Imagination: The Madwoman

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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, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“At once he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side while he sent the crowds away. After sending the crowds away he went up into the hills by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, while the boat, by now some furlongs from land, was hard pressed by rough waves, for there was a headwind.

“In the fourth watch of the night, he came towards them, walking on the sea, and when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. ‘It is a ghost!’ they said, and they cried out in fear. But at once Jesus called out to them, saying, ‘Courage! It is I! Do not be afraid’” (Matt. 14:22-27).

Many of the saints have liked to say that the imagination is like a madwoman, the "madwoman of the house.”

St. Teresa of Ávila, in particular, used this phrase. She said in spite of that, how often we choose this madwoman of the house, more or less consciously, as our advisor in the most delicate problems of our soul.

The apostles cried out, “It is a ghost!” But it wasn’t a ghost; it was just Jesus.

A writer says (see below) that “this madwoman confuses us with her fussing and distracts us with her chatter; she communicates to us her various fears and makes us apprehensive; she whispers her baseless suspicions in our ears, tyrannizes over us with her ambition, and infects us with her envy; this madwoman makes us walk away from reality, leading us into a dream-world, full of elation or pessimism” (Salvatore Canals, Jesus as Friend).

It becomes very important in our spiritual life that we learn how to control our imagination, because she could be playing on us all day long—making us apprehensive and anxious; full of fears when we don't need to be; whispering those baseless suspicions in our ears. She can take away our interior peace. She can make us walk away from reality.

As followers of Christ, it's very important that we walk in the real world.

Sometimes people ask about the importance of their dreams. The best thing we can do with our dreams is to forget about them. If we have some unpleasant dream, we can say a Hail Mary, offer it to Our Lady, carry on.

We don't live in the world of dreams; we live in the real world, which is much more interesting—the world created by God.

Subtly, she can feed us with the poison of sensuality and self-love. The imagination can be “the great enemy of our interior life; she is the eternal ally of the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

It's very good if we can recognize things that are just fruit of our imagination, and not from the real world. They don’t reflect reality, so that we can see that the devil, maybe, is tempting us through these imaginary problems.

The imagination is the one who disturbs our prayer life, makes us fear mortification.

She can introduce into our soul the temptation of the flesh and of pride; she can give us a false idea of God—an idea that is not in keeping with Our God, who is a loving Father, who tells us that “even the hairs of our head are counted”; that we are “worth much more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:7); who is beside us always (Ps. 16:8), irrespective of how we might be feeling.

Our imagination can deprive us of our supernatural love, which helps us to see the world as God sees it—which is how it is in reality.

She can lull us to sleep with frivolities or drown us in the lethargy of lukewarmness.

She can put out the flame of charity and kindle the flames of distrust and discord. She can be a great instrument of disunity.

She is as wild as a horse without a bridle; as giddy as a butterfly; if we fail to control and guide her, we will never be a supernatural and interior soul.

God wants us to be full of peace —a peace that only He can give, a peace which the things of this world cannot give (John 14:27)—so that we also know how to react peacefully, serenely, to all the different events and occurrences that might take place.

And so, we need to put a brake on our own imagination. If we don’t, we'll never have that realism which a life of holiness requires.

The saints were people who lived in the real world. They were immensely human; they didn't live in a dream world.

Calm, realism, serenity, objectivity: these are all virtues which are born where the tyranny of the imagination is buried; virtues which grow and bear fruit in the ascetical effort of dominating and controlling our imagination.

Notice how Our Lord came to the apostles not in the first, second, or the third, but in the fourth watch of the night. They must have been a little bit tired.

They didn't recognize Him when He came. It was as though Our Lord was very good at playing practical jokes on them.

He comes to them, walking on the water, and He scares the living daylights out of them. "It is a ghost!" they cried out in fear (Matt. 14:25-26).

Sometimes we might have similar reactions. We think this is because of a ghost, or because of the devil, or because of this, or because of that.

