This site is full of FREE ebooks -
TO A FRIEND
1923-41
Heavenly King, Paraclete, Spirit of Truth, present in all placet, and | filling all things, Treasury of good and Choir-master of life: come and dwell within us, cleanse us from all stains and save our souls.—Liturgy I of St. John Chrysostom.
Jan. 19, 1923.
… As to the “degrees of prayer,” it is not really uncanny, for most of us travel by that road more or less, though of course we each feel our own experience to be unique! As you recognize yourself there do read Les Graces d’Oraison by Poulain and Holy Wisdom by Augustine Baker. It’s not in the least “out of order” that you should find yourself at the levels of the “simplicity” and the “quiet”—but you may, probably will, lose these, perhaps more than once, before they become truly established and habitual. That vivid awareness could not go on all the time—it has to grow steadier. But the great thing is not to try to do too much of yourself, but leave it to happen. Of course too it is of primary importance for anyone committed to this way of life, to set aside, so far as possible, the same time each day for prayer and recollection, and it is also far better to do it always in the same place. This time should be so used, whether you are in the light or not—at least a half-hour daily. It is essential to you as training if for nothing else. I mean this of course in addition to any ordinary morning and night prayers. Do not be too much cast down when the joy goes, will you?
It is the steady course, not the ecstasy, that counts in the end.
… .
Jan. 25, 1923.
I am not a bit unpleasant about sins and penances… but apt to be disagreeable on the church question. I stood out against it myself for so long and have been so thoroughly convinced of my own error, that I do not want other people to waste time in the same way.
Nothing can save you from narrow intensity and “verticalness” if you reject all the corporate and institutional side—always rather repugnant to people of our temperament. I do not mean that perpetual churchgoing and sermons (!) are necessary, but some participation in the common religious life and some sacramental practice. In the long run you will find it has a steadying and mellowing effect, and will help too to carry you over the blank times. You will find regular training a great help too. A simple rule, to be followed whether one is in the light or not, gives backbone to one’s spiritual life, as nothing else can. You should fix it now, during this time of peace and joy; and let it be decidedly less than you feel you can do now… . If you fall later into a state in which you cannot, without strain, practise meditation or mental prayer, you can spend the time in spiritual reading, only try always to keep it intact and not use it for other things.
It is no trouble to write to you—but a great pleasure and privilege; and easy, because you trust me enough to write intimately, for which I am very grateful. Only please never assume that what I suggest is necessarily right for you, if you have a distinct feeling against it.
Feb. 7, 1923.
But you MUST settle down and quiet yourself. Your present state if encouraged will be in the end as bad for you spiritually as physically. I know it is not easy to do. Nevertheless it will in the nature of things come about gradually and I want you to help it all you know. If you allow rapture or vehemence to have its way too much, you risk a violent reaction to dryness, whereas if you act prudently you will keep the deep steady permanent peace, in the long run more precious and more fruitful than the dazzling light. But you won’t do it by direct struggle—did you ever quiet a baby, or your dog, or any other excited bit of life, by direct struggle? You will do it, please, by steadily, gradually and quietly turning your thoughts and prayers not so much to the overwhelming joy and wonder, as to the deep steadfastness of God, get gently accustomed to it, at home with it, rest in it. Let your night prayers be rather short, very quiet, more or less on a set form, not too “mental” and in the line of feeling of Psalm xxiii. Let yourself sink down into God’s Love in complete dependence, and even though the light does seem to rush in on you, keep as it were the eyes of your soul shut, intent on falling asleep in Him…. During the day, doing your work, etc., it is I know very hard not to be distracted and absorbed. But remember you have no more right to be extravagant over this than over any other pleasure or craving. It is true you can and probably will find a balance in which you will live in a quiet spirit of prayer, able at all leisure moments—and in the middle of your work —to turn simply and gently to God. But this will come only when all vehemence is eliminated.
Consider the sequence of daily acts, and your external interests as part of your service, part of God’s order for you, and as having a proper claim on your undivided attention.
Take special pains now to keep up fully or develop some definite non-religious interest, e.g., your music. Work at it, consider it an obligation to do so. It is most necessary to your spiritual health; and you will very soon find that it has a steadying effect. “Good works” won’t do—it must be something you really like for its own sake. (When this prescription was given to me by the wisest of saints, I objected strongly, but lived to bless him for his insistence! Now I hand it on to you.)
Otherwise, just for the present, do go as quietly as you can, about your work, etc., I mean. Avoid strain. If you could take a few days off and keep quite quiet it would be good, but if this is impossible at any rate go along gently, look after your body, don’t saturate yourself the whole time with mystical books. I know you do feel tremendously stimulated all round; but remember the “young presumptuous disciples” in the Cloud! Hot milk and a thoroughly foolish novel are better things for you to go to bed on just now than St. Teresa.
Remember as a general rule, running right through the spiritual life, that the more any particular aspect or exercise attracts you, the more ordered, regular, moderate should be your use of it.
Don’t have any lurking fear that you will lose the light by this kind of discipline—just the opposite, you will steady and tend to retain it.
February 21, 1923.
It is physically as much as spiritually I want you quieted and normalized. The body must not be driven beyond its strength… .
Your nerves and mind have been subjected to an abnormal strain and must be wisely looked after for a bit. Otherwise just gently encourage the quieting-down process in all possible ways and give outlet to your new zest in your active and mental as well as your purely religious life. I would never dream of calling you a Young Presumptuous Disciple! What am I to use such language? “An infant crying in the night” as the poet said. I merely wanted to draw your attention to what happened to those who “travailled their fleshly hearts outrageously in their breasts.” The Choral Society sounds quite a good outlet!
If you should find you tend to dry up during your fixed time of prayer—I don’t mean merely become passive—don’t try to tune yourself up again, but at once take to congenial vocal or book-prayers with intervals of silence if you like; nothing forced.
I look forward so much to seeing you. Give me as much notice as you can, when you want to come.
