fourteenth-century recluse on the foolishness of worry, the duty of
confidence, gaiety, and hope. “Notwithstanding our simple living and our
blindness here, yet endlessly our courteous Lord beholdeth us in this
working rejoicing; and of all things we may please him best, wisely and
truly to believe, and to enjoy with Him and in Him.” She brings back the
primitive Christian insistence on joy—confident happiness—as the one
sure sign of the spiritual life. If we have not got this, it is because
we lack the faith and common sense which sees life in a universal and
disinterested light. Once, Julian says, she was inclined to worry about
God’s work in the soul of a friend whom she loved, and she was answered
in her reason “as it were by a friendly man,” “Take it generally! and
behold the courtesy of thy Lord God as He shows it to thee, for it is
more worship to God to behold Him in all than in any special thing.” In
those words we have a complete prescription for happiness and inward
peace. All that is made, as Julian saw in her vision, is but “a little
thing the quantity of an hazel nut” in comparison with the Divine life
that creates, keeps, and loves it, and may be known in those sudden
glimpses of perfection which we call the Good, the Beautiful, and the
True. These, in her language, are “God’s courteous showings of Himself,”
and we are most likely to encounter them when we take the worlds of
nature and grace “generally,” and refrain from partial or egoistic
criticisms and demands. Failure in this simple rule, she thinks, is the
true cause of human misery and unrest. “This is the cause why we be not
all in ease of heart and soul; that we seek here rest in those things
that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is
All-mighty, All-wise, and All-good.”
MYSTICISM IN MODERN FRANCE
I
SŒUR THÉRÈSE DE L’ENFANT-JÉSUS
That Christian tradition of the spiritual life which has been specially
developed within the religious orders—with its definite objective, its
methodical training in self-conquest and the art of prayer—is often
regarded as a mere survival of mediævalism, lingering in odd corners but
having no points of contact with our modern world. Yet this tradition
lives now, as surely as in the days of St. Gertrude or St. Teresa. It
continues to exercise its mysterious attraction; transmuting those who
give themselves to its influence, and producing that special type of
character and experience which is so clearly marked in the histories of
the Catholic saints. In a world of change, this has hardly altered.
Within the contemplative convents there obtains that same scale of
values, that same contempt for the body and undivided attention to the
interests of the soul, that same avoidance of all comfort or pleasure
and eager acceptance of pain, which is revealed in the standard writings
of Christian asceticism. In these houses, mysticism is still a practical
art: the education there given represents the classic spiritual
discipline of the west, and still retains its transforming power.
Through it, souls obtain access to a veritable world of spirit; and
apprehend under symbols eternal values, which are unperceived by their
fellow men. By it they are supported through the difficult adjustments
of consciousness and sublimation of instinct, which are needed when the
centre of life’s interest is shifted from physical to supernal levels.
This is a fact which students of psychology, and especially of religious
experience in its intensive form, should not ignore. They need not go to
the Middle Ages for their examples of the effect of ascetic training and
contemplative practice, or for characteristic specimens of the “saintly
type”; for these may be found within our own period, and studied in
their relation to our modern world.
Those who regard this saintly type as a hot-house plant, raised under
conditions which appear to defend it from the temptations and
distractions of ordinary existence, can have little acquaintance either
with cloister ideals or with cloistered lives. A thoroughgoing monastic
discipline is the most searching school of virtue ever invented. It
withers easy-going piety and “other-worldliness” at the root. It confers
a robust humility which is proof against all mortifications and
disappointments. It leaves no room for individual tastes and
preferences, religious or secular. Its pupils must learn to resent
nothing, to demand nothing; to thrive on humiliations, to love and serve
all without distinction, without personal choice; even to renounce the
special consolations of religion. The common idea of the cloister, as
providing a career of impressive religious ceremonial varied by plain
sewing, pious gossip, and “devotionettes” is far from the truth. On its
external side, a well-ordered convent provides a busy, practical, family
life of the most austere kind, with many duties, both religious and
domestic, countless demands upon patience, good-temper and
unselfishness, and few relaxations. On its hidden side, it is a device
to train and toughen the spirit, develop its highest powers, and help it
to concentrate its attention more and more completely on eternal
realities. That training is still given in its completeness; and the
classic, saintly character is still being produced, with its special
cultivation of love, meekness, and self-sacrifice, balanced by energy,
courage, and strength of will.
