"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man shall hear My voice, and shall open to Me the door, I will come in unto him, and sup with him, and he with Me:" the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Apocalypse (3:20)."Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man shall hear My voice, and shall open to Me the door, I will come in unto him, and sup with him, and he with Me:" the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Apocalypse (3:20).
Whilst we are in this world, the sole desire of God is to enter into our hearts, and reign there; not for His own happiness what need has He of us to make Him happy? but only for our happiness, not simply in eternity, but even in this life: for it is quite certain, to reason, to faith, and to experience, that there is no happiness for man but in God. And to bring this happiness to us what does God do? He stands constantly at the door of our hearts: He knocks there by the light of grace, by good inspirations, by remorse and sorrow for sin, in order that He may draw us to seek good and to fly from evil. If we were attentive to His voice, if we often entered into our hearts, we should notice that He is always knocking there, and that when we do not hear Him it is because we do not put ourselves into a state to hear Him. He knocks there, without wearying, for many long years, or rather, we may say, for the whole of our life. His patience in waiting for us is inconceivable; He bears our contempt, our resistance, our obstinacy, with a goodness and a perseverance beyond expression.
Bring back, O my Lord and my Love, to my memory the time when You began to knock at the door of my heart, and the time when my heart began to resist You! Bring back to my memory all Your loving invitations and all my resistances! Alas! they are both innumerable. Did one day pass, in all those long years, in which You did not call me, not once, but many times? Did one day pass without my rejecting Your call over and over again? What an excess of goodness on Your part! What an excess of ingratitude on mine! Ah! Lord, this double view pierces me and confounds me; it excites in me the most lively horror of myself, and a boundless gratitude for Your benefits. How many sins! what an abuse of Your grace! What an ineffable patience on Your part, in bearing with me, in waiting for me, You, Who, immediately after my first sin, could have thrust me down to hell! How many souls are there, and will be there for ever, who have offended you less than I! Why am I not there, as they are? That is the secret of Your justice and of Your mercy! I shall bless it, I shall eternally sing this mercy, while a crowd of souls less guilty than I am will be for ever the victims of Your avenging justice!
When, after He has knocked at the door for a long time, more or less, any one at last opens it, God enters; He takes possession of that heart; there He establishes His kingdom; He will never go away again, unless He is willfully driven away. He enters there with eagerness, with a joy which nothing can equal! He enters there with all the treasures of His grace, determined to communicate them without measure to that soul, if she is as faithful as He is liberal. He pardons, He forgets all the past. The soul, surprised at such generous treatment, almost herself forgets that she has so long and so often offended Him; and if she does remember it, it is a memory which has no bitterness, and which is produced by love and gratitude. In such a soul that remembrance flows like a river of peace, an interior peace, a delicious peace which is above all mere feeling, a deep peace which passes understanding.
If all souls do not experience what I have just said, it is because they return to God rather by a feeling of fear than by the way of pure love; it is because they give themselves to Him only half-heartedly and with reserve; it is because their fidelity does not respond to His benefits. Therefore, for the most part, they fall back again into their sins, and their life is only one continual succession of falls and of repentance. But as for those souls who give themselves to God entirely, who open to Him their whole heart, and who are more touched by His love than the thought of their own interest, those souls taste, even from the first moment of their return to Him, how good God is, and what a welcome He gives to the sinner who in all sincerity returns to Him.
Ah! Lord of my soul! this is what I have had the happiness of experiencing, and never will I forget it. Yes; from the moment that I gave myself entirely to You, You have blotted out all my iniquities; You have washed my soul in the Blood of Your Divine Son; You have enlightened my mind with a heavenly light; You have poured into my breast a ravishing peace; I have known, I have felt, how sweet it is to belong to You alone, and how all that is not You is worthy of the utmost contempt. Every day You load me with new favours; every day You unite me more closely to Yourself, and You detach me more and more from creatures and from myself. Give me, then, fidelity, O my God; give me generosity. May I look upon it as the greatest of misfortunes to refuse You anything, or even to hesitate for a moment to grant You all. Whatever You ask from me, is it not my good alone You consider? And what other happiness can I find than in sacrificing all to You, without reserve? Life of love, life of renunciation, life of sacrifice, now I begin to understand all your value; I begin to understand that the true and holy use of my liberty can only, and must only, consist in sacrificing myself and allowing myself to be sacrificed by Your Hand.
This peace which the soul tastes in the beginning of its course is nothing in comparison with the deeper peace which Jesus Christ promises to her, even in his life, if she continues to be faithful and generous. The end of the spiritual life is immediate, close, entire union with God. It is more than union; it is transformation; it is oneness; it is a symbol of the adorable unity which exists between the Three Divine Persons. Jesus Christ expressly says so, in the last prayer which He addressed to His Father for His elect: "That they may be one in us," He says, "as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee. And in the Apocalypse, to express the intimate familiarity of this union between God and the soul: "I will sup" He says, "with Him, and He with Me." There shall be a kind of equality between that soul and Me; My table shall be his, and his shall be Mine; our food shall be the same. And what food! That by which God Himself sustains Himself. God will pass into His creature, and the creature will pass into God; they shall have one same Life, and one same principle of life.
This is what is promised, even here, to the soul that loves and resigns herself; this she can begin to enjoy, even here, under the veil of faith. But these are things upon which we must keep silence. They are too high and too deep for human language. This Divine communication is such, that even the soul to whom it is granted cannot express it, and feels that it is beyond knowledge, and beyond conception!
But to be one with Jesus Christ in His state of glory we must first have been one with Him in His humiliations and sufferings; we must have been altogether dead to self, and to self-love in all its forms. It is to bring about this perfect purification of the soul, that Gods allows her to pass through all these trials: trials which are necessary, because only by them can she possibly be entirely freed from herself; trials which are painful, but in which God Himself sustains her, and in which the soul has nothing to do but to abandon herself entirely to God, and allow Him to do all He pleases; trials which give more glory to God and are more profitable to the soul than all the good works and holy actions of the longest life.
Ah! my God and my All, if I love myself, and if I love You more than myself, can I draw back, and refuse to give myself up to the accomplishment of Your designs for me, however hard they may be to human nature? Hitherto You have done everything for me; You have loved me even when I was offending You. Now that I am Your very own, and that I wish to be so for ever, with my whole heart, must You not love me incomparably more?
What have I, then, to fear from Your love, and why should I shrink from being its victim? Even if this love destroys and consumes me, it is only that I may be renewed and may live in You. I give myself up, then; I abandon myself without reserve to all it may please You to do with me. I accept entirely and most willingly all the crosses which Your goodness has destined for me; I embrace them, and cherish them, from this moment, as the most precious favours I can receive from You, and I will never desire to be released from them, unless it is Your Holy Will, until I breathe out my last sigh.
So be it.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou