Why Fénelon Said Pure Love Is Almost Impossible
⏱ 10 min read
You have been reading the saints, and you have arrived at the quiet conclusion that you are not one. The disinterested love. The pure heart. The forgetting of self. You have read Teresa, you have read John of the Cross, you have read the lives of women who seem to have crossed into a country you cannot find the road to. And so you have begun to wonder, in the small hours, whether the pure love is for the few — and whether you should stop hoping it could be for you.
François Fénelon, writing as the spiritual director of many such women in late seventeenth-century France, knew the wondering very well. Spiritual Progress, the letters that survived him, is candid about this — pure love is rare, the souls who reach it are few, and the path to it is long. Fénelon did not lower the standard to comfort you. He did not pretend that disinterested love arrives easily, or in a month, or by reading enough about it. What he did instead is set the rare attainment beside an even rarer fact — that the few souls who do reach pure love are not the spiritual prodigies, but the souls who simply kept walking. The Stilling Waves Prayer Journal for Women was built as a daily home for that walking — one short page per evening, one slow honest sentence, one small daily fidelity that, accumulated over years, becomes the very road the saints walked. For now, the Fénelon text.
The honest rarity, named
Fénelon would not flatter you. The pure heart, as he understood it, is rare — and the rarity is part of his pastoral teaching, not a thing he was trying to soften. The disinterested love of God, fully formed, in which the soul has truly stopped seeking herself even in her seeking of Him, is not the achievement of most Christians. Most Christians live and die with a real and beautiful love for God that is, throughout, mixed with the natural attachments of the self. Fénelon did not despise that mixed love. He honoured it. But he was clear that the pure love, the amour pur his school of spirituality made central, is reached by few souls in this life.
The pastoral move he then makes is the move that matters. The fact that few souls reach the pure love does not mean that few souls should walk toward it. The walking is what God asks. The arrival is His to grant, in His timing, and the granting often happens at the very end — in the last decade, sometimes in the last year, sometimes in the dying. The woman who reads the saints and concludes she cannot be one has misread Fénelon if she takes the rarity as a reason to stop walking. The rarity is a reason to walk more slowly, with more humility, and without the urgency that has been making the walking exhausting.
The first passage: the daily small purification
“Carefully purify your conscience, then, from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate; you will become lukewarm, forget God, and find yourself growing in attachment to the creature.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
The line for the woman who thinks pure love is impossible is small as it may seem. Fénelon is not asking her for a heroic act of sanctity. He is asking her for daily small faithfulness with daily small faults — the unkind thought, the petty resentment, the small self-indulgence, the small turning inward, the attachment to the creature that has grown alongside her devotion. This is the actual road. Not the dramatic conversion. Not the mystical experience. The slow daily purifying of the small things.
The pure heart is not built by one heroic surrender. It is built by ten thousand small ones, carefully offered, over years. The woman who thought the pure love was for the few has been picturing a sudden ascent. Fénelon is describing a long, gentle slope — the same slope every saint walked — composed of small acts of fidelity that, accumulated, become the very purity she has been envying. The fenelon pure heart impossible feeling lifts a little when she sees this. Not because the destination has moved closer. Because the road has become walkable.
The second passage: the simple peaceful dependence
“We must make use of all that Christian vigilance so much recommended by our Lord; raise our hearts to God in the simple view of faith, and dwell in sweet and peaceful dependence upon the Spirit of grace, as the only means of our safety and strength.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read this one twice.
The medicine is in the only means of our safety and strength. The woman who reads the lives of the saints and concludes she cannot be one has, almost always, been reading them as if their purity were their own attainment. Fénelon, who was their spiritual director, knew otherwise. The pure love is not the soul’s achievement. The pure love is the Spirit’s slow work in the soul who has stopped trying to manufacture it and has settled into peaceful dependence on the Spirit of grace as the only means.
This re-frames the impossibility. The pure love is impossible to you. It was always impossible to you. It is also impossible to every saint whose life you have been reading, considered apart from the Spirit who formed it in them. The fenelon pure heart impossible feeling is, in one sense, accurate — and in another sense, the doorway. The accuracy is the death of your project. The doorway is the peaceful dependence you can begin tomorrow, without needing to be capable of anything you are not already capable of. The Spirit forms the pure love. Your part is the daily yielding, the daily small fidelity, the daily lifting of the heart in the simple view of faith. The grand attainment is not yours to engineer. It is His to give, when and if and how He wills.