Sanctity is the orientation of the spirit towards supreme Reality. To
the believer in any theistic religion, no attitude of the soul could be
simpler, more natural than this. There is nothing about it which
deserves to be called abnormal, archaic, or fantastic. The complications
with which it is surrounded, the unnatural aspect which it wears for
practical men, all come from its collision with the entangled interests
and perverse ideals of the world. Thus, retreat from this tangle of sham
interests, the building up of a consistent universe within which the
self can develop its highest powers and purest loves, is felt to be
imperative for those selves in whom this innate aptitude for God reaches
the conscious level. In these spirits, the “vocation” for the special
life of correspondence with the supersensual reproduces on a higher
plane the vocation of the artist or the poet. All the self’s best
energies and desires tend in this direction, and it will achieve
harmonious development only by unifying itself about this centre of
interest, and submitting to the nurture and discipline which shall
assure its dominance. The symbols with which the universe of religion is
furnished, the moral law which there obtains, are all contributory to
the one end; and find their justification in its achievement.
Within the Christian Church, and especially in that which is technically
called the “religious life,” these symbols and this law have not varied
for many centuries; nor has the type of personality which they develop
changed much since it first appeared in monastic history. The sharp
sense of close communion with, and immediate responsibility to, a
personal God possessing human attributes; the complete abandonment of
desire, combined with astonishing tenacity of purpose; contempt for the
merely comfortable either in spiritual or physical affairs; a glad and
eager acceptance of pain—these are the qualities of the Christian saint,
and these are still fostered in appropriate subjects by the cloistered
life. These facts have been abundantly demonstrated during the last
thirty years in a group of French Carmelite mystics, of whom the best
known is Thérèse Martin, already the object of a widespread _cultus_
under the name of Sœur Thérése de l’Enfant Jésus. Others who will repay
study are Elizabeth Catez, or Sœur Elizabeth de la Trinité (1880-1906)
and Mère Marie-Ange de l’Enfant-Jésus (1881-1909). It is clear that we
have in these young women—for they all died before they were thirty
years of age—a genuine renaissance of traditional Catholic mysticism.
Their experience exhibits many close correspondences with that of the
great mystics of the past; the same development of the interior life can
be traced in them, and they knew at first hand some at least among those
forms of spiritual consciousness which are described by Ruysbroeck,
Angela of Foligno, St. Teresa, and St. John of the Cross.
The first in time and in importance—for the others depended to a greater
or less degree on her influence and example—was Thérèse Martin, who was
born at Alençon in 1873 and died in 1897. The last nine years of her
life were spent in the Carmelite Convent of Lisieux in Normandy; and she
there wrote the spiritual autobiography, _L’histoire d’une âme_, which
has since been translated into every European language. In her
life—which shows with exceptional clearness the reality and driving
power of that instinct which is known as religious vocation—and in the
incidents connected with her death and _cultus_, we find many suggestive
parallels with the histories of the historical saints. These parallels
often help us to determine the true meaning of statements in those
histories; indicating the possible origin of much that now appears
extravagant and abnormal, and restoring to their real position in the
human race men and women who dropped their living characteristics in
ascending to the altars of the Church.
We notice first in Thérèse the extent to which heredity and environment
contributed to the formation in her of an exclusively religious
temperament. She inherited from both parents an ascetic tendency. Her
father, as a young man, had sought without success to become a novice at
the Great St. Bernard; her mother had wished to be a Sister of Charity.
