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(P.73) God deprives it of consolations; He makes it aware of its helplessness. Sweet springtide is over. Instead of the delicious vernal breath of the breeze, a scorching sun burns and leaves it withered. The flowers fall one by one. The soul feels itself alone, and believes itself deserted in its struggle against its evil nature. It seems wholly to have lost its inclination for crosses and humiliations. Prayer is a burden to it. Its supernatural outlook appears to have been succeeded by one more materialistic. It is no longer conscious of its love for Jesus. Like a ship without a compass, whither drifts such a soul? Holiness, that in its ardent dreams seemed so immediately obtainable, has fled afar. Countless minor imperfections, hitherto unperceived, are now brought to light.
Its resolutions are like ephemeral sparks which are quickly quenched. The soul has perpetually broken them, and has perpetually re-made them.
At once, there is a risk of a slow accumulation of distrust and discouragement in the soul. To itself it is tempted to make this lament: "Once I believed myself called to holiness; once I thought myself made for it. I imagined myself conscious of its actual approach. All that was surely a delusion. For must not I now say to myself 'I am self-deceived; I was not made nor fashioned for perfection?'"
(P.74) Your desires were indeed no delusion. The delusion lay merely in your belief that holiness is the work of a few days; that your progress in virtue was rapid. You deceived yourself strangely, when you imagined yourself already detached in the midst of consolations, humble in the midst of evidences of man's esteem, a lover of suffering amid life's roses. You believed these roses to be without thorns. Now that you have greater insight into truth, you see yourself more truly as you have always been.
These perpetual imperfections and these faults that distress you, are precious windows through which the light of Heaven comes flooding to make your misery luminous and your helplessness plainly perceptible. Slowly they will cure you or your conceit, of your foolish self-complacency. They will deprive you of your purely human hopes; they will make you despair of yourself and so, step by step will induce you to fix all your hope on none but God.
We must certainly not be astonished, though we be given over to imperfections, above all when desolations are with us, and this despite all our resolutions, all our meditations, all our retreats. The springtide of our spiritual life is past―this we must not forget. Conscious grace, that, like the winds of Heaven, (P.75) blew so delightfully, blows now only at intervals. The delicate flowers which gladdened our hearts are withered: the fruit ripens slowly and its ripening is hidden from our eyes. In all probability we shall neither see nor taste it till our life's summer ends or its autumn has begun. From this time till then, we must work, we must allow the Divine Master to lop and to prune as He thinks fit, to water our soul with the rain from Heaven; nor ever show distrust of Him, nor ever seek to control His action.
Shall this phase last long? Are we repeatedly to be the battle-ground of these faults and of this helplessness? The days of our life, that are so precious for eternity's sake, one by one are spent, and at the end of them little amelioration is perceptible. Our years passed in God's service, or in the Religious Life, follow swiftly one after the other. In all things and above all things let trust be ours! Let us be generous, and leave all else to God! In all things let us strive to do His Will so far as our frail humanity permits; be assured that in the end He, too, will grant all our desires. Let us trust ourselves implicitly to His Love. It matters little whether our progress be perceived by us; in fact, it is desirable that it should be hidden from us, so that it may be perceptible only to Jesus, to Whom we are bound by the chains of Love.
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