Book Review

The Inner Life (full title: Christian Counsel, on Divers Matters Pertaining to the Inner Life)
  By François Fénelon
  English translation originally published in James W. Metcalf,
  ED., Spiritual Progress (1853) Available free online at www.passtheword.org/dialogs-from-the-past/innerlife.htm

The Inner Life, by François Fénelon (1651–1715), offers guidance on developing a deep inner awareness of and love for God. Born into a noble family in France, Fénelon became a priest and eventually the archbishop of Cambrai. He came under criticism for his defence of precepts associated with Quietism, a doctrine condemned by the Church that taught that the believer could experience God’s presence by becoming inwardly still. While he was not stripped of his post, he spent his last years under censure, confined to the area around Cambrai.

The Inner Life comprises thirty short chapters with titles like “On the Advantages of Silence and Recollection” and “On the Interior Operations of God to Bring Man to the True End of the Creation.” Fénelon’s 17th-century language may be challenging for some readers, but his guidance remains as relevant for spiritual seekers today as it was in his time. His insights are profound and subtle, and his advice practical:

Let us be accustomed to recollect ourselves during the day and in the midst of our occupations, by a simple view of God. … While outwardly busy, let us be more occupied with God than with everything else. To be rightly engaged, we must be in His presence and employed for Him.

An excellent means of preserving our interior solitude and liberty of soul, is to make it a rule to put an end, at the close of every action, to all reflections upon it. …Whether of a vain joy or sorrow. Happy is he whose mind contains only what is necessary, and who thinks of nothing except when it is time to think of it!

We must not wait for a leisure hour, when we can bar our doors; the moment that is employed in regretting that we have no opportunity to be recollected, might be better spent in recollection. Let us turn our hearts toward God in a simple, familiar spirit, full of confidence in Him. The most interrupted moments, even while eating or listening to others, are valuable.

In the chapter entitled “On the Employment of Time,” he explains, “There is a time for everything in our lives; but the maxim that governs every moment is that there should be none useless; that they should all enter into the order and sequence of our salvation.” While we may think certain circumstances we have to go through are mere distractions from the real purpose of our lives, Fénelon claims that God “has never assigned us a barren moment, nor one which we can consider as given up to our own discretion.” A fundamental error most people make is to seek their own self-interest in every circumstance, though they may do so subtly and unconsciously:

For we misemploy our time, not only when we do wrong or do nothing, but also when we do something else than what was incumbent on us at the moment.… We are strongly ingenious in perpetually seeking our own interest; and what the world does nakedly and without shame, those who desire to be devoted to God do also, but in a refined manner, under favor of some pretext which serves as a veil.

Therefore, Fénelon cautions the reader to practice “fidelity in small matters.”

Great virtues are rare; they are seldom needed, and when the occasion comes …[we are] sustained either by the brilliancy of the action in the eyes of others, or by self-complacency in our ability to do such wonderful things. Small occasions, however, are unforeseen; they occur every moment, and place us incessantly in conflict with our pride, our sloth, our self-esteem, and our passions. It would please us much better to make some great sacrifice … and retain our old habits in little things.

These “small matters” seem trivial, but by neglecting them, Fénelon says, “the soul becomes accustomed to unfaithfulness.” He describes how this neglect creates a division between the person and God: “At first, it is but an atom; but the atom becomes a mountain and so forms a sort of chaos between it and God.”

Fénelon speaks of prayer as a simple inward turning, with love, toward the presence of God within. In the beginning those who desire to love God may experience a wonderful sweetness in prayer, a feeling of grace or ‘consolation’ from God, as well as illumination. But when these gifts are withdrawn, they lose heart.

Many are tempted to believe that they no longer pray, when they cease to enjoy a certain pleasure in the act of praying. But, if they will reflect that perfect prayer is only another name for love to God, they will be undeceived. Prayer, then, does not consist in sweet feelings, nor in the charms of an excited imagination.

Dry, desolate prayer serves to force the soul to “attach itself immediately and solely to God, instead of to his mercies.” As Fénelon says, “Such love is chaste; for it is the love of God in and for God; we are attached to Him, but not for the pleasure which he bestows on us.” Often people in this state may “think that everything is going to ruin, when, in fact, the foundations are just beginning to be solidly laid.” This is because progress on the spiritual path is contrary to our expectations: “We expect gain and not loss, consolation and not suffering, riches and not poverty, increase and not diminution. But the whole of interior work is of an opposite character; to be lost, sacrificed, made less than nothing. …That we may be forced to cling to Him alone.”

After all, Fénelon declares,

The source of all our defects is the love of self; we refer everything to that, instead of to the love of God. Whoever, then, will labour to get rid of self, to deny himself, according to the instructions of Christ, strikes at once at the root of every evil, and finds in this simple abandonment of self, the germ of every good.

Fénelon warns us that even efforts to improve ourselves may have love of self as their inspiration.

The sum of the principal directions for attaining true liberty without neglecting our duties is this: do not reason too much, always have an upright purpose in the smallest matters, and pay no attention to the thousand reflections by which we wrap and bury ourselves in self, under the pretence of correcting our faults.

Clinging to distress over failures is, according to Fénelon, merely a form of pride. Instead, he says: “Be not discouraged; go straight on; quietly bear the humiliation of your fault before God without being troubled by the anguish of a wounded pride that cannot bear to see itself imperfect. Your fault will be of service in causing you to die to self, and to become nothing before Him.” A simple commitment to follow God’s way suffices: “Our illumination from God discovers the lightest transgressions, but never discourages. We walk before Him; but if we stumble, we hasten to resume our way, and have no watchword but Onward!” He reassures us that the way becomes ever easier: “God will gradually make it pleasant and easy for you, for true love is obedient without constraint, and without strife or effort.”

Fénelon speaks of the freedom from all care – what he calls “true liberty” – that comes with self-abandonment to God, of “becoming less than nothing.”

Let us cast all our cares, then, into the bosom of so good a Father, and suffer Him to do as He pleases. Let us be content to adopt His will in all points, and to abandon our own will absolutely and forever. How can we retain anything of our own, when we do not even belong to ourselves?

Having thrown off the burden of self, which we formerly carried, we are astounded to behold the simplicity and straightness of the way. We thought there was a need of strife and constant exertion, but we now perceive that there is little to do; that it is sufficient to look to God with confidence, without reasoning either upon the past or the future, regarding Him as a loving Father, who leads us every moment by the hand.

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