BY BARON FRIEDRICH VON HUGEL.
In a transition period such as our own, in an age of hurry, of noise, of restlessness and self-consciousness, in which even the most direct and earnest find it specially difficult to rise to something more positive and more persuasive than some more or less contentious anti-Protestantism ; in times which cry aloud for the ever-increasing production of a spiritual life altogether different in kind from what the world can either reproduce or understand ; in such times as these it is refreshing and bracing in a rare degree to make intimate acquaintance with a spirituality such as that of Pere Grou. Sobensilent, sold, simple; a solitary, laborious, claimless scholar, gentleman, and saint; passing, with ever-growing serenity, through ever-thickening storms and sufferings, exterior and interior; driven back and pressed down upon the very foundations and mainsprings of faith and love, he speaks with his whole being in accents large and calm. His figure stands out clear and distinct amidst that noble succession of-great children of the great Church, who, though differing in magnitude, are all great with the greatness of their origin; upturned countenances; living, candid, pleading eyes; and the living light striking down upon them with never-exhausted freshness and transforming power. Born at Calais in 1731, and dying at Lulworth in 18o, the long life of Jean Nicolas Grou falls quite naturally into three stages, marked off by the dates of 1770 and 1792. The first stage includes his twenty years of preparation, profession, and work in the Society of Jesus (1746-1766), the all-important foundation which should never be forgotten. It also covers a double exile, first, as a Jesuit, from Paris to Nancy, from the kingdom of France, which had suppressed the Society to the Duchy of Lorraine, which still tolerated it ; and, secondly, on the re-union of the Duchy with France and the Society’s suppression in the ex-Duchy, as an ex-Jesuit, from Nancy back to Paris, and from thence into Holland—why exactly has never been made out. To this fist period belong his fine translations of Plato’s Laws, Republic, and eight other Dialogues, and his answers to attacks on the Society.
In 1770 we find him back in Paris, beginning the second stage by the most important year of his life. [All the following quotations are taken from Pere Alphonse Cadres’ (S.J.) book, le Mre J. N. Grou, second edition; Paris: Palme; 1866.] “Soon after an old colleague of his, who directed the Convent of the Visitation in the Rue do Bac, Robert Guerin du -Rocher, introduced him to a religious of that community who was distinguished amongst all the others by her regularity and fervor, and who was said to be favored by extraordinary graces. This person, Sceur Magi; who was very devout and very interior, opened to Pere Grou the ways of a higher perfection. According to her advice he made a retreat in which his soul experienced, from point to point, all that she had predicted to him, and by which he decided to give himself wholly to God. It is from thence that he dated his conversion, as he used to call it. He was at this time 39 years of age. The spirit of prayer, the habit of the presence of God, a total abandonment to grace, an absolute renunciation of his own will–such were the principal virtues which shone in him. In 1784 he says to Madame d’Adhemar regarding his experiences of this time: ‘My spirit, since the change which God has made in me, is a spirit of childlikeness and of simplicity, a spirit quite contrary to that which I had before, and which closed to toe the entrance of the things of God. At that time I had no understanding of the conduct of God towards me; but I let Him act, and gave myself over to the instinct of grace ; now I see clearly up to a certain point, and I know that it would have been impossible for me to hold out in the different trials amidst which divine Providence has since placed me unless I had, first of all, been reduced to this state of childhood.’ He had an entire confidence in Sceur Pelagie, and deferred to her advice concerning the good of his soul. The same submission and the same simplicity he demanded from the persons he himself directed, and by that means enabled them to make great-pro gress in virtue.?’ This second period—up to 1792—is entirely spent in Paris, in prayer, direction, large classical studies, and the composition and partial publication of the first group of his spiritual works, of which the Morale thee des Confessions de St. Augustin and the Manuel des Ames lnterieures are the most important. The exact origin of the Manuel is worth recording “There is nothing to prove that Pere Grou ever devoted himself to the ministry of preaching. But we cannot doubt that the religious houses of the capital must have’been eager to hear him, and he, in his zeal, would be unwilling to reject their pious wishes. Simple and paternal exhortations, full of that interior spirit by which he himself was penetrated, their manner and language may be judged of by the collection which remains to us. This a series of nine little manuscript volumes, each of which contains seven exhortations or discourses on different detached subjects hence the title of senzaine given to each of these volumes. The Comtesse d’Adhemar [at this time a lady-inwaiting to Queen Marie Antoinette], who was for many years under Pere Grou’s direction, obtained his permission to have this collection copied. Although the autograph manuscript of the author has not reached us, yet the care-and correctness of the copy leave no doubt as to its being in entire accord with the original, either as regards the substance of the contents or as to the order observed in the disposition of the subject-matter.
