Knowledge of God's Love, Which Produces Trust

Catholic spirituality recognises two roots of all serious interior life: self-knowledge, which produces humility, and knowledge of God, which produces hope and trust. The two go together. St. Augustine already prayed: "Noverim me, noverim te" — "May I know myself, may I know thee"^[4]. St. Catherine of Siena receives from the Eternal Father this more radical formula: "Do you know, my daughter, who you are and who I am? You are she who is not. I am He who is"^[5]. Knowledge thus unfolds in the gap between two abysses: that of our created nothingness and that of divine plenitude.

Why trust is not spontaneous

All of the above holds only if "knowing" God's Love means effectively believing it — that is, drawing practical consequences from it even in the consciousness of sin. Yet universal spiritual experience runs the other way: as soon as a soul becomes aware of its misery, its first reaction is to doubt that God can still love it. "Often, when we sink into the abyss of our misery, we begin to doubt God's mercy" — such is the difficulty common to every spiritual journey, which becomes a crisis proper to the advanced soul. Intellectual knowledge of infinite Love is therefore not enough: it must still pass through the affections, take root in the heart, and become a reflex in the instant following a fall.

This is precisely what Fr. Jean d'Elbée aims at in Croire à l'Amour, the reference book on this question, when he analyses our resistance to believing ourselves loved:

"So often, we have been told of our miseries. We have been told, rightly, that we are miserable; and then, of Jesus, we have been told, yes, that he was good, but not enough that he was wonderfully good, infinitely good, infinite charity. We have not been told, insistently, that he was Saviour before being Judge, and that, in the Heart of God, justice and peace had embraced. […] I do not say to you: 'You believe too much in your misery.' We are still far more miserable than we see. But I say to you: 'You do not believe enough in merciful Love.' We must have trust, not despite our miseries, but because of them, since it is misery that draws Mercy." — Fr. Jean d'Elbée, Croire à l'Amour, Téqui, 2007, pp. 49-50^[6]

The lock of distrust

This diagnosis — "you do not believe enough in merciful Love" — is not leniency; it is the opposite. It denounces a spiritual laziness disguised as false humility. Believing oneself too miserable to be loved by God is implicitly deciding that the measure of our sin is greater than the measure of his mercy. It is, without seeing it, substituting our judgment for God's: God tells us he loves us infinitely; we answer him that this is unreasonable.

The Catholic tradition calls this a sin against hope, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church qualifies it severely: "The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption: by despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice — for the Lord is faithful to his promises — and to his mercy" (CCC § 2091)^[7]. Distrust is therefore not a variant of humility: strictly speaking, it is the opposite of faith, insofar as faith is assent to God's truthfulness.

The great intuition of the spirituality of trust is that these two abysses — that of human nothingness and that of divine Love — do not oppose each other. They attract and measure one another. The more the soul knows its misery, the more it can know God's Love, because this Love is precisely a Love that lowers itself, that gives itself to what is nothing. And the more it knows this Love, the more light it has to see its own misery without despairing.

The "double abyss" in Christian mysticism

The classic formula comes from St. Angela of Foligno (c. 1248-1309), Franciscan tertiary, great mystic of the Middle Ages, canonised equipollenter by Pope Francis in 2013^[8]. In her Book of Visions and Instructions, dictated to her Franciscan brother Father Arnaud at the end of the thirteenth century, she writes:

"Here is all perfection: to know oneself! to know God! Supreme necessity that rules over every necessity! To remain eternally bent over the double abyss — that is my secret!" — St. Angela of Foligno, The Book of Visions and Instructions, chapter 57^[9]

The same intuition recurs in other forms: "You are she who is not, I am He who is" in Catherine of Siena, "know thyself, know God" in Augustine and in the whole Socratic tradition taken up by the Fathers. This is no nineteenth-century novelty: it is the very structure of Christian spiritual knowledge.

