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These deep purifications of the soul have often been
treated, for example, by Tauler, by Louis de Blois,
and by St. John of the Cross.
Louis de Blois, [31] explaining the phrase which
Tauler uses, namely, the depth of the soul, speaks as
follows: "The substance of the soul cannot operate
directly. It cannot feel, cannot conceive, judge,
love, will, except by its faculties. In this it
differs from the divine substance, which alone is
pure act, and hence is immediately operative of
itself. [32] God has no need of faculties by which to
pass from potentiality to act. He is thought itself,
He is love itself. God is like a flash of genius and
love, eternally subsistent. On the contrary, the
human soul and the angel need faculties. They cannot
know except by the faculty of intelligence, they
cannot will except by the faculty of will. Hence we
cannot admit, following St. Thomas, [33] that the
essence of the soul has latent acts of knowledge and
of love, acts which would not proceed from our
faculties.
But it is true that our most profound acts, roused
into activity by God, differ strikingly from the
superficial judgments of daily life. These acts are
so deep, so profound in the depths of our superior
faculties, that
they seem rooted in the very substance of the soul.
In this sense, excellent authors like John of the
Cross speak of substantial touches of the Holy Spirit
in the depth of the soul, touches that bring forth a
mystic knowledge, very elevated and intense acts of
infused love. [34]
Since God is more intimate to the soul than itself,
since He preserves it in existence, He can touch and
move it ab intus, from within. He touches the very
bottom of our faculties by a contact, not spatial but
spiritual, dynamic, divine.
Comparison has often been made between our
superficial consciousness and the shell which
envelops the body of a mollusk. Man, too, has his
shell, that is, routine habitudes of thinking,
willing, acting, attitudes which are the result of
his egoism, of his illusion, of his errors. Nothing
of all this is in harmony with God, hidden in the
depth of our soul. This shell, this superficial
consciousness, must be broken before the soul can
know what lies in its most profound depths.
That which breaks the shell is the trials, especially
the trial which is called purgatory before death. A
poor woman, mother of many children, suddenly loses
her husband, on whom the family depended. The soul of
this poor woman suddenly reveals a great Christian.
The
father of a family is captured and kept in a war
prison for many years. If he is faithful, God bends
toward him, reveals to him the grandeur of the
Christian family for which he suffers.
We can see the same truth in a king robbed of his
crown: in Louis XVI, say, the king of France,
condemned to death and executed during the Terror.
Having lost his own kingdom, he came to see before
death the
grandeur of the kingdom of God.All Europe at this
moment is passing through this purifying trial.
Please God that we may understand. Pain is, in
appearance, the most useless of things, but it
becomes fruitful by the grace of Christ, whose love
rendered His sufferings on Calvary infinitely
fruitful. The Holy Father in Rome recently recalled
in a congress of Catholic physicians these words of a
French poet:
Man is an apprentice, pain is his master: Nothing can
be known, except so far as man has suffered.
Thus pain, suffered in a Christian manner, is most
useful. Already in the physical order it is useful,
in admonishing us, for instance, of the beginning of
a cancer. Similarly moral pain is useful, since it
makes
us desire a life superior to that of sense. Pain
makes us desire God, who alone can heal certain
wounds of the heart, and who alone can fortify and
remake the soul. Pain invites us to have recourse to
Him who alone can restore peace and give Himself to
us.
Listen to St. John Chrysostom: "Suffering in the
present life is the remedy against pride, which would
turn us astray, against vainglory and ambition.
Through suffering the power of God shines forth in
weak men, who without His grace would not be able to
bear their afflictions. Suffering, patience,
manifests the goodness of him who is persecuted. By
this road he is led to desire eternal life. Memory of
the great sufferings of the saints leads us to
support our own, by imitating the saints. Finally,
pain teaches us to distinguish false goods which pass
away from true goods which last eternally." [35]
Listen to Holy Scripture: "My son, reject not the
correction of the Lord, and do not faint when thou
art chastised by Him. For whom the Lord loveth He
chastiseth, and He scourgeth every son whom He
receiveth." [36]
We must purify the depths of the soul. Our Lord says
often: "If any man will follow Me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross and follow Me." [37]
Again: "I am the true vine (you the branches) and My
Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me . . .
that beareth fruit, He will purge it, that it may
bring forth more fruit."
This lesson is particularly necessary for those who
by vocation must work, not only for their own
personal sanctification, but also for that of others.
Hence St. Paul says: "We are reviled, and we bless;
we are persecuted, and we suffer it; we are
blasphemed, and we entreat." [38]
The purifying action of God on the depths of the soul
appears above all in what is called purgatory before
death, that purgatory which generally souls must
traverse in order to arrive at divine union here
below.
During this purgatory charity is rooted more and
more in the depths of the souls and ends by
destroying all unregulated love of self. This
unregulated love is like a blade of dogs-tail grass,
which grows again and again. This bad root receives
its deathblow when charity reigns entirely in the
depth of the soul.
Purgatory before death means passive purification,
both of sense and of spirit. Its goal is to purify
the very depths of our faculties, to extirpate, with
iron and fire, all germs of death. During this
anticipated
purgatory the soul merits, whereas after death the
soul cannot merit. St. John of the Cross says: "In
spite of its generosity the soul cannot arrive at
complete purification of itself, cannot render itself
entirely suited for the world of divine union and the
perfection of love. God Himself must set His hand to
the work and purify the soul in His own dark fire."
