights. It is the Holy Spirit who lights it in the heart, because of the union of the soul with God. The apostles were kindled, as St Gregory remarked, when this divine Spirit came down visibly upon them. For the supernatural goods whose soul is enriched, it is impossible to understand them; and a few books that could be made to explain them, there would remain much more to say.

"The tenth and last degree is not of present life, but of future life. The soul becomes like it to God, by the clear sight she has of it when she is delivered from the body...

"This is the secret rise that the soul speaks of in its song. It is true, however, that it is not entirely hidden from him; lamour discovers it to him in the degrees we have just deduced by the admirable effects he produces there. And it is in this way that she emerges from herself and from temporary things, and that she ascends to God through this secret love that always rises up to heaven, as fire always extends upwards, towards its sphere and its natural center."

It is seen, love, as a devouring fire, first agitates and torments the soul in order to clear it from all its filth and break all its bonds; it lumbles and gives it purity, brightness, lightness, but also the anxiety of the still captive flame, until finally it splendours free, shining and immaculate towards the sky.

Saint John of the Cross has just described these ardours and movements of sacred love. As long as the soul feels burned and tormented, it is still in the passive test that we are talking about, the purification of love, which prepares and operates union. This work and this fire of love, in fact, by consuming the last remains of natural and clean life, and by replacing it with divine life, excellingly realize the essentials of mystical life. The soul now lacks only the consciousness of this union to touch this climax of contemplation, or rather the violence and impatience of love, which throws soul out of itself, are less an announcement than the prelude and the very exercise of united prayer.

Here we end this long and difficult presentation of the Contemplation. We have studied this divine operation in turn in itself, in its end, in its causes and effects, in the subject which receives it, in its progressive ascension, from the purifying trials which announce and prepare it, until the climax of the Mystical Union.

To the spectacle of these divine condescendences, a cry of admiration escapes from our heart. He also escapes a prayer. May divine love multiply the holy souls he tortures and beatifies, for they are the perfume, the honor and the protection of the earth. And if he met to whom these pages serve to give light and security, let them in return obtain the mercy and grace of the Lord. Prede So GEODE XIIE authore a AE ee RE Letter from His Em. Cardinal Bourret: . . . . . . . . . . . re RODIOBANOBAUE MY COUNTER eme Ne vi Report of the Examiner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AMENT AND THIS PREface of the first edition . . . .

INTRODUCTION

LA MYSTIQUE

RATE NYSIE in PENETAL ATEN Ein These are II. Its own notion, and its place in ascetic Theology. . .

the relationship of mystical facts with each of them. . . . . IV. Mystics as experience and as science. V. Experimental Mystics after Saint Bonaventure, Gerson,

Bona, saint François de Sales; dernière formule. . . . . . VI. Contrefaçons diaboliques et analogies parelles EEE VII. Definition of Doctrinal or Scientific Mystics . . . . . . . : VEHI. Necessity and utility of mystical Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RO SCD CUS and 17 D LU RE DM E rer nr, X- Plan and division of the work +: . . . . + : to . CCE MIS authentic TECIHSME EME CUDE TERM RD PATES doer nales RENE a UE NE A

LES PHÉNOMÈNES MYSTIQUES

PREMIÈRE PARTIE

DE LA CONTEMPLATION

PREAMBLE The Contemplation occupies the first place in mys--~ theology. — Three points of view embrace all matter: the Contemplation in general, its degrees, the purifications that precede it.

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10% I. OF THE CONTEMPLATION IN GENERAL

La Notion. CHAPITRE PREMIER I. Various acceptances: this is only contemplation

théologique . . . . de II. Its definition according to the main mystics, JII 1. Its two elements: intuition and love. IV. How it differs from philosophical contemplation. V. Simple thought and meditation. ee

L’Excellence. CHAP. Il 1. The excellence of contemplation comes from its nature, its

object, its origin, its end, its effects. II. Contemplative life and active life . . . IT. Superiority of the first on the second. RS IV. Contemplation is not essential to perfection.