Why our misery draws Love

The movement of divine Love towards human misery is not a painful condescension: it is its reason for acting. St. Thomas Aquinas establishes this in the Summa Theologiae with decisive precision when he asks utrum misericordia sit maxima virtutum — "whether mercy is the greatest of the virtues": he answers that it is "proper to God," and that divine omnipotence is manifested most highly in mercy, because "to show mercy is held to belong to God, and it is in this above all that his omnipotence is manifested"^[10].

St. Augustine had given the definition that marked Latin patristics: "what is mercy but a compassion of our heart for another's misery" (quid est autem misericordia nisi alienae miseriae quaedam in nostro corde compassio)^[11]. Scholasticism took up this analysis. Fr. d'Elbée retains it as his guiding image: "this word mercy — miseris cor dare — a heart that gives itself to the miserable, a heart that feeds on miseries by consuming them"^[12].

The consequence is paradoxical, but strictly deductive: the more miserable a soul is, the more it is a field of application for divine mercy. Words of Jesus to his confidants state this, at degrees of authority that must not be confused: St. Faustina, canonised in 2000, whose Diary nourishes a devotion approved by the Church; Sr. Josefa Menendez and Elisabeth Kindelmann, whose writings — authorised for circulation — belong to private revelations whose supernatural character has not been declared by the Church:

"Be at peace, my daughter; it is precisely through such misery that I want to show the power of my mercy." — Jesus to St. Faustina Kowalska, Diary, § 133^[13]

"Do you not know, Josefa, that the more miserable souls are, the more I love them! If, more than any other, you have ravished my Heart, it is because of your littleness and your misery." — Jesus to Sr. Josefa Menendez, An Appeal to Love, Work of the Sacred Heart^[14]

"I know your imperfection and your misery, my daughter. But this must not lessen your perseverance, for it is one more reason to rely on my love with greater abandonment." — Jesus to Elisabeth Kindelmann, The Flame of Love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary^[15]

Miseris cor dare: the pious gloss taken up by the saints

The same conviction is attested among the saints who were most deeply aware of their littleness. St. Faustina (1905-1938), apostle of Divine Mercy, prays in almost juridical terms:

"Whatever good I have in me is all yours, Lord. But because I am little and miserable, I have the right to rely on your infinite Mercy." — St. Faustina Kowalska, Diary, § 237^[16]

Mother Yvonne-Aimée of Malestroit (1901-1951), Augustinian religious and twentieth-century mystic, whose cause for beatification was introduced in the diocese of Vannes after her death^[17], writes in the same vein:

"It is because I am weak and nothing that he chose me, so that his mercy and his all-powerful goodness may be proclaimed aloud." — Mother Yvonne-Aimée of Malestroit, Écrits spirituels, François-Xavier de Guibert, 2011, p. 60^[18]

This logic of grace in inverse proportion to dignity is no sentimental invention. It reproduces exactly St. Paul's teaching: "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20) and "When I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10).

The direct consequence of this structure is that no reasonable limit can be set to Christian trust. If the object of trust were our dignity, our constancy or our merits, it would have to vary with our state. But its object is God himself, and God does not vary: "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16), in the eternal present.

As great as misery is deep

Fr. d'Elbée formulates this equivalence in terms that have become classic in twentieth-century French spirituality:

"…more than an immense trust, more than a mad trust: an entire trust — that is, a trust as great as one's weakness, as great as one's misery. Obviously, when one sees oneself so unworthy, so cowardly, falling at every instant, how can one not be tempted against trust? […] His merciful Love is without limits, his mercy is infinite. That is why you can and must live this doctrine, which opens the Kingdom of Heaven to the most miserable and the path of holiness to the poorest." — Fr. Jean d'Elbée, Croire à l'Amour, Téqui, 2007, pp. 54-55^[19]

The same measure is found, more briefly, in the prayer of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), who made it the matrix of her whole "little way":

"I feel that if, by some impossible thing, you found a soul weaker and littler than mine, you would delight in showering it with still greater favours, if it abandoned itself with entire trust to your infinite mercy." — St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript B, in Œuvres Complètes, Cerf/DDB, 2004, p. 232^[20]

