I Am the Vine
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
When the soul has conquered its sensuality, when it has succeeded in maintaining the heart free for God, when it has kept itself faithful to its resolve to find God at all costs, and has arrived at the renouncement of all affections that are not in God and for God, and thus has attained the detachment towards which the Lord has been directing it, it reaches the next stage in the interior life, a stage that has characteristics which distinguish it sharply from the other two.
The soul has learned by experience that all its efforts after the acquisition of the virtues have had very little success. Time and time again, when the occasions offered themselves of practicing those virtues which at moments it thought it had acquired, it failed abjectly. It failed in patience, submission, humility, simplicity, and charity.
The conviction has at last been forced upon it, a conviction which Our Lord has been all the time trying to bring home to it, that it is of itself, by its own efforts, incapable of any good at all, much less of acquiring virtue.
This discovery has not, however, the effect of causing it any discouragement or irritation, both signs of pride, for its detachment has earned for it the great grace of a perfect confidence that if it submits itself absolutely to his action, Our Lord can accomplish in it these things to which it aspires, that he can effect in it the virtues it has been struggling to acquire.
At last, the truth has dawned on it, that perfection is not its own work or to be acquired by its own efforts, but is purely the work of Our Lord, whom St. Teresa of Avila liked to compare to a gardener working in the soul.
The moment that the soul realizes that it is absolutely incapable of attaining to goodness is precisely the moment of salvation for it, if this complete distrust in itself is accompanied by an unbounded trust in Our Lord’s power to effect sanctification in the creatures he has redeemed by his blood.
The soul sees that its own cooperation in the work consists solely in divesting itself by the practice of self-abnegation and by forgoing whatever would attach it or enslave it to any creature. It understands that its role in the work of sanctification consists in holding itself free from all ties in order that the Lord may operate freely in it.
It sees that what is required of it is to combat all inordinate affections and to attach itself exclusively to God. It still falls into frequent faults because it is very imperfect, but these passing failures neither astonish nor wound, nor irritate or cause disappointment. They are clearly seen to rise from those depths of the soul as yet unsubmissive to God.
The soul realizes keenly that this fundamental weakness will show itself as soon as it releases its hold on the hand of Jesus. But these lapses do not cause despair of ultimate success. The soul seizes each lapse as an occasion for plunging itself deeper and deeper into humility and of clinging with more and more tenacity to the help and companionship of Jesus.
It asks pardon, resolves to be with him more frequently, to keep closer to him, and begin again with unabated courage and perfect peace.
If the soul does any good, it assigns it readily to Our Lord, for it has been clearly shown that it is he alone that operates any good. If it does wrong, commits faults, it recognizes that nothing else is to be expected from unregenerate human nature.
The soul is illuminated to its depths by the truth contained in Our Lord’s words, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
The soul has become very patient with itself and fully expects that Our Lord will in the end replace its own vileness with his goodness. The process may take years, but it is confident that the end will come if in the meantime detachment and docility of spirit are practiced.
By docility of life is meant an uncomplaining submission to all the dispensations of providence, accepting everything that comes to one as coming from God’s hand and as being meant to work towards one’s sanctification.
At this stage, prayer has come to be of extreme simplicity. A mere glance at the subject of identification suffices to put the intelligence in possession of the points and of the bearing on the particular state in which the soul happens to find itself. Considerations are no longer necessary. Convictions have been formed, and the soul is desirous of nothing except of pleasing God and of advancing in friendship with him, pursuing virtue merely as a means to this.
The whole exercise tends to develop into a simple, familiar, and intimate conversation with Jesus. The soul has now taken its own worthlessness for granted and is no longer so much enamored with the idea or prospect of its own excellence.
Its objective is entirely changed. It aims no longer at its own perfection as an end, but at a love and service of God. It asks for perfection, but its request is purely disinterested. It is asked for simply because the soul sees in it an indispensable means towards serving God properly.
The soul has at last ceased to be self-centered in its pursuit of perfection and has become God-centered. It surrenders itself entirely to the action of Our Lord, begging him to transform it to his own likeness and to impress his own virtues upon it.
Sufferings are no longer merely patiently borne. They commence to be valued. They are recognized to be most efficacious instruments in the working out of perfect detachment from creatures and in purifying the soul from all attachment to self.
