Padraig, Thank you for such honest frankness. Oftentimes, the acts I do are done in hopes of being noticed, and thereby reduced to a subtle form of hypocrisy. With all my weaknesses, I cling tenaciously to the Holy Mass. I am a little cell in the Mystical Body: I love to pretend to be one of the drops of water immersed in the chalice of wine, which is then offered up with the bread at the Offertory. United with Christ, I am caught up in His perfect and singular Sacrifice! In the transforming power of the Blood flowing from the Sacred Heart, the Father sees me (and each of us) as his Beloved! Similarly, Christ calls to us in the Song of Songs: 2:14 O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is comely! And so I believe that the Eucharist could be the great tool of purification during the Dark Night of the Soul. As the intense light of God's presence blinds us to his action during the Dark Night, so the mundane, outward appearances of the Eucharist can blind us to the work that the Holy Spirit accomplishes in this most intimate exchange of hearts! 2 Cor 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into his image, from one degree of glory to another: for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit! Is there any other moment besides the reception of the Blessed Sacrament that we are so unveiled? There is none!! When we prepare for this precious union, may it be a time when God rips the mask off and forces us to be honest. Safe in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
Padraig, I am just catching up with your posts on this topic and they are very informative and a subject for deep reflection. I have been and will be very preoccupied of late. Hopefully I will be back to normality in a few weeks. This is very insightful taching and worthy of a pamphlet on the subject. What do you think? Mary
Its true, Terry I don't know how folks mange without the Bread of Life. I feel especially sorry for our Protestant Brothers and sisters that they don't have this great staff beside them. Those with it fly in the paths of prayer, those without it can hardly crawl. Its the great sweetner of the soul, making us kind, compassionate and loving. I think sometimes without this there can be a certain strict harshness in religion and spirituality.
Hi Mary. I was thinking off revising my little book, 'On Meeting Mary and Learning to Pray' and including in it more comments on the stages of prayer, including comments the 'Dark Night of the Soul' which I am making here first. But it may take longer than I thought as when I get started rambling I go on an on... May God Bless you all on the big day, Mary, especially with good weather, though that would certainly be a miracle the ay things have been going11 Though today was beautiful, thank God!!
I suppose of the Dark Night you could say that the soul is like a library were all the books are mixed up and have fallen of the shelf and are scattered and srewn all over the place, the consequence of sin. The Holy Spirit comes along and arranges them all in the right order, the right order being that everything is arranged in order of love, not as we would arrange things but as God Himself would have them. Not by our false prideful notions of 'Right' and 'Wrong' but through, with and in Love No Sadducaidical religion here but a true religion, bathing love, love, love.
Frued was once asked what the end result of Psychoananlysis was, 'So that the patient may share in the general unhappiness', he replied. Which, when you think of it isn't much of an outcome. In fact studies have shown that much of therapy not only is unhelpful but actually harmful. The opposite is true of prayer and particularly of the Dark Night. For here it is a God of Love who is deep healing us of all the wounds inflicted on us by our own sins and the sins of others and even the sins of earlier generations the results of whose sins are visited, 'Even unto the seventh generation' Its a bit like an onion, once one layer is healed of another is revealed layer after layer in huge heavenly healing process, only love can do this and only love can make it possible that we endure it, for feeling held close to a loving heart we feel like a little child held secure as we are confident that, here, the hand that wounds is, indeed ,the hand that heals. Nor is the healing only of the Spirit and of the mind and heart but actual physical healing takes place too as we move towards the Heavenly Jerusalem. I mention these layers of healing so that when I turn to the role of Satan in this process I should make it clear that I am very aware that psychological processes are in train here. But it is the gravest mistake , as many modern commentators do that it is only 'inner demons' As I mentioned before the Fallen Angels have a very particular role to play, just as Scripture shows us in the Book of Job {and elsewhere and I suspect one particular devil, whose former seat in heaven the soul may occupy has a very particular reason for fury.So in a real way the battle for the soul is at a very personal level. Consider the battle for souls as though it takes place on a great plane before you. Usually it is steady enough with the souls fighting back and forth in both directions, for the forces of light and the forces of Darkness. But now and again a valiant Pilgrim soul of prayer steps forward, one who walks forward and fights with great courage with the Sword of Prayer. All around the other soldiers stop to watch as this champion goes forward to the fray and more and more from the side of Darkness more Champions of Darkness step forward to challenge this Prayer Warrior. Its like this in the Dark Night. The devil does not have to worry too much about the souls who either give in to him, nor the ones who put up much of a fight. But he does take a very great interest in those who enter Contemplative Prayer and the Dark Night. Why so@ Well in the first place such souls are very,very close to escaping his grasp. Secondly such souls, if they do escape his grasp for long pose a great threat to Satan's Kingdom on Earth. For such valiant Prayer Warriors will by no means go to heaven alone, but will win freedom and salvation for many, many, many others including even very great sinners who might have fallen into his clutches in hell. So Satan being a cunning General Marshalls his fores in greater numbers,in greater power and with much more sophistication against such Warriors. On the other side heaven seeing the Valiant soul attacked releases unheard of grace and many angels to its defense. In this defense the soul turns more and more to the Mother of God, who at heavens ruling leads the forces of Light as once did Michael to drive Satan and the Rebellious angels from the High Places.
