Work is an indisputable social necessity, and the Mystic must slowly head
here towards an interior state of being which is very difficult to reach.
It consists of being indifferent to the results of one's efforts. It is
necessary to understand that Heaven never asked you to be successful, but
only to imagine, to prepare, to work.
So, all is in the act, and the whole reward comes from it, if it is pure.
I give you this aim, it will be necessary to approach it every day a little
bit more. Therefore I draw your attention on general failure. - When you
will have combined everything at your best, struggled for many months, and
that all will collapse at the precise moment when you were going to collect
the desired price, you should never let you go to discouragement, nor forget
to thank GOD that, He, in His omniscience, judged this setback as being
better for you. That is the Mystical Law, the most important Christian Law
that I have to point out to you in this paragraph aimed to material work.
This Law will also apply to intellectual work.
The second important notice I want to give you, is that in general, and
always for the apprentice Soldier of JESUS, what he does specifically is
what is best for him. - Where he is, is where the Master wants him to be.
My friends, as you have the interior certainty that not only JESUS exists,
but that He is there, close to you, that He is watching that nothing may
happen to you without His permission, you should, while thinking at that,
arrive at the firm belief that what I tell you here is true. As a consequence,
do not voluntarily change your situation or profession. Do not escape from
a bad boss or from bad friends. Look only for an improvement of your lot
when all outside circumstances let you distinctly know GOD'S will. - Besides,
opening your eyes, praying, observing your or others' past life, will show
you how much this notice is right, and how many times, when looking for
the best, you found the worse.
Do never forget this. In all circumstances, examine the things coldly, and
pray.
It is still in the every day work that you will be able to find the opportunity
to ask for this marvellous transmutation, of which I spoke here above. -
Heaven agrees to change all your manual or cerebral activity into a supernatural
strength that remains your property, so that not one of your fatigues, not
a line of your work will be lost. This thought, united to the frequent interior
vision of JESUS in His terrestrial Father's shop, and the considerable effort
that all His Friends achieved, must sustain you in your work and even confer
to it a constant charm that will surely decrease its bitterness or fatigue.
Thus be united with your Master during work, and all works of your hands
or your brain will be blessed and fertile.
The links with friends also require a little attention. There you will need
a lot of charity, prudence and patience. The best would be to feel mercy,
affection for them. By love you would know them thoroughly and you would
know how to take them according to their character. - But, I know, this
is difficult. - At least, have all the possible kindliness with your subordinates
and your equals, all the necessary deference towards your superiors and
your chiefs, even though you think « they don't deserve it ».
This, too, is difficult; however you will arrive at it, when calling at
you the forces and the light of the Master.
As to your beliefs, and what could already be revealed to you of the Mysteries,
Silence sole is appropriate in an atheistic environ-ment, enemy of all mysticism,
or even in a neutral one. If someone, by his attitude in front of the mockeries
or the blasphemies, by his own words sometimes, does show some attraction
towards the mystical ideas, this would be a clear work for you, but even
in this case, a lot of precautions would be necessary to speak to him in
private. Your only predication, nine times out of ten, will be your example.
I told you
that, for you, thanks to prayer and to a marvellous grant due to the Goodness
of the Master, material and spiritual work became unified in practice. However,
this last one has to be studied especially, and requires some useful notices.
First of all, and outside of this small essay, you should naturally guide
yourself on the direct words of Christ and His teachings conserved in the
Gospel. You all possess this book, and I don't have to tell you that it
is therein that you must look for your instructions while adapting them.
But here are some thoughts that will be useful to you.
At first, your spiritual work should be the object of an attentive preparation:
1° It is necessary to know yourself; 2° Examine the obstacles coming
from the world, the family, the friends; 3° Look how to overcome them;
4° Study the best manner for you to get along with other men; 5°
We shall see the possible spiritual activities, according to the different
situations of each of you.
To understand oneself, to clearly see one's shortcomings and to fight them,
to know where one is on the path and what one can get from one's intelligence
or one's heart, these are the primordial things. One cannot arrive there
alone. It is necessary to pray and often ask for light. A good way is to
examine your tastes and your tendencies and to organize your time as much
as possible, in order to act to the contrary.
