Course V - Teaching 4: Mystical Death of De Rancé

De Rancé, a reformer of the Cistercian Order and founder of the Trappe, is one of the most beautiful examples of contemplating death and sorrow.
When does death call him to the true life by removing him from the illusory world and leading him to the summit of the most pure sanctity? Sometimes the Divine Providence creates evils that become goods.
In a century as the seventeenth, when devotion and retreat are relaxed, not surprisingly this young takes up priesthood more for status and material interest than for devotion, neglects his ecclesiastic responsibilities and lives well. But in the human heart there are fibers that respond through flesh and misery to a call that perhaps is divine.
We are told that De Rancé, from pleasure to pleasure in his youth, quite enchanted with a Marchioness, scandalized the Court and Paris. But God touched this man that was more filled with pleasure than with love, and gave him love through the way of pleasure. Always love, even bad love, at the end is something holy, because through it a person becomes detached and unselfish; love makes him suffer, and suffering is ever good. This Marchioness, rich, young and the most beautiful in the Court of France, suffered from violent fevers and suddenly died. A friend of De Rancé writes that all believed that he would go mad; his despair and sorrow were unbearable. But he did not surrender to despair, and surely in the Other World the soul of that woman who loved him so much wished to save him from his karma and blame.
De Rancé, retreated in his castle, at the sunset goes for a walk through the fields; he neither wants to see anyone nor to write to anyone. Then far away he sees a farm bursting into flames. He feels that is a fire in harvest time, and runs to find out. But as he comes near, the fire escapes, and following it he finds a lonely forest, and over there a woman that is burning. He sees her body up to her waist, and although her hair covers her face, seemingly she is his girlfriend wishing to show all the suffering that her soul had to experience because of her fiery passion in the world.
From this day De Rancé changes his behavior. Now he is different, leaves prebends, Court and palace, and lives detached from the world; eventually he arrives at his convent of the Trappe, where instructs to write on the door of his cell: “Memory of death is my life and salvation”.
But it is not only this. That suffering that he glimpsed in the hereafter in the sense that that woman was suffering for his blame, led this admirable man to establish a primordial purpose among his monks: continuous sacrifice for souls who suffer in the hereafter, for those beings that passed away and are deprived of light.
Renunciation as a mission makes the Son become more and more sensible and subtle. His life in prayer and retreat moves him away from the screen of the world and leads him through prayer to be able to cross many times the bridge and to attain life in the hereafter. Also beings that passed away comprise this Humanity that he has to redeem.
Notice that these beings are not far away because you cannot see or touch them; also many of them are particularly close to the Sons, whether for a mission and to get help, or simply to ask help and be able to get rid of ties of the flesh.
Is there any other person that, having renounced to the world and offered himself in holocaust to the Divinity, may help the suffering souls deprived of light to see the glorious world in which they have to experience torments beyond human imagination?
If sufferings of this poor Marchioness are internal and moral, surely they are frightening and burn any fiber of her being, and the most sensible part of her soul grieves her. She is a being continuously suffocated, and as soon as she sees her friend, feels that the can save her through life. That is why she extends her hand again.
Here is one of the main missions of the Sons of Cafh: to devote a part of their prayers and sacrifices to help those souls around them, which suffer torments in the hereafter because whilst the soul does not untie the bonds of flesh, it remains motionless and fastened between heaven and earth, between the Gate to Eternity and the Gate to Earthly Life.
The Son cannot forget the dead, those numerous beings who are repeating there the process of their suffering. This is a sorrow produced by their ideas formed in their lifetime according to their beliefs. For instance, a Catholic feels to be a prisoner in purgatorial flames; an unbeliever feels to be tied to objects and beings that he loved on earth, and continuously wants to go there and touch them, and suffers awfully.
The mission of the Son is to give them light, offer his life and his Vows, and to make sacrifices and pray.
When the Blessed Buddha talked about redeeming Humanity, he did neither exclude animals nor the tiniest insect. So the Son must include all living and dead beings, those on earth, those who passed away and those who shall come.
It is a complete, absolute mission. But necessarily this purpose must be in your meditations. By considering death and vanity of the world you understand how valuable is not only death but also what exists after death. Here is one of the bases of Renunciation and a way to get rid of materiality.
Souls of those that passed away receive prayer because they need it, but in return they attest that the astral world and liberation exist. Nothing is for free. Also, when these souls that suffer in the hereafter contact the Son through prayers and offerings, they become their patrons and never forget them.
Beings in the hereafter suffer awfully, even for little things. According to a pious person that was in prayer, her closest friend, recently dead, came to her. She came sad and sorrowful, as if from a dark alley; her legs were full of sores and seemingly she was unable to walk. She asked help and cure for her legs. Then this pious person spent the whole night praying, made many sacrifices, and finally this soul was liberated: her suffering was an illusion, because she appeared again and said: “Do you remember that, like you, I was about to enter a religious order, but my mother dissuaded me and I formed a family? In my heart I had surrendered to God, and God took me out of this world and by that fault that I have committed I saw myself without legs and was unable to walk. I had no vocation to walk. Your vocation has saved me, but please, now help my mother”. In fact, her mother, who died some few days later; once appeared with a broken ankle and explained her condition because she had not encouraged the vocation of her daughter.
If this brings sorrows and torments in the hereafter, imagine those of persons that commit crimes and always do wrong! So, the Sons must devote their meditations and prayers to the souls of the dead to make them cross more easily the bridge between earth and heaven, thinking of these souls and remembering them during their meditations.
During the year there is ever a Son whose mission is to pray for the dead. This has to be the bread of all Sons. May someday there be Ordained Sons enough for this mission, now limited to one hour of worship for the souls of beings who passed away, eventually to become an everlasting offering, day and night, for those souls. Even the kindest beings have to suffer a little in their process of losing their material form. Then this prayer would be a continuous force, a flame of ceaseless light, guiding them on the way. Just as that pious woman illuminated travelers in the mountain from Chile and were lost in gorges by the zonda (hot northerly wind), so the Sons will kindle a little lamp to illuminate the souls and lead them to think that they left the world and now are free beings that are able to worship God to the full.
After the consideration of death, you must consider the great abyss where the poor souls that left this world are suffering.
The Sons of Cafh must be in everything and comprise everything. Their renunciation is not only for their perfection, but also for the perfection of all beings. It is beyond imagination how many souls suffer in the astral world. Perchance may you choose an unknown soul and make offerings of prayers and sacrifices for this soul during the day, as if you were a godfather, until this soul goes toward peace? Everybody has a poor soul that expects –perhaps many years from now– help from the Son.
Many people feel that some of those who passed away are great beings that do not need help; perhaps they carry a very heavy burden of faults in the other world. There they expect help; people feel that they are in peace, but those beings are really in need.
You should ask for all those who died in an unnatural way, for homicides, suicides, betrayers, renegades and flesh sinners; for all those who passed away and are suffering. These beings are in the dark, being illuminated only by veils and white cloaks of beings that left the world during his lifetime.
Which would be their destiny without the Son’s help? You should never forget this great mission of the Son of Cafh: To pray, to pray and to pray for those who are suffering in the hereafter.