FROM SOCIAL BUTTERFLY TO SAINT

MADAME GUYON (1648-1717)

NOTHING WAS more easy to me now than to practice prayer. Hours passed away like moments, while I could hardly do anything else but pray. The fervency of my love allowed me no intermission….So strong, almost insatiable, was my desire for communion with God that I arose at four o’clock to pray.

            These are not words one would have expected to hear from the young woman who grew up to become the saintly mystic we now as Madame Guyon. Born into the pleasure-seeking class in France during the reign of Louis XIV, Mademoiselle de La Mothe (Jeanne Marie Bourvieres) possessed unusual beauty. As her mother lavished upon her clothes, jewelry and the things of the world. Jeanne read romance novels and spent hours looking at herself in the mirror.  When she as 15, the La Mothe family moved near Paris where Jeanne continued to climb the social ladder.

            Amid the social whirl of Paris, Jeanne married M. Jacques Guyon, a wealthy invalid 23 year her senior. The marriage was unhappy from the beginning, and thus Madame Guyon began to finally seek her true happiness in God. She was rewarded with a deep sense of God’s salvation and presence, and after a mystical experience while walking the river Seine, she wrote, 

"From this day, this hour, if it be possible, I will be wholly the Lord’s. The world shall have no portion in me."  In the years that followed, trouble mounted for Madame Guyon. She went through what St. John of the Cross called the "dark night of the soul," her husband and young son died, a severe case of small pox left her face disfigured, and she was persecuted and imprisoned in the Bastille by the clergy for what they believed to be her heretical religious views. 

Through all this, Jeanne Guyon prayed with Job. "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be his name." He contribution to devotional literature was prodigious during those years. The poems, hymns and books she authored have touched thousands down to the present day, including Watchman Nee, Francois Fenelon, Hudson Taylor and John Wesley. The shallow social butterfly had become a woman of great spiritual substance by the time she died in 1717.

Guyon outlined her method of 

praying Scripture in her book.

Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, also known as A Short and Very Easy Method Prayer.  She recommended the practice of reading the Bible very slowly, tasting and digesting each verse, a line at a time, moving on only after extracting the essence of the passage.  The result of this practice: "The Lord’s chief desire is to reveal himself to you and, in order for him to do that, he gives you abundant grace. The Lord gives you the experience of enjoying his presence. He touches you, and his touch is so delightful that, more than ever, you are drawn inwardly to him."

In Christ,

Janet Irene Thomas

Playwright/Screen Writer/Director

Published Author/Gospel Lyricist &Producer

FOUNDER/CEO

Bible Stories Theatre of

Fine & Performing Arts

www.biblestoriestheatre.org.