Tenth Elevation
Loving Heart of our hearts
First desire of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus: to make us happy
I
Reflection. – What is love? Love considered in God, its primary source, is God himself. God is love: Deus caritas est[1]. In God everything is love, even his anger; his punishments are a love of justice, and his trials a love of wisdom, as his benefits a love of tender love. All forms of love among men emanate in principle from this divine ocean: love is born of God;[2] if it remains pure, it rises to its principle like the dew to the firmament, and it falls more abundantly to the point from which it rose.
This boundless and bottomless expanse of divine charity is both ocean and furnace; but it is a flood that submerges without engulfing, it is a fire that burns without destroying[3].
To love Jesus, Son of God, oh, the blessed fire! … the sweet refreshment[4]!
II
Jesus – I have loved you with an eternal love. I loved you before you were born, that is why I gave you life, this treasure of time with which my chosen ones buy the goods of eternity; do not spend it in vain, this treasure of human life, each parcel of which contains in principle the perfect happiness that you dream of. It is true that it will only be complete in heaven, but already here below it has a taste that exceeds all the joys of the earth.
Why do you look for this happiness outside of me, when I alone possess it, and when I alone wish to give it to you? Perhaps you don’t go down to ask for it at the poisoned springs, which reassures you, but you don’t let yourself be drawn to the smell of my perfumes either, and your poor heart, altered and always empty on one side, goes up against the created things which don’t have and can’t give you what you beg for.
I made your heart[5], and I made it to the measure of my own, that is, as big as I wanted to pour love into it. So I know the extent of it, and that is why I tell you that it will never be able to suffice with the best that you seek.
Turn around, dear soul, convert, turn around with grace, and you will meet me, for I too am pursuing an object that flees from me, that I desire, that I love … your very heart, yes, as if it were indispensable to my own happiness; but I am indispensable to yours, and it is the same thing to me. I thirst, yes, for your peace; for your joy, for the fullness of your being, that is, for the fullness of your heart inasmuch as I must fill it. It is therefore of each other that we thirst. Ah! if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink!
If you only understood the value of this supreme gift! He is not only the living water, the grace, he is the very author of the grace, the life at its divine source and its heavenly food: the living bread that sustains the world, the Eucharist, the Heart loving your hearts and that, for your happiness, begs you to love him. « My son, give me your heart. Praebe, fili mi, cor tuum mihi (Prov. XXIII, 26).
III
The soul – What, Lord, from all eternity you have loved me? Was I conceived in your eternally loving Heart in your Father’s bosom? And you undoubtedly gave me being only to give me a heart which loved you, which returned you love for love and which tasted the true happiness prepared for your chosen ones!…
And I, a fool, went to offer this attraction of the true, the beautiful, the good that you deposited for you in my soul, I went to offer it to others than to you; and during this time you waited for me, you followed me! Ah, Lord, am I the object of such a prodigy of goodness, my heart is subjugated, my reason confounded.
I still understand, O Lord, that you love your creatures who remain innocent and beautiful as when they came out of your hands, that you smile at the child who stammers your name, at the undefiled heart that shines with your image, at the soul turned upwards that seeks your face, at the hard-working man who labors in your vineyard; but the criminals like me, the workers of the last hour, how, infinite purity, can you love them ?
Ah, my beloved Master, another miracle has followed your first miracle of love in my creation; to show that the guilty can be loved, you, the spotless Lamb, have made yourself, dare I say it? the immense culprit of the earth!… You have bent down under the weight of our crimes, you have drunk the shame of them and borne the punishment! But you have not known remorse?
Ah, remorse, it has remained my torment; but, oh prodigy of the last excess, you still want to drown it in a last river of love that came out of your Eucharistic Heart to erase the sins of the world: the sweetness of your sacred presence on this earth and the close union that you allow us with you, oh thrice merciful Heart of my Creator, of my Savior and of my most tender friend!
This is too much! I turn to you. Take this poor ungrateful heart, here it is forever; from today, let us work to remake it, to detach it from everything, to attach it only to you, for it is a right heart, a strong heart, a warm heart that you want; the lukewarm one, you vomit it. Well, yes, with your grace it will become all that, because I want it and you want it, everything is there. Every day, purifying myself a little more, I will establish ascents in my heart, I will rise towards you, Lord.
11th Elevation: Heart begging to be loved
[1] Cf. I John IV, 8.
[2] Imitation of Jesus Christ, 1. III, ch. V.
[3] Cf. Exod. III, 2.
[4] Cf. Saint Bernard, Sermones in Cantica, XV, P.L., CLXXXIII, 847.
[5] Cf. Ps. XXXIII, 15.