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I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore
have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee. And I will
build thee again, and thou shalt be built, 0 virgin
of Israel.(1) These are the words of God, by which he
promises that the Saviour coming into the world shall
establish a new kingdom in his Church, which shall be
his virgin-spouse, and true spiritual Israelite.
Now as you see, Theotimus, it was not by the works
of justice, which we have done, but according to his
mercy he saved us,(2) by that ancient, yea, eternal,
charity which moved his divine Providence to draw us
unto him. No man can come to me except the Father,
who hath sent me, draw him.(3) For if the Father had
not drawn us we had never come to the Son, our
Saviour, nor consequently to salvation.
There are certain birds, Theotimus, which
Aristotle calls apodes,(4) because having extremely
short legs, and feeble feet, they use them no more
than if they had none. And if ever they light upon
the ground they must remain there, so that they can
never take flight again of their own power, because
having no use of their legs or feet, they have
therefore no power to move and start themselves into
the air: hence they remain there motionless, and die,
unless some wind, propitious to their impotence,
sending out its blasts upon the face of the earth,
happen to seize upon and bear them up, as it does
many other things. If this happen, and they make use
of their wings to correspond with this first start
and motion which the wind gives them, it also
continues its assistance to them, bringing them by
little and little into flight.
Theotimus, the angels are like to those birds, which
for their beauty and rarity are called
birds-of-paradise, never seen on earth but dead. For
those heavenly spirits had no sooner forsaken divine
love to attach themselves to self-love, than suddenly
they fell as dead, buried in hell, seeing that the
same effect which death has on men, separating them
everlastingly from this mortal life, the same had the
angels' fall on them, excluding them for ever from
eternal life.
But we mortals rather resemble apodes: for if it
chance that we, quitting the air of holy divine love,
fall upon earth and adhere to creatures, which we do
as often as we offend God, we die indeed, yet not so
absolute a death but that there remains in us a
little movement, besides our legs and feet, namely,
some weak affections, which enable us to make some
essays of love, though so weakly, that in truth we
are impotent of ourselves to detach our hearts from
sin, or start ourselves again in the flight of sacred
love, which, wretches that we are, we have
perfidiously and voluntarily forsaken.
And truly we should well deserve to remain
abandoned of God, when with this disloyalty we have
thus abandoned him. But his eternal charity does not
often permit his justice to use this chastisement,
but rather, exciting his compassion, it provokes him
to reclaim us from our misery, which he does by
sending us the favourable wind of his most holy
inspirations, which, blowing upon our hearts with a
gentle violence, seizes and moves them, raising our
thoughts, and moving our affections into the air of
divine love.
Now this first stirring or motion which God causes
in our hearts to incite them to their own good, is
effected indeed in us but not by us; for it comes
unexpectedly, before we have either thought of it or
been able to think of it, seeing we are not
sufficient to think anything towards our salvation of
ourselves as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is
from God,(5) who did not only love us before we were,
but also to the end we might be, and might be saints.
For which cause he prevents us with the blessings of
his fatherly sweetness, and excites our souls, in
order to bring them to holy repentance arid
conversion.
See, I pray you, Theotimus, the prince of the
Apostles, stupefied with sin in the sad night of his
Master's passion; he no more thought of sorrowing for
his sin, than though he had never known his heavenly
Saviour. And as a miserable apode fallen to earth, he
would never have been raised, had not the cock, as an
instrument of divine providence, struck his ears with
its voice, at the same instant in which his sweet
Redeemer casting upon him a gracious look, like a
dart of love, transpierced that heart of stone, which
afterwards sent forth water in such abundance, like
the ancient rock smitten by Moses in the desert.
But look again and see this holy Apostle sleeping
in Herod's prison, bound with two chains: he is there
in quality of a martyr, and nevertheless he
represents the poor man who sleeps amid sin, prisoner
and slave to Satan. Alas! who will deliver him? The
angel descends from heaven, and striking the great
Saint Peter, the prisoner, upon the side, awakens
him, saying: Arise quickly! So the inspiration comes
from heaven like an angel, and striking upon the poor
sinner's heart, stirs him up to rise from his
iniquity.
Is it not true then, my dear Theotimus, that this
first emotion and shock which the soul perceives,
when God, preventing it with love, awakens it and
excites it to forsake sin and return unto him and not
only this shock, but also the whole awakening, is
done in us, and for us, but not by us?
We are awake, but have not awakened of ourselves,
it is the inspiration which has awakened us, and to
awaken us has shaken and moved us. I slept, says that
devout spouse, but my beloved, who is my heart,
watched. Ah! see that it is he who awakens me,
calling me by the name of our loves, and I know well
by his voice that it is he. It is unawares and
unexpectedly that God calls and awakens us by his
holy inspiration, and in this beginning of grace we
do nothing but feel the touch which God gives, in us,
as S. Bernard says, but without us.
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