Visions, Revelations, and Locutions, though true and from God, may deceive. Proofs from Holy Scripture.

THERE are two reasons why Divine locutions and visions prove untrue to us, though they are in themselves always true and certain. The first is our defective understanding of them, and the second depends on the cause and ground of them: they are frequently threats, and therefore conditional, depending for their fulfilment on penance done, or abstinence from particular acts; although at the same time expressed in absolute terms. I proceed to illustrate this by certain proofs from the Holy Writings.

In the first place, it is clear that the prophecies do not always mean what we understand by them, and that the issues do not correspond with our expectations. The reason is that God is infinite and most high, and therefore His prophecies, locutions, and revelations, involve other conceptions, other meanings, widely different from those according to which we measure our own perceptions; and they are the more true and the more certain the less they seem so to our intellect. We have instances of this truth in the Holy Scriptures, where we read that many prophecies and Divine locutions disappointed, in their fulfilment, the expectations of many of the ancient people, because they understood them

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too much according to the letter in their own way. This will become clear if we consider the following examples.

When God had brought Abraham into the land of Chanaan, He said unto him,‘I brought thee out from Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land.’* But now that God had said this to Abraham more than once, and as the Patriarch was old, and the land not yet his, he said unto God when the promise was again made, ‘ Whereby may I know that I shall possess it?’ ft Then God revealed to Abraham that it was not he, but his children, after the lapse of four hundred years, who were to possess the land. Abraham then understood the promise, which in itself was most true: for God by giving the land to his children, because of the love He bore him, was giving it to him. Thus Abraham deceived himself while he understood the promise in his own sense. And if he had then acted on that understanding, he would have greatly erred, for the time of fulfilment was not come. Those, too, who saw him die before he had entered into possession of the land, knowing the promise which God had made him, would have been put to shame, and would have accounted the prophecy for a false one.

Afterwards, when Jacob his grandson was going to Egypt, whither Joseph had sent for him, because of the famine in the land of Chanaan, God appeared to him on the way, and said, ‘ Fear not, go down into Egypt. I will bring thee back again from thence.’{ This prophecy was not fulfilled as we should understand it, for the holy old man died in Egypt, and never came back alive. That prophecy was to be fulfilled in his descendants, whom God brought back, after many years, being Himself their Guide. Now anyone who might have heard of this prophecy might have been certain, that as Jacob went down into Egypt by the grace and command of

* Gen. xv. 7. + Ib. 8. t Th. xlvi. 3, 4

God, so would he return thence alive without fail; for the same promise extended to his return and protection. Such an one would have been astonished and deceived when he saw the Patriarch die, and the events not answering to his expectation. Thus, while the promise of God was most certain, men might deceive themselves greatly about it.

The tribes of Israel assembled together to fight against that of Benjamin, because of a certain evil deed which that tribe had sanctioned. God, too, appointed them a leader in the war. Upon this they were so confident of success that, when they were defeated with the loss of two and twenty thousand men, they were filled with astonishment, and wept before God, not knowing the cause of their discomfiture, for they had understood that victory had been promised them, They asked whether they should return to the fight; God answered them, ‘Go up against them and join battle.’ They went up the second time with great boldness, confident of victory, but were beaten again, and eighteen thousand of them were slain. In consequence of this they were filled with confusion, and knew not what to do. God had commanded them to fight, and they were always beaten, though they surpassed their enemies in courage and in numbers— being themselves four hundred thousand strong, while the tribe of Benjamin only mustered five and twenty thousand and seven hundred men. They deceived themselves by their own interpretation of the word of God, which in itself was true. God had not said to them, go forth and conquer, but go forth and fight. And His purpose was to chastise them in this way for their negligence and presumption, and so to humble them. At last God said unto them, ‘Go up, for to-morrow I will deliver them into your hands,’ and then by toil and stratagem they obtained the victory,*

* Judg. xx, 23—28,

3. the Israel.

This is the way in which many souls deceive themselves in the matter of revelations and Divine locutions. They understand them in the letter according to their apparent meaning. For, as I have said, the chief purpose of God in sending visions is to express and communicate the Spirit which is hidden within them, and which is very hard to be understood. This is much more abundant than the letter, more extraordinary, and surpasses the limits thereof. He therefore that will rely on the letter of the Divine locution, or on the intelligible form of the vision, will of necessity fall into a delusion, and be put to shame; for he directs himself therein by sense, and does not yield to the Spirit in detachment from sense. ‘The letter killeth,’ saith the Apostle, ‘but the Spirit quickeneth.’* We must therefore reject the literal sense, and abide in the obscurity of faith, which is the Spirit, incomprehensible by sense.

