Deep down, nervousness is a
form of psychological masochism.[1]
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
[1] 13-9-74.
In This Chapter
Dr. Plinio analyzes confidence as a voice of God that makes itself heard within us. It is a word of certainty and truth that reassures us.
The voice of confidence never lies. Its opposite is distrust, formed by rivers of corrosive and effervescent waters.
When Providence wants something, It accomplishes it even against all hope and all appearances.
Our Lady of Confidence
Confidence and Tranquility
We do not like confusion, which plunges us into perplexity, torments and distresses us. We want certainty, direction, and closure, and confusion creates conditions where certainties, directions and closure become elusive, hence our perplexity and anguish. When confusion presents itself, the time comes no longer for a light but for an inner word. In our predicament, this single word is the opposite of confusion and anguish: confidence!
An inner voice often heals our wounds, as if telling us, “Have confidence; the winds and the sea obey Him.”[1] And so, various anguishes and perplexities in our souls are immediately placated. One has the impression of waking up from a nightmare, and one realizes that the outlook of things and the strangulation of which we were victims were not as severe as we had imagined.
Then one understands that Someone who never lies promised us inside our soul, in a way that no one hears, that He will do something calming for us. This promise brings an absolute truth that nothing can break. When strangulation returns and confusion again manifests itself, we will know the promise will be reborn in our souls as we interiorly hear the word “confidence.” And so we understand that the Mother of God had said something within our souls. She does what she says: She promises confidence and gives it. This confidence is not founded on external things but has the seal of truth: In her word, I believed that because she is the Mother of God, I forge ahead without arguing but confiding.
In the Silence of Hearts
The Book of Confidence, by Fr. Thomas de Saint Laurent,[2] begins with thus: “O Voice of Christ, mysterious voice of grace that resoundeth in the silence of our souls, Thou murmurest in the depths of our hearts words of sweetness and peace.” Sometimes, these words say nothing, but at other times, they convey this impression: ‘All right, while everything is incongruous, in my mind, I can hear a word being uttered which has a fullness of certainty and truth that reassures my soul, making it understand that I must go forward and that somehow the problem will be solved. Walls will be pierced, flagstones will be crosses, and spaces will be transposed as I march toward the stupid and absurd, but something will be resolved.
This inner word is neither a light nor appears bright and luminous. It does not result from something we saw outside but is gratuitously spoken to us within our soul. It is a confidence that enters and operates in us the act of confiding: it says confidence and makes us confide. And we confidently move forward, convinced that we are doing something rational. Indeed, it is the most logical thing, for we are heeding the voice of God being heard within us.
We are the blessed ones to whom God does not speak only through the outer ear but also internally, within the soul. We follow this word and move along with it. This provides confidence even amid confusion.
Anxiety, Nervousness and Confidence
Psychologically speaking, something incredible happens in everyday temptations of anguish caused by the hellish confusion of our day: the person often does not want to get rid of the anxiety but prefers to keep it. When one begins to prove to him that he does not have to be distressed, he starts fighting like a child from whom you are trying to take the candy; he does everything to defend his anguish.
A man under assault by nervousness may not want his anguish to be taken away but rather to stay in it. He is tempted by a kind of masochism, with which he tears himself up inwardly in a thousand ways. This state does not correspond to the mentality of an inmate in a prison who wants to be break free by all means. Instead, in this case, he wants to remain in jail and attacks anyone seeking to get him out of there. He becomes impatient and screams when you try to free him. He has turned his back to confidence and is looking to despair; he may have an appetite for despair.
Therefore, he is not led to utter the word confidence but mistrust. He engenders it torrentially: rivers of mistrust converge into corrosive and effervescent waters. We can imagine a river of sulfuric acid where a person plunges into a festival of self-destruction without any delight.
Nervousness, Usually a Perversion
People with the defect of nervousness existed at all times, but they were exceptions within the history of moral defects because men still had not deteriorated to habitually wishing for such an absurdity. With mankind’s decadence—much more a violation of the First Commandment than the others—perversions like this appeared and became a general rule. Deep down, nervousness is a form of psychological masochism. Imagine a person who tends to break his fingers and needs them put into a cast so he won’t hurt them. What judgment could we make of him? [3]
Nervousness disappears when confidence takes over the reins of behavior. The person calms down, all his lucid sides take over the upper part of his soul, and his sickly sides are cast aside, meaning that lucidity has won.
Confidence Has the Holy Ghost’s Characteristic Operations
Three elements characterize the operations of the Holy Spirit in the soul: His action is sudden and unexpected, efficacious, and bears good fruits.
This inner word, confidence, generally comes when you least expect it. Sometimes, it’s just a prayer, and the person comes out reassured. It is sudden and not produced by anything within us, for we will never be able to come up with such a word ourselves. It suddenly tells us, “Confide!” and we really confide.
It is an efficacious word that produces the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The soul is disposed to all acts of virtue and correspondence to grace. It becomes articulate, flexible, and cheerful toward good. It could be said that it was healed. Even more, it was disinfested; Angels entered and changed it. Confidence is a word that makes its meaning come true.
Our Lord said: ‘By their fruits, you will know them.’ [4] Confidence works in us all the fruits characteristic of the Holy Spirit’s action: a propensity for faith, piety, self-denial, renunciation, heroism, and order—connaturality with everything concerning the Church and easy renunciation of things that do not. Distrust operates precisely the opposite, point by point.
Once, a great desert saint was very tempted against purity. He fought as hard as he could. Finally, some light entered the cave; the demon left, and he felt flooded with light. Then he asked God:
“Where were You, Lord, while your servant was fighting?”
God answered:
“I was deep in your soul, resisting.”
Paris, graffiti made during the May 1968 unrest
Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible!
During the Sorbonne upheaval (1968), some students (with their French talent, even when defending the worst causes) posted this motto at the university: “Be realistic, demand the impossible.”
Faced with this motto, as with many creations of the French spirit, people are divided into two families of souls: Those with a geometrical spirit are against such a statement because demanding the impossible is utopian and, therefore, absurd. But people with a fine spirit understand that it purposely contains a kind of aberrant contradiction. Impossible here is a word that is psychologically between quotation marks.
In other words, there are a thousand things mediocre individuals find impossible and really are impossible for them. But they are not impossible for those with an integral sense of reality. These understand that mediocre horizons are limited and circumscribed and that most men are easily discouraged in the face of things they call impossible but are not.
Those who travel to Barcelona can visit reproductions of the three ships of Christopher Columbus. Exaggerating a little, they are nut shells in which you would be afraid to cross a small dam’s lake. Yet they came to America. Precisely when a revolt was brewing on board under the pretext that they never got anywhere, someone shouted: “Land sighted!” It was precisely when the “impossible” (in quotation marks, for the mediocre) had become possible.
This is a natural fact, but it is much more beautiful and rich on the supernatural side. The riches are this: We know that when Providence wants something, It accomplishes it against all hope and all appearances. What even great men find impossible is possible for Our Lady because Her prayer is omnipotent before God, from Whom She obtains everything that may exist in God’s designs.
Copy of the ship Santa Maria in the port of Barcelona in 1950
The Voice of Confidence Never Lies
When one is led to believe that the voice of confidence has lied, he must not think it, for the voice of confidence never lies but always does what it promises.
Sometimes, we are filled with the sand of aridity, isolation, incomprehension, boredom, and the feeling of standing before a wall. That is when it is the case to say: gaude et lætare! [5] Rejoice! Let us rejoice because the best way seems to be a closed alley with no way out. In the spiritual field, therein lies an explanation for this part of the motto: demand the impossible. It will come to us if we keep our gaze on Our Lady. [6]
Someone may ask: How can I know if this inner voice of the soul is not an illusion? How can I discern this movement of the soul from an imagination or impression that arose in my mind?
These are impalpable things, but everything spiritual deals with impalpable factors. We have to check it with the ways grace works in us. If our inner movement moves in the direction of grace, we can confide in it. And so, through a play of impalpables, we can fully be sure of our path.[7]
When we have an interior movement and perceive that heeding it will lead us to virtue, we must find that, very likely, this inner movement corresponds to something from grace. On the contrary, it leads us to distance ourselves from virtue, and we must take it for granted that it distances us from the ways of God. Therefore, it is false, and we cannot trust it.
Notes:
[1] Lk, 8:25.
[2] Fr. Raymond Thomas de Saint Laurent, The Book of Confidence, American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), 2015, p. ?
[3] 9-13-74.
[4] Mt. 7, 16-20.
[5] Rejoice and be glad: from the Regina Cœli hymn.
[6] 8-3-68.
[7] 8-7-71.