Maybe it’s just Christ coming to seek us out in different ways, saying, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

When Our Lord allows them to have these reactions with their imagination, immediately He calms them down: “Courage, it is I. Do not be afraid” (Matt. 14:27).

Christ comes to calm our fears, to restore our peace, so that we don’t let ourselves be dominated by the tyranny of the imagination, which can be so tyrannical, twists our minds, misrepresents situations, distorts our view of other people.

Our imagination can make us see things that are not really there. We may not live according to reality.

Our imagination can make us think that this person said this, or said that, or said it in that tone because they want this, or they want that, or what they mean is something else. We can tie ourselves up in knots.

It's interesting how Pope Francis often talks about Our Lady the Untier of Knots, to whom they have a lot of devotion in Argentina. Our Lady can help us to untie the knots created by our imagination.

The Gospel gives us a very eloquent proof of that tyranny of the imagination.

They’re out on the lake of Gennesaret. It’s a dark, stormy night. The Apostles have to row hard against a violent wind. Their little boat, battling on the waves, contains twelve men who strive to resist the impetuous wind.

Meanwhile, Jesus has gone away to be alone on the top of a nearby mountain, to pray.

But at the fourth watch of the night, He approaches them, walking on the water. When they see Him, they become worried and they cry out, "It is a ghost!"

The adorable figure of the Master, who comes so as to be with them, and help them, and calm the storm, silencing the waves with His word, takes on in their imagination the appearance of a ghost, which fills them with fear and disquiet.

That whole Gospel episode can be repeated in our own life. How often our soul, victim of our imagination, can become frightened and uneasy!

There can be imaginary crosses that torment us, exhaust us. These can be tricks that our imagination plays on us.

Maybe ninety percent of our sufferings, or those sufferings which we call crosses—they may be imaginary. So little do we know of the Cross of Christ, or at least they can be blown up or twisted by the cruel tyranny of our imagination.

That's why they can weigh so heavy on us, drain us of our energy—all those human and invented crosses.

If what made us suffer so much, if what drained us, were truly the cross the Lord sends us, the Cross of Christ, once we recognized it as such and, with faith and love, accepted it, it no longer ought to be a weight.

It ought no longer to oppress us, because the Cross, the true Cross of Christ, the Holy Cross, is not a source of sadness or depression or fear, but one of peace and joy.

Our joy and our happiness have their roots in the Holy Cross (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 28).

But if it is a human or imaginary cross that we are carrying on our shoulders, or one which is the result of our interior rebellion against the true Cross, then we can truly become sad and worried.

But that weight and that preoccupation can disappear from our life and cease to drain us. All we have to do is to open the eyes of faith; decide to cut the wings of our imagination.

We might sometimes imagine that God has abandoned us: ‘Why do I have so many problems in my life?’ ‘Why are things going wrong?’ ‘Why are these things happening to me all the time?’

Maybe, those things that are happening to you all the time are just the ordinary realities of professional life, or they’re just the ups and downs of every day. We haven’t yet recognized them as such. These daily realities are what God wants us to sanctify through acceptance of the cross in the ordinary things of each day.

Those human crosses that may seem so heavy, that may seem to flatten us, may have no real existence in our supernatural life and might only exist in our imagination.

We should try to offer these things to Our Lord.

Lord, I leave things at the foot of your Cross or leave things at your tabernacle— these thoughts, these worries, these concerns, so that I don’t focus my whole life or revolve around the moment.

It could be that I could be carrying on my shoulders a weight that is as atrocious as it is ridiculous—a weight I imagine to be a mountain and in fact, is only a grain of sand.

Here is where spiritual direction can be very helpful—to have someone we can go to and open our soul, talk about our concerns, our worries.

Very often those things that may agitate us, concern us, take away our peace—when we get them out, we get a new peace. We see those things in their proper light.

That other person with the grace of the Holy Spirit helps us to see that this thing is perhaps not important. Or this is not reality.

