Stepping Heavenward [108]
have been given you, and in recalling your mind every time you perceive its distraction, will gradually give you the grace of being more recollected. Meanwhile bear your involuntary distractions with patience and humility; you deserve nothing better. Is it surprising that recollection is difficult to a man so long dissipated and far from God?
"III.-I wish to know if it is best to record, on my tablets, the faults and the sins I have committed, in order not to rum the risk of forgetting them. I excite in myself to repentance for my faults as much as I can; but I have never felt any real grief on account of them. When I examine myself at night, I see persons far more perfect than I complain of more sin: as for me, I seek, I find nothing; and yet it is impossible there should not be many points on which to implore pardon every day of my life.
"REPLY.-You should examine yourself every night, but simply and briefly. In the disposition to which God has brought you, you will not voluntarily commit any considerable fault without remembering and reproaching yourself for it. As to little faults, scarcely perceived, even if you sometimes forget them, this need not make you uneasy.
"As to lively grief on account of your sins, it is not necessary. God gives it when it pleases Him. True and essential conversion of the heart consists in a full will to sacrifice all to God. What I call full will is a fixed immovable disposition of the will to resume none of the voluntary affections which may alter the purity of the love to God and to abandon itself to all the crosses which it will -perhaps -be necessary to bear, in order to accomplish the will of God always and in all things. As to sorrow for sin, when one has it, one ought to return thanks for it; when one perceives it to be wanting, one should humble one's self peacefully before God without trying to excite it by vain efforts.
"You find in your self-examination fewer faults than persons more advanced and more perfect do; it is because your interior light is still feeble. It will increase, and the view of your infidelities will increase in proportion. It suffices, without making yourself uneasy, to try to be faithful to the degree of light you possess, and to instruct yourself by reading and meditation. It will not do to try to forestall the grace that belongs to a more advanced period. It would only serve to trouble and discourage you, and even to exhaust you by continual anxiety; the time that should be spent in loving God would be given to forced returns upon yourself, which secretly nourish self-love.
"IV.---In my prayers my mind has difficulty in finding anything to say to God. My heart is not in it, or it is inaccessible to the thoughts of my mind.
"REPLY.-It is not necessary to say much to God. Oftentimes one does not speak much to a friend whom one is delighted to see; one looks at him with pleasure; one speaks certain short words to him which are mere expressions of feeling. The mind has no part in them, or next to none; one keeps repeating the same words. It is not so much a variety of thoughts that one seeks in intercourse with a friend, as a certain repose and correspondence of heart. It is thus we are with God, who does not disdain to be our tenderest, most cordial,-most familiar, most intimate friend. A word, a sigh, a sentiment, says all to God; it is not always necessary to have transports of sensible tenderness; a will all naked and dry, without life, without vivacity, without pleasure, is often purest in the sight of God. In fine, it is necessary to content one's self with giving to Him what He gives it to give, a fervent heart when it is fervent, a heart firm and faithful in its aridity, when He deprives it of sensible fervor. It does not always depend on you to feel; but it is necessary to wish to feel. Leave it to God to choose to make you feel sometimes, in order to sustain your weakness and infancy in Christian life; sometimes weaning you from that sweet and consoling sentiment which is the milk of babes, in order to humble you, to make you grow,
"III.-I wish to know if it is best to record, on my tablets, the faults and the sins I have committed, in order not to rum the risk of forgetting them. I excite in myself to repentance for my faults as much as I can; but I have never felt any real grief on account of them. When I examine myself at night, I see persons far more perfect than I complain of more sin: as for me, I seek, I find nothing; and yet it is impossible there should not be many points on which to implore pardon every day of my life.
"REPLY.-You should examine yourself every night, but simply and briefly. In the disposition to which God has brought you, you will not voluntarily commit any considerable fault without remembering and reproaching yourself for it. As to little faults, scarcely perceived, even if you sometimes forget them, this need not make you uneasy.
"As to lively grief on account of your sins, it is not necessary. God gives it when it pleases Him. True and essential conversion of the heart consists in a full will to sacrifice all to God. What I call full will is a fixed immovable disposition of the will to resume none of the voluntary affections which may alter the purity of the love to God and to abandon itself to all the crosses which it will -perhaps -be necessary to bear, in order to accomplish the will of God always and in all things. As to sorrow for sin, when one has it, one ought to return thanks for it; when one perceives it to be wanting, one should humble one's self peacefully before God without trying to excite it by vain efforts.
"You find in your self-examination fewer faults than persons more advanced and more perfect do; it is because your interior light is still feeble. It will increase, and the view of your infidelities will increase in proportion. It suffices, without making yourself uneasy, to try to be faithful to the degree of light you possess, and to instruct yourself by reading and meditation. It will not do to try to forestall the grace that belongs to a more advanced period. It would only serve to trouble and discourage you, and even to exhaust you by continual anxiety; the time that should be spent in loving God would be given to forced returns upon yourself, which secretly nourish self-love.
"IV.---In my prayers my mind has difficulty in finding anything to say to God. My heart is not in it, or it is inaccessible to the thoughts of my mind.
"REPLY.-It is not necessary to say much to God. Oftentimes one does not speak much to a friend whom one is delighted to see; one looks at him with pleasure; one speaks certain short words to him which are mere expressions of feeling. The mind has no part in them, or next to none; one keeps repeating the same words. It is not so much a variety of thoughts that one seeks in intercourse with a friend, as a certain repose and correspondence of heart. It is thus we are with God, who does not disdain to be our tenderest, most cordial,-most familiar, most intimate friend. A word, a sigh, a sentiment, says all to God; it is not always necessary to have transports of sensible tenderness; a will all naked and dry, without life, without vivacity, without pleasure, is often purest in the sight of God. In fine, it is necessary to content one's self with giving to Him what He gives it to give, a fervent heart when it is fervent, a heart firm and faithful in its aridity, when He deprives it of sensible fervor. It does not always depend on you to feel; but it is necessary to wish to feel. Leave it to God to choose to make you feel sometimes, in order to sustain your weakness and infancy in Christian life; sometimes weaning you from that sweet and consoling sentiment which is the milk of babes, in order to humble you, to make you grow,