March 1, 1923.
I am delighted to hear of the novels, but please leave St. Teresa, Ruysbroeck and Co. alone for a bit and don’t deliberately practise mental prayer either. I know this is a “hard saying” and I don’t mean I want you to put any strain on yourself to keep off it, but don’t encourage yourself in it…. So long as you feel “peaceful and rested” well and good—just stay there and be content. You see, the whole point is, there is as you know quite well, a psychic as well as a spiritual side to all these experiences—and it is in your case the psychic side which has been too fully roused and upset your equilibrium. The spiritual side is always deep, quiet, peaceful, humbling. All this you have and this is the valuable part and absolutely safe. Keep close to that and gently move away from the vivid, passionately rapturous type of reaction. It is not God but your too eagerly enjoying psyche which keeps you awake and tears you to bits with an over-exciting joy. This was inevitable for a bit —but please get away from it now!
You will think I give nothing but unpleasant lectures. However I promise not to refer to the subject when you come, unless you do first!
But do be limp and get well.
May 2, 1923.
I was wondering when you would write again, but never dreamed of that lovely keepsake falling, as it were, out of the letter. … It is beautiful and I do like it so much.
Some of your letter I like too, but not the part confessing that you are still really ill and plainly in a condition when a little spiritual vegetation would suit you better than the demanded revision of your rule of prayer. I still think one or at most one and a half hours in the day for deliberate continuous prayer is sufficient; it is as much, and probably more than you will manage without strain when this exceptional illumination fades—and that is the real test. It may be in two or three separate portions, as you like. I do not count short 5-minute recollections or aspirations during the day. These you are quite free to do so long as they do not interfere with necessary activities. In fact the occasional momentary prayers are excellent and should become habitual. As to reading, something rather less advanced and more concerned with laying solid foundations than the Sparkling Stone would be better I should think, and please do not only read mysticism. Balance it with some good logical stuff; and use the New Testament as material for meditation in preference to anything else; it is steadying, and after all, if the other things do not lead you back to that, they are not much good.
I think a Retreat of not more than seven days would be very good for you… . Most of the conducted Retreats are only about three days but you can usually stay on a bit longer as a private retreatant and get the benefit of the silence and general atmosphere… . Do take care of yourself—I mean your body not your soul! make up your mind to some sort of complete rest. The tramp steamer sounds nice.
June 27, 1923.
The Retreat House I always go to is Pleshey. I do advise you to go to a conducted Retreat; you are more sure of unbroken silence and you get the atmosphere better. But by all means stay on a day or two by yourself afterwards…. No restrictions except a general warning against over-intensity… .
Go to Communion as often as you can and weave the idea (and practice) of spiritual communion into your prayers. You’ve got to get rid of that obsession of sin, you know; it’s a crudeness, an inferior sort of humility at best—and really rooted in a disguised self-occupation! I’ve had it badly so I know all about it. Look at Christ and not at yourself. Regard the inclination to useless remorse as a temptation. There is not much to choose between the best and the worst in us, seen in the spiritual light, is there?
Just let the love of God wash over the whole thing. It’s the only Christian attitude.
Now as to your rule of making Christ the ultimate arbiter as to the spirit of every action, of course that is right. As to the concrete fact of each action, don’t fall into excesses. If He did not go to Italy, He visited His friends, obviously enjoyed beauty, satisfied the poetic and imaginative outlook so clearly reflected in the Gospel. You are to be both world-accepting and worldrenouncing. This He clearly taught and teaches.
Also kindly re-read and ponder the parable of the Two Camels in Ferishtah’s Fancies—a very wise work! This need not count as spiritual reading, though it is. And get as long and complete a holiday as you can and regard it as your first religious duty to keep quiet and in a state of gentle acceptance and not bang about.
October 7, 1923.
Do bring yourself to realize that a life of complete surrender, inward poverty and correspondence with Our Lord, has been and can be lived without the use of physical penances… .
If you are feeling so much as you say the attraction of Holy Communion and beginning to have the idea that a more Catholic type of practice may be God’s will for you, I should very deeply regret any action on your part which shut you off from this possibility. I have felt all along that a regular sacramental practice was what you needed and now you begin to see what it means it is doubtful whether you will get on in the long run without it. I shall never say one word to press you to join the Anglican or any other church. You must only do so if you clearly feel it is God’s call for you. Do not confuse the issue with scruples about Holy Communion being a “spiritual selfindulgence.” You know at the bottom of your heart it is nothing of the kind and is not to be resorted to for its sweetness but as a positive source of strength. If you do become a regular and frequent communicant you will have to do it with absolute determination to continue it steadily in darkness or in light and will find in this a degree of discipline you probably do not realize yet… .
After being myself bodi a non-sacramentalist and a sacramentalist, there is no doubt at all left in my own mind as to what is the simplest and most direct channel through which grace comes to the soul.
November 6, 1923.
I am so dreadfully sorry for you and do not suppose anything I say will cheer you up much. But I do want you to realize that this was absolutely bound to happen sooner or later—not merely to you, but to any soul whatever. No one—not the saints—has ever had continuous illumination: and the very vividness of your experience has to be paid for by a corresponding reaction. I am so glad you realize it was not “quite right” or peaceful enough. I knew it—but the least hint that it had a psychic element seemed to upset you. I believe you do not know at all yet, though you will, what the deep and true peace really is.
Now do, my very dear child, take this grand, indeed crucial opportunity rightly. You’ve desired suffering—this is your opportunity of suffering and of testing the purity and disinterestedness of your love. Your whole spiritual future depends on how you take this trial. If you are quiet and steady I do not suppose the darkness will long be unrelieved. Read again St. John of the Cross, Dark Night, Book I; I think you will see where you are. A more blessed place to be really, than in the midst of “sensible consolations”—which, however entrancing, are mere snares unless they lead to self-loss.
Now as to practice. Keep up, however it repels you, regular Communions (once a week if you can, not more); other churchgoing I leave to you. Quite short morning and night prayers. No strain. No attempt at mental prayer. But please keep intact the time you had for mental prayer; do needlework, gardening, any quiet and congenial work in it, but don’t melt it into your day—and if the unsought impulse to prayer then comes to you, yield gently to it. Make no struggle to recover fervour… . Above all, remember all the time, God is moulding you as much in darkness as in light and turn to Him with gratitude and acceptance.
November 16, 1923.
The more you can avoid strain, remain quiet, trustful and accepting, the sooner light will return. Offer what you suffer in this darkness to Christ, it’s worth offering, and if you do this, the worst of the sting will go.
I do not think either St. John of the Cross or your director (a pretty pair! why not Jehovah and a black beetle?) fails to realize that you feel very small indeed. It would be most deplorable if you did not! Any soul feeling the dark side of the Divine action is necessarily overwhelmed with its own “nothingness.” All the same, what he says does apply to you and what you are suffering is what countless others have borne before. Of course the sense of being forsaken is the worst bit, as it was the worst bit of the Cross. I shall be glad if you emerge from this to a more moderate and quiet type of experience, for indeed these sudden and violent alternations are enough to tear you to bits and you must take real care of yourself…. Do not struggle for concentration in reading. That mental deadness is part (a psychic part!) of the whole condition of exhaustion in which you now are. But all parts of it can be turned by you to great spiritual profit, if they bring you to a perfectly quiet and patient waiting on God’s will for you… . Think of yourself as a child in a dark room from which the light has been taken, in order that you may quiet down and sleep a little. Love took away the light and at the right time will bring it back.
November 24, 1923.
Do arrange your life to get in as many Communions as you can, for thus you will get really, though not directly in consciousness, the strength you have been getting in contemplative prayer. You have been relying too much on experience and not enough on the facts of faith, which is the path you have now got to follow for a bit. When you feel that impulse to prayer, try to stay as it were in the dark for a bit with God and accept the conditions under which you have now got to live. Quiet acceptance and common-sense are the way to get fervour back again. Repulsive programme, isn’t it?
December 14, 1923.
It’s not the least use reintroducing the physical penance question.
As you were so insistent I even went so far as to ask Baron von Hugel (who is my “final court of appeal” on all questions of the inner life) in an impersonal way, what would be the correct advice to give on this point; and he replied, to leave all severe penances alone, their renunciation being a far more wholesome discipline than their use. Considering that he has directed hundreds of souls of all sorts of different types and is himself a saint, I do not think you can go against this, can you? You are quite mistaken if you think anything of this sort would bring back fervour and light: on the contrary, keep quiet, do not concentrate on religion, let the reaction spend itself and in the end, all will be well. You are in God’s hands and He can’t hurt you. Do rest your soul on that. As to “God’s absence”; it is of course illusion; it is He who casts the shadow that distresses you so.
Do not hesitate to write if it helps.
January 26, 1924.
How I wish I could get out of your head the idea that the love of Christ is “withdrawn” from you and that you have “no spiritual life.” You are far more truly living the spiritual life holding on through this darkness than when you were enjoying yourself in consolations. And one proof of this is that people come to you for help and you are able to deal with them. Why be vexed about that? It is extremely good for you to do it, as well as a blessed privilege.
Certainly do not tell them “you have no spiritual life” or indeed unless inevitable, anything at all about yourself! There’s no occasion to feel hypocritical, and even when, as so often happens, those who come to us for advice are so immeasurably better than we are ourselves, keep it all on impersonal levels. God sends such work and will help you to do it.
February 25, 1924.
Ovaltine! gentle aspirations! no strain and no fixed rule!
preference given to secular interests! Be one-tenth as kind to yourself as you were to me and you will do very nicely… . It was such a perfectly happy week and I loved every moment of it, both the sacred and the profane!
The poem* will come true for you—not “perhaps”! I am not dissatisfied, though it is horrid to have to stand by and see you suffer. But it is the sort of pain which is one of the greatest of the soul’s privileges and makes “affirmative religion” look pretty thin. How can we expect God’s action to be other than torture to us; weak and unpurified and yet sensitive things as we are?
These verses were found written on the fly-leaf of a copy of Immanence after E.U. had left.
Come with birds’ voices when the light grows dim Yet lovelier in departure and more dear:
While the warm flush hangs yet at heaven’s rim, And the one star shines clear.
Though the swift night haste to approaching day Stay Thou and stir not, brooding on the deep:
Thy secret love, Thy silent word let say Within the senses’ sleep.
Softer than dew. But when the morning wind Blows down the world, O Spirit! show Thy power:
Quicken the dreams within the languid mind And bring Thy seed to flower!
—E.U.
May 20, 1924.
Of course a life of adoration and surrender is not selfish! What next in the way of scruples? Do you think the seraphim Isaiah saw were monuments of spiritual selfindulgence? If that is your call it is a very blessed one and to be received with deep gratitude in spite of the suffering it must entail. But I am grieved for all the physical pain, though somehow when you are not too overcome by it to do anything but just bear it, it too can open up heavenly vistas with the Cross at their far end. I wonder whether beads will help you at all just now—usually I rather dislike them—but when ill and weak one can drowsily run them through one’s fingers as a link to one’s aspirations; keeping thus gently recollected without strain I find. DON’T do it if it tires you ever, or if you find it is no help. But in case you do find it nice I send you a heavily-blessed Dominican rosary I got for a friend of mine now dead, who came as near sanctity in her ten years as a Christian, as anyone I’ve known.
I’d love you to have them anyhow.
