contemplation part 8

 Contemplation and passive prayer part 8 :

St Teresa of the Child Jesus had very fierce attacks made on her belief in heaven, and she speaks of the thick wall of darkness that seemed to separate her from God. God permits the evil spirit thus to attack souls so that while purifiying them He at the same time gains great victories in weak mortals over the proud spirits of darkness. St Teresa of the child Jesus , moreover , stated that her interior sufferings were so intense that no one in this life could imagine their intensity. Thus was she made a victim of love.

A very usual form of suffering is a keen sense of unworthiness in God's sight.The soul feels, as it were, all sin and rejected. The reason she feels so sinful is that she is obtaining a deep appreciation of the all- Holiness and Majesty of God and is , as it were, unable to appear in His sight.Yet that very appreciation draws her to an intense love of God, and thus drawn between these two feelings the soul suffers a veritable martyrdom . Moreover, in spite of all her spiritual director may say or do to assure her that all is well with her, she can never be fully persuaded of this, or if she is satisfied for a time, a deeper darkness often succeeds, till at length, in God's good time, the soul is prepared to bask in the sunshine of a more perfect realization of the intensity of God's love for her and her union with Him. St Francis de Sales at one time experienced this trial of dereliction to such an extent that he earnestly begged that he would be allowed to love God even in hell, for which he felt himself destined . But from these trials which, as it were, lead to the brink of despair, the contemplative soul emerges purified and fixed in an unshakeable confidence in the mercy and goodness of God.

Similar to this trial is that of extreme aridity or dryness in which the soul appears utterly incapable of prayer or of doing anything for God. Sometimes persons can pray and keep recollected during the course of the day, but when they attempt formal prayer, every effort they make appears absolutely vain. The explanation is that God desires to keep these souls in continuous union with Himself and so they can be attentive to the Presence of God while at their work, but when they come to formal prayer God takes the work completely into His own hands and unites them intimately to Himself, while their own faculties appear completely inert. The soul may suffer much at this apparent idleness, but must be patient and perfectly submissive to God's ways. This apparent absence of God increases very much their longing for Him. This trial of aridity has already been explained , but the sufferng it causes in the passive Dark night of the Spirit is of far greater intensity because the soul has already felt the touch of God. The soul must be carefully instructed, and no matter how long the trial may last, she must be encouraged to perserverance with the assurance that God will surely bring her to close union with Himself ......

To be continued...