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The heart that is taken and pressed with a desire of
praising the divine goodness more than it is able,
after many endeavours goes oftentimes out of itself,
to invite all creatures to help it in its design.
As did the three children in the furnace, in that
admirable canticle of benedictions, by which they
excite all that is in heaven, on earth and under the
earth, to render thanks to the eternal God, by
blessing and praising him sovereignly. So the
glorious Psalmist, quite mastered by holily
disordered passion moving him to praise God, goes
without order, leaping from heaven to earth, and from
earth to heaven again, invoking angels, fishes,
mountains, waters, dragons, birds, serpents, fire,
hail, mists, assembling by his desires all creatures,
- to the end that they all may conspire to lovingly
magnify their Creator, some in their own persons
celebrating the divine praise, others affording
matter of praise by the wonders of their different
properties, which manifest their Maker's power; so
that this divine royal Psalmist, having composed a
great number of psalms with this inscription: Praise
God: after he had run through all creatures, holily
inviting them to bless the divine Majesty, and gone
over a great variety of means and instruments proper
for the celebration of the praises of this eternal
goodness, in the end, as falling down through lack of
breath, closes his sacred song with this ejaculation:
Let every spirit praise the Lord;91) that is, let all
that has life, neither live nor breathe but to bless
its Creator, according to the invitation he had
elsewhere given: O magnify the Lord with me; and let
us extol his name together.(2)
So the great S. Francis sang the canticle of the sun,
and a hundred other excellent benedictions, to invoke
creatures to help his heart, all fainting because he
could not satisfy himself in the praises of the dear
Saviour of his soul. So the heavenly spouse
perceiving herself almost to faint away amid the
violent efforts she made to bless and magnify the
well-beloved king of her heart, Ah! she cried out to
her companions, this divine spouse has led me by
contemplation into his wine-cellar, making me taste
the incomparable delights of the perfections of his
excellence, and I have so steeped and holily
inebriated myself in the holy complacency which I
have taken in this abyss of beauty, that my soul
languishes, wounded with a lovingly mortal desire,
which urges me everlastingly to praise so exalted a
goodness. Ah! come, I beseech you, to the assistance
of my poor heart, which is upon the point of falling
down dead. For pity sustain it, and stay me up with
flowers; strengthen me and compass me about with
apples, or I fall lifeless.
Complacency draws the divine sweetnesses into her
heart, which so ardently fills itself therewith that
it is overcharged. But the love of benevolence makes
our heart pass out of itself, and exhale itself in
vapours of delicious perfumes, that is, in all kinds
of holy praises. And
yet not being able to produce as many as it would
wish: Oh! it says, let all creatures come and
contribute the flowers of their benedictions, the
apples of their thanksgivings, honours and
adorations, so that on every side we may smell odours
poured out to the glory of him whose infinite
sweetness surpasses all honour, and whom we can never
right worthily magnify.
It is this divine passion that brings forth so many
discourses, sends through all hazards a Xavier, a
Berzees, an Anthony, that multitude of Jesuits,
Capuchins, and religious and ecclesiastics of all
kinds, to the Indies, Japan, Maranon, that the holy
name of Jesus may be known, acknowledged, and adored
throughout those immense nations.
It is this holy passion which causes so many books
of piety to be written, so many churches, altars,
pious houses to be erected, and in a word which makes
many of God's servants watch, labour, and die amid
the flames of zeal which consume and spend them.
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