On authority and because of certain experiences of his own, Surin believed that God could be known directly, in a transfiguring union of the soul with the divine Ground of its own and the world’s being. But he also cherished the opinion that, because of our first parents’ sin, nature is totally depraved, and that this depravity sets a great gulf between the Creator and the creature. Given these notions about God and the universe (notions idolatrously regarded as interchangeable with facts and the primordial Fact), Surin felt that it was only logical to attempt the eradication from his mind-body of every element of nature that could be uprooted without actually causing death.
In his old age he recognized that he had made a mistake. “For it must be remarked that, several years before he went to Loudun, the Father” [Surin is writing of himself in the third person] “had held himself exceedingly tight (s’était extrèmement serré) for reasons of mortification, and in an effort to remain unceasingly in the presence of God; and though there was in this some commendable zeal, there were also great excesses in the reserve and constraint of his mind. For this reason he was in a condition of cramped contraction (rétrécissetnent), which was assuredly blameworthy, though well meant.” Because he cherished the opinion that the infinite is somehow outside the finite, that God is in some way opposed to his creation, Surin had tried to mortify, not his egotistic attitude toward nature, not the fancies and notions which he had set up in the place of nature, but nature itself, the given facts of embodied existence among human beings on this particular planet.
“Hate nature,” is his advice, “and let it suffer the humiliations God wills for it.” Nature has been “condemned and sentenced to death,” and the sentence is just; that is why we must “allow God to flay and crucify us at His pleasure.” That it was His pleasure, Surin knew by the bitterest experience. Cherishing the opinion of nature’s total depravity, he had transformed the world-weariness, which is so common a symptom of neurosis, into a loathing for his own humanity, an abhorrence for his environment—a loathing and an abhorrence all the more intense because he still had cravings, because creatures, though disgusting, were still a source of temptation. In one of his letters he states that, for some days past, he has had some business to transact. To his sick nature the occupation brings a certain relief.
He feels a little less miserable, until the moment comes when he realizes that the improvement was due to the fact that “every moment had been filled with infidelities.” His misery returns, aggravated by a sense of guilt, a conviction of sin. He feels a chronic remorse. But it is a remorse which does not spur him to action; for he finds himself incapable of action, incapable even of confession, so that he has to “swallow his sins like water, to feed on them as though on bread.” He lives in a paralysis of the will and the faculties, but not of the sensibilities. For though he cannot do anything, he can still suffer. “The more one is stripped, the more acutely does one feel the blows.” He is in “the void of death.” But this void is more than a mere absence; it is nothingness with a vengeance, “hideous and horrible, it is an abyss, where there can be no help or relief from any creature,” and where the Creator is a tormentor, for whom the victim can feel only hatred. The new Master demands to reign alone; that is why He is making his servant’s life utterly unlivable; that is why nature has been hunted down to its last retreat and is being slowly tortured to death. Nothing remains of the personality but its most repulsive elements.
Surin can no longer think, or study, or pray, or do good works, or lift up his heart to his Maker in love and gratitude; but “the sensual and animal side of his nature” is still alive and “plunged in crime and abomination.” And so are the criminally frivolous cravings for diversion, so are pride and self-love and ambition. Annihilated from within by neurosis and his rigorist opinions, he resolves to accelerate the destruction of nature by mortifying himself from without. There are still certain occupations that bring him a little relief from his miseries. He gives them up; for it is necessary, he feels, to “join outward emptiness to inward emptiness.” By this means the very hope of external support will be removed, and nature will be left, utterly defenseless, to the mercy of God. Meanwhile the doctors have ordered him to eat plenty of meat; but he cannot bring himself to obey. God has sent him this sickness as a means of purgation. If he tries to get well prematurely, he will be thwarting the divine will.
Health is rejected, business and recreation are rejected. But there are still those flashy products of his talents and learning—the sermons, the theological treatises, the homilies, the devotional poems, at which he has worked so hard and of which he is still so wickedly vain. After long and torturing indecision, he feels a strong impulse to destroy everything he has ever written. The manuscripts of several books, together with many other papers, are torn up and burned. He is now “despoiled of everything and abandoned stark naked to his sufferings.” He is “in the hands of the Workman who (I assure you) presses on with his work forcing me to travel by hard roads, which my nature revolts against taking.”
A few months later the road had become so hard that Surin was physically and mentally incapable of describing it. From 1639 to 1657 there is a great gap in his correspondence, a total blank. During all this time he suffered from a kind of pathological illiteracy, and was incapable either of writing or reading. At moments it was difficult for him even to speak. He was in solitary confinement, cut off from all communication with the outside world. Exile from humanity was bad enough; but it was as nothing to that exile from God, to which he was now condemned. Not long after his return from Annecy, Surin came to be convinced (and the conviction endured for many years) that he was already damned. Nothing now remained for him but to wait, in utter despair, for a death which was predestined to be the passage from hell on earth to an infinitely more terrible hell in hell.
His confessor and his superiors assured him that God’s mercy is boundless and that, so long as there is life, there can be no certainty of damnation. One learned theologian proved the point by syllogisms; another came to the infirmary loaded with folios and proved it by the authority of the Doctors of the Church. It was all in vain. Surin knew that he was lost and that the devils, over whom he had so recently triumphed, were gleefully preparing a place for him among the everlasting fires. Men might talk as they liked; but facts and his own deeds spoke louder than any words. Everything that happened, everything he felt and was inspired to do, confirmed him in his conviction.
If he sat near the fire, a burning ember (the symbol of eternal damnation) was sure to jump out at him. If he entered a church, it was always at the moment when some phrase about God’s justice, some denunciation of the wicked, was read or sung—for him. If he listened to a sermon, he would invariably hear the preacher affirm that there was a lost soul in the congregation—it was his. Once, when he had gone to pray at the bedside of a dying brother, the conviction came to him that, like Urbain Grandier, he was a sorcerer and had the power to command devils to enter the bodies of innocent persons. And that was what he was doing now—putting a spell upon the dying man. Ordering Leviathan, the demon of pride to enter into him. Summoning Isacaaron, the demon of lust, Balaam, the spirit of buffoonery, Behemoth, the lord of all blasphemies.
A man was standing on the brink of eternity, ready to take the last, decisive step. If, when he took that step, his soul were full of love and faith, all would go well with him. If not . . . Surin could actually smell the sulphur, could hear the howling and the gnashing of teeth—and yet, against his will (or was he doing it voluntarily?) he kept calling on the devils, he kept hoping that they would show themselves. All at once the sick man stirred uneasily in his bed and began to talk—not as he had done before, of resignation to God’s will, not of Christ and Mary, not of the divine mercy and the joys of
