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'THE proper work of the will is to love God.' The relentless drive of our nature towards an undiscerned and yet desired fulfilment
can have no other end: and in so far as it has
departed from this, its only adequate objective, and
frittered its energies on half-real objects of desire,
its aim must be corrected by the pressure of Reality.
Rege quod est devium.
In proportion to our haunting intuition of the
Perfect, will be the ceaseless disillusionments which
follow our attempt to find and enjoy that Perfect,
embodied in the imperfect satisfactions of the
temporal world. In so far as we try to rest in them,
even the holy incarnations and sacramental actions
of religion baffle while they enchant us: for they
do not quench but stimulate our metaphysical
craving, and point beyond themselves to that all-cherishing,
all-penetrating Loveliness which makes
them lovely, and can only be known by us in the
self-abandonment of love.
O Lux beatissima,
Reple cordis intima
Tuorum fidelium.
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Thus to love God, without demand or measure,
in and for Himself—'that we may abide in Him, not
that any advantage may accrue to us from Him,'
says St. Thomas—this is Charity: and Charity is
the spiritual life. Only this most gently powerful
of all attractions and all pressures can capture and
purify the will of man, and subordinate it to the
great purpose of God; for as His Love and Will are
One, so the love and will of man must become one.
Therefore all other purifications, disciplines and
practices have meaning, because they prepare and
contribute to the invasion and transformation of
the heart by the uncreated Charity of God. 'Thou
art the Love wherewith the heart loves Thee.'
For it is only when the secret thrust of our whole
being is thus re-ordered by God and set towards
God, that peace is established in the house of life.
Then, the disorderly energies of emotion and will
are rectified and harmonized, and all the various
and wide-spreading love which we pour out towards
other souls and things is deepened, unselfed and
made safe; because that which is now sought and
loved in them is the immanent Divine thought and
love. Thus the will transformed in charity everywhere
discovers God. It sees behind and within
even the most unpleasing creatures the all-pleasing
Creator; and loves and cherishes, in and
for Him, that which in itself never could be loved.
It discerns and adores His mysterious action within
the most homely activities and most disconcerting
frustrations of the common life. And by this
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humble and glad recognition of that secret Presence,
all the apprehensions of the senses, all the conceivings
of the mind, all the hoarded treasures
and experiences of the past, are cleansed and
sanctified.
Veni, lumen cordium.
Nothing but the power and pressure of the
Absolute Love, humbling while it quickens and
delights, can do this for us: shedding the light of
charity on our conflicts and problems, persuading
the restless will to cease its arrogant and restless
strivings, and producing that living and supple
detachment—using all gifts for God alone, and
doing all works within and for His love—which is
the secret of freedom and joy.
'The closer a soul
approaches God by love', says Maritain,
'the
simpler grows the gaze of her intelligence, and the
clearer her vision.' We may be utterly bewildered
by the world of faith when it is presented to our
understanding, and daunted by the effort which
is demanded if we are to lose the life of memory in
forward-tending hope. But the simple penetration
of the Divine Charity neither bewilders nor daunts
us. The soul simplified in charity can go in and out,
and find pasture at every level. All things work
together, because all has been laid open to the
consecrating and clarifying action of the Divine
Love; and all becomes in fact a medium for the
recognition and expression of that love.
This transforming of the will in love, this simpli-
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fying and supernaturalizing of the whole drive and
intention of our life, by its immersion in the great
movement of the Infinite Life, is itself the work of
Creative Spirit. It is only possible because that
Spirit already indwells the soul's ground, and there
pursues the secret alchemy of love; more and more
possessing and transmuting us, with every small
movement of acceptance or renunciation in which
we yield ourselves to the quiet action of God. It
is true that the soul hardly perceives the separate
moments of this mysterious action; and only by a
view which takes in long stretches of experience,
can realize the changes which it works.
Yet our own self-discipline and suffering, our
willing acquiescence and adjustment to circumstances,
could do little here, did they not work
together with the inciting, moulding, indwelling
Power; submitting us to that secret and passive
purification which cleanses will and emotion of
unreal attachments, and perfectly unites the poor
little love and will of man with the universal Love
and Will of God. Then, when the whole movement
of our being is freely given in love to the purposes of
Spirit, and takes its small place in the eternal order,
we find our place and our peace. We learn to give
significance and worth to our homeliest duties by
linking all the chain-like activities of daily life with
His overruling and unchanging Reality:
'that most
inspiring and darling relation', says Von Hügel,
wherein 'you have each single act, each single
moment, joined directly to God Himself—not a
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chain, but one great Simultaneity'. And if we
ask why this self-giving to the vast Divine action,
rather than an individual self-fulfilment, is the goal
of spiritual man; the answer is that any other
makes nonsense of our life, gives it no meaning which
is adequate to its cravings and its powers.
