Eleventh Elevation
Heart begging to be loved
Second desire of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus: to be loved with a love of preference


I
Reflection. – Does it not seem contrary to dignity to ask for love? Where does it come from that the Heart of Jesus seems to lower itself to this supplication? It is because loving God is in our interests, not in his, and if he urges us to respond to his love, it is only for our own good. God has no need of our return, finding in himself his infinite sufficiency.
However, as the nature of fire is to communicate itself and as divine charity is a fire, it is of its nature to spread itself; now, the heart of man made by God in his image being for him an object of predilection, he will not have completed his creation until he has filled it with his love. That is why he begs him to make this essential element of his happiness and the glory of God’s work live in him.


II
Jesus – I have come to bring fire to the earth, and what do I desire but that it be kindled[1]? This fire, which the earth did not know before I came to bring it the law of love with its graces, is not a devastating fire; since this reign of love, I am no longer in storms, nor in trembling. I am gentleness[2], which does not break the half broken reed but lights the still smoldering wick[3].
My heart does not impose itself, it sup¬plies; I call many to the intimacy of my love and many refuse[4], I knock at the door and often they do not open it[5]; but I will beg you to love me, and with so much insistence that if your heart is not of stone, it will surrender.
Again, what have I had to do that I have not done for you[6]? To win you, I put on your nature and gave you my life, I took it back in order to give it again for you: I consume myself today in the Eucharist, and there, more yours than ever, in yourself what are not the tender insinuations of my heart to triumph over your will, to make you choose preferably the only good that will not leave an emptiness in your soul.
I do not demand an exclusive love from all, and if you are not called to it, give yourself to those whom you can love here below, I agree, since I have made it your duty to do so, but love them with my heart so that you may love them with something of my unchanging tenderness. Meditate on and honor all my mysteries, each in its own time, but love with a predilection the mystery which contains them all and which has from my heart to be par excellence the sacrament of love.


III
The soul – 0 my God, I understand at last today why you love us so much … this desire to be loved, it is not in you a need relating to yourself, eternal Word, uncreated and infinite love: what increase of good would bring you our indigent affection? but it is because you are perfect love that you are so strongly inclined to love us perfectly and to want to be loved as perfectly as we are capable of it
You are all love, O Jesus, you are all heart: I am no longer surprised that you cannot tire of coming from heaven to earth, to transform us into you. In your Eucharist, you are not only all love as God, but all love as man, so that there may be a human heart here on earth that truly loves your Father with all of itself and that truly loves men, your dear ones, O Jesus, as itself for the love of God. In the Eucharist, you are therefore, if I dare say so, doubly all your own.
What a wonder and what happiness! If you were only science, beauty, wisdom, you would only suffer around you wisdom, beauty, science; but, because of the great love with which you have loved us,[7] a love which surpasses all human knowledge,[8] you ask above all for our hearts. And if I were to bring you knowledge, beauty, wisdom even without my heart, you would count it all for nothing;[9] and if my heart were not all love, would you recognize it as a heart?
Ah, may this love fill me, flood me, consume me, transform me, since, by giving you my poor heart, I satisfy you. May I at least love you from now on, Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, not only above all created things, but also with a preferential affection, among the various testimonies of your divine love, in order to compensate you for the oblivion in which our hearts have left you for so long.


12th Elevation: Patient heart waiting for us

[1] Cf. Luke XII, 49.
[2] Cf. Matth. XI, 29.
[3] Cf. Ibid. XII, 2o.
[4] Cf. Prov. I, 24.
[5] Cf. Apoc. III, 20.
[6] Cf. Is. V, 4.
[7] Ephes. II, 4.
[8] Ephes. II, 19.
[9. I Corinthians XIII, 1-2.