One can make endless devotional patterns on them. I rather like this one:
Anima Christi or Jesu dulds memoria on the Cross, and on the small beads O Sacred Heart of Jesus! in Thee is all my trust and the Paternoster on the big beads; or if that is too long If Thou wilt that I be in Light, be Thou blessed for it; and if Thou wilt that I be in darkness, still be Thou blessed for it! Light and darkness, life and death, bless ye the Lord.’ …
Glad you like Otto; he has got hold of something real hasn’t he? I was sorry he trailed off into Luther when he might have illustrated from real saints; and of course he does not get the intimate, penetrating other side, the sacramental and homely—just as “irrational” as the “numinous” and perhaps in a way more productive of abject feelings!
June 20, 1924.
You need not have worried about penances and mortifications need you? When the hour strikes they are there all right; and so on with everything else, only never the expected thing. It is lovely to think you are happier inwardly, though still so “tried and tempested” outwardly. Sink down gently into that selfabandoned peace all you can, it is there that your real treasures are hid.
As to Communion, well it would have been a solace to you: but it is the comfort, not the grace, you are missing. “Every time we think with love of the well-beloved, He is once more our meat and our drink.” I love that bit, don’t you?
Yes, as you say, the vastness does open up more and more and we shrink more and more; and get more our real shape and size in the process. It is when one gets a glimpse of the Completeness and Perfection of God’s operation right through, that it is so lovely, isn’t it? Then we cease to matter and at once we are in Him and quite happy, even though not consciously “consoled.”
August 7, 1924.
I’m very glad to hear you have managed to get recollected again. The sort of prayer you describe is all right, I am sure. In fact you ought to make up your mind to it as your average prayer and a great deal to be grateful for at that. Anything beyond is an added grace and never to be expected continuously: and in your present state of health would be far too much for you. So stay quiet and be content with that sense of dim nearness, won’t you? You do not require sugar-feeding now and so aren’t having it. No! I don’t mind much about your rule. Only avoid all strain and just remain quietly with God as long as you feel called so to do. Let your side be entirely response and acceptance—no forcing of the situation—and that will beall right.
As to what you can do: I feel pretty confident, and all the more since you’ve had to weather this darkness, that your real call is contemplative: and this fits in well enough with your physical situation, doesn’t it?
Now, contemplation which is exclusively of the a deux type certainly does run a grave risk of falling into spiritual selfishness. But a true contemplative vocation (whether lived in or out of the world) is surely not this at all. It involves (in the end—gradually—never with violence) the development of a spiritual force by which you exercise not only adoration, but also mediatorship—a sort of redemptive and clarifying power working on other souls—a tiny co-operation in the work of Christ. This is the thought I’d like you to keep before you. And it will cover not only everything you have to suffer, physically and every way, but actual work in and for other souls. It is only to my mind when thus understood, that the vocation to prayer achieves real greatness. Of course the side of personal communion and adoration remains primary—through that comes the food, power, impetus and peace—but all that comes |[ thus is to be used again, eventually, for the purposes of God.
I do not mean you are to change your prayer at all now, or struggle to do intercessions, etc. But regard your present phase as educative, and respond to it faithfully and quietly. The rest will come at the right time. You may have more time for this quiet receptive prayer; but on days when you feel dry, exhausted, etc., you are quietly to drop it.
“Where Thou art, there is Heaven” is a nice little aspiration I think, don’t you?
I am glad you like Lucie-Christine. But if you read her carefully (and after all it is only extracts from her Journal) she has plenty of times of obscurity and desolation. Yes, her fervours do make one blush like the “Golden Fountain” lady. But after all she never meant ‘em to be printed poor dear, and French is an unfortunate language.
Even St. Catherine of Siena in modern French would look pretty bad!
August 28, 1924.
After your remarks about Fenelon and health (with which I rather agree!) I suppose further reference to this subject would be tactless. Otherwise descriptions of invalids driving in the cows are calculated to provoke a “Surtout, chere Madame, evitez les fatigues!” The Baron dosed me with Fenelon at one time, till I told him that a Perfect Gentleman giving judicious spiritual advice to Perfect Ladies was no good to me—since when his name has not been mentioned between us! …
You must expect and accept fluctuations. You won’t mind them nearly so much after a bit… . Try not to be torn to bits by the longing, it’s so bad for you and so useless—and you are just as much there really in the dark as in the light, aren’t you? Heaven would still be Heaven if we had to go in with blinkers on.
Perugia.
Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
You know quite well it is Fenelon’s moderation and avoidance of introspection that is so good for you; and not his gentility! I too am much more at home among cows and pigs than elsewhere and so glad you had a little of their company… .
I am sure you ought not to kneel! Like you I always want to and find it much harder if one doesn’t. But it is possible to cure oneself of that! The most contemplative person I know always sits and shuts her eyes: like Rolle! It is just habit and you had better begin to acquire it. So handy in many ways, especially for short snatches of recollection when one may be interrupted. Shutting one’s eyes and thinking of oneself as kneeling before the Cross is sometimes rather a help… .
Do not overdo things or forget how necessary it is to keep external interests going if you want to avoid the spiritual ennui which comes from overstrain. When I said more time for prayer, I didn’t mean all the time!
September 24, 1924.
… Te prayerful attitude is more valuable for you than long concentration on the prayerful act, which is only one way, and not the way of living the contemplative life.
October 24, 1924.
I’ve given two addresses this week, or rather the same one twice …
on the need for Retreats and all that they stand for. … I spoke of Joy, and the Chairman said “Miss Underhill has told us we must be Cheerful Christians.” I nearly yelled “I didn’t!!” Imagine it! Like putting the loveliest of the angels into Jaeger combinations!
… Do not fuss about using this part of your life well! Of course you will “keep on” as you call it, or rather, He will keep on with you. There are times when “suffering the divine action” is the main part of one’s job… .
I never got much value out of Pascal except the Mystere and the Amulet myself… .
Holy Innocents Day, 1924.
Do you like this aspiration which came to me on a tiny card, “Lord!
for Thy great pain, have mercy on my little pain!” I think it’s rather a lovely one: it is from Margery Kempe.
The other new one I have liked is, “I lose myself, wondering at Him”—from the old Cowley Saint, Richard Benson.
