| Chapter 15. From The Fond Caresses Which The Soul Has Has With God Beneath | ||||
The Cross, She Returns Again To His Passion | ||||
The Servant. You have revealed to me the measureless sufferings which You didst suffer in Your exterior Man on the gibbet of the cross, how cruelly tormented You wast, and encompassed about with the bands of miserable death. Alas! Lord, how was it beneath the cross? Or was there not one at its foot whose heart was pierced by Your woeful death? Or how didst You bear Thyself in Your sufferings towards Your sorrowing Mother? | ||||
Eternal Wisdom. Oh, listen now to a woeful thing, and let it sink into your heart. When, as you have heard, I hung suspended in mortal anguish before them, behold, they stood over against Me, and, with their voices, called out scoffingly to Me, wagging their heads contemptuously, and scorning Me utterly in their hearts, as though I had been a loathsome worm. | ||||
But I was firm amidst it all, and prayed fervently for them to My heavenly Father; behold, I, the innocent Lamb, was likened to the guilty thieves; by one of these was I reviled, but by the other invoked. I listened to his prayer and forgave him all his evil deeds. I opened to him the celestial paradise. Listen to a lamentable thing. I gazed around Me and found Myself utterly abandoned by all mankind, and those very friends who had followed Me, stood now afar off; yea, My beloved disciples had all fled from Me. Thus was I left naked, and stripped of all My clothes. I had lost all power Andes without victory. They treated Me without pity, but I bore Myself like a meek and silent lamb. On whichever side I turned I was encompassed by bitter distress of heart. Below Me stood My sorrowful Mother, who suffered in the bottom of her motherly heart all that I suffered in My body. My tender heart was, in consequence, deeply touched, because I alone knew the depth of her great sorrow, and beheld her distressful gestures and heard her lamentable words. I consoled her very tenderly at My mortal departure, and commended her to the filial care of My beloved disciple, and gave the disciple in charge to her maternal fidelity. | ||||
The Servant. Ah, gentle Lord, who can here refrain from sighing inwardly, and weeping bitterly? Yes, You beautiful Wisdom, how could they, the fierce lions, the raging wolves, be so ungentle to You, You sweet Lamb, as to treat You thus? Tender God, oh, that Your servant had but been there to represent all mankind! Oh, that I had stood up there for my Lord, or else had gone to bitter death with my only Love; or, had they not chosen to kill me with my only Love, that I yet might have embraced, with the arms of my heart, in sorrow and desolation, the hard stone socket of the cross, and, when it burst asunder for very pity, that my wretched heart, too, might have burst with the desire to follow my Beloved. | ||||
Eternal Wisdom. It was by Me from all eternity ordained, that when My hour was come, I alone should drink the cup of My bitter Passion for all mankind. But you, and all those who desire to imitate Me, deny yourselves, and take up, each of you, your own cross, and follow Me. For this dying to yourselves is as agreeable to Me as though you had actually gone with Me to bitter death itself. | ||||
The Servant. Gentle Lord, teach me then, how I should die with You, and what my own cross is. For, truly, Lord, since You have died for me, I ought not to live any more for myself. | ||||
Eternal Wisdom. When you do strive to do your best as well as you do understand it, and for so doing, do earn scornful words and contemptuous gestures from your fellow men, and they so utterly despise you in their hearts that they regard you as unable, nay, as afraid, to revenge yourself, and still you continuest not only firm and unshaken in your conduct, but do lovingly pray for your revilers to your heavenly Father, and do sincerely excuse them before Him; lo! as often as you diest thus to yourself for love of Me, so often is My own death freshly renewed and made to bloom again in you. When you do keep yourself pure and innocent and still your good works are so misrepresented, that with the joyful consent of your own heare you are reckoned as one of the wicked, and that from the bottom of your heare you are as ready to forgive all the injury you have received as though it never had happened, and, moreover, to be useful to and assist your persecutors by word and deed, in imitation of My forgiveness of My crucifiers, then truly are you crucified with your Beloved. When you do renounce the love of all mankind, and all comfort and advantage, so far as your absolute necessities will allow, the forsaken state in which you do then stand, forsaken by all earthly love, fills up the place of all those who forsook Me when My hour was come. When you do stand, for My sake, so disengaged from all your friends in those things by means of which they are an impediment between Me and you, even as though your friends did not belong to you, then are you to Me a dear disciple and brother, standing at the foot of My cross, and helping Me to support My sufferings. The voluntary detachment of your heart from temporal things, and its devotion to Me, clothe and adorn My nakedness. When, in every adversity which may befall you from your neighbour, you are oppressed for the love of Me, and do endure the furious wrath of all men from whichever side its blast come, how fiercely soever it come, and whether you be right or wrong, as meekly as a silent lamb, so that, in virtue o' your meek heart, and sweet words, and gentle looks, you disarmest the malice of the hearts of your enemies; behold even this is the true image of My death accomplished in you. Yes, wherever I find this likeness, what delight and satisfaction have I not then, and My heavenly Father also, in man. Oh, carry but My bitter death in the bottom of your heart, and in your prayers, and in the manifestation of your works, and then will you fulfill the sufferings and fidelity of My immaculate Mother and My beloved disciple. | ||||
The Servant. Ah, loving Lord, my soul implores You to accomplish the perfect imaging of Your miserable Passion on my body and in my soul, be it for my pleasure or my pain, to Your highest praise and according to Your blessed will. I desire, also, in particular, that You would describe something more of the great sorrow of Your sorrowing Mother, and would relate to me how she bore herself in the hour that she stood under the cross. | ||||