[39]
Purification of sense comes first. We are deprived of
consolations which may have been useful for the
moment, but which become an obstacle when we seek
them for their own sake with a sort of spiritual
gluttony. The ensuing sense-aridity leads us into a
life much more disengaged from the senses, from the
imagination, from reasoning. We begin to live by the
gift of knowledge, which gives us an experimental and
intuitive knowledge, first of earthly vanity, then of
God's grandeur. Temptations, which become very
frequent, lead us to
make meritorious acts, even heroic acts, of chastity
and patience. We are purified by losing certain
friendships, by losing fortune, by undergoing
sickness, by family trials, for example, in the case
of a person unsuitably married.
This purification of sense has as its goal to subject
our superior faculties entirely to God. But these
superior faculties too have need of purification. The
stains of the old man, says St. John of the Cross,
[40] persist in the spirit though the soul itself may
not be conscious of them. They yield and disappear
only under the soap and lye of purification.
Even those far advanced often seek themselves
unconsciously. They are much attached to their own
judgment, to their particular manner of doing good.
They are too sure of themselves. They may be seduced
by the demon, who carries them on to presumption.
Their
faults can become incurable, being taken for
perfections. [41] Selfishness prevents them from
seeing these faults.
Hence purification of the spirit is also
indispensable. It is a purgatory before death, meant
to purify humility and the three theological virtues.
This purification proceeds under an infused light, an
illumination from the gift of knowledge, a light
which seems obscure because it is too strong for the
feeble eyes of our spirit, just as the light of the
sun is too strong for nocturnal birds. This light
manifests more and more the infinite grandeur of God,
superior to all the ideas we ourselves can make. On
the other hand, it shows us also our own
defectiveness, reveals in us deficiencies that of
ourselves we would never find. Humility becomes
genuine humility. The soul wishes to be nothing,
wishes God to be all-in-all, wishes to be unknown and
reputed as nothing. Temptations against the
theological virtues, common at this stage, lead to
the highest heroism.
Purification sets in strong relief the formal motive
of the three theological virtues. Secondary motives
seem to disappear. We believe, in the absence of
every other reason, for this sole and unique motive:
God has said it. We adhere more and more strongly to
Primal Truth, in an order immensely beyond miracles
and human reasonings. We hope against hope, resting
solely on God's omnipotence and goodness. We are to
love, not consolations, sensible or spiritual, but
God for His own sake, because of His infinite
goodness. And this pure love of God leads us to a
pure love of our neighbor, whatever be our neighbor.
The three formal motives of the theological virtues,
namely, Primal Truth, aiding Omnipotence, Infinite
Goodness, are three stars of the first magnitude
shining in this night of the spirit. St. Theresa of
the Infant Jesus [42] passed through this night in
the last years of her life. St. Vincent de Paul,
suffering for another priest tormented in his faith,
was himself assailed for four years with temptations
against the faith, so strong that he wrote the creed
on a parchment, which he pressed against his heart
every time the temptation became vehement. These four
years in the dark night of faith multiplied his
heroic acts a hundredfold. St. Paul of the Cross, the
founder of the Passionists, endured a similar trial
for forty-five years. This trial was meant chiefly to
repair the sins of the world. Further, since he
himself was already
deeply purified and had arrived at the transforming
union, he was thus prepared to be the founder of an
order devoted to reparation.
This passive purification of the spirit leads to
mystic death, to the death of irregulated self-love,
of spiritual pride, often subtle and little
recognized, to the death of egoism, the principle of
every sin. It
cleanses the depth of the will from all wicked roots.
Love of God and of neighbor now reigns without rival,
according to the supreme command: "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy
whole soul and with all thy strength and with all thy
mind."
[43]
Thus the soul has passed through purgatory before
physical death, and it has passed through in the
state of merit, whereas in the other purgatory after
death merit is not possible. Thus even here on earth
the soul is spiritualized, supernaturalized, down to
its very depths, where all spiritual life begins and
ends. The soul aspires more and more to reach its
source, to re-enter the bosom of the Father, that is,
the depths of God. It aspires more and more to see
Him without medium. It experiences ever more keenly
that only God can satisfy it.
Great saints exemplify St. Augustine's word: "The
love of God has reached the scorn of self." Thus we
read that the apostles, [44] after their
imprisonment, came forth rejoicing because they had
been judged worthy to suffer opprobrium for the name
of Jesus. "And every day they ceased not, in the
temple and from house to house, to teach and preach
Christ Jesus." Their blood, shed with that of
thousands of other martyrs, was the seed of
Christianity. The love of God even to the scorn of
self triumphed over selfishness reaching to the scorn
of God. Unselfish love of God converted the world,
Roman and barbarian.
What will reconvert the world of today? Only a
constellation of saints can lead the masses back to
Christ and the Church. Mere democratic aspirations,
as conceived by Lamennais and many others, are not
sufficient. There is need of the love of a Vincent de
Paul if we would reach the depths of the modern soul.
Everlasting life must again become, not a mere word,
but an experienced reality.
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