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Chapter 4Dil.1.4

Quinam ex Dei recordatione consolationem capiant: quive magis ad ejus amorem idonei.

The Generation That Finds Consolation in God

Only the humble generation that refuses worldly consolation and hungers for God finds true delight in remembering Him, while the rich in spirit have already received their comfort.

But it matters which generation receives consolation from the remembrance of God. Not the corrupt and exasperating generation to which it is said, 'Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,' but the one that can truly say, 'My soul has refused to be comforted.'✦✦12 This is clearly the generation we believe in, if it adds what follows: 'I have been mindful of God, and I have been delighted.'✦3 It is only right that those whom his presence does not yet delight should have at hand the memory of things to come, and that those who refuse to be consoled by any abundance of passing things should be delighted by the remembrance of eternity. And this is the generation of those who seek the Lord — seeking not their own interests, but the face of the God of Jacob.✦4 For those who seek and long for God's presence, the memory of him is at hand and sweet in the meantime — yet not the kind that satisfies, but the kind that makes them hunger all the more for the one who will satisfy them. The food himself testifies to this about himself, saying: 'Whoever eats me will still hunger, and whoever is fed by me — I will be satisfied, he says, when your glory appears.'56 Blessed, even now, are those who hunger and thirst for justice, because they themselves will one day be satisfied.✦78

The Crooked Generation That Flees the Cross

The perverse generation dreads God's presence and shrinks from the hard saying of the cross, preferring worldly snares to the mortification of the flesh.

Woe to you, crooked and perverse generation!✦ Woe to you, foolish and senseless people, who despise remembrance and dread presence!✦ And rightly so: for you want to be freed not only from the snare of hunters, since those who wish to become rich in this age fall into the snare of the devil; nor then will you be able to be freed from the harsh word.✦9 O harsh word, O hard saying!✦ Go, accursed, into eternal fire.✦ Far harder and harsher by far than the one repeated to us daily in the Church from the memory of the passion: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.✦ That is, the one who recalls my death and, by my example, mortifies the members of his body that are upon the earth has eternal life: if you suffer with me, you will also reign with me.✦✦10 And yet very many, shrinking back from this voice and going away even to this day, answer not in word but in deed: This saying is hard; who can bear it?✦✦

The Reckoning of the Worldly and the Blessed of the Upright

Those who trust in riches and refuse the sweet yoke of Christ will face the crushing weight of judgment, while the upright who strive to please God will hear the blessed invitation of the Father.

And so a generation that has not set its own heart straight, and whose spirit is not trusted with God but instead puts its hope in the uncertainty of riches — that generation is weighed down just hearing the word of the cross, and considers the memory of the Passion a burden to itself. But how will it bear the weight of that word when it stands before Him: 'Go, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels'?✦ On whomever this stone will have fallen, it will crush.✦ But the generation of the upright will be blessed — those who, together with the Apostle, whether absent or present, strive to please God.✦ At last they will hear: 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father,' and so on.✦ Then that generation that has not directed its heart will indeed experience, though late, how sweet the yoke of Christ is and how light its burden proved to be, compared to that pain — the very yoke to which it had proudly submitted its stiff neck as though it were heavy and harsh.✦ You cannot, O wretched servants of mammon, both glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and place your hope in the treasures of money — going after gold, and discovering how sweet the Lord is.✦ Therefore, the One whom you do not perceive as sweet in memory, you will without doubt perceive as harsh when He stands before you.

The Bride's Rest Between Memory and Presence

The faithful soul rests sweetly in the memory of Christ's love while longing for His unveiled presence, glorying even now in the disgrace of the cross.

And so the faithful soul longs for his presence with deep sighs and rests sweetly in the memory of him, until she is made fit to behold the glory of the Lord with face unveiled — and in the meantime she glories even in the disgrace of the cross.✦ So truly, the bride and dove of Christ rests for herself in the meantime and sleeps among the portions she has received, having already obtained in the present, from the memory of the abundance of your sweetness, Lord Jesus, wings silvered with the brightness of innocence — that is, of chastity; and hoping besides to be filled with joy in your presence, where even the hinder parts of its back are made to shine with the pallor of gold: when, led into the splendors of the saints with joy, it will have been more fully illuminated by the radiances of wisdom. Rightly then she now glories and says: His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me. In the left hand she considers the remembrance of his love, than which none is greater — that he laid down his life for his friends; but in the right hand, the blessed vision he promised to his friends, and the joy that comes from the presence of his majesty.✦✦ Rightly is that divine and deifying vision, that inestimable delight in the divine presence, assigned to the right hand — concerning which it is delightfully sung: At your right hand are delights, even to the end. Rightly is that admirable love — remembered and always to be remembered — placed in the left hand, because until iniquity passes away, the bride reclines upon it and rests.

The Bridegroom's Left Hand: Love That Lifts the Mind

The remembrance of Christ's unmerited compassion lifts the soul from worldly desires, and the bride runs eagerly in the fragrance of His love, knowing that even her whole self is too little a return for the love of the Father and Son.

