The First TruthThe First Truth
God has only given free-will to man that he may consecrate it to Him; therefore the best use we can make of our free-will is to put it in the hands of God again, to renounce all wish to guide ourselves, and to allow God to dispose of us in all things, because in the designs of God everything that happens to us by the arrangement of His Providence must be for our eternal salvation.
Saint Paul says that "All things work together for good to them that love God." If I govern myself in anything whatever, in the first place it is very much to be feared that I shall govern myself badly; and in the second place I am then answerable for the consequences, and if they are bad I cannot be sure of being able to remedy them. If on the contrary I allow myself to be governed by God, I am no longer answerable for anything God takes charge of everything; I am quite sure of being well guided, and that nothing can happen to me that will not be for my greater good, for God loves me infinitely more than I love myself.
God is infinitely wiser and more enlightened than I am, and if I make Him my absolute Master, it is impossible that anything can prevent the execution of His designs of goodness and mercy towards me.
This first truth is self-evident.
Second Truth
The second truth is not less certain by experience, and it is this: that the source of the true peace of man is in the gift he makes of himself to God, and that when this gift is full and entire, generous and irrevocable, the peace which he will enjoy in return will be uninterrupted, and will increase and be strengthened from one day to another even by events which apparently might change it or do it harm. The only happiness in life, the only happiness we can obtain for ourselves by the good use of our free-will, is peace of heart. And this peace is not for the wicked, as God tells us in Holy Scripture. The peace also of those devout persons who have not fully given themselves to God is very weak, very tottering, very much troubled either by the scruples of their conscience or their fear of the judgments of God, or the various accidents and events of life. When is it then that a deep, solid, and unchangeable peace takes root in a soul? From the moment that she gives herself entirely to God she enters into a rest and a peace that is none other than the peace of God Himself, upon Whom she leans. We share, of necessity, in the nature of the things to which we attach ourselves. If I unite myself to things that are continually in motion, I experience the same agitation myself; if I unite myself to God, Who alone is unchangeable, I share in His immutability, and nothing can shake me so long as I do not separate myself from Him.
Third Truth
We are not capable, of ourselves, either of great or little things for God; but we must rather desire little things, leaving it to God, when He thinks fit, to make us do great things.
Little opportunities of serving and loving Him present themselves every day, almost every instant great ones rarely offer themselves to us. Little things conduce no less to our sanctification than great ones, and perhaps they even do so more, because they keep us humble, and give self-love nothing to feed upon. Fidelity in little things, a carefulness to please God even in the smallest trifles, proves the reality and the delicacy of our love. We may do little things with such an exalted motive that they may be more pleasing to God than the greatest things done in less perfect dispositions. Let us cast an eye upon the holy house of Nazareth, and the simple and wonderful lives led there, and we shall be convinced of the truth of this. Finally, one thing is certain by the teaching of Holy Scripture, and that is that he who neglects and despises little things will also neglect greater ones. Let us then aspire to the perfect practice of little things, and of all that can nourish in us a child-like and simple spirit.
Fourth Truth
The love of God has in us only one enemy, which is the love of ourselves; the devil is only strong against us, and only has power over us, through this self-love. Human respect, which is so terribly strong in so many souls, is the child of self-love. All the obstacles we meet with, all the interior disturbances we experience, only come from self-love. And in proportion as self-love is weakened, and we give up our own judgment and bend our own will to the will of God, which is His own glory and His own good pleasure, so will our difficulties be overcome, our conflicts will cease, our troubles will vanish, and peace and calm will be established in our hearts. Self-love, which at first is open and coarse and plainly seen, becomes more delicate and more spiritual as we advance. And the more spiritual it is, and the deeper and more secret it is, so much the more difficult is it to uproot, and so much the more distress and agony of spirit does it cost us to deliver ourselves from it.
We only know self-love as far as the Divine light discovers it to us, and God only shows it to us by degrees, in proportion as He wishes to destroy it: thus, self-love is only known to us by the blows that God deals at it and that we deal at it conjointly with God, and gradually Divine love occupies the place from which self-love has been driven, until at last Divine love succeeds in driving it completely from the centre of the soul, and reigns there alone, without a rival. When once a soul belongs to Divine love, she is perfectly purified; she may still have to suffer, but she resists no more, and she enjoys the most profound peace in the midst of her sufferings.