Is it a big pleasure for you to remain at home, inactive? Then force yourself
to leave and to act. - Are you complicate and arguing? Simplify yourself
and keep silence. - Do you like a certain activity of the body, some noise
? Force yourselves to an intellec-tual study and a writing work. - In one
word, after having discerned your tendencies and your tastes, try, not to
destroy them, but to balance them. Thus, you will know yourself as deeply
as possible. Once this first effort accomplished, interrogate yourself on
pride, selfishness, anger and on the main known shortcomings. See if you
feel ready for a sacrifice of yourself, if you are prepared to dedicate
your life, not in search of personal happiness, but to the reduction of
other men's sufferings. Prepare yourself to this service and without impatience.
Such is your first spiritual duty.
The second consists in realizing correctly the obstacles that you are going
to meet in your family, in your social environment, among your friends,
etc. There is a law without exception: Each time that a more advanced soul
comes down to incarnate herself in a terrestrial family, it is isolated,
misunderstood and sometimes despised.
When we give ourselves completely to Christ and to God, it is very rare
that we shall not find the maximum of obstacles in our family, in our social
environment and in our entourage that even we should not judge. So, how
should we go about it ? First of all, do understand the importance of silence;
then, do know that no one is a prophet in his house, and that almost always
the Apostolate will there be forbidden to you. Then, you will find that
the antipathies, hates, mockeries, will be an excellent way for you to exercise
yourself in order to reach the indispensable Christian virtues. Finally,
let's not forget that a spiritual act accomplished with the maximum of difficulties,
is also the most fertile and purest one. As to our entourage, our friends,
this is less difficult since we do not live in common with them. Besides,
it is again silence and discretion, constant kindliness and good example,
that may serve us with them.
In summary, those among you who will find big obstacles in their family,
should know that they are there by the express will of their Master, in
order for them to do there a work of harmonization, and that their patience,
their faith, their charity will develop there like a seed placed in a land
that suits them best.
Now let's examine your behaviour towards those you would like to lead to
Christ. There especially you will meet very different cases and innumerable
obstacles. The main law to observe, at least in the beginning of your spiritual
activities, is to make rarely the first advances. Preach as an example more
than with words, and wait until you are questioned, unless you feel distinctly
that one is ready to listen to you and to understand you. But, at this moment,
do speak with the greatest prudence to this soul.
Reveal her the truth only little by little; you would risk to disturb her,
and even to stop her for a long time, when letting her look at a too bright
light. Then, you will need patience as big as your prudence, and an indulgence
of every moment. Make use with this neophyte of the same means that have
served yourself, adapting them to him. Finally, always look to be guided,
ask your friends for their lights, let them help you.
Now, I would like to give you some notices under an easy form to remember.
Exercise yourself every day to forget you, remember that from morning till
evening your spiritual work must be unceasing. In the street, in public
cars, do not let yourself driven by your grieves and ordeals; forget them.
Study the poor human figures, often contorted by pain or bad feelings. Learn
to recognize the secret reasons. If in yourself you feel love for the creatures
because they suffer, you will be quickly helped to discover the motives
of their sadness. You will then pray, and sometimes, marvellous mystery,
you will distinctly see the features relaxing and the looks humanizing themselves.
- Therefore be attentive. Don't forget that one day you may make a decisive
meeting, receiving a celestial gleam, because you will have crossed a Child
of the Sky, and to not recognize it would be regrettable.
Let your main effort be to forget yourself for the others. You will see
that it is one of the keys of happiness. - Don't make nor say anything useless;
avoid discussions; take the habit to speak by affirmation. - With regard
to Faith, consider Christ and His commands in all. You are apprentice servants;
thus have the looks of your soul always fixed on your Master, in order not
to make a gesture, nor to speak a word, that He may not approve.
Listen attentively to the complaints of the suffering, but before comforting
them or throwing light on them, wait until you feel in yourself the true
brotherly mercy and do not answer before having prayed.
Several times per day, place your own will in God's Will. Accustom yourself
to unite them, in the bad as in the good fortune. That's the most important.
