[page 215]
THOSE students of mysticism who feel that the purely
cloistered type of spirituality, as seen in Thérèse Martin and
Elizabeth Catez, is too remote from the common experience
to be actual to us, may find something with which they can
sympathize and from which they can learn, in the self-revelations of the remarkable contemplative who is known under
the pseudonym of Lucie-Christine.
This lady, whose spiritual journal was published in 1912,
was a married woman of the leisured class, leading the ordinary
life of a person of her type and position. She was born in
1844 and married in 1865. She had five children. At forty-three she became a widow, and in 1908, after nineteen years
of blindness, she died at the age of sixty-four. Nothing
could have been more commonplace than her external circumstances. On the religious side she was an exact and fervent
Roman Catholic, accepting without question the dogmas
and discipline of the Church, and diligent in all the outward
observances of conventional French piety. Her time was
spent in family and social duties, sometimes in Paris, sometimes in her country home; and she appeared to her neighbours
remarkable only for her goodness, gentleness, and love of
religion. Yet her inward life — unsuspected by any but her
parish priest, for whom her journal was written — had a richness
and originality which entitle her to a place among the Catholic
mystics, and often help us to understand the meaning and
character of the parallel experiences which those mystics
[page 216]
describe. The value for study of a contemplative who is at
once so modern and so classic is obvious. This value is increased by the fact that for many years Lucie-Christine knew
nothing of mystical literature, and was ignorant even of
the names of the spiritual states which her journal so faithfully
describes. Therefore in her case unconscious imitation,
which accounts for much so-called mystical experience,
appears to be excluded.
Her journal — at present our only source of information —
covers thirty-eight years: from 1870 to 1908. The first
twelve years, however, are only represented by fragmentary
notes, put together in 1882; when Lucie-Christine, at the
suggestion of her confessor, began to keep a detailed record
of her religious life. Whatever view we may take of its
theological value, this record is certainly a psychological
document of the first class. It is the work of a woman of
marked intelligence; temperamentally philosophic, and with
great intuitional gifts. The short memoir prefixed to the
French edition tells us that even as a child she showed unusual
qualities; was grave, thoughtful, and to some extent "psychic,"
being subject to flashes of clairvoyance, and premonitions of
important and tragic events. This peculiarity, which she
disliked and never spoke of, persisted through life; and its
presence in her helps us to understand how the many stories
of abnormal power possessed by the mystics first arose.
Her character was by no means of that detached and
inhuman type which is supposed to be proper to religious
exaltation. She was ardent and impressionable, gave love
and craved for it; her qualities and faults were essentially
of a lovable kind. She reveals herself in her journal as
sensitive, idealistic, and affectionate; somewhat unpractical,
very easily wounded, tempted to irritability, and inclined to
worry. "The excessive wish to be loved, appreciated,
admired by those whom I love," was one of the temptations
against which, as a young woman, she felt it necessary to pray:
[page 217]
another was the longing for enjoyment, for personal happiness.
It was only after eight years of intermittent mystical experience that she learned the secret of inward peace: to "lose
her own interests in those of God, and receive a share in His
interests in exchange." Though the "activity and practical
capacity of Martha" never came naturally to her, she was yet
a splendid wife and mother. Even in the years when her
inner life was passed in almost continuous contemplation, she
never neglected human duties for superhuman joys; but
planned and shared the amusements of her boys and girls,
wrote and rehearsed the plays which they acted, and watched
with care over every detail of their lives.
Her spiritual life developed gradually and evenly. There
is no trace in it of any psychic storm or dramatic conversion.
She grew up in a religious home, and even in childhood seems
to have been attracted to silent devotion or "mental prayer."
As a girl she was a vital, impulsive creature, full of eager
enthusiasms. That deep, instinctive longing for Perfection
which makes one man an artist, another a philosopher, and
another a saint, showed itself early in a passionate worship
of all beautiful things. " Tout ce que je connaissais de beau
me passionnait et entraînait toute mon âme. La première
vue de la mer et des falaises m'arracha des larmes. . . . Je
ne pouvais trouver l'expression qui traduisit assez ardeur
dont le beau enflammait mon imagination, et je ne voyais
pas d'inconvénients ces entraînements excessifs; au contraire,
je m'y livrais de toute la force de ma volonte. Infortunée,
mon âme en revenait cependant avec le sentiment du vide et
de l'insuffisance, et c'est alors qu'elle rejetait son activité
dévorante sur l'idéal qui lui reservait tant de dangers! Moins
altérée du beau, je me fusse peut-être contentée des choses
réelles, mais comme le coureur, lancé dans un fol elan, dépasse
le but, ainsi mon âme s'élançait vers le beau a peine aperçu
et cherchait encore au delâ."