This is the reason why many of the people of Israel came to disregard and to disbelieve the words of their Prophets. They understood them in a particular sense, according to the letter, and were disappointed at their non-fulfilment. To such an extent did this evil grow among them that they had a current proverb in ridicule of the prophecies. Isaias complains of this, saying: ‘ Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand the hearing? Them that are weaned from the milk, that are drawn away from the breasts. For command, command again; command, command again; wait, wait again; wait, wait again; a little there, a little there. For with the speech of lips, and with another tongue He will speak to this people.’f It is clear from these words, that the people made a jest of the prophecies, and were in the habit of ridiculing them by saying, ‘wait, wait again,’ Their object was to insinuate

* 2 Cor. iii. 6. + Is. xxviii. 9—11.

that the prophecies would never be accomplished: for they understood them according to the letter, which is the milk of babes; and in their own sense, which is the ‘ breasts,’ which is in contradiction with the grandeur of the science of the Spirit. The Prophet therefore asks, ‘Whom shall he teach the knowledge’ of his prophecies, and ‘ whom shall he make to understand’ what they teach? Is it not they who are ‘weaned from the milk’ of the letter and from ‘ the breasts’ of sense? That nation understood not the prophecies, for it followed after the milk of the letter, and the breasts of sense, saying, ‘command, command again; wait, wait again.’ For God spoke to them the doctrine of His own mouth, and not of theirs, and that in another tongue than theirs.

We are therefore not to consider Prophecy according to our own understanding and our own speech, knowing that the words of God have a meaning different from ours, and very difficult to ascertain. So much so that Jeremias, himself a Prophet of God, seems to have been deceived when he saw the meaning of the Divine words to be so far removed

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from the ordinary understanding of men; for he thus complains on behalf of the people, saying, ‘ Alas, alas, alas! O Lord God, hast Thou then deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, You shall have peace, and behold the sword reacheth even to the soul?’* The peace which God had promised was peace between Himself and man in the Messias, Whom He was to send; but the people understood it of temporal peace; and so, when war and trouble came upon them, they thought God had deceived them, because they were disappointed in their hopes. They then cried out in the words of the Prophet, ‘ We looked for peace, and no good came.’t It was not possible for them not to be deceived, because they relied on the literal, grammatical sense.

* Jer, iv. 10. + Ib. viii. 15.

Is it possible for anyone to escape error and confusion, who should understand in the letter the prophecy of the Psalmist concerning Christ, especially that which says of Him, ‘He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth’?* And again, ‘ He shall deliver the poor from the mighty, and the needy that hath no helper.’ Now Christ was born in a low estate, lived in poverty, and died in misery: so far was He from ruling over the earth while He lived upon it, that He subjected Himself to the lowest of the people and died under Pontius Pilate. Not only did He not deliver the poor, His own disciples, from the mighty, but He suffered the mighty to persecute them for His name, and to put them to death. The prophecy concerning Christ is to be understood spiritually, for in that sense is it most true. He is not only the Lord of the whole earth, but of Heaven also, for He is God. And the poor, who are to follow Him, are not only redeemed by Him and delivered from the mighty, that is out of the hand of Satan, but also made heirs of the kingdom of Heaven. The prophecy referred to Christ and His followers in the highest sense, to His eternal kingdom and our everlasting salvation; but men understood it in their own way, referring it to that which is of least importance, and of which God makes but little account, a temporal dominion, and a temporal deliverance, which in the sight of God is not a kingdom nor freedom. The Jews, blinded by the letter of the prophecy, and not understanding the true spiritual meaning it involved, put our Lord God to death. ‘They that inhabited Jerusalem,’ saith the Apostle, ‘and the rulers thereof, not knowing Him, nor the voices of the Prophets, which are read every Sabbath, judging Him, have fulfilled them.’

The words of God are indeed hard to be understood as

“SPs. 4Exi, 8, f Ib. 12. t Acts xiii. 27.

they ought to be. His own disciples, who had been familiar with Him, were themselves deceived. Two of them after His death were journeying sad and desponding to Emmaus, and saying, ‘We hoped that it was He who should have redeemed Israel.’* They, too, understood this redemption and dominion in a temporal sense. Our Lord appeared to them, and rebuked them, saying, ‘O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the Prophets have spoken!’ Even on the day of His Ascension some of them were alike ignorant, for they asked Him saying, ‘ Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?’ t

Many things have been spoken by the Holy Ghost, the meaning of which is different from that which men conceive. Such were the words of Caiphas concerning Christ: ‘ It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. And this he spoke not of himself.’§ The words of Caiphas had one meaning to himself, and another, a very different one, to the Holy Ghost.