Padraig, I think this discourse on stages of prayer is very helpful and difinitely would benefit those who want to advance or who are going through this and dont quite understand whats going on. so I think it would be good to add a further few chapters to your little book. Thank you for your prayers for the big day. Its been a very stressful week. My husband David was very ill. He is improving now thank God. I hope everything works out O.K. for the day and for Clair and Rob's future life. God bless Mary
The position the soul finds itself in is exactly the same as Job when the devil had been given the green light by God to do his worst to Job , in order to try Job's virtue. Up until this point on it's spiritual journey the soul has been carried, as it were, like a child ih it's mother's arms. But now is the time of great trial when the soul must make it's own,seemingly unaided decisions. I say seemingly, for, of course the soul is never left unaided but, nevertheless, is the time of greatest testing. When a person breaks a bone and it heals, it heals twice as strong as it was in the first place. So now for the soul as the battle is directed at exactly its weakest points by a general who knows the soul only too well. So Satan, in this as in all else and despite himself serves as an agent of God in this work of Redemption. "Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone" (James 1:14-15). As Saint Paul reminds us, no one is tempted above his means. 1 Corinthians 10:13 ( 13No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
Padraig, Such a paradox, and yet true. It must be frustrating for Satan to wage his battle against a soul whose gaze remains fixed on God. JoeJerk ends up as you say, an agent for the Lord! Thank you for your posts relative to the devil's role in the Dark Night. It has been most instructive and helpful to me! 8) Safe in the Father's Arms!
Terry I have a little trick I came up with many years ago which you can use if you like to see the devil in action around you, which is harmless enough and in fact is useful as a guard against temptation and the devil's influence , which you can try if you like. If gave me a bit of a shock the first time I tried it and always sets me back a little on my heels when I see it work. Your mind is like a stream of concious thought and of course it should only be yourself thinking of course since its your brain. Now place yourself like a kinda guard dog across your mind. In other words pay attention to what your thinking and were the stuff is coming from. Be alert to foriegn thoughts and influences; by that I mean stuff that is foreign to your way of thinking, stuff that isn't Terry if you see what I mean, very negative, dark stuff. For the devil doesn't only right out tempt us, if he can simply put us in a sad depressed mood he will be quite happy to do so. Take myself for instance I tend to be very,very postiive and joyful, a regular smiler. Always for me the glass is almost full rather than half empty. But the first time I kept a watch {it can be pretty casual this, a half dozing watch dog , if you like}; but suddenly a couple of days later I suddenly noticed out of the blue, there were these thoughts, very foreign to me, 'You're useless, you're a looser, what use are you...'' over and over and over a kind of dull constants refrain. Not in order to persuade me just like some dull dark background music. I was so excited the first time I caught this stuff going on, I said right out loud, 'Hey this is the devil ! What are you up to??!! :lol: ..and I laughed :lol: For it was just so clear who it was !! At once the background voice, the bad music disappeared; instantly! Just like turning off a radio!! Amazing! For if theirs one thing the devil HATES is to be brought out into the open like this!! He is like a rat peeking his head out of a hole and you've hit him with a blazing searchlight!! Anyway I enjoy it and have found it very benificial spiritually, so its not just a trick, it teaches me to be aware of temptation. I only do it conciously now and again as it can be tiring and distracting,, but I've found down the years its helped me to be more aware of the rats goings on than I otherwise might have been. It kinda goes 'automatic watch dog' after a while of practice so you can pick it up out of the blue. It always makes me smile, the devil doesn't like it, which is reason enough for me to do it as I don't like him either. So just a little trick I always enjoy.