For those who doubt, Marcel Van's Colloques — the account of a private revelation whose supernatural character has not been declared by the Church — report this dialogue attributed to Thérèse after her death. Van (1928-1959), a young Vietnamese Redemptorist religious whose cause for beatification was introduced in the diocese of Belley-Ars on 26 March 1997^[21], receives these words:

"Oh, dear little brother, how weak you are! But thanks to your weakness, you will be spoiled all the more, and you will receive greater marks of love." — St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus to Marcel Van, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, p. 121^[22]

Fr. d'Elbée's wager: "Provided you go to him"

The natural objection is: "this is too beautiful to be true." Fr. d'Elbée names it and answers it:

"There is something strange: even the most beautiful souls, who burn to be in the Heart of Jesus, refuse to believe that trust is the key that will open its door to them. […] How often I have been told: 'It is too beautiful to be true.' And I answer: 'Jesus paid dearly enough, at the price of all his blood, for the right to bring us on earth something that is too beautiful.' So what? He calls me as I am? I can go to him with all my miseries, my weaknesses? He will repair what I have done badly? He will supply for all my needs? Yes, provided you go to him, rely on him, expect everything from him […]" — Fr. Jean d'Elbée, Croire à l'Amour, Téqui, 2007, pp. 85-86^[23]

The condition is not prior perfection. It is a direction, a movement of going-towards, which supposes only the minimum of trust needed to decide to return.

"One sin of distrust offends more than a hundred sins of weakness"

The most striking criterion of this doctrine is the aphorism d'Elbée attributes to the shared experience of the saints:

"One sin of distrust offends and pains Jesus more than a hundred sins of weakness." — Fr. Jean d'Elbée, Croire à l'Amour, Téqui, 2007, p. 74^[24]

The statement is no rhetorical provocation. It describes the difference in nature between a fault of frailty (which wounds God but does not attack his Love) and a fault of distrust (which claims, in miniature, that God is not truly merciful). The first belongs to the flesh, the second to the spirit. St. Thomas Aquinas already distinguished this point clearly: despair is not the gravest of sins in itself — unbelief and hatred of God are graver — but it is the most dangerous for us (periculosior): "it is by hope that we are drawn back from evils" (quia per spem revocamur a malis); with hope removed, man rushes headlong into vices^[25].

It is in this sense that Jesus speaks in Marcel Van's Colloques:

"Never does sin offend my Love; there is absolutely nothing that offends my Love, except lack of trust in my Love." — Jesus to Marcel Van, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, p. 346^[26]

These words, as we shall see below, must be set in their precise context: they do not deny the objective gravity of mortal sin, but stress that it is the breaking of the relationship of trust that makes sin destructive, and not the material act alone.

The doctrinal testimony of Luisa Piccarreta on trusting souls

This same doctrine is confirmed by the writings of Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), Servant of God whose cause received the Nulla Osta of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in June 2024^[27]. On 10 April 1912, she receives these words of Jesus:

"My daughter, the souls that will shine brightest, like precious stones in the Crown of my Mercy, are the most trusting souls. For the more trusting they are, the more room they give my Mercy to pour into them all the graces it wills. On the other hand, souls that have no true trust sulk at my graces, remain poor and ill-equipped, while my Love stays withdrawn and suffers greatly. […] In short, trusting souls are those into whom I pour my Love most abundantly, those who receive the most graces and are the richest." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 11, 10 April 1912^[28]

The image — giving room to Mercy — expresses exactly the theological logic of grace: it is not conditioned by our dignity but by our openness, and trust is precisely what opens.

If trust is the condition for receiving God's Love, its opposite — distrust — is the first and gravest of spiritual faults. Catholic tradition identifies it as the root of original sin and the culminating point of opposition to God.

Adam: the first fear of God

The founding narrative is Genesis 3. After the sin, God calls man: "Adam, where are you?" (Gen 3:9). Instead of returning to him, Adam answers: "I heard your voice in the garden, I was afraid, and I hid" (Gen 3:10). This is not only shame at nakedness: it is, as Fr. d'Elbée stresses, the first act of distrust towards the God who comes seeking the sinner.

St. Bernard, commenting on the Song of Songs, teaches the rightful place of fear: God must be honoured as Father, feared as Lord, but loved as Bridegroom — and love prevails, for "fear is servile until love has set it free"^[29].

