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Pere La Combe
Spiritual Progress
ATTRIBUTED TO
AT ONE TIME SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR OF MADAME GUYON.
"Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts."--Isa. xxviii. 9.
1. To rob God of nothing; to refuse
Him nothing; to require of Him nothing; this is great perfection.[11]
2. In the commencement of the
spiritual life, our hardest task is to bear with our neighbor; in
its progress, with ourselves, and in its end, with God.
3. He that regards self only with
horror, is beginning to be the delight of God.
4. The more we learn what humility
is, the less we discover of it in ourselves.
5. When we suffer aridity and
desolation with equanimity, we testify our love to God; but when
He visits us with the sweetness of his presence, He testifies his
love to us.
6. He that bears the privations of
the gifts of God and the esteem of men, with an even soul, knows
how to enjoy his Supreme Good beyond all time and above all means.
7. Let no one ask a stronger mark
of an excellent love to God, than that we are insensible to our
own reputation.
8. Would you exert all your powers
to attain Divine Union? Use all your strength for the destruction
of self.
9. Be so much the enemy of self as
you desire to be the friend of God.
10. How are we directed in the law
to love ourselves? In God with the same love that we bear to God;
because as our true selves are in Him, our love must be there
also.
11. It is a rare gift to discover
an indescribable something, which is above grace and
nature; which is not God, but which suffers no intermediate
between God and us. It is a pure and unmixed emanation of a
created being who is immediately connected with the Uncreated
Original, from whom he proceeds. It is a union of essence with
essence, in which nothing that is neither can act the part of an
intermediate.
12. The ray of the creature is
derived from the Sun of the Divinity; it cannot, however, be
separated from it; and if its dependence upon its divine
principle is essential, its union is not less so. O wonder! The
creature which can only be by the power of God, cannot exist
without Him, and the root of its being, that nothing can come
between or cause the slightest separation. This is the common
condition of all creatures; but it is only perceived by those
whose purified faculties can trace the grandeur of their centre,
and whose interior, freed from the defilement that covered it,
begins to return to its origin.
13. Faith and the cross are
inseparable: the cross is the shrine of faith, and faith is the
light of the cross.
14. It is only by the death of self
that the soul can enter into Divine Truth, and understand in part
what is the light that shineth in darkness.
15. The more the darkness of self-knowledge
deepens about us, the more does the divine truth shine in the
midst.
16. Nothing less than a divine
operation can empty us of the creature and of self, for whatever
is natural tends constantly to fill us with the creature, and
occupy us with ourselves. This emptiness without anything
distinct, is, then, an excellent sign, though it exist surrounded
by the deepest and, I may say, the most importunate temptations.
17. God causes us to promise in
time of peace what He exacts from us in time of war; He enables
us to make our abandonments in joy, but He requires the
fulfilment of them in the midst of much bitterness. It is well
for thee, O Love! to exercise thy rights; suffer as we may, we
will not return to self, or if we suffer because we have done so,
the remedy for the evil is to devote ourselves afresh with an
enlarged abandonment. Strange malady, the cure of which is only
to be found in a worse! O Lord, cause me to do whatever Thou wilt,
provided I do only thy will?[12]
18. How hidden is the theology of
Love! O Love, Thou sulliest to excess what Thou wouldst raise to
the heights of purity! Thou profanest thine own sanctuary; there
is not left one stone upon another that is not cast into the dirt.
And what shall be the end? Thou knowest it from the beginning; it
is worthy of so great a Workman that his work should be hidden,
and that while He seems to destroy, He should accomplish it the
most effectually.
19. Ah Lord! who seest the secrets
of the heart, Thou knowest if I yet expect anything from myself,
or if there be anything which I would refuse to Thee!
20. How rare is it to behold a soul
in an absolute abandonment of selfish interests, that it may
devote itself to the interests of God!
21. The creature would willingly
cease to be creature if it could become God; but where shall we
find one willing that God should resume everything He has
bestowed without receiving anything in return? I say everything,
and everything without reserve, even to our own righteousness,
which is dearer to man than his existence, and to our rest, by
which we enjoy self and the gifts of God in self, and in which we
place our happiness, without knowing it. Where shall we find an
abandonment that is as comprehensive as the will of God, not only
when accompanied by delights, illumination, and feeling, but
under all circumstances and in fact? O it is a fruit of Paradise
that can scarce be found upon the earth!
22. God is infinitely more honored
by the sacrifices of death than by those of life; by the latter
we honor Him as a great Sovereign, but by the former, as God,
losing all things for his glory. This is the reason why Jesus
Christ made many more sacrifices of death than of life; and I
suspect no one will gain all without having lost all.