I think now I'll write a little bit about my own, personal, experience of the Dark Night. I wasn't sure at first if this might be a good thing to do since I believe generally it may well be good to be a little discrete about such things, but I feel the Lord indicating that good will come of this so I will, in the hope it will help others who walk a similiar path, I had been in the monastery for about three years and things could not have been better in so many different ways. All my life, nearly, since I was about five years old I had wanted like crazy to be a priest and now it looked as though my dream might actually be coming true! I was a city boy living in the country and revelling in it! doing the harvesting, feeding the sheep, herding the cattle. Best of all taking the sheep dogs, {there were four or five of them for long walks through the woods and forest and down beside the river. There was a large library full of spiritual books, I especially loved reading the Lives of the Saints and those on mysticism and on prayer, trying to make sense of the graces God had given me.I have always loved reading but especially the books in the monastic library they had books on the subjects I loved, I don't think I'd have found the like anywhere else in Ireland. It was so beautiful there watching the seasons change. It was a relatively new monastery built in the 1960's and had large panes of glass everywhere so you could constantly see the light and months change. The silence was incredible. Cistercians rarely talked at all and it was just what I needed, time to think and pray and work things out with God. To get my act together , if you like. After all the trouble and killing and violence I had seen the peace was like some great ocean I could swim in. I recall the American monk , Thomas Merton saying after the Second World War that there had been a great flood of servicemen entering the monasteries searching for peace. So many in fact that they hadn't enough beds for them all and they didn't know were to put them all. I can well see why.]
Enjoying it. Padraig, I love the personal touch. Keep the projector rolling! Safe in the Father's Arms!
Thanks, Terry, it's always so good to know someone's reading! I suppose I had best move on to how the Dark Night began all those years ago. At time I would have been 29 years old, I suppose, away back about 24 years ago. So long ago that my recollection of what happened should, surely, be less than half forgotten yet seem to me still as clear as my own home mountain seen on a frosty morn. For some things are written in blood and tears and even the sunshine of a later smiles and joys can drown the memories. It was very early morning and it was Springtime and I was sitting, happy as could be in an armchair facing the cloister garden. It was that wonderful time when the monastery was waking up. We had said the Office of Vigils and now it was the sleepy in between time before Mass. Looking back I am a Little surprised to see myself sitting there at that time. For I always found it more than a little of a struggle staying awake. So, for instance I could not easily pray in my cell or in the Oratory or I would have been snoring in no time. For we used to rise in the morning about half three for the Office and since I, for my sins was the bell ringer, I was up even earlier. While I was thus happily waiting for the time I would ring the bell for Lauds and Mass I heard the Lord speaking to me in my heart. quoting scripture in the same words as he used to Ananias at Damascus; ', and I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name." I don't mean to place strong emphasis on signs here, it was a very gentle message, easily ignored, I suppose, but in the silence of a monastic night the slightest whisper, screams. I suppose that God talks to us all, its not, turly that He is ever silent, for love makes him talkative, its just , maybe that we don't always listen.
I believe we can view the good God as being very good mannered to souls. He never demands, never forces, But how indeed could he force, for a love whose heart is forced is not loving, it is something else. To a large extent it does not matter how concious we are of God's request's all that matters is our yes. I believe for instance all of us will know the hour of our death, we may not be concious of it as many of the saints were , but we will be asked and asked to agree. In either case I agreed happily enough, though I had no idea what I was signing up for. If I had been asked I might have guessed it was to be some kind of illness or maybe some kind of misunderstanding, rather than a long dark hike that would stretch for maybe a couple of dozen years. Just as well, too for which of us, if we were shown photos of an operation we were to have would have the courage to go through with it. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof.