In this important passage we see the true source of Lucie's
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mysticism. It was the craving for an absolute and unchanging
loveliness on which to expend her large-hearted powers of
adoration and self-giving, which led her like the Platonists
through visible beauty to its invisible source. She had, as
she says of herself in a sudden flash of ironic wit, "le coeur
assez mal placé pour trouver Dieu plus aimable que le monde,
et l'esprit assez étroit pour se contenter de l'Infini"; but it was
not until youth was nearly over, and she had been married
for eight years, that she found what she sought. One day,
when she was meditating as usual on a passage in the Imitation of Christ, she saw and heard within her mind the words "Dieu seul!" — summing up and answering in one phrase the
vague efforts and questions of her growing mystical sense,
and offering to the hungry psyche the only satisfaction of
desire. As Fox was released from his conflict by the inner
voice which cried, "There is one only who can speak to thy
condition," so this inner voice, says Lucie (whom it greatly
astonished), "fut à la fois une lumière, un attrait, et une force.
Une lumière qui me fit voir comment je pouvais être complètement à Dieu seul dans le monde, et je vis que jusque-là je ne l'avais pas bien comprit. Un attrait par lequel mon coeur fut
subjuguè et ravi. Une force qui m'inspira une résolution
genereuse et me mit en quelque sorte dans les mains les
moyens de l'exécuter, car le propre de ces paroles divines est
d'opérer ce qu'elles disent."
We see at once the complete and practical character of her
reaction to the divine; the promptitude with which she makes
the vital connection between intuition and act. St. Teresa
said that the object of the spiritual marriage was "the incessant production of work." So for Lucie-Christine that sure
consciousness of the Presence of God which now became
frequent, "clothing and inundating" her as she sat alone at
her sewing or took part in some social activity, called her
above all to "faire les petites choses du dévouement journalier
avec amour"; conquering her natural irritability and dislike
[page 219]
for the boredoms and unrealities of a prosperous existence.
"N'avoir jamais l'air ennuyé des autres. Que de fois je
manque à ceci avec les pauvres enfants. Vous etes ennuyeux!
C'est bien vite dit! Est-ce une amabilité divine? "
More and more, as her mystical consciousness grew, the
life of contemplation became her delight; and it was plainly
a real trial to be distracted from it for trivial purposes. In
company, or busied with household duties, she went for
hours with "her soul absorbed, its better part rapt in God."
She "tried to appear ordinary," and made excuses if her
abstraction was observed; but there are a few entries in her
journal which will give pleasure to those who condemn
mysticism as an "anti-social type of religion." " Nous avons
été nous promener, quatorze. Je remarque que d'aller ainsi
avec plusieurs 'Marthes' hommes ou femmes, cela ne fait
rien. On laisse discourir, on met un mot de temps en temps,
mais, en définitive, on demeure bien libre et l'oraison va toute
seule. Mais avec une seule Marthe, que c'est terrible! La
tete-a-tete oblige a causer presque tout le temps."
When Lucie wrote this, ten years after her first illuminative
experience, she was far advanced in contemplation. She
had known that direct and ineffable vision of God "Himself
the True, the Good, the Beautiful; all things being nothing
save by Him" which is characteristic — though she knew it
not — of the unitive way: known too the corresponding
experience of dereliction, when the door which had opened on
Eternity seemed tightly closed. It would be tedious to analyze
in detail the rich profusion of mystic states which she had
already exhibited: the degrees of contemplation, ecstasies,
visions and voices, all the forms taken by her growing intuition
of the Transcendent. Many of these can be matched in the
writings of the great mystics. Again and again as we read
her, we are reminded of Angela of Foligno, Ruysbroeck, Julian
of Norwich, Catherine of Genoa, even of Plotinus: yet Lucie-Christine was at this time ignorant of mystical literature,
[page 220]
and only in later life found with amazement descriptions of
her own experiences in the works of the great contemplatives.
