And he spoke to God quietly.

“My soul is an evil place, sordid and infamous; till now it has loved only perverse ways; it has exacted from my wretched body the tithe of illicit pleasures and unholy joys, it is worth little, it is worth nothing, and yet down there near Thee, if Thou wilt succor me, I think that I shall subdue it, but if my body be sick, I cannot force it to obey me; this is worse than all, I am disarmed if Thou do not come to my aid.

“Take count of this, O Lord; I know by experience that when I am ill-fed, I have neuralgia; humanly, logically speaking, I am certain to be horribly ill…nevertheless, if I can get about at all, the day after tomorrow, I go all the same.

“In default of love, this is the sole proof I can give that I truly desire Thee, that truly I hope and believe in Thee, but then, O Lord, aid me.”

He added sadly, “Ah! indeed I am no Lidwine or Catherine Emmerich, who when Thou didst strike them cried out, More, more! Thou dost scarce touch me, and I protest; but what wouldest Thou? Thou dost know better than I; physical suffering breaks me down, drives me to despair. “

He went to sleep at last to kill the day in bed; slumbering to wake again suddenly from frightful nightmares. –J.K. Huysmans ‘En Route’

Mass this evening at St Charles Borromeo proved special. It was a celebratory Mass for the first day of school for the special ed students, the largest such student body in the Cleveland diocese with thirty-five students. The middle front pews were filled with the students and their families. A guitar player and a man beating on a drum box led the attending in song. The students, possessing their special needs and personalities warmed my heart, causing a subtle eruption of tears throughout the Mass, a grateful groaning within. A sense of lacking, need, and loneliness, called out from my heart to God. The Mass ended with the hymn ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’, the students excitedly following along in voice and hand gestures.

“He (St John of the Cross) wills that we should extinguish our imagination—so lethargize it that it can no longer form images—imprison our senses, annihilate our faculties. He wills that he who desires to unite himself to God should place himself under an exhausted receiver, and make a vacuum within, so that, if he choose, the Pilgrim should descend therein, and purify himself, tearing out the remains of sins, extirpating the last relics of vice.

“Then the sufferings which the soul endures overpass the bounds of the possible, it lies lost in utter darkness, falls under discouragement and fatigue, believes itself for ever abandoned by Him to whom it cries, who now hides Himself and answers not again, happy still when in that agony, the pangs of the flesh are not added, and that abominable spirit which Isaias calls the spirit of confusion, and which is none other than the disease of scrupulousness pushed to its extreme.

“Saint John makes you shudder when he cries out that this night of the soul is bitter and terrible, and that the being who suffers it is plunged alive into hell. But when the old man is purged out, when he is scraped at every seam, raked over every face, light springs out, and God appears. Then the soul casts itself like a child into His arms, and the incomprehensible fusion takes place.

“You see Saint John penetrates more deeply than others into the depths of mystical initiation. He also, like Saint Teresa and Ruysbröck, treats of the spiritual marriage, of the influx of grace, and its gifts; but he first dared to describe minutely the dolorous phases which till then had been but hinted at with trembling.

“Then if he is an admirable theologian, he is also a rigorous and clear-sighted saint. He has not those weaknesses which are natural to a woman; he does not lose himself in digressions, nor return continually on his own steps; he walks straight forward, but you often see him at the end of the road, blood-stained and terrible, with dry eyes.”

“But, but,” said Durtal, “surely not all souls whom Christ will lead in the ways of mysticism are tried thus?”

“Yes, almost always, more or less.”

“I will confess that I thought the spiritual life was less arid and less complex. I imagined that by leading a pure life, praying one’s best, and communicating, one would attain without much trouble, not indeed to taste the infinite joys reserved for the saints, but at last to possess the Lord, and live, at least, near Him, at rest.

“And I should be quite content with this middle-class joy. The price paid in advance for the exaltation described by Saint John disconcerts me.”

The abbé smiled, but made no answer.

“But do you know that if it be so,” replied Durtal, “we are very far from the Catholicism that is taught us? It is so practical, so benign, so gentle, in comparison with Mysticism.”

“It is made for lukewarm souls—that is to say, for almost all the pious souls which are about us; it lives in a moderate atmosphere, without too great suffering or too much joy; it only can be assimilated by the masses, and the priests are right to present it thus, since otherwise the faithful would cease to understand it, or would take flight in alarm.”

“But if God judge that a moderate religion is amply sufficient—for the masses believe that he demands the most painful efforts on the part of those whom he deigns to initiate into the supremely adorable mysteries of His Person—it is necessary and just that he should mortify them before allowing them to taste the essential intoxication of union with Him.”

“In fact, the end of Mysticism is to render visible, sensible, almost palpable, the God who remains silent and hidden from all.” –J.K. Huysmans ‘En Route’

“I don’t know, Monsieur l’Abbe. I am almost ashamed to talk to you about such troubles,” and suddenly he burst out, telling his sorrows in any chance words, declaring the unreality of his conversion, his struggles with the flesh, his human respect, his neglect of religious practices, his aversion from the rites demanded of him, in fact from all yokes.

