Part 16 (2/2)
”Then I think I see myself on my knees, on the floor for hours, I who suffered so much at La Glaciere in remaining in that posture, on a step, for scarce a quarter of an hour.
”Again, I am so accustomed to cigarettes that it is absolutely impossible to give them up, and it is pretty certain they will not let me smoke in a monastery.
”No, indeed, from the bodily point of view, this plan is madness; in my state of health there is no doctor who would not dissuade me from undertaking such a risk.
”If I place myself in a spiritual point of view I must then again recognize that it is terrible to enter La Trappe.
”I am afraid indeed that my dryness of soul, my want of love will remain, and then what would become of me in such surroundings? then it is equally probable, that in that solitude and absolute silence, I should be wearied to death, and if it be so, what a miserable existence is it to stalk about a cell and count the hours. No, for that one needs to be firmly fixed on G.o.d, to be dwelt in wholly by Him.
”Moreover, there are two formidable questions which I have never properly weighed, because it has been painful to think of them, but now that they come before me, and stop the road, I must face them, the questions of Confession and Holy Communion.
”Confession? Yes, I will consent to it, I am so tired of myself, so disgusted with my wretched existence that this expiation appears to me as deserved, even necessary. I desire to humble myself, I would ask pardon with all my heart, but again this penance must be a.s.signed me under possible conditions. At La Trappe, if I believe the abbe, no one will trouble himself about me, in other words no one will encourage me, and aid me to submit to this sorrowful extraction of my shames. I shall be somewhat like a sick man operated on in hospital, far from his friends and relatives.
”Confession,” he went on, ”is an admirable discovery, for it is the most sensitive touchstone of souls, the most intolerable act which the Church has ever imposed on the vanity of men.
”Is this strange? We speak easily of our lapses, of our grosser actions, even, indeed, to a priest in conversation, that does not seem to lead to any consequences, and perhaps a little bragging enters into our admission of easy sins, but to tell the same thing on one's knees, accusing oneself, after prayer, is different, that which was only rather amusing becomes a very painful humiliation, for the soul is not the dupe of this false seeming, it knows so well in its inner tribunal that all is changed, it feels so well the terrible power of the Sacrament, that he who but now smiled, now trembles at the very thought.
”Now, were I to find myself face to face with an old monk who emerges from an eternity of silence to listen to me, a monk who will not aid me, perhaps cannot even understand me, this will be terrible. I shall never get to the end of my troubles if he does not hold out a staff to me, if he lets me stifle and gives no air to my soul, nor brings me help.
”The Eucharist also seems terrible. To dare to come forward, to offer Him as a tabernacle the sewer of self scarce purified by repentance, a sewer drained by absolution, but still hardly dry, is monstrous. I am quite without such courage as to offer Christ this last insult, and so there is no good in fleeing to a monastery.
”No; the more I think of it, the more I am obliged to conclude that I should be mad if I ventured into a Trappist house.
”Now for the Credit side. The only proper work of my life would be to make a parcel of my life, and take it to a cloister to disinfect it, and if that cost me nothing, where is the merit?
”Nothing shows me, on the other hand, that my body, however weakened, cannot support the regimen of La Trappe. Without believing or pretending to believe with the Abbe Gevresin that that kind of food will be even helpful to me, I ought to count on Divine consolations, to admit the principle that, if I am sent there, it is not that I may take at once to my bed, or be obliged to leave again as soon as I arrive--at least, unless that is the chastis.e.m.e.nt prepared me, the expiation demanded, and again no, for that would be to ascribe to G.o.d pitiless tricks, and would be absurd!
”As to the cookery, it matters little that it is uncivilized, if my stomach can digest it; to have bad food, and get up in the middle of the night is nothing, provided the body can stand it, and no doubt I shall find some means of smoking cigarettes by stealth in the woods.
”After all, a week is soon over, and I am not even obliged, if I feel poorly, to remain a week.
”From the spiritual point of view, I must again count on the mercy of G.o.d, believe that it will not abandon me, will dress my wounds, and change the very foundation of my soul. I know well that these arguments do not rest on any earthly certainty, but yet if I have proofs that Providence has already taken part in my affairs, I have no reason to suppose that these arguments are weaker than the purely physical motives which served to support my other thesis. Now I must recall that conversion, so outside my will; I must take account of a fact which should encourage me, the weakness of the temptations which I now experience.
”It is difficult to have been more rapidly and more completely heard.
Whether I owe this grace to my own prayers or to those of the convents which have s.h.i.+elded me without knowing me, it is the case that for some time past my brain has been silent and my flesh calm. That monster Florence appears to me still at certain times, but she does not approach me, she remains in the shade, and the end of the Lord's Prayer, the 'ne nos inducas in tentationem,' puts her to flight.
”That is an unaccustomed fact, and yet a precise one. Why should I doubt, then, that I shall be better upheld at La Trappe than I am in Paris itself?
”There remain confession and communion.
”Confession? It will be what the Lord chooses it should be. He will choose the monk for me; I shall only be able to make use of him; and then the more disagreeable it is, the better worth it will be; and if I suffer much, I shall think myself less unworthy to communicate.
”That is,” he went on, ”the most painful point! Communicate! But let us consider, it is certain that I shall be base in proposing to Christ that He should descend like a scavenger into my ditch; but if I wait till it is empty, I shall never be in a state to receive Him, for my bulkheads are not closed, and sins would filter through the fissures.
”All this well considered, the abbe spoke truth when he answered me one day: 'But I too am not worthy to approach Him; thank G.o.d, I have not those sewers of which you speak, but in the morning, when I go to say my ma.s.s, and think of all the dust of the evening, do you not think that I am ashamed? It is always necessary, you see, to go back to the Gospels, and say to yourself that He came for the weak and the sick, the publicans and lepers; and, in fact, you must convince yourself that the Eucharist is a lookout post, a help, that it is given, as it is written in the ordinary of the Ma.s.s ”ad tutamentum mentis et corporis et ad medelam percipiendam.” It is, if I may say so, a spiritual medicine; you go to the Saviour just as you go to a doctor, you take your soul to Him to care for it, and He does so!'
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