HOW DOES GOD PURIFY THE SOUL IN THIS THIRD CONVERSION?

It seems that at first He strips the soul instead of enriching it. In order to cure the soul of all spiritual and intellectual pride, and to show it what dregs of poverty it still has within, He leaves the understanding in darkness, the will in aridity, sometimes even in bitterness and anguish. The soul then, says St. John of the Cross, after Tauler, must

'remain in the dark, in pure faith, which is dark night for the natural faculties.' [106]

St. Thomas often points out that the object of faith is that which is not seen (fides est de non visis); it is dark. And the Angelic Doctor adds that it is impossible for anyone to believe and to see the same thing under the same aspect; because what is believed, as such, is not seen. [107] The soul has now to enter into the depths of faith and to rise to its heights, like the Apostles when they were deprived of the sensible presence of Christ after His ascension. As He Himself had told them:

'It is expedient to you that I go. For if I go not the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you.' [108]

St. Thomas gives an admirable explanation of these words in his commentary on St. John; he says that the Apostles, attached as they were to the humanity of Christ by a natural love, were not yet sufficiently filled with a spiritual love of His divinity, and therefore were not yet capable of receiving the Holy Ghost spiritually, as they must if they were to withstand the tribulations which they would meet when Jesus had deprived them of His perceptible presence.

At first, then, God seems to strip the soul in this purification, as in the preceding; He seems to leave it in darkness and aridity. The motto of the soul must now be:

'Fidelity and abandonment.'

It is now that the words of Christ will be fulfilled.

' He that followeth me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' [109]

Especially illuminated now by the purging light of the gift of understanding, the soul begins, as St. Paul says,

'to search the deep things of God.' [110]

Now humility and the theological virtues are purged of all human alloy. The soul experiences more and more, without seeing it, the infinite purity and greatness of God, who transcends all the ideas that we can form of Him; it experiences likewise all the supernatural riches of the holy soul of Christ, which here on earth contained the fulness of grace,

'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' [111]

Like the Apostles on the day of Pentecost it has a glimpse of the depths of the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption; it perceives something of the infinite value of the merits of Christ who died for us on the Cross. The soul now has a sort of living knowledge, an experimental perception, of the supernatural world, a new outlook upon it. And by contrast the soul becomes more conscious of its own poverty. The chief suffering of a St. Paul of the Cross, of a Cure d'Ars, at this stage, was to feel themselves so distant from the ideal of the priesthood, which loomed now so great before them in the dark night of faith; while at the same time they understood better the great needs of those many souls that had recourse to them, imploring their prayers and their help.

This third conversion or purification is, evidently, the work of the Holy Spirit, who illuminates the soul by the gift of understanding. As with a lightning-flash during the night He illumines the soul that He wishes to purify. The soul had said to Him so often.

' Enlighten my eyes that I may never sleep in death';[112]

'O my God, enlighten my darkness' ;[113]

'Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within my bowels. Cast me not away from thy face, and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and strengthen me with a perfect spirit. I will teach the unjust thy ways... and my tongue shall extol thy justice.' [114]

The purified soul addresses to Christ those words which He Himself once uttered, and begs that they may be fulfilled in itself.

'I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?'[115]

This third purification comes about, as St. John of the Cross says, by

'an inflowing of God into the soul, which purges it from its ignorances and imperfections, habitual, natural and spiritual, and which is called by contemplatives infused contemplation or mystical theology. Herein God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in perfection of love, without its doing anything or understanding of what manner is this infused contemplation.'[116]

This great purification or transformation appears under different forms, according as it is in pure contemplatives like a St. Bruno, or in souls dedicated to the apostolate or to works of mercy, like a St. Vincent de Paul; but in substance it is the same. In every case there is the purification of humility and the three theological virtues from every human alloy, so that the formal motive of these virtues takes increasing ascendancy over all secondary motives. Humility grows according to the process described by St. Anselm, and repeated by St. Thomas:

(1) To know that one is contemptible;

(2) to feel affliction at this knowledge;

(3) to confess that one is despicable;

(4) to wish one's neighbours to know this;

(5) patiently to endure their saying so;

(6) to submit to being treated as worthy of contempt;

(7) to like being so treated.

So we have the example of St. Dominic, who by preference went to those parts of Languedoc where he was ill-treated and ridiculed, experiencing a holy joy at feeling himself made like our Lord, who was humbled for our sake.

Then the formal motives of the three theological virtues appear in all their sublime grandeur- the supreme Truth that reveals, Mercy ever ready to help, sovereign Goodness, ever lovable for its own sake. These three motives shine forth like three stars of the first magnitude in the night of the spirit, to guide us surely to the end of our journey.

The fruits of this third conversion are the same as those of Pentecost, when the Apostles were enlightened and fortified, and being themselves transformed, transformed the first Christians by their preaching-as we learn from the Acts of the Apostles, where we are told of the first sermons of St. Peter and of St. Stephen's discourse before his martyrdom.

The fruits of this third conversion are a true and deep humility, and a living faith that begins to relish and savour the mysteries of the supernatural order-as it were, a foretaste of eternal life. Moreover, it produces a firm and confident hope in the divine mercy, which is ever at hand to help us. To attain to this perfection of hope, one must, as St. Paul says, have hoped against hope.

But the most perfect fruit of this third conversion is a very great love of God, a very pure and very strong love, a love that hesitates before no contradiction or persecution, like the love of the Apostles who rejoiced to suffer for the sake of our Lord. This love is born of an ardent desire for perfection, it is

'hunger and thirst after the justice of God,'

accompanied by the gift of fortitude, which enables it to triumph over every obstacle. It is the perfect fulfilment of the commandment-

'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind.'

Henceforth the depth of the soul belongs completely to God. The soul has now reached the stage of living almost continually the life of the spirit in its higher part; it is now an adorer in spirit and in truth. The darkness of the night of faith is thus a prelude to the life of eternity: quaedam inchoatio vitae aeternae It is the fulfilment of the words of Christ:

'If any man thirst let him come to me and drink.... Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.' [117]

This is the living water that springs up into eternal life, the water which Jesus promised to the Samaritan woman:

'If thou didst know the gift of God... thou perhaps wouldst have asked of him and he would have given thee living water.... The water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting.' [118]