Sine tuo numine,
Nihil est in homine,
Nihil est innoxium.
Here, then, reason and love combine to assure us
that our end is God alone; first realized as an
influence, one amongst other claims and objects of
desire, and then, as we more and more respond to
His attraction, as the only satisfaction of the heart;
and at last as the all-penetrating, all-compelling
Reality, that only Life which is recognized by faith,
desired in hope, achieved by Charity. Then, all
those separate movements of love and longing—those passionate self-givings and agonies of desire—in which the struggling and half-awakened spirit
reaches out towards life and draws back to the prison
of solitary pain, find their solution and satisfaction
in God; and there is established in her that steadfast
habitude of love which makes of her the open
channel and docile instrument of the one Divine
Love. 'Who dwelleth in Charity dwelleth in God,
and God in him': for the secret of Charity is an
opening up of the whole tangled, many-levelled
creature to the penetration of that Spirit which
already indwells our soul's ground.
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Then the deep and gentle power of the Unchanging
quickens, possesses and directs the changeful self;
by its silent pressure perpetually reminding us of
the disharmonies and wasteful follies of our claimful
and divided life, purifying our inward trend and
effort, and turning our nature in its wholeness
towards the purposes of God: till at last the steady
soul, purified in love and become one will with the
hidden all-loving Will, can maintain her easy poise
and orientation, her quiet gaze on God, within
the wild confusing dance of life.
'Though we here speak of love', says Barbanson,
'I would rather term it the divine Spirit, lest some
should mistakenly adhere more to the effect than
to the cause, which is God himself. For love is but
an effect and operation of the divine Spirit. I mean
not only that more impetuous and violent love which
is in the heart and inferior affective part; but also,
and more, that love which resides in the supreme
will, sweetly informing and filling it with such a
divine motion.'
This cleansing, bracing and transforming of the
will and emotional life is the hardest and most
searching of all the soul's purifications. For it
requires us to take the Cross into the most hidden
sanctuary of personality, and complete that living
sacrifice which the mortifying of the senses began.
Now we must be ready not merely to renounce
natural self-fulfilment and consolation, but supernatural
self-fulfilment and consolation too; placing
ourselves without reserve in the hand of God, and
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subordinating our small interests to the deep requirements
of His mysterious life. As human love only
achieves nobility when Eros is converted into
Agape, when crude desire is sublimated, and becomes
a self-giving tenderness; so with the craving for
God which possesses all awakened souls. Only in
so far as it compels us to a single undemanding act
of self-giving can it be reckoned as purged of self-love; and only this simple and unconditioned
charity can make of the soul a point of insertion
for the action of the Spirit within the human world—a tool of the Divine creative will.
This transformation of the will by Charity is
chiefly accomplished, and perhaps most deeply and
painfully experienced, in the life of prayer. For here
the self-regarding instincts of greed, lust and
avarice find their last refuge, and ceaselessly invite the devout to a self-regarding spirituality, a seeking
of spiritual enjoyment, a hoarding of spiritual
wealth. And here the purging influence of the Love
of God is chiefly felt in terms of deprivation. It is
true that those short and indescribable moments,
when the soul seems without sign or image to
savour God, are alone completely happy and
unstrained. Then she is absorbed and penetrated
by a life that is peace. Yet this feeling of beatitude
is not Charity. For Charity requires an entire
detachment of the will from pleasurable feeling,
willingness to embrace a dry and unconsoled prayer,
or a vocation that seems to exclude all but the
virtual communion of a ceaseless self-abandonment.
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What is asked is the unselfing of the whole drive
of our God-given nature, its detachment from all
softness and ease, all personal enjoyment and
achievement, even of the most apparently spiritual
kind: and only the hard lessons of dereliction will
accomplish this. It is a rough training, designed
to make of those who can endure it the hardy and
devoted fellow-workers with Spirit; not the hothouse
products of an intensive piety. Charity must
not seek her own spiritual comfort, or attribute any
importance to her own spiritual apprehensions. As
poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet
possessing all things, she must achieve the perfect
suppleness, the undivided vigour, of the self-abandoned
but energetic will: not the limp acquiescence
of the quietist.