Yes! though I’ll never believe God likes or means illness per se—I am sure in its weakness and suffering it is among the most valuable ways in which He can work on us and we complete our surrender to Him. Although conscious recollection is often beyond us, we do then remain in true interior solitude with Him and are obliged to suffer His working on our souls.
Of course because you’ve been trying to take it right, it has not impaired (but improved) you as an instrument of His purposes… .
January 25, 1925.
I’ll bring or lend you when we meet St. Fracois de Sales’ Letters which are full of splendid, sane stuff. As for Therese de l’Enfant Jesus, she is NOT a model for you! A “case” inclined to tepid and agreeable paths who read it, asked me whether she was to regard it as “murder or suicide?” and I certainly think, without daring to criticize the special calls of the saints, that there is an element of this sort in it.
As to self-abnegation: be ready to accept every mortification and sacrifice God asks of you in unruffled peace—but No Cross-Hunting!
Your consecration means tranquil abiding in love with Christ, through ups and downs and lights and darknesses—just as they come, without self-will, doesn’t it? But requests for yet another dose of powder without jam, are only inverted self-will! Far the best way to deal with self-love, is to let it die of starvation because you are wholly concentrated on His love, within which you can safely love all things, from your dog to the Seraphim, can’t you?
April 16, 1925.
NO! prayer for other people is emphatically not an extra; but part of one’s daily rule. It must come within the two hours for prayer and meditation. Sorry! But after all, if one is spending the time with God, does it matter very much exactly how one is spending it?
July 16, 1925.
The Conference about “deepening the spiritual life of the Church”
was a most interesting and illuminating affair. A mixture of eminent and progressive ecclesiastics of all parties (4 Bishops and quite a bunch of Canons) with boys and girls from the Universities (who told the Bishops without any tact or reserve just what they thought about the Church), representatives of Missionary Societies, Studdert-Kennedy, the Superior of Cowley and so forth. Most of the mature persons freely confessed to feeling “spiritually impotent and tired”; but when we were all asked to give a quarter of an hour a day to prayer for the objects of the Conference, a surprising number were alarmed by this dreadful demand! And after a little discussion there was a plaintive yelp from one clerical collar to presiding Bishop: “My Lord! is this quarter of an hour to be in addition to our ordinary devotions?”
We now form a more or less permanent body and meet again in October.
Everyone on it I think is really keen, though the way they put things might suggest to an outsider that there are at least 12
different religions in the English Church. We meet in the Jerusalem Chamber and have silent prayer before the High Altar of Westminster Abbey at 10 p.m. which is rather wonderful… . Oh yes! I am sure it’s true we each have to discover (with help) all the real things for ourselves and don’t really understand what we read—though we often think we do!—till we have managed to practise at least some of it. …
July 31, 1925.
Do not be in a hurry with your convert! It is not everyone who is equal to “giving themselves freely” at the beginning. Let her go along gently, following her own attrait. She will probably do best on a sugar diet for a little while and in due course find out for herself that it is not adequate….
Miss Small gave me the suppressed verse of Bishop Ken’s Evening Hymn—rather nice for ending night prayers:
The faster sleep the sense doth bind The more unfettered is the mind; O may my soul from matter free, Thy Loveliness unclouded see!
August 28, 1925.
… I do realize that a long quiet time alone with God would probably help you a lot. But it must be quite without strain and have opportunities for relaxation and safeguards both against intensity and monotony. After all, if you had been able to leave the world … you would not have been allowed to spend all your time praying. But you would have a life considerably relieved from distraction and external claims, and so more consistently recollected. And this I think you may certainly have for some weeks on end, if a suitable place can be discovered… .
Venice,
September 14, 1925.
I agree with you about Poulain; no account of “states of prayer”
reduced to a system can be really accurate, because we are not machines and each go within certain general limitations our own way; and may have transitory gleams of “higher states” whilst still only really belonging to the lower degrees, and so forth. After all, his presence de Dieu send as a criterion of “mystical prayer” is much too general. For as we all know, this may vary from a faint sort of certitude to an overwhelming experience, and there’s no point at which one could say “here the supernatural begins.”
November 10, 1925.
Do not please assume and dwell on the idea that this illness and suffering is necessarily God’s special visitation to you and therefore ought to go on. It is raw material simply; an opportunity of acceptance and consecration, and therefore capable of becoming an immense grace for your soul, an opportunity of adoration from the Cross. But humanly speaking, your life is to pass on and through it, taking all reasonable means of cure and making yourself fit for service to whatever else God’s providence contains for you, isn’t it?
Epiphany, 1926.
I am deeply interested in your Chemical [student]… . As to his recent remarks, I think I would say Catholicism did not produce Torquemada but gave his natural ferocity a theological outlet. It is the old choice between a religion wide enough and human enough to embrace all sorts, and one narrow enough and lofty enough to be content with Gentlemen Only. And it is the big room-for-all-sorts kind that produces saints, isn’t it?
Would he really condemn an apple-tree that occasionally tolerated a bit of blight, and in spite of it produced a good average crop and here and there a Prize Specimen? While he is at it, he had better condemn the whole Universe—but it is really no use being more fussy than God! …
My latest case is aged 64 and says, poor lamb (sheep perhaps), that ever since 17 it has been longing for an answer to prayer but never had one, in spite of listening! Almost as if she expected a sort of spiritual telephone, and—“What is wrong?” But what can one say?
Sunday before Ascension, 1926.
