SYMPATHY AND GRATIFYING LOVE IN THE PASSION OF OUR LORD
When I see my Saviour on the Mount of Olives with his soul sorrowful unto death (Mt 26:38), Lord Jesus, what shall I say? What could carry these sorrows of death into the soul of life? Your love aroused sympathy. By means of it, you drew our miseries into your sovereign heart. A devout soul sees the abyss of anxiety and distress of this divine Lover. How can it remain without experiencing a loving grief? Moreover, it realizes that all the sufferings of its Beloved do not come from any imperfection or lack of power, but from the greatness of his love. Then the soul cannot but melt fully by a holy painful love. So it cries out: I am dark with sorrow through compassion, but I am beautiful through gratifying love. The anguishes of my Beloved have eternally discoloured me (Song 1:5). How can a faithful lover see so many torments in the one whom he loves more than life itself ? How can he remain without becoming distressed, pale and wasted by sorrow? The tents of nomads are constantly exposed to the harm done by the wind and war. They are always shabby and covered with dust. I am fully exposed to sufferings. I receive them from the unparalleled trials and sufferings of my divine Saviour through sympathy. I am fully covered with distress and pierced with sorrow. The sufferings of him whom I love comes from his love. So, in the same measure they cause me sorrow through compassion, they delight me through gratifying love. For can a loyal lover not have an extreme contentment on seeing herself so much loved by the heavenly Spouse?
So the beauty of his love is in the repulsiveness of suffering. I mourn over the passion and death of my King, sun-burnt and dark with grief. Even so, I do not cease to have an incomparable sweetness in seeing the excess of his love in the midst of the trials of his sufferings. The tents of Solomon were embellished and adorned with an admirable variety of artistic works (Song 1:4). Their beauty in no way surpasses what I feel. I am happy, lovable and pleased with the variety of feelings of love. I have them in the midst of these sorrows. Love makes lovers equal. I see him. This beloved Lover is a fire of love burning in a thorn bush (Ex 3:2) of pain. I am also the same, I am burning with love within the thicket of my sorrows. I am a lily surrounded by thorns (Song 2:2). Please do not look only at the horrors of my piercing sorrows, but see the beauty of my gratifying love. This beloved divine Lover bears unbearable sufferings. This grieves me, makes me swoon out of anguish. But he takes delight in suffering. He loves his torments and dies in the joy of dying for me in pain. That is why I am grieved at his sufferings. I am also delighted with joy at his love. I not only feel sorrow with him but also I glorify myself in him (Rom 8:17).
It was this love, Theotimus, which imprinted on the loving, seraphic St. Francis [of Assisi] the stigmata. Likewise, the loving, angelic St. Catherine of Siena shared the burning wounds of the Saviour. Gratifying love [loving delight] sharpened the points of painful compassion. Honey renders the bitterness of wormwood more penetrating and keenly felt by the senses. On the contrary, the sweet scent of the roses is refined by the nearness of garlic which are planted close to the rose plants. Similarly, the loving delight we have taken in the love of our Lord makes infinitely stronger the compassion we have for his sufferings. Passing mutually, back and forth, from the compassion of sufferings to the delights of gratifying love, the joy of it becomes intense and heightened. Thus the pain of love and the love of pain are practised. Then loving sympathy and painful delight, like another Esau and Jacob, struggle to become stronger (Gen 25:22). They put the soul in unbelievable spasms of pain and agony. It becomes an ecstasy, lovingly painful and painfully loving. Thus the great St. Francis [of Assisi] and St. Catherine [of Siena] felt unrivalled love in their pains, incomparable pains in their love when they received the stigmata. They experienced the joyful love of suffering for their friend. This the Saviour felt in a supreme degree on the tree of the cross (Jn 15:13). Thus was born the precious union of our hearts with its God. Like a mystic Benjamin, this union is the child of pain and joy at the same time (Gen 35:18).
It is impossible to express how much the Saviour longs to enter into our souls, by the painful delight of gratifying love. “Ah," he says, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one: for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night (Song 5:2). What is this dew and what are these drops of the night if not the distress and sufferings of his passion? Pearls, as we have often said,[1] are nothing else than drops of dew. The freshness of the night rains them over the surface of the sea. These are received in the shells of the oysters or mother pearls. The divine Lover of souls wishes to say: I am overburdened with the pains and sweat of my passion. Almost everything took place either in the darkness of night or in the night of darkness when the sun becoming dark made midday darker. Therefore open your heart to me like the oysters open their shell towards the sky. I will spread over you the dew of my passion. It will be changed into pearls of consolation.
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[1] Bk. 3 ch. 2; Bk 4. chs 4 and 6