The abbé listened without moving, his chin on his hand.

“You are more than forty,” he said, when Durtal was silent; “you have passed the age when without any impulse from thought, the awakening of the flesh excites temptations, you are now in that period when indecent thoughts first present themselves to the imagination, before the senses are agitated. We have then to fight less against your sleeping body than your mind, which stimulates and vexes it. On the other hand, you have arrears and prizes of affection to put out, you have no wife or children to receive them, so that your affections being driven back by celibacy, you will end by taking them there where at first they should have been placed; you try to appease your soul’s hunger in chapels, and as you hesitate, as you have not the courage to come to a decision, to break once and for all with your vices, you have arrived at this strange compromise; to reserve your tender feeling for the church and the manifestations of that feeling for women. That, if I do not mistake, is your correct balance-sheet. But, good heavens, you have not too much to complain of, for do you not see that the important thing is to care for woman only with your bodily senses? When Heaven has given you grace to be no longer taken captive by thought, all may be arranged with a little effort of will.”

“This is an indulgent priest, ” thought Durtal.

“But,” continued the abbé, “you cannot always sit between two stools, the moment will come when you must stick to the one and push the other away.”

And looking at Durtal, who looked down without answering…

“Do you pray? I do not ask if you say your morning prayers, for not all those, who end by entering on the divine way, after wandering for years where chance might take them, call on the Lord so soon as they awake. At break of day the soul thinks itself well, thinks itself firmer, and at once takes occasion of this fleeting energy to forget God. It is the soul as with the body when it is sick. Wien night comes our sensations are stronger, pain which was quieted awakes, the fever which slept blazes up again, filth revives, and wounds bleed anew, and then it thinks of the divine Miracle-worker, it thinks of Christ. Do you pray in the evening?”

“Sometimes—and yet it is very difficult; the afternoon is tolerable, but you say truly when the daylight goes, evils spring up. A whole cavalcade of obscene ideas then pass through my brain; how can anyone be recollected at such moments?”

“If you do not feel able to resist in the street or at home, why do you not take refuge in the churches?”

“But they are closed when one has most need of them; clergy put Jesus to bed at nightfall.”

“I know it, but if most churches are closed, there are a few which remain partly open very late. Ah, St. Sulpice is among the number, and there is one which remains open every evening, and where those who visit it are always sure of prayers and Benediction: Notre Dame des Victoires, I think you know it. ”  –Joris Karl Huysmans ‘En Route’

Thus wrapped in thought, he found himself at his own door, without remembering the road he had taken, and as soon as he was in his room, his whole soul dilated and burst forth. He desired to thank, to call for mercy, to appeal to someone, he knew not whom, to complain of he knew not what. All at once the need of pouring himself forth, of going out of himself, took shape, and he fell on his knees saying to Our Lady,

“Have pity on me, and hear me; I would rather anything than continue this shaken existence, these idle stages without an aim. Pardon me, Holy Virgin, unclean as I am, for I have no courage for the battle. Ah, wouldest thou grant my prayer! I know well that I am over bold in daring to ask, since I am not even resolved to turn out my soul, to empty it like a bucket of filth, to strike it on the bottom, that the lees may trickle out and the scales fall off, but…but…thou knowest I am so weak, so little sure of myself, that in truth I shrink.

“Oh, all the same I would desire to flee away, a thousand miles from Paris, I know not where into a cloister. My God! Yet this is very madness that I speak, for I could not stay two days in a convent; nor indeed would they take me in.”

Then he thought—

“Though this once I am less dry, less unclean than is my wont, I can find nothing to say to Our Lady but insanities and follies, when it would be so simple to ask her pardon, to beg her to have pity on my desolate life, to aid me to resist the demands of my vices, not to pay as I do the royalties on my nerves, the tax on my senses.

“All the same,” he said, rising, “enough of this, I will at least do what little I can; without more delay I will go to the abbe tomorrow. I will explain the struggle of my soul, and we will see what happens afterwards.” —J.K. Huysmans ‘En Route’

A selction from New Advent: Catholic Encyclopedia on J.K. Huysmans

Both before and after his conversion he was a realist. All his art consisted in rendering clearly details that he had seen and noted down. His pictures of poor people, his sketches of old Paris and particularly of Bièvre, as well as his descriptions of big crowds and scenes at Lourdes, are most vivid and picturesque. Of Dutch origin, he shows in his works the temperament of a great colourist and suggests the paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens. Never did a man have clearer power of vision and never did one take more pleasure in looking and in seeing. One may therefore understand the torture that he felt when during the last days of his life he was afflicted with an affliction of the eyes and it became necessary to sew his eyelids shut. In his piety, he believed that these eyes, with which he had seen so many beautiful things and through which he had received so much pleasure, were taken from him by way of enforcing penitence.