I am so grieved that you have been wretched physically and spiritually too. Of course the two things are closely connected but that I know does not make the spiritual desolation any easier to bear. The right and only way for you to take it is to relax all effort, make no attempt to keep your rule, but wait as quietly and peaceably as you can and dwell on this and kindred subjects as little as you can. I wish your nature craved less for emotional satisfactions; for it is that very largely which causes this intense suffering in you. After all the sense of Christ’s presence, though a joy and support, is not the essence of religion. Nor would the Cross be the Cross without that feeling of darkness and abandonment by God. You can, you know, turn all this into a redemptive sacrifice; and if you are able to do that, it is worth all the consolations in the world. But you must do it quietly, and check the propensity to dwell on your own spiritual pain. It is much the same with bodily suffering. There too, one can either explore and emphasize it, allow oneself to be obsessed till it is nearly intolerable; or, stand away from it and let it happen and so kill the worst of the sting. You have got, probably, to let this thing happen for a bit; and the more quietly you can do this, the sooner light will return. If you have Tauler’s Inner Way read the sermon on the Martyrs and see what can be made of such a situation! You told me you felt called to suffer for Christ. Well! here is the suffering—far more prevailing too than crude physical austerities and I don’t think, if you take it that way, you can resent it, can you? Never mind if you did “feel rebellious.” Do not agonize over this. Accept it too as part of the suffering and then just leave it.
Go to Communion when you can; but make no efforts to achieve any sort of realization. These in your present phase always defeat themselves and increase the sense of conflict and strain.
No more now. Let me know how you get on. And do not lose hope or allow yourself to consider the idea of losing hope. That is the one thing which is never allowed surely, and which takes away the whole value of the sacrifice to which you are called.
September 5, 1926.
This is just to send you my love and say I hope you will have a really and deeply happy time at [the Convent]. I entreat you to enter on it in as simple, expansive, non-intense mood as you possibly can, turning steadily away from all self-abasing and self-analysing sentiments and remaining gently passive and ready for everything, or for nothing.
Horning.
September 14, 1926.
Now as to your Confession. If you are genuinely sure that you wish it because you feel it to be God’s will for you, by all means do it.
But do not do it to please the Rev. Mother or abstain from doing it to please me! These motives should not ever be thought of in connection with a Sacrament, should they? I think possibly, if you feel a real inclination to do it, it may be a good thing and help you to escape from this morbid sense of sin and confusion of motive, etc., which obsesses you.
Be quite clear with yourself that only definite committed sins are to be confessed. The fact that you feel “wlatsome” and are always brooding over it is merely an unfortunate piece of foolishness, to which the Church does not extend absolution. I remember the Baron saying to me under similar circumstances, “The Sacrament of Penance was not created in order that you might discuss your unfortunate character. You can’t be absolved for not having a sense of humour!”
A word used by Hilton.
I should be very sorry for you to make a practice of frequent confession or anything else requiring detailed self-examination because I am sure it would increase your self-occupation. But one confession, without soul-scraping of any kind and with a clear determination to let bygones be bygones when it is over, may really pacify and clarify your soul… .
50 C.H.S.
October 29, 1926.
I think you have lately made a distinct advance in this [Prayer]
even though it is “without salary” (but at any moment you know the arrears may be paid in full) and that you are most distinctly to follow quietly but faithfully where you are being led. You are also quite right to leave formal prayer as you say, when impelled to, and go and do “something useful” in that same spirit. That you are able and inclined to do this, is in itself a sign of growth, Persevere gently along this line.
As to “that which you are going to transmit will be relative to that which you are able to receive”—Yes! But not “consciously receive”! You are, in such a disposition as you describe, as wide open as you know how to be towards God, and so receiving all the while. That remark was not directed to your type but to the sort of people who practise constant fussy intercessions without that essential background of contemplation which is, though it may not give you any particular satisfaction, well established now in your life. And if this self-oblation to God does take the form of suffering (though here you have to guard most carefully of course against any morbid assumption that particular sufferings “come from God” and must be endured and not alleviated) still this is supremely material which can be utilized for His redemptive work in souls.
When it comes, use it thus—but never deliberately seek it. I do not think it necessarily a coincidence that your “difficult child”
came round thus. It is seldom possible to do much with really crucial cases without at least being fully willing to suffer, mentally or otherwise… . The mere tension and effort needed tend to produce it. Anyhow in all this I take it you will be perfectly safe to follow your attrait, so long as you are reasonable, and do not overstrain yourself and keep non-religious interests alive as much as you possibly can.
As for asking for special things for special souls, don’t you think it is rather a case of first offering oneself and them to God, and then as it were letting oneself be used to work His will on them? Of course in some cases the issue is quite clear—e.g., rescue from temptation: in which case you simply try in union with His will to work this. First give yourself to God; then direct your whole attention, as it were, from within the Cross, on the person for whom you have got to pray. This probably comes to the same thing as what you describe. Anyhow, don’t force yourself to a particular method, but follow your call. Goodbye for now. I am very glad you wrote about all this, though you don’t need direction on it really, except a judicious use of the curb! …
Heiler is in England and coming to tea next Sunday. Yes! isn’t Pere Charles a pure joy? I love the meditation on the Benedicite so, and feel when David [her cat] suddenly sticks his nose into my face that, like the frogs and the escargots, he can enchanter ma priere.
Your dog too should be good at this! My last addition to Andrewes is from St. Anselm: “Lord! teach me to seek Thee and show Thyself to me as I seek: for I cannot seek Thee unless Thou teach me, nor find Thee unless Thou show Thyself.”
E.U. used an edition of Andrewes with blank pages on which she used to write prayers which specially delighted her. But each new prayer had to be on probation for some time before she admitted it to her collection.
July 18, 1927.
In view of all you say I think:
(a) Daily Communion would be spiritually permissible provided it was not too much for you physically; but it must be one of your chief duties to reduce physical strain as much as you possibly can.
(b) Extra times of prayer are not necessary. You must use your judgment as to how much and what kind, best enables you to keep in the generalized state of prayer you describe.
(c) Community life probably not suitable and almost certainly too much for your health. The best thing seems to me at present what you suggest: your normal life, with longish but not strenuous retreats from time to time.
You will probably always find your special type of prayer pretty exhausting and therefore the careful preserving of your strength is of the very first importance. For this reason, considering your health, I do not feel definite fasting would be a safe asceticism, except in the form of leaving out something you like and replacing it by something you do not care for. Fragile persons are never allowed to fast.