The Christian movement therefore does not consist in abolishing all fear — filial fear remains a gift of the Holy Spirit (Is 11:2; CCC § 1831) — but in passing from servile fear (fear of punishment) to filial fear (fear of wounding a beloved Father). The Catechism describes this passage in § 1828: the Christian animated by charity "no longer stands before God as a slave, in servile fear […] but as a son responding to love"^[30].

Judas: despair as the supreme refusal

The New Testament archetype of distrust is Judas, not so much because of his betrayal (Peter betrayed too) as because of his refusal to believe in forgiveness. St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Doctor of the Church, receives from the Eternal Father this decisive explanation:

"To judge your misery greater than my mercy — that is the sin that is forgiven neither in this world nor in the next. The soul has rejected, despised my mercy; and this sin is greater than all those it has committed. Judas's despair offended me more and was more painful to my Son than his very betrayal. Man is condemned above all for having falsely judged his sin greater than my mercy." — The Eternal Father to St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, chap. 37^[31]

This is exactly what the Catechism calls the sin against the Holy Spirit: "God's mercy knows no bounds but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss" (CCC § 1864)^[32]. The unforgivable sin is therefore not a sin God refuses to forgive: it is a sin that consists in refusing to let God forgive.

St. Catherine of Siena on the worst of sins

Catherine's analysis is confirmed throughout the spiritual tradition. St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church, describes the same mechanism in his Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ: the devil drives the soul now to presumption, now to despair; after a fall, he suggests distrust to rob it of its trust, and it is this lost trust that opens the door to further falls^[33].

Distrust is therefore not only one sin among others: it prepares and precipitates all the others. This is exactly the dynamic St. Catherine of Siena describes when she writes that the first fall, in itself, is never what loses the soul — it is the refusal to rise again that loses it.

The major cause of distrust, in the spiritual tradition's analysis, is not moral perversity: it is an intellectual error about the face of God. Before one can trust in God, one must know who he is.

The "tragic misunderstanding" according to Fr. d'Elbée

Fr. d'Elbée speaks of a "tragic misunderstanding between God and us": we project onto God our own mechanisms — anger at offence, distance at disappointment, rejection at contempt — whereas God is precisely the One whose Love does not work according to these human logics. St. John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars (1786-1859), patron of priests, formulates this error with his peasant sobriety:

"There are those who give the Eternal Father a hard heart. Oh! How mistaken they are! The Eternal Father, to disarm his justice, gave his Son a heart excessively good: one does not give what one does not have." — St. John Mary Vianney, Pensées, Artège, 2015, pp. 10-11^[34]

The argument is strictly theological: if the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and if the Heart of the Son is manifestly overflowing with tenderness for sinners (the pardoned sinful woman, the good thief, the return of the prodigal son, the penitent Mary Magdalene), then the Father too is such. God does not have two faces.

The Curé of Ars and divine mercy in parish ministry

The Curé of Ars's ministry (in his last years, he spent up to sixteen to eighteen hours a day in the confessional) is inseparable from this conviction. His most quoted saying sums up the experience:

"The good God awaits us in prayer as a good mother awaits her child; he receives us with love. […] Our Lord is always there, in the tabernacle; he waits for us to come and visit him." — St. John Mary Vianney, Catéchismes, in Pensées, Artège, 2015^[35]

The Curé of Ars was canonised in 1925 and proclaimed patron of the world's parish priests by Pius XI^[36]. His pastoral practice is the direct application of the doctrine of trust.

