About this time I fell into a state of total privation which lasted
nearly seven years. I seemed to myself cast down like Nebuchadnezzar,
to live among beasts; a deplorable state, yet of the greatest advantage
to me, by the use which divine wisdom made of it. This state of
emptiness, darkness, and impotency, went far beyond any trials I had
ever yet met. I have since experienced, that the prayer of the heart
when it appears most dry and barren, nevertheless is not ineffectual
nor offered in vain. God gives what is best for us, though not what we
most relish or wish for. Were people but convinced of this truth, they
would be far from complaining all their lives. By causing us death He
would procure us life; for all our happiness, spiritual, temporal and
eternal, consists in resigning ourselves to God, leaving it to Him to
do in us and with us as He pleases, and with so much the more
submission; as things please us less. By this pure dependence on His
Spirit, everything is given us admirably. Our very weaknesses, in His
hand, prove a source of humilition. If the soul were faithful to leave
itself in the hand of God, sustaining all His operations whether
gratifying or mortifying, suffering itself to be conducted, from moment
to moment, by His hand, and annihilated by the strokes of His
Providence, without complaining, or desiring anything but what it has;
it would soon arrive at the experience of the eternal truth, though it
might not at once know the ways and methods by which God conducted it
there.
People want to direct God instead of resigning themselves to be
directed by Him. They want to show Him a way, instead of passively
following that wherein He leads them. Hence many souls, called to enjoy
God Himself, and not barely His gifts, spend all their lives in running
after little consolations, and feeding on them--resting there only,
making all their happiness to consist therein.
If my chains and my imprisonment in any way afflict you, I pray that
they may serve to engage you to seek nothing but God for Himself alone,
and never to desire to possess Him but by the death of your whole
selves, never to seek to be something in the ways of the Spirit, but
choose to enter into the most profound nothingness.
I had an internal strife, which continually racked me--two powers which
appeared equally strong seemed equally to struggle for the mastery
within me. On the one hand, a desire of pleasing Thee, O my God, a fear
of offending, and a continual tendency of all my powers to Thee--on the
other side, the view of all my inward corruptions, the depravity of my
heart, and the continual stirring and rising of self. What torrents of
tears, what desolations have these cost me? "Is it possible," I cried,
"that I have received so many graces and favors from God only to lose
them;--that I have loved Him with so much ardor, but to be eternally
deprived of Him; that His benefits have only produced ingratitude; His
fidelity been repaid with infidelity; that my heart has been emptied of
all creatures, and created objects, and filled with His blessed
presence and love, in order now to be wholly void of divine power, and
only filled with wanderings and created objects!"
I could now no longer pray as formerly. Heaven seemed shut to me, and I
thought justly. I could get no consolation or make any complaint; nor
had I any creature on earth to apply to. I found myself banished from
all beings without finding a support of refuge in anything. I could no
more practice any virtue with facility. "Alas!" said I, "is it possible
that this heart, formerly all on fire, should now become like ice!" I
often thought all creatures combined against me. Laden with a weight of
past sins, and a multitude of new ones, I could not think God would
ever pardon me, but looked on myself as a victim designed for Hell. I
would have been glad to do penances, to make use of prayers,
pilgrimages, and vows. But still, whatever I tried for a remedy seemed
only to increase the malady. I may say that tears were my drink, and
sorrow my food. I felt in myself such a pain as I never could bring any
to comprehend, but such as have experienced it. I had within myself an
executioner who tortured me without respite. Even when I went to
church, I was not easy there. To sermons I could give no attention;
they were now of no service or refreshment to me. I scarcely conceived
or understood anything in them, or about them.