French mystic, Archbishop of Cambrai, spiritual director. Born one year after Scougal. Where Scougal wrote one small book and died at 27, Fénelon lived to 64 and poured his soul into hundreds of letters of counsel. A different voice but the same light. A new companion enters the journal.
What men stand most in need of, is the knowledge of God.
They know miracles and providences; they have reflected on corruption and instability; they are convinced of the need for moral reformation.
But the whole edifice is destitute of foundation; this pious and Christian exterior possesses no soul.
The living principle which animates every true believer, God, the all and in all, is wanting.
Fénelon opens where Scougal opened — dismantling the exterior. Scougal called them three counterfeits. Fénelon calls it an edifice without foundation. Two voices. One truth. The building looks solid. But the life of God is missing from it.
He is, in all things, infinite — in wisdom, power, and love. He makes no effort when He executes what He has decreed; when He wills, the thing is already accomplished.
✦ When He Wills, the Thing Is Already Accomplished
Fénelon describes a God who does not strain. When He wills, the thing is already accomplished. The same God who spoke the heavens into existence — sold an apartment that wasn't listed. The infinite does not try. The infinite does. 🙏
He loved us before the creation of the world; He saw and knew us, and prepared His blessings for us; He loved and chose us from all Eternity.
He forms no new will respecting us; it is not He that changes, but we.
This is the immutable standard which the changeable creature is continually approaching and leaving.
God does not change. We do. His love preceded creation. Every blessing derives from eternity. When we wander — it is not God who moved. It is we who moved away from Him. The immutable standard. The changeable creature. The gap is always our doing, never His.
The richest of His gifts is that we may love Him with that love which is His due.
When He is able by His love to produce that love in us, He reigns within; He constitutes there our life, our peace, our happiness, and we already begin to taste that blissful existence which He enjoys.
Scougal's beam of the eternal light — Fénelon says the same: when God's love produces love in us, He reigns within. The richest gift is not provision — it is the capacity to love Him back. When the circuit is complete — love given, love returned — heaven has already begun on earth.
His love towards us is stamped with His own character of infinity: when He loves, all the measures of His love are infinite.
He comes down from Heaven to earth to seek the creature of clay whom He loves; He becomes creature and clay with him; He gives him His flesh to eat.
He loves like a God, with a love utterly incomprehensible.
It is the height of folly to seek to measure infinite love by human wisdom.
He is just as rich as Scougal.
He is able to explain so simply the most complex things in our heart. 🙏
He loves like a God. Not like a human who calculates the cost. He comes down from heaven. He becomes clay. He gives His flesh to eat. The Infinite outstrips all human affection. And Le names what draws her to Fénelon: he explains so simply the most complex things. Simplicity is not shallowness. It is depth so clear you can see the bottom.
O! how great and lovely is He in His mysteries!
But we want eyes to see them, and have no desire to behold God in everything.
✦ The Problem Is Not That God Is Hidden
The love is infinite, the mysteries great and lovely. And we have no desire to behold God in everything. The problem is not supply. The problem is sight. The problem is desire. And the mornings — the Word, the reading, the evening journal — are the training of the eyes. 🙏
"He loves like a God, with a love utterly incomprehensible."
François Fénelon · Christian Counsel · A new voice in the journal — just as richThe Edifice Without a Soul
Knowledge, morality, pious exterior — all soulless without the living principle. The building without the foundation.
The Immutable Standard
God does not change. We do. His love preceded creation. When we wander, He has not moved. We have.
When He Reigns Within
When God's love produces love in us, He reigns within. Our life, our peace, our happiness. The richest gift: the capacity to love Him back.
He Loves Like a God
Not bounded, not constrained. He comes down to seek the creature of clay. All the measures of His love are infinite. Utterly incomprehensible.