The action or direction of Our Lord now becomes very pronounced, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit exercise increased activity. The soul has become very mobile to the action of the Holy Spirit. The self-analysis characteristic of the former states disappears.
Only one ambition now stirs the soul, namely, that of lending itself as an instrument to be used by the Lord to effect his purposes. It bewails its imperfections for the reason that they destroy or mar its perfection as an instrument, making it less serviceable.
It therefore presents itself readily to the purifying action of the divine will, which tempers and perfects it in the fire of trial and suffering. Our Lord becomes the chief worker, and the action of the soul consists in the loving desire to serve God at all costs and a docile surrender to him to equip it for that service.
The soul has become more childlike in its attitude towards Our Lord, in its attitude of complete dependence on him and perfect confidence in him. Its objective has undergone a complete change unconsciously. Zeal for the glory of God and the accomplishment of his will in itself, in others, over the whole earth has replaced its passionate ardor for its own good and its own perfection.
The action of the theological virtue of charity dominates that of the virtue of hope. It has become to a great extent oblivious of self and its own concerns and begins to be more occupied with the interests of God whom it loves. It is not that it is obliged to make efforts to leave self out of count or to forget self, but preoccupied as it is about God, it ceases without observing it to think about self at all.
The absence of self-consciousness, the characteristic of that childlike simplicity that Our Lord demands as a condition of entrance into intimacy with him, develops with the growth of charity. This want of self-consciousness precludes to a great extent the necessity of that active and positive repression of self which constituted the chief work of the soul in the previous stages of the interior life.
The acquisition of simplicity does away with the necessity of self-repression, for self is no longer assertive. According as this self-consciousness disappears, there is developed a consciousness of another kind, namely, a growing realization of the great truth that one is not a mere isolated individual, but forms part of a great mystical organism in the life of which the individual shares. The Catholic sense is gradually replacing the individual sense. The soul now aims at conforming its thoughts and its feelings with those of that mystical body with whom it feels itself identified in the community of a common life.
Its previous experience and study has revealed to it fully the inner dispositions, aspirations, and devotion of the head of that body, of that head which imparts to the body all the vitality it has in the supernatural order. The soul passionately desires that its life should be in perfect harmony with that life of which Christ the head has the plenitude. It is perfectly aware that it cannot receive the inflow of that life to the fullest of its own capacity unless there disappears from it all the pulsations of the life of self which in its tendencies is opposed to the spirit of the life of Christ.
Its object now is to check all unsupernatural movements in itself in order that its whole life may be supernaturalized and that thus it may be brought into perfect union with Jesus Christ himself. All manifestations of the inordinate life of self become abhorrent to it, for the sole reason that they prevent the perfection of that union and harmony between itself as member and the head of that mystical body. In other words, the soul wishes to become a healthy cell in the mystical body of Christ, a cell fully vivified by the life that animates that body.
It shrinks from the condition of being a languishing one, possessing only a tainted or incomplete life. Venial sins weaken the vital energy of the body. They diminish the fervor of charity and impoverish grace, which is, as it were, the soul of the mystical body of Christ. The conscience, therefore, becomes very delicate and shrinks from everything that falls short of a complete conformity to the will of God. Deviation from that will, even when far short of opposition to it, appears in its real horror.
It has to do extreme violence to all its newborn instincts to commit a single deliberate fault, and if it falls into such, it is seized with a lively and keen remorse. Its infidelities become rarer, at least deliberate infidelities, though the soul is still weak and can fail frequently through frailty. But it cannot for a moment leave go of God to attach itself to something else, even though that attachment may not be positively displeasing to God, without instantly hearing his reproach in the depths of its interior. Our Lord’s voice makes itself heard reproachfully at every infidelity.
The soul grows rapidly in purity of conscience, and its confessions become very sincere. Its faults are traced back with perfect surety of discernment to their true source, which is always a want of correspondence in some direction or other to God’s designs of love. It has a growing discernment of the action of God on it and understands to a large extent how it can in its own activities cooperate with or impede that action. It now perceives how its every act has an effect on its own state and makes or mars its growth in supernatural life.
Its contrition is deeper and more perfect, though all traces of irritation and bitterness against self have disappeared from its sorrow for sin. It abhors its faults now, not as being a humiliating reminder of its native weakness and imperfection, nor yet because of the loss and harm of which they are the cause, but simply because they render it less apt to serve God’s purposes.