Or this is just a fruit of your imagination; that's not what the person meant at all, or that's not what those words mean.

Or that person that said those things with that face, it's because they're carrying this other cross. It's not because they hate you, or they want to send you a message, or whatever else.

Or this failure that you've experienced in your life, where life has struck—this is not some great catastrophe. This is just the realities of ordinary life. It happens to everybody.

We learn to carry those particular crosses and move on.

There are ghosts that can be created in our mind, bogeymen that our imagination decks out in vivid colors, giving them huge, terrifying hands and swift, agile legs.

We can imagine that people are out to get us, but maybe that’s not the reality at all.

Hence, the help of an objective voice or opinion that can help to keep us on the straight and narrow, to lead normal lives, to maintain our balance, so that we don’t allow those imaginary thoughts, or desires, or temptations to chase us and fill our souls with sorrow and agitation.

Often, a little assertion of our life of faith can help them disappear. “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Turning to Our Mother—Mary, help me! Refuge of sinners, Comforter of the afflicted, Mother most admirable, Mother most amiable.

Our Mother is always there to calm us down. That's what mothers are for: to untie the knots we ourselves may have tied up in all sorts of ways.

All these troublesome thoughts and dreams can be got rid of very easily. Sometimes we can allow other things to scare us, things that may come from far away: ‘What if?’ ‘What if this were to happen?’ or ‘What if that were to happen?’ Fears about future dangers.

Our Lord, in His public life, spoke a lot to us about “today,” about this moment.

Blessed Álvaro used to say that the sanctification of our lifetime is made up of the sanctification of each moment. Hence, the norms of always can be very relevant: acts of faith, acts of hope, acts of thanksgiving, acts of abandonment.

We can be afraid of dangers which in the present moment don't exist, and we don’t know if they will ever come about. But our imagination can make us see those things as present. That can make them appear even more terrible.

A simple supernatural reasoning process can get rid of them. Since those dangers which we imagine are not actual dangers, and the fear that we have has not been verified, then clearly we don't have the grace of God necessary to overcome them or accept them.

So we have to get rid of them. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it; we live for today.

“Woman, my hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). “Now has the hour come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). “This day you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

If our fears are verified, if things do turn out as we expected them, then we'll have divine grace. With that grace and our response to it, we’ll win out and have peace.

We have the grace to carry real crosses, but we don’t have the grace to carry imaginary ones. It's quite natural that at present, we don't have the grace of God to overcome those obstacles and to accept the crosses which only exist in our imagination.

We could ask St. Joseph, in particular, to help us to base our spiritual life on a serene, objective realism.

In the homily on St. Joseph, St. Josemaría says that St. Joseph was “in no way shy or frightened of life. … He faced up to problems, dealt with difficult situations, and showed initiative and responsibility in all that he was asked to do” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 40).

St. Joseph lived in the real world. He solved real problems; faced up to real situations. He didn't get into all sorts of a tizzy, imagining all sorts of things that won't come to happen.

In the field of charity, we may particularly be a victim of our imagination, imagining that this person said this or meant that, or looked at us in that funny way.

This can lead us to have all sorts of suspicions that have no basis in reality—a suspicion whose only roots are in our minds.

There could be an enormity of things that we imagine that our neighbor has thought or said or done, which the person has never thought, nor said, nor done.

That sort of thing can disturb and undermine our relationships with other people, and also in our family.

Those little differences which necessarily exist in all human relationships, even in those of the saints (we're not angels), can be blown up and twisted by our imagination, and put us into moods that make us suffer a lot.

Nothing, little things, games our imagination plays on us; yet they open abysses which cause divisions among people. They destroy affections and friendships and undermine unity.

In reality, they're just little issues, water under the bridge.

Imagination can be a great ally of sensuality and self-love. We can write many novels about ourselves—fantastic dreams in which we are the hero, the person who comes out on top; dreams which indulge our ambition, the desire to be on top and to be admired, and to grow in vanity.

