ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS ON FALSE (SELF-PRODUCED) LOCUTIONS I knew a person who had these successive locutions: among them were some very true and substantial ones concerning the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, but others were sheer heresy. And I am appalled at what happens in these days — namely, when some soul with the very smallest experience of meditation, if it be conscious of certain locutions of this kind in some state of recollection, at once christens them all as coming from God, and assumes that this is the case, saying: ‘God said to me . . ,’; ‘God answered me . . ,’; whereas it is not so at all, but, as we have said, it is for the most part they who are saying these things to themselves. And, over and above this, the desire which people have for locutions, and the pleasure which comes to their spirits from them, lead them to make answer to themselves and then to think that it is God Who is answering them and speaking to them. They therefore commit great blunders unless they impose a strict restraint upon themselves, and unless their director obliges them to abstain from these kinds of reflection. For they are apt to gain from them mere nonsensical talk and impurity of soul rather than humility and mortification of spirit, if they think, ‘This was indeed a great thing’ and ‘God was speaking’; whereas it will have been little more than nothing, or nothing at all, or less than nothing. (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. II, ch. 29)
Posted on: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 23:40:38 +0000
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