Les Formes générales. CHAP. Il I. The three modes of Richard de Saint-Victor . . L II. Supernatural contemplation is acquired or infused, II. Chérubique ou séraphique, . IV. Unitive ou gratuitement donnée, V. Imaginaire ou intellectuelle.

L’Objet. CHAP. D: ee and its attributes. II. The holy humanity of Jesus Christ; HE. The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints. . IV. Christian truths and mysteries . . s We The glorious and militant Church, souls. . VI. Qi de ces manifestations . VII. The three circular movements, straight and oblique from Fe to

Dieu.

Les Causes.

1. Man's share. CHAP. V I. Two principles: God and man. IL. Human assistance in contemplation either passive or passive

active II. One can desire, ask, hope for Ja contemplation acquired. IV. Is there any presumptiveness to claim also to infuse contemplation?

2. La part de Dieu. CHAP. VI I. La vocation contemplative. Dispositions naturelles. . Il. Appel surnaturel; ses signes . . IIM. One must give in to divine attraction after having submitted it to the EEA HESTANMECON ERROR IV. In intermittances, meditation resumes if its course. V. Divine action in the very act of contemplation and in each of its elements: suspension, admiration and love.

Les Effets. CHAP. VII I. Inseparable effects of Covenant of contemplation. . TI. The elevation and suspension of the mind. . HI. L’admiration. . . IV. La délectation . . MR Re V. The fruits that arise from contemplation: peace, purification, humility, strength and patience, hunger and thirst for justice, detachment and contempt of created things, desire and impatience to be to God. .

La Durée. CHAP. VII I. Considered generally, contemplation can last a long time. II. As an act, it lasts little. Temps précis". ; IV. Interruptions et reprises ;

Le Sujet. CHAP. IX I. Perfection required: In principle, contemplation is granted only to the righteous and the perfect: it can meet in the beginnings and the progressives. 5 IT. No honest condition excludes contemplative life. III. Preferences for simple, 1V. Des femmes, S V. Des vierges chrétiennes, $ VI. Des religieuses, .

II. THE DEGREES OF CONTEMPLATION Existence and enumeration of these various degrees. CHAP. X I. Gradual march of contemplation. . II. Dieu garde sa liberté . III. Difficultés d’une classification. IV. Nomenclatures diverses: Richard de Saint- Victor. V. Saint Bonaventure VI. Gerson. VII. Sainte Térèse VIII. Saint François de Sales . IX. Alvarez de Paz. ; X. Philip of the Most Holy Trinity. XI. Joseph Lopez Ezquerra . a XII. Saint Alphonse de Liguori

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174 XIII. Le P. Godinez et le P. Schram . . XIV. Le P. Scaramelli . % XV. Classification définitive . .

The A: degree of Contemplation: the Collection

passif. CHAP. XI I. Sa notion. II. How it differs from the active collection. III. Degrés divers. IV. Is silence a ‘special' form of contemplation?. = V. Effects of passive recollection. VI. Sa durée. LAR VII. Déductions pratiques ST

The 2nd degree of Contemplation: the Quietness. CHAP. XII I. Notion et description . . II. Two degrees: suspension of the only will, or

puissances . III. Silence et sommeil . IV. Durée de la quiétude . V. How it differs from mystical recollection and from natural drowsiness. TY ; VI. Effets : amour désintéressé, dégagement de toutes choses sensibles, joie spirituelle . ARLES EU MR SE VII. Practical Tips: Beware of Disturbing Quietness

the will by worrying about the mobility of other powers. VII. Avoid feedback on yourself during this rest. IX. Do not suspend the meditation entirely or engage in the exercise of prayer immoderately. $ X. Perfection required or conferred by tranquillity a

The third degree of Contemplation: the Transports.

