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Nothing so much wounds a loving heart as to perceive
another wounded with the love of it.
The pelican builds her nest upon the ground,
wherefore serpents often sting her young ones. Now
when this happens, the pelican, as an excellent
physician, with the point of her beak wounds these
poor chicks all over, to cause the poison which the
serpents' sting had spread through all the parts of
their bodies to flow out with the blood; and to get
out all the poison she lets out all the blood, and
thus consequently, permits this little pelican-brood
to perish. But seeing them dead she wounds herself,
and spreading her blood over them she vivifies them
with a new and purer life. Her love wounded them, and
forthwith by the same love she wounds herself.
Never do we wound a heart with the wound of love
but we ourselves are wounded with the same.
When the soul sees her God wounded by love for her
sake, she immediately receives from it a reciprocal
wound. Thou hast wounded my heart,(1) said the
heavenly lover to the Sulamitess, and the Sulamitess
cries out: Tell my beloved that I languish with
love.(2) Bees never wound without being themselves
wounded to death. And we, seeing the Saviour of our
souls wounded to death by love of us, even to the
death of the cross, - how can we but be wounded for
him, but wounded with a wound as much more dolorously
amorous as his was amorously dolorous, and a wound as
great as is our inability to love him as much as his
love and death require?
It is, again, another wound of love, when the soul
feels truly that she loves God, and yet he treats her
as if he knew not that she loved him, or as if he
were distrustful of her love: for then, my dear
Theotimus, the soul is put into an extreme anguish,
as it is insupportable to her to see and feel even
the mere pretence God makes of distrusting her.
The poor S. Peter had and felt his heart all
filled with love for his master, and Our Lord, hiding
his knowledge of it: Peter, said he, dost thou love
me more than these? Ah! Lord, said the Apostle, thou
knowest that I love thee. But, Peter, lovest thou me,
replied Our Saviour. My dear Master, said the
Apostle, truly I love thee, thou knowest it. But this
sweet master to prove him, and as if showing a
diffidence of his love: Peter, said he, dost thou
love me? Ah! Lord, thou woundest this poor heart,
which greatly afflicted cries out, amorously yet
dolorously: Lord thou knowest all things: thou
knowest that I love thee.(3)
It happened once that a possessed person was being
exorcised, and the wicked spirit being urged to tell
his name: I am, said he, that miserable being
deprived of love: and S. Catharine of Genoa who was
there present suddenly perceived her whole frame
disturbed and disordered, merely from having heard
the words, privation of love, pronounced: for as the
devils so hate divine love that they quake when they
see its sign, or hear its name, that is, when they
see the cross, or hear the name of Jesus pronounced,
so those who dearly love Our Lord thrill with pain
and horror when they see some sign or hear some word,
that refers to the privation of this holy love.
S. Peter was quite sure that Our Lord, knowing all
things, could not be ignorant how much he was loved
by him, yet because the repetition of this demand:
Peter, dost thou love me? had some appearance of
distrust, S. Peter is greatly grieved by it. Alas!
that poor soul who feels that she is resolved rather
to die than offend her God, and yet feels not a spark
of fervour, but on the contrary an extreme coldness,
which so benumbs and weakens her that at every step
she falls into very sensible imperfections, this soul
I say, Theotimus, is all wounded: for her love is
exceedingly in pain to see that God lets himself look
as if he did not see how much she loves him, leaving
her as a creature not belonging to him; and she
fancies that amid her failings, her distractions and
coldness, Our Lord smites her with this reproach: How
canst thou say that thou lovest me, seeing thy soul
is not with me? And this is a dart of pain through
her heart, but a dart of pain which proceeds from
love; for if she loved not, she would not be
afflicted with the fear that she loved not.
Sometimes this wound of love is made merely by the
remembrance we have that there was a time in which we
loved not our God. "Oh! too late have I loved thee,
beauty ever ancient and ever new," said that saint
who for thirty years was a heretic. The past life is
an object of horror to the present life of him who
has passed his previous life without loving the
sovereign goodness.
Sometimes love wounds us with the mere
consideration of the multitude of those who contemn
the love of God; so that we faint away with grief for
this, as did he who said: My zeal hath made me pine
away: because my enemies forgot thy words.(4) And the
great S. Francis, thinking he was not heard, upon a
day wept, sobbed and lamented so pitifully, that a
good man hearing him ran as if to the succour of one
who was going to be slain, and finding him all alone
asked him: why dost thou cry so hard, poor man? Alas!
said he, I weep to think that Our Lord endured so
much for love of us and no one thinks of it: and
having said thus he took to his tears again, and this
good man sobbed and wept with him.
But, however it be, there is this admirable in the
wounds received from the divine love that their pain
is delightful, and all that feel it consent to it,
and would not change this pain for all the pleasures
of the world. There is no pain in love, or if there
is pain it is well-beloved pain. Once a Seraph,
holding a golden arrow, from the head of which issued
a little flame, darted it into the heart of the
Blessed Mother (S.) Teresa; and when he would draw it
out, it seemed to this virgin that he was tearing out
her very entrails, the pain being so excessive that
she had only strength to utter low and feeble moans;
but yet a pain so dear that she would have wished
never to be delivered from it.
Such was the arrow of love that God sent into the
heart of the great S. Catharine of Genoa in the
beginning of her conversion, after which she became
another woman, dead to the world and things created,
to live only to her Creator.
The well-beloved is a bundle of bitter myrrh, and
this bitter bundle again is well-beloved, which
abides dearly placed between the breasts,(5) that is,
the best-beloved of all the wellbeloved.
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