23. Reason should not undertake to
comprehend the last destructions; they are ordained expressly to
destroy our reason.
24. God has means more efficient,
more conducive to his own glory, and more edifying for souls, but
they are less sanctifying. These great and dazzling gifts are
very gratifying to nature, even when it seems to give way beneath
their weight, and thus nourish its secret life; but distresses,
continual dyings, and unprofitableness for any good, crucify the
most vital parts of the soul, which are those which prevent the
coming of the kingdom of God.
25. In our solemn feasts, some
strive to do something for Thee, O my God! and others, that Thou
mayest do something for them; but neither of these is permitted
to us. Love forbids the one and cannot suffer the other.
26. It is harder to die to our
virtues than to our vices; but the one is just as necessary as
the other for perfect union. Our attachments are the stronger as
they are more spiritual.
27. What is a help to perfection at
one time, is a hinderance at another; what formerly helped you in
your way to God, will now prevent your reaching Him; the more
wants we have, the further we are from God, and the nearer we
approach him, the better can we dispense with everything that is
not Himself. When we have come there, we use everything
indifferently, and have no more need but of Him.
28. Who can say to what extent the
divine abandonment will carry the poor soul that is given up to
it? or rather, to whom can we describe the extremity of sacrifice
which God exacts from his simple victim? He raises him by degrees,
and then plunges him into the abyss; he discovers new points to
him day by day, and never ceases until he has sacrificed
everything God wills, putting no other bounds to his abandonment
than God does to his decrees. He even goes further, submitting to
everything that God could do, or his sovereign will ordain. Then
every selfish interest is given up; all is surrendered to the
Author of All, and God reigns supreme over his nothingness.
29. God gives us gifts, graces, and
natural talents, not for our own use, but that we may render them
to Him. He takes pleasure in giving and in taking them away, or
in so disposing of us, that we cannot enjoy them; but their grand
use is to be offered in a continual sacrifice to Him; and by this
He is most glorified.
30. Naked faith keeps us in
ignorance, uncertainty, and oblivion of everything in reference
to ourselves; says everything, excepts nothing, neither grace nor
nature, virtue nor vice; it is the darkness concealing us wholly
from ourselves, but revealing so much the more of the Divinity
and the greatness of his works; an obscurity that gives us an
admirable discernment of spirits, and dislodges the esteem and
love of self from its most secret recesses. Pure love reigns
underneath, notwithstanding; for how can a soul go about to
consider its own interest, when it cannot so much as look at
itself? Or, how could it be pleased to look at what it cannot see?
It either sees nothing, or nothing but God, who is All and in all,
and the more it is blinded to self, the more it beholds of Him.
31. There are but few men who are
led by their reason, most of them are fewer, indeed, who act from
an illuminated faith, or from reason enlightened by faith; but
shall we find a single one who admits no guide but a blind faith,
which, though it leads him straight to God by the short road of
abandonment, seems, nevertheless, to precipitate him into abysses
from which he has no hope of ever escaping? There are, however,
some such souls, who have noble trust enough to be blindfolded,
and led they know not whither. Many are called, but few are
willing to enter, and they who have most fully surrendered
themselves to the sway of their senses, their passions, their
reason, and the distinct illuminations of faith, are they who
have the greatest difficulty in plunging into the gulf of the
blindest and most naked faith; whereas the simple souls enter
with ease. It is the same as with the shipwrecked; those who know
how to swim, or who have perhaps seized a plank of the ship,
struggle and contend for a long while before they drown; but
those who cannot swim, and who have nothing to sustain them, are
instantly submerged, and, sinking without a struggle beneath the
surface, die and are delivered from their suffering.
32. The spirituality of most
spiritual persons is nothing but presumption. When the Divine
Truth penetrates to their centre, it discovers many a theft from
God in their course, and teaches them that the only way to secure
themselves is by an abandonment without reserve to God, and
submission to his guidance; for, whenever we endeavor to bring
about our own perfection, or that of others, by our own efforts,
the result is simply imperfection.
33. The soul that is destined to
have no other support but God himself, must pass through the
strangest trials. How much agony and how many deaths must it
suffer before losing the life of self! It will encounter no
purgatory in the other world, but it will feel a terrible hell in
this; a hell not only of pain--that would be a small matter--but
also of temptations its own resistance to which it does not
perceive; this is the cross of crosses, of all sufferings the
most intolerable, of all deaths the most despairing.
34. All consolation that does not
come from God is but desolation; when the soul has learned to
receive no comfort but in God only, it has passed beyond the
reach of desolation.
35. By the alternations of interior
union and desertion, God sometimes makes us feel what He is, and
sometimes gives us to perceive what we are. He does the latter to
make us hate and die to ourselves, but the former to make us love
Him, and to exalt us into union.
