Part 4

There is no moment when God is not present with us under the appearance of some obligation or some duty. All that is effected within us, about us, and through us involves and hides His divine action: it is veritably present, though in an invisible manner; therefore we do not discern it, and only recognize its workings when it has ceased to act. Could we pierce the veil which obscures it, and were we vigilant and attentive, God would unceasingly reveal Himself to us, and we would recognize His action in all that befell us. At every event we would exclaim, _Dominus est!_--It is the Lord! and we should feel each circumstance of our life an especial gift from Him. We should regard creatures as feeble instruments in the hands of an all-powerful workman; we should easily recognize that we lacked nothing, and that God’s watchful care supplied the needs of every moment. Had we faith, we should be grateful to all creatures; we should cherish them, and in our hearts thank them that in the hand of God they have been so serviceable to us and so favorable to the work of our perfection.

If we lived an uninterrupted life of faith we should be in continual communion with God, we should speak with Him face to face. Just as the air transmits our words and thoughts, so would all that we are called to do and suffer transmit to us the words and thoughts of God; all that came to us would be but the embodiment of His word; it would be exteriorly manifested in all things; we should find everything holy and profitable. The glory of God makes this the state of the blessed in heaven, and faith would make it ours on earth; there would be only the difference of means.

Faith is God’s interpreter; without its enlightenment we understand nothing of the language of created things. It is a writing in cipher, in which we see naught but confusion; it is a burning bush, from the midst of which we little expect to hear God’s voice. But faith reveals to us as to Moses the fire of divine charity burning in the midst of the bush; it gives the key to the ciphers, and discovers to us in the midst of the confusion the wonders of the divine wisdom. Faith gives to the whole earth a heavenly aspect; faith transports, enraptures the heart, and raises it above the things of this earth to converse with the blessed.

Faith is the light of time: it alone grasps the truth without seeing it; it touches what it does not feel; it sees this world as though it existed not, beholding quite other things than those which are visible. It is the key of the treasure-house, the key of the abyss, the key of the science of God. It is faith which shows the falseness of all creatures: through it God reveals and manifests Himself in all things; by it all things are made divine; it lifts the veil from created things and reveals the eternal truth.

All that our eyes behold is vanity and falsehood; in God alone lies the truth of all things. How far above our illusions are the designs of God! How is it that though continually reminded that all that passes in the world is but a shadow, a figure, a mystery of faith, we are guided by human feelings, by the natural sense of things, which after all is but an enigma? We foolishly fall into snares instead of lifting our eyes and rising to the principle, the source, the origin of all; where all things bear other names and other qualities; where all is supernatural, divine, sanctifying; where all is part of the fulness of Jesus Christ; where everything forms a stone of the heavenly Jerusalem, where everything leads to this marvellous edifice and enters therein. We live by the things of sight and hearing, neglecting that light of faith which would safely guide us through the labyrinth of shadows and images through which we foolishly wander. He, on the contrary, who walks by faith seeks but God alone, and all things from God; he lives in God; unheeding and rising above the figures of sense.

_CHAPTER II._

The Divine Action is all the more Visible to the Eye of Faith when hidden under Appearances most Repugnant to the Senses.

The soul enlightened by faith is far from judging of created things, like those who measure them by their senses, and ignore the inestimable treasure they contain. He who recognizes the king in disguise treats him very differently from him who, judging by appearances alone, fails to recognize his royalty. So the soul that sees the will of God in the smallest things, and in the most desolating and fatal events, receives all with equal joy, exultation, and respect. That which others fear and fly from with horror she opens all her doors to receive with honor. The retinue is poor, the senses despise it; but the heart, under these humble appearances, discerns and does homage to the royal majesty; and the more this majesty abases itself, coming secretly with modest suite, the deeper is the love it inspires in the heart.

I have no words with which to portray the feelings of the heart when it receives this divine will in the guise of humiliation, poverty, annihilation. Ah! how moved was the beautiful heart of Mary at sight of that poverty of a God, that annihilation which brought Him to lodge in a manger, to repose on a handful of straw a trembling, weeping infant! Ask the people of Bethlehem what they think of this child: were He in a palace with royal surroundings they would do Him homage. But ask Mary, Joseph, the Magi, the shepherds: they will tell you that in this extreme poverty they find that which manifests God to them more sublime and adorable. By just that which the senses lack is faith heightened, increased, and nourished; the less there is to human eyes, the more there is to the soul. The faith which adores Jesus on Thabor, which loves the will of God in extraordinary events, is not that lively faith which loves the will of God in common events and adores Jesus on the cross. For the perfection of faith is seen only when visible and material things contradict it and seek to destroy it. Through this war of the senses faith comes out gloriously victorious.