These few notices apply to all. We shall now look for the particular works
that are included in the aims of our "Entente Amicale" (Friendly
Entente), and see what those will be able to do, whose material work takes
all hours.
It is necessary that you understand well: our ministry can and should be
exercised at all times and according to the different events of our day.
The sole fact to forget our hardships and to be in prayer is already by
itself an excellent work. Those amongst our friends who have time will do
well to organize their day methodically, to prepare their visits to the
sick and poor, to establish a list of their charitable activities and to
stay moreover ready to intervene every time that an opportunity will be
there.
For the others, those whose whole time is taken by material work, they should
know that their always active desire to ask Christ for an attenuation of
the general suffering constitutes already a good part of their spiritual
work, but provided that this desire is true, non artificial, and that they
pray.
Then there is, as I told you before, the street, the trams, the buses, the
subway. There, they have, two or even often four times a day, some moments
that can give them the opportunity of a good work. To forget one's hardships
or worries and to exercise oneself to discern the needs of one's neighbours
and to pray. This excellent exercise applies to all, and especially to those
of our friends who are too much occupied to make visits. Should you attend
in the street or elsewhere to a beginning of a dispute, should you have
the impression that hate, bad council, or merely anger is hanging over a
group of human beings, ask for the arrival of the Angel of Peace; very often
it will be granted to you. If someone feels unwell before you, and if several
people are attentive to him in order to conduct him to a pharmacist, remember
that you are not a physician, nor a magnetizer, keep yourself apart and
ask the Master that one of His Angels may come to heal the sick person.
Intervene only directly if you are alone with him. Act in any case in the
same way; abstain yourself to advise some remedies. Pray and impose hands
only if it may be useful to your sick person; if, for example, he cannot
understand the action of the Prayer. By these few examples, the friends
may realize that, in spite of their occupations, they are still capable
of a real and fruitful spiritual work. And then, everything happens by period,
Heaven asks us almost exclusively for such or such material activity. But
there will always come a moment when, after a long preparation, we are called
to dedicate all our time to the sick and to those who suffer.
Little by little,
this result will be obtained and you will become more and more conscious
of the divine Presence and the Mysterious and Grand Being, who manifests
it up to the deepest of your terrestrial matter: The one that the Gospel
names JESUS has begun to take over your heart and to give it the knowledge
of His real Identity; then, without your feeling it, His action on you won
little by little up to your mental, which so purified, simplified itself.
Your conscience also has considerably extended; a corner of the veil rose
and a little of what the Gospel calls Heaven, the Kingdom, the Centre, appeared
to you.
All you are or will one day be conscious of the operated marvel, of the
incredible change that occurred in yourselves. But, the more you understand
the immensity of Jesus, the more your smallness will appear in light, and
the more you will descend into the abyss without bottom of humility,.
Christ, it's Life itself, creative, unfathomable, unknowable, absolutely
impossible to reach, if it wouldn't descend towards us. It is the Verb,
this Word that was God and was in God; it is Eternal Life, simple, immense,
always similar to Itself; bearing in itself the germ of everything possible,
renewing itself constantly as It gives itself.
Therefore Jesus is all, and we are nothing. But, by a marvellous miracle
of love, He comes, He calls us, He invites us to look at Him, to desire
Him, to understand Him until the time we, voluntarily, shall answer Him.
Thus His relations with us are those of the Sun and the seed in the gloomy
and frozen earth. It is the Father's Law that we must answer ourselves.
He does not want to force us, He wants to get us by our own means. As soon
as we believe in His Divinity, be well aware of it, the Union has begun.
And this blessed moment, if we want it, will even come quickly when He will
tell us: « Now you are Mine forever ». As you all, my friends,
believe in Him, and even more, as you gave yourselves voluntarily, it is
thus necessary for you to live in order to achieve His Will, to follow Him
with all your strengths, to prepare you to this beautiful role of Harvesters
that He reserves for you.
Our Masters didn't hesitate to certify that one can arrive at a sufficient
Union with Christ so that He deigns to listen to our demands and to answer.
