Salesian Literature

Chapter 6  :  Signs of wholesome rapture; the third type

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In our own day, to be sure, there have been people convinced – and they were not alone in their belief – of being often rapt by God into ecstasy; yet, in the end, it turned out that they had been suffering from delusions, deceived by the devil.  Even philosophers have known certain forms of natural ecstasy, resulting from acute mental concentration on abstract things.  We are not to be surprised, therefore, if the devil – when he is up to his monkey tricks, deluding souls, scandalizing the weak, passing himself off for an angel of light (cf. 2 Cor. 11:140 – brings about raptures in one or two souls insufficiently instructed in true piety.

 

To help us distinguish divine ecstasies from human or diabolical ones, God’s servants have left considerable evidence.  For my own part, it will sufficiently meet my purpose here, if I give you two signs of sound and saintly ecstasy.

 

The first is that a holy ecstasy never takes over, engages the intellect to the extent that it does the will, which it moves, excites, fills with a powerful fondness for God.  So that if an ecstasy is more beautiful than good, more discerning than fervent, more speculative than stimulating, it is extremely dubious, highly suspect.  What I mean is that when a person has more light in his intellect to appreciate God’s wonders than fervour in his will to love God, then he must be on his guard: there is every likelihood that his ecstasy may be a fake.

 

The second sign of authentic ecstasy lies in the third kind of ecstasy which I mentioned above[1] -  an ecstasy that is perfectly holy, perfectly desirable, crowning the other two; this is the ecstasy of activity, of life.  At such times it is not merely a normal decent Christian life that we are living, but one that is superhuman, spiritual, devoted, ecstatic; in other words, a life that is in every way beyond and above our natural state.

 

Never to steal, or tell lies, never to be impure, or swear unnecessarily, or take another’s life; ever to say one’s prayers, love and respect one’s parents – all that amounts to living in accord with man’s natural reason.  But to give up all our possessions, to love poverty, to call it “lady” and mean it, to count disgrace, scorn, abasement, persecution, martyrdom as blessings, as sources of intense happiness, to accept the limitations of absolute chastity, to behave (after all) in complete contrast to the opinions and maxims of the world in which we live, to swim against the stream by habitual self-renouncement and submission – there is life, not on the natural, but on the supernatural level; that is living, not within, but above and beyond ourselves.  Since nobody can go out of self in this way, except he be attracted by the eternal Father (Jn. 6:44), such a way of living necessitates a continual rapture, a permanent ecstasy of activity and work.

 

You have undergone death, wrote St. Paul to the people of Rhodes[2], and your life is hidden away now with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).  Death sets the soul free from the limitations of the body; so what does the apostle mean by his statement, you have undergone death?  It is as though he had said: “You are alive to self no longer, free from the limitations of your natural state; your soul’s life is no longer its own, but God’s.”  So it is with us, Theotimus, if we are spiritual. We lay aside our natural life, to lead a higher one, hiding this new life completely with Christ in God, who alone sees it, understands it, bestows it.

 

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[1]  Book 7, Chapter 4.

[2]  According to some Greek writers the Colossians lived at Rhodes, and were so called after the famous Colossus.

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