It is not an ordinary but a grand and extraordinary faith which finds God equally adorable in the simplest and commonest things as in the greatest events of life.

To content ones’ self with the present moment is to love and adore the divine will in all that comes to us to do or suffer through the things which successively form the duties of the present moment. Souls thus disposed adore God with redoubled ardor and respect in the greatest humiliations; nothing hides Him from the piercing eye of their faith. The more vehemently the senses exclaim, This is not from God! the closer do they press this bundle of myrrh from the hand of the Bridegroom; nothing disturbs them, nothing repels them.

Mary sees the Apostles fly, but she remains constant at the foot of the cross; she recognizes her Son in that face spat upon and bruised. These disfiguring wounds only render Him more adorable and worthy of love in the eyes of this tender mother; and the blasphemies poured forth against Him only serve to increase her profound veneration. In like manner, a life of faith is but a continual pursuit of God through all which disguises and disfigures Him; through all which, so to speak, destroys and annihilates Him. It is truly a reproduction of the life of Mary, who from the manger to Calvary remained constant to a God whom the world despised, persecuted, and abandoned. So faithful souls, despite a continual succession of deaths, veils, shadows, semblances which disguise the will of God, perseveringly pursue it, and love it unto death on the cross. They know that, unheeding all disguises, they must follow this holy will; for, beyond the heaviest shadows, beyond the darkest clouds, the divine Sun is shining to enlighten, enflame, and vivify those constant hearts who bless, praise, and contemplate Him from all points of this mysterious horizon.

Hasten, then, happy, faithful, untiring souls; hasten to follow this dear Spouse who with giant strides traverses the heavens and from whom nothing can be hidden. He passes over the smallest blade of grass as above the loftiest cedars. The grains of sand are under His feet no less than the mountains. Wherever your foot may rest He has passed, and you have only to follow Him faithfully to find Him wherever you go.

Oh, the ineffable peace that is ours when faith has taught us thus to see God through all creatures as through a transparent veil! Then darkness becomes light, and bitter turns to sweet. Faith, manifesting all things in their true light, changes their deformity into beauty, and their malice into virtue. Faith is the mother of meekness, confidence, and joy; she can feel naught but tenderness and compassion for her enemies who so abundantly enrich her at their own expense. The more malignant the action of the creature, the more profitable does God render it to the soul. While the human instrument seeks to injure us, the divine Artisan in whose hand it lies makes use of its very malice to remove what is prejudicial to the soul.

The will of God has only consolations, graces, treasures, for submissive souls; our confidence in it cannot be too great, nor our abandonment thereto be too absolute. It always wills and effects that which contributes most to our sanctification, provided meanwhile we yield ourselves to its divine action. Faith never doubts it; the more unbelieving, rebellious, despondent, and wavering the senses, the louder Faith cries, “This is God! All is well!”

There is nothing Faith does not penetrate and overcome; it passes beyond all shadows and through the darkest clouds to reach Truth; clasps it in a firm embrace, and is never parted from it.

_CHAPTER III._

The Divine Action offers us at each Moment Infinite Blessings, which we receive in proportion to our Faith and Love.

If we knew how to greet each moment as the manifestation of the divine will, we would find in it all the heart could desire. For what indeed is more reasonable, more perfect, more divine than the will of God? Can its infinite value be increased by the paltry difference of time, place, or circumstance? Were you given the secret of finding it at all times and in all places, you would possess a gift most precious, most worthy of your desires. What seek ye, holy souls? Give free scope to your longings; place no limit to your aspirations; expand your heart to the measure of the infinite. I have that wherewith to satisfy it: there is no moment in which I may not cause you to find all you can desire.

The present moment is always filled with infinite treasures: it contains more than you are capable of receiving. Faith is the measure of these blessings: in proportion to your faith will you receive. By love also are they measured: the more your heart loves the more it desires, and the more it desires the more it receives. The will of God is constantly before you as an unfathomable sea, which the heart cannot exhaust: only in proportion as the heart is expanded by faith, confidence, and love can it receive of its fulness. All created things could not fill your heart, for its capacity is greater than anything which is not God.

