Remain in peace, little brother!
The dark cloud will one day disappear.
Yes, may your heart stay peaceful;
Jesus will emerge one day from his hiding-place.
May your heart be joyful;
Neglected love perhaps fills it to overflowing.
May your heart stay peaceful,
And I will plunge you into the fire of Love.
From a poem given by Saint Thérèse to Marcel Văn during his novitiate year in Hanoi
Through Desolation Remain in Peace
1–2 minutes
Changing sadness into joy, Dark night, Dryness, Fire, Joy, Love, Marcel Van, Peace, Thérèse of Lisieux
5 comments on Through Desolation Remain in Peace
5 responses to “Through Desolation Remain in Peace”
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I didn’t realise they were contemporaries.
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Good point. =) They weren’t at all contemporaries (about 30 years separate her death and his birth).
Văn recorded many “conversations” with Thérèse (and Jesus and Mary) for about two years when he as a young novice brother — but this disappeared into complete dryness later on.
I don’t know exactly how Jesus, Mary, and Thérèse might have communicated with Văn and how much was Văn’s own interpretation of things beyond him that were happening to him by God’s grace. I don’t know if anyone could know. Even if what Marcel says is true, it must be a mix of both. (Marcel naively said to Thérèse once: “You speak perfect Vietnamese!” Hehe. I think Marcel was innocent of just how much of Marcel God needs to use, even if God “talks” to him. He was young and innocent.)
But I don’t see any signs that the things he “recorded” were not genuine (i.e., I see no signs that Marcel was making things up or that the things he said merely came from his imagination without having a component of grace to them). For example, he always rigidly obeyed his superiors to not write anything down if they said to stop, and he would then write again if they left him free to do so (if such “communications” came) — so he wasn’t writing these things for selfish reasons. Also, the writings that came out of these experiences are very edifying (and Marcel didn’t understand some things he wrote, forcing him to call himself a “secretary”) — so it seems that some grace was given to Marcel. And moreover, these communications stopped after a couple of years, and Văn accepted that as growth — i.e., he accepted dryness as growth and didn’t cling to these kinds of “communications” as being better. He accepted the change God gave, even if it was harder. Because of all this, I still find it useful to quote was Marcel says.
I tend to just quote these writings as useful tips from Văn himself, normally. But this time (for some reason) I identified that Marcel claims Thérèse wrote this poem for him to help him.
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Thank you for the explanation. I think St. Teresa says the same in The Interior Castle -about the ‘rightness’ or otherwise of one’s experiences. It is interesting how God works.
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Probably Saint Teresa says something similar. =)
I always think of Saint John of the Cross: “God spoke his One Word once,” and everything else is as nothing compared to this. So any desires for such revelations or communications need to be as nothing compared to our desires for that “One Word spoken once.” If anything “extra” helps us, then that’s fine; we can accept it. But we must be detached from that “extra,” for it (unlike the One Word spoken once) is not God.
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Yes, exactly. That’s what I’ve been learning. It’s a bit like a baby who needs and clings to its mother but by the time you’re an adult you don’t need her reassurance and if you did it would be very self-serving rather than serving, and Jesus told us to serve, not to be served. It is frustrating sometimes when people seemingly never get past the baby stage. But then, we’re all different and who am I to say how another person’s spiritual journey should be? But when people in positions of authority are childish in their faith it’s hard, because they are supposed to be leading the flock, not misleading…
I love that phrase from St. John of the Cross: ‘God spoke his One Word once’ the ‘logos’. How utterly compelling.
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Contemplative in the Mud 