For the rest, you have I fear quite enough physical suffering to give material for the exercise of patience, surrender, etc. Be moderate!
Great privileges must be handled wisely… .
In the train, Liverpool to London.
Eve of All Saints.
Both shows are safely over and I really felt very happy, thanks to good backing up. We had 28 at Watermillock… . I had lots of interviews and many of them were perfect dears…. I had to submit to a long discussion on Spiritual Healing [after the Retreat was over].
These people seem so cocksure about what God means and wills and all the rest of it and so over-impressed by the importance of physical robustness, don’t they? X. considered the Saints would have been so much more useful if they had been full of beans and had lived longer and gone about and met more people. I said, from that point of view a mere three years ministry in Galilee instead of a prolonged tour through the Roman Empire did seem a pity. But he did not seem inclined to deal with this argument and only made a vague noise.
… History teaches these people nothing—they seem unable to distinguish between quality and quantity….
… At Liverpool I had the Bishop’s vestry all to myself! Think of that! … One simply darling person, an aged Quakeress, 86, Dr.
Thomas Hodgkins’ widow, and Violet Hodgkins’ mother: light simply streamed out of her. She came in to see me and held my hand and said, “I hope, my dear, while you are watering our souls, you get a few drops for yourself?” I said, “Well, I have to give most of my attention to holding on to the can!” At which she laughed and kissed me.
Advent Sunday, 1928.
Had an interesting lunch sitting next the Archbishop [of Canterbury]
on Wed. He pleased me greatly by saying the only really important thing for Clergy was to make a Retreat every year: and then told me a tale of an utterly lonely, poverty-stricken one in an utterly irresponsive village, with an ill wife and no servants, who rang his own Church bell daily, said his offices and made his meditation and never lost heart; and then added quietly, “That is the true evidence of the Supernatural.” Nice, don’t you think?
April 16, 1929.
As to what you say about the times in Chapel, I think what you do is ample, and also that the sort of prayer you describe, however unsatisfying it may be to you, is perfectly all right and you have no cause for depression about it. …
I think regularity in the Opus Dei is important. In your own times in Chapel, when it is a strain, I should not attempt actual prayer but read a bit and just be there—it will suffice. Also reduce the early morning half-hour if it tires you for the day and certainly DON’T get up earlier… .
My Bishop too thinks I do not get enough time for myself when conducting, but it really is impossible! As to Intercession, I do not believe anyone really knows much about it, except in experience, and it’s best to follow your attrait. But in leading Intercessions, one is bound to provide a certain amount of framework. It is all a very difficult problem. People as a whole are so much cruder than one realizes….
July, 1929.
I am so glad you liked your Retreat and am sure the quiet bit you had alone in bed upstairs was just what you needed most and the discoveries you made are the true ones.
We all tend to mix up peace with feeling happy, and joy with enjoyment! And the effort and tension and strain you would put all your stress on, stopped the simple, tranquil sort of acceptance which does make burdens light! And as to advising people, if it is put into one’s hand, one just has to do it in simple trust that if one keeps as quiet as possible, God will do it through one and that one’s own insufficiency does not matter much… .
I think it was lovely your Reverend Mother asking for your prayers.
After all, if we never prayed for those who are streets above us, our list would become uncommonly short… .
January 26, 1931.
It seems to me perfectly all right—for after all you are doing what you can and can’t do otherwise—and to do this is to please God. And what is “sitting in the Chapel looking at the Crucifix” but a form of passive prayer? I am sure my Abbot would say the same. Isn’t he a darling?—the simplicity of the saints.
Dom John Chapman, Abbot of Downside.
December 7, 1931.
As to your prayer, I am sure you must avoid everything that strains you or keys you up; that it ought to be mostly a quite gentle self-yielding towards God; a loving and docile abandon and feeding your trust in support even though you do not feel support.
“Adherence” rather than effort. Remember Maria’s, “Jesus can use everything: and though I am afraid I am not alert enough, He can make something even out of my weariness.” After all, to give ourselves quite simply is all we are asked to do and there is nothing reprehensible in resting in the Lord! so long as it really is in Him!
July, 1933.
(After one of E.U.‘s Retreats.)
I do not think the addresses should be shattering, because the achievement can never be general but must be the result of our various poor little efforts, decorated as it were by a handful of saints, like the almonds on a cake! And it’s lovely to think that after all our lives can contribute to the total of the Corpus Christi however small. F. von Hugel’s “Joy for the others—the lovely constellations of the spiritual heavens.” I wish you would try that and not feel tormented by what seems to you the smallness of your own achievement. I am sure we are meant to be at peace about ourselves, whatever we are like!!
August 1933.
A hard month’s work is not the time to examine one’s doubts! I think a better plan is Julian of Norwich’s, “It was said unto me: ‘Take it generally,” i.e. although one may be in the dark about details and unable to draw a neat line between what is realistic and what is symbolic, one’s whole life, work and sense of obligation witnesses to the general truth of the supernatural and our relation to God; and detailed investigation of the way the relationship is maintained, etc., is on the whole less fruitful and less pacifying than this general trustful adherence. The test is not of course our understanding of this or that, but the effects produced by the bits of work we are given to do—or rather, which are done through us.
And the more you let yourself be a channel, a kind of spiritual Robot, the less you will “do it on your nerves” and the quieter you will be. This, not merely doing less, is the point, isn’t it? When things are very thick, it is more important to maintain this spirit (by occasional aspirations, etc.) than to wear yourself out with trying to keep your times and do everything.
March 1934.
Yes! it was lovely at Wantage and I am so glad we were there together for it all went so perfectly… .
As to dark prayer being deeply satisfying, I am sure for many who are put to it in a queer way it is. Dom Chapman says so too—that although one seems to know and do nothing, yet one comes away sure of having been praying somehow, and pacified.