Their marriage had the character of a religious dedication; and their
one wish was for children who might be consecrated to the service of
God. Nine were born, of whom four died in infancy. The five girls who
survived all entered the cloister, for which indeed their whole life had
been a perfect preparation. The idea of marriage seems never to have
occurred to any member of the family. Hence Thérèse, the youngest child,
grew up in a home which was a veritable forcing-house of the spiritual
life, though full of happiness and warm affection; and by it was moulded
to that puritanism and other-worldliness which is characteristic of real
Catholic piety. There the conception of earthly existence as a “school
for saints” was taken for granted, and the supremacy of religious
interests never questioned: all deeds and words, however trivial, being
judged by the grief or pleasure they would give to God. Even as a tiny
child, she was given a string of beads to count the “sacrifices” made
each day. The Martin family lived, in fact, within a dream-world,
substantially identical with the universe of mediæval piety. It was
peopled with angels and demons, whose activities were constantly noted;
its doors were ever open for the entry of the miraculous, its human
inhabitants were the objects of the Blessed Virgin’s peculiar care,
every chance happening was the result of Divine interference. For them
this universe was actual, not symbolic. Their minds instinctively
rejected every impression that conflicted with it; and its
inconsistencies with the other—perhaps equally symbolic and less
lovely—world of our daily life were unperceived. The most bizarre
legends of the saints were literal facts; all relics were authentic, and
most were full of supernatural power. The Holy House of Loretto, the
face of St. Catherine of Bologna still marked by the kiss of the Infant
Christ, found in them willing and awestruck believers. Yet these crude
symbols, thus literally understood, became for them the means of a real
transcendence. The dominant interests of the home were truly
supersensual; a vigorous spiritual life was fostered in it, marked by
humility and love, true goodness, complete unselfishness, a courageous
attitude towards misfortune and pain.
Thus from birth Thérèse was protected from all risk of intellectual
conflict, and surrounded by harmonious contributory suggestions all
tending to press her emotional life into one mould. Such a nurture could
hardly fail to create either the disposition of a rebel or that of a
saint: but there was in Thérèse no tendency to revolt. Her
temperament—ardent, imaginative, abnormally sensitive, and psychically
unstable—inclined her to the enthusiastic acceptance of religious ideas,
and even in childhood she showed a fervour and devotion exceeding that
of her sisters. When she was still a little girl, the two eldest left
home one after the other, in order to become nuns in the Carmelite
convent of Lisieux. The departure of the first, Pauline, was a crushing
grief to Thérèse, at that time about nine years old; and was apparently
the beginning of her own desire to be a nun. She told the Superior of
the convent that she, too, intended to be a Carmelite, and wished to
take the veil at once. The Reverend Mother, a woman of kindness and good
sense, did not laugh; but advised her to wait until she was sixteen, and
then to try her vocation. There is less absurdity than at first appears
in this childish craving; for the religious type is often strangely
precocious. As the tendency to music or painting may appear in earliest
childhood, so the sense of vocation may awaken, long before the
implications of this mysterious impulse are fully understood. Thus
Elizabeth Catez, afterwards Sœur Elizabeth de la Trinité, determined to
be a nun when she was seven years old, and began at this age to govern
her inner life. She and Thérèse help us to understand the stories and
the visions and self-dedication of the little St. Catherine of Siena; or
those of St. Catherine of Genoa and Madame Guyon, who both wished at
twelve years old to enter a religious order. We are faced in all such
cases by the strange phenomenon of accelerated development: strongly
marked in the case of Thérèse, who undoubtedly had, in spite of the
great simplicity of her nature, a real genius for the spiritual life.
She had, too, and in a marked degree, the peculiarly sensitive psychic
organization which is observed in many of the historic mystics. A long
and severe nervous illness had followed her sister’s departure for the
cloister. It was cured by a form of auto-suggestion for which many
parallels can be found in the history of adult religious experience;
though few in that of children of her age. This incident Thérèse has
described in her memoirs with great clearness and honesty. At a crisis
of the sickness, when she was reduced to utter misery and weakness and
tormented by hallucinations and fears, her three sisters came to her
room and knelt before the statue of the Blessed Virgin, praying for her
cure. The sick child, praying too as well as she could, suddenly saw the
statue take life and advance towards her with a smile. Instantly the
prayer was answered, her pains and delusions left her, and she was
cured. The “vision” being told—and of course accepted at face-value as a
supernatural grace—marked Thérèse from this time as a privileged soul.
