"Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.""Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit."
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ made this act of entire abandonment when He was forsaken by His Father, treated by Him as a Victim loaded with all the sins of the universe, and as if He were an object of malediction when He was experiencing at the same time in His Soul all the severity of God's justice, and in His Sacred Body all the torments and ignominies which the rage of his cruel enemies could invent when His holiness, His miracles, His prophecies, His mission as King and Messiah, were all turned into derision when of His own apostles one had betrayed Him, one had denied Him, all had forsaken Him when, naked and poor, having absolutely nothing on this earth, not even His immaculate and broken-hearted Mother, whom He had given away to Saint John, He was about to breathe out His last sigh upon the cross. It was then that, collecting all His strength and all His love, accepting fully and with a generous heart all that He suffered in Soul and Body from God and man, deprived of all exterior aid and all consolation it was then that He pronounced those great words, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My This soul of mine, which has exhausted all the bitter scourging of Your anger this soul of mine, which is the reproach of men and the outcast of the people, I commend it, I sacrifice it, I lose it in Your hands!"
We must not doubt that this act of entire resignation was also the expression of the most pure and disinterested love. Pure love is not separated, in the faithful soul, from faith and hope; on the contrary, it perfects them both. We may not have the feeling of them, nor even the perception, but we have the reality of them in the most sublime degree. And it is an error to think that love, when it attains its greatest height in this world, weakens or destroys the other two theological virtues; and it is a gross calumny upon the followers of the interior life to accuse them of this error, and to impute to them the abominable heresy of Quietism, when they teach that the height of perfection is to serve God for His own sake alone, without any thought as a rule of self-interest, either for time or for eternity.
But it is quite certain, by the doctrine and experience of the saints, that man, assisted by Divine grace, can in some degree imitate Jesus Christ in this supreme abandonment. It is quite certain that God can place a soul, and has placed many souls, in such a state of trial as this, and that He has led them by degrees to make to Him the sacrifice of their dearest interests. I grant that we cannot make such a sacrifice with only ordinary grace, and that we must have passed beforehand through very high and very purifying states of prayer, into which no one must dare to venture of himself, and of which this supreme sacrifice is only the consummation. God alone, by an extraordinary grace, can bring a soul into this state, and lead her by the hand to the end of it. There is nothing to fear from delusion in this state, because nature has a horror of it, as it is infinitely painful to nature, and only tends to its destruction; and it is impossible to imagine or to feign this state. For those who are really in it do not generally know that they are in it; they walk, feeling their way in the darkness of pure and blind faith; they accept this state in the superior part of their soul, but the inferior part suffers the most violent conflicts; it would gladly avoid all this intense suffering, and is far from taking any pleasure in it. If it ever happens that such souls are persecuted and misunderstood, it can only be by those who have had no experience whatever and no knowledge of this state; and we cannot take too many precautions, we cannot distrust our own judgment too much, we cannot call upon God too humbly and earnestly, when we have to pronounce upon such matters as these.
When God wishes to lead a soul by this way, He inspires her first of all to give herself up entirely to Him. Then He calls her to a state of passive recollection and continual prayer. He gives her a taste for those books only which treat of the interior life, and gives her an infused knowledge of it in proportion to His designs for her. Often also He enlightens her Himself without the aid of books. Above all things, He takes care to give her a wise and experienced guide who can help her to make progress in the way of perfection, and He inspires her with a docility and a spirit of obedience above the common.
Then He tries her by degrees; He makes her pass from one renunciation to another, from one trial to another, all becoming more and more interior and spiritual. He joins to this various kinds of temptations, either from the devil or from men. At the same time He blinds her as to herself and her interior state; she has no certainty where she is or how she stands, whether she loves God or whether God loves her; she fears to offend Him by her every action; she thinks her incapacity of feeling is hardness of heart; she thinks that the apparent estrangement of God from her is the beginning of His rejecting her altogether; all which causes her inexpressible torment and anguish. It is in vain that her director and superiors try to reassure her and to calm her; all their reasonings make no impression upon her. God leads her thus from precipice to precipice, until at last He brings her to the edge of the great abyss, and' commands her to cast herself down there by an utter and generous resignation of her whole self into His hands. He leaves her some time in this abyss, after which He draws her out of it, and gives her a new and glorious life in Him.
All this is an enigma and a mystery for any one who is not enlightened by a supernatural light. But it is not right to treat such states as these as mere fancies, and those whom God leads by them as if their brains were deranged; we must respect what we are ignorant of, or at least we must not venture to decide upon it.
As to those favoured souls who have some reason to believe that God is calling them to this state of entire abandonment, let them not be frightened under the pretext that all this is quite beyond their present strength, that such a sacrifice inspires them with horror, and that they cannot even bear the thought of it. It is truly here that we may say that the things which are impossible to men are possible and easy to God. He Himself will prepare the soul, she need only leave it to Him; He will change all her interior dispositions; He will purify her and detach her little by little from self-love; He will inspire her with a holy hatred of herself, until He convinces her that she is indeed worthy of condemnation.
All this is true; there is no delusion or Quietism in believing it, still less in experiencing it. This state is the height of perfection for the creature. It is quite clear that we must refuse absolutely nothing to God, if we wish Him to lead us by this way; that we must give all, detach ourselves from all, allow all to be torn from us. What danger can there possibly be in a way so perfect?
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou