Charity; Conduct of life; Meditations; Spiritual life -- Catholic Church
As the bee draws honey from the sweetest juices contained in each
flower; as the artist studies the masterpieces to reproduce their
marvellous tints in pictures which, in their turn, become models;
as a mirror placed in a focus receives the rays of brilliancy from
a thousand others placed around it to re-invest them with a
dazzling brilliancy, so happy is the community whose members
multiply themselves, so to say, by mutually esteeming, loving,
admiring, and imitating each other in what is good.
This spontaneity of virtues exercises on all the members a
constant and sublime ministry of mutual edification and reciprocal
sanctification.
XVIII
EXTENT AND DELICACY OF GOD'S CHARITY FOR MEN
IN order to excite ourselves to fraternal charity, let us try and
picture that of God for us. After having had us present in His
thoughts from all eternity, He has called us from nothingness to
life.
He Himself formed man's body, and, animating it with a breath,
enclosed in it an immortal soul, created to His own image.
Scarcely arrived on the threshold of life, we found an officer
from His court an angel deputed to protect, accompany, and conduct
us in triumph to our heavenly inheritance.
What a superb palace He has prepared for us in this world,
supplied with a prodigious variety of flowers, fruits, and animals
which He has placed at our disposal!
We were a fallen race, and He sent His Son to raise us and save us
from hell, which we merited. The Word was made flesh. He took a
body and soul like ours, thus ennobling and deifying, so to speak,
our human nature. Before ascending to His heavenly Father, after
having been immolated for us on the Cross, for fear of leaving us
orphans, He wished to remain amongst us in the Holy Eucharist, to
nourish us with His flesh, and to infuse into our hearts His
Divine Spirit as the living promise and the delicious foretaste of
the felicity and glory which He went to prepare for us in His
kingdom.
Truly, O God, You treat us not only with a paternal love, but with
an infinite respect and honour; and cannot I love and honour those
whom You have thus honoured and loved Yourself? Why do not these
thoughts inflame my charity in the fire of your Divine love? My
brethren and myself are children of God and members of Jesus
Christ. My brethren have their angels, who are companions of my
angel. One day my brethren will be my companions in glory,
chanting eternally the Divine praises. It is but a short time
since, with them, I partook of the heavenly banquet of the Most
Holy Sacrament, and to-morrow shall do so again.
XIX
EXTENT AND DELICACY OF THE CHARITY OF JESUS CHRIST DURING HIS
MORTAL LIFE
LET us now admire the charity of our Divine Saviour while on
earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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