Madame d’Adhemar, at her death in 1822, left these nine littlevolumes to the Abbe Lesurre, an intimate friend of hers, and he, in 1833, published a first selection in a little volume in t8mo., to which he gave the title of Manuel des Ames Ina. rieures. In 1837 and 1840 he published a second and third (and final) selection.” This brings us to 1792, and to the beginning of the third and last period of his life. The •Reign of Terror broke out; but Pere Grou had intended at first to remain in Paris and to exercise his-ministry in secret. But Sceur Pelagie, who, obliged to quit her convent, was now living in profound retirement, wrote to him during this year to determine him to withdraw to England. Pere Grou answered that the only person known to in that country was Father Clinton, who had translated some of his works, and who was, at that time, chaplain to Mr. Weld, of Lulworth. The Sister answered that that was wherehe was to go, and that God destined him to undertake the direction of the whole of that family. Meanwhile, Father Clinton, forseeing that priests would soon be forced to quit France. wrote to Pere Grou to invite him to come to him. Pere Grou, seeing in this the hand of Providence, hastened to profit by it, and arrived at Lulworth in the course of December, 1792. Here he soon became the director of the nine members of the Weld family then at home, and of three out of the four priests at that time enjoying, like himself, the large hospitality of Lulworth Castle. Here, on the re-establishment of the Society. he had the consolation of renewing his four vows of religion.; and here, giving special care to the spiritual training of Mr. Weld’s eldest son, Thomas, afterwards Cardinal Weld, and of Miss Mary Weld, afterwards Sister Mary de Sales, of the Order of the Visitation, he remained till his death on December 13, 1803. To this third period belong the second group of his. spiritual works, of which the most important are L’Interieur de Jesus et de Marie (written for Miss Mary Weld), and the Ecole de Jesus Christ, each in two volumes. As to his manner of writing on spiritual subjects, he says, in certain unprinted instructions addressed to Miss Weld: “I write nothing of my own on matters of piety. God guides my pen. When I take it up I do not know what I shall write; and I am the first to be astonished at the thoughts which present themselves to me.” When God gave him the wherewithal he used to write fluently and with great ease. If he received no light he waited peacefully till God should deign to come to his aid. Sometimes, when in a state of absolute dryness and impotence, he would seek out Miss Weld and say: ” Pray for me; God gives me nothing; I can write nothing.” During the last years of his life he ceased to write on spiritual subjects, saying that God had ceased to give him the wherewithal. But during this last, as during the two earlier periods, his classical labors were of the largest and most consecutive character.
During the last two years of his life, he was successively afflicted by asthma, apoplexy, and dropsy in the legs; all sensible consolations were withdrawn from him; pure faith alone remained to move him; but his one distress was the distress and trouble he gave to others, his one practice the practice of all that he had ever taught. With ever deepening serenity he awaited death: a few instants before expiring, he said, holding his crucifix in his hands: “0 my God, how sweet it is to die in Thine-arms.”
Now what was the special outcome, as regards his spiritual teaching, of his particular character, modified by his particular circumstances, and transfigured by his particular grace? It is
easy to see that he can be grouped, generally, with St. Bonaventure and with Gerson, with St. John of the Cross and St. Catherine of Genoa; and, again, that he belongs, in a more special manner, to the school of St. Francis de Sales and of Fenelon. It is more difficult to say in what he differs from these latter two. We take it that the spirit animating the three is identical, but that the natural character of the three is very different. If Pere Grou has not the genial humor and nail poetry of the first, nor the elastic brightness and warm expansive friendships of the second ; if he has, naturally, an almost Jansenistic hardness and dry vehemence all his own : he has also gained, by personal experience, a special insight into the advantages of hard intellectual work for the maintenance of the spiritual life, which ought to make him specially attractive and useful in times such as these, when probably the greatest and most difficult of all requirements is the practical combination of great intellectual openness and activity with a childlike spirit of faith, simplicity, and love. Now Pere Grou’s faith was thus stimulating and enlarging, just because it was so intensely faith and not sight, still less comprehension ; his simplicity was thus free from every touch of childishness, just because it was so exquisitely childlike ; his love was thus warm and generous towards all that lives, just because it came from a source so far transcending the -merits, but never the requirements, of the creatures to whom it was applied.