These experiences had a wide range. Some we are justified
in regarding as invasions from her deeper self; coming to the
rescue of the often distracted surface personality, and correcting the impressions of the outer world by its own intimations
of Eternity. Thus, in 1875, she confesses that being particularly worried by a number of people, the Divine voice said to
her, "Ma fine, il n' y a que toi et moi." She replied: "Seigneur,
et les autres?" The voice said: "Pour chaque âme en ce
monde il n'y a que moi et elle, toutes les autres âmes et toutes
choses ne sont rien pour elle que par moi et pour moi," and
by this timely reminder of the one Reality in whose life she
lived, and by and in whom alone all other lives are real, she
was recalled to her inner poise.
In assessing the value of this, and many other of her revelations, we have to remember that Lucie-Christine was a fervent
and exact Churchwoman. Her belief was literal. She
felt no discord between traditional Christianity of the most
concrete kind and the freedom of her own communion with
God. The fruits of that communion were often expressed by
her in theological terms, and the special atmosphere and
tendencies of French Catholicism certainly affected the form
of many of her contemplations. Thus at one end of the scale
her passionate devotion to the Person of Christ, and the fact
that her religious practice centred in the Eucharist, sometimes resulted in visions of a distinctly anthropomorphic
type. In these, her intuition of God's presence translated
themselves into hallucinatory images of the Face of Christ,
or of His eyes looking at her; or photisms, which she explained
to herself as the radiance emanating from His person. As we
all know, such dramatizations of mystical emotion are comparatively commonplace. The elements from which the self
constructs them are by no means all of a spiritual kind; and
experienced mystics agree in regarding them with much
[page 221]
suspicion. A careful study of Lucie-Christine's journal
forces us to admit, that the deliberate passivity which she
cultivated often placed her at the mercy of her instinctive
nature; and that its hidden wishes sometimes took a devotional
form. To this source, too, we must refer those "obsessions
and temptations" — in other words, uprushes from the lower
centres — by which she was often attacked during contemplation, and also the occasionally sentimental and emotional
character of her reactions to the Divine.
These objections, however, do not apply to the remarkable "metaphysical visions" — sharp onsets of real transcendental
consciousness — in which her innate passion for the Absolute
found satisfaction. Then, as she says, God seemed to "put
aside all intermediaries between Himself and the soul;" and "bathed and irradiated by the Divine substance "she became
"aware of the Divine Abyss," or perceived, as Julian of Norwich did, "the Universe in a point," swallowed up in the simple
yet overwhelming sight of God. Here lie, for us, the real
interest and value of Lucie-Christine's confessions. She
shares with Angela of Foligno and a few other historical
mystics the double apprehension of the Divine Nature under
its personal and impersonal forms; and as both utterly transcendent to, yet completely immanent in, the human soul.
In her descriptions of these visions, this woman unread in
philosophy displays a grasp of the philosophic basis of religion
which would do credit to a trained theologian. Thus she says "Il n'y a pas, ce me semble, de vue intérieure qui égale celle
de l'essence divine. Mon âme était comme environnée de la
substance divine en laquelle elle voyait ce caractère essential
qui nous est révelé par le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, c'est-à-dire qu'il y a en Dieu l'unite et la distinction, le tout et le
particulier, et je sentais combien c'est folie de chercher quelque
chose en dehors de lui." Again, "Étant profondement unie
a lui dans la Sainte Communion, je vis Dieu en tant qu'il
est le souverain bien, et je compris en même temps que le mal
[page 222]
n'est que la négation du bien, un pur néant. . . . Dans cette
vue intellectuelle, je compris aussi combien sera grande la
confusion des pécheurs quand ils seront jugés, et qu'ils verront
que tout le mal qu'ils ont aimé, préconisé, adoré, se réduit au
néant! Avoir aime le néant, avoir veçu pour lui, et perdre
pour lui l'Etre éternel!" Here Lucie's view of sin is that
characteristic of all mystics; who can seldom be persuaded,
however orthodox they may be in other respects, that anything which is not good is real. We remember how Julian
of Norwich, also a natural contemplative of philosophic
temperament, says, "I saw not sin; for I believe it has no
manner of substance nor part of being."
