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The love of benevolence, then, causes in us a desire,
more and more to increase the complacency which, we
take in the divine goodness; and to effect this
increase, the soul sedulously deprives herself of all
other pleasure that she may give herself more
entirely to taking pleasure in God.
A religious man asked the devout Brother Giles,
one of the first and most holy companions of S.
Francis, in what work he could be most agreeable to
God he answered by singing: "One to one," which he
afterwards explained, saying, "Give ever your whole
soul which is one, to God who is one." The soul pours
itself out by pleasures, and the diversity of these
dissipates and hinders her from being able to apply
herself attentively to the pleasure which she ought
to take in God.
The glorious S. Paul reputed all things as dung
and dirt in comparison of his Saviour. And the sacred
spouse is wholly for her well-beloved only: My
beloved to me and I to him. And if the soul that
stands thus holily affected meet with creatures never
so excellent, yea though they were angels, she makes
no delay with them, save only what she needs for the
help and furtherance of her desire. Tell me then,
says she to them, tell me, I conjure you, have you
seen him whom my soul loveth?(1)
The glorious lover Magdalen met the angels at the
sepulchre, who doubtless spoke to her angelically,
that is most sweetly, but she, on the contrary,
wholly ruthful, could take no content, either in
their sweet words or in the glory of their garments,
or in the all-heavenly grace of their deportment, or
in the most delightsome beauty of their faces, but
all steeped in tears: They have taken away my Lord,
says she, and I know not where they have laid him:(2)
and, turning about, she saw her sweet Saviour, but in
form of a gardener, with whom her heart cannot be
satisfied, for full of the love of the death of her
Master, flowers she will have none, nor consequently
gardeners; she has within her heart the cross, the
nails, the thorns; she seeks her crucified. Ah! my
dear sir gardener, says she, if perchance you have
planted my well-beloved deceased Lord amongst your
flowers, as a crushed and withered lily, tell me
quickly and I, I will carry him away.
But no sooner had he called her by her name, than,
wholly melting with delight, O God! says she, my
Master! Nothing can content her, nor angels' company
delight her, no nor yet her very Saviour's, unless he
appear in that form in which he had stolen her heart.
The kings could not content themselves either in the
beauty of Jerusalem or in the magnificence of Herod's
court, or in the brightness of the star; their heart
seeks the little cave and the little child of
Bethlehem. The mother of fair loving and the spouse
of most holy love cannot stay among their kinsfolks
and acquaintance; they still walk on in grief,
seeking after the only object of their delight.
The desire to increase holy complacency cuts off
all other pleasure, to the end that it may more
actively practise that to which the divine
benevolence excites it.
Now still more to magnify this sovereign
well-beloved, the soul goes ever seeking his face:
that is, with an attention more and more careful and
fervent, she keeps noting every particular of the
beauties and perfections which are in him, making a
continual progress in this sweet searching out of
motives, which may perpetually urge her to a greater
complacency in the incomprehensible goodness which
she loves.
So David in many of his heavenly psalms recites
one by one the works and wonders of God, and the
sacred spouse ranges, in her divine canticles, as a
well-ranked army, all the perfections of her beloved,
one after another, to provoke her soul to most holy
complacency, thereby more highly to magnify his
excellence, and also to subject all other spirits to
the love of her beloved so dear.
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