The particular kind of life the soul is leading will naturally determine the direction which its positive activity towards spiritual progress will take. Having only one purpose in view, and that the promotion of God’s glory, it will have only one object to tend towards, and that is to extirpate in itself all that prevents God’s glory being realized through its instrumentality. If the soul has adopted the contemplative life as its vocation, it will aim at consoling Our Lord by its fidelity, by its delicate attentions to him, and by the warmth of its affection for the abandonment he suffers from others.
The soul desires that it should be a holy place where the Lord may come to take his rest and where he may find nothing but profound adoration, deep sympathy, and warm affection. It aims at excluding everything from its way of acting that could displease Our Lord or render his presence less intimate. Dissipation, purely natural activity, or want of fervor are the kind of faults that frustrate the realization of the glory God is to gain through that soul.
The soul reproaches itself with deep sorrow if it has been betrayed by its frailty into any faults. Inevitably, in its conversations with God, it will gravitate towards this ruling thought, now become the Christian motive of its life, that of lending itself to be a perfect and willing instrument in the hands of God for the fulfillment of his designs. The petition of its prayer will be fervor, recollection, and interior peace, as being the means which render it pliable under the action of the Holy Spirit. If devoted to the active or apostolic life, its energy will be directed to the correction of those faults and defects of temperament or character which might hamper its action on souls and check the flow of the divine influence which Jesus wills to transmit through it to others.
Therefore, in order to have more power to attract souls, it will with an eagerness inspired by love, work hard to bring under control all movements of impatience, rigidity, and uncharitableness. On account of its high ideals, which it believes only too low, it will at first tend to be hard and exacting with weak and cowardly souls that choose to move in a lower plane than itself.
But Our Lord, who does not break the bruised reed or extinguish the smoking flax, reveals to it that such a hard and exacting spirit is not his. It sees in this illumination that it must cultivate a divine tolerance of weakness in others and cultivate in itself a peace so solidly established that it cannot be disturbed by the ceaseless difficulties that God’s work encounters in this world. This tolerance of weakness in others, combined with an intolerance of what is in any way wrong, and this peace of soul which should remain unshaken by any manifestation of wickedness, are necessary, it realizes, for the full exercise on the souls of others of the supernatural vigor which the soul itself possesses.
It will naturally make all its conversations with Jesus converge on the acquisition of the qualities which were so perfectly exemplified in Our Lord’s apostolic dealings with men, namely, gentleness to sinners, intolerance of sin, and calm of soul. These apostolic motives will furnish the theme of all its petitions. In this connection, it is not out of place to talk about the particular examination of conscience, an exercise which presents a considerable amount of difficulty for the best-intentioned soul, but one which can become, instead of a distasteful duty, a most consoling and fruitful spiritual occupation.
The stage of prayer should always determine the subject of that particular examination. In the first stage, it will be some glaring defect, the cause of frequent falls. For instance, lukewarmness, sloth, sensuality, the habit of criticism or the like. In the second stage, the reproaches of the conscience will turn on self-seeking in one or other of its various forms, inordinate affections, want of kindness to others, eagerness for our own perfection and the like. In the third stage, the examination will turn on that particular thing in us which we find to be a hindrance to the free intercourse of Our Lord with our souls. Instances of those obstacles have already been cited: want of sincerity or of simplicity, a tendency to irritation against wrongdoing, a habit of exaggeration, hastiness in speech and in action, a yielding to weakness in handling the affairs of Our Lord, failure in meekness or patience, and other faults of this kind. The soul casts a rapid glance over the twenty-four hours to see if it has fallen, and how many times, into the particular fault to which it is prone. It reviews the occasions on which these faults have occurred with a view to taking precautions in similar circumstances the next time, and it strives to trace the different faults it discovers back to some single fundamental defect in itself.
This review should be rapid and never exceed a few minutes. The soul then excites itself to a sincere regret for what it has done, and this it will do without difficulty because it sees in all its faults an impediment to its own movement under the high motive by which its life is directed. When after the expression of its sorrow it has made a humble petition for help in its future trials, it will tranquilly resume the spiritual position it occupied at the termination of its period of mental prayer.
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW
Based on Progress Through Mental Prayer, “The Third Stage in the Transformation,” by Edward Leen, C.S.Sp. (Sheed & Ward, 1935).