Sixth Elevation
Forgotten Heart
Fourth complaint of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus to the lukewarm soul
I
Reflection. – The forgetting of the heart is the continuation of neglect, its consummation. It is here the most bitter proof of indifference, a proof all the more bitter to the forgotten heart that it had given more, given everything, had given itself. In a heart where still lives a remainder of friendship, the memory is a spur which often determines the return; but the lapse of memory, the implacable lapse of memory, immobilizes the abandonment and leaves its victim deprived of all hope.
II
Jesus. – Is it because I am silent and do not see that you have forgotten my gaze which is always directed towards you, and that your knees have grown weary before me[1] ? Dear soul, once so full of life, why have you become languid, when my hopeful heart had counted on you? … Has the bread with which I feed you lost its flavor, nor the blood of my heart its warmth? why have you become weak and lukewarm, why does nothing warm you with duration? You are lukewarm. Oh, it would be better if you were cold[2], for the ineffectual desires that lull your life to sleep would cease to deceive you and to afflict me. Woe to him who does the work of God carelessly[3]. Poor soul, you are going to the grave and you do not see it! Come back, come back to the source of life, it is because you have forgotten to take your food, that you have become weak[4] and without strength, this food of fervent prayers, of solid virtues, of valiant love and above all of the sacred Bread which gives life to the world[5]. Perhaps you have eaten this bread, but it has not produced in you the effect of life. Ah! it is because you have not found the vital force corresponding to its action! … Perhaps also in your sickly state, not wanting to complain about yourself, you complain about me, poor soul! Well, see and answer: What must I have done that I did not do[6]?
Search your memories and consider your existence: neither the gentle feelings that I lavished on the weak, nor the trials that I granted to the strong, nor the pain that purifies, nor the contentment that encourages, have failed you; nothing has failed you except the perseverance of your good will. Do not die like this: Rise up. Rise up, come out of your dust, break your fetters, O captive daughter of Zion[7], awake Jerusalem[8], I will take from your hand this cup of slumber[9], take up your bed and walk, this bed of fatal rest, of restless dreams, and come to my house, to my tabernacle, it is I, it is I myself, who will restore joy to your soul[10], and with the warmth of my heart, movement to yours, life to your life.
III
The soul. – O Jesus, boundless love, infinite goodness, incomprehensible mercy! O Jesus: although left alone in your tabernacles, where you remain only for us; although forsaken and forgotten, you do not leave us. By putting on the Eucharist, you wanted to make it easier and sweeter for us to fulfill the great duties that faith imposes on us towards your divine majesty; but above all, you wanted, in your tenderness, to make it easier for us to have access to your sacred Heart from this life, leaving no other separation between you and us than that of the sacramental veils.
I have deceived your hopes, O Lord; I have nullified your condescending goodness: and yet you remain, because you do not change; your love is faithful. You have fixed your eyes and your heart there,[11] and while the constant souls rejoice, your eyes are sadly turned towards those who are lacking, looking, like the father of the prodigal son, by what way they might return, but during this waiting the days pass, and we forget you! … It is not only the unbelievers, the impious, the criminals, who add this new wound to your Eucharistic Heart, it is not only the lukewarm soul, it is also us, good Christians (Christians of the time, alas! ) superficial and soft, who sacrifice at the same time to God and to the world; who, while going to church, have perhaps never thought that, behind the doors of the tabernacle, lives and loves a God made man, and that the heart of this God-Man, always full of tenderness for his creatures, expects from them at least a memory of convenience. It is we, the rigid observers of the Law, who see in its fulfilment only the rest of the accomplished law, without thinking of meditating on it in our hearts[12], forgetting that the external practices have for their end the interior life, which unites the heart of man to the heart of God.
It is we who, lost in the number and natural activity of our works, sometimes give preference to the second commandment over the more hidden life of the first; it is we too, consecrated souls, the object of the predilections of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, who perhaps have forgotten, forgetting ourselves, that the consecration of the heart is the only true one for the heart of the Spouse. Finally, let us confess it to our shame, and to our desolation, it is we, pious communicants, who forget this divine Heart, when, after having received it with love, we allow ourselves to be surprised by the images of earthly things, and when we return to Jesus, his sacramental presence has disappeared: he is no longer there…
Oh, Heart of our Jesus, who thinks so much of us, who thinks of you, as you desire, as you deserve, as you are entitled to in your Eucharist ?
[1] Cf. Ps. CVIII, 24.
[2] Cf. Rev. III, 15.
[3] Cf. Jer. XLVIII, 10
[4] Cf. Ps. CII, 5.
[5] Cf. John VI, 33.
[6] Cf. Is V, 4.
[7] Cf. Is. LII,2
[8] Cf. Is. LI, 17.
[9] Cf. Is. LI, 22.
[10] Cf. Jer. XXXI, 13.
[11] Cf. II Paral. VII, 16.
[12] Cf. II Cor. III, 6.