OUR LORD PRACTISED THE MOST PERFECT ACTIVITIES OF LOVE
I have spoken at length and in detail on the sacred activities of divine love. To enable you to keep them in your memory with facility and holiness, I offer you a selection and a digest of them. The love of Jesus Christ is a compelling motive, says the great Apostle [St. Paul] (2 Cor 5:14). Yes, surely, Theotimus, divine love impels us and constrains us by its infinite sweetness. It is practised in every work of our redemption in which the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared towards all humans (Titus 2:11; 3:4). For what is there that this divine Lover did not do for us as regards love?
1. He loved us with a gratifying love. For his delights were to be with the children of humans (Prov. 8:31). To attract humans to himself he became a human being himself.
2. He loved us with a benevolent love. He bestowed his own divinity upon humans in such a way that humans became God.
3. He united with us through a union beyond all understanding. In this union, he joined himself and bound himself to our nature so strongly, inseparably, and infinitely so that never was anything so tightly joined and grafted to humanity. Thus humanity is now the most holy Divinity in the Person of the Son of God.
4. He flowed out of himself into us, so to say, he melted his greatness to mould it into the form and shape of our littleness. So he is called the spring of living water (Jer 2:13), dew and rain from heaven (Is 45:8).
5. He experienced ecstasy. As St. Denis says, his overwhelming loving goodness makes him, in some way, come out of himself. Thus he extends his providence over all things and makes himself present in all things. Besides these, it is also as St. Paul says, he gave up himself in some way. He emptied himself. He drained away his greatness, his glory. He renounced his indescribable Majesty. If we may speak so, he annihilated himself (Phil 2:7) to come to our humanity to fill us with his Divinity, to overwhelm us with his goodness, to raise us to his dignity and to grant us the divine being as the children of God (Jn 1:12; 1Jn 3:1). He of whom it is so often written, I live by myself, says the Lord, could say soon after in the language of his Apostle [St. Paul]: I no longer live by myself but human being lives in me (Gal 2:20). My life is human being and to die for humans is my gain (Phil 1:21). My life is hidden with human being in God (Col 3:3). He who dwelt in himself now dwells in us. He who was living for all eternity in the bosom of his eternal Father (Jn 1:18) became soon after mortal in the bosom of his temporal Mother. He who lived eternally his divine life, lived in time with a human life. He was eternally only God, will be eternally for ever human being too. To such an extent did love of humans enrapture God and thus drew him into ecstasy.
6. Often his love led him to admiration as in the case of the centurion (Mt 8:10) and the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:28).
7. He contemplated the young man who had kept the commandments from his childhood and wanted to be led to perfection (Mk 10:21).
8. He took a loving rest in us. He even kept in suspension his senses in the womb of his Mother and in his childhood.
9. He had wonderful tenderness towards little children. He took them in his arms and caressed them (Mk 10:16). He showed marvellous tenderness towards Martha and Mary (Jn 11:5), towards Lazarus for whom he wept (Jn 11:35,36) and over the city of Jerusalem (Lk 19:41).
10. He was moved by an incomparable zeal which, as St. Denis says, turned into jealousy. As far as possible, he turned away from his beloved human nature all the evil at the risk and cost of his own life. He drove away the devil, the prince of this world (Jn 16:30) who seemed to be as if he was his rival and equal.
11. He had thousands of mystical pinings of love. For from where could these divine words come. I have a baptism with which to be baptized and what anguish and stress I am under till it is completed (Lk 12:50). The hour of his baptism in his blood was not yet in sight. He was longing for it till it came. The love he had for us urged him to see us freed from eternal death by his own death. Thus he was sad and sweated the blood of distress in the garden of Olives (Mt 26:37, 38; Lk 22: 43, 44). It is not only because of the intense sorrow in the inferior part of his reason but also because of the ardent love he had for us in the superior part. Sorrow gave him a dread of death and love gave him an extreme desire of death. Thus a very bitter struggle and a very cruel agony between the desire for death and the horror of death battled in him. It led to a great outpouring of blood which flowed as from a living spring streaming down to the earth.
12. Finally, Theotimus, this divine Lover died in the midst of the flames and fervours of charity because of the immense charity he had towards us and by the strength and power of love. In other words, he died in love, by love, for love and of love. The cruel corporal punishments he endured were more than enough to kill anyone whoever it might be . Yet death can never enter into the life of him who holds the keys of life and of death (Rev 1:18) unless divine love which handles those keys would open the doors to death. Thus death went to plunder this divine body and robe it of life.
Love was not satisfied with making him mortal for us unless it had also submitted him to death. It was by choice and not by the power of evil that he died: No one takes it [life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord, I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again (Jn 10:18). He was offered because he willed it, says Isaiah (Isa 53:4-11). Therefore it is not said that his spirit went away, left him and separated itself from him. On the contrary, he gave up his spirit, he breathed it out, yielded it and surrendered into the hands of his heavenly Father (Mt 27:50; Mk 15:37; Lk 23:46; Jn 19:30). So St. Athanasius observes that he bowed his head to die in order to consent and incline to the approach of death. Otherwise, it would never have dared to approach him. Crying with a loud voice he surrendered his spirit to his Father (Lk 23:46). Thus he showed that he had enough strength and breath not to die. He had also too much love to live any longer. He was intent on bringing to life by his death those who otherwise would never escape death and aspire to true life.
So our Saviour’s death was a true sacrifice. It was a holocaust which he himself offered to his Father for our salvation. For the sorrow and the sufferings of the Passion were so intense and cruel that any other person would have died of them: as for him, he would never have died, had he not willed it and had not the fire of his infinite charity consumed his life. Thus he himself was the sacrificing priest who offered himself to his Father. He immolated himself in love, to love, by love, for love and of love.
However, Theotimus, beware of saying that the loving death of the Saviour was by way of rapture. For the object for which his charity led him to death was not so lovable as to enrapture to itself his divine soul. Hence his soul went out of his body by way of ecstasy urged and drawn out by the abundance and power of his love. It is like the myrrh tree exuding its first sap only because of its abundance alone without drawing it out in any way. It is as he himself said and as we have observed: No one takes my life or enrapture my soul but I give it up willingly. My God! Theotimus, what blazing fire of divine love leaping on us to inflame our hearts in the exercise of holy love for the Saviour all good. We see that he actively loved us who are so wicked! This love of Jesus Christ, then, compels us (2 Cor 5:14).
END OF BOOK TEN