We possess nothing in the world—for chance can take everything from us—except the power to say I. That is what must be given to God, that is to say, destroyed. There is absolutely no other free act permitted to us, except the destruction of the I. Offering: one cannot offer anything other than the I, and everything one calls offering is nothing but a label placed on a revenge of the I. Nothing in the world can take from us the power to say I. Nothing, except extreme misfortune. Nothing is worse than extreme misfortune which from the outside destroys the I, since from then on one can no longer destroy it oneself. What happens to those in whom misfortune has destroyed the I from the outside? One can only imagine for them annihilation in the manner of the atheist or materialist conception. That they have lost the I does not mean they no longer have any selfishness. On the contrary. True, it does sometimes happen that a dog-like devotion is produced. But at other times the being is on the contrary reduced to naked, vegetative selfishness. A selfishness without an I. If one has even slightly begun the process of destroying the I, one can prevent any misfortune from doing harm. For the I is not destroyed by external pressure without extreme revolt. If one refuses this revolt out of love for God, then the destruction of the I does not take place from the outside, but from within.
Redemptive suffering. When the human being is in a state of perfection, when with the help of grace he has completely destroyed the I in himself, if he then falls to the degree of misfortune that would correspond for him to the destruction of the I from the outside, that is the fullness of the cross. Misfortune can no longer in him destroy the I, for the I in him no longer exists, having entirely disappeared and left its place to God. But misfortune produces an effect equivalent, on the plane of perfection, to the external destruction of the I. It produces the absence of God. "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
What is this absence of God produced by extreme misfortune in the perfect soul? What is this value attached to it that is called redemptive suffering?
Redemptive suffering is that by which evil truly has the fullness of being, to the extent that it can receive it.
Through redemptive suffering, God is present in extreme evil. For the absence of God is the mode of divine presence that corresponds to evil—the felt absence. Whoever does not have God within cannot feel his absence.
This is the purity, the perfection, the fullness, the abyss of evil. Whereas hell is a false abyss (cf. Thibon). Hell is superficial. Hell is nothingness pretending and giving the illusion of being.
The purely external destruction of the I is nearly infernal suffering. The external destruction to which the soul associates itself through love is expiatory suffering. The production of the absence of God in the soul completely emptied of itself through love is redemptive suffering. In misfortune, the survival instinct outlasts the attachments that have been torn away and blindly clings to anything that can serve as support, as a plant clings with its tendrils. Gratitude (except in a base form), justice are not conceivable in this state. Slavery. There is no longer that surplus quantity of energy that supports free will, by means of which man gains distance. Misfortune, in this aspect, is hideous, as life is always hideous when laid bare, like a stump, like the swarming of insects. Life without form. To survive is there the sole attachment. It is there that extreme misfortune begins, when all attachments are replaced by that of surviving. Attachment appears there in its nakedness. Without any other object than itself. Hell. It is through this mechanism that nothing seems sweeter to the wretched than life, even though their life is in no way preferable to death. In this situation, to accept death is total detachment. Near-hell on earth. Extreme uprooting in misfortune. Human injustice generally produces not martyrs but near-damned. Those who have fallen into near-hell are like the man stripped and wounded by robbers. They have lost the garment of character. The greatest suffering that leaves roots intact is still at an infinite distance from near-hell.
When one renders service to beings thus uprooted and receives in return bad treatment, ingratitude, betrayal, one is simply undergoing a small part of their misfortune. One has the duty to expose oneself to it, within measure, as one has the power to expose oneself to misfortune. When it happens, one must bear it as one bears misfortune, without connecting it to particular persons, for it does not connect to them. There is something impersonal in near-infernal misfortune, as in perfection. For those in whom the I is dead, nothing can be done, absolutely nothing. But one never knows whether, in a given human being, the I is entirely dead or merely unconscious. If it is not entirely dead, love can revive it as though by an injection, but only love that is entirely pure, without the slightest trace of condescension, for the slightest shade of contempt pushes toward death. When the I is wounded from the outside, its first reaction is the most extreme, the most bitter revolt, like an animal struggling. But once the I is half dead, it desires to be finished off and lets itself sink into unconsciousness. If then a touch of love awakens it, the pain is extreme and produces anger and sometimes hatred toward the one who caused that pain. Hence, in fallen beings, those apparently inexplicable reactions of vengeance against the benefactor. It also happens that in the benefactor the love is not pure. Then the I, awakened by love and immediately receiving a new wound through contempt, the most bitter hatred arises—a legitimate hatred. The one in whom the I is entirely dead, on the contrary, is in no way troubled by the love shown to him. He lets himself be handled like dogs and cats that receive food, warmth, and caresses, and like them he is eager to receive as much as possible. Depending on the case, he becomes attached like a dog or lets himself be handled with a kind of indifference like a cat. He drinks without the slightest scruple all the energy of whoever takes care of him.
Unfortunately, every charitable work risks having as its clients a majority of unscrupulous people, or above all beings in whom the I has been killed.
The I is killed more quickly the weaker the character of the one who suffers misfortune. More precisely, the limiting misfortune, the misfortune that destroys the I, is situated more or less far away depending on the temper of the character, and the farther it is situated, the more one says the character is strong.
The more or less remote location of this limit is probably a fact of nature, like aptitude for mathematics, and whoever, having no faith, is proud of having kept up "good morale" in difficult circumstances is no more right than the adolescent who takes pride in having a gift for mathematics. The one who believes in God runs the risk of an even greater illusion, namely, of attributing to grace what is simply an effect of nature, essentially mechanical.
The anguish of extreme misfortune is the external destruction of the I. Arnolphe, Phaedra, Lycaon. One is right to fall to one's knees, to supplicate basely, when the violent death about to strike is going to kill the I from the outside before even life is destroyed.
"Niobe too, she of the beautiful hair, thought of eating." This is sublime in the manner of space in the frescoes of Giotto.
A humiliation that forces one to renounce even despair.
The sin in me says I.
I am everything. But this I is God. And it is not an I.
Evil creates the distinction; it prevents God from being equivalent to everything.
It is my misery that makes me I. It is the misery of the universe that makes God, in a sense, I (that is, a person).
The Pharisees were people who relied on their own strength to be virtuous.
Humility consists in knowing that in what one calls I there is no source of energy by which one can rise.
All that is precious in me, without exception, comes from somewhere other than myself, not as a gift, but as a loan that must be ceaselessly renewed. All that is in me, without exception, is absolutely without value; and, among the gifts come from elsewhere, everything I appropriate immediately becomes without value. Perfect joy excludes even the feeling of joy, for in the soul filled by its object no corner is available to say I. One does not imagine such joys when they are absent, and thus the incentive to seek them is lacking.