Simone Pacot, who references Daniel Bourguet, wrote a series of books on the theme of “Evangelizing the depths,” the title of the first in the series. (Amazon link here.) She used the title as an alternative to the idea of inner healing, seeing the application of the gospel to what she calls the “deep heart” as the best way to say how real change comes. There is a commonality of background theology with DB, so translation of this first book worked alongside the project of translating DB, an adjunct to it. The books are precious to me as translator, hence their prominence on the DB website; part of the intention is to bring out the themes common to the two authors. SP’s four books, in their French titles, are L’évangélization des profundeurs, Reviens à la vie, Ose la vie nouvelle, and Ouvrir à l’Esprit. The following attempts to provide a glimpse of what they say, but since only the first volume is available in translation, that is where the focus is; the three other volumes have all been translated and it is hoped to publish them soon.
In her prologue, Pacot explains briefly how she found herself and her vocation. She was a lawyer (and continued with a successful career in law), but a lawyer of faith, a faith which was her priority. She describes, however, encountering an impasse in her life which her faith as it then stood was unable to overcome. She needed, she discovered, to take her own inner world, her psychological constitution more seriously, since, as we find in a biography (in French) by Luc Weizmann entitled simply Simone Pacot, there had been considerable unresolved childhood issues of identity. As she did this, there came a “great reestablishment of order and meaning,” then enabling her faith to become “more true, alive, deeply rooted and also more humble.” She seems to have subsequently worked with a number of those in the psychology field, further integrating insights that lead to more precise applications of the gospel to deep needs. I think the following, which starts with a quotation from Xavier Thevenot, is a very good take on the appropriate role of psychology:
“Spiritual laws never oppose psychological laws. We can say rather that they assume them. However, their focus is not the same, and the spiritual cannot be reduced to the psychological.” They are wider in scope and their goal is different. Spiritual law goes beyond psychological law and gives it direction, its goal, but it cannot do away with with, extinguish, ignore or deny the psychological function.
My thought is that the notion that spiritual laws assume psychological laws is very pertinent; the point being that the latter cannot just be left as assumed but need to be unfolded from a spiritual perspective, which is the way Pacot works. In subsequent volumes, Pacot identifies 5 laws of life, which if transgressed lead to poor function, to loss, to death; essentially, to not living as a fully accepted and loved child of God; thus, psychological wounding is best approached through the spiritual. Starting always with biblical passages, in this first volume, Pacot looks at a number of deep needs, and, as a link to DB, always with a view to the integration of the whole being, being whole, which is a theme commonly found in DB’s looks at monasticism, where one meaning of the word ‘monk’ is ‘to be one.’ To touch on another point of commonality with DB, Pacot speaks frequently about union and communion but ‘without fusion.’ Evidently, to quote Bob Ekblad on the back cover of our English translation, this is reading ‘for anyone interested in holistic personal transformation’; Pacot is a deep inward dive, always as conducted by the Holy Spirit. I’m going to quote Daniel here, from his book on Ascetism:
From the moment we are aware that God is not in us and that we are not in God, we find that we are sick. Since this concerns the core of our lives, our love for God and for others, we discover the extreme necessity there is that we be treated, the extreme necessity of coming before Christ and saying to him, “Lord, heal me!”
This is very much in line with Pacot’s approach, which is to call on her reader to open up entirely to the Holy Spirit, allowing him a free hand in all our inner difficulties. This is a constant theme that finds its fullest expression in Ouvrir à l’Esprit, but here it is as expressed in the first volume:
“The Spirit is the secret God, the interior God, deeper than our deepest depth.” Essentially it is the function of the Holy Spirit, who is given us by the Father, to help us pursue this immersion, into the shadows as well as the light, into the very heart of our being . . . The first act of setting our feet on the way, the first step, is to place total confidence in the wisdom and power of the Spirit; that is, that we abandon the form of healing we had anticipated, ceasing to be fixated on some precise outcome and give our full agreement to him working freely. (p.37)
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Moving now to look specifically at the contents of Evangelizing the Depths, I will try to give a taste.
The central or framing scriptural passage is John 5: 1–18, the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda. Here, SP is particularly interested in two facets: firstly, the question “Do you wish to be well,” and then the phrase or fact that he “took up his bed” and walked.
She begins therefore with motivation and an inward look. The first step towards healing where there is paralysis is just this, to look in. The man’s first response to Jesus had been in essence to complain and blame others, but the Lord has him question himself; what does he find within? This, then, is the starting point of SP’s methodology, if there can be said to be such a thing. Typified in a good number of individual sketches, people would come with seemingly intractable problems. Assuming that, because a therapeutic process has begun, the person has also begun to open the door to Jesus, there is some preparedness because there is less fear to go further within, and so it becomes possible to look for problem areas. SP then identifies some of these: not dealing with wounds; fusion with others and thus not forming a proper identity; confusion, with the loss of clear boundaries; and covetousness, wanting something inappropriate. Many times, harmful vows are uncovered, which, with other matters, will readily be recognized by those with some familiarity with psychotherapy as sort of standard; there is likewise a discussion of “the will of God” which leads at times into something recognizable in psychological terms as existential therapy. (I am making this point about psychology because, speaking as a qualified “counsellor” much of the material is very practical in this area in a way which helps a Christian counsellor bypass while acknowledging secular methodologies.) At all points, in contrast to psychology per se, SP is carefully referring to Christ. The second step, once the inner springs of the person have been touched, is to ‘take up your bed and walk.’ This means that they are not simply walking away from their problem (leaving the bed of paralysis behind) but taking responsibility, recognizing that difficulties will be ongoing but now in a different form, with Jesus involved. SP does not typically refer to instant healings but to walking out a process, now undergirded by the word of God; eg “his depressions became less frequent and ceased completely after some months.”
When the Spirit enables us to understand the word in its true meaning and in his strength, we become able to choose, to renounce transgression in favor of life; then too we receive our answer. In all such processes the answer has to do with recovered freedom. We are no longer bound, and our freedom is functional.
Within this general modus operandi, SP discusses, as a further example, the parable of the prodigal son. Here we read:
We have already marveled, as we meditated on the text on the healing of the infirm man at Bethesda, at the revelation that even if we are still far, very far away, the love of God is searching for us, waiting, watching for the slightest sign of an opening. We know now that whatever our condition, in his grace, we can always rise up and make our way back towards the Father. Even if the action we take seems insignificant, it is enough to set us on the way of resurrection (John 5:7; 11:41). It is not our place to look after pigs, nor to be hired workers; through Christ we are sons and daughters of God. We are cared for, informed, forgiven, comforted. We have nothing more to do than open our heart to initiate a feast, to receive the insignia of a son, the robes of a distinguished guest, the ring — the family seal, and the sandals, the sign of the free (slaves went bare foot).
We see then, the continuity of approach, and this is closed out in this volume with a discussion of forgiveness, which proceeds in similar vein. And I will close on a little hobby horse of mine. I often hear people speak about forgiving themselves, and I object to this! We know perhaps what is meant, that a person may decide to stop beating themselves up but, says SP, if we say that we are unable to forgive ourselves, this
…is a wrong way of looking at things; only God forgives. It is not for us to forgive ourselves. It would be more correct to say that we are unable to receive the forgiveness of God for ourselves. If that is how we put it, things are already clearer.
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In my current work in a rehabilitation centre, which can’t really decide if that is what it is or a discipleship centre – and in many ways operates a bit like a monastery – my counseling/mentoring is thoroughly informed by SP’s approach. This matter of how to approach the subject of forgiveness is an important one – there is a tendency in Christian counseling to seek to exact (my word) in principle forgiveness of others at an early stage; SP helps me to stand firm on this issue. She is very strong, insistent, on accepting reality; first of all, acceptance of self with our limitations and in our humanity; secondly, accepting others for who they are – in particular, not placing expectations on them, “letting them go.” Her style is to say the same thing repeatedly in slightly different ways. I have found that constant exposure to what she says, shapes the whole tone of what I do; and in some places I adopt something approaching a methodology, something I could perhaps be more deliberate about. One element, I certainly dwell on is what she terms “burying emotions,” which is particularly prevalent where there are addictive problems, addictions commonly being ways of avoiding feelings; emotions must be owned, brought to light, with the process of grief over previously denied loss that this entails. We have an interesting 5 step model: Belonging, Healing, Restoring, Identity, Purpose, and I find that SP helps me be increasingly ‘intentional’ at each stage. She will help any counselor be properly aware of the need for time, for real healing, for process – and of our very basic and ultimately simple human needs.
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In trying to give a good taste of the quality in SP’s writing and it’s benefits, I came across something as I was working on Open the door to the Spirit. Part 3 of the book concerns Rev 3:20, in fact, opening the door! The discussion is about opening the door in relationships and at work, and then she turns to witness, or, as she terms it, evangelizing in general.
We obviously have no business becoming pretentious, annoying, dogmatic; it is important to remain alert, relaxed, convivial. Nothing is indifferent. Everything can take on value. This requires peaceful but very attentive listening, respectful of others. We try to get away from our own projections, our preconceived ideas, not rushing to respond, nor trying to impose our point of view but remaining very open to the leadings of the Spirit, having no goal other than living hospitality from the heart in which everyone can move around at ease; all this is part of a renewed way of being. To have a language that can be heard, it is first important to know how to listen. And this is what will enable others, whoever they are, to feel understood, to realize that they are interesting, worthy of being loved. This is how Christ begins to awaken consciences, to heal hearts.
It’s not that there is anything of itself remarkable here, but, in this sort of passage, as she adds one thought after another, obviously stemming from experience and practice, there is always something that makes me at least stop and think – ‘how can I do this better?’ – and brings home the general principle in a new and deeper way. This is a constant with her writing; she always pulls you deeper.
Germane to this, I think, is one expression of the constant theme of accepting our humanity in its fulness, with its limitations. As I write, I have in mind a comparison with something like the highly ‘mystical’ writings of Theresa of Avila, which describe spiritual experiences in great detail. This is not Simone Pacot.
The believer learns to make this first journey into the interior and living presence of Christ; we live by his grace, we collaborate with the Holy Spirit, we ask and welcome his light. It is not the role of some therapist to make us experience such a journey in this way; it is up to the individual to experience how not to be cut off from God but to descend into the depths of the psyche and body. We have to be careful at this point not to fall into the trap of taking refuge in the spiritual. This is the time to work our inner land, in the depth of our humanity. We must not pass by this exploration; we must not go too quickly on the pretext that God is already present. (from Dare to Live, part 1)
The temptation to take ‘refuge in the spiritual’ is indeed a real temptation, no doubt obviated in SP’s life by her work as an advocate. Her, I think, well-rounded approach time and again will bring the reader face to face with their likely failings, inducing constant re-appraisal!
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This scatter shot approach to illustrate SP’s thinking can be usefully furthered by providing an excerpt from Ose la vie nouvelle (Dare to live). It concerns the meaning of bearing the cross, it is a part of a lengthy meditation on the application to ourselves of Jesus’ Paschal (Easter) journey:
Bearing the cross.
‘Whoever does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple’ (Lk 14:27). A misinterpretation of this can be catastrophic. “Bear” is an active verb and not a passive one. We find the same vigor as in the invitation to get up, take up your bed and not throw it away before time (Jn 5:8). The issue here is not the torture of the cross that Jesus suffered but of the meaning that Jesus gave to his life and in his death. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches us to contemplate the event that was the condemnation and death of Jesus. Little by little he will have us “advance into deep water”; he helps us approach the true meaning of the cross and, at the same time, this great high point of love before which we can only bow to our knees.
To try to understand these words of Jesus about “bearing your cross,” we can begin humbly, limiting ourselves to the symbolism of the two beams of the cross, and keeping in mind that we are only exploring one aspect of the cross. This first approach will prevent us getting locked into a potentially deadly interpretation of the word of Christ so that we don’t become established in what we have termed sacrificial drift. It will then be easier to deepen the invigorating, specific meaning that this challenge of Jesus will have for each and every one and discover, in the light of the Spirit, the life-giving nourishment of the word which always calls us to true life and not destruction.
The two branches of the cross bring before our eyes the intersection of two dimensions. The horizontal represents the earth, matter, flesh, the world of forms. The vertical represents the world of God, the unseen infinite, the word and the eternal light, the grace and power of the love of the Triune God, who visits and penetrates the earth. The Eternal enters into time, the finite. The word, the living word, descends into the flesh. Christ is crucified at the intersection of these two forces, in their exact middle, where one meets the other, where the eternal lights meets earthly resistance. Jesus the Christ is truly man and at the same time he is “the Son”; he participates fully in the life of the Father; he is there in this place, at this high point of love, in the gift of his life in all its dimensions. The dawn of his resurrection will see the victory of the Father over evil, the world of violence, heaviness, inertia, resistance of all kinds, voluntary or not, to the breaking in of new life.
The human person through Christ, in him and with him, is in this same place, at the intersection of Spirit and matter. Our essential task is to pursue our humanity to its end, without overlooking anything, not erasing or denying the horizontal dimension, while allowing the grace of Christ — the vertical dimension — to be brought to life by the breath of the Spirit, our inner ground in its entirety as well as our outer world; it is as false to take refuge in the spiritual world by despising matter as it is to attach oneself to matter by denying the world of the Spirit, cutting oneself off from the source of life, not knowing the way it waters and makes the earth fruitful.
Many wonder how to carry their cross, inventing crosses for themselves even though they are already fully living this call, this passage into life.
Throughout the journey of evangelizing the depths, we find ourselves at this place of intersection of the two vertical and horizontal dimensions.
