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Having spoken at large of the sacred acts of divine
love, I present you, that you may more easily and
holily preserve the memory of them, with a collection
or abridgment of them.
The charity of Jesus Christ presseth us,(1) says
the great apostle. Yea truly, Theotimus, it forces
and carries us away by its infinite sweetness,
exercised in the whole work of our Redemption, in
which appeared the benignity and love of God towards
men: for what did not this divine lover do in matter
of love?
1. He loved us with a love of Complacency, for his
delights were to be with the children of men(2) and
to draw man to himself, making himself man.
2. He loved us with a love of Benevolence,
bestowing his own divinity upon man, so that man was
God.
3. He united himself unto us by an
incomprehensible Union, whereby he adhered to our
nature, and joined himself so closely, indissolubly
and supereminently to it, that never was anything so
strictly joined and bound to humanity as is now the
most holy divinity in the person of the Son of God.
4. He flowed out into us, and as it were melted
his greatness, to bring it to the form and figure of
our littleness, whence he is styled a source of
living water, dew and rain of heaven.
5. He loved us to Ecstasy, not only because, as S.
Denis says, by the excess of his loving goodness he
goes in a certain manner out of himself, extending
his Providence to all things and being in all things,
but also because he has in a sort forsaken and
emptied himself, dried up his greatness and glory,
resigned the throne of his incomprehensible majesty,
and, if it be lawful so to say, annihilated himself
to stoop down to our humanity, to fill us with his
divinity, to replenish us with his goodness, to raise
us to his dignity, and bestow upon us the divine
being of children of God. And he of whom it is so
frequently written: I live, saith the Lord; could
afterwards have said according to his apostle's
language: I live, now not I, but man liveth in me. To
me to live is man, and to die for man is gain. My
life is hidden with man in God.(3) He who dwelt in
himself dwells now in us, and he who was living from
all eternity in the bosom of his Eternal Father
becomes mortal in the bosom of his temporal Mother;
he who lived eternally by his own divine life, lived
with a human life, and he who from eternity had been
only God, shall be for all eternity man too: so has
the love of man ravished God, and drawn him into an
ecstasy!
6. Love often led him to admiration, as of the
Centurion and Chanaanitess.
7. He contemplated the young man who had till that
hour kept the commandments, and desired to be taught
perfection.
8. He took a loving quiet in us, yea even with
some suspension of his senses, in his mother's womb
and in his infancy.
9. He had wondrous movements of Tenderness towards
little children, whom he would take in his arms and
lovingly fondle; towards Martha and Magdalen, towards
Lazarus, over whom he wept, as he wept also over the
city of Jerusalem.
10. He was animated with an incomparable Zeal,
which, as S. Denis says, changed into Jealousy,
turning away, as much as possible, all evil from his
beloved human nature, with hazard, yea with the
price, of his own life; driving away the devil the
prince of this world, who seemed to be his rival and
companion.
11. He had a thousand thousand Languors of love;
for whence could those divine words proceed: I have a
baptism, wherewith I am to be baptized: and how am I
straightened until it be accomplished?(4) The hour in
which he was baptized in his blood was not yet come,
and he languished after it; the love which he bore
unto us urging him thereunto, that he might by his
death see us delivered from an eternal death. So he
was sad, and sweated the blood of distress in the
Garden of Olives, not only by reason of the exceeding
sorrow which his soul felt in the inferior part of
his reason, but also by reason of the singular love
which he bore unto us in the superior portion
thereof, sorrow causing in him a horror of death, and
love giving him an extreme desire of the same; so
that a most fierce combat and a cruel agony took
place, between the desire and the dread of death,
unto a mighty shedding of blood, which streamed down
upon the earth as from a living spring.
12. Finally, Theotimus, this divine lover died
amongst the flames and ardours of love, by reason of
the infinite charity which he had towards us, and by
the force and virtue of love: that is he died in
love, by love, for love, and of love, for though his
cruel torments were sufficient to have killed any
one, yet could death never make entry into his life
who keeps the keys of life and death, unless divine
love, which handles those keys, had opened the gates
to death, to let it ravage that divine body and
despoil it of life.
Love was not content to have only made him subject
to death for us unless it made him dead. It was by
choice, not by force of torment, that he died. No man
taketh my life away from me: but I lay it down of
myself, and I have power to lay it down, and I have
power to take it up again.(5) He was offered, says
Isaias, because it was his own will.(6) And therefore
it is not said that his spirit went away, forsook
him, or separated itself from him, but, contrariwise,
that he gave up his spirit, breathed it out, yielded
and commended it into the hands of his eternal
Father; so that S. Athanasius remarks that he bowed
his head to die, that he might consent to and bend to
death's approach, which otherwise durst not have come
near him; and crying out with a loud voice he gives
up his spirit into his Father's hands, to show that
as he had strength and breath enough not to die, so
had he love so great that he could no longer live,
but would by his death revive those who without it
could never escape death, nor have the chance of true
life.
Wherefore our Saviour's death was a true
sacrifice, and a sacrifice of holocaust, which
himself offered to his Father for our redemption: for
though the pains and dolours of his passion were so
great and violent that any but he had died of them,
yet had he never died of them unless he himself had
pleased, and unless the fire of his infinite charity
had consumed his life. He was then the sacrificer
himself, who offered himself unto his Father and
immolated himself, dying in love, to love, by love,
for love, and of love.
Yet beware of saying, Theotimus, that this amorous
death of the Saviour took place by manner of rapture,
for the object which his charity moved him to die for
was not love-worthy enough to ravish to itself this
divine soul, which departed then from his body by way
of ecstasy, driven and forced on by the abundance and
might of love; even as we see the myrrh tree send
forth its first juice by its mere abundance, without
squeezing or drawing in any way; according to that
which he himself said, as we have declared: No man
taketh my life away from me but I lay it down of
myself.
O God! Theotimus, what burning coals are cast upon
all our hearts to inflame us to the exercise of holy
love towards our all-good Saviour, seeing he has so
lovingly practised them towards us who are so evil!
This charity then of Jesus Christ presseth us!
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