As an analyzer of her own psychological states, Lucie-Christine
had something of that genius which St. Teresa possessed in
a supreme degree; and she has, perhaps, an added value for us
because she speaks not from the past nor from the cloister,
but out of the Paris of our own day. We owe to her one of
our most vivid descriptions of that apprehension of Eternal
Life — the immersion of our durational existence in the Absolute
Life of God — which Von Hugel regards as the fundamental
religious experience. "J' ai observe," she says, "que pendant
l'oraison passive et surtout dans l'etat d'union, l'âme perd le
sentiment de la durée. Il n'y a plus pour elle de succession
de moments, mais un moment unique, et j'ai cru comprendre
qu'étant élevée a cet état, l'âme y vit selon le mode de vivre
de l'éternité, ou il n'y a point de durée, point de passé ni
d'avenir, mais un moment unique, infini." We have again
to remember that the woman who wrote this had then no
acquaintance with the classics of mysticism. It is her own
impression which she is trying to register.
Again, consider this account of the state of divine union
as she had known it: "L' âme va prier, elle s' élance pour
franchir la distance qui la sépare de l'Infini, et cette distance
elle ne la trouve plus! Elle veut aller à vous, mon Dieu, et
vous êtes en elle! . . . Perdue en vous, elie oublie elle-
[page 223]
même et tout le reste, elle ne sait plus comment elle vit, ni
comment elle aime; elle ne voit plus que Vous seul. Encore ne
peut elle pas penser qu'elle vous voit et vous adore; car se
serait se voir elle-même, et en de tels moments elle ne se voit
pas, elle ne voit que Vous. Elle connait et aime par un mode
nouveau et incomprehensible, qui est en dehors et infiniment
au-dessus de l'exercice ordinaire de ses facultés. Elle sent
que l'opération de Dieu a pris la place de la sienne et que c'est
Dieu même qui opère en elle la connaissance et l' amour."
This sense of complete surrender to a larger life and greater
power, of which love is the very substance and ground, is
characteristic of nearly all high mystical experience; and the
literature of contemplation would furnish many parallels
to all that Lucie tells us of it. In this state, as she says in
another place, "the thirst of the spirit is suddenly fulfilled
by the Infinite," and "God takes possession of the ground
of the soul, without passage of time or feeling of space."
Then, the bewilderment and unrest produced in us by the
disharmonies of daily life are healed. "Là ou tout raisonnement échoue," she says in one of her most beautiful passages; "où l'âme est tellement troublée qu' elle ne saurait même
expliquer ce qui la trouble, la divine presence paraît, et soudain
le vertige cesse et la paix renaît avec la lumière." Consciousness, ceasing more or less completely its normal correspondences with the temporal order, then becomes aware
of the eternal and spiritual universe in which we really live.
Such an attitude to Eternity was a marked characteristic
of Lucie-Christine's mysticism. Often, it produced in her the
complete mono-ideism of ecstasy; and she describes the oncoming, content, and passing of these states with a minuteness
which makes her journal a valuable document for the psychologist. Constantly, the intense awareness of the Divine
Presence persisted through the many duties and activities
of the day; "like a grave and tender note, dominating all
the modulations of the keyboard of my exterior life." She is
[page 224]
not afraid to use the most violent metaphors, the most
concrete images, in her efforts to express the intensity and
reality of this spiritual life that she leads, this divine companionship that she enjoys. "I am nourished by God's
substance." "I breathe the divine essence." "The presence
of God is so clear that faith is not faith — it is sight." "The
soul plays within God, as within a limitless universe." "The
Divine action penetrates and transforms my adoration. It
is the Divine Being who thinks, loves, and lives within me."
None of the mystics have gone further than this in their
claims; but it is significant that nearly all the greatest go
as far.
Yet in all this, Lucie-Christine is strictly Evangelical.
She was a Christian first, and a mystic afterwards. Though
her expressions may seem startling, her mysticism never goes
beyond that of St. John and St. Paul; and her most Platonic
utterances can be justified by the New Testrnent. But the
Pauline and Johannine teachings on the soul's union with
Christ are not for her merely doctrinal statements. They are
vivid descriptions of states she has personally known, when her
consciousness truly penetrated to that "region d'amour,
region unique, où l'âme trouve un autre jour, une autre vie,
un autre air respirable, où du moins tous ces éléments latents
se trouvent manifestés, où Dieu seul apparait, et tout le reste
rentre dans l'ombre."
