Salesian Literature

LETTERS OF SFS

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Angelique Arnauld

Spiritual Directors

Method of Prayer

Desire to belong to God alone

Getting rid of distractions

 

Desire to belong to God alone

October or November, 1619[1]

 

[…]  I can see clearly this “ant hill” of inclinations which self-love feeds and spreads in your heart, my very dear daughter, and I am well aware that your subtle, delicate, and creative mind contributes toward this; still, my dear daughter, these are after all only inclinations, and since you experience them as intrusions and your heart complains about them, it doesn’t look as if you are consenting to them at all, at least not deliberately so.  No, my very dear daughter, since your dear soul has conceived a great God-given desire to belong to Him alone, don’t be so quick to believe that you are consenting to these contrary movements.  Your heart may be somewhat shaken by these passions, but I think it rarely sins by consenting to them.

 

“Oh, unhappy man that I am,” said the great apostle, “who will deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24)  He felt as if an army, made up of his moods, aversions, habits, and natural inclinations, had conspired to bring about his spiritual death; and because he feared them, he showed that he despised them; and because he despised them, he could not endure them without pain; and his pain made him cry out this way and then answer his own cry by asserting that the grace of God through Jesus Christ (Rom. 7:24) will defend him, not from fear, or terror, or alarm, nor from the fight, but from defeat, and from being overcome.

 

My daughter, to be in this world and not to feel these stirrings of passion – these two things are incompatible.  Our glorious Saint Bernard said it is heresy to claim that we can persist in the same state here on earth, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit, speaking of human beings through Job, has declared that we are never in the same state (Job. 14:2)[2].  This is in reply to what you tell me about the fickleness and inconstancy of your soul, for I firmly believe that it is continually blown about by the winds of its passions and therefore is always unsteady.  But I believe just as firmly that the grace of God and the resolution He has inspired in you live continually at the fine point of your soul where the standard of the Cross is always raised on high, and where faith, hope, and charity ever proclaim loudly: LIVE JESUS!

 

You see, my daughter, these tendencies to pride, vanity, and self-love creep in everywhere, and, whether we are aware of them or not, insinuate themselves into almost all our actions, although they are not the motivation of these actions.  One day Saint Bernard, feeling their annoying presence while he was preaching, said, “Depart from me, Satan!  I didn’t begin because of you and I will not end because of you!”[3]

 

I have only one thing to say to you, my very dear daughter; you tell me that you feed your pride by certain affectations in your conversations and letters.  In conversations, it is true, affectation slips in at times so subtly that we hardly notice it; and yet if we do, we must quickly change our style of speaking.  But in letters, really, this is rather, even very, intolerable, for we can see far better what we are dong, and if we perceive a particularly affected passage, we must punish the hand that wrote it by making it write another letter in a different manner.

 

For the rest, my dear daughter, I don’t doubt that in all this twisting and turning in your heart some venial faults do slip in here and there; yet, because they are only fleeting, they do not deprive you of the fruit of your resolutions but only of the consolation you would feel in not committing these failures – if the human condition permitted this.

 

So now, be fair: neither excuse nor accuse your poor soul except after mature consideration, for fear that if you excuse it for no reason, you render it insolent, and if you accuse it too readily, you weaken its courage and render it timid.  Walk simply and you will walk confidently (cf. Prov. 10:9).

 

I must add an important word at the bottom of this page: don’t burden your weak body with any austerity beyond what the Rule prescribes; preserve your physical strength to help you serve God through spiritual practices.  Often these have to be given up because we have indiscreetly overburdened the body which should be a partner of the soul in our service of God.

 

Write to me whenever you wish, without ceremony or fear; do not let respect stand in the way of the love that God wants us to have for each other, and according to which I am invariably and forever…

 

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[1] Oeuvres, XIX, 50-53: Letter MDLXIV.

[2] Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter CCLIV to Guarinus.

[3] Cf. Mt. 4:10.  The Annecy editors were not able to find any basis in the works or biographies of Bernard for this story often told about him.

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