Book 2, Chapter 2
-Part 3 continued yet more-
It is always a risky thing to tell a believer that part of their life with God will involve responding to impressions and directions that are less concrete or objective, but are understood as suggestions and nudges from God.
Caussade brings up two avenues of submission upon which the believer may travel with relative safety. He states that “God makes use of our being in two ways: He either obliges us to perform certain actions, or he simply acts himself in us” (Page 59).
Saying the same in another way, he says, “There are therefore duties of precept that must be accomplished, and duties of necessity that must be accepted” (Page 60).
These two categories of “duties” certainly involve the will of the submissive soul in obedience and in acquiescence. A believer is quite far along when he or she has lived and loved in the light of these two undertakings. The guidelines for such responses are found in the precepts (and acting upon them in obedience) or the necessities (being acted upon by God) according to which the clear-minded believer can rightly discern a life in accord with the will of God.
It still takes some doing, but the mature believer who has trained himself to walk with God will be able to fathom out his required obedience and his requisite acquiescence while he is firmly present to God in his every step.
It is a bold step for any teacher of spiritual things to move from here to what Caussade would consider a Class 3 Duty: “The duties of inspiration to which the spirit of God inclines hearts that are submissive to him” (Page 60).
He goes on to say, “This third class of duties is quite beyond and outside any law, form or determined matter” (Page 60).
This kind of talk has a fascinating appeal to people who want a deep spiritual acumen but a minimal amount of guidance and a low tolerance for boundaries. In each of us there is a craving to express ourselves freely and push back limits. Any high school or college student who has served on the school newspaper will be able to recall the administration banning a story or stopping the presses or ceasing a publication altogether because “the students went too far.”
The universal pleasure that we all take in swearing bears out this craving as well. We push the boundaries of language and force it to go beyond its norms. Something in us enjoys this.
When God told Adam and Eve that they could eat anything in the garden except the fruit of one tree, it didn’t take long for the two, with the help of the Serpent, to force that boundary.
While there is a great deal of freedom to celebrate as spiritual beings made alive and restored by God, a little lack of structures is all we need to get crazy.
“One merely lets oneself go, and freely and simply obeys one’s impressions,” says Caussade (Page 60).
As you must know by now, one can get very weird very quickly when one removes spirituality from its context of sound theology and places it in the context of imagination. If this is the way in which someone is going to “let oneself go,” then there will be no end to the troubles ahead. Many times throughout history and to the present day, someone with charm or talent or gumption has veered away from orthodoxy and has developed theories that are radically off course from the truth. Such veering can result in a “new” religion, although most of those smack of regurgitated heresies which the church has condemned in the past, or they can result in just one person carrying around a very distorted, unsound and unreliable grasp of Christian spirituality.
So, if we are going to “obey our impressions” and call this the will of God, we are in a wilderness with no landmarks. It is certainly adventurous and sounds quite spiritual, but, as Caussade says, we are at risk of falling “under the influence of our own will and be exposed to illusion” (Page 60).
Without guidelines or limits, our chances of enfolding ourselves into a self-made illusion are very good. The chances that we have embarked on a path God has chosen, not so good.
To rightly involve oneself in a Class 3 Duty, Caussade gives us two forms of advice. 1. Receive clear guidance from a spiritual director. 2. Do not make a big deal out of hunting down the Class 3 Duties.
As to Point 1, Caussade says: “That souls may not be deceived in this way,” [self-made illusion] “God never fails to give them wise directors who point out the degree of liberty or reserve with which these inspirations should be utilized” (Page 60).
I needn’t point out that once we become endeared to an illusion, which we believe bears out our advanced spiritual condition, we will not be prone to ask someone of spiritual authority to check out our vision. Anyone who would dare point out our error would be considered an obstacle to the “truth” we have found. When we think ourselves visionaries, everyone else is considered blind.
Father C’s explanation of Point 2 is important enough that I want to give it a separate reflection.
No comments:
Post a Comment