"I am before Thee as one that is not." - Psalms"I am before Thee as one that is not." - Psalms
When we are spoken to of dying to ourselves, of annihilating ourselves, when we are told that that is the foundation of Christian morality, and that in it consists the adoration of God in spirit and in truth, we do not wish to receive this saying; it seems to us hard and even unjust, and we rebel against those who announce it to us on the part of God. Let us convince ourselves once for all that this saying has nothing but what is just and right in itself, and that the practice of it is infinitely sweeter than we think for. Afterwards let us humble ourselves if we have not the courage to put it in practice; and instead of condemning the words of wisdom, let us condemn ourselves.
What does God ask of us, when He commands us to annihilate ourselves and to renounce ourselves? He asks of us to do ourselves justice, to put ourselves in our proper place and to acknowledge ourselves for what we really are. Even if we had been born and had always lived in a state of innocence, even if we had never lost original grace, we should still be nothing else but utter nothingness from our very nature; we could not look upon ourselves otherwise without making a great mistake; and we should be unjust if we expected God or men to look upon us in any other light. What rights can a thing have that is nothing? What can a thing require that is nothing? If his very existence is a free gift, certainly everything else he has is much more so It is then a formal injustice on our part to refuse to be treated, or to refuse to treat ourselves, as if we were really nothing. But we may say that this avowal costs us nothing to make with regard to God, and that it is just as far as He is concerned; but that it is not at all so with regard to other men, who are nothing as well as we are, and therefore have no right to oblige us to such an avowal and to all its consequences. Certainly, this avowal costs us nothing as far as God is concerned, if we only make it with our mouth; but if we mould our conduct upon it, and allow God to exercise over us all the rights which belong to Him; if we freely consent that He shall dispose of us as He pleases, of our mind, our heart, and our whole being, it will cost us a great deal, and we shall even find a difficulty in not saying that it is injustice. Therefore, God has pity on our weakness; He does not make use of His rights in all their severity, and He never puts us to certain annihilating trials without first having obtained our free consent.
As to what concerns men, I agree that of themselves they have no authority over us, and that any contempt or humiliation or outrage on their part is an injustice. But we have not any the more for that the right to complain of this injustice, because in reality it is not an injustice against us, who are nothing, and to whom nothing is due; but it is an injustice against God, Whose commands they violate when they despise us, or humble us, or outrage us. It is therefore God who should resent the injury they do to Him by ill-treating us; it is not for us to resent it, for in all that happens to us we ought only to feel the injury that is done to God.
My neighbour despises me; he is wrong, because he is of no more importance than I am, and God has forbidden him to despise me. But is he wrong because I am really worthy of esteem, and because there is nothing in me that deserves contempt? No. If he takes away from me my goods, if he blackens my reputation, if he attempts my life, he is guilty, and very guilty, towards God; but is he so towards me? Am I justified in wishing him ill for it, or in seeking revenge? No. Because all that I possess, all that I am, is not properly mine, who have nothing of my own but nothingness, and from whom therefore nothing can be taken away.
If we were always to look upon things thus, only as they regard God's side of the questions, and not ours, we should not be so easily wounded, so sensitive, so given to complaining and getting angry. All our disturbances come from thinking ourselves to be something of importance and assuming rights which we do not possess, and because we will always look at things as they regard ourselves, and not simply as they regard the rights and interests of God, Whose injuries are the only ones which ought to concern it.
I confess that this is a very difficult practice, and that to attain to it we must be dead to ourselves. But indeed it is a just thing, and reason has nothing to oppose to it. For God requires of us nothing but what is reasonable when He requires of us that we should behave to Him and to our neighbour as if we were nothing, had nothing, and expected nothing.
This would be quite just, as I have already said, even if we had preserved our first innocence. But if we were born in original sin, if we have stained ourselves over and over again with actual sins, if we have contracted innumerable debts against Divine justice, if we have deserved, I know not how many times, eternal damnation is it not a chastisement far too mild for us to be treated as if we were nothing, and is not a sinner infinitely beneath that which is nothing? Whatever trial he may suffer from God, whatever ill-treatment he may have to bear from his neighbour, has he any right to complain? Can he accuse God of severity, or men of injustice? t Ought he not to think himself too happy to be able to save himself from eternal torments by patiently bearing these small temporal trials? If religion is not a delusion altogether, if what faith teaches us about sin and the punishments it incurs is really true, how can a sinner whom God wishes to pardon dare to think that he does not deserve whatever he may have to endure here below, even if his life were to last for millions of ages? Yes, it is a sovereign injustice, it is a monstrous ingratitude, for any one who has offended God and which of us has not offended Him? not to accept with a good heart and most thankfully, with love and zeal for the interests of God, all that it may please the Divine Goodness to send him in the way of sufferings and humiliations. And what shall we say if these sufferings, these passing humiliations, are not merely to be instead of the punishments of hell, but if they are to be the price of an eternal felicity, of the eternal possession of God if we are to be raised high in glory in proportion as we have been humbled and annihilated in this world? Shall we still fear this annihilation? And shall we think that we are being wronged when we are required to annihilate ourselves because we are really nothing, and because we are sinners, while all the time we have the promise of a reward which will never end?
