And, in fact, we do so justifiedly insofar as it is a question of things that represent no higher reality than we ourselves do; things that may not, on the strength of their objective content and quality, legitimately claim to possess us. Such are, notably, all mere passions: for example, the effect of certain narcotics, or again, the imperious automatism of some kind of professional activity, which tends wholly to absorb us.

The error, however, lies in identifying this routine tendency to remain sovereign over the situation and to preserve the solid ground under our feet with the sanctioning as such. A bold dedication of self, too—a relinquishment of the solid ground on which we feel secure—can be an act sanctioned by our central personality. Faith itself is nothing less than an immense venture: the venture of advancing beyond the naturally ensured base of our cognition. God invites us to engage upon this heroic venture.

Supernatural life as a whole requires us to depart from that firm natural terrain. The Apostles, indeed, left that solid ground when in response to Christ’s sequere me they left everything behind and followed the Lord unconditionally; when they spoke, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:69).

Yet, they did so, not in an unsanctioned way, yielding blindly to a compelling urge, but in the blissful consciousness which we find in the words of St. Paul, “For I know whom I have believed” (2 Tim. 1:12). They gave themselves wholly to the absolute Lord over life and death, from whom they had received everything. Their departure from the framework of their former lives—their losing of self—bore the most express and most complete personal sanction a human act can bear. Any self-surrender that lacks such a sanction lacks ultimate validity. We must, then, never abandon ourselves to any unsanctioned impulse.

The true state of dwelling with ourselves, again, presupposes what we have called the sanction. But the endeavor to shun all risk and flee all danger of being possessed—to carefully preserve the firm ground under one’s feet—is not consonant (and is even inconsistent) with the true habitare secum, though it represents a kind of illegitimate counterfeit thereof. It is the source of all philistine mediocrity. It is doubtless better to abide on the firm ground of one’s well-ordered natural life than to allow oneself to be swept off one’s feet; but again it is infinitely better to lose oneself in Christ and to be seized by Him than to keep smugly within that secure natural framework.

Not only is such seizure better—it is necessary for us if we are truly desirous of being transformed in Christ. Our abandonment of self is an indispensable condition of the full unfolding in us of supernatural life. For Our Lord says, not only “He that shall lose his life for me shall find it,” but also “He that findeth his life shall lose it.”

We must, then, lose our soul so as to find it. In other words, we should renounce all vain effort to incorporate Christ into our life, but endeavor wholeheartedly, with the full sanction of our central personality, to transpose our life into Christ and entrust it to Him; indeed, to be possessed by Him.