This shows us that we cannot rely upon visions and revelations, even though coming from God, because it is so easy for us to be deceived by understanding them in our own sense. They are an abyss and a depth of the Spirit, and therefore to limit them to our own sense and apprehension of them, is to grasp the air and the motes floating in it; the air only disperses, and our hand is empty.

The spiritual director must be therefore careful not to make his penitent narrow-minded by attaching any importance to these supernatural visitations; for they are nothing else but the motes of the Spirit, and he who shall give his attention to these alone will in the end have no spirituality at all. Yea, rather let him wean him from all visions and locutions, and guide him into the liberty and obscurity of

* §, Luke xxiv, 21, + Ib. 25. t Acts i. 6. § S, John xi. 50.

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faith, where he shall receive of the abundance of the Spirit, and consequently the knowledge and understanding of the words of God. It is impossible for anyone who is not spiritually-minded to judge, even in a moderate degree, the things of God; and he who judges them according to sense is not spiritual. Though the things of God are presented to men through the senses, they are not to be so understood. ‘The sensual man,’ saith the Apostle, ‘perceiveth not the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand; because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judgeth all things.’ * By ‘sensual man’ is here meant one who understands the Divine locutions in the literal sense; and the ‘spiritual man’ is he who is neither tied to it, nor directed by it. It is presumption therefore to converse with God in this supernatural way and to allow sense to intermeddle therewith..

For the clearer understanding of this I will give some illustrations of it. Let us suppose a holy man in affliction, persecuted by his enemies, to whom God shall say, ‘I will deliver thee out of their hands.’ This promise may be verified, and yet the enemies of the Saint triumph, and he die by their hands. Should he understand the word of God in a temporal sense, that would be a delusion; for God may have spoken of the true deliverance and victory, which is salvation, by which the soul is delivered, and by which it conquers all its enemies in a higher and truer sense than that of any temporal victory over them. Thus the prophecy is much more true and comprehensive than the understanding of it by anyone who should have limited its meaning to this life. For God, when He speaks, intends great and profitable things; but man may understand Him in his

* 1 Cor. ii. 14,

own way, in the lowest sense, and so fall into error. This is exemplified in the prophecy of David concerning Christ: ‘Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter's vessel.’* Here God speaks of that supreme and perfect dominion, which is eternal and now accomplished; not of a dominion which is less perfect, which is temporal, and which was not fulfilled in the earthly life of Christ.

Again: let us suppose a man longing for martyrdom, to whom God shall say, ‘Thou shalt be a Martyr.’ Upon this such an one feels great interior consolation, and hopes of being a martyr. Still he does not die a martyr’s death, and yet the promise is fulfilled. But why is the promise not literally performed? Because God keeps it in the highest and substantial sense, bestowing on that soul the essential love and reward of a martyr, making it a martyr of love, granting to it a prolonged martyrdom of suffering, the continuance of which is more painful than death. Thus He bestows really on that soul what that soul desired, and what He had promised. For the substance of that desire was, not any particular kind of death, but rather the oblation to God of the obedience of a martyr, and a martyr’s act of love. Martyrdom itself is nothing worth without the friendship of God, Who by other means gives the love, obedience, and reward of a martyr perfectly; and the soul is satisfied as to its desires, though the death of a martyr is withheld from it.

These desires, and others like them, when they spring from true love, though not fulfilled as men may understand them, are nevertheless fulfilled in another and better way, and more for the honour of God than men know how to ask. ‘The Lord hath heard the desire of the poor;’f and ‘to the just their desire shall be given.’{ Many Saints have desired

* Pei. @. + Ib. ix. 17. } Proy, x. 24,

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many things for God in this life, and their desires have not been granted; but itis certain that, as their desires were just and good, they will be perfectly fulfilled in the world to come. And as this is true, so also is it true, that God in this life performs His promise of granting their -desires, though not in the way they thought.

In this and in many other ways the words and visions of God are true and certain, and yet we may be deceived because we do not rise to the heights of God’s purpose and meaning. Thus, the safest course, which directors can take, is to lead souls into a prudent avoidance of these supernatural visitations, accustoming them to pureness of spirit in the obscurity of faith, which is the means of the Divine union