I may add that this way of annihilation, against which nature cries out so strongly, is not really so painful as we imagine, and it is even sweet. For, first of all, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has said so. " Take My yoke upon you" He says, "for it is easy and light" However heavy this yoke may be in itself, God will lighten it to those who willingly take it up, and who consent to bear it for the love of Him. Love does not prevent us from suffering, but it makes us love our sufferings and prefer them to all pleasures.
The reward, even in this world, of annihilating ourselves, is a peace of heart, a calm of our passions, a cessation of all the agitations of our mind, of all murmurs and interior revolts.
Let us examine the proof of this in detail. What is the greatest evil of suffering? It is not the suffering itself, but it is our rebellion against it, it is the state of interior revolt which so often accompanies it. A soul that is perfectly annihilated will suffer all the evils imaginable without losing the sweet repose of its blessed state: this is a matter of experience. It costs a great deal to attain to this state of annihilation, we must make the greatest efforts over ourselves; but when we have once attained it we enjoy a peace and repose proportionate to the victories we have gained. The habit of renouncing ourselves and of dying to ourselves becomes every day more and more easy, and we are astonished at last to find that what seemed to us once intolerable, what so frightened our imaginations, raised up our passions, and put our whole nature in a state of rebellion, does not even give us the least pain after a certain time.
In all contempt we may have to suffer, in all calumnies and humiliations, the thing which really hurts us and really makes them hard to bear is our own pride; it is because we wish to be esteemed and considered, and treated with a certain respect, and that we do not at all like the idea of being treated with ridicule and contempt by others. This is what really agitates us, and makes us indignant, and renders our life bitter and insupportable. Let us set seriously to work to annihilate ourselves, let us give no food to pride, let us put away from us all the first movements of self-esteem and self-love, and let us accept patiently and joyfully, in the depth of our soul, all the little mortifications which are offered to us. Little by little we shall come not to care in the very least about what is thought of us or said of us, or how we are treated. A person who is dead feels nothing; for him there is no more honour or reputation; praise and blame to him are equal.
In the service of God, the cause of most of the trouble we experience is that we do not annihilate ourselves sufficiently in His Divine presence; it is because we have a sort of life which we try to preserve in all our dealings with Him; it is because we allow a secret pride to insinuate itself into our devotion. Hence it comes that we are not indifferent, as we ought to be, as to whether we are in dryness or in consolation; that we are very unhappy when God seems to withdraw from us, that we exhaust ourselves in desires and efforts to call Him back to us, and fall into the most wretched depression and desolation if His absence lasts a long time.
From this cause too proceeds all our false alarms about the state of our souls. We think God must be angry with us because He deprives us of the sweetness of sensible devotion. We think our Communions have been bad because we have made them without any great fervour; the same with our spiritual reading, our prayer, all our other practices of piety.
Let us serve God, once for all, in the spirit of annihilation; let us serve Him for Himself alone, not for ourselves; let us sacrifice our own interests for His glory and His good pleasure; then we shall always be quite contented with the way in which He treats us, being persuaded that we deserve nothing, and that He is too good, I do not say to accept, but to permit our services.
In all great temptations against purity, or against faith or hope, what is most painful to us is not exactly our fear of offending God, but our fear of losing ourselves through offending Him. We are much more occupied with the thought of our own interest than of His glory. This is why our confessor has so much difficulty in reassuring us, and in making us obey him. We think he is deceiving us, that he is leading us astray, that he is ruining us, because he requires us to pass over and set aside our vain fears. Let us annihilate our own judgment; let us prefer blind obedience to all else; let us even consent, if it is necessary, to be lost through obedience: then we shall find that all our perplexities, all the anguish of our soul, all our interior torments, will cease. We shall find peace, and a most exquisite and perfect peace, in the total forgetfulness of ourselves. There is nothing in heaven, or on earth, or in hell, that can trouble the peace of a soul that is really annihilated.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou