St. Ignatius
Loyola, in his "Rules for Discerning Spirits," borrowed no doubt from
the current mystical theology of his day, makes this absence of any
suggested object a criterion of "consolation" coming from God alone--a
criterion always difficult to apply owing to the lightning subtlety of
thoughts that flash across the soul and are forgotten even while their
emotional reverberation yet remains. Where there was a preceding thought
to account for the emotion, he held that the "consolation" might be the
work of spirits (good or evil) who could not influence the will
directly, but only indirectly through the mind; or else it might be the
work of the mind itself, whose thoughts often seem to us abrupt through
mere failure of self-observation.
Normally what is known as an "actual grace" involves both an
illustration of the mind, and an enkindling of the will; but though
supernatural, such graces are not held to be miraculous or
preternatural, or to break the usual psychological laws of cause and
effect; like the ordinary answers to prayer, they are from God's
ordinary providence in that supernatural order which permeates but does
not of itself interfere with the natural.
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