The following document is at present an extract from a book originally published in 1939 and recommended to the webmaster by his Spiritual Director. It is hoped that these beautiful pensées may be helpful to those floundering in the spiritual moors, fens, crags or torrents may find peace and joy. It is hoped that the scanner is not being heretical..

LETTERS OF DIRECTION:
thoughts on the Spiritual Life from the letters of the Abbé de Tourville

VI

AUTHORITY AND OBEDIENCE

THE external voice of the Church has no other function than that of giving the inner voice greater clarity, so that we learn to trust it without fear of making any personal mistakes. What joy and tranquillity this brings! This external voice has, moreover, a very special quality in that it is not only an exhortation or a piece of advice, but carries its own authority, which our Lord has promised to regard as His own personal authority. It is therefore He whom we hear, without as well as within. We are thus wholly and demonstrably held by Him on every side. Under such conditions how can we fail to feel secure? It is surely because we always tend to revert to our own ideas, easily convincing ourselves that this is the right thing to do. But if it were, then the institution of the Church, and in particular of the intimate priestly ministry to souls, would become useless to us. We should be in the position of pagans or Jews. . . and should miss our Lord's greatest work. We should deserve the compassion He expressed when He pitied the multitudes because they were wandering to and fro like sheep without a shepherd. The inner voice, the very words of the Gospel would become uncertain and doubtful: we should be constantly afraid of misunderstanding if the clear and decisive voice of external authority did not put an end to our various illusions and give us utter peace.

How beautiful Obedience is. For it alone silences doubt, preserves our stability and presence of mind, our freedom of heart and firmness of will in the midst of all that might shake or disturb us. Unless we constantly bring ourselves back to Obedience, we lose our heads, and that which should be a blessing becomes a torment and a curse. We lose all sense of where we stand.

The object of all direction here as elsewhere, is not to refashion your soul on the model of some imported or prescribed interior life, but to direct effectually the powers and impulses which God has chosen to give you and which He alone can give. That is the meaning of the beautiful passage in St. John in which he speaks of the Good Shepherd who Himself leads His sheep, and goes before them; they hear His voice and He calls each one of them clearly by its own name.

The best directors are not those who are tied to any system, but those whose aim is to direct, help, and further each soul according to its own nature. For God never makes any two souls exactly alike.

As to your Communions, never deprive yourself of them except under an absolute prohibition from which there is no appeal, no loophole for hesitation. Otherwise, decide for your Communion and not against it. You need it. . . .

God never goes back on His creations and from the very first our souls are being prepared to receive His plans. Our parents, in bringing us up, form our first habits; circumstances complete our education according to the designs of Providence; our directors guide the development of our souls as a gardener trains his fruit-trees, according to their various natures. All this together constitutes our final personality, our individual make-up. It is this which we bring to the vocation to which we give ourselves. It would be altogether contrary to God's invariable practice in all things, if He suddenly decided to re-make us all over again from the beginning. On the contrary, in the plans of God everything follows in orderly succession and that which comes first is the foundation of that which follows.

We must help ourselves by the use of every good thing we have acquired on our way. We must never allow ourselves to believe that our soul is linked to any other soul in such a way that we rely solely on that external influence, on a direction external to ourselves. God wants to teach us to stand alone, without having to lean too heavily even on the instruments He provides. A child needs to be constantly guided, upheld, encouraged, and advised. But as he grows older his parents, who are for him the instruments of God, only really help him by their presence. They are available when he is in real need, but not all the time or for everything. The same is true of the whole education of the soul. We must reach the state when we know that there is only one thing which lasts and which is complete in itself: God, and the work He is doing in our souls through time and the sum of all the benefits we have received throughout our life from our childhood up. He alone is the Master beyond compare, and He teaches us by a series of intermediaries all of whom are transitory and all of whom, when considered separately are profoundly incomplete.

Once more then, love your only true Master, your Saviour, eternal and everlasting.