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Saint Paul said: "When I am weak, then I am strong". That is to say, when I have a clear conviction of my weakness, when I know it thoroughly by my own experience, when, seeing that of myself I can do nothing, I humble myself and put all my trust in God, it is then that I am strong with the strength of God, Who delights in making His power shine forth through the weakness of His creature; it is then that I can do all things, through Him that strengthened me.
No less true is it, that when we are strong with our own strength, then we are really weak. That is to say, when we think ourselves strong, when we take to ourselves the 'credit of this strength, when we presume upon it, when we are proud of it, and think ourselves capable of doing everything and suffering everything, it is then that we are really weak, because God takes away His strength from His presumptuous creature, and abandons her to herself.
Strength in ourselves is, then, a real weakness, and even an extreme weakness; it is an inevitable cause of falls, and almost always of the most humiliating falls. On the contrary, weakness in ourselves, if it is accompanied by humility and trust in God, is a real strength, an all-powerful strength, even the strength of God Himself. But why does God wish us to be penetrated by this conviction of our own weakness? It is that He may make His strength shine forth in us. It is because He wishes that all the good in us should be attributed to Him alone; it is because He wishes to be recognized as the sole Author and the sole Finisher of all human sanctity; it is because He cannot endure in the order of grace above all things that the creature should think she can of herself do the least thing, or that she should depend on herself, on her own resolutions, her own courage, or her own dispositions.
The great secret of the conduct of God towards a soul which He wishes to sanctify is, then, to take from that soul every kind of confidence in herself; and to do this, He begins by delivering her up, as it were, to all her misery. He allows every arrangement she makes by her own judgment to deceive all her hopes; He allows all her ideas and projects to fail; He allows her understanding to lead her astray, her judgment to deceive her; He allows her foresight to be in vain, her will to be feeble; He allows her to fall at every step. He wishes to teach her never to rely upon herself in anything, but to rely only upon Him.
When we begin to serve God, when we experience the sensible effects of grace, when our mind is illuminated by a great light and our will is transported by holy emotions, it is quite natural that we should think we are capable of doing everything and suffering everything for God; we cannot imagine that we could ever refuse Him anything, or even that we could hesitate ever so little in the most difficult things. Sometimes, even, we go so far as to ask for great crosses or great humiliations, persuaded that we are quite strong enough to bear them. When a soul is upright and simple, this kind of presumption, born of the intense realization we have of the strength of grace, only comes from want of experience, and does not displease God, provided it is not accompanied by a great opinion of ourselves and a vain feeling of complacency in ourselves.
But God is not slow in curing the soul of this good opinion of herself. He has only to withdraw His sensible grace, to leave the soul to herself, to expose her to a very light temptation: at once she feels disgust and repugnance; she sees everywhere obstacles and difficulties; she succumbs to the smallest temptations: a look, a gesture, a word, throws her off her guard: she who thought herself superior to the greatest dangers. Now she passes to the opposite extreme: she fears everything; she despairs of everything; she thinks she can never overcome herself in anything; she is tempted to abandon everything. In fact, she would give up all, if God did not quickly come to her assistance. God continues this method with regard to the soul until, by reiterated experiences, He has well convinced her of her own nothingness, of her utter incapacity of all good, and of the absolute necessity there is for her to lean upon Him alone.
To this end, He allows temptations to come upon her, so that a hundred times she sees herself ready to yield, if God did not come to her assistance, when there is no other resource; He allows the revolt of passions which, she thought, were for ever extinguished, and which suddenly rise up with an extreme violence, obscuring the reason and bringing the soul to the very brink of ruin; He expressly allows her to fall into every kind of human weakness, on purpose to humble her; He allows strange repugnances and difficulties in the practice of virtue; a strong aversion for prayer and the other exercises of piety: in one word, He gives that soul a clear vision of her own natural malignity and aversion for good. God employs all these means to annihilate the soul in her own eyes, to inspire her with hatred and horror for herself, to convince her that there is no crime too horrible for her to be guilty of, and not the least good action, not the least effort, not the faintest good desire, nor the smallest good thought which she is capable of producing by herself. When at last, after many blows, many falls, many miseries, the soul is finally reduced to such a state that she relies no longer on herself in the smallest thing, then God clothes her by degrees with His own strength, always making her feel that this strength is not in herself, but comes simply from above. And when she has this real strength, she can undertake all, she can bear all: sufferings, humiliations of every kind, labours and troubles for the glory of God and the good of others; she succeeds in everything; no difficulty stops her, no obstacle resists her, no danger frightens her; because it is no longer herself, it is God Who is acting and suffering in her. Not only does she give God all the glory, but she recognizes and knows by experience that He alone does all, and can do all, and that she is nothing but a feeble instrument in His hands, to be moved by His Will, or rather that she is an abyss of nothingness which He deigns to employ for the execution of His designs. It is thus that Saint Paul, after having related all the great things he had done and suffered for the Gospel, adds with the most intense conviction: "Nevertheless, I am nothing; it was not I, but the grace of God, which is in me"
Such a soul renders to God all the glory He expects from her, and reserves absolutely nothing for herself, because she looks upon herself as she really is, and that is nothingness; thus she glorifies God in two ways, by all she does and suffers for Him, and by this interior disposition of annihilation. Oh, how dead we must be to ourselves, through how many trials must we have passed, to attain to this! But then, when we have attained it, our life is one long canticle of praise; God Himself is praised and glorified in such a soul: all there is for Him; there is no self left.
But what must we do to succeed in being thus strong with the strength of God? Of course, the determination must be firm and unshaken to refuse nothing to God, and to do nothing deliberate which may displease Him. When this foundation is well laid, I say that we must humble ourselves for our faults, but never allow them to trouble us, looking upon them as a proof of our own weakness, and drawing from them, the fruit God wishes us to draw from them, which is never to trust in ourselves, but always and only in Him. Then we must not think too much of the good sentiments which come to us in certain times of fervour, nor must we think ourselves better and stronger than we really are because of these passing emotions; the only time to judge ourselves rightly is when sensible grace is withdrawn from us. Also, we must never be discouraged by the sight of our own misery, nor must we say: "No, I can never do or suffer such and such a thing;" but, while we confess that we of ourselves are incapable of the least effort of virtue, let us always say: "God is all-powerful; as long as I lean only on Him, He will make easy and possible for me those things which seem beyond my strength." We must say to God, like Saint Augustine: "Give what Thou command, and command what Thou please." We must not be astonished at any disinclination we feel in ourselves, but we must incessantly ask of God the grace to raise us above it; and when we have overcome ourselves in anything, we must not take the credit of the victory to ourselves, but thank God for it.
Finally, we must be neither presumptuous nor cowardly: two faults which arise, one from trusting too much in ourselves; the other from not trusting enough in God. Cowardice comes from a want of faith: presumption from an insufficient knowledge of ourselves. The remedy for both these faults is simply to look upon God as the one and only source of strength. How can we be presumptuous if we are convinced that our strength comes from elsewhere? How can we be cowardly if we believe, as we ought to believe, that our strength is the very strength of the Almighty?
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou