In the religious atmosphere of the convent my soul developed wonderfully. There began for me then a new life, the life with God. The Confessions of Saint Augustine and the Life of Saint Teresa, written by herself, introduced me into this life. I still remember into what a deeply religious state of mind these books led me, and to what heights of enthusiasm for God's service they raised me. I could not understand it at all, if I saw a father going about the cloister without some special occupation. In the library were all the works of Saint Augustine; why did he not read them? There was surely nothing sweeter and more useful than to do so. I sat in my cell pouring over the Confessions, and as I read I was astonished. The book was already so old, and yet so entirely modern. Had not, for example, the community life which Saint Augustine had planned to lead with his friends Romanianus, Nabridius, Alypius and Verecundus, been also our dream, the dream of the nabis, with Serusier as superior? “But,” says Saint Augustine, “when we asked ourselves whether the women, whom some of us had already married, and those whom others of us thought of marrying, would consent to this kind of life the whole plan which we had so beautifully elaborated fell to pieces and was discarded; and precisely so was it with us.”
How different from mine was the struggle which Saint Augustine had to make, in order to attain to the truth. And what a fervid spirit of prayer still streams forth from that book, what acuteness of intellect, what warmth of heart. Often in my reading I would pause and reflect on what I had read. After a while my thoughts grew nebulous and vanished. Yet I did not remain alone. It was not only the stillness, with its occasional noises, chants and sighs that then surrounded me. No, I was conscious of a Presence there, of some one who was about me and in me. If I rose and went away, that Presence accompanied me, and if I halted and stood still, it waited with me. It was perfectly natural then for me to pray, and how blissfully happy I felt.
“I was nourished at the breast of his consideration,” and “I drank of delights overflowing from the abundance of his glory.” He “brought upon me, as it were, a river of peace." I was “carried at the breast and caressed upon the knees” (Is. lvi. II etc.).
The time for that passionate devotion to God which follows every serious conversion had now come to me, the time for a devotional ardour, characterized both by blessed joys and also foolish anxieties, by wholehearted self-surrender yet by a timid withdrawal into oneself. New converts usually confound this passionate ardour with the true love of God. That is incorrect. What they think is pure love has in it still an element of self-love and is even in fluenced by the senses. Even if such converts assert that they are not seeking themselves but only God, and that they wish to be associated with Him alone and to live according to His will, in reality it is seldom so. For in their love of God they still love far too much the joy of that love itself, the heavenly consolation which it brings, and that upward flight of the spirit which often, for a moment, makes of them artists, masters of words, and geniuses, capable of expressing themselves in fervid prayers, sublime poetry and clever designs. At heart they are seeking in their service of God, before all else, that enrichment of the ego, of which Goethe's “Werther” says, “I appeared to be more than I was, because I was all that I could be.” When one is in this state of mind everything depends upon good leadership. A good spiritual guide will know then how to turn to account this impulse to self-expansion. He will assist his pupil by aiding him to free himself from bad habits, and to acquire good ones; for virtue is, after all, nothing but the habit of doing right. If only the true love, which manifests itself in fulfilling God's commandments, would always increase together with the emotional, ardent love. Then the latter would be a most beautiful trait. For how edifying are new converts, when in that emotional state. With what profound earnestness they do everything. How divinely sincere and loyal they are. In the final analysis, does not the ardent form of love always precede the true love, even though the latter does not always succeed the former. And as the true love increases, does not the passionate love in many instances always remain? One sees this often in very happy marriages and also in the lives of ecstatic saints, in whom the excessive intensity, inherent in ardent love, becomes a precious quality, because “the measure of one's love to God is immeasurable.” Then ardent love loses its character of self-love, for it no longer seeks itself, or any created being, but only the Creator, and no material element any longer adheres to it, since it has become purely spiritual.
Taken from a chapter in Yesterday's of an Artist-Monk by Dom Willibrord Verkade. Available now from Angelico Press.