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If such is the life of grace, if such is the spiritual organism of
the infused virtues and the gifts, it is not surprising to find
that the development of the interior life has often been compared
to the three periods or stages of physical life: childhood, youth,
and manhood. St. Thomas himself has indicated this analogy: and it
is an analogy which is worth pursuing, particular attention being
paid to the transition from one period to the other.
It is generally admitted that childhood lasts until the age of
puberty, about fourteen; though early childhood, or infancy,
ceases at the dawn of reason, about the age of seven. Youth, or
adolescence, lasts from the age of fourteen to twenty. Then
follows manhood, in which we may distinguish the period which
precedes full maturity, about the age of thirty-five, and that
which follows it, before the decline of old age sets in.
A man's mentality changes with the development of the organism:
the activity of the child, it has been said, is not that of a man
in miniature, or of a fatigued adult; the dominant element in
childhood is different. The child has as yet no discernment, it is
unable to organize in a rational manner; it follows the lead of
the imagination and the impulses of sense. And even when its
reason begins to awaken it still remains to a great extent
dependent upon the senses. So, for example, a child asked me one
day:
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'What are you lecturing on this year?'
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I replied.
was the next inquiry. The child's intelligence was
as yet unable to grasp the abstract and universal idea of man as
such.
Most important to be noticed, for the purposes of our present
subject, is the transition from childhood to adolescence and from
youth to manhood.
The period of puberty, which is the end of childhood, about the
age of fourteen, is characterized by a transformation which is not
only organic but also psychological, intellectual and moral. The
youth is no longer content to follow his imagination, as the child
was; he begins 10 reflect on the things of human life, on the need
to prepare himself for some career or occupation in the future. He
has no longer the child's attitude towards family, social and
religious matters; his moral personality begins to take shape, and
he acquires the sense of honour and of good repute. Or else, on
the contrary, if he passes unsuccessfully through this difficult
period, he deteriorates and follows evil courses. The law of
nature so ordains that the transition from childhood to youth must
follow a normal development; otherwise the subject will assume a
positive bias to evil, or else he will remain a half-wit, perhaps
even a complete idiot, for the rest of his life.
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'He who makes no
progress loses ground.'
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It is at this point that the analogy becomes illuminating for the
spiritual life. We shall see that the beginner who fails to become
a proficient, either turns to sin or else presents an example of
arrested spiritual development. Here, too, it is true that
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'he who
makes no progress loses ground,'
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as the Fathers of the Church have
so often pointed out.
Let us pursue the analogy further. If the physical and moral
crisis of puberty is a difficult transition, the same is to be
said of another crisis, which we may call the crisis of the first
freedom, and which occurs at the stage where the youth enters
manhood, about the age of twenty. The young man, having now
reached his complete physical development, has to begin to take
his place in social life. It will soon be time for him to marry
and to become an educator in his turn, unless he has received from
God a higher vocation still. Many fail to surmount this crisis of
the first freedom, and, like the prodigal son, depart from their
father's house and confuse liberty with licence. Here again the
law ordains that the transition must be made normally; otherwise
the young man either takes the wrong road, or else his development
is arrested and he becomes one of those of whom it is said:
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'He
will be a child for the whole of his life.'
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The true adult is not merely a young man grown a little older. He
has a new mentality; he is preoccupied with wider questions,
questions to which the youth does not yet advert. He understands
the younger generation, but the younger generation does not
understand him; conversation between them on certain subjects,
except of a very superficial kind, is impossible.
There is a somewhat similar relation, in the spiritual life,
between the proficient and the perfect. He who is perfect
understands the earlier stages through which he has himself
already passed; but he cannot expect to be understood by those who
are still passing through them.
The important thing to be noticed is that, just as there is the
crisis of puberty, more or less manifest and more or less
successfully surpassed, between childhood and adolescence, so in
the spiritual life there is an analogous crisis for the transition
from the purgative life of beginners to the illuminative life of
proficients. This crisis has been described by several great
spiritual writers, in particular by Tauler [50] and especially by
St. John of the Cross, under the name of the passive purgation of
the senses, [51] and by Pere Lallemant, S. J., [52] and several
others under the name of the second conversion.
Moreover, just as the youth has to pass through a second crisis,
that of the first freedom, in order to reach manhood, so in the
transition from the illuminative way of the proficients to the
true life of union, there is a second spiritual crisis, mentioned
by Tauler, [53] and described by St. John of the Cross under the
name of the passive purgation of the spirit. [54] This, likewise,
may be called a third conversion, or better, a transformation of
the soul.
None has better described these crises which mark the transition
from one spiritual period to another than St. John of the Cross.
It will be noticed that they correspond to the two parts of the
human soul, the sensitive and the spiritual. they correspond also
to the nature of the divine seed, sanctifying grace, that germ of
eternal life which must ever more and more animate all our
faculties and inspire all our actions, until the depth of the soul
is purged of all egoism and surrendered entirely to God.
St. John of the Cross, it is true, describes spiritual progress as
it appears especially in contemplatives, and in the most generous
among contemplatives, who are striving to reach union with God by
the most direct way possible. He therefore shows us what are the
higher laws of the spiritual life at their maximum of sublimity.
But these laws apply in a lesser degree also to many other souls
who do not reach so high a state of perfection, but are
nevertheless making devoted progress, and not looking back.
In the chapters which follow it will be our object to show that,
according to the traditional teaching, beginners in the spiritual
life must, after a certain period, undergo a second conversion,
similar to the second conversion of the Apostles at the end of our
Lord's Passion, and that, still later, before entering upon the
life of perfect union, there must be a third conversion or
transformation of the soul, similar to that which took place in
the souls of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost.
This distinction between the three periods or stages of the
spiritual life is clearly of great importance, as those who are
charged with the direction of souls well know. An old and
experienced director who has himself reached the age of the
perfect may have read but little of the writings of the mystics,
and yet he will be able to answer well and readily the most
delicate questions on the most sublime subjects, and he will
answer in the words of the Scriptures, perhaps by quoting a
passage from the Gospel of the day, without even suspecting for a
moment how truly profound his answers are. On the other hand a
young and inexperienced priest, himself only at the age of a
beginner, will have little more than a book-knowledge and a verbal
acquaintance with the spiritual life.
The question with which we are concerned is thus in the highest
sense a vital question; and it is important that we should
consider it from the traditional point of view. If we do so
consider it, we shall see how true is the saying of the ancients,
that
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'in the way of God he who makes no progress loses ground' ;
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and it will appear also that our interior life must, already here
on earth, become the normal prelude to the beatific vision. In
this deep sense our interior life is, as we have said, eternal
life already begun:
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'inchoatio vitae aeternae.' [55]
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'Amen, amen I
say to you, he that believeth in me hath eternal life, and I will
raise him up in the last day.'[56]
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