|
"In the world you shall have distress; but have confidence, I have
overcome the world." John 16: 33
The quietists held that the sacred humanity of our Savior was a means
useful only at the beginning of the spiritual life.(1) St. Teresa, on
the contrary, insists particularly that we should not of our own
initiative leave off in prayer the consideration of our Savior's
humanity, for it is the way which leads souls to His divinity.(2) In
discussing the state of souls that are in the sixth mansion, the saint
writes:
You may fancy that one who has enjoyed such high favors need not
meditate on the mysteries of the most sacred Humanity of our Lord
Jesus Christ, but will be wholly absorbed in love. . . . Having been
warned by experience in this respect, I have decided to speak again
about it here. . . . Be most cautious on the subject; attend to what
I venture to say about it and do not believe anyone who tells you
the contrary. . . . How much less should we willfully endeavor to
abstain from thinking of our only good and remedy, the most sacred
Humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ? . . . Our Lord Himself tells us
that He is "the Way"; He also says that He is "the Light"; that no
man cometh to the Father but by Him; and that "He that seeth Me,
seeth the Father also."
. . . True, those whom our Lord admits into the seventh mansion
rarely or never need thus to help their fervor, for the reason I
will tell you of, if I recollect it when I come to write of this
room where, in a wonderful manner, souls are constantly in the
company of Christ our Lord both in His Humanity and His Divinity. .
. . Life is long and full of crosses and we have need to look on
Christ our pattern, to see how He bore His trials, and even to take
example by His Apostles and saints if we would bear our own trials
perfectly. Our good Jesus and His most blessed Mother are too good
company to be left. . . . I assure you, daughters, that I consider
this a most dangerous idea whereby the devil might end by robbing us
of our devotion to the most Blessed Sacrament.(3)
St. Catherine of Siena, who drank several times from the sacred
wound in the heart of Jesus, teaches the same doctrine in her
Dialogue.(4) She speaks repeatedly of the value of our Savior's blood.
CHRIST'S VICTORY AND ITS RADIATION All the saints
have repeated St. Paul's words: "For to me, to live is Christ: and to
die is gain. . . . Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with
Christ." (5) As the profession of arms, says St. Thomas,(6) is the
life of the soldier, as study is that of the scholar, so Christ was
their life, the continual object of their love and the source of their
energy. St. Paul likewise delighted in saying to the Corinthians: "For
both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we
preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and
unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both
Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." (7)
"For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ,
and Him crucified." (8) The great Apostle repeats this thought to the
Ephesians with incomparable splendor: "That the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom
and of revelation, in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of your heart
enlightened, that you may know what the hope is of His calling, and
what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. And
what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us, who believe
according to the operation of the might of His power, which He wrought
in Christ, raising Him up from the dead." (9) "That Christ may dwell
by faith in your hearts that, being rooted and founded in charity, you
may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth
and length and height and depth: to know also the charity of Christ,
which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the
fullness of God." (10) All the saints have lived until the end of
their lives by the contemplation of the Passion, particularly those
who were more configured to Jesus crucified, like St. Francis of
Assisi, St. Dominic, and more recently St. Paul of the Cross, and St.
Benedict Joseph Labre. In the unitive way are manifested
increasingly the immense spiritual riches of our Savior's holy soul,
of His intellect, His will, His sensibility. More and more there
appears His innate, substantial, uncreated sanctity, constituted by
the very person of the Word who possesses intimately and forever His
soul and body which suffered for us. One sees with increasing
clearness the value of the plenitude of grace, light, and charity that
sprang from the Word in the holy soul of Jesus. This plenitude was the
source of the loftiest peace, of perfect beatitude even here on earth,
and, at the same time, the source of the intensity of the sufferings
of Christ, Priest and Victim, since these sufferings at the sight of
men's sins, which He had taken on Himself, had the same depth as His
love for His offended Father and for our souls in need of
redemption(11) In the unitive way the soul becomes increasingly
conscious of the great victory won by Christ during His passion and on
the cross: the victory over sin and the devil, manifested three days
later by that over death.(12) The value of this victory over sin
derived, as the soul comprehends more and more, from the act of
theandric love, which drew from the divine person of the Word an
intrinsically infinite worth to satisfy for our sins and to merit
eternal life for us. This act of love of our Savior's holy soul "gave
more to God than was required to compensate for the offense of the
whole human race." (13) It proceeded from the very person of the Son
who is equal to the Father, and was worth more than all the merits of
men and angels in their totality. Superabundant in value, it was equal
and even superior to the recompense merited, that is, to the eternal
life of all the elect redeemed by the sacrifice of the cross. Truly
Christ could say: "Have confidence, I have overcome the world." (14)
During periods of calamity and persecution, what a consolation to
think that Christ crucified has already won the definitive victory,
and that we have only to give ourselves to Him so that He may make us
benefit by it! There are still struggles on earth, but the victory
is already won by Christ, the Head of the mystical body, of which we
are the members. In the unitive way, devotion to our Savior's passion
becomes increasingly devotion to the glorious Christ, by His cross the
Conqueror of sin and the demon. The hymns of Holy Week sing of this
victory:
Vexilla Regis prodeum;
Fulget crucis mysterium,
Qua vita mortem pertulit,
Et morte vitam protulit.
