Prayers and Meditations

March 4, 1915

Always the same harsh solitude... but it is not painful, on the contrary. In it more clearly than ever, is revealed the pure and infinite love in which the whole earth is immersed. By this love all lives and is animated; the darkest shadows become almost translucent to let its streams flow through, and the intensest pain is transformed into potent bliss.

Each turn of the propeller upon the deep ocean seems to drag me farther away from my true destiny, the one best expressing the divine Will; each passing hour seems to plunge me again deeper into that past with which I had broken, sure of being called to new and vaster realisations; everything seems to draw me back to a state of things totally contrary to the life of my soul which reigns uncontested over outer activities; and, despite the apparent sadness of my own situation, the consciousness is so firmly established in a world which passes beyond personal limitations on every side, that the whole being rejoices in a constant perception of power and love.

In the material actuality, tomorrow lies dark and unreadable; no light, not even the faintest, reveals to my bewildered gaze any indication, any presence of the Divine. But something in the depths of consciousness turns to the Invisible and Sovereign Witness and tells him: "Thou dost plunge me, O Lord, into the thickest darkness; this means that Thou hast established Thy light so firmly in me that Thou knowest it will stand this perilous ordeal. Otherwise wouldst Thou have chosen me for the descent

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into the vortex of this hell as Thy torch-bearer? Wouldst Thou have judged my heart strong enough not to fail, my hand firm enough not to tremble? And yet my individual being knows how weak and powerless it is; when Thou dost not manifest Thy Presence, it is more denuded than most people who do not know or care for Thee. In Thee alone lies its strength and ability. If Thou art pleased to make use of it, nothing will be too difficult to accomplish, no task too vast and complex. But if Thou shouldst withdraw, just a poor child is left, capable only of nestling in Thy arms and sleeping there in the sweet dreamless sleep where nothing else exists but Thou."

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