42 — BOLD AND IMPATIENT LOVE

Presence of God. — My God, may Your love make me bold in seeking You and impatient to possess You.

Meditation

1 — The soul subjected by the Holy Spirit to interior purification, although profoundly aware of its misery and unworthiness, nevertheless has so much “courage and boldness to aspire to divine union” (G.C. N. II, 13, 9). Whence comes to it so much audacity? From the love that goes on increasing in it; in fact, “it is proper to love that the lover wishes to be united, equalized and made similar to the thing loved” (ibid.), therefore, the more love grows in the soul so much more does it yearn for union with God. Even if its love is not yet perfect, because it has not yet led it to union, nevertheless it is sincere and, “by means of the forces that it has already infused in the will, [the soul] feels hunger and thirst for what it lacks, that is, for the union to which love tends” (ibid.). Moreover, how could the soul not aspire to union with God that has intuited something of His infinite beauty and of His immense love? That same divine light that discovers to it the abyss of its nothingness and of the nothingness of creatures, illumines it, by contrast, on the infinite superiority of God, so that it remains taken and captured by Him, while God Himself, as He purifies it, attracts it to Himself infusing new love.

Humble, then, for its unworthiness that it well knows, but bold for the love that grows in it and for the invitation that God Himself addresses to it by attracting it secretly to Himself, the soul dares to aspire to this supreme good that is divine union. It is humble in its audacious desire because it knows it does not merit so great a gift, but it is bold because it intuits that God Himself wishes to make it to it, it is bold because so great is its hunger and its thirst for God that it cannot live far from Him. “What — exclaims St. Bernard — could it not confidently dare with Him from whom it knows it bears in itself the noble image and the luminous likeness?”. The love of God has prevented it, wishing to render it similar to Himself by creation and by grace; this divine likeness natural and supernatural expresses precisely the desire of God to unite it to Himself, and at the same time constitutes the basis for such union. God, who has placed this basis, certainly wishes to lead the work to term, and to do so awaits only that the soul second His action, letting itself be purified, letting itself be stripped of self and clothed completely with divine life.

2 — The soul hungry and thirsty for God goes seeking Him without ceasing, “because in the shadows in which it lies it seems to itself to be deprived of Him, and dies from desire for Him” (G.C. N. II, 13, 8). Love renders it impatient to find the Lord and in fact it seeks Him with great solicitude, similar to Magdalen who, after the death of Jesus, does not give herself peace, rises early in the morning, runs to the sepulcher and, not finding there the sacred Body, sets herself to seek Him, interrogating all whom she meets. “I will rise — says the spouse of the Canticle of Canticles — and will go about the city: through the streets and through the squares I will seek him whom my soul loves” (3, 2). It is the attitude of the soul that does not resign itself, that does not give itself for vanquished, but that at all costs wishes to find that God whom it loves more than itself.

In this state, says St. John of the Cross, “the soul is so solicitous that in all things it seeks the Beloved: in all that it thinks, it immediately runs with its thought to the Beloved; in all that it says, in all the affairs that befall it, it immediately speaks and treats of the Beloved; whether it eats, whether it sleeps, or wills, or does any other thing, all its solicitude is reposed in the Beloved” (N. II, 19, 2).

Oh, if you too were so solicitous in the search for your God! You too, from eternity, have been prevented by His love; you too, created to His image and likeness, you too, clothed with divine life, are by God invited to union with Him. Why, then, do you go about the world in search not of God, but of yourself, solicitous not for His love, but for the love of creatures? Is there not perhaps in you greater anxiety and care for the poor things of down here than for celestial things, than for God?

Oh, how much you still have need of detachment, of renunciation, of purification! Do not resist divine invitations; open wide your heart to the purifying action of the Holy Spirit, because He alone can finally disentangle you from all earthly cares and solicitudes. If you will be attentive and faithful to follow the inspirations of the heavenly Paraclete, He will send you new ones, more subtle and delicate, that will lead you to leave more and more aside all the vanities of the earth to seek and love God alone.

Colloquy

“O Lord, my life and strength, one of the greatest and divine mercies that You have shown me is that of deigning that a creature of Yours, ungrateful and full of sins, as I am, be invited by You to love Your Majesty, in whose presence the Seraphim of heaven cover their faces, vanquished by the splendor of the divinity and by the ardor of Your love. I feel honored by so great liberality and, at the same time, stimulated to love You to reciprocate Your love and the desire You have of uniting me to Your heart, sweet nest to which I long to fly to find rest.

“Waiting for others for earthly cares and pretensions, I will attend to You alone and will make myself importunate to impetrate Your love. I know not, nor can I ask other than You: I love You and seek You; I will love and will always seek Your face, that You may attract me and bind me with Your divine beauty.

“O most amiable Lord, do not cast me off from You! Always have You been most liberal and have shown very high mercies even to those who did not ask them of You; do not use, then, rigor with me who invoke from my heart the goodness and the sweetness of Your love.

“May it please Your most tender heart, O Son of the Most High, to accept me in Your service and keep me among the hired servants of Your house, who suffer, labor and bear the weight of the day and wish no other reward than You.

“But my desire goes beyond, since I long to be united to You with an indissoluble bond. O Beauty full of majesty, who stealest hearts with infinite force and configures them to Yourself, realize in me, I supplicate You, this configuration, that I may no longer live in myself, but in You, and that the sweetest law of Your grace and the force of Your love direct all my thoughts, all my words and works” (Ven. John of G. M., o.c.d.).