The Autobiography of Madame GuyonGuyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte
Religion
The Autobiography of Madame Guyon
Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte
Catholics -- France -- Biography; Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte, 1648-1717
What made me go by Grenoble was the desire I had to spend two or three
days with a lady, an eminent servant of God, and one of my friends.
When I was there Father La Combe and that lady spoke to me not to go
any farther. God would glorify Himself in me and by me in that place.
He returned to Verceil, and I left myself to be conducted as a child by
Providence. This lady took me to the house of a good widow, there not
being accommodations at the inn. As I was ordered to stop at Grenoble,
at her house I resided. I placed my daughter in a convent, and resolved
to employ all this time in resigning myself to be possessed in solitude
by Him who is the absolute Sovereign of my soul. I made not any visit
in this place; no more had I in any of the others where I had
sojourned. I was greatly surprised when, a few days after my arrival,
there came to see me several persons who made profession of a singular
devotion to God. I perceived immediately a gift which He had given me,
of administering to each that which suited their states. I felt myself
invested, all of a sudden, with the apostolic state. I discerned the
conditions of the souls of such persons as spoke to me, and that with
so much facility, that they were surprised at it, and said one to
another, that I gave every one of them "the very thing they had stood
in need of." It was thou, O my God, who didst all these things; some of
them sent others to me. It came to such excess, that, generally from
six in the morning till eight in the evening, I was taken up in
speaking of the Lord. People flocked on all sides, far and near,
friars, priests, men of the world, maids, wives, widows, all came one
after another. The Lord supplied me with what was pertinent and
satisfactory to them all, after a wonderful manner, without any share
of my study or meditation therein. Nothing was hid from me of their
interior state, and of what passed within them. Here, O my God, Thou
madest an infinite number of conquests known to Thyself only. They were
instantly furnished with a wonderful facility of prayer. God conferred
on them His grace plentifully, and wrought marvelous changes in them.
The most advanced of these souls found, when with me, in silence, a
grace communicated to them which they could neither comprehend, nor
cease to admire. The others found an unction in my words, and that they
operated in them what I said. Friars of different orders, and priests
of merit, came to see me, to whom our Lord granted very great favors,
as indeed He did to all, without exception, who came in sincerity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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