Where the prayer is real suffering as you describe, that is a special case and (very likely) a special vocation, a prayer in the Cross. Of course that is not, at least on the surface, pacifying, but agonizing; and yet if it is your contribution, your share in Christ’s action, then it is (or can be) satisfying in the deepest sense. I feel if you saw it more from that point of view, as a painful and sacred kind of intercession, it might take away some of the strain of it. You would go to it as one might go to the painful privilege of doing a hard, even torturing job for someone that one loved. On the theory of the Church’s total prayer, your suffering avails for other souls.
April 25, 1935. (After 10 days in the Lakes.)
It was a nice time, wasn’t it? the heavenly little Church gave it a sort of special benediction! …
The Abbot’s Letters are a god-send. I knew they would enlighten you as to the meaning of your own state and that alone is an enormous relief of strain and bewilderment. His calm matter-of-factness is so reassuring and also his sense of the fundamental queerness of things existing at all—which I have always had very strongly.
* Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman.
I still think you distress yourself unduly and also quite unprofitably by dwelling on the sight of your own unworthiness…. It is at best a distorted sight and no index at all of your real state.
Drop it quietly as much as you can and simply turn away from all self-scrutiny of every kind. In one of his letters to me which Dom Hudleston did not print the Abbot said, “I have lots of monks here who are always ill because they are always thinking about their own insides!” Quite a lot of truth in that! When you feel the blues coming on, at once go and do something which takes your whole attention (not something religious) or write and tell me about it!
This sometimes acts like a charm!
Septuagesima, 1936.
Don’t think about being good! If you accept the very tiresome stuff the Lord is handing out to you, that’s all He wants at the moment.
“Let not your heart be troubled” if you can help it, is the best N.T.
bit for the moment I think; but the more bovine or merely acquiescent you are the better. I know this will strike you as thin advice, but it is all I can give. Drop religion for the time being and just be quiet and wait a bit and God will reveal Himself again, more richly and closely than ever before… .
February 26, 1936.
Have been reading for the first time, Pusey, and am amazed to find what a fine, deep creature he was. Full of the mystics, very averse to all mere ritualism and Romanism, and his letters of Direction are splendid, quite in the St. Francois de Sales tradition. He strikes me as much bigger spiritually than Newman, though not so brilliant.
Maundy Thursday, 1936.
[Written when she had to cancel a Retreat and disappoint many people and when her correspondent also had to give up a bit of work.]
If your physical presence were absolutely necessary from God’s point of view, then He would arrange for it! This idea always comforts me a lot when I can’t do things though perhaps you will think it rather austere! … I hope you are more comfy and freer from pain.
Sometimes I think the resurrection of the body, unless much improved in construction, a mistake!
Advent Sunday, 1936.
My love and blessing for your Retreat. I hope and believe it will be a time of peace for you and, if you will avoid all strain and let your soul slowly become tranquillized, you will begin, like the cats, to see a bit in the dark.
I do see that you must be constantly tempted to escape the pain of darkness by losing yourself in activity but I am not at all sure that it is a good thing to do. Physical exhaustion then reacts on your spirit and so we get a vicious circle! Do let this time be an entire withdrawal from work, the world, people and the rest; an abiding in the emptiness where God alone is. I will be thinking of you much and shall expect you on the 6th anyhow, whether in the Pink or in the Drab and whatever the angle at which you are carrying the tail.
Eve of the Annunciation, 1938.
So terribly sorry if you have to leave off… . These losses of liberty I think are among the hardest demands of the Lord. At least I feel them so, but perhaps they are meant to drive us bit by bit into the solitude with Him, which He requires of us.
Just sitting or kneeling in Church and apparently doing nothing at all is a very good prayer. It is God’s prayer in us, we are just the vessels and so feel nothing. If that is your main trouble, you ought to be quite pleased; it’s a form of oraison passive and should be settled into and no straining after anything else!
Maundy Thursday, 1938.
I was so glad to get your letter and hear all went so very well with the Retreat, I thought it would! But it does all sound as if it had been very specially lovely. I only hope you have not had a very bad reaction from the inevitable fatigue. The Sunday always is the easy day if things are going right; Saturday, as it were one hauls them into position and Sunday they go along under their own steam. … It will be very nice to see you. I can’t tell you how pleased I am about the Retreat!
Trinity V, 1938.
You are now to rest quietly till God hands you out your next job. Who knows what? His unexpectedness is one of the most attractive things about Him!
Trinity VI, 1938.
I am afraid you are going through a very bad bit of readjustment just now—that feeling one is no use any more, is horrible but is a temptation of the devil. Remember Huvelin’s “Notre Seigneur a gagne le monde non pas par ses beaux discours par le sermon sur la montagne, mais par son sang, par sa douleur sur la croix”—which must have seemed utter failure, a finis to “being of use.” In various degrees I am sure we all have to make that transition. You and I have both been allowed a good run of active work, but the real test is giving it up, and passively accepting God’s action and work, and the suffering that usually goes with it. It will mean not only interior growth for you, but also in the end, a closer union with God and greatly increased power of helping souls….
No one, not the greatest saint, is irreplaceable. It is a greater act of trust and love to give your work into fresh hands than to struggle on with increasing damage to health. I know it must be increasing anguish to you—but after all, Our Lord Himself had to leave His work to 12 quite inferior disciples. We have to learn to accept for ourselves all that this means, before we are really abandoned to God.
Ascension Day, 1941.
This intense craving for activity, freedom, doing work, is natural to you and me and hard to give up. But it is quite clear that it is something one must be prepared to give up if one is really to be “abandoned.” And praying for people, however dryly and inadequately, may and often must be an exchange for instructing them! “Our Lord taught great perfection on the Cross”—doing nothing at all, but just accepting the situation and offering it to God.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit: and upon us, weak and sinful, be mercy and grace at all times.—Liturgy of the Syrian Jacobites.
This site is full of FREE ebooks -