Such a personal and overwhelming consciousness of "the
greatness, power, and simplicity of God" — an all-inclusive
unity which the unity of her spirit could comprehend — was the
central interest of her life. She certainly tended to that
which Baron von Hugel has called "the vertical relation" with
the Divine. Nevertheless, this theocentric existence did not
involve either the limp passivity or the spiritual selfishness
with which it is sometimes charged. On the ethical side
it committed her to a constant moral discipline; for her ardent
and impulsive temperament reacted too easily to every external
[page 225]
stimulus. "I must give up pleasure — never work for my own
enjoyment." "My one prayer is, that I may not feel joy and
grief so vividly: that I may feel only Thee." This deliberate
unselfing and concentration on God so strengthened the
fibres of character that she was able to bear with quietness her
many personal sorrows, and the long years of blindness — a
bitter cross for that keen lover of beauty — which closed her
life. Yet it did not muffle her in the unattractive folds of "holy indifference." She loved her family devotedly, and
felt without mitigation the anxieties and griefs of human life.
Her attitude to others was generous and sympathetic. God,
she says, gives Himself to us that we may give Him again.
His unique light must pass through the soul as through a
prism; breaking up into the many colours of word and deed,
forgiveness and good counsel, prayer and alms, self-forgetfulness and self-giving. Though exceedingly reserved about her
spiritual experiences, which were only known to her confessor,
the influence of these experiences was felt by those among
whom she lived; and her house was known by them as "the
house of peace."
Moreover, her love for the institutional and sacramental
side of religion saved her from many of the dangers and extravagances of individualism. It gave her a framework within
which her own intuitions could find their place; and a valid
symbolism through which she could interpret to herself the
most rarefied experiences of her soul. She is an example of
the way in which the mystic seems able to achieve the universal
without losing or rejecting its particular expression: assimilating symbols of an amazing crudity without in any way
impairing her vision of truth. The conflict between that
vision and the concrete objectives of popular devotion was
ignored by her; as it is generally ignored by practical mystics
of the institutional type. She, who had touched the Absolute
in her contemplations, was yet deeply impressed by the drama
of the Church; by its ceremonies, holy places, festivals, consecrations.
[page 226]
Her inner life was nourished by its sacraments.
She displayed the power — so characteristic of Christian
mysticism at its best — of transcending without rejecting the
formule of belief as commonly understood; of remaining
within, and drawing life from, the organism, without any
diminution in the proper liberty of the soul.
Thus, seen as a whole, Lucie-Christine's spiritual life has
a richness and balance which reflects the richness and balance
of her own nature; for an impoverished or one-sided character
was never yet found capable of a fully developed and fruitful
mysticism. We see her from girlhood seeking to satisfy her
innate longing for reality; urged on the one hand by the
artist's craving for perfect loveliness, on the other by the
philosopher's instinct for Eternity. When the veil was
lifted, and the inner voice said, "God only!" she found at
once the reconciliation and the fulfilment of these two desires.
The long and varied experience which followed was no more
than an unfolding of the content of those words. They
revealed to her the Substance of all beauty and truth; shining
in that world of appearance which she loved to the last with an
artist's passion, yet ever abiding unchanged in that world of
pure being which she touched in her contemplations "above all
feeling, image, and idea." Because of this double outlook on
reality, her mysticism was both transcendental and sacramental.
It irradiated the natural world, and also the symbols of
religion, with that simple light of Eternity wherein she found "all beauties known and unknown, all harmonies natural and
supernatural." Lucie-Christine makes clear to us, as few
mystics have done, the immense transfiguration of ordinary
life which comes from such an extension of consciousness;
when "the veil suddenly drops, God reveals Himself, and the
soul knows experimentally that which she knew not before."
Her journal is full of passages in which its joy and splendour
are described. I take one written in a time of great mental
and physical suffering, when the cruel deprivations of blindness
[page 227]
were already closing in on her, and the two beings she loved
best — her husband and her youngest daughter — had lately
been taken from her by death. " Figurez-vous un pauvre
prisonnier au fond d'un cachot renfermé et obscur, voyant
tout à coup s'entr'ouvrir la voûte de ce cachot, et par là
recevant la lumière du soleil, et aspirant avec force fair du
dehors qui lui arrive embaumé des senteurs de la vie et de la
chaleur de l' atmosphère resplendissante. Ainsi mon âme
s'ouvrait, et buvait Dieu! . . . mon âme aspirait et buvait
la vie même de la Trinité Sainte, et se sentait revivre, et
n'avait plus aucun mal."
