Mariette in Ecstasy

Ron Hansen

You are not the first young nun to tell me such things. Especially now in the infancy of your religious vocation, Satan will be tempting you in a hundred ways. When you see Christ or hear Him, you must be mistrusting and wary, for Christ is a Word that does not give voice to the ear but goes directly into the mind. Jesus does not usually speak; Jesus performs and inspires. Also, He does not make Himself present to our human sense but in the holy desires of the will. Jesus impresses His form upon our soul and fills the heart with joy.

Christ said, "You will grow hard, Mariette. You will find yourself afflicted and empty adn tempted, adn all your body's senses will revolt and become like wolves. Each of the world's tawdry pleasures will invade your sleep. Your memories will be sad and persistent. Everything that is contrary to God will be in your sight and thinking, and all that is of and from God you'll no longer feel. I shall not offer comfort at such times, but I shall not cease to understand you. I shall allow Satan to harshly attack your soul, and he will plant a great hatred of prayer in your heart, and a hundred evil thoughts in your mind, and terror of him will never leave you.
"You will have no solace or pity, not even from your superiors. You will be tortured by gross outrages and mistreatment, but no one will believe you. You will be punished and humbled and greatly confused, and Heaven will seem closed to you, God will seem dead and indifferent, you will try to be recollected, but instead be distracted, you will try to pray and your thoughts will fly, you will seek me fruitlessly and without avail for I shall hide in noise and shadows and I shall seem to withdraw when you need me most. Everyone will seem to abandon you. Confession will seem tedious, Communion stale and unprofitable; you will practice each daily exercise of worship and devotion, but all through necessity, as if you stood outside yourself and hated what you'd become. And yet you will believe, Mariette, but as if you did not believe; you will always hope, but as if you did not hope; you will love your Savior, but as if you did not love him, because in this time your true feelings will fail you, you will be tired of life and afraid of death, and you will not even have the relief of being able to weep."

God sometimes wants our desire for a religious vocation but not the deed itself.

Hansen is not the best writer. I don't even think he's a good writer. He has his moments, but there are also those times when he drags and tumbles along with horrible prose--something I am guilty of myself. But whatever his mechanical failings, the story of Mariette in Ecstasy is wonderfully thought out. I admire Hansen's discipline in holding back from fact--sometimes I wish he had had a trifle more. The story of this stigmata, real or feigned, is worthwhile.
Hansen forces you, especially if you are a Christian, to face the reality of a relationship with this being we call Jesus Christ--God. This relationship can be nothing less than a love-affair.
Mariette acts out a love-affair with Christ, often this is described in physical terms that will make you squirm. It sounds weird when you hear someone talk about Jesus as if he were a lover of your body as well as your soul. I meant lover with every dripping connotation it has.
And where there is physicality there must also be pain. In Mariette's case, there is so very much of it. I don't know what to think about this story. The first quote above has as its antidote the last quote above. In between is the promise of the pain. I don't know which way we wander through this story, whether we start with the last quote and proceed to the first or if it is the opposite. Whatever the case, it will make you think about love and pain and faith.
Oscar Wilde said in De Profundis, "Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation for the extraordinary amount of suffering there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul."
How should we go with this? How far are you willing to go?