Even if EU were correct in her espousal of such an athletic spirituality—and she makes a strong case—the constant stream of invective and scorn directed throughout her writing, and throughout her life, at quietism, at nature mystics, pantheists, and at non-institutional mysticism in nearly all of its manifestations, seems to me to be a systemic weakness in her oeuvre.
The path she lays out is an austere one, to be sure, but anything less is not just seen or shown to be inadequate, but it is to be damned utterly, and repeatedly.
It suggests—to me at any rate—that the real energy shaping and directing her path—and her writing—derives from a personal agenda that we are not party to, and that even in her strongest case there may well be an element of special pleading.
DCW |
The detachment of the soul from the mere
enjoyment of its spiritual correspondences, the
transformation of the easy-going amateur into
the disciplined professional, is mainly achieved
in and through our own psychic and emotional
instability; ever betraying us, and making impossible
the steady enjoyment of light and of consoling
prayer. Here as elsewhere the suffering
which enters by the door of our own weakness is
always the most humbling and purifying in the
end. By these inevitable alternations of our spiritual
sensitiveness, our spiritual life is detached from
feeling and grounded in faith; centred in God and
not in spiritual self. For strong and ardent souls, this
final purging of the will may be a desperate crisis;
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a darkness and storm in which it seems as though
the little boat must founder, a testing to the utmost
of fortitude and of trust.
'For suddenly, or ever
thou knowest', says the Epistle of Privy Counsel,
'all is away and thou left barren in the boat,
blowing with blundering blasts now hither and now
thither, thou knowest never where nor whither.
Yet be not abashed, for He shall come, I promise
thee, full soon when He liketh, to relieve thee and
doughtily deliver thee of all thy dole . . . and all
this He doth because He will have thee made as
pliant to His will ghostly, as a roan glove to thine
hand bodily.'
Such a pliability, which accepts without reluctance
and in peace the strange movements of the Hand of
God, the unexplained vicissitudes of a spiritual
course, is a great earnest of Charity. For only a
very loving self-oblivion can follow the hard counsel
of St. Francis de Sales, and 'refuse to be troubled
because we are being troubled, or disquieted because
we are unquiet'. Yet those who love much, think
little of the weather. Even though the further outlook
be unsettled, and the visibility far from good,
they are always ready to go forward 'with the wind
and rain in their face'. They are convinced that
a dark and arduous prayer, void of self-interest,
and basing all on the steady direction of the pure
bare will to God, unites them more closely to their
Pattern than those devotional enjoyments which
were so conspicuously absent from His life. From
beginning to end Christ never sought for Himself
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any spiritual advantage or consolation. His steadfast
will and perfect love accepted evenly that which
was uneven, and went without reluctance from
Hermon to Gethsemane. In the agony of the Passion,
He sacrificed the dearest treasure of His secret
life. All the triumphs of the Spirit have been won
through those who here 'follow the footsteps of His
holy life' and are clear of all taint of spiritual
avarice, all selfish longing for personal beatitude.
So the final cleansing of the will and heart requires
the soul to disregard her own inevitable alternations
of pain and pleasure, communion and dereliction;
to escape from introspection and subjectivity into
the bracing atmosphere of God. She is to lose herself
in the great Divine purpose, and in His will
find her unbreakable peace. For though this final
transforming action of Spirit on the soul is first
experienced as a purifying inward suffering, while
our conscious disharmony with God persists; when
the soul has at last become pliant to Him and His
interests, it enters into a very quiet and unanalysed
condition of freedom and of joy.
Da perenne gaudium.
The saints have ever sought with an increasing
ardour this simple and self-oblivious ideal. As
faith and hope more utterly possessed them and
subdued to one purpose all the powers of the soul,
so an entire and loving self-donation in and through
circumstance has seemed to them to contain within
itself the whole substance of a spiritual life.
' What
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require I more of thee, than that thou shouldst
study wholly to resign thyself to me?'
Indeed,
it is the beggar-maid's only possible response to
Cophetua: for all that she has is her will and her
love.