All these things will ultimately—lots of obstacles to our holiness.

The solutions lie in our life of piety: our prayer; our presence of God; our abandonment into the hands of Our Father God; strong supernatural joy.

All these are walls of our interior life; they can all be threatened by the madwoman of the house.

“We need to be very supernatural, very objective. The voice of Jesus puts an end to the fears of the apostles on the lake of Gennesaret: ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid!” (Matt. 14:27).

St. Josemaría says in the Furrow, “If your imagination bubbles over with thoughts about yourself and creates fanciful situations and circumstances which would not normally find a place in your way, then these will foolishly distract you. They will dampen your ardor and separate you from the presence of God. This is vanity.

“If your imagination revolves around others,” he continues, “you will easily fall into the defect of passing judgment. This is not your responsibility. You will interpret their behavior not at all objectively but in a mean way. This is rash judgement.

“If your imagination concerns itself with your own talents and ways of speaking, or with the general admiration that you inspire in others, then you will be in danger of losing your rectitude of intention, and of providing fodder for your pride.

“Generally, letting your imagination loose is a waste of time, and, if it is not controlled, it opens the door to a whole string of voluntary temptations. Do not leave off the practice of interior mortification for even a single day!" (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 135).

This point highlights the importance of interior mortification. Often, we think of mortification only in terms of exterior mortification.

Sometimes, we have to mortify our thoughts, our yearnings, our desires, our imaginations—all those things that go on, on the inside.

“I could behave better,” he says in another point, “show more decision, and spread around more enthusiasm...Why don't I?

“Because—forgive my frankness—you are a fool. The devil knows full well that one of the worst-guarded doors of the soul is that of human foolishness: vanity.

“That is where he attacks with all his might: pseudo-sentimental memories, the hysterical form of a black-sheep complex, the unfounded impression of a lack of freedom. ...

“What are you waiting for in order to follow the Master's injunction? ‘Watch and pray, for you know not the day nor the hour’” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 164).

We’re also told in the Furrow (Point 248): “There are souls who seem bent on inventing sufferings, on torturing themselves with their imagination. Afterwards, when objective sorrows and contradictions come their way, they do not know how to be like the Most Holy Virgin at the foot of the Cross with her eyes fixed on her Son.”

We focus on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, place our mind and our heart in the wounds. That will help us to be more focused on the real world.

In The Way, we're told, “Get rid of those useless thoughts which, at best, are but a waste of time” (Point 13).

“Don't be so touchy. The least thing offends you. It's necessary to weigh one's words well before speaking to you even on the most trivial manner. Don't be annoyed if I tell you that you are…unbearable. Unless you change, you will never be of any use” (Point 43).

We could ask Our Lady, that we might grow in control of our imagination, this madwoman, so that we can work at the business of making it more effective for us.

We're told: “Tongues have been wagging and you have suffered rebuffs that hurt you all the more because you were not expecting them. Your supernatural reaction should be to pardon—even to ask pardon,—and to take advantage of the experience to detach yourself from creatures” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 689).

“Don't let yourself be distracted,” we're told in The Forge (Point 1023), “don't give free rein to your imagination. Live the life within you and you will be closer to God.”

“Don't be ashamed of doing little childlike things, I advised you. As long as they are not done out of routine, they will not be foolish.

“Here is an example. Imagine that a soul who is following the way of spiritual childhood is moved each night, during the hours of sleep, to adorn a wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin. Our intelligence would reject such an action as quite useless. But humble souls touched by grace understand very well that a child would indeed act like this out of love.

“And then the strong will, which all those who are little children spiritually have, insists and moves the intelligence to give way. … And if that childlike soul were to continue each day dressing up that statue of Our Lady, there would be repeated each day a little act of childlike love, which would be fruitful in the eyes of God” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 347).

Mary, may you help us to be more aware of our imagination so that we can attack it at an early stage, to be led to a deeper, more serene, spiritual life, pondering all the things just as you did.

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, Saint 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