Premier transport : l'Ivresse spirituelle. CHAP. XIII I. Transportation connects tranquillity to union. IT. Spiritual drunkenness, its various forms . . Mi- Deux LESDE CES AMAR ET PERRET IV. Perfect intoxication: its concept and its effects . . V. She doesn't go to the ecstasy training. VI. Ses degrés . . UE VII. Sa durée. VIII. Precautions to be taken in sensitive intoxication.

Second transport: the Sleep Re CHAP. XIV | I. His notion and relationship to body sleep. II. Its causes; luminous immersion and the absorption of the will. - HI. How it differs from contemplative silence, from drunkenness, from ecstasy. IV. Sleep occurs at the peak of drunkenness or without drunkenness. -

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is linked to liquefaction or flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perfection et sûreté de cet état ERP CRAN RAS RAR per CS

Third transport: the Divine Touches. CHAP. XV I. Notion générale . . . . Re RM M D II. Deep sympathy between the soul and God. AREA D ESS III. The keys are a test of union, if not union: MAME AN E9 IV. Leurs formes diverses . . . Se TS ET tem e Ge AO |) V. Their effects in the soul and on I Body, DEE 242 VI. It is concluded from their main characters that God alone can

PTO EE N e a as E ne O A

Fourth transport: the Injuries of Love. CHAP. XVI I. The wound he's here with Sata differs from the tests.

pariticatrices: -r si. MaJaa N an A US II. Mélange de suavité et de douleur . OE act PA ORI II. Love is the principle of this in different ways . . . . 251 IV. Its three forms: transfixion, spark, soft liquor

CAR OT RER TRUE ER PESTE RDS V. Its effects on the soul: the burning, the disgust of all that

is not God, anguish and thirst for love. . . . . . 255 VI. Its effects on the body: the languor, the vehement movements, the ecstasy; the Stismates ee EME NN COS VII. Holy Teresis wounded by seraphim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From the Mystical Union in general. CHAP. XVII I. Contemplation tends to mystic union. PRE PRE

265 II. God unites with the creature in two ways: naturally,

by creation and providence; supernaturally, by the

gräce sanctifiante. De ETES TEL HI. The supernatural union, unconscious ‘in Ja grace, brilliant

in the full day of glory. . . . . . . . . . . . 270 IV. Between the darkness of faith and the radiance of glory,

places the feeling that characterizes the union with me V. Sa notion . . VI. Although it does not differ substantially from ordinary grace, it is nevertheless a special favor of God to the soul.

AC LC PEN EE ME UT, E TRANS VII. Its three degrees: the simple union, the ecstatic union, the pertable union OF CONTENTS 454

simple. How simple union differs from the mystical states that

...that precede it and those that follow it. Sometimes it suspends all powers, sometimes only the

will . . to RSR The ecstatic union leads to the total alienation of the external senses. Its three degrees: ecstasy, rapture and theft of mind;

their differences and relationships. Spiritual engagements and their ceremonial . . IV. The effects of ecstatic union . . Perfection qu'elle requiert ou qu'elle apporte.

1. Existence et cérémonial. Through sanctifying grace, God becomes the bridegroom of our souls. .

313 The usual feeling of this union is mysMORER marriage

316 Difference between this state and previous ones. À

318 Restrictions touchant sa perfection et sa permanence >

318 How this sacred marriage is celebrated: apparition

of the Most Holy Trinity and union with the Word. Justification

by the theology of descent and cohabitation of the

Trinité dans l'àme,

321 And the title of Bridegroom attributed to the Word.

324 These mysteries are accomplished in the very centre of K àme.

327 Cette cérémonie se renouvelle . .

329

2. Effets du Mariage E

XXI God reigns over the soul with his illuminations and his inspirations,

and, making her like him, imparts to him a mervae beauty . . Touches surnaturelles et substantielles. Les plaies d'amour . Paix profonde, égalité constante, vertus héroïques.

ecstatic ports ? . its It confers relative impeccability. but not absolute; The role of the Eucharist in the mystical alliance. . CHAP. XXII I. The glorious vision is not part of the regular gradations of mystical prayer, and, according to the greatest number, is never granted to any living man. II. Plusieurs admettent des exceptions . . Aa? II. The common opinion, true in principle, is perhaps severe as an absolute negation: natural connection between grace, glory and contemplation. . IV. Coup d'œil rétrospectif. .