The mountains which affright the eye are but atoms to the heart. The divine will is an abyss, of which the present moment is the entrance; plunge fearlessly therein and you will find it more boundless than your desires. Offer no homage to creatures; adore not phantoms: they can give you nothing, they can take nothing from you. The will of God alone shall be your fulness, and it shall leave no void in your soul. Adore it; go direct to it, penetrating all appearances, casting aside all impediments. The spoliation, the destruction, the death of the senses is the reign of faith. The senses adore creatures; faith adores the divine will. Wrest from the senses their idols, they will weep like disconsolate children; but faith will triumph, for nothing can take from her the will of God. When all the senses are famished, affrighted, despoiled, then does the will of God nourish, enrich, and fortify faith, which smiles at these apparent losses, as the commander of an impregnable fortress smiles at the futile attacks of an enemy.

When the will of God reveals itself to a soul manifesting a desire to wholly possess her, if the soul freely give herself in return she experiences most powerful assistance in all difficulties; she then tastes by experience the happiness of that coming of the Lord, and her enjoyment is in proportion to the degree in which she learned to practise that self abandonment which must bring her at all moments face to face with this ever adorable will.

_CHAPTER IV._

God reveals Himself to us as Mysteriously, as Adorably, and with as much Reality in the most Ordinary Events as in the great Events of History and the Holy Scriptures.

The written word of God is full of mystery; His word expressed in the events of the world is no less so. These two books are truly sealed; the letter of both killeth.

God is the centre of faith which is an abyss from whose depths shadows rise which encompass all that comes forth from it. God is incomprehensible; so also are His works, which require our faith. All these words, all these works, are but obscure rays, so to speak, of a sun still more obscure. In vain do we strive to gaze upon this sun and its rays with the eyes of our body; the eyes of the soul itself, through which we behold God and His works, are no less closed. Obscurity here takes the place of light; knowledge is ignorance, and we see though not seeing. Holy Scripture is the mysterious language of a still more mysterious God. The events of the world are the mysterious utterances of this same hidden and inscrutable God. They are drops of the ocean, but an ocean of shadows. Every rivulet, every drop of the stream, bears the impress of its origin. The fall of the angels, the fall of man, the wickedness and idolatry of men before and after the deluge, in the time of the Patriarchs who knew the history of creation, with its recent preservation, and related it to their children,--these are the truly mysterious words of Holy Scripture. A handful of men preserved from idolatry amid the general corruption of the whole world until the coming of the Messias; evil always dominant, always powerful; the little band of the defenders of the faith always ill-treated, always persecuted; the persecution of Christ; the plagues of the Apocalypse--in these behold the words of God. It is what He has revealed. It is what He has dictated. And the effects of these terrible mysteries, which endure till the end of time, are still the living words of God by which we learn His wisdom, goodness, and power. All the events in the history of the world show forth these attributes and glorify Him therein. We must believe it blindly, for, alas! we cannot see.

What does God teach us by Turks, heretics, and all the enemies of His Church? They preach forcibly. They all show forth His infinite perfections. So do Pharao and all the impious hosts who followed him and will still follow him; though truly, to the evidence of our senses, the end of all these is most contrary to the divine glory. We must close our corporal eyes and cease to reason if we would read the divine mysteries in all this.

Thou speakest, Lord, to all mankind by general events. All revolutions are but the tides of Thy Providence, which excite storms and tempests in the minds of the curious. Thou speakest to each one in particular by the events of his every moment. But instead of respecting the mystery and obscurity of Thy words, and hearing Thy voice in all the occurrences of life, they only see therein chance, the acts, the caprice of men; they find fault in everything; they would add to, diminish, reform--in fact, they indulge in liberties with these living words of God, while they would consider it a sacrilege to alter a comma of the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures they revere: they are the word of God, they tell you; they are true and holy. Though they may comprehend them little, their veneration for them is no less great, and they justly give honor and glory to God for the depth of His wisdom.

But, dear souls, have you no respect for the words God addresses you each moment,--words which are not conveyed to you by means of ink and paper, but by what you have to do and suffer from moment to moment,--do these words merit nothing from you? Why do you not revere the truth and will of God in all things? There is nothing which fully satisfies you; you criticise and cavil at all that happens. Do you not see that you try to measure by the senses and reason that which can be measured by faith alone? And that while reading the word of God in the Holy Scriptures with the eyes of faith, you gravely err when you read this same word with other eyes in His works?

_CHAPTER V._

The Divine Action continues in our Hearts the Revelation begun in Holy Scripture; but the Characters in which it is written will be Visible only at the Last Day.