Let us follow the different states of the spiritual life, and let us see in a general manner, without going into details, how God pursues self-love from place to place in each of these states.
The most gross kind of self-love lives in the senses, and in the attachment to the things of sense. God drives it out by purifying the senses with His own sweetness and with heavenly consolations, which inspire the soul with disgust and contempt for all earthly pleasures.
Then self-love attaches itself to these consolations, to this peace, to this sensible recollection, until God takes away that support, and withdraws little by little all sensible feeling, leaving to the soul, at the same time, its real peace and tranquillity.
At last, by various kinds of trials, He apparently disturbs this peace completely upon which self-love was relying. We begin to lose ground, and to find no longer any resource in ourselves.
Then to the trials which come from God are joined the temptations of the devil. The soul finds herself stained with thoughts against purity, against faith and hope and charity; then she begins no longer to rely on her own strength or her own virtue; she thinks herself stained with sin, and her director has much trouble in persuading her that she has not consented to the suggestions of the devil. The temptations are always increasing, and her resistance, I do not say really, but apparently, is always growing weaker, in such a manner that at last the soul imagines she has consented; she sees herself covered with sins, and for this reason she imagines herself rejected by God and forsaken by Him: it is now that self-love is really desolate, and finds the greatest difficulty in serving God for Himself alone, without any consolation. This state lasts until the soul learns to seek herself in nothing. Then self-love leaves her at last and for ever.
And when the soul is thus dead to herself, God gives her a new life, which belongs more to heaven than to earth, in which she possesses God with the firmest confidence, I might almost say with the assurance of never losing Him. She feels that she is united closely with Him in the very depths of her being and in all her faculties her body even, in a manner, shares in this blissful union. She loves, and she is loved again; no more fears, no more troubles, no more temptations; her sufferings, if she still has any, only serve as food for her love. She waits for death in the greatest peace, and dies in the purest act of love.
Fifth Truth
In the whole course of the sanctification of a soul, the action of God always goes on increasing, and the action of the soul herself is always growing less, until at last all her care is to repress her own activity in order to place no obstacle in the way of the Divine operation. The soul then becomes more and more passive, and God exercises His power over her more and more, until the will of the creature is entirely transformed into the will of God.
The great point, therefore, when we have once given ourselves completely, is to allow ourselves to be despoiled of everything; for God will take all that we give Him, and will scarcely leave to the soul her own being I mean her moral being, and her love for herself but God alone takes all, to bring that all to a state of perfection and excellence above anything that we can think or say.
Sixth Truth
Let us explain by a comparison what passes with regard to the soul in the way of perfection. A son, influenced by his good natural disposition, protests to his father that he loves him with his whole heart, without any thought of self-interest. The father shows at first by his caresses and his favours how sensible he is of this love of his son. At last, to try if this love is really true and sincere, he withdraws his caresses, he rebukes and neglects his son, he seems to despise his services, he has no attention except for his other children, and seems to forget this one entirely; he exacts everything from him with the utmost severity, and punishes him severely for the least faults. Not only does he give this son nothing, but he despoils him of everything, and leaves him, so to speak, in a state of entire nakedness; he takes occasion to ask of him the greatest sacrifices, and at last goes so far that he allows this son to think that he will have no share in his inheritance. In spite of all this, the good son perseveres to the end in giving his father every proof of his love that he possibly can; he spares himself in nothing, he seeks himself in nothing; he looks to nothing but the good pleasure of his father. Forsaken, despoiled, and ill-treated, he still loves his father with a strength, a generosity, and a disinterestedness which rises above all trials.
Now, what will not this father do for a son who loves him so much? Will he not give him, during his life and after his death, everything that he possibly can give him without being unjust to his other children?
A love which counts the cost, which calculates, which looks at its own interest, in a word which will only go so far and no farther, is not a perfect love: to be truly worthy of God, a love must be without measure and without bounds; it must rise above human reason and prudence, and must go as far as folly, even the folly of the cross! It is so that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ loved His Father; it is so that He loves each one of us. We shall gain in eternity all that we have lost for God in time, and we shall lose in eternity all that we have refused to Him in time.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou