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We need to long for love with Jesus, avoiding sin for love; the vileness of sin surpasses all punishment. God loves us tenderly while we are in a state of sin, and so we should love our neighbour in the same way.
It is a supreme favour from our kind Lord, that he should watch over us so tenderly while we are in a state of sin; and furthermore he secretly touches our inner hearts and shows us our sin by the pure, sweet light of mercy and grace. But when we see how filthy we are, then we think that God must be angry with us for our sins and then the Holy Ghost moves us through contrition to prayers and a longing to amend our life with all our might, to lessen God’s anger, until the time we find rest for our soul and comfort for our conscience; and then we hope that God has forgiven us our sins; and it is true. And then our kind Lord reveals himself, very joyfully and looking very pleased, with a friendly welcome, as though the soul had been in pain and in prison, sweetly saying this: ‘My darling, I am glad you have come to me. I have always been with you in all your misery and now you can see how much I love you and we are united in bliss.’ This is how sins are forgiven through mercy and grace and our souls gloriously received in joy, just as they will be when they come to heaven, whenever this occurs through the gracious working of the Holy Ghost and the power of Christ’s Passion.
Here I really understood that all manner of things are made ready for us by the great goodness of God, so much so that when we are ourselves in a state of peace and love we are truly safe. But because this cannot be fully so while we are here, it is fitting for us to live with our Lord Jesus in loving prayer and tender longing; for he always longs to bring us to the fullness of joy, as has been said before when his spiritual thirst was shown.33
But now, if because of all this spiritual help that has been mentioned, any man or woman is foolishly moved to say or think, ‘If this is true, then it would be a good idea to sin in order to have a greater reward’, or else to give less weight to sin, beware of this impulse, for in truth, if any such impulse is felt, it is false and comes from the Enemy of that same true love which offers us all this help and comfort. The same blessed love tells us that we should hate sin only because of love. And I am sure, by what I feel myself, that the more every well-natured soul sees this in the generous love of our Lord God, the more loath he is to sin and the more he is ashamed; for if we could see laid out before us all the sufferings of hell and of purgatory and of earth – death and everything else – and sin, we would choose all those sufferings rather than sin, for sin is so vile and so very hateful that it cannot be compared to any suffering other than the suffering of sin itself. And I was shown no harder hell than sin, because for a well-natured soul there is no hell but sin.
If we try to be loving and humble, we are made all fair and pure through the working of mercy and grace. And God is as eager to save man as he is strong and wise; for Christ himself is the foundation of all the laws of Christian men and he taught us to return good for evil. Here we can see that he himself is love, and he treats us as he wishes us to treat others, for he wants us to be like him in completeness of unending love for ourselves and our fellow Christians. Just as his love for us does not fail because of our sin, he does not want our love for ourselves and our fellow Christians to fail; we must feel naked hatred for sin and unending love for the soul, as God loves it. Then we shall hate sin as God hates it and love the soul as God loves it; for this assertion of God’s is an endless help and comfort: ‘I am keeping you very safe.’
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The fourteenth revelation concerns what has been said before, that it is impossible that we should pray for mercy and not receive it; and how God always wants us to pray, although we may be dry and barren, because prayer is welcome and pleasing to him.
After this our Lord gave a revelation about prayer; in this showing I saw two qualities in what our Lord conveyed: one is righteousness, another is sure trust. But yet often we do not trust him fully for it seems to us that because of our unworthiness, and because we are feeling absolutely nothing, we cannot be certain that God is hearing our prayers. For often we are as barren and dry after our prayers as we were before, and so we feel our folly is the cause of our weakness; I have felt like this myself. And our Lord brought all this suddenly into my mind and these words were shown and spoken: ‘I am the foundation of your prayers: first it is my will that you should have something, and then I make you desire it, and then I make you pray for it; and if you pray for it, then how could it be that you should not have what you pray for?’ And thus in his first statement, along with the three which follow, our good Lord shows us something immensely helpful, as can be seen in his very words. Where he begins by saying, ‘If you pray for it’, there he reveals the very great joy and unending reward that our prayer will receive from him. And where he says next, ‘Then how could it be …’, this is said as an impossibility; for it is quite impossible that we should pray for mercy and grace and not have them; for everything which our good Lord makes us pray for is what he himself has ordained for us since before time began. Here we can see that our prayer is not the cause of God’s goodness; and he shows that beyond any doubt in all these precious words when he says, ‘I am the foundation.’ And our good Lord wants this to be known to those on earth who love him, and the more that we know it, the more we should pray for, if we understand it wisely; and this is what our Lord intends. Prayer is a new, gracious, lasting will of the soul united and fast-bound to the will of God by the precious and mysterious working of the Holy Ghost. Our Lord, he is the chief receiver34 of our prayers, it seems to me, and he accepts them very gratefully and with much delight; and he sends them up above and puts them in a treasury where they will never perish. They are there in the presence of God and all his holy ones, being received continually, always helping us in our need, and when we finally receive our bliss they will be given to us as a stage in our joy, with endless and glorious thanks from God.
Our Lord is very glad and happy that we should pray, and he expects it and wants it; for, through his grace, when we pray he makes us like him in quality as we are like him in nature, and this is his sacred will; for this is what he says: ‘Pray earnestly even though you do not feel like praying, for it is helping you even if you do not feel it doing you good, even if you see nothing, yes, even if you think you cannot pray; for in dryness and in barrenness, in sickness and weakness, then your prayers give me great pleasure, even if you feel that they are hardly pleasing to you at all. And it is so in my sight with all your trustful prayers.’ For the sake of the reward and the unending thanks which he wishes to give us, he longs for us to pray continually before him. God accepts the good intentions and the effort of those who serve him, whatever we are feeling; that is why he is pleased when we try hard and through our prayers and through living well, with his help and his grace, we incline towards him with all our strength (but reasonably and prudently) until we possess him we seek in the fullness of joy, that is, Jesus. And he revealed that in the fifteenth showing, where these words stand foremost: ‘You shall have me as your reward.’
And thanksgiving is also part of prayer. Thanksgiving is a new inward awareness, accompanied by great reverence and loving fear, when we apply ourselves with all our might to whatever action35 our good Lord inspires, rejoicing and giving inward thanks. And sometimes thanks giving is so abundant that it breaks out into words and says, ‘Good Lord, thank you; blessed may you be!’ And sometimes, when the heart is dry and does not feel anything, or else because of the temptation of our Enemy, it is driven by reason and grace to cry out loud to our Lord, calling on his blessed Passion and his great goodness. And the power of our Lord’s word enters the soul, enlivens the heart and through his grace makes it move properly, and makes it pray very blessedly and truly to rejoice in our Lord; such prayer is truly blessed thanksgiving in the eyes of God.
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Of three things which belong to prayer, and how we should pray; and of the goodness of God which always makes up for our imper
fections and weakness when we do what we should.
Our Lord God wants us to have true understanding, and especially of three things which belong to our prayers. The first is through whom and how our prayers arise; he shows through whom when he says, ‘I am the foundation’; and he shows how, through his goodness, for he says, ‘First it is my will.’ The second thing is in what manner and how we should be accustomed to pray; which is that our will should be joyfully transformed into the will of our Lord, rejoicing; and this is what he means when he says, ‘I make you desire it.’ As for the third, it is that we should know the fruit and end of our prayers, that is, to be united with and like our Lord in every way. And for this purpose and to this end all this precious teaching was revealed; and he will help us and we shall make what he says come to pass – blessed may he be!
For this is what our Lord wants – that both our prayers and our trust should be equally abundant; for if we do not trust as much as we pray, our prayers do not fully honour our Lord and we also hinder and harm ourselves; and I believe that the reason is this: we do not truly know that our Lord is the foundation from which our prayers arise and neither do we know that this is given to us by the grace of his love; for if we knew this, it would make us confident that our Lord would give us everything we desire; for I am sure that no man asks for mercy and grace with true sincerity unless mercy and grace have already been given to him. Sometimes it seems to us that we have prayed for a long time and yet, we think, we have not received what we asked for; but we should not let this sadden us; for I am sure, according to our Lord’s purpose, that we should wait for a better time, for more grace or for a better gift. He wants us to have a true knowledge that he himself is Being, and he wants our understanding to be rooted with all our might and all our will-power and all our thought in this knowledge, and on this foundation he wants us to build our home and our dwelling place.
And by his own gracious light he wants us to understand the following things: the first is our noble and excellent creation; the second our costly and precious redemption; the third, everything which he has made beneath us to be of use to us and which he sustains out of love for us. So this is what he means, as if he said, ‘Behold and see that I have done all this before your prayers, and now you exist and you pray to me.’ And so he means that it befits us to know that the greatest deeds have been done, as Holy Church teaches. And in contemplating this with thanksgiving we should pray for the deed which is now being done: that is, we pray that he should rule and guide us to his greater glory in this life and bring us to his bliss; and he has done everything to this end.
So this is what he means: we must see that he is doing it, and we must pray for it. One of these alone is not enough; for if we pray and do not see that he is doing it, we become sad and full of doubts, which is not to God’s glory; and if we see that he is doing it and do not pray, we are not doing what we owe him; and that must not happen, that is to say, it is not as God sees it; but for us to see that he is doing it and to pray for it, that is to his greater glory and to our advantage. It is God’s will that we should pray for everything which he has ordained to be done, either specifically or in general; and it seems to me that the thanks and glory that we shall receive for this are beyond the understanding of any creature; for prayer is a true understanding of that fullness of joy which is to come, with sure trust and great longing for it. Lack of the bliss for which we have been ordained by nature makes us long, and true understanding and love, with sweet thoughts of our Saviour, by God’s grace make us trust. And our Lord watches us continually as we perform these two actions; they are what we owe him, and his goodness allows him to allot us no lesser duties. Then we are under an obligation to try as hard as possible: and when we have done so we shall still think it is nothing – and indeed it is. But if we do the best we can, and sincerely pray for mercy and grace, we shall find in him all that we lack; and this is what he means where he says, ‘I am the foundation of your prayers.’
And so in this blessed statement, with the showing, I saw how all our weakness and all our doubtful fears are fully overcome.
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What prayer does when ordered according to God’s will; and how the goodness of God delights in the deeds that he does through us, as though he were indebted to us, doing everything most lovingly.
Prayer unites the soul to God; for though the soul, restored through grace, is always like God in nature and substance, yet because of sin on man’s part, it is often in a state which is unlike God. Then prayer testifies that the desire of the soul is the desire of God, and it comforts the conscience and fits man to receive grace. And so God teaches us to pray, and to trust firmly that we shall obtain what we pray for; because he regards us with love and wishes to make us sharers in his good deed, and therefore he moves us to pray for what it pleases him to do; and for these prayers, and for the good will that he wishes us to show him, he will reward us and give us an everlasting recompense. And this was shown in these words, ‘If you pray for it’. In this statement God revealed such great pleasure and so much delight that it seemed as if he was deeply grateful to us for every good deed that we do – and yet it is he who does them – and because we entreat him very strongly to do everything that pleases him; as if he said, ‘Then what could please me more than to be entreated very strongly, truly and eagerly to do what I wish to do?’ And thus through prayer the soul is in accord with God.
But when our courteous Lord shows himself to our soul through his grace, we have what we long for; and then for a time we are unaware of anything to pray for; our only aim and our whole strength is set entirely on beholding God; and to me this seems an exalted, imperceptible prayer; for the whole purpose of our prayer is concentrated into the sight and contemplation of him to whom we pray, feeling marvellous joy, reverent fear and such great sweetness and delight in him that at that moment we can only pray as he moves us. And I know very well that the more the soul sees of God, the more it longs for him, through his grace. But when we do not see him in this way, then we feel a need to pray for a particular purpose, because we lack something, and so as to make ourselves open to Jesus; for when the soul is tormented, troubled and isolated by distress, then it is time to pray and make oneself pliable and submissive to God. But no kind of prayer can make God bend to the soul, for God’s love is always the same. And so I saw that when we see something we need to pray for, then our good Lord follows us, helping us in our entreaty. And when through his special grace we behold him plainly, seeing no other need, then we follow him and he draws us into him by love; for I saw and felt that his marvellous and abundant goodness fills up all our faculties; and then I saw that his continual operation in all manner of things is done so kindly, so wisely and so powerfully that it surpasses all our imagining and all that we can believe and think; and then we can do no more than contemplate him, rejoicing, with a great and powerful longing to be completely united with him, resting in his dwelling, enjoying his love and delighting in his kindness. And then we shall, with this precious grace, through our own humble and continual prayers, come to him now in this life by many mysterious touches of precious spiritual revelations and feelings, apportioned to us as our simplicity can bear it; and this is done and shall be done, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, until we die in longing for love. And then we shall all enter into our Lord, clearly knowing ourselves and fully possessing God. And we shall all be unendingly held in God, seeing him truly, feeling him fully, hearing him spiritually, smelling him delectably and swallowing him sweetly; and then we shall see God face to face, fully and familiarly; the creature that is made shall see and endlessly contemplate God, who is the Maker; for no man can see God like this and continue to live, that is to say in this mortal life, but when through his special grace God wishes to show himself here, he strengthens the created being beyond its own nature, and he apportions the showing according to his own purpose, as much as is good for it at that moment.
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Of the qualities of the Trini
ty; and how man’s soul, God’s creation, has the same qualities when it does what it was made for – seeing, contemplating and marvelling at its God; so that, compared with God, the soul seems as nothing to itself.
God showed again and again in all the revelations that man works his will and worships him for ever and unceasingly. And what this work is was shown in the first revelation, supported by a wonderful example, for it was shown in the working of the soul of our blessed Lady Saint Mary – truth and wisdom; and how this was shown, I hope, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, to tell as I saw it. Truth sees God, and wisdom contemplates God, and from these two comes the third, a holy and wonderful delight in God, who is love.36 Where truth and wisdom truly are, there is truly love coming from both of them, and all of God’s making; for he is supreme unending truth, supreme unending wisdom, supreme unending love, uncreated; and man’s soul is a creature within God which has these same qualities in a created form, and it always does what it was made for: it sees God, it contemplates God and it loves God; so God rejoices in his creature and his creature rejoices in God, marvelling for ever; and in this marvelling he sees his God, his Lord, his Maker, so high, so great and so good in comparison with him that he made, that the creature hardly seems of any value to himself, but the brightness and purity of truth and wisdom make him see and recognize that he is made for love, in which God holds him for ever.
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Of the stable and deep judgement of God and the wavering judgement of man.
Revelations of Divine Love Page 15
