XII — LOVING LOVE IN RETURN

Presence of God. — O Jesus, who have loved me so much, make me capable of returning your love.

Meditation

1 — Leo XIII, in the Encyclical Annum Sacrum, affirms: “The Sacred Heart is the symbol and image of the infinite charity of Jesus Christ, a charity that impels us to love Him in return.” Indeed, nothing more than love is capable of awakening love: “love is repaid with love,” the Saints have always said and repeated. St. Teresa of Jesus writes: “Each time we think of Christ, we must remember the love He has shown us in granting us so many graces... Love calls for love: despite our smallness and the weakness of our love, let us try always to consider this truth, stirring ourselves up to love” (Vi. 22, 14).

Precisely to stir us up to love, the Church proposes devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the Office of his feast, after reminding us of the immense proofs of Christ’s love, this good mother asks us with lively anxiety: “Who will not love in return One who has loved us so much? Who among his redeemed will not prefer Him above all?” (hymn at Lauds). And, to urge us ever more to render love for love, she places on Jesus’ lips the beautiful words of Sacred Scripture: “I have loved you with an everlasting love, and therefore I have drawn you to me in compassion” (lesson III), and again: “Fili, praebe mihi cor tuum, son, give me your heart” (antiphon at Lauds). Here, then, is what true devotion to the Sacred Heart consists in: loving Love in return, “rendering love for love,” as St. Margaret Mary, the great disciple of the Sacred Heart, expresses it; “unceasingly loving in return Him who has loved us so much,” as St. Teresa Margaret of the Heart of Jesus, the hidden but no less ardent disciple of the divine Heart, adds.

2 — The setting of our spiritual life depends greatly on the idea we form of God. If, like the slothful servant of the Gospel (Mt. 25:14-30), we have of God a narrow and petty idea, instead of feeling ourselves spurred to love Him and give ourselves generously to his service, we shall be cold, lazy, calculating; we too will bury the talent received from the master, not troubling ourselves to use for God those goods we have received from Him. Many Christians, unfortunately, live this way: they serve God as a slave serves his master; if they refrain from sin, they do so only out of fear of punishment; if they pray or perform some good work, it is only with a view to their own interest and, therefore, there is in them no impulse of generosity and love. But when the soul begins to perceive that “Deus charitas est” (1 Jn. 4:8), begins to penetrate the mystery of infinite love that surrounds it, begins to understand God’s love, Jesus’ love for it, then everything spontaneously changes aspect because “love calls for love.” Devotion to the Sacred Heart, which is devotion to Jesus’ infinite love, must produce in us precisely this effect: to make us understand ever more “the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge” (Eph. 3:19). By meditating on and contemplating the Heart of Jesus pierced for love of us, we shall learn the science of love, a science no earthly book can teach us but which is learned only from the open book of the Heart of Christ, of Christ our only Master: “Here He taught me a most delightful science” (G.C. C. 27), sings with enthusiasm the soul that Jesus has introduced into the secrets of his divine Heart. Then the response to his love will be easy: “He loved me and gave Himself for me... and I most gladly will spend and be spent wholly for Him and for the souls that are his treasure” (cf. Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 12:15). Love thus casts us beyond every calculation and every selfishness.

Colloquy

“Come then, my soul, awake. How long will you drowse? Above heaven there is a King who desires to see you: He loves you with all his Heart; He loves you without measure. Christ loves you so sweetly and so faithfully that He has left his kingdom and humbled Himself for you. To seek you, He suffered Himself to be bound like a malefactor. He loves you so cordially and so strongly, is so jealous for you and has given you so many proofs of it, that for you He willingly delivered his Body to death. He has washed you with his Blood; He has redeemed you with his death. And how long will you wait to love Him in return? Hasten, then, to give Him an answer. “Here I am, I come to You, most loving Jesus! I come for your sweetness, for your mercy, for your charity; I come with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength. Who will grant me to be wholly conformed to your Heart, so that You may find in me all that You desire?

“O Jesus, my King and my God, receive me into the most gracious asylum of your divine Heart, and there unite me to You so that I may live wholly for You. Let me now be plunged into the great sea of your mercy, abandon myself completely to your pity, cast myself into the burning furnace of your love and remain there until consummation...

“But what am I, my God? Oh, how unlike I am to You, I who am the refuse of all creatures! But You are my great confidence, because in You is the complement, indeed the abundance, of all the goods I have lost. Enclose me, O Lord, in the tomb of your Heart opened by the lance, and place over it the stone of your most sweet gaze, so that I may be entrusted eternally to your care: in the shadow of your fatherly love the perpetual memory of your precious love will be my rest” (St. Gertrude).