The dialogue between Marcel Van and Jesus on souls' fear

The mystical dialogue between Marcel Van and Jesus, dated to the years 1942-1946, extends this analysis with particular explicitness. Van, a Vietnamese Redemptorist religious (who died in captivity in the Yên Bình camp in 1959), asks why so many souls fear God while he himself experiences Jesus as unreserved sweetness:

"How is it that I hear certain brothers say they are greatly afraid of you? Little Jesus, what then is your conduct towards other souls, that they should be so afraid of you? For if you acted with them as with me, I wonder who could still be afraid of you, since you are so good, so gentle, finding pleasure only in loving. […] You have never scolded me, and yet there are souls who fear you. Is it because you treat each soul differently?" — Marcel Van to Jesus, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, pp. 126-127^[37]

Jesus answers at length, and this passage is among the most meditated in contemporary spirituality:

"Yes, Marcel, it is indeed strange. I myself find it strange, and I do not understand why so many souls fear me thus. They are so afraid that they do not even dare open their mouths to address a word of friendship to me. Yet I behave towards these souls just as towards yourself. […] They are afraid because they are willing to be afraid, for I do nothing that could frighten anyone. And if ever my love wished to sow terror among men, it would no longer deserve the name of Love. If, in the presence of love, these souls continue to fear, it is because, for them, my love is not love." — Jesus to Marcel Van, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, pp. 127-128^[38]

The diagnosis is moral as much as theological: fear of God, when it is not filial fear, is really a defect of love. He who loves does not fear — this is precisely the doctrine of St. John's first epistle: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" (1 Jn 4:18).

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the emergence of a constellation of mystics who pass on this doctrine with particular intensity. Fr. d'Elbée speaks of the "little apostles of merciful Love." None of these names stands alone: they form a spiritual chain in which each explicitly refers to the others.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), the little way

A Carmelite of Lisieux who died at 24, a Doctor of the Church since 1997^[39], Thérèse Martin formulated in terms of spiritual childhood the doctrine of trust as direct access to holiness. Her little way — a term she herself uses in Manuscript C — rests on the conviction that the littlest souls can attain the greatest graces if they abandon themselves without reserve.

On her deathbed in 1897, she writes to Abbé Bellière:

"The good God is far better than we think." — St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter to Abbé Bellière, 21 June 1897 (LT 247)^[40]

And in a letter of 17 September 1896 to her sister Marie:

"[…] the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more suited one is for the workings of this consuming and transforming Love. […] It is trust and nothing but trust that must lead us to Love…" — St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter to Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart, 17 September 1896 (LT 197)^[41]

Her doctrine was officially taken up by John Paul II in the apostolic letter Divini amoris scientia of 19 October 1997, on her proclamation as Doctor: "Thérèse of Lisieux made the science of divine love shine forth"^[42].

Sr. Benigna Consolata Ferrero (1885-1916)

An Italian Visitation religious who died at 31 in Como, Benigna Consolata Ferrero is less well known but is explicitly designated by Jesus, in the writings attributed to her, as an "apostle of my mercy." The words she receives sum up the whole doctrine:

"You are the apostle of God's mercy. […] Write, then, my Benigna, that the chief thing I desire to be known is that I am all love, and that the greatest pain that can be given to my Heart is to doubt my goodness." — Jesus to Sr. Benigna Consolata Ferrero, messages of 25 October and 27 May 1915^[43]

According to Marcel Van's Colloques, Jesus asks Van to do "the same work as Sr. Benigna"^[44].

Sr. Josefa Menendez (1890-1923)

A Spanish religious of the Sacred Heart who died at 33 in Poitiers, Josefa Menendez received during the last four years of her life a series of communications from Jesus, published under the title An Appeal to Love^[45]. The book, published in 1938, was very widely circulated^[46].

Among the most quoted words:

"Let the sight of your misery strengthen you in humility, but never let it touch your trust." — Jesus to Sr. Josefa Menendez, An Appeal to Love, p. 408^[47]

"Let them never forget that I preferred them to so many others, not because of their perfection, but because of their misery… I am all Love, and the fire that consumes me consumes all their weaknesses." — Jesus to Sr. Josefa Menendez, An Appeal to Love, p. 238^[48]

St. Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), Divine Mercy

A Polish religious of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, canonised by John Paul II on 30 April 2000^[49], Faustina is the great apostle of Divine Mercy in the twentieth century. Her Diary (1934-1938), published in full in 1981 after the lifting in 1978 of the Holy Office Notification of 1959^[50], has become one of the most widely read spiritual writings in the contemporary Catholic world.

"O Jesus, when I consider the gift of your Blood, I rejoice in its priceless worth, for one drop would have sufficed for all sinners. […] That is why every soul must trust in the Lord's Passion, trust in his mercy. God refuses his forgiveness to no one. Heaven and earth may change, but God's Mercy will never be exhausted." — St. Faustina Kowalska, Diary, § 72^[51]

The venerated image of Christ — "Jesus, I trust in You" (Jezu, ufam Tobie) — painted after Faustina's visions by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski in 1934 and now displayed in the Vilnius shrine, sums up in a single formula the whole of this spirituality: trust as the simplest and most radical act of the soul.

Marcel Van (1928-1959), the "little brother"

A Vietnamese Redemptorist religious who died in captivity in the Yên Bình camp in 1959, Marcel Van carried on from the age of 17 a mystical dialogue with Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and Thérèse of Lisieux. A Servant of God, his cause for beatification was introduced in the diocese of Belley-Ars in 1997^[52]; beyond this established fact, neither a formal recognition of the supernatural character nor a Roman position on his writings is attested by any verifiable source.

His spirituality is exactly that of Thérèse of Lisieux, from whom he says he receives his spiritual mission: the "little way," trust, an intense consciousness of his weakness, a childlike dialogue with Jesus. It is in the Colloques that some of the most striking words on God's Love are found, notably those quoted below on the mystery of hell.

Fr. Jean d'Elbée and doctrinal transmission

Fr. Jean of the Heart of Jesus d'Elbée is the one who synthesises and passes on this spirituality in his book Croire à l'Amour, published in 1969 by Téqui and reissued many times (reference edition: Téqui, 2007), translated into English as I Believe in Love (Sophia Institute Press, 2001).

D'Elbée never presents himself as a mystic but as a transmitter. He quotes abundantly from Thérèse of Lisieux, Faustina, Josefa Menendez, Catherine of Siena, the Curé of Ars. For the twentieth-century French-speaking Catholic public, he accomplished the doctrinal synthesis of trust^[53].

The doctrine of trust, pushed to its extreme, meets the most difficult objection: how to reconcile God's infinite Love with the reality of hell? If Love is without limits, how can souls be lost? The spirituality of trust does not deny hell — the Church professes its reality and eternity since the Firmiter symbol of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), and the Catechism recalls them (§§ 1033-1037)^[54] — but it proposes a particular reading of it, holding together human freedom and the fidelity of divine Love.

The trust of which the devil must despair

The central passage is a long dialogue of Jesus with Marcel Van, in which Jesus specifies the conditions of damnation:

"Little brother, you are right to think so, but unfortunately men do not understand it. If men could understand that Love loves them infinitely, there is not one soul that would fall into hell. Truly, the devil has no power to snatch a soul from my hands; all he can do is bring men to fall into sin. However, if a soul no longer trusts in my infinite love, then naturally it is very easy for the devil to seize that soul." — Jesus to Marcel Van, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, p. 345^[55]

Jesus goes further:

"Love loves infinitely, it is infinitely just. […] A single glance of trust cast upon me suffices to snatch sinful souls from the devil's claws. Even if a soul were already at the gate of hell, awaiting its last breath to fall into it, if in that last breath there is the slightest degree of trust in my infinite Love, that will still be enough for my Love to draw that soul into the arms of the Trinity; that is why I say it can be very easy for men to ascend to heaven, while it can be very difficult and even infinitely difficult for them to fall into hell; for Love can never bear that a soul should be lost so easily." — Jesus to Marcel Van, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, pp. 346-347^[56]

In summary of this dialogue of the Colloques: even the devil should despair of a soul in which the word "trust" still subsists^[57]. The mechanism is strictly theological: grace does not impose itself, it is received; trust is the act by which the soul opens itself to grace; as long as there is trust, there is openness, and as long as there is openness, infinite Love can save.

