The constant companion of sanctity is temptation, without which no true saint can live.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
It is difficult to be a saint, because even a patient and longsuffering nature will not readily endure such a high degree of differentiation and defends itself in its own way.
The constant companion of sanctity is temptation, without which no true saint can live.
We know that these temptations can pass off unconsciously, so that only their equivalents reach consciousness in the form of symptoms.
We know, too, that Herz traditionally rhymes with Schmerz.
It is a well-known fact that hysterics substitute a physical pain for a psychic pain which is not felt because repressed.
Catherina Emmerich’s biographer has understood this more or less correctly, but her own interpretation of the pain is based, as usual, on a projection: it is always the others who secretly say all sorts of wicked things about her, and this is the cause of her pains.
The facts of the matter are rather different: the renunciation of all life’s joys, this fading before the flower, is always painful, and especially painful are the unfulfilled desires and the attempts of nature to break through the barrier of repression, without which no such differentiation would be possible.
The gossip and sarcastic gibes of the sisters very naturally pick on these painful things, so that it must seem to the saint as if her difficulties came from there.
She could hardly know that gossip is very apt to take over the role of the unconscious, and, like a skilled adversary, always aims at the ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 436
