Into the silence of God
The Mectildian Jubilee Year (1614–2014) continues to provide me with an opportunity to share something of the immense treasure of her spiritual doctrine with the readers of Vultus Christi. I came, this evening, upon a non–dated text of Mother Mectilde de Bar, edited by Mère Marie–Véronique Andral in Catherine de Bar, Itinéraire spirituel. The text, entitled Un écrit sur l’oraison [Writing on Prayer] reveals Mother Mectilde’s own experience of prayer. She speaks of three annihilations through which the soul must pass before entering into the sacred silence and sweet repose of God.
In the first annihilation the soul is stripped of the desire to feel anything in prayer. Inexorably, this comes through suffering. Mother Mectilde says that if one knew what awaited the soul at this crossroads, one wouldn’t have the courage even to set out towards it. Mother Mectilde then speaks of a second annihilation in which one is stripped of inward thoughts and feelings. Whereas formerly one could, at least, think about God, in this state all such thoughts vanish and the mere formulation of a prayer seems to require an impossible effort. The third annihilation is the stripping away of every delight, consolation, and support. One finds oneself in complete darkness without even being able to feel the faintest Godward movement of the soul. One is tempted to stop praying altogether. Prayer seems a waste of time, an utterly fruitless exercise, a delusion. One feels nothing, grasps nothing, and begins to wonder if anything of one’s prayer has ever been real.
After these three strippings away, Mother Mectilde assures us that the soul enters into God’s own sacred silence. Although the way into the silence of God is fraught with interior sufferings and bitterness of spirit, God allows the soul to experience, ever so faintly, the occasional taste of His sweetness, lest one be overwhelmed by the darkness. Mother Mectilde writes from the perspective of one who, having lived through (and died through) these successive strippings away, has entered into the silence of God. Here, then, is her text as I translated it:
Not in Feelings
It seems to me, according to my little knowledge and experience, that a soul whom God wishes to lead into interior silence must pass through three ways. . . . As I see it, the soul must enter first into the annihilation of the outward sensibility and be in a state of having no relish for feeling anything. Without this, one will taste [only] very imperfectly the sacred repose and silence of the soul in the course of which God acts. To arrive at this, experience teaches us how fitting it is that one should suffer. So true is this that I doubt that this one or that one who talks about the sweet and sacred repose of the soul in God, would, if he knew [what he is talking about] have courage enough to set out in pursuit of it.
Nor in Thoughts
But entrance into the second degree, which is the annihilation of the views and sentiments of the interior sensibility, requires suffering of quite another sort.
Nor in Any Delight or Support of the Soul
In the third degree, or annihilation, into which the soul must enter, if God were not to take away from the soul all the delights and all the support that one derives from one’s own lights and from the affections of the will [to love, according to Saint Thomas, is to will the good] and other dispositions, I do not know how the soul would ever get through it. Temptations in this regard are extreme, and there are strange difficulties concerning apprehensions over losing the time by which one enters into a state that is so dark to the spirit.
A Certain Fleeting Sweetness
The soul, then, having arrived at these strippings away, and being, as it were, all annihilated in God, enters into this sacred silence, the beginnings of which, though they be arduous, are mingled with the sweetnesses of a certain felt experience of the presence of God in the soul.
