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Wisdom Saying
When I had lost all created supports, and even divine ones, I then found myself happily compelled to fall into the pure divine, and to fall into it through all those very things that had seemed to remove me further from it. In losing all the gifts, with all their supports, I found the Giver. In losing the sense and perception of You in myself, I found You, O my God, to lose You no more in Yourself, in Your own immutability. Oh, poor creatures, who pass all your time in feeding upon the gifts of God, and think in that to be the most favored and happy, how I pity you if you stop there, short of true rest, and cease to go forward to God Himself, through the loss of those cherished gifts in which you now delight! How many pass all their lives in this way, and think highly of themselves!
*Madame Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717), Jeanne Guyon: An Autobiography
Comments
How resistant we are, at first, to arid times. We pray, or seem to be only trying to pray, but the sweetness of our Love seems far away, or we feel deadened to Her intimations of love that once delighted us daily. We may wonder what we have done to tear Her away from us. We lament loss of the sweet affections that once we seemed to recline within as does lover in her beloved's arms.
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We arrive at such freedom, through Grace and loyalty to our Love through the aridity, that we no longer equate the divine nearness with sense of the delights of the nearness. We are delighted simply to rest with a naked inward gaze beyond the gifts of Her sweetness to the Essence of the sweetness. We know with inward, mystical certitude that we are resting in Her Herself, in pure love and denuded faith.
This is possibly the most difficult death to die on the mystical path, this death to greed for delights of the Divine Effulgence. This death we must die, however, to know the deeper, more pure delight: bliss of pure love, the more intimate knowing of the Word in the inner sanctum of the Heart, wherein mingles, eternally, the Word and the word spoken by the Word, which is the mystery of the rational and mystical soul of every human person.
This fall into pure love, the pure divine, beyond the gifts of God, is a fortunate fall.
Suggested Reflection
Did anything in the above quote or comments reflect your personal experience? Explain.
See next page for details on OneLife Ministries, Brian's book An Ache for Union, and material pertaining to sources used in the writing.
Feel free to submit a query. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
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