Te, fons salutis, Trinitas,
Collaudet omnis spiritus:
Quibus crucis victoriam
Largiris, adde praemium. Amen.
Then the soul understands better and better what St. Thomas says,
speaking of the love of God for Christ and for us: "God loves more the
better things, for it has been shown that God's loving one thing more
than another is nothing else than His willing for that thing greater
good. God's will is the cause of goodness in things;
and for this reason some things are
better than others, because God wills for them greater good. . . . God
loves Christ not only more than He loves the whole human race, but
more than He loves the entire created universe. He willed for Him the
greater good in giving Him 'a Name that is above all names,' in so far
as He Was true God. Nor did anything of His excellence diminish when
God delivered Him up to death for the salvation of the human race;
rather did He become thereby a glorious conqueror [over sin, the
devil, and death]. For, as Isaias (9:6) says: 'The government was
placed upon His shoulder.' " (15) The text just quoted throws light on why God permitted the sin of the
first man and its results. St. Thomas says: "God allows evils to
happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written
(Rom. 5: 20): 'Where sin abounded, grace did more abound.' Hence, too,
in the blessing of the paschal candle, we say: 'O happy fault, that
merited such and so great a Redeemer!'" (16) Christ's death on the
cross, which is at the same time His victory, is the most glorious
manifestation of the mercy and power of God. "For God so loved the
world, as to give His only begotten Son," says St. John,(17) This truth
appears more and more to the contemplative soul and daily shows the
soul more clearly the infinite value of the Sacrifice of the Mass,
which perpetuates in substance that of the cross and applies its
fruits to us. DEVOTION TO MARY IN THE UNITIVE WAY In the unitive way, there is a profound influence, secret touches of
Mary, Mediatrix of all graces, given to lead us to ever greater
intimacy with our Lord. The soul that follows this way thereby enters
increasingly into the mystery of the communion of saints and shares in
the loftiest sentiments of the Mother of God at the foot of the cross,
after the death of our Lord, on Pentecost, and still later in her
prayers for the diffusion of the Gospel by the apostles,
by which she obtained for them the great graces of light, love, and
fortitude which they needed to carry the name of Jesus to the
extremities of the then known world. Mary thus exercised the loftiest apostolate through prayer and immolation, which rendered
inexpressibly fruitful the apostolate by teaching and preaching. The
summits of the life of the Church, the mystical body of Jesus, are
today no less under the influence of Mary Mediatrix, whose action is
more universal and more radiant since her assumption into heaven.(18) That it may penetrate the mystery of Christ, that of His passion, the
contemplative soul should beg Mary to introduce it more profoundly
into this mystery, as the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi (1228-1306) does
in the Stabat Mater. This hymn is only one of a number of liturgical
prayers asking for this grace. This sequence demonstrates in a singularly striking manner how much
the supernatural contemplation of the mystery of Christ is in the
normal way of sanctity. In precise, ardent, and splendid images, it
expresses the wound in our Savior's heart and shows us how intimate
and penetrating is Mary's influence to lead us to it. And not only
does the Blessed Virgin lead us to this divine intimacy, but, in a
sense, she establishes it in us as the admirable repetition of the
word Fac, the expression of ardent prayer, makes clear:
Eia Mater, fons amoris,
Me sentire vim doloris
Fac ut tecum lugeam.
Fac ut ardeat cor meum,
In amando Christum Deum,
Ut sibi complaceam.
Fac ut portem Christi mortem,
Passionis fac consortem
Et plagas recolere.
Fac me plagis vulnerari,
Fac me cruce inebriari,
Et cruore Filii.
This hymn is the prayer of the soul desirous of knowing spiritually,
in its turn, the wound of love and of being associated with these
sorrowful mysteries through reparatory adoration, as St. John
and St. Mary Magdalen were in the company of Mary on Calvary,
and as St. Peter also was when he shed abundant tears. The soul would wish always to shed these tears of contrition and
adoration for, in a work attributed to St. Augustine, we read "that
the more one suffers from offense offered to God, the more one
rejoices in experiencing this holy sorrow." (19) The Stabat Mater
expresses these sentiments in the following beautiful strophe:
Fac me tecum pie fiere,
Crucifixi condolere,
Donec ego vixero.
