One can only achieve real freedom from sin and imperfections by allowing God to work in one's life.
This means doing what we do not want to do and going where we do not want to go. It also means giving up trying to pray in ways which "worked" before, such as meditation. Giving into grace sometimes means giving up on past tried and true methods of prayer. Freedom means not hanging onto to either the need for consolations or even the forms of meditation.
In the third place, as St. John of the Cross points out here,(3) when persons can no longer meditate discursively: "All they have to do is to keep their soul free, . . . contenting themselves simply with directing their attention lovingly and calmly toward God." To wish to return at any cost to discursive meditation, would be to wish to run counter to the current of grace instead of following it, and to give ourselves great trouble without profit. It would be like running toward the spring of living water when we have already reached its brim; continuing to run, we withdraw from it. It would be like continuing to spell when we already know how to read several words at a glance. It would be to fall back instead of allowing ourselves to be drawn, to be lifted up by God. However, if the difficulty in meditating does not increase and makes itself felt only from time to time, it is well to return to simplified, affective meditation whenever possible: for example, to the very slow meditation of the Our Father.
St. John gives a fourth rule of direction for those who, having reached this state of prolonged aridity, wish, not to return to reasoned meditation, but to feel some consolation. St. John of the Cross says on this subject: "All they have to do is to keep their soul free, . . . and all this without anxiety or effort, or immoderate desire to feel and taste His presence. For all such efforts disquiet the soul, and distract it from the peaceful quiet and sweet tranquillity of contemplation to which they are now admitted.(4) . . . If they were now to exert their interior faculties, they would simply hinder and ruin the good which, in that repose, God is working in the soul; for if a man while sitting for his portrait cannot be still, but moves about, the painter will never depict his face, and even the work already done will be spoiled. . . . The more it strives to find help in affections and knowledge, the more will it feel the deficiency which cannot now be supplied in that way."
(5) In other words, natural activity exercising itself counter to the gifts of the Holy Ghost, through self-seeking opposes an obstacle to their most delicate inspirations. In prayer, we should not seek to feel the gift of God, but should receive it with docility and disinterestedness in the obscurity of faith. Spiritual joy will be added later on to the act of contemplation and love of God; but it is not joy that should be sought, it is God Himself, who is greatly superior to His gifts.
If the soul that has reached this period of transition is faithful to what has been said, then will be realized what St. John of the Cross affirms: "By not hindering the operation of infused contemplation, to which God is now admitting it, the soul is refreshed in peaceful abundance, and set on fire with the spirit of love, which this contemplation, dim and secret, induces and establishes within it. (6)
One knows one is in this state by the experience of love. To be continued