Mary to Marcel Van: God never uses harsh words

In another passage of the Colloques, from the same period, the Virgin Mary explains to Marcel Van why God never acts with harshness, even towards the devil:

"God in three persons is truly an infinitely good Father […]. You must know that your true Father hates nothing but sin, not sinners; that is why he shows himself truly good towards the devil. Yet, with regard to his sin, he must act according to justice. […] My child, never, absolutely never do I speak to the devil harshly. Likewise, the Trinity never uses harsh words when speaking to the devil. The devil is truly worthy of pity, but since he will never accept that pity, he will have to suffer thus eternally." — The Virgin Mary to Marcel Van, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, pp. 357-358^[58]

This passage is among the most demanding to receive. It denies nothing of the Catholic doctrine of the eternity of hell: it proposes a reading in which the eternity of torment is the eternal echo of the damned soul's free refusal, not the effect of a vengeful God. Classical theology had formulated it differently: poena damni (pain of loss, privation of God) and poena sensus (pain of sense) flow from the will's definitive turning away from God, not from an added punishment. The boundary is clear: one must neither pray for the devil nor harbour a dangerous pity for him — compassion before the mystery of this eternal refusal changes nothing about the eternity of that refusal.

Hell remains eternal by free refusal, not by lack of Love

This reading conforms to the magisterial teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which stresses in § 1033 that "to die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice"^[59]. And in § 1037: "God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end"^[60].

Hell therefore exists — the doctrine is clear and magisterially defined — but its ultimate cause is never God's lack of Love: it lies in the voluntary refusal to believe in the Love that forgives, and in persisting in that refusal to the end.

The doctrine of trust extends this intuition to its furthest consequences: if the soul's loss depends not on material sin but on the voluntary refusal to believe in the Love that forgives, then as long as an act of trust remains, a way back remains.

Pastoral caution: words to pass on with discernment

Jesus himself, in the Colloques, warns Marcel Van that these words cannot be addressed to everyone indiscriminately:

"However, little brother, these words must not be made known to all souls indiscriminately; it must be done with prudence, lest certain souls, knowing this, harden themselves in evil, only to lose trust in me afterwards and have no trust left." — Jesus to Marcel Van, Colloques, Amis de Van, 2017, p. 347^[61]

The warning is doctrinally important. It echoes the pastoral rule of the Catechism, which recalls that preaching on mercy must not soften preaching on the gravity of sin. Otherwise the discourse of trust becomes what the older theologians called presumption (CCC § 2092): the inverted form of despair, in which the soul counts on divine mercy without conversion or effort^[62].

The criterion of discernment is therefore this: to whom are we speaking? To a scrupulous soul, paralysed by fear, that no longer dares to pray after each fall, we must repeat with d'Elbée that "one sin of distrust offends more than a hundred sins of weakness." To a presumptuous soul, that permits itself sin because "God forgives everything," we must repeat with St. Paul: "shall we sin that grace may abound? By no means!" (Rom 6:1-2). Both discourses are true; they are not addressed to the same souls.

Maintaining the doctrine of purgatory within the spirituality of trust is what prevents tipping into spiritual laxity. If hell remains hard to reach while trust endures, purgatory, for its part, is rigorously certain for all who have not completed their purification on earth.

St. Thomas: "the pain of purgatory exceeds every pain of this life"

St. Thomas Aquinas establishes, in his Commentary on the Sentences, that the least pain of purgatory surpasses the greatest pain of this life:

"The least pain of Purgatory surpasses the greatest pain of this life." — St. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis, book IV, distinction 21, question 1, article 1, quaestiuncula 3^[63]

The Thomist argument is rigorous: punishment is proportioned to the gravity of the disorder, and every unpurified venial sin constitutes an objective disorder in the divine order. St. Augustine had already affirmed this in the Enarrationes in Psalmos: "That fire will be more terrible than anything man can suffer in this life"^[64].

Denis the Carthusian and the testimony of the departed

Denis the Carthusian (1402-1471), Rhineland theologian regarded as one of the great representatives of late Carthusian mysticism, teaches in his treatise De quatuor hominis novissimis ("On the four last things," art. 53) that, compared with the least pain of purgatory, all the torments of this world are as consolations^[65].

