Let God be the sovereign Master over our hearts, and instruct, and reprove, and operate in us, by Himself, or through others, as pleases Him.
Do not suppose that you are to be purified by great trials and extraordinary events. All is accomplished in you by the suppleness of your will — by the state of infancy. It must be so on account of the pride of your natural reason. God conducts the soul in a way opposed to human philosophy.
Hence the necessity of being reduced to the state of infancy, and to the subjection of the will. What we call the death of the will is the passage of our will into the will of God. This change implies not only a change in externals, but the inward subjection of the desires and sentiments of the heart.
✦ Not the Bastille — The Kitchen
Guyon dismantles a common expectation: that spiritual growth requires dramatic suffering. We imagine the refining fire as spectacular — persecution, crisis, the dungeon. But Guyon says no. The real purification is quieter and harder: the daily suppleness of the will. The state of infancy. A child's willingness to be led without understanding where.
And Guyon knows this because she lived the Bastille. She had the dramatic suffering. She experienced the spectacular trial. And she tells her friend: that is not where the real work happens. The real work is the daily passage. The quiet willingness to be led. The infancy that does not demand to understand before it obeys.
What we call the death of the will is the passage of our will into the will of God. Not destruction. Passage. The will does not cease to exist — it passes into something larger, the way a river passes into the ocean. It does not lose its water. It loses its separate course. And from inside His will, it moves freely for the first time. 🙏
"The real purification is quieter and harder — and unseen by the world."
Le · The daily suppleness. The audience has always been One.Here most persons, who commence the religious life, stop short. They cannot submit to the interior crucifixion, which lays prostrate the whole of the natural carnal life — and consequently there follows a mingling of the spirit of the flesh with grace, and it is this which produces such monsters in the religious world.
Do we not read in Scripture, that in consequence of the alliance of the sons of God with the daughters of men, giants were born, who so filled the earth with wickedness, they drew down a deluge of wrath upon the world? It is from this abominable alliance of the flesh with the spirit, that all those who appear in the world as "mighty men, men of renown," are produced and sustained.
One may be full of the natural life, while apparently dead to the external things of the world. Dead in name, but not in reality.
✦ Where Most Stop Short
Most persons who commence the religious life stop short. They will give up external sins. They will change their behaviour. They will adopt the forms of devotion. But the interior crucifixion — the laying prostrate of the whole natural life — that is where they stop.
And what results is the mingling Guyon describes: flesh with spirit, self with grace, the natural life wearing the clothing of the spiritual life. From that mingling — monsters. Mighty men, men of renown — impressive on the outside, alive with self on the inside. The religious world is full of them. Giants that look like saints. Dead in name, but not in reality.
Guyon's image from Genesis 6 is deliberately shocking. The sons of God mingling with the daughters of men produced giants — and those giants filled the earth with wickedness so severe that God sent the flood. The alliance of flesh with spirit in the religious life produces the same thing: impressive, powerful, renowned — and full of the natural life that should have been crucified. 🙏
The real purification is quieter and harder — and unseen by the world. Actually, what you care about is pleasing God and living according to His will. 🙏
Le completes what Guyon began. The purification is unseen — and that is not a deficiency. That is the point. The audience has always been One. The daily suppleness of the will, the passage into His will, the infancy that does not demand recognition — all of it happens where no one sees. The packing boxes in Caldas da Rainha. The morning devotion before dawn. The quiet submission in a hundred small moments that will never be written about. What you care about is pleasing God. Not being seen pleasing God. Pleasing Him — in the kitchen, in the packing, in the daily grind where the real purification happens. 🙏
The State of Infancy
Not great trials. Not extraordinary events. The suppleness of the will — a child's willingness to be led without understanding where. God conducts the soul in a way opposed to human philosophy.
Passage, Not Death
The will passes into the will of God — the way a river passes into the ocean. Not destroyed. Absorbed. Losing its separate course, moving freely for the first time inside His will.
Where Most Stop Short
The interior crucifixion is where most halt. Flesh mingles with spirit. Giants are born — impressive, renowned, dead in name but alive with self. The religious world is full of them.
Guyon's twenty-first day. And today she names the secret that holds the entire series together: the daily suppleness of the will. Not the dramatic. Not the spectacular. The quiet passage — unseen by the world, seen by God.
Day eight — desire over fear: "It is better to cherish a desire to please God than a fear of displeasing Him." And today Le says: what you care about is pleasing God. Twenty-one days apart, the same truth: the motive is desire, not fear. The audience is God, not the world.
Day six — the bird released: "As a bird let loose from its cage, the soul goes forth to dwell in the immensity of God." And today: the death of the will is the passage of our will into the will of God. The cage was self-will. The immensity is His will. The passage and the release are the same event.
Day fifteen — writing on sand: "Faults traced on sand when the wind is high." And today: most persons stop short — they cannot submit to the interior crucifixion. Those who stop short have their faults written in ink. Those who submit to the interior crucifixion have them written on sand. The difference is the suppleness — the willingness to let the wind erase what the self would preserve.
Caldas da Rainha — the place of daily suppleness: Le is packing to leave this apartment. Years of morning devotions in these rooms — quiet, unseen, unremarkable to anyone watching from outside. No Bastille. No persecution. No giants or men of renown. Just a woman rising before dawn, day after day, letting her will pass into His. That is the secret of divine operations upon the soul. And it happened here — in Caldas — where no one was looking. 🙏