Mystical Contemplation

How great was the discredit into which the study of such things had unhappily fallen, owing to the excesses of the pseudo-mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was right to be on one's guard against abuses; but it was not right to neglect such an estimable way of perfection as that of mystical contemplation, a way trodden by all who have attained a high degree of sanctity.Many prejudices still remain. The writer knows more than one excellent priest who regards works...
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How great was the discredit into which the study of such things had unhappily fallen, owing to the excesses of the pseudo-mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was right to be on one's guard against abuses; but it was not right to neglect such an estimable way of perfection as that of mystical contemplation, a way trodden by all who have attained a high degree of sanctity.Many prejudices still remain. The writer knows more than one excellent priest who regards works with titles like the present one as possibly interesting curiosities, but as having no practical use. To get them to read such books, the titles would have to be changed. But how will such priests direct contemplative souls whom they will certainly meet with? Listen to St. John of the Cross: "For, whenever God begins to anoint a soul with the unction of loving knowledge, most delicate, serene, peaceful, lonely, strange to sense and imagination; whenever He withholds all sweetness from it, and suspends its power of meditation-because He reserves it for this lonely unction, inclined to solitude and quiet - a spiritual director will appear, who, like a rough blacksmith, knows only the use of the hammer, and who, because all his knowledge is limited to the coarser work, will say to it: Come, get rid of this, this is waste of time and idleness: arise and meditate, resume thine interior acts, for it is necessary that thou shouldest make diligent efforts of thine own ; everything else is delusion and folly. Such a director as this does not understand the gradations of prayer, nor the ways of the Spirit, neither does he consider that what he recommends the soul is too late, since it has passed through that state already, having attained to the state of sensitive abnegation; for when the goal is reached, and the journey ended, all further travelling must be away from the goal." "But it may be said that these directors err, perhaps, with good intentions, because their knowledge is scanty. Be it so; but they are not therefore justified in giving the rash counsels they do, without previously ascertaining the way and spirit of their penitent.And if they do not understand the case, it is not for them to interfere in what they do not comprehend, but rather to send their penitent to others who understand him better than they. It is not a trivial matter or a slight fault to cause, by incompetent direction, the loss of inestimable blessings, and to endanger a soul. Thus, he who rashly errs, being under an obligation to give good advice-for so is everyone in the office he assumes-shall not go unpunished for the evil he has done. The affairs of God are to be handled with great caution and watchful circumspection, and especially this, which is so delicate and so high, and where the gain is infinite if the direction given be right, and the loss also infinite if it be wrong.It was to help spiritual directors in the discharge of their duty that these articles were first pll:blished in the Ami du Clerge. The writer is too busy to recast and extend their contents, but he believes they will suffice nevertheless.The simplicity and modesty of the papers need cause no surprise. Still further simplification would have been preferable. When a question is well elucidated, it is always reduced to a few clear principles, with which countless particular ideas are brought into relation; and when they are thus deduced, they are selfexplanatory and shed light upon one another.