III. PURIFIGATIONS PASSIVES

Aperçu général. CHAP. XXIII I. Why one places the study of the conditions that precede contemplation after that of contemplation itself. . IL. Nécessité des purifications passives. . III. Rigueur de ces épreuves. : IV. Their diversity in terms of intensity, 3 V. From the moment they appear, . . VI. De leur durée, : VIL. De leur continuité . . VIII. The means used to achieve them. The main is the suppression of the joyful radiance of inner devotion on the senses in sensitive purification, and on the spirit in spiritual purification IX. Absolute necessity for souls who undergo passive purifications, careful and skilful direction . . X. Signs of contemplation. . . XI. Conduite du directeur. .

La Purification des Sens.

1. Sa Nuture. CHAP. XXIV I. Necessity of purging the senses because of imperfections mixed with sensitive enjoyments, even in the order of piety. II. Difficulties in discerning the principle of where these enjoyments proceed, and their falsified backlash on the body. . III. Passive purifications of the senses include the struggle against pleasures of temperance and chastity; . . IV. And the painful deprivation of sensitive goods: through the droughts of the soul, the diseases and infirmities of the body, the loss of relatives and friends, the loss of fortune, honours, reputation.

2. Agents and Effects. CHAP. XXV I. The purifying agents are: God, by himself or by in347

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380 456 TABLE OF CONTENTS . - Pages. Men: wicked, close and friends, good people. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 5 III. Demon, through temptations and obsession, rarely by EE possession. ES MR ABOU z5 IV. Conduct and advice of the director € in these meetings. oS 398 TE V. Effects: reduction of sensual appetite, self-knowledgeAt the same time, progress of virtues, inner vitality . . . . . =~ . . 399 Ke Purification of the Spirit.

1. Nécessité et Nature de ces épreuves. CHAP. XXVI I. The purification of the mind disposes the soul to union. . .. 404 IT. Four reasons for its necessity: to complete the purgation of

remove internal stains and imperfections,

achieving the resemblance with Jesus Christ, enriching with graces

etide merites PE EE Ra ANR ee à Ponte ee UE DO NI. Nature of spiritual neglect: I greater torment is

the deprivation of any feeling of devotion. . . . . 409 IV. This aridity is complicated by horrific temptations, mainly

against faith and trust in God. . . . 410 V. From there result other temptations, murmuring, fatigue. 413 VI. Comment on sort triomphant de ces épreuves. . . . . . . . . 414

2. Causes and Effects. CHAP. XXVII I. Causes: men contribute to spiritual cleansing,

mainly those who are expected to be sympathetic and helpful. 416 IT. The demon intervenes with violent suggestions and vexations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 III. God is the true agent of this purification by a light

who reveals to the soul his misery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The effects are: self contempt, adherence to God, 494 V. The perfection of virtues up to heroism . . . . 495 VI. This progress is slow and successive: comparison of Saint John of

Ja Croix et de’Hugues desSaint-Victor. nn me 90

La Purification d'Amour. CHAP. XXVIII PeNature/derce Supremo DUTICALONE e Aa NN SS TST TST DEPTOS TIA DIESSUTED MAA T IN ESG Wounds E OPA E E PR ner ES T a E ASI IV. L'agonie damour. . . . ARE ON LE RU PE 0) V. Diversity in Violence and Duration DATE 449 VI. The effects of purifying love and its ten echelons, € after

Saint Jean de Jai Croix ers minie RE TRE ER ET ETS Conclusion sde dagpremièrezparte: Sas RE A NE nomor — ALBRE -Ma Ja

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