So large and well-balanced, and yet individual a mind, can hardly be shown in quotations: they will be liable to read as commonplaces, or else as exaggerations. But single stones of a rich and large mosaic, can, if fitly chosen, impress upon us a sense of its existence, and stimulate in us a wish to study it in its length and breadth. This is all the following quotations aim at doing. Those on faith we will mostly translate for ourselves from his other works; those on simplicity and on love shall be taken from the fine translation before us, a book which we owe to the discrimination and enterprise of the excellent St. Anselm’s Society, and will thus also serve as specimens, and by no means exceptional ones, of the work under notice.
His ideas as to faith can be seen from the following passage: “Faith manifestly excludes, not only the comprehension, but also the sight of its object. To comprehend is more than to see, it is to know; and, in whatever subject-matter, to know is another thing from to believe. We believe on the report, on the authority of another; as soon as we see for ourselves, there is no more room for faith. Thus, faith will cease in heaven, where we shall have the clear vision of what, for us here below, is enveloped in a cloud; and yet, all the same, in heaven itself, we shall have but,a very imperfect comprehension of that which we shall see.” (Ecole, Lesson 51.)
“Nothing is more contrary to the spirit of God than the spirit of man. To gain the spirit of God, which is that of the Gospel, you must absolutely renounce your own. I do not say that you will understand nothing of it, as regards the matters essential to salvation, but I affirm that you will not with respect to those which concern Christian perfection. And how could you understand it on such delicate matters? Your character, your prejudices, your faults, which you do not dream of combating, of which you do not wish to rid yourself, which perhaps you take to be virtues, are like a cloud which troubles and obscures the eye of your soul, they deprive your mind of the intelligence, and your heart of the relish of a Gospel which orders renouncement of self, of a Gospel, the enemy of all imperfection, which tends to destroy in man all that is of man. Learn, if you know it not, that spiritual vices are those which the Gospel hates the most, and which blind us most ; that, on the other hand, in proportion as we advance in death to self by the destruction of these vices, the better we understand what the Gospel teaches on this matter ; and that, since there are no limits to the sanctity of the Christian, there are none to the intelligence of the Gospel which he may acquire.”
“What is the conclusion to be drawn from this? That the majority of Christians, even of those who are charged by their state to teach it to others, understand the Gospel but very imperfectly ; that we understand it only in proportion as we practice it ; that, in what concerns interior things, it is only understood by souls given to the interior life ; that God, who alone dispenses this light, measures it by the good will and by the advancement of each individual ; that there is no one who would not despair of perfection, if God were to show it to him in all the fullness enclosed in the words of the Gospel ; but that He administers its manifestation according to our weakness, revealing the light to us only by degrees and according to what is necessary for our encouragement and our humiliation. Since the Gospel opens out to man a career of which the term is infinitely distant, it would only terrify him to show him this term at the distance and at the height where it actually is. God in consequence, shows it to man as tolerably clear to him ; but in proportion as a man advances in his course, this term seems to fly from before him, and, if he reaches it, as far as is necessary for salvation, he never approaches it, as far as it is so for perfection.” “To act and suffer for Thee; to die to self and to live by Thy spirit—such is the aim and end of Thy great Gospel.” (Ecole, Lesson 41). A truly supernatural end; the means are equally supernatural -(We quote from the fine translation before us, pp. 130-132)” It s necessary to have a director, because the greatest mistake of all is to wish to guide ourselves, and the greatest delusion we can fall into is to think we are in a fit state to guide ourselves. Even the most clever man, and he who is in the ‘best dispositions, is blind as to his interior conduct; and even if he were a saint, and capable of directing others, he is not capable of directing himself; and if he thinks he can, it is through presumption. The first thing God requires of any one who aspires to sanctity is that he should renounce his own spirit, tha the should humble himself, and submit to the guidance of those to whom God has entrusted the care of souls. The important point is to make a good choice of such a guide. And in a choice of such importance, it is God above all Whom we must