For the daily home this peaceful dependence needs, the Stilling Waves Prayer Journal for Women holds a short page for the evening yielding and the morning small fidelity, structured for the woman who has stopped trying to be one of the few and has begun, slowly, to walk the road that is open to all.
The somatic — the soft hands
Pause here. Sit somewhere quiet. The woman who has been envying the saints carries the envy in her body — the small striving in the hands, the slight forward lean, the muscular tension that says I am trying to become.
Let the hands soften in your lap. Let the forward lean ease. Let the breath be slower than it has been. The body of peaceful dependence is the un-straining body. You are not building the pure heart with your effort. You are walking the road that the Spirit makes, and the body can walk that road in softness rather than in strain.
Stay there for thirty seconds. Then continue reading.
The soft hands do not produce the pure love. They do, quietly, release the woman from the small chronic striving that has been making the journey feel impossible. The fenelon pure heart impossible feeling sits, partly, in a body that has been straining to become. The body that has stopped straining can keep walking longer, and the walking is the whole of what is asked.
The third passage: the un-mixed love that is His to form
“We must renounce, forget and forever lose sight of self, take part with Thee and shine, O God, against ourselves and ours; have no longer any will, glory or peace, but thine only; in a word, we must love Thee without loving self except in and for Thee.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
The third passage names the destination honestly — we must love Thee without loving self except in and for Thee — and the line is, in one sense, the very statement of what the woman fears she cannot reach. But read it once more, and notice what Fénelon does not say.
He does not say you must reach this by next year. He does not say if you do not reach this, you have failed. He does not say only those who reach this are truly saved. He simply names the destination, with the candour of a director who refuses to lower it, and trusts the slow work of the Spirit to bring the soul there in His timing. The woman who hears the destination and despairs has heard half the teaching. The other half is the long peaceful walking, the small daily fidelity, the years of un-spectacular yielding that, in God’s hands, become the very forgetting of self she could not engineer in any single act.
Few souls reach the disinterested love in this life. Few souls keep walking toward it. Fénelon’s pastoral hope is that the woman reading him will be among the few who keep walking — not because she is more capable than the others, but because she has accepted that the walking is the whole of her part, and the arrival is His. The fenelon pure heart impossible feeling, sat with long enough in this peaceful dependence, becomes the very humility the road requires.
Three small returns
If you take nothing else from Spiritual Progress, these three returns are the spine of the keep-walking posture.
The first return is the single small fidelity — one daily act of unspectacular faithfulness, offered without measuring how close it has brought you to the destination. The small fidelity is the road. There is no shortcut.
The second return is the soft-handed sit — five minutes in the chair with the body un-straining and the soul resting in peaceful dependence on the Spirit who alone forms the pure love.
The third return is the one slow petition — Lord, form in me what I cannot form in myself. Said once, in the morning. The pure love is the answer to that prayer, said for years, by a soul that has stopped trying to be the answer to it.
(For the sibling readings in the Pure Love cluster, what Fénelon meant by Pure Love of God walks the foundational distinction between loving God for who He is and for what He gives, Fénelon on Loving God Without Feeling It walks the will-led love that does not require the heart to be warm, and Why Fénelon Said Most Christian Devotion Is Self-Love walks the slow un-mixing of the secret seam of self-interest. If the language of abiding has been the way you have framed this journey, what Andrew Murray meant by abide in Christ and Andrew Murray on Christ as the indwelling life walk the parallel teaching from the South African pastoral tradition.)
What changes, slowly
The pure love does not become possible because you have read a better article on it. The rarity remains rare. What changes is the woman’s relationship to the rarity. She stops measuring her devotional life against the saints as if their attainment were the proof of hers, and starts walking the road they walked — slowly, peacefully, with small daily fidelity — and trusts the Spirit to bring her where He brings her, in His own timing. The walking is the substance. The arrival is His. The few souls who reach the pure love are the few souls who kept walking, and the keep-walking is open to you tomorrow morning, in the chair, with a soft body and a peaceful trust and a single small fidelity offered into His hands.
A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women.
Get Seven Days of Stillness — free
A free gift from Hayley Louisa Mark. A short devotional companion drawn from the 140-Day series — seven passages, seven contemplative practices, sent to your inbox over the coming week.
No noise. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you wish.
This article continues the Fénelon reading library on Stilling Waves Press — slow contemplative readings of the French spiritual director’s letters, with the matched journals at the centre of the practice. Stilling Waves is preparing reprints of Fénelon’s letters, including Spiritual Progress, for the woman who has read the saints and is, slowly, accepting that the road they walked is open to her also.
