Twelfth Elevation
Patient heart waiting for us.
Third desire of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus: to see us correspond to the grace of his call
I
Reflection. – The long-suffering and clemency of a powerful being, who suspends the punishment of a guilty person, waiting for repentance, which brings amendment, to suffice for his punishment. The longanimity is all the more touching, that the one who waits could force the one who is slow to amend, but he respects his freedom, preferring to wait to owe everything to his will.
II
Jesus – The expectation of the just man is his joy[1], because it marks his hope. The object of my desires, oh my people, have you not understood? It is to see you walk in the way of the precepts, that, surrendering at last to my grace, you will second it and accomplish the urgent work of your salvation, walking to the end without stopping.
My Father once spoke to the patriarchs and did not disdain to descend with them to the smallest details of the law for the fulfillment of his holy will. I, his Word, whom he sent to speak in his name, saying to you, « This is my beloved Son, listen to him, »[2] brought you the law of grace, and during my mortal life I taught it to you.
My thirty years of obscurity have shown you humility, which must at length form the basis of divine works in an interior and hidden life; my three years of preaching have told you how the active life must be united in a lesser measure with the contemplative life to form in you that mixed life of which I have given an example; and my Passion and death, by purifying you with my blood, have revealed to you the part of penance which I have done for each of you and that which remains to be done by yourselves to make it complete.
However, these teachings, however striking they may be, completed by the word of the Holy Spirit and the reading of the Holy Books, would not have been enough in the face of your incapacity and for you to complete the work of your salvation[3]; it was necessary for me to add, to my mortal life, my Eucharistic life, established to allow me to pour it into you, so that a strong and powerful life might come to renew unceasingly the continual impoverishments of yours caused by sin.
But still a merely living life bringing you a germ of immortality would not have satisfied you, you needed a loving life that would instruct you through love; this is why I have given you my Heart, and why this Heart calls you, aspires to you, with a very strong desire awaits you.
Therefore, oh my people, apply your heart, with your eyes see, with your ears listen this time[4] and answer my voice, for if you delay again, perhaps when you come, it will not be time[5].
III
The soul – What is man, so that you deign to take care of him[6]? Is a soul, then, something very precious, and divine love in that soul? … But I have been able to keep a God waiting!
You, Lord, have not only waited for me, you have come more than once to knock on the door[7] of this rebellious soul.
You knocked with the tender mercies of your grace, in circumstances which I remember, alas!
You knocked with rays of light, which would have enlightened me if I had not been voluntarily blind.
You knocked with fear, with love, with trial … and I did not open or only half opened … and you did not enter, but waited, Lord, and today, thanks to your patience, I am overcome and I open.
Enter, Lord Jesus, in my turn I say to you: Come, take possession of all my being, and immediately I will follow you to your holy Tabernacle, not only to bind my will to that of your Father, but to attach myself to your Heart and not to leave you any more, to apply my heart, to see with my eyes, and with my ears to hear what you deign to tell me.
Hard to hear as I was, I had not understood that there, as well as in Bethlehem, in Bethany, on Calvary, was your Heart, and more hidden and more loving and more to me still!
I was approaching your august Sacrament, but while prostrate I was adoring your sacred Body, your holy soul, your divinity, I did not think that this Heart palpitating with love was waiting for a glance from mine! I forgot that it was the Sacrament of love and that your sacred Body was there only to keep your Heart there and to wait for us until the end. Jesus… cum dilexisset suos… in finem dilexit eos[8].
O Jesus, it is I who will now wait for you, and if by my delays I have deserved yours, I will not tire of saying at the door of your dwelling: I am waiting for you, Lord, and while I wait I will wait and my consolation will be to wait for you, since I hope in you[9]. The Lord is a God of equity; happy are all those who wait for him, happier still are those who do not make him wait and run in the way.
13th Elevation: Heart eager to hear us
[1] Cf. Prov. X, 28.
[2] Cf. Luke IX, 35.
[3] Cf. I Thess. V, 9.
[4] Cf. Jerem. V, 1.
[5] Cf. Ecclesi. V, 8.
[6] Cf. Job VII, 17.
[7] Cf. Rev. III, 20.
[8] Cf. John XIII, 1.
[9] Psalm XXXIX, 1: « Exspetans, exspetavi Dominum, et intendit mihi.