The mystical tradition has multiplied converging visions and testimonies: St. Catherine of Genoa in her Treatise on Purgatory (fifteenth century), St. Faustina in her Diary (visions of purgatory), Maria Simma in the twentieth century (testimonies whose local ecclesial reception remains to be documented)^[66]. All describe a real, intense and painful purification, because it is imperfection itself that is consumed.

The Catholic balance: trust and conversion

Catholic doctrine therefore holds, without contradiction, two apparently opposed affirmations:

1. God's Love is without limits, and every sinner can be forgiven if he keeps the faintest spark of trust until his last breath.
2. Every soul must nevertheless be purified, and what has not been purified on earth by penance, confession, prayer and charity will have to be purified in purgatory, in a pain surpassing every earthly pain.

These two truths do not conflict: the first describes the object of our trust (God's Love); the second describes the effort of conversion that this very trust engenders. True trust never defuses penance; it makes penance possible, by freeing the soul from the paralysis of fear. Fr. d'Elbée sums up this balance in an instruction addressed to his retreatants:

"Think of your past faults to humble yourselves, to convince yourselves still more of your weakness, of your unworthiness; to be glad to make expiation, to confirm your firm resolve not to fall again; yes, this must be done — but above all to bless Jesus for having forgiven you." — Fr. Jean d'Elbée, Croire à l'Amour, Téqui, 2007, pp. 29-30^[67]

The spirituality of trust finds its densest mystical formulation in St. Angela of Foligno (c. 1248-1309), Franciscan tertiary. Converted around the age of 40 after a worldly life, she received over the following twenty years a series of visions and instructions that form one of the summits of medieval Christian mysticism, whose French translation by Ernest Hello (1868) carried its modern rediscovery^[68].

Her formulation of the double abyss synthesises the whole teaching:

"O perfection of knowledge! O God! when the soul plunges into the bottomless abyss of the divine height — which I blaspheme if I name it — when the soul plunges into the abyss of its unworthiness, of its vileness, of its sin, when the soul sees the most high God become the friend, the brother, the victim of the sinner, shedding for this miserable one, in an infamous death, his precious blood — the more deeply it plunges its gaze into the double abyss, the more deeply is realised, in the innermost of its being, the mystery of love, the sacred transformation. […] Yes, yes, again and always, the more deeply the soul knows this divine height, this infinite goodness, proven by facts, and this human emptiness, this ingratitude, this vileness of the creature, the more deeply it is wounded with love and sorrow, the more wholly it is transformed into Him. Here is all perfection: to know oneself! to know God! Supreme necessity that rules over every necessity! To remain eternally bent over the double abyss — that is my secret!" — St. Angela of Foligno, The Book of Visions and Instructions, chapter 57^[69]

Three points must be noted:

1. The "sacred transformation" — in Ernest Hello's translation — designates mystical union, deification in the sense of the Greek Fathers and of Cabasilas. It is the goal of the double abyss, not merely a stage.
2. "Infinite goodness, proven by facts": Angela proposes no spirituality of ideas but of historical experience. The facts are the Incarnation, the Cross, the Eucharist. The whole spirituality of trust is rooted in the historical reality of God's gift.
3. Angela's "secret" is no technique but a stable posture: "remaining eternally bent." Trust is not a single act but a permanent state, to be resumed at every instant.

Seven centuries later, Fr. d'Elbée sums up the same intuition in a more concise formula: our trust in God's Love can be infinite, because it rests not on us and our merits, but on God's Love, which is infinite^[70].

Going further in Via Divina — This synthesis condenses the matter of a course from the free Via Divina formation on the roots of the spiritual life: the "double abyss" of our nothingness and of God's Love. To enter the complete version, with its five courses on God's infinite Love and its two courses on humility and trust in the face of sin: open the Via Divina course.

• Knowledge of man's nothingness, which produces humility — the first abyss, root of all spiritual life.
• God's infinite Love in the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy — the Marian and Christological preaching of mercy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• The double abyss: knowledge of self and knowledge of God — the spiritual structure of the "double abyss" in the mystical tradition.
• Using humility and trust to change our view of our sins — the following course, extending the practical application.
• The necessity of humility and the danger of pride — the other spiritual root, without which trust degenerates into presumption.