I am unable to get my idea across clearly, probably because I am a wild flower that has arisen, flourished, and grown solely by the will of Jesus and do not know about mystical terms, nor am I familiar with the nuances of asceticism. Not at all. I love because I love. I live as God wants. I take joy in and suffer what God sends me or permits for me. But I cannot state the “name” of one thing or another which I experience.
You20 ask me certain questions I am unable to answer, and since I do not want to draw anyone into error by providing a conception of myself which does not reflect truth, I shall humbly tell you what I know and how I know it, and nothing else. Perhaps by reading and speaking with me you will understand the point I am at better than I do.
A short time ago you asked me if I had ever been absorbed into God to the point that I was aware of nothing else.
Well, I don’t know if I have understood your thought correctly. If you are speaking of ecstasy, as it is usually understood, I have certainly never experienced it. If, however, you are speaking of that sense of ecstasy wherein human vitality is not suppressed, but all vitality is concentrated on a point, focused thereupon, in such a way that everything else loses value and we live amidst the things of each hour as if surrounded by a robe isolating and protecting us from them, creating a kind of veil of fire around us within which we move and act, gazing solely at the hub attracting us, then I definitely have experienced it on many occasions. The whole world pressing in around us loses its shape and value, to the point that it appears to us (for a matter of instants) as something dreamlike, whereas true reality is what the faculties of our soul adore, absorb, and experience. I don’t know if I have gotten my idea across.
I believe that if this continued, it would kill us in a short time. I believe, however, that anyone who has undergone, even just once, this mystical experience, remains marked by it for an entire lifetime. It is like an increase in our spiritual vitality, a passage from a minority to a majority of age whereby, after every immersion in this mystical experience, we find we have grown in grace and in supernatural wisdom. And we remain so forever, if we manage to be worthy thereof.
And not only this - I indeed believe that even if, out of human weakness, we sometimes tumble, but without an act of malice, the grace previously obtained is not annulled - it is left numbed, that is true, in such fashion that the occurrence of a new immersion in the “joy of tasting and seeing the essence of God” (I believe that this is what is experienced) is delayed, but the benefit obtained is not lost. Only by acting with persistent, conscious malice is it lost.
We must consider that this “joy,” which takes us away from what is humanly perceptible to immerse us in a realm of the divinely suprasensible, is given to us by God and, therefore, by a Being who does not waste his gifts by bestowing them with imprudent prodigality. We can thus assume that He, together with the gift, grants additional strength suited to making us capable of defending his gift in us, against the enemies that are in ourselves: the flesh, the passions, and so on - and, consequently, only a willed, sacrilegious malice can make us unable to preserve God’s gift in us.
If only I had at least gotten the point across clearly! But I repeat: I am illiterate in mystical science and thus state what is superhuman in human words.
Today a question had popped onto my lips which I am burning to know about: “Has He heard my prayers in recent days? Have they obtained the goal I offered them for?” I haven’t asked you anything, tossing this little sacrifice as well onto the pyre where I burn for so many reasons, in so many ways. They seem to be nonsense. But they sometimes require real exertion. You sweat to accomplish them...
Oh, Father, how tormenting love is! When love with all its violence rushes into a heart which is too small to contain it!
Oh, Father, how I understand the desire, the need of those in love with Christ to surround their passion with solitude! How I wish for the night, which gives me a way to be alone, when love intoxicates me, tortures me, and gives me tears and laughter. If only I could make you see what I experience! I understand, in certain moments, how one can die of love. And yet for nothing in the world would I want to be saved from this very gentle grip which is agony for the flesh, which cannot bear its power without feeling itself break, and which is blessedness for the spirit.
I am thinking of a sentence from the Song of Songs, the remembrance of which stirs in my mind: “Lay me on the flowers, lean me against the apple trees, for I am faint with love.” I think it goes like that - and it is so well expressed, for one really feels one is fainting, destroyed by love.
20 Father Migliorini.