consult: it is to Him we must pray that we may choose aright. His good providence is engaged to furnish us with all the necessary means for our salvation and sanctification; and as this is one of the most necessary means, we must believe that He will grant it to us, if we ask it of Him with simplicity and confidence. Did he not send St. Francis de Sales to Dijon on purpose for Madame de Chantal? and did she not recognize at once by certain signs, that he was the director whom God had destined for her? These signs can never deceive upright and pure souls, who seek only their own spiritual advancement. And I am quite certain that all those who are deceived when they seek direction have brought it upon themselves, through having been influenced by their imagination, or their self-love, or some other human motives, whatever they may be. The certainty which God gives us at first of having made a good choice increases from day to day, and we soon have undoubted proofs of this. Nevertheless, if it should happen that we have been deceived, God will never permit a soul that is upright and pure to be long in error: she will soon discover, by one thing or another, that she has made a mistake, and God will guide her elsewhere.”
In this faith there is nothing fanatical or really blind: “When I speak of recasting nature, I do not mean that the character is changed into an opposite one. The foundation of each character is good; why should grace change it? This foundation then remain; but the viciousness which self-love had added, disappears, and what it has of good grows perfect. Each moral quality loses what it had too much, and acquires what it had too little. They fit into each other, and from their fusion results perfect virtue. Moreover, devotion supernaturalizes the moral qualities, and gives them an undefinable touch of the divine, which ennobles and sanctifies them.
” We cannot but recognize, however, that the work of man, although aided by grace, rarely carries this work to its final perfection; and that, even in very holy persons, there generally remain some defects or some excesses derived from the primitive character, such as can be found in the writings and conduct of a St. Cyprian, a St. Jerome, and of many others. But when God directly undertakes the work, and that, with this object, He possesses Himself of a soul and puts it on the interior way; if this soul is faithful, habitual recollection, prayer, and trials purify her radically and pass the character through the crucible so as to leave it without alloy. Such were St Augustine and St. Francis de Sales.” (Charactires, ch. xxvii.) This faith is full of action, because empty of all activity: “The surest means of preserving the spirit of prayer, is to alternate prayer with work and work with prayer. One cannot always be in contemplation; the mind grows weary and the body exhausted; it degenerates into mere idleness. It must be intermingled with action; and the interior life could not sustain itself for long if it were not broken in upon by some external occupation.
“All interior souls are eager and active at bottom; they must always have some occupation, either of mind or of body; and, if the duties of their state do not give them enough, they are industrious in finding it elsewhere. The spirit of God leads them to this point, and does not suffer them to remain for a moment doing nothing. When circumstances force such a soul to be thus idle, it is then in real torment. St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Francis de Sales, . . . . St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Theresa. . . what interior souls, and who more laborious or more occupied? (Int. del. ch. xvii.) Large and liberal reading; consecutive study; the slow formation of individual opinion finds ready place in such a faith, and are required by it: “As to profane authors, the best without contradiction, the most sensible, the best fitted to form the taste and judgment are the ancients. Even Lucretius, all epicurean that he is, deserves to be read, both as a poet and as a philosopher. But put off reading him to a certain age, when you need not fear his reasoning as far as it is bad. A book which would be dangerous for you at 20, will not be so at 30 or 35 ” p. 1. vic., ch. xv). “Give as little time as possible to the public papers, to newspapers and other periodical writings. They enable you, no doubt, to talk of the last news or of new books, but that is al ; they teach little or nothing; they render the mind superficial and disgust it with solid studies. Make a point of training your mind to be just, of gaining true ideas of all that concerns you, and of getting those ideas clear and precise. Nothing is rarer than this; and, if you will but watch for it, you will day by day meet with people who have but a vague and confused notion of the things they talk about, nor are these the persons who are the least confident in their tone.” (Ibid. ch. iii.)
Published in The Tablet, 21st December 1889.