padraig, Just to let you know I am reading and looking forward to reading of your personal experience of suffering the dark night. Mary
Thanks Mary, to be honest with you I was a bit dubious about being so personal about prayer like this, but I always found in my own reading that its been the personal stuff from others that helped the most. I remember one time coming straight out and asking a very holy Catholic Archbishop if he was, in fact in the Final Stage of Prayer, Mystical Marriage. I thought he had been because a talk of his he gave, which quoted A reading from the Holy Office on Saint Columbanus, who talked of the final stage of prayer being like a boat coming into harbour. I also suspected it because he was a very holy person, you could tell just by looking at him. He had suffered a lot , he had been Archbishop of Iran when the Ayatollah Komeini took over and had seen many of his flock martyred. He himself was kicked back home by that wicked old man, Khomaini, to Ireland and never saw his diocese again. It was cheeky of me to ask such a question because our Catholic tradition recommends a certain humility and prudence in talking about such matters , unlike in the Eastern traditions which are much more forthcoming. However I will be open on this forum because I think Our Lady wants me to be. The Archbishop was frank to my cheeky question and told me he was , in fact in this prayer stage. I am talking now about very high prayer stages but as I say I think Our Lady wants me to, because it will be helpful to others. Certainly I wish in the past I had encountered more writers and others who had been open about such experiences since they are so helpful to read. Also this is a very small forum and I am relatively anonymous on the is place and can always delete these posts later if I feel it necessary. Its always good to be prudent about such matters, but if the Spirit calls us to openess then I think its good to open the door , which I am doing. Anyhow, that morning in the monastery I got the first warning , or knock on the door before the darkness fell and as it went I got two more. The second, I think occurred a couple of weeks later in a dream, a very vivid dream. We used to allow young men to enter the monastery for a couple of weeks to decide if they would like to enter, to see if they liked it. In my dream I was walking with a young man showing him around the monastery. Actually I even remeber were I was, I was outside, walking down a field to the river Bann. The young man looked at me and suddenly said, 'Do you like it here? Will you stay?' Then in my dream I turned to him and said, 'I love it here but I will have left here within a month'. I woke up and recalling very clearly the dream burst out laughing, for it seemed so absurd!! I shook my head at how weird dreams could be as leaving the monastery was the very,very last thing I had on my mind. But as it turned out the dream was right and I was wrong.
My last knock on the door came in came in the oratory of the Monastery Infirmary , I suppose a day or two before the Dark Night fell. The little infirmary was my favourite place in the monastery alone, praying. Basically no one ever really went there but me. It was a little small carpeted chapel with its own altar and the Blessed Sacrament present. Who could ask for more? Very quiet and peaceful, I always had a great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament so it was pretty well heaven to me. I could sit in the dark with the little red candle light burning in the tabernacle for hours and it was being as if I was coming home. I was sitting there in a warm summer evening, very beautiful when suddenly I heard the voice if the Lord saying inside my, 'Go outside to pray' . Well I was surprised at this because my own eucharistic devotion had always taught me to think of Our Lord as being alone in the Real Presence and needing company, which I was very happy happy to give so I felt guilty about leaving the Lord. But the voice was insistent and firm so I got up and left and walked about the monastic grounds, taking everything in. It was the first time since I had joined the monastery several years before I had ever done such a thing, summer, winter, spring Autumn , the little Oratory was just such a draw to me. I got a lttle shock this morning listening to the Gospel at MAss as it seemed to speak so directly to what was happening to me at that time. Gospel Lk 9:43b-45 While they were all amazed at his every deed, Jesus said to his disciples, “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying. Just like the disciples I did not understand what the Lord was saying to me, in fact He was saying different things at different levels. First of all yes He was urging to me to go outside in the summer sun to pray. But He was also saying that prayer changes and so must we. He was telling me my prayer was about to change {yet again}. He was also telling me that the time had come for me to leave the monastery, though I could only read this into His words much , much later. years later in fact such like the disciples, I heard but I just didn't understand. The Dark Night hit just after that . I went into the Oratory the next night and God wasn't there any more!! It was as if the light inside me had just been siwitched off!! Were before I had experienced a great warm glow of joy and love, of being embraced in a great ball of love, suddenly there was cold and dark, nothing. This might seem a very small thing in and off itself, but it wasn't such