God alone can render you happy. Give yourself wholly to Him, never more to take yourself back. Love Him with all your heart. Retire often within the closet of your heart to commune with God.
Do not pray to Him in a constrained and formal manner, but all simple and natural. God loves better the affectionate language of the heart, than the cold and discursive thoughts of the intellect. The prayer of love softens the heart.
✦ Day One Returned
Day one: enter the closet. Day thirty-one: retire often within the closet of your heart. The same instruction — but now it is no longer an instruction. It is an invitation from a friend who has spent thirty-one days showing what is inside the closet. The religion of the heart, arrived at its fullest expression: simple, natural, the affectionate language of the heart rather than the cold thoughts of the intellect.
Thirty-one days of Guyon — and the destination is the starting point. The closet from which the journey began is the closet to which it returns. The stream reaches the ocean — and the ocean was the source all along. 🙏
Do not shrink from your ordinary duties. We are often more united to God in our daily avocations than in retirement. The reason is, our good Father holds us more closely when we are most exposed to temptations.
Endeavor to maintain, at all times, harmony and oneness with God. You have only to abandon yourself wholly to divine love, and perform all the duties that devolve upon you. Do not be restive, and thus mar God's beautiful design and operation upon your soul.
✦ The Packing Boxes Are the Spiritual Life
Guyon at her most practical — and most surprising. The ordinary duties are not interruptions to the spiritual life. They are the spiritual life. The Father holds us more closely when we are most exposed — in the kitchen, in the market, in the motorhome, surrounded by boxes and blinking things. The daily avocation is the place where the union is tested and proven real.
Do not be restive. Do not fight the process. Do not wish the packing were finished so the spiritual life could resume. The packing is the spiritual life. Every box folded, every item wrapped, every room emptied is the beautiful design of God operating upon the soul — if the soul does not mar it by restiveness. 🙏
Place in His bosom of rest all your inquietudes, and allow Him to carry you, as a little child is borne by its mother.
This little one has only to regard, lovingly, the smiles of its tender mother.
No wonder I have been thinking a lot about my mother, and can hear her voice in my head: "I'm not afraid of anything."
Allow God to carry you, as a little child. 🙏
✦ Consuelo's Voice
Guyon writes: allow God to carry you, as a little child is borne by its mother. And Le hears her mother's voice — Consuelo — saying what Guyon has been teaching for thirty-one days, in five words: I'm not afraid of anything.
The child in the mother's arms is not afraid because the mother is holding. The soul in God's arms is not afraid because God is carrying. And Le hears her mother's voice — not from a book, not from a letter, not from theology — from the place where love lives after death. The saints in heaven possess each other in God. Sword Beach, day ten. And Consuelo's voice, arriving in Caldas da Rainha, saying what the whole series has said: don't be afraid.
Five words from a mother. Thirty-one days from Guyon. One truth: you are carried. 🙏
"I'm not afraid of anything."
Consuelo · Le's mother · From heaven to Caldas · The child is carriedWhat have we to desire in heaven and on earth, only the glory of God? But it is necessary to desire the glory of God as He desires it.
He who has absolute power over the heart of man has a plan of operations; He does all things in their time; He waits until the hour is come. In coming into the world, our Lord could have converted the world at once — but the economy of His wisdom did not so direct.
When I hear our Lord say, "Mine hour is not yet come," and wishing neither to advance nor retard, for a moment, the hour that His Father had appointed, I am plunged into my nothingness.
We are only instruments in His hands, which He may lay aside or use according to His good pleasure. We should be so dead to self as to be indifferent whether He makes use of us or not.
Let Him accomplish in you, and by you, all His good pleasure — whether to cast down or build up.
✦ His Hour — Not Ours
Mine hour is not yet come. John 2:4. Jesus would not advance or retard the Father's hour by a single moment. And Guyon — the woman who endured the Bastille, who lost everything, who waited years — says: I am plunged into my nothingness. The hour is not hers to set. The instruments do not choose when they are used. The instruments do not choose whether they are used. They are so dead to self as to be indifferent.
The September deadline. The move to France. The packing. The apartment sold before it was listed. All of it — in His time. Not advanced. Not retarded. His hour. And the soul that trusts the hour trusts the One who set it. Let Him accomplish in you, and by you, all His good pleasure — whether to cast down or build up. 🙏
The Closet Returns
Day one: enter the closet. Day thirty-one: retire often within the closet of your heart. The destination is the starting point. Simple, natural, the affectionate language of the heart.
Consuelo's Voice
"I'm not afraid of anything." A mother's voice from heaven. The child is carried. Five words that say what thirty-one days of Guyon have taught.
Mine Hour
Jesus would not advance or retard the Father's hour by a moment. The instruments do not choose when they are used. Dead to self. Indifferent. His good pleasure — whether to cast down or build up.
Guyon's thirty-first day. And today the series comes full circle — the closet of the heart, where it all began.
Day one to day thirty-one: Enter the closet. Retire within the heart. Speak few words. Receive the Holy Spirit. Thirty-one days later: retire often within the closet of your heart to commune with God. The same four walls. The same silence. The same heart. But the soul that enters the closet on day thirty-one has walked the entire interior map — and knows what the closet contains.
Day seventeen — the daily grind: "As we grind, we learn to love." And today: we are often more united to God in our daily avocations than in retirement. The grind is not the obstacle. It is the place of closest union. The Father holds most closely where the exposure is greatest.
Day fourteen — the gentle zephyr: "God often makes known His will only in the time of action." And today: mine hour is not yet come. The time of action is His to choose. The zephyr blows when the zephyr blows. The instrument waits — and the waiting is not wasted time. It is His time.
Consuelo — Le's mother: The saints in heaven possess each other in God. Le's parents, greeted from afar in Granada. And now Consuelo's voice — "I'm not afraid of anything" — arriving in Caldas da Rainha while Le packs to leave for France. The communion of saints is not a doctrine. It is a mother's voice in her daughter's heart. Guyon wrote: the little one has only to regard, lovingly, the smiles of its tender mother. And Le, the 500 denari soul, the child of Consuelo, regards those smiles — and is not afraid.
Thirty-one days with Guyon: The longest sustained reading in the journal. From Eymet through Normandy through Brittany through Dax and home to Caldas. Every day a new letter. Every letter a deeper layer. And today — the circle closes where it opened: in the closet of the heart, with a mother's voice saying don't be afraid, and a God whose hour is His own. Le — you are carried. You have always been carried. And the One who carries you is not afraid of anything either. 🙏