Juxta crucem tecum stare,
Et me tihi sociare
In planctu desidero.
We should not fail to profit by these fountains of life, but should
slake our thirst at them. From the adorable wounds of our Savior
gushes forth the life that we should drink abundantly. May the Lord,
during the Sacrifice of the Mass and at Communion, lift us up to the
fountain of His Sacred Heart! Such is the petition of a beautiful
German prayer in a form accessible to all the faithful:
Ich danke Dir, Herr Jesu Christ,
Dass du fur mich, gestorben bist;
Lass dein Blut und deine Fein
An mir doch nicht verloren sein.
"I thank Thee, Lord Jesus Christ, for having died for me. Let not
Thy blood and Thy anguish be lost on me."
In a more intimate and ardent manner St. Nicholas of Flue, called by
the Swiss the Father of their country, expresses the same thought: "My
Lord and my God, take from me everything that hinders me from going to
Thee! My Lord and my God, give me everything that will lead me to
Thee! My Lord and my God, take me from myself and give me completely
to Thyself!" Of a surety, this contemplation of our Savior's infinite merits is in
the normal way of sanctity; without it there can be no true love of
the cross, which is nothing else than an ardent love of
Jesus crucified. It is the royal road to heaven, and in it there is
already something like a beginning of eternal life, quaedam inchoatio
vitae aeternae.(20) A greatly tried soul wrote as follows: "Our Savior's divine words have
often sustained me: 'In the world you shall have distress; but have
confidence, I have overcome the world.' His final triumph, that
triumph which casts so consoling a light on the things of earth, is an
immense joy to me. When, worn out, I lift my eyes to our
good Master, sighing: 'Lord, I need joy,' I see His triumph, His
victory at the end of time, and this ray from on high illumines the
darkest nights and restores peace to my soul in spite of all
disasters. It is as if from the shore one watched the torrents passing
by. Things go so badly on earth. The foundations of the universe
tremble, but He is immutable, immutably good." Following our Lord in this way, man does not walk in darkness,
but receives in ever greater abundance the light of life.(21)
|
|
1. Cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 1155.
2. The Interior Castle, second mansion, chap. I; sixth mansion, chap.
7. Life, chap. 22. 3. The Interior Castle, sixth mansion, chap. 7.
4. The Dialogue, chaps. 21, 26, 59, 75, 76. Christ is compared to a
bridge
which links earth to heaven. This bridge has three steps to which
correspond
three states of the soul: the feet, the heart, the mouth. 5. Phil. 1:21,23.
6. In Ep. ad Philipp., 1:21.
7. Cf. I Cor. 1:22-24. 8. Ibid., 2:2. 9. Eph. I:17-20. 10. Eph. 3: 17-19. 11. We developed this point at length in
The Love of God and the Cross
of
Jesus, I, 174-223. 12. Cf. Dom A. Vonier's beautiful book, The Victory of Christ (Burns,
Oates and Washbourne, 1934). 13. St. Thomas, IIIa, Q.48, a.2. 14. John 16:33. Likewise we read in I John 5:4: "This is the victory
which
overcometh the world, our faith." And in Hebrews 11: 1: "Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for"; our faith is victorious over
the spirit of the world, because it makes us scorn those things that
would separate us from God. 15. Summa, Ia, q.20, a.4, c. and ad Ium.
16. Ibid., IIa, q. I, a.3 ad
3um. 17. John 3:16. 18. In the original, this paragraph appears as
an addendum, referring to this chapter. Cf. also Note, p. 570. 19.
Liber de vera et falsa poenitentia, chap. 13: "Semper doleat
poenitens, et de dolore gaudeat." Cf. St. Thomas, IIIa, suppl., q.4. a.2: "Whether
it is expedient to grieve for sin continually." 20. Cf. St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q.69, a.2; IIa IIae, q.24, a.3 ad
2um; De veritate,
q. 14, a.2. 21. Father Mary John Joseph Lataste, O.P., founder of the
OEuvre des
Rehabilitees de Bethanie, without knowing the prayer of St. Nicholas
of Flue, which we have just quoted, composed the following very
similar prayer: "O my Jesus, how I love Thee! Give Thyself to me and
give me to Thyself! Identify me with Thyself; may my will be Thine!
Incorporate me in Thee, that I may live only in Thee and for Thee! May
I spend for Thee all that I have received from Thee, keeping nothing
for myself! May I die to everything for Thee! Grant that I may win
souls for Thee! Souls, O my Jesus, souls." |