36. It is in vain for man to
endeavor to instruct man in those things which the Holy Spirit
alone can teach.
37. To take and receive all things
not in ourselves, but in God, is the true and excellent way of
dying to ourselves and living only to God. They who understand
the practice of this, are beginning to live purely; but, outside
of this, nature is always mingled with grace, and we rest in self
instead of permitting ourselves no repose, except in the Supreme
Good, who should be the center of every movement of the heart, as
He is the final end of all the measures of love.
38. Why should we complain that we
have been stripped of the divine virtues, if we had not hidden
them away as our own? Why should we complain of a loss, if we had
no property in the thing lost? or why does deprivation give us so
much pain, except because of the appropriation we had made of
that which was taken away?
39. When thou canst not find
thyself, nor any good, then rejoice that all things are rendered
unto God.
40. O monster justly abhorred of
God and man! after being humiliated in so many ways, I cannot
become humble, and I am so pampered with pride, that when I most
endeavor to be humble, I set about my own praises!
41. Some saints have been
sanctified by the easy and determined practice of all the virtues,
but there are others who owe their sanctification to having
endured with perfect resignation the privation of every virtue.
42. If we do not go so far as to be
stopped by nothing short of the power of God, we are not entirely
free from presumption; and if our abandonment is bounded by
anything short of the possible will of God, we are not yet
disengaged from appropriation; and presumption and appropriation
are impurities.
43. I have never found any who
prayed so well as those who had never been taught how. They who
have no master in man, have one in the Holy Spirit.
44. He who has a pure heart will
never cease to pray; and he who will be constant in prayer, shall
know what it is to have a pure heart.
45. God is so great and so
independent, that He can find means to glorify Himself even by
sin.
46. While our abandonment blesses
or spares us, we shall find many to advise it; but let it bring
us into trouble, and the most spiritually-minded will exclaim
against it.
47. It is easy enough to understand
the course of such as go on from virtue to virtue, but who can
comprehend the decrees that send some dashing from one precipice
to another, and from abyss to abyss? or who shall bring aid and
comfort to these hidden favorites of God, whom He gradually
deprives of every stay, and who are reduced to an inability to
know or help themselves as utter as their ignorance of what
sustains them?
48. Who can comprehend the extent
of that supreme homage which is due to the will of God?
49. Those who are abandoned are
cast from one precipice to another, and from one abyss to another,
as if they were lost.
50. The harmlessness of the dove
consists in not judging another; the wisdom of the serpent in
distrusting ourselves.
51. Self-seeking is the gate by
which a soul departs from peace; and total abandonment to the
will of God, that by which it returns.
52. Alas! how hard it is to will
only the will of God, and yet to believe that we do nothing but
what is contrary to that will! to desire nothing so much as to do
His will, and not even to know what it is! to be able to show it
with great confidence to others, but not to find it for ourselves!
When we are full of His will, and everywhere penetrated by it, we
no longer know it. This is, indeed, a long and painful martyrdom,
but one which will result in an unchangeable peace in this life,
and an incomprehensible felicity in the next!
53. He who has learned to seek
nothing but the will of God, shall always find what he seeks.
54. Which is the harder lot for a
soul that has known and loved God, not to know whether it loves
God, or whether God loves it?
55. Which of the two would the
perfect soul choose, if the choice were presented, to love God,
or to be loved by Him?
56. Tell me, what is that which is
neither separated from God nor united to God, but which is
inseparable from Him?
57. What is the state of a soul
which has neither power nor will? and what can it do, and not do?
58. Who shall measure the extent of
the abandonment of a soul that is no longer self-possessed in
anything, and which has an absorbing sense of the supremity of
the power and will of God?
59. Who can take in the extent of
the interior sacrifices of Jesus Christ, except him to whom He
shall manifest them?
60. How can they be delivered from
the life of self, who are not willing to abandon all their
possessions? How can they believe themselves despoiled of all,
who possess the greatest treasure under heaven? Do not oblige me
to name it, but judge, if you are enlightened; there is one of
them which is less than the other, which is lost before it, but
which those who must lose everything have the greatest trouble in
parting with.
THE END.
[11] To appropriate nothing to ourselves, either of God's grace or glory, but to refer it all to Him; to yield up everything to Him with a cheerful and delighted heart the moment He asks for it; and to be so absolutely content with his will, as to be able to confine our petitions to the simple prayer, "thy will be done," which, in truth, contains all prayer--this is, indeed, great perfection!--Editor.
[12] A proviso which the truly abandoned soul will not find necessary, or rest easy under.--Editor.