It certainly indicated in her an abnormal suggestibility, comparable
with that which is revealed by the somewhat similar incident in the life
of Julian of Norwich, and was not without importance for her future
development.
The religious transformation and exaltation so often experienced in
adolescence is seen in Thérèse in its most intense form. It was
initiated when she was thirteen by another nervous illness,
apparently brought on by a morbid brooding on her own supposed
imperfections—the spiritual ailment well known to religious
directors as “scrupulosity”—and it was from this period that she
afterwards dated the beginning of her real spiritual life. The
childish determination to become a Carmelite had now grown in
strength, and when she was fourteen she broke to her father her own
violent consciousness of vocation; a certitude which nothing could
shake. Her inner life was at this time astonishingly mature. She was
not a prig, but a sensitive and affectionate little girl; yet her
autobiography is full of sayings which surprise us by their depth
and wisdom, when we remember the age of the child who thought and
said them. By the constant practice of small renunciations,
self-denial was now habitual to her; for it was by that which she
called the “little pathway” of incessant but inconspicuous
sacrifices and kind deeds, and not by any abnormal austerities or
devotions, that her character was formed. Though perfectly free from
all spiritual pride, she was, moreover, quite certain of her own
communion with the Divine order, and of the authority of the
impressions which she received from it.
“En ce temps-là, je n’osais rien dire de mes sentiments intérieurs; la
voie par laquelle je marchais était si droite, si lumineuse, que je ne
sentais pas le besoin d’un autre guide que Jésus ... je pensais que pour
moi, le bon Dieu ne se servait pas d’intermédiaire, mais agissait
directement.”
These are bold words for a young girl who had been reared in the most
rigid provincial piety, and had been taught to distrust private judgment
and regard her director as the representative of God. In them we see the
action of that strong will, power of initiative and clear conception of
her own needs and duties, which redeem her often emotional religious
fervour from insipidity. It is true that she can and does express that
fervour in the sentimental language which is the least attractive
element in French piety. The sense of a special relationship and special
destiny which more and more possessed her, far exceeded her powers
either of realization or of expression; and unfortunately impelled her
to describe herself as the “fleurette,” the “petite fiancée,” even the
“jouet” of Jesus, and to note in too many casual happenings evidence of
“les delicatesses du bon Dieu pour moi.” Yet we cannot forget that
similar declarations, equally offensive to modern taste, abound in some
of the greatest historical mystics, and that their full unpleasantness
is only mitigated to us by the quaint and archaic phrases in which they
are expressed. Whilst no doubt these declarations represent the invasion
of human desires and instincts into the field of spiritual experience,
its natural craving for protection and personal love; they also witness
to the mystic’s intense personal consciousness of close communion, a
consciousness which far transcends the poor vocabulary and commonplace
symbols through which it must be told.
Therefore we cannot dismiss Thérèse Martin as a mere victim of religious
emotionalism, because her mental equipment is inadequate to her
spiritual experience. When, moreover, we remember the amazing vigour and
tenacity of purpose with which, when barely fifteen, this gentle and
home-loving child, driven by her strong sense of vocation, planned and
carried through a lifelong separation from the father she adored and the
world of nature she loved, we are bound to acknowledge in her an element
of greatness, a strong and an adventurous soul. With a certitude of her
own duty which nothing could shake, Thérèse interviewed on her own
behalf the Superior of the order, who snubbed her, and the Bishop of the
diocese, who was kind but prevaricated with her; demanding from them
permission to take the veil at once, instead of waiting till the usual
age of twenty-one. Further, being taken by her father to Rome with a
party of French pilgrims, when they were all received by the Pope she
had the courage to address him directly—although the priest in charge of
the pilgrimage forbade it—and asked for his support. The end of it was
that she at last convinced the authorities of her special vocation, and
was allowed to become a postulant in the most austere of all religious
orders at the unheard-of age of fifteen.