It is incredible, but it's His Love that makes this possible. Here, however,
is a revelation on this topic that has been given to me and that will make
this mystery more comprehensible. I give it to you. When meditating on it,
you will feel encouraged to make all the necessary to reach the goal. Here
it is: since the beginning of the Creation, all has been said, all has been
made, between the Verb and each of His creatures. On a mysterious Book will
be written in a Lightning time everything He wants to reveal to each of
us, so that the expression « to speak to Jesus and to receive the
answers » is equivalent to the progressive possibility for our soul
and for our heart to get little by little the knowledge of the Divine Words,
written down in the Book of Life.
The day will come when, our Unity being reconstituted, our conscience, operating
in a regenerated Body and capable to live in the Kingdom, will have a complete
knowledge of this Book. This will then be the total reintegration of the
Being into Heaven, into Christ. So you will understand a little better how
such a thing is possible and what marvellous promises it reserves.
There will thus come a moment when we can begin to achieve this. It is there
that the Master intervenes and it is Him Who could tell you the day when
it will be given you to start.
A second fact that occurs between Jesus and you, is that in dream, in some
states of concentration first, then later in the waking state, you will
see a more or less net picture of Christ. This vision should never be desired
nor sought-after. When it occurs, it is sometimes our Master who, in the
serious cases, takes Christ's shape; sometimes, an Angel, tangible sign
of one of Jesus' Blessings. Do remember this well: in this moment you must
strongly declare that you don't want to receive anything but from Heaven.
If the vision persists, pray and thank. Besides, on our path and in the
beginning, this favour is rare.
By your life of prayer and action the work of union continues at every minute,
every second, day and night. Every day, without being aware, and even maybe
more in the dark hours when all seems lost, every day you will come a little
bit closer, and you will feel this closeness above all by your resignation
to pain, also above all by the deeper feeling of your real smallness, and
the definitive abandonment of the destructive reasoning. You will also feel
it by the easier and more fertile Prayer, and, tangible result, by the coming
down into you of a delicious sensation of peace and serenity. The Spiritual
Sacraments will help you a lot, but time has not come to speak too overtly
to you about this. I will content myself with informing you that the deep
dreams, in which you will see yourselves dived in a lake of fire, brought
by the Angels to some temples, may be considered by you as corresponding
to the beginning of this action of Heaven on your different Bodies.
Be therefore
certain that Jesus, either by the Spiritual Sacraments, either by the sittings,
either by a direct grant, constantly sustains our soul, our heart, our physical
organisms, our intuition, our brain. He raises us and forgives us every
time that we fell. He eases and moderates the fire of our sufferings in
proportions that we will only understand later. He really comforts us, and
if in our tears we would more often turn to Him, if we threw ourselves immediately
in His arms, on His helpful heart, ah, how much would our pains decrease,
how quick would resignation change itself in joy ! Do this, my friends,
it is the best advice contained in these pages. It summarizes them all.
May your Hope, your absolute certainty to unite yourself to the One who
said of Himself: « I am the Way, the Truth and Life» increase
every day in you. Be certain that you will meet Him, be certain that one
only of His smiles will make you forget everything, be certain that He Himself
will clothe you with the last Sacraments and the White Robe, which will
open you all the doors of all the Spiritual Countries. Be also certain of
the future existence of the Celestial Jerusalem. These rubies, these emeralds,
these topazes of the Apocalypse are not symbols to interpret, but mere real
living realities, and surely, some day, the eyes of your soul will open
up and contemplate with delight, in some places of our France, the marvellous
seats where God's Kingdom slowly constructs itself. And you will say again:
«Our Father, Thy Kingdom come... ». And you will then understand
the necessity to cement these dazzling stones with the help of a special
cement: our human Will united to the Universal Celestial Will of God.
Therefore take courage, every time you will read these promises. They are
not from me, my friends, you know from whom they are, and you will have
confidence. May these few pages maintain you, and when I shall no more be
physically with you, render your Path more easy and the task less hard.
This will be my reward, if I have been successful.
Lestiac
- Paris, August - December 1928.
G. PHANEG
