Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange was a Dominican priest and theologian who lived in the 20th century, and is one of my favorite writers on the spiritual life. He wrote a monumental two-volume work, The Three Ages of the Interior Life: Prelude to Eternal Life, in which he systematically presents the best of the inherited, evolving tradition on the spiritual life in the Catholic tradition, based on scripture and on the writings of masters and doctors of the spiritual life through the ages. He wrote it for a general Catholic audience, and intends that the book be accessible to “all interior souls.”
Not everyone will have the time, or the desire, to read a work of such scope. But this is one of the works that I would like to share gems from occasionally, here on this blog, gems that I believe can so enrich our lives, if only we knew about them. That’s why I want to share them.
Here are a few excerpts from the introduction:
… The interior life is an elevated form of intimate conversation which everyone has with himself as soon as he is alone, even in the tumult of a great city. From the moment he ceases to converse with his fellow men, man converses interiorly with himself about what preoccupies him most.
… As soon as a man seriously seeks truth and goodness, this intimate conversation with himself tends to become conversation with God. Little by little, instead of seeking himself in everything, instead of tending more or less consciously to make himself a center, man tends to seek God in everything, and to substitute for egoism love of God and of souls in Him. This constitutes the interior life.
… To be a saint, neither intellectual culture nor great exterior activity is a requisite; it suffices that we live profoundly by God. … To save our soul, one thing alone is necessary: to hear the word of God and to live by it.
… Religion can give an efficacious and truly realistic answer to the great modern problems only if it is a religion that is profoundly lived, not simply a superficial and cheap religion made up of some vocal prayers and some ceremonies in which religious art has more place than true piety. ... Religion, the interior life, must be profound, must be a true life of union with God.
And from vol. one, chapter one, “The Life of Grace, Eternal Life Begun:”
Through baptism we have already received the seed of eternal life. … Jesus repeats: “He that believeth in Me, hath everlasting life.” Not only will he have it later on, but in a sense he already possesses it, for the life of grace is eternal life begun.
It is, in fact, the same life in its essence, just as the seed which is in an acorn has the same life as the full-grown oak, and as the spiritual soul of the little child is the same one that will eventually develop in the mature man.
Fundamentally, the same divine life exists as a germ or a seed in the Christian on earth and as a fully developed life in the saints in heaven. … It is hidden there like the mustard seed, like the leaven which causes the dough to rise, like the treasure buried in the field.
In other words, if we are baptized believers, we have already received and begun to live eternal life on earth. Not later, after we die. Now. And that life is meant to grow, and be developed, throughout our lives, until we gain entrance to the fullness of eternal life through the passage of death.
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange spends the rest of the two volumes explaining, step by step and in beautiful detail, how that life of grace unfolds and is developed. I’ll share more gems from his thought later, as time permits.
