CHAPTER XIV.

ON PERFECT PEACE AND QUIET OF THE SOUL.

O THAT God alone occupied thy thoughts! For, so long as thy heart is nut detached from all other things, so long as thou adherest to anything transitory, so long as thou lovest thy own will rather than the will of God, thou canst not he perfectly united to Him. Blessed is he. who is inwardly detached from all things, who is neither unworthily disturbed by losses, nor foolishly elated by success, who meets all inequalities of fortune with an equable mind, who has learnt to relinquish, and, as it were, to go out of himself, who at length, by self-denial, has attained to perfect charity. What peace, thinkest thou, does such a one possess 1 So great is it that no words suffice to express it.

Such persons are sometimes interiorly inundated by so profuse a torrent of divine consolation that, being scarcely able to bear it, they are as if forced to withdraw from it, and to cry out, saying: Lord, withhold the streams of Thy grace! Hence it often happens that their very bodies are wonderfully changed by the benignity of the divine visitation. They may, indeed, rightly sing with the Psalmist: “In peace in the self-same I will sleep, and I will rest ” (Ps. iv. 9).

O desirable peace, which surpasses all sense, and transcends all understanding! joyful peace, by which the mind is absorbed in the interior life, and, 35forgetful of all external things, reposes happily in the Lord! sweet peace, through which and in which the spirit, soaring above itself, and absorbed in the riches of ineffable glory, passes wholly into God! Happy, thrice happy is that soul, which deserves to be often thus cherished in the bosom of her Spouse, and frequently to repose, in this manner in the embraces of her Beloved. It is not to be told what joy she feels in this peace, while she cannot contain herself for the abundance of spiritual delights, while she is all filled with an incomprehensible and inestimable sweetness, and being filled she is inebriated, and being inebriated she is brought into the haven of holy security.

But, alas! while we bear about us a corruptible body, we cannot long enjoy this holy and secret union with God. For the Spouse approaches and with draws; now He shows Himself, and again He hides Himself. O what distaste for present things, what groans, what sighs, invade the holy soul when it returns to itself from those raptures, when it falls back from such riches to such poverty, from such delights to such misery, from so grateful a tranquillity of spirit to such unwelcome distractions and temptations! But yet these groans and sighs bring her meanwhile no little consolation; and they induce the Spouse to hasten His return.

There are few to be found who attain to this perfection, who shine with such purity and simplicity, who dwell in the citadel of highest charity and contemplation; nor does God allow all to reach it. Other pious 36souls, indeed, whose lives are not so holy, also enjoy interior peace in this pilgrimage, but not to such a degree as those who are perfect.