Marie Petyt (1623–1677)
For a long time, I felt trapped by the limitations of my nature, as if I were bound, with a gag in my mouth and shackled by iron chains in a narrow dark prison...
without being able to move my inner faculties or direct them to God or occupy them with something good: prayer and all spiritual exercises were so repugnant to me that they made me feel ill, yes, I dreaded the hours when I was supposed to pray...
Spending just a single hour in prayer was torment for me, for it felt as if I had to swim against the current. Often, I couldn't gather my thoughts and focus on God, not even for the duration of half a Hail Mary. It seemed that an iron wall rose between God and me. I felt – especially during prayer – so distant from my Beloved, so alienated from Him, as if He were a thousand miles away; this is to say: I experienced it this way emotionally, for my will was never alienated from Him.
No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on God during prayer, it was in vain...
I do not know how I spend my time in prayer. I do not engage with God, but neither do I distract myself with other things. It seems that thoughts do not remain fixed on anything, because it feels as if there is no life within me, no attachment, no desire for God or for creatures. And I have aversion and distaste towards myself and can hardly endure myself with patience.
Then, prayer became in a certain way supernatural; it mostly took place in inner silence and rest in God, inspired by a bare living faith in God's presence. All coarse striving and multiplicity of inner faculties fell away, and only a simple gaze of faith remained within me, as well as a simple and sweet loving inclination towards God.
Every other personal occupation bored and fatigued me greatly, as if it were good for nothing other than disrupting inner peace, clouding the clarity of inner light, leading the spirit from internal simplicity into tension and multiplicity, which harms it.
When the opportunity to practice inner acts of virtue arose, I did so – as best I could – in great stillness and simplicity, in order to better preserve the spirit in its purity and maturity, separated from sensory and emotional influences. I then tried hard to keep it this way, when God's grace revealed to me this maturity and refinement. The divine light was indeed initially quite small, like the morning dawn, whose light gradually strengthens.
Excerpted from the book: Leben aus dem Nichts
Author: Maria Petyt
Published by: Vier-Türme-Verlag Münsterschwarzach, 1995
Selected and translated by: Norbert Žuška, OCarm.