“Jesus Christ,” says the Apostle, “is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” From the beginning of the world He was, as God, the principle of the life of just souls. From the first moment of His incarnation His humanity shared this prerogative of His divinity. Throughout our whole lives He is working within us. The time of this world is but a day, and this day is full of Him. Jesus Christ lived, and He still lives. He began in Himself, and He continues in His saints, a life which will never end. O life of Jesus, which embraces and exceeds all ages! Life which unceasingly worketh new wonders! If the world is incapable of embracing all that could have been written of the actual life of Jesus, of all that He said and did upon earth; if the Gospel gives us only a few traits of it; if so little is known even of that first hidden yet fruitful hour of Bethlehem,--how many gospels must needs be written to relate all the moments of that mystic life of Jesus Christ which multiplies wonders infinitely, multiplies them eternally!--for all times, properly speaking, are but the history of the divine action.

The Holy Spirit has marked in infallible and incontestable characters certain moments of this vast duration, and gathered in the Scriptures some drops of this boundless ocean. We see therein the secret and hidden ways by which He has manifested Jesus Christ to the world. We can follow the channels and veins which, amid the confusion of the children of men, distinguish this Firstborn. The Old Testament is but a small portion of the innumerable and inscrutable ways of this divine work; it only contains what is necessary to reach Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit held the rest hidden in the treasures of His wisdom. And from out this vast sea of the divine action but a thread of water appears which reaches Jesus, loses itself in the Apostles, and is swallowed up in the Apocalypse. So that by our faith alone can we learn the history of this divine action which consists in the life which Jesus Christ leads, and will lead in just souls until the end of time.

To the manifestation of God’s truth by word succeeded the manifestation of His charity by action. The Holy Spirit continues the work of the Saviour. While He assists the Church in preaching the gospel of Christ, He Himself at the same time writes His own gospel in our hearts. Each moment, each act, of the Saints is the gospel of the Holy Spirit. Holy souls are the paper; their sufferings, their actions, are the ink. The Holy Spirit by the pen of His action writes a living gospel; but we can only read it on the last day, when it will be drawn from the press of this life and published.

Oh, the glorious history, the beautiful book, which the Holy Spirit is now writing! It is in press, holy souls; and not a day passes in which type is not set, ink applied, and sheets of it printed. But we are in the night of faith: the paper is blacker than the ink; the characters are confused; it is the language of another world; we understand it not; we shall only read its gospel in heaven. Oh, if we could but see this life of God in all creatures, in all things, and learn to regard them, not in themselves, but as the instruments of His will! If we could see how the divine action impels them hither and thither, unites them, disperses them, opposes them, and leads them by contrary ways to the same end, we should recognize that all things have their purpose, their reason, their proportion, their relations in this divine work. But how shall we read this book with its hidden, innumerable, contradictory, and obscure characters? If the combinations of twenty-seven letters are incomprehensible to us and suffice to form an unlimited number of different volumes, each admirable of its kind, who can express what God does in His universe? Who can read and comprehend a book so vast, in which there is not a letter which has not its own significance and does not contain in its littleness profound mysteries? Mysteries are neither seen nor felt; they are the subjects of faith. Faith judges their worth and truth only by their source, for they are so obscure in themselves that all their external appearances only serve to conceal them, and mislead those who judge by reason alone.

Teach me, O divine Spirit, to read in this book of life! I would become Thy disciple, and like a little child believe what I cannot see. It sufficeth that my Master speaks. He tells me this, He proclaims that; His words are arranged in one form. He interprets them in another: that sufficeth me; I receive all as He presents it; I see not the reason thereof, but I know He is the infallible Truth. His words, His actions, are truth. He wills that these letters should form a word; such a number, another. They are but three, but six; yet no more are required, and less would mar the sense. He alone who knows all thought can combine the characters to express it. Everything is significant; everything has a perfect meaning. This line purposely ends here; there is not a comma lacking therein, nor one useless point. I believe it now; but on that glorious day, when so many mysteries will be revealed me, I will see what I now only confusedly comprehend; and that which appears so obscure, so perplexing, so contradictory to reason, so vague, so visionary, will enrapture and delight me to all eternity with the beauty, the order, the meaning, the wisdom, and the inconceivable marvels I shall discover therein.

_CHAPTER VI._

Divine Love is communicated to us through the Veil of Creatures, as Jesus communicates Himself to us through the Veil of the Eucharistic Species.