a small thing to me, it was a real catastrophe. Let me explain. Ever since Our Lady had appeared to me and promised me she would teach me how to pray she had been as good as her word. In fact she hadn't so much taught me to pray as lifted me off the ground and run with me, carry me, laughing over her shoulder, like a little laughing baby. Such great graces, totally overwhelming, really. I, in response, had given more and more of myself in return. This wasn't really hard and difficult, prayer was just so attractive. But here I was in the monastery, no TV, no social life no drink and even by monastic standards I was totally fixated on praying. One of the monks told me later that others in the monastery regarded me as something of a saint because I prayed so much. The Trappist life is itself about great silence and aloneness with God; but even by their standards I was totally cut off and alone. Every minute and I mean every second was lived for me in prayer. So much so that even the Abbot thought I was going overboard with it. I say this, not to praise myself, but so great were the graces I was being given that the joy I felt was incredible, I just couldn't get enough of it. I was like a man who had been in a great desert and just couldn't stop drinking. Not only that I was so fascinated by these graces I read hundreds of books on mysticism and prayer in order to understand these graces. So it was not so much the lights been suddenly turned out as like a person who is suddnely struck blind ,death and dumb, it was so hard. Well for the first few eeks I hoped and wondered. Maybe it was just temporary. Maybe it was just for a few days or weeks. Maybe I was just suffering from some kind of depression . Maybe I had offended God in some terrible way without knowing quite what and had cut myself of from Him...maybe I was just imagining it all and had become fixated on the Dark Night and was becoming obsessed. maybe, maybe , maybe.... I returned in a rush to my books on prayer to see if I could find out what was going on!! Of course at once the answer was there, at least in theory that it was the Dark Night. Not only the Dark Night but a Night in its very strongest form. But you see , to me this is the very epitome of the Dark Night hat the person who experiences it does not know they are experiencing it!! They are like Jesus on the Cross as He cries out, 'My God, my God why have you forsaken me!!' Of course the soul cries out too in faith 'But you alone are Holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel...' But really the soul is in very,very great Darkness. Sometimes little things can light the darkness .For instance I used to travel to see my Spiritual Director and he used to reassure me that things were fine , that I was in the Night and when I was with him this so much reassured me, but as soon as I left him, wham bang the doors of the dungeon slammed closed and argggggggggh I was back in the outer Dark again. So I would say this for this pain that if the soul knows it is in the Dark Night it is not in the Dark Night. Which sounds like a paradox but is still true. Of course at some level I accepted I was there but in order to drink the dregs to the full the soul has to feel itself as totally abandoned; if the soul were to think to itself with assurance, 'Well things are fine, I'm in the Night, this wuill pass..' the soul is not in the Night at all. I do not know how to explain it any better. But when Jesus was in the Passion I think Jesus in order to drink the dregs to the full must have experienced this dark, so the angel came to comfort Him, so he begged the disciples to stay with Him. For Jesus truly felt He had been abandoned.
I think what made the Dark Night particularly hard on me was the fact that I was in a Cistercian Monastery when it fell. If I had been outside I might have softened its edges in a hundred ways, went out for a drink, took in a movie, socialised,whatever. However, a monastery is organised in such a way that the soul has nowhere to run too; particularly a Cistercian one "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast." Psalm 139:7-10 Later on when I left the monastery, things would get a good lot easier, but for those few weeks before I left I found it totally intolerable. Just how bad was the pain? Well the Dark Night has been compared to the cleansing fires of Purgatory, But of course it would be nowhere nearly as bad as that, otherwise the poor soul would be running about screaming in pain, I suppose. The soul on earth has the immense advantage that it is still corporeal and thus the pain is distracted or mitigated; not so in the next life where the soul's nose is to the grindstone, so to speak. Also how can we compare pain? What is a slight burn to us might well cause great pain to others.So that what struck me as terrible indeed, may well have seemed not so bad to others. I hope so anyway. Saint Teresa mentions on commenting on this that we should have the very greatest pity on souls going through this and I believe she is certainly right. I have been beaten, nearly murdered, almost committed suicide, suffered deep sadnesses, seen members of my family die , including my mother, been imprisoned, hated by all those around me and yet I will honestly tell you, compared to the Dark Night and most particularly those first few weeks and months , well they were all like a flea bite by comparison. In fact the Night has this benefit it kinda innoculates you to the worse that life can pick up and throw at you , thereafter. Talk given by Christopher Mc Camley, OCDS, during the Tridium to St Therese in St Nicholas’s Church, Dundalk, Sunday 30th September, 2007 Almost at this very minute, at twenty past seven in the evening, one hundred and ten years ago, St Therese of Lisieux died. Her final words “Oh I love Him, my God I love you”. She had endured months of agony with tuberculosis, and without the benefit of morphine. She had embraced her suffering with maturity and yet with real joy, uniting every bit of that suffering with the sufferings of Christ on the cross. St Therese as much as any saint, recognised that Christ did not save the world through his miracles and his teaching and his preaching but through his suffering and death on the cross when he seemed to be utterly powerless. But the real suffering she endured, greater than the pain in her body, was the darkness she carried in her soul during the last year and a half of her life. Some of you may have read the stories recently about Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Time Magazine took extracts from some of her letters and declared that she had had a crisis of faith, that for many years she was almost an atheist. I have to admit I smiled to myself when I read that. It reminded me of a story of a priest who visited the Carmel in Lisieux not long after the Story of a Soul, Therese’s autobiography began to circulate. He mentioned her to one of the nuns who said, “Therese, the little atheist”. Nothing, of course could be further from the truth. What Therese endured for some eighteen months before her death and Mother Teresa over many years was what St John of the Cross calls “the dark night of the soul”. This is the experience of Christ at Gethsemane, and on the cross crying out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me”. Therese’s life of prayer had always been without the consolations or visions enjoyed by many of the saints. Her sister Celine records that “Therese lived on bare faith her entire life. There was no soul less consoled in prayer”. In the last eighteen months of her life, Therese lost the certainty she had about heaven. But she persevered in faith, and even more in love. And she accepted her trials in solidarity with those who have no faith. “What a grace it is to have faith! If I had not had any faith, I would have committed suicide without an instant’s hesitation”. For many of us this is a shocking image of Therese – but it is the culmination of a life lived solely by faith and by love, it is a life stripped bare, emptied so that there was room only for God. When Therese was dying, she purposely gave her last look to Mother Marie Gonzague, and not to her own sisters, Pauline, Marie and Celine. It was a last little emptying, looking at the Prioress who represented Christ in the community. It was another step in her “little way”. “The more my life is focused in Jesus Christ the more I am able to love the Sisters,” she wrote. And this is the essence of the “little way”; it is doing everything for love of God and accepting everything as grace from God. Therese lived for nine years in Carmel with the same small group of women – some annoying, some lazy, some stupid, some overly sensitive and self-centred. People like us. Therese decided that she would bring to every one in her community and to every situation the commitment to love. She would try to be a good Samaritan reaching out to the roadside casualties. It need not be more at times than a smile or a good word.St Therese often referred to St John of the Cross, who said “Where there is no love, put love and you will find love”. That is the essence of Carmel and of the life of St Therese. It is what transformed her from a petulant child to become a doctor of the church, patroness of the missions, and still a little child, the Little Flower, Therese, our Apostle of Love.
I think there are a number of questions that occur to souls about the Night, especially if they happen to be going through it themselves. One of the first that naturally occurred to me was how long do these things last? I asked Father Bernard about this and he quoted the Founder of his own Order, The Passionists as having one lasting 45 years. I laughed at this and asked if he was trying to cheer me up? Father Bernard supposed that because a soul like Paul suffered so long he might have a higher place in heaven. But I think it would be very presumptious to suppose so. For instance Saint Therese of Liseaux lived only a short time but was a very, very great saint indeed. As it points out in one of the readings for the dead: The Book of Wisdom Chapter 3 1 1 But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. 2 They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction 3 and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. 4 For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; 5 Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. 6 2 As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself. So this trying as gold in the Furnace can be accomplished quickly of slowly, with greater or lesser intensity involved. So that for instance we can have child saint , say like Saint Dominic Savio who can achieve massive holiness on a really very, very short space of time. Saint John Bosco noted him in the chapel in a very high state of prayer. God knows what he is doing with such souls, I am afraid the rest of us can only goggle..and there are cases of children even much younger sprinting in the ways of prayer, including martyrs of the Church.
