How God Is All, and the Creature Is Nothing

He who has well embraced these two ideas can understand the spiritual life, in all its extent; for the sole end of the spiritual life is to give to God and the creature their just due; all to God, all without reserve: nothing to the creature, absolutely nothing. He who acts in all things conformably to these two ideas will be really humble and perfectly in subjection to grace. As soon as we begin to give ourselves to God, we begin also to understand how God is all and how we ourselves are nothing: I do not mean by this understanding a knowledge which is purely speculative and without effect, such as any one may have who reflects on what God and what he himself is; I mean a practical knowledge, which effectually influences our conduct, both interior and exterior. The effect of this knowledge is to empty us by degrees of ourselves, to take from us all that we have usurped, and to reduce us at last to what we really are, that is to say, to nothing; at the same time, to fill us with God, in such a manner that He is entirely in us and we are entirely in Him. As long as we think ourselves to be something, when we are nothing; as long as we look to our own interest in anything; as long as we look to ourselves as our final end in any thing whatsoever, so long we do not really consider ourselves as pure nothingness, nor God as the sole end from Whom proceed all things, and to Whom all things must return.

God is all, in the order of nature. Everything else was nothing until God gave it existence: now existence, simple being, is a gift without which no other possession is possible.

Therefore I am nothing of myself, and I owe to God alone all that I am; my understanding, my memory, my will, as well as the power to exercise these faculties, all is a gift from God. If I appropriate these gifts to myself, if I am proud of them, if I prefer myself to those who are, or whom I suppose to be less gifted than myself, I steal from God what is His own, I do not comprehend my own nothingness, I commit an injustice towards those to whom I prefer myself, because I am nothing, as they are; and, by my pride, I begin even to be less than nothing; I begin to be the object of the hatred of God, Who cannot bear that what is really nothing should dare to attribute to itself any good.

"What have you?" Saint Paul says, "that you have not received? And if you have received it, why should you glorify yourselves as if you had not received it?"

Not only is God all in the order of nature, but He has made all for Himself; all that exists belongs solely to Him; He is the only and necessary end of all things. In one sense, it is true that this world was made for man, and for his use, during this life; but the intention of God is that man should use for Him and for His glory all the creatures which he may lawfully use; that man is to glorify God through other creatures, because man alone is gifted with intelligence and free-will, and he should make use of these only in accordance with the Will of God.

This is, then, the commandment: man, being alone capable of glorifying God by his reasonable service, must refer all to God: his being, all his powers, all his free actions; he must submit in all things to the sovereignty of God; and because God has made him the master and ruler of other creatures, he must look upon those creatures as so many benefits from God, and use them only for the glory of his Benefactor. If man does not obey this commandment, if he looks upon himself in anything as independent, as master of his own will; if, without regard to the supreme sovereignty of God, he acts or thinks as he chooses; if he makes use of creatures otherwise than as God wishes and permits; if he attaches himself to them inordinately, and makes of them his only happiness and his final end he is a rebel, a traitor, a most ungrateful servant, a usurper of what belongs to God.

God is all, in the order of grace, and here man is, if we can say so, even more completely nothing than in the order of nature.

Now, what is the order of grace? It is an order by which the intelligent creature, who is nothing of himself, is destined to the eternal possession of God, Who in Himself is all. And this destiny is so sublime, so immeasurably above the natural capacity of the creature, that there is less distance from absolute nothingness to his simple actual existence in this life than there is from his simple actual existence in this life to a destiny so supernatural.

This destiny is, then, a pure grace of the Creator, but a grace so excellent, so sublime, that God Himself, God as He is, could do nothing greater for man. So that it is principally in the order of grace that man must look upon God as all, and upon himself as nothing.

God is all in the order of grace: 1st, Because He alone has given or could give to us the knowledge of the excellence of our destiny. Man never would have had, and never could have had, the least idea of it by himself.

2nd, Because God alone could indicate to us, and has indicated to us, the necessary means to attain to this supernatural end. Religion, the worship of God, His sacraments, His precepts, all this is absolutely of Divine institution. Human reason, left to itself, could never have known these means, any more than it could have had any authority to establish them.

3rd, Because man, if he is not assisted by a heavenly light, which makes things clear to his mind, and by a good inspiration acting on his will, can never form one holy thought, one good desire, or perform one action which is worthy of eternal life. His free-will needs to be continually prevented and assisted by grace. The very consent which he gives to the promptings of grace is a grace in itself, and God has more part in it than he has himself. His will is excited to good, his actions are made good and meritorious, by the help of God alone and entirely; his only merit consists in faithfully and constantly co-operating with God, and even this is not a merit, for it is simply what he ought to do.

This is how man would stand with regard to grace, this is what would be his dependence upon it, even if he had never sinned. But since original sin has entered into the world, this dependence is much greater. The natural corruption of man inclines him to what is evil, and inspires him with a secret aversion to what is good. His passions overpower and obscure his reason; his ignorance and weakness are extreme. He needs a far stronger grace, if he would do what is right, and persevere in it; and he owes this grace to the pure goodness and mercy of Jesus Christ, Who in His own nature repaired our human nature, fallen through the sin of Adam.

But if to original sin, which has already so weakened him, a man has added frequently and during a long course of years an innumerable number of actual sins; if he has contracted terrible habits of sin, which have made evil natural to him, and apparently necessary, that man is no longer a simple nothing in the order of grace: he is a formal opposition to it: he resists grace, so to speak, with all his strength, and God must actually struggle with him to make him good. It is then indeed that God is all, as regards the sanctification of that man, who is not only nothing in His sight, but who has opposed Him to the utmost of his power.

And this is what we have nearly all done: for how few are those who have preserved the innocence of their baptism! And this is what we may become again at any moment. How? By one single willful infidelity, one single resistance to grace. Yes; when God has sought after a soul, loaded it with the gifts of His grace, drawn it back from its wanderings, and led it safely into the path of His pure love, then one deliberate fault, one formal and obstinate refusal to do something which God requires, may have the most terrible consequences, and may cause its eternal ruin. And what kind of deliberate faults? One simple thought of self-complacency and pride, willfully indulged; one deliberate yielding to pride, when thinking of the graces we have received, or of what we have done for God; one feeling of contempt for our neighbour, or preferring of ourselves to him. Such faults may lead us, by degrees, into a state far more dangerous than that from which God once rescued us. Alas! alas! who would not be seized with a holy terror at the sight of this abyss into which sin has plunged him, and into which it may plunge him again at any moment! Who can think anything of himself when he considers what he has been, what he would be now, if God had not come to his assistance, and what he certainly may become at any moment if he withdraws himself from the protection of God, to lean on his own strength?

O my God, and my All! be all for me, all in the order of nature, all in the order of grace! Teach me to sacrifice all to You, to attribute to You alone any good I may be able to do, and to expect everything from You! Teach me to look upon myself as absolute nothingness from beginning to end, as disposed to evil by my will, as incapable of doing the least good of myself, and as capable of the greatest sins, if for one instant I turn away from You!

Destroy in me that love of self which sin has planted there, and reduce me to that blessed state of annihilation which has no life but in You, which is no longer able to oppose any obstacle to Your designs, and which renders to You all the homage and glory which is possible from the utter nothingness of Your creature! Amen.

- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou