To The Lovers of The Divine Outcast
We Religious know that the secret of all happiness is Sanctity, just as we know the falling off from this shining ideal is the cause of all cloistered misery.
Though the task of becoming a Saint is not a very hard one, comparatively few souls attain it. Many imagine it to be an impossibility. Is not the end of Sanctity, its object and reward, intimacy with God? If we Religious were only brave enough and wise enough to pay half the price in trying to become saints, that, whether we like it or not, we must pay for living tepidly, the Cloisters of the earth would ring with the Joy Bells of Paradise. The giving up of this ideal, the aiming at a standard lower than heroic, in the end weaves for all its votaries a "Sorrow's crown of sorrow." But when life's day is over and the night closes darkly in, when the clock from the Eternal Shore chimes the midnight of our lives, then it will be too late to retrieve the lost and wounded past. Let us do so now.
Lovers of the Divine Outcast must not shrink from the things that wound, but rather, like the Victim of Calvary, embrace them. It is true that the embracing of the Nails more than half turns them to roses. For like earthly physicians, the divine Physician has His anesthetics, and whilst the Religious is, as St. Paul puts it, being conformed to the likeness of Christ, whilst the loved one is being transmuted into the image of the Divine Lover, whilst Love's Scourge and Thorn and Nail and Lance effect the Divine Conformity, the patient sleeps on in the Arms of Jesus. And the conformity fully effected―Calvary ―wakes up on the eternal Thabor. After this, it is peace and joy, rest and ecstasy for ever. Forge on, then, O Chosen One, Lover of the Divine Outcast, right on to the burning pinnacles of Sanctity; nothing else is wise, for life is very brief, Eternity is endless. Nothing else is worthy of the God whose Bride you are. He is Infinite Sanctity and the Bride shares in the Bridegroom's Life. He is very sweet, too, and His service is very easy, making earth an echo of Paradise. Indeed, for the Saints, the earthly one and the Heavenly one differ only in accidents, there is no essential difference; Death means simply "Crossing The Bar―walking from the veiled vision of here, to the unveiled vision of hereafter. And yet, in spite of this, how many of us Religious make a muddle of life! We begin well but, before the icy breath of the years, we freeze up. Only here and there is a soul Really in Love With Our Lord―All His Own. Be yours one of these!
And this for love of the Outcast Divine, because of the way He is treated. Look around you and oh! the pity of it! millions of hearts taken up with earth's clayey and narrow love, scarce one with His Beautiful and Infinite Love. St. John is right. His cry is as true to-day as it was in that far off and dead day, when first he mournfully said: "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." "No room for Him" in the inns of our hearts to-day, as in the hearts dead now two thousand years. Listen to the talk of men, read their books and papers, observe their actions―and in all you will scarcely find a mention of Him, much less a sigh or a tear for Him, and so many of His very own not bothering that it is so, only just a little more loving, more attentive, but not so much more than those other blinded, passionate hearts.
We do good for souls, but is it not only a fraction of the good we could and should do? We fulfill our duties, carry out our assignments; but do these duties and assignments sanctify us? They are performed with care and precision―does the supernatural accompany them? We meet people of the world; we are in close contact with pupils and patients; our Sisters are ever with us,―yet, perhaps we inspire in them no eagerness for good. Our zeal gives out so little heat that those who meet us are not fired up to do great things for God. Our manners may savor a trifle of the world, robbing us of the refinement of cloistral beauty, hence our failure to attract souls to higher living. Eagerness to shine, hunger for applause, selfish aim and jealous intrigue may sap the well―springs of our life. Such faults mar the work entrusted to our keeping. Souls who look to us for strength and courage are harmed by these defects.
Spouses of Christ! Shall we not offer ourselves to swell the number of those who give their all to Christ? Shall we not pledge ourselves to vicarious suffering and to the forgetfulness of all, save the supreme interest of our Savior's Heart? To such souls God grants that special feeling of His Divine Presence which He alone can give. It is a mystical grace though many souls do not realize that they are the recipients of such a favor. The soul then feels as though she were a Living Tabernacle where the Divine Outcast resides, and where He invites her to a familiar intercourse with Himself.
This intimacy always deepens, and slowly changes itself into identification with Jesus.
Many souls are afraid to set their hopes high. They do not desire lofty perfection or complete holiness, for the simple reason that they dare not hope for it. Their past is always with them, showing them clearly how little progress they have made in virtue. To such souls St. Little Thérèse said: "We can never have too much confidence in our God, Who is so mighty and merciful." "As we hope in Him, so shall we receive."
She delighted to say that God had no need of time to sanctify her soul. For Him one day is as a thousand years. "Jesus has no need of our works," she said. "If all weak and imperfect souls such as mine felt as I do, none would despair of reaching the Summit of the Mountain of Love, since Jesus does not look for deeds, but only for gratitude and self-surrender."
"It is impossible for me to become great, so I must bear with myself and my many imperfections, but I will seek out a means of reaching Heaven by a little way-very short, very straight and entirely new. We live in an age of lifts which save us the trouble of climbing stairs-I will try to find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too small to climb the steep stairway of perfection.
I sought to find in Holy Scripture some suggestion of what this desired lift might be, and I came across those words, uttered by the Eternal Wisdom itself: "Whosoever is a little one, let him come to Me." I therefore drew near to God, feeling sure that I had discovered what I sought. But wishing further to know what He would do to the "little one." I continued my search and this is what I found: "You shall be carried at the breasts and upon the knees; . . . as one whom the mother caresseth, so will I comfort you." (Isa. 66/12. 13.)
"Never have I been consoled by words more tender and more sweet. O Jesus, Thy Arms, then, are the lift which must raise me even unto Heaven. To reach Heaven I need not become great; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become even smaller than I am. My God, Thou hast gone beyond my desire and I will sing Thy Mercies!"
To us, if only we have immense desires for holiness, how comforting are such words as these!
During the closing days of her life, St. Little Thérèse said "I feel that my mission is soon to begin-my mission to make others love God as I love Him . . . to teach souls my Little Way." "And what is that little way that you would teach to souls?" "It is the Way of Spiritual Childhood, the Way of Trust and absolute Self-surrender. I want to point out to them the means that I have always found so perfectly successful, to tell them that there is but one thing to do here below; we must offer Jesus the flowers of little sacrifices and win Him by caresses. That is how I have won Him, and that is why I shall be made so welcome."
His Holiness Pope Benedict XV, with his twofold authority as Father and Head of the Church, said of the Little Way of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, "It is our special desire that the Secret of Sanctity―the way of Spiritual Childhood―should be disclosed to all Our Children . . . In Spiritual Childhood is the Secret of Sanctity." And our late Holy Father, Pope Pius XI, has said: Spiritual Childhood is not only possible but easy to all." What an encouragement to live a life of absolute Trust and Self-surrender!
But all holiness presupposes an austerity richly prolific of abnegation and self-sacrifice.
There two facets to the Love of God. The first is God's concern―Divine Charity; the second is man's concern―hatred of self. True love of God is inseparable from holy hatred of self, which is the great enemy of God.
God gives us a mysterious share in His Own Nature, which we call Grace. We become partakers of the Divine Nature. This does not mean that we become partakers of the Divine Essence, but of the Divine Nature, that is to say of that activity which constitutes the Life of God and consists in the knowledge and the fruitful Beatifying Love of The Divine Persons.
In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the Church prays that we may become sharers of His Divinity Who became Partaker of our humanity.
There is not a single soul, however imperfect, that in spite of many falls and failings is striving to live the Supernatural Life, that may not aspire to become a Lover of Jesus, and climb, even in this world, to the highest peak of the Mountain of Love―the highest reach of the Supernatural life―the Mystical Marriage itself. Nothing has held souls back in their ascent to God more than the utterly false notion that anything beyond the most elementary spiritual experience is not for them, but only for a select few. The Mystical Marriage ratified on earth by love, consummated in heaven by vision, is open to all.
Love is both the most wonderful thing in the world, and the most wonderful power in the world, whether we look at it under the natural or the supernatural aspect.
Souls quickened by love will arrive at perfection with surprising swiftness and make the most heroic sacrifices; Jesus, the Divine Lover, has come on earth to find lovers. His appeal is for lovers. He desires, above all, to be loved and loved extremely, extravagantly, for love always is extreme, always extravagant.
This little book is for the Lovers of the Divine Outcast, or, at least, for those who desire to become His Lovers. Above all, it is for those souls who long to live the life of Spiritual Childhood―a life of identification with Jesus.
Thank God, there are nowadays many souls eager for union, burning with the desire of absolute self-surrender, and ready to give up the gladness of their personal lives to follow Christ, their Beloved, Who lives in them to appropriate all to Himself; souls who are exquisitely tortured by their unquenchable desire to love Jesus, the Divine Outcast, with a selfless love, and who are conscious of never being able to love or to make others love Him as they would like, and as He desires.
This union of Divinest Love
By which I live a life above,
Setting my heart at liberty
My God to me enchains.
―Saint Teresa
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