It is not a coincidence that my
reading of Raissa's Journal, with selections written in France
at the outbreak of WWII should occur this week.
The anxiety and terror of two women,
Raissa and her sister, Vera, both Jewish converts to Catholicism,
bubbled up at the beginning of war in 1939. Vera was given by God
several consoling messages regarding the fact that they would be safe
and that Paris would not burn.
Seeing the Seine for the first time in
my life allowed me a glimpse of the love the Parisians have for their
city. I hope to go back and have time for the usual touristy things,
which I did not in my travels during the past few days.
Vera's words from God encouraged all of
those who lived in the house, but sadly, the three, Vera, Jacques and
Raissa were to go to Toronto, into exile, for safety.
Raissa knew that the war was a direct
result of man's sins. That God gave men and women free will and that
some used it against Christ and His Reign on Earth could not be
denied.
I understand what it feels like, the
intense suffering of having to leave one's home and go into exile.
Raissa lost Meudon, where she had been given the Presence of Christ
in the Eucharist, where she felt safe and able to carry on her deep
prayer. Jacques notes in the Journal that at some point, God
denies the person called to contemplation, the place where this is
easily done.
I understand this perfectly. Jacques
writes this, “She was flung into the hazards of the swirling waters
of the world and found herself henchforth having to contend, and in
particularly hostile circumstances, with the relentless energy of
things which make man dispersed. She had to wrench by sheer force
from the malevolent hours whatever time she could, however scrappy,
for that contemplative prayer without which it impossible for her to
live.”
The huge difference between Raissa and
myself, flung into increasingly hostile places, is that she was
already in the Illuminative and then Unitive States. Because of her
high level of contemplation, Raissa kept this mode of being
constantly, underneath all that she did and endured.
This, my Dear Readers, is what to which
God is calling all of us in order to be able to endure what is
coming.
Raissa writes this: “My own life, my
very imperfect life, has reached that maturity of soul which is
acquired only at the price of extra-ordinary misfortune, personal or
otherwise; that age at which nothing is let of childhood or of
happiness of living. My life comes to this climax much less because
of the trials that I myself have endured, than because of the
misfortune which has fallen upon all humanity. For justice wears
mourning, the afflicted are not—cannot--be consoled, the persecuted
are not succoured, because God's truth is not spoken, and suddenly
the world has become to little, so narrowed for the spirit , by the
monotony of that lie which rules it and which almost alone make
itself heard.”
This is from another book I have, We
Have Been Friends Together.
Is this not the
call of all today who are in the remnant?
For many years, I have, like Raissa,
been without a dwelling of my own, without my own things, and in
exile. Raissa calls this “the divine bitterness of living and
dying.” As soon as the Gestapo entered Paris, they began looking
for Jacques, now safely in America for however long the occupation
would last. Raissa suffered terribly not only from this exile, but
from the worry of her loved friends in Poland and other places. She
also suffered from those enemies of Jacques, who were in the Vatican
undermining his important work of neo-Thomism.
Sadly, a bit later than this time,
their great friend Henri Bergson died without baptism. This was his
desire in wanting to identify with the Jews being persecuted under
the Nazis. Raissa was finally, in December of 1940, given the
knowledge that Jesus was her only place of peace in the world, and
from this knowledge, she came into some peace.
For those who have never been forced to
give up their homes, and all the things they love, this message must
seem unreal. However, we are on the edge of those times again, and I
am merely the lighthouse, showing others what is to come in the
darkness.
We are on the edge of that darkness.
