by William M. Cunningham (1916)
THE WAY OF SURRENDER TO GOD
We have already laid stress on the point that the way of complete abandonment to God taught so eloquently and alluringly by Sister Theresa of the Child Jesus, is no new teaching, but is nothing more or less than the unanimous teaching of the saints of all times. It is, therefore, with great pleasure we have come across what is practically an anticipatory life-like description of the state of soul of Sister Theresa, written by Mgr. Gay in his well-known work ” La Vie et les Vertus Chretiennes.” So startlingly does the description follow the lines of Sister Theresa’s sanctity, that but for the fact that the book was written long before her time, a casual reader might be tempted to believe the saintly and learned writer, though writing so many years ago, had drawn her character from life. We quote from the chapter on Abandonment :
” The soul that practises abandonment is poor, chaste, obedient : it is humble, gentle, patient and genuinely fair- minded.
It leads the life of faith ; it hopes just the same as it breathes, and it loves unceasingly. Every manifestation of God’s will, whatever form it may take, finds it disengaged and takes possession of it just as if it were a piece of land without an owner.
Everything seems equally good in its eyes. To be accounted worth nothing or to be thought much of, to be thought little of ; to give orders or to obey without regard to whom obedience is required ; to be humiliated and to be overlooked ; to fail or attain success ; to have plenty of leisure or to be weighed down by engagements ; to be left by oneself or not to be left alone ; to be placed with congenial companions or the reverse to be feeling well, or feeling ill or ailing, or cast aside for years ; to become an invalid and so be left a charge on a community that one had come expressly to serve ; to live a long life or to die shortly or die at once, is all the same to it.
It wishes for everything because it wishes for nothing ; and it wishes for nothing particular because it wishes for every thing.
It has not an equal attraction to everything : that would be impossible, and nothing could be more fantastically impossible than to wish that could ever come about. Such a soul, therefore, is not without feeling, and can of course suffer.”
” Human reason finds with good reason, such a life is a martyrdom, and cries out often upon it. Supernatural faith’s prompt answer is : All the better. It goes on to add it is equally the life of a confessor and of a virgin, and it is just this that fascinates the soul, because the more titles it has here on earth to sanctity, the more richly will its crown in heaven be studded with gems.
Thus turning a deaf ear to its human feelings and trading to the best advantage spiritually with its discomforts, it is ready for anything and is bespoken for anything in advance.
If others have been given more graces and seem to be more advanced in virtue, it has no need to be on its guard against feelings of jealousy ; as a matter of fact it rejoices the more at it for the sake of God and of Holy Church, and the degree of glory to which it aspires is exactly that to which God has destined it.
Its miseries, nay, its very imperfections leave it untroubled and all but cheerful. Shall I add, even the faults it has com mitted, although it detests them in themselves, yet it accepts humbly the fact of its guilt, and is content that in this way the glories of grace and the Divine mercy, which nothing that has happened has caused it to doubt, should be thrown into relief by shadows more or less sombre.”
” To satisfy itself that God wishes something from it, such a soul wishes no long or methodical proofs. It makes up its mind in all simplicity in the light of supernatural faith, and so far as occasion offers by the counsels of its superiors.
As regards all the rulings of Providence, nothing could be clearer. After making all due allowance between, on the one hand, what God permits even though evil of its own nature, and what on the other He Himself performs and is intrinsically good, such a soul accepts everything that happens and submits itself with the best will in the world. Likewise as regards every thing that is of precept or rule, it is just the same.
Thus it is such a soul is little occupied with itself why should it be ?
One never finds it making itself uneasy : one can scarcely say it even uses necessary foresight. God is for it its eye and its prudence. Tomorrow, in its eyes, is simply and solely the same as today, and that the loving will of its Father in Heaven. It does not seek to learn the future why should it ? One can’t live two days at a time, but only one.
Until the sun of the will of God has shone upon anything, it gives no sign of formal choice ; but once a thing appears to it to have been divinely manifested and blessed, then it is borne forward towards it, and attaches itself to it passionately ; for the love of God not only is the mainspring of its existence, but is the secret of its apparent indifference, and so it is just because its life, isolated as regards other things, is all concen trated on that one point, that it is so intense.
Every manifestation of the Divine Will that reaches it, thrills it to the very depths of its soul.
Just like a little sleeping baby that his mother can never wake up, but he stretches out his arms to her, so such a soul welcomes with a smile everything God sends it, and opens its arms to it with loving affection.
The docility of such a soul is active, and its indifference is a loving one. Its life may be summed up as a living yes in answer to all God asks of it.”
(” Vie et Vertus Chretiennes,” by Mgr. Gay II. 372, 375.)
When the end was near Sister Theresa said she was sure our Lord would never refuse her anything when she went to heaven, seeing she on earth had never refused Him anything He asked of her since she was three years old. No wonder then it has been said that this admirable delineation of a soul rooted on God really reads like a verbal photograph of the soul of Sister Theresa. The sanctity of the angel of Lisieux was therefore no new fashioned, ease-loving, new way to heaven, but one of the most minute, and searching and whole-hearted detachment from all created things : sometimes they seem little things, even perhaps, trifling and childish, but such as they were, they were her life, and what she had to give she gave without reserve and with all her heart and soul she could do no more. What higher ideal could we have ?
1 response so far ↓
Joseph // February 27, 2009 at 7:20 pm |
Thanks for this post. Sometimes one thinks that claiming that St. Therese made an entirely new way is high praise for her. But really, if her way was totally different from that of all the saints through the entire history of the Church, it would be a quite questionable way. Her genius was her way of living and teaching her vocation that showed the path of simplicity and love more accessibly and visibly.