If we respond to the invitation (Rev 3:20) and open the door of our interior ground in all its dimensions (the horizontal) to the one who comes to bring us salvation, to take us out of chaos and confusion, from the absence of meaning, then, the living presence of Christ (the vertical) penetrates to the heart of the depth of our humanity, of our resistances, during each of the passages that grace offers us.
Anyone who does not trust only their own wisdom, their own laws for the conduct of their life, but adheres to the Father’s design, starting by implementing the laws of life, bears their cross because they are then renouncing omnipotence: the first, fundamental law will illuminate human laws and give them meaning. Anyone who allows the Holy Spirit to visit the entirety of their being, to illuminate their obscurities, to bring them to the truth about themselves, is bearing their cross. Anyone who actively welcomes the grace of Christ, who accepts and receives the strength to leave the paths of death, is bearing their cross. Whoever adheres to the work of the God of resurrection which awakens their deepest resources, who strengthens their choices, their most authentic desires and their will, is bearing their cross.
Those who respond to the invitation to enlarge the space of their tents (Isa 54:2) to become crafters of life, servants of the Kingdom, who set out on the Paschal path, of passage from a form of death to life, who accept to pass in Christ, in the Spirit, through the subsequent stages, find themselves at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the cross: they then bear their own cross, now alive, on their feet, becoming disciples.
In this way human works are set free from immobility, from heaviness, from repetitiveness, from absence of meaning, so that the Kingdom will be brought into the world where it has not yet been born.
I now append her “Laws of Life” as stated in my (hopefully to be published) translation of Come back to Life:
THE LAWS OF LIFE
The foundational word of life.
Then the Eternal God made the man with the clay of the ground; he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being (Gen 2:7); then from the rib that he had taken from the man, the Eternal God fashioned a woman and brought her to the man (Gen 2:22).
I give you Life, therefore live.
The choice of life.
Therefore choose life so that you may live (Deut 30:15–20).
Transgressions: The possibility of choosing the path of death — the wrong paths — self-destruction, pacts with death, foolish vows
Paths of life: Choosing to set out on a path of life
— discovering a way into life in the conditions of life that are one’s own — renouncing all complicity with death.
Acceptance of the human condition.
You can eat from all the trees in the garden. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die (Gen 2:16–17).
You are created, you are not God, you are created and loved within the limits of every person.
Transgressions: Refusing or misunderstanding the limits of the human condition: error, failures, crises, lack, loss, the vulnerability of every man and woman. . . Entering into omnipotence, burying your emotions, refusing means or making them absolute.. .
Path of life: Occupying one’s rightful place as a creature. Finding our source. Entering into a right collaboration with the Holy Spirit, accepting one’s own limitations, one’s reality, those of others, of one’s past, those imposed by events, facing one’s emotions. Discovering and deploying your specific competency.
Unfolding of the specific identity of each person, in God and in right relation with others.
Go to your own, leaving your land, your birth and your father’s house for the land that I will show you (Gen 12:1).
And you will no longer be called Abram, but your name will be Abraham (Gen 17:5).
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Churches: to the victor, I will give hidden manna and I will also give him a white stone, a stone with a new name engraved on it that no one knows except the one who receives it (Rev 2:17).
You are created and loved as unique; become yourself in God, in right relationship with others.
Transgressions: Remaining in fusion, being mixed with the identity of another, possessing them or allowing oneself to be possessed, maintaining confusion in the relationship, taking another’s path upon oneself, cowering in the face of abusive power, coveting what the other has or is, entering into rivalry, depreciating oneself.
Path of life: Becoming yourself. Ensuring your identity in God, discovering your name. Renewing relationship: in Love and Truth, the Pentecost of relationship.
The search for the unity of the person, indwelt by the living God.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself (Deut 6:5; Lev 19: 8; Lk10:27).
The Word became flesh (Jn 1:14).
Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you (1Cor 3:16).
You are one in your body, your psyche and the deep heart that animates them.
Transgressions : Mixing the different components, dividing them, ignoring their inner hierarchy, neglecting one, being fascinated by one of them.
Paths of life: Take care of the three components equally, learning to develop life from the deep heart.
Entrance into fruitfulness and gifting.
God blessed them and told them: be fruitful, multiply (Gen 1: 28).
The Parable of the Talents (Mt 25:14–30):
Well done, good and faithful servant, his master said to him, in a few things you have been faithful, over many things I will establish you, enter into the joy of your Lord.
Transgressions: Misunderstanding the source of fruitfulness and gifting, remaining fruitlessly folded in upon self, reducing or depreciating self, misunderstanding or burying gifts received.
Path of life: Living in God’s blessing, receiving the resurrected life, discovering one’s specific form of fruitfulness, bearing fruit.