Summary of the Morrow's Meditation
We will meditate tomorrow upon the love of Jesus towards us, and we shall see: 1st, how unworthy we were of it; 2nd, to what an extent He has loved us, spite of our unworthiness. We will then make the resolution: 1st, often to protest to Our Lord, by fervent acts of love, that we love Him, and that we desire to love Him always more and more; 2nd, to offer Him the homage of all our actions, of all that we have, and of all that we are, not wishing to do anything but for Him, to possess nothing except for Him, and to see only Him in the persons whom we love. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of St. John: "Let us love God, because God hath first loved us" (I. John iv. 19).
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore Jesus Christ as the passionate lover of our souls, who carried love for us to its very last excess (Ephes. ii. 4); who made for us all that exists, sacrificed Himself, spent Himself entirely for us. Let us render Him all the homage of which our heart is capable.
FIRST POINT
How Unworthy we were of the Love of Jesus Christ.
O my God, if it be true that love is greater in proportion as it sets forth from the loftiest summit and descends to the lowest abyss, how unworthy, then, was I to be loved by Thee! When I contemplate Thee in the highest heavens, where Thou dost reign; when I gaze at the vast extent of the firmament which Thou hast set forth as a magnificent tent above my head, and the countless stars Thou hast sown therein, even as the laborer sows seed in his field, and the whole universe, which was for Thee but as the playing of Thy fingers, I fall down abased and confused in the presence of so much greatness. When I tell myself that all the nations are in Thy presence as though they were not, that with three of Thy fingers Thou dost sustain the globe and balance the mountains, that Thou dost send the thunder, and it goes, and on its return it says, Behold me (Baruch iii.), I cannot overcome my astonishment that a God so great should lower His affections to me, and that He should will to love me, I who am so infinitely below Him. O prodigy which will be the astonishment of the heavens during all eternity! and what am I, then, that I should be loved by so lofty a majesty? I am a worm of the earth, crawling in the dust of this lower world; a nothingness which lives only by means of a borrowed existence; less still than that, a sinner by origin, a child of wrath by nature; less than that even, a sinner by malice, an abyss of misery and corruption, capable of all evil, if grace does not hold me back; and a God so great, so holy, loves a creature so vile in every respect; a God who is an abyss of majesty, of greatness, of independence, loves a rebel nothingness, an abyss of baseness, of indigence, and of sin! O love which dost bring distances together, which triumphs over contrasts! And even this is not all. Jesus Christ completely foresaw that we should respond to His love only by coldness, by the indifference which does not care for it, by the ingratitude which thinks of it without being thankful, by other sins which crucify Him afresh, and spite of these He has loved us so much. O mystery of love!
SECOND POINT
How Jesus Christ has Loved us Spite of our Unworthiness.
He has loved us:
With an anticipated love which dates from all eternity (Jer. xxxi. 3), and which is anterior to all merit on our part;
With a gratuitous love: He possessed in Himself the plenitude of all good, and without any self-interest on His part, without any merit on our part, He conceived for us a love of preference which made Him go and seek us from out of nothingness, choose us out of a number of possible creatures who would have made a better use of existence than we have done, amongst so many millions of infidels to make of us Christians, amongst so many millions of Christians to make of us Catholics, and amongst so many millions of Catholics to surround us with special graces of salvation.
With an infinite love. We should here have to traverse a whole world of miracles; and heaven and earth, and the order of nature and the order of grace, all is full of the love of our God, all cries out to us to love Him. Amongst so many marvels, the crib, the cross, the altar, cry out louder than all the rest, Behold how Jesus Christ has loved us! Let us listen to these voices in the silence of our soul, and let us respond to them by all the ardor of love.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.