Her career as a Carmelite was far from being the succession of mystical
enjoyments, the basking in divine sunshine, which some imagine the
contemplative life to be. She now experienced the common lot of the
“proficient” in the mystic way; paying for her religious exaltation by
reactions, long periods of aridity, which were doubtless due in part to
psychic exhaustion. Then, in addition to the perpetual little
sacrifices, self-deprivations, and penances which she imposed on
herself, she seemed, as she says, to be plunged in a “terrible desert,”
a “profound night” of darkness and solitude; and prayer itself became
dreary and unreal. “Tout a disparu ... ce n’est plus un voile, c’est un
mur qui s’éleve jusqu’aux cieux et couvre le firmament étoilé.” But an
inner life which was nourished on the robust doctrine of St. John of the
Cross could bear this deprivation with fortitude, and make of inward
poverty itself a gain. Outwardly, too, her life was difficult. Her
superiors seem at once to have perceived in her that peculiar quality of
soul which is capable of sanctity; and since it is the ambition of every
community to produce a saint, they addressed themselves with vigour to
the stern task of educating Thérèse for her destiny. Still a child,
sensitive and physically delicate, she was spared no opportunity of
self-denial and mortification. Her most trifling deficiencies were
remarked, her most reasonable desires thwarted, her good points ignored.
When her health began to fail under a rule of life far beyond her
strength, and the first signs of tuberculosis—that scourge of the
cloister—appeared in her, the Prioress, in her ferocious zeal for souls,
even refused to dispense the ailing girl from attendance at the
night-office. “Une âme de cette trempe, disait-elle, ne doit pas être
traité comme une enfant, les dispenses ne sont pas faites pour elle.
Laissez-la. Dieu la soutient.”
This drastic training did its work. Thérèse had a heroic soul, though
her courage and generosity found expression for the most part in small
and obscure ways. She has said that she felt in herself the longing to
be a soldier, an apostle, a martyr; and within the limits of the
cloister, she found means of satisfying these desires. “Elle
accomplissait simplement des actes héroïques,” said the Superior after
her death. Determined, in her own metaphor, to be a “victime d’amour,”
her brave spirit never faltered in its willing acceptance of pain. She
hid her mental and physical sufferings, fought her increasing weakness,
ate without hesitation the rough food which made her ill, refused every
comfort and amelioration. By this hard yet humble way she rose in a few
years to the heights of perfect self-conquest and moral perfection:
passing through suffering to a state in which love, and total
self-giving for love, was realized by her as the central secret of the
spiritual life. “La charité me donna la clef de ma vocation.... Enfin,
je l’ai trouvée. Ma vocation, c’est l’amour.”
In this completed love, stretching from the smallest acts of service to
the most secret experiences of the soul, she found—as every mystic has
done—that unifying principle of action which alone gives meaning to
life. In its light all problems were solved, and the meaning of all
experiences was disclosed. So Julian of Norwich, fifteen years after her
first revelation, was answered in ghostly understanding: “Wouldest thou
wit thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Wit it well, Love was his meaning.
Who showed it thee? Love. What showed he thee? Love. Wherefore showed it
he? For love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt wit and know more in the
same; but thou shalt never know nor wit therein other thing without
end.” To live in this supernatural charity is to introduce into the
world of succession the steadfast values of eternity; hence this
quality, so simple yet so difficult of attainment, is the one essential
character of the saints. “Pour atteindre à la vie idéale de l’âme,” said
Elizabeth Catez, who so greatly exceeded her fellow-Carmelite in
philosophic grasp, though not in moral beauty, “je crois qu’il faut
vivre dans le surnaturel, prendre conscience que Dieu est au plus intime
de nous, et aller à tout avec lui: alors on n’est jamais banal, même en
faisant les actions les plus ordinaires, car on ne vit pas en ces
choses, on les dépasse. Une âme surnaturelle ne traite pas avec les
causes secondes, mais avec Dieu seulement ... pour elle, tout se reduite
à l’unité.”