A true Christian, then, must display this readiness to be possessed which always presupposes his personal sanction. He must be able, in holy courage, to leave the firm ground of familiar securities; he must rejoice in the state of being possessed. But he must not insist on deciding all by himself whether a specified experience may be upheld before the face of God but should make his sanction depend on his director’s decision.

On the other hand, whenever God places in his path anything of great beauty or any other high good which claims to possess him, if, having confronted it with God, he feels justified in according it his full sanction, he should be equally ready to give himself to that elevating force without restraints or preoccupations.

For it is a duty of gratitude to be responsive to the word of God wherever it reaches us: to “keep it in a good and perfect heart” (Luke 8:15) rather than let it “fall upon a rock” (Luke 8:6). It is extremely important for us to profit by the moments when God draws us nearer to Him, when He allows us to be possessed by true values—and so loosens the fetters of our trivial system of petty self-protection and invites us to an act of ultimate audacity and freedom.

To such moments apply these words of St. Paul: “Behold, now is the acceptable time: behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). To be sure, all such possession by high natural values must be ordained to our true surrender of self to Christ. If this is not the case, we do not hear the call of God; nay, we even abuse His gifts.

If all out life is thus incorporated in Christ so that we consistently seek—and find—Him in every created value, then our being held by the latter implies no submersion in darkness. On the contrary, it helps us to collect ourselves and to realize that true freedom which comes to us from above. It is in such moments—not in the trivial common sense attitude we have to display in our everyday occupations—that our vision is given a valid perspective. It is then that we see the true countenance of things, which we must engrave in our mind so as to evoke it even at times of interior dryness.

In such moments of being possessed by a genuine value, all things shine forth revealing their deeper meaning and their secret ties with superior Reality. In these moments we experience something of what the Scriptures call “the passing by of the Lord.” Then do we rise to an awareness of our true metaphysical situation, and start to see everything in conspectu Dei. This is precisely the infallible test of our being held by a high and authentic created value, a great human love in Jesus, for example.