| 23. "The Glad Giver" | ||||
"All the Trinity wrought in the Passion of Jesus Christ" | ||||
AND in these three words: It is a Joy, a bliss, an endless satisfying to me, were showed three heavens, as thus: For the joy, I understood the pleasure of the Father; and for the bliss, the worship of the Son; and for the endless satisfying, the Holy Ghost. The Father is pleased, the Son is worshipped, the Holy Ghost is satisfied. | ||||
And here saw I, for the Third Beholding in His blissful Passion: that is to say, the Joy and the Bliss that make Him to be well-satisfied in it. For our Courteous Lord showed His Passion to me in five manners: of which the first is the bleeding of the head; the second is, discolouring of His face; the third is, the plenteous bleeding of the body, in seeming [as] from the scourging; the fourth is, the deep dying: these four are beforetold for the pains of the Passion. And the fifth is [this] that was shown for the joy and the bliss of the Passion. | ||||
For it is God's will that we have true enjoying with Him in our salvation, and therein He wills [that] we be mightily comforted and strengthened; and thus wills He that merrily with His grace our soul be occupied. For we are His bliss: for in us He enjoys without end; and so shall we in Him, with His grace. | ||||
And all that He has done for us, and does, and ever shall, was never cost nor charge to Him, nor might be, but only that [which] He did in our manhood, beginning at the sweet Incarnation and lasting to the Blessed Uprise on Easter-morrow: so long dured the cost and the charge about our redemption in deed: of [the] which deed He enjoys endlessly, as it is beforesaid. | ||||
Jesus wills that we take heed to the bliss that is in the blessed Trinity [because] of our salvation and that we desire to have as much spiritual enjoying, with His grace, (as it is beforesaid): that is to say, that the enjoying of our salvation be [as] like to the joy that Christ has of our salvation as it may be while we are here. | ||||
All the Trinity wrought in the Passion of Christ, ministering abundance of virtues and plenty of grace to us by Him: but only the Maiden's Son suffered: whereof all the blessed Trinity endlessly enjoys. All this was shown in these words: Are you well pleased? and by that other word that Christ said: If you are pleased, then am I pleased; as if He said: It is joy and satisfying enough to me, and I ask nought else of you for my travail but that I might well please you. | ||||
And in this He brought to mind the property of a glad giver. A glad giver takes but little heed of the thing that he gives, but all his desire and all his intent is to please him and solace him to whom he gives it. And if the receiver take the gift highly and thankfully, then the courteous giver setts at nought all his cost and all his travail, for joy and delight that he has pleased and solaced him that he loves. Plenteously and fully was this showed. | ||||
Think also wisely of the greatness of this word "ever." For in it was shown an high knowing of love that He has in our salvation, with manifold joys that follow of the Passion of Christ. One is that He rejoices that He has done it in deed, and He shall no more suffer; another, that He bought us from endless pains of hell. | ||||