Section 7 - The Hidden Work of Divine Love. What
great truths are hidden even from Christians who imagine
themselves most enlightened! How many are there amongst them who
understand that every cross, every action, every attraction
according to the designs of God, give God to us in a way that
nothing can better explain than a comparison with the most august
mystery? Nevertheless there is nothing more
certain. Does not reason as well as faith reveal to us the real
presence of divine love in all creatures, and in all the events of
life, as indubitably as the words of Jesus Christ and of the
Church reveal the real presence of the sacred flesh of our Saviour
under the Eucharistic species? Do we not
know that by all creatures, and by every event the divine love
desires to unite us to Himself, that He has ordained, arranged, or
permitted everything about us, everything that happens to us with
a view to this union? This is the ultimate
object of all His designs to attain which He makes use of the
worst of His creatures as well as of the best, and of the most
distressing events as well as of those which are pleasant and
agreeable. Our communion with Him is even more meritorious when
the means that serve to make it closer are repugnant to nature.
If this be true, every moment of our lives may be a kind of
communion with the divine love, and this communion of every moment
may produce as much fruit in our souls as that which we receive in
the Communion of the Body and Blood of the Son of God. This
latter, it is true, is efficacious sacramentally which the former
cannot be, but on the other hand, how much more frequently can it
not be renewed, and what great increase of merit it can acquire by
the more perfect dispositions with which it may be accomplished.
Consequently how true it is that the more holy the life the more
mysterious it becomes by its apparent simplicity and littleness.
O great feast! O perpetual festival! God! given and received under
all that is most feeble, foolish and worthless upon earth! God
chooses that which nature abhors, and human prudence rejects. Of
these He makes mysteries, sacraments of love, and by that which
seems as if it would do most harm to souls, He gives Himself to
them as often and as much as they desire to possess Him.
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