Rightly, then, the bridegroom's left hand is under the bride's head — the head, clearly, that he has laid back and now supports — and this means the attention of her own mind, so that it doesn't lean over and bend toward carnal and worldly desires. For the body, which is being corrupted, weighs down the soul, and this earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks about so many things.✦ For indeed, what else could such great and utterly unmerited compassion accomplish — such free and so thoroughly tested love, such unexpected condescension, such unconquerable gentleness, such astonishing sweetness — once all this has been carefully weighed? What, I ask you, could all these things accomplish when carefully considered, except that they would marvelously snatch away the mind of the one who considers them — once it has been freed from every utterly corrupt love — and powerfully move it, and make it despise, in comparison with themselves, whatever cannot be desired except in contempt of these things? No doubt, then, the bride runs eagerly in the fragrance of these ointments, loves ardently, and — having been so loved — seems to herself to love too little, even when she has strained her whole self in love.✦ And not without reason. For what great thing is repaid to so great a love and from so great a one, if a tiny bit of dust has gathered its whole self together for the sake of loving in return — that dust which that Majesty, clearly, is seen anticipating in love, wholly intent upon the work of its salvation? In short, God so loved the world that he gave his Only-begotten Son — there is no doubt that he speaks of the Father.✦ Likewise, he gave his soul unto death — and there is no doubt that he speaks of the Son.✦✦

The Whole Trinity Loves

The Holy Spirit teaches and reminds the soul of all that Christ said, and God loves with His whole self—the whole Trinity loves, infinitely and simply.

He also says about the Holy Spirit: "The Spirit, the Advocate, whom the Father sends in my name — he will teach you all things, and will bring to your mind everything I have said to you."✦11 God loves, then, and loves with his whole self, because the whole Trinity loves — if "whole" can even be said of what is infinite and incomprehensible, or at any rate of what is simple.12

Read the original Latin

Sed interest, quaenam generatio ex Dei capiat recordatione solamen. Non enim generatio prava et exasperans, cui dicitur, Vae vobis, divites, qui habetis consolationem vestram; sed quae dicere veraciter potest, Renuit consolari anima mea. Huic plane et credimus, si secuta adjecerit: Memor fui Dei, et delectatus sum. Justum quippe est, ut quos praesentia non delectant, praesto eis sit memoria futurorum: et qui de rerum fluentium qualibet affluentia despiciunt consolari, recordatio illos delectet aeternitatis. Et haec est generatio quaerentium Dominum, quaerentium non quae sua sunt, sed faciem Dei Jacob. Dei ergo quarentibus et suspirantibus praesentiam, praesto interim et dulcis memoria est, non tamen qua satientur, sed qua magis esurient unde satientur. Hoc ipsum de se cibus ipse testatur, ita dicens, Qui edit me, adhuc esuriet: et qui eo cibatus est, Satiabor, inquit, cum apparuerit gloria tua. Beati tamen jam nunc qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam, quoniam quandoque ipsi,.

Vae tibi, generatio prava atque perversa! vae tibi, popule stulte et insipiens, qui et memoriam fastidis, et praesentiam expavescis! Merito quidem: nec modo enim liberari vis de laqueo venantium, siquidem qui volunt divites fieri in hoc saeculo, incidunt in laqueum diaboli; nec tunc a verbo aspero poteris liberari. O verbum asperum, o sermo durus! Ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum. Durior plane atque asperior illo, qui quotidie nobis de memoria passionis in Ecclesia replicatur: Qui manducat meam carnem, et bibit sanguinem meum, habet vitam aeternam. Hoc est, qui recolit mortem meam, et exemplo meo mortificat membra sua quae sunt super terram, habet vitam aeternam: hoc est, si compatimini, et conregnabitis. Et tamen plerique ab hac voce resilientes et abeuntes hodieque retrorsum, respondent non verbo, sed facto: Durus est hic sermo; quis potest eum audire?

Itaque generatio quae non direxit cor suum et non est creditus cum Deo spiritus ejus, sed magis sperans in incerto divitiarum, verbum modo crucis audire gravatur, ac memoriam passionis sibi judicat onerosam. Verum qualiter verbi illius pondus in praesentia sustinebit: Ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum, qui paratus est diabolo, et angelis ejus? Super quem profecto ceciderit lapis iste, conteret eum. At vero generatio rectorum benedicetur: qui utique cum Apostolo, sive absentes, sive praesentes, contendunt placere Deo. Denique audient, Venite, benedicti, Patris mei, etc. Tunc illa quae non direxit cor suum, sero quidem experietur, quam in illius comparatione doloris jugum Christi suave, et onus leve fuerit, cui tanquam gravi et aspero duram cervicem superbe subduxit. Non potestis, o miseri servi mammonae, simul gloriari in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et sperare in pecuniae thesauris; post aurum abire, et probare quam suavis est Dominus. Proinde quem suavem in memoria non sentitis, asperum procul dubio in praesentia sentietis.

Caeterum fidelis anima et suspirat praesentiam inhianter, et in memoria requiescit suaviter; et donec idonea sit revelata facie speculari gloriam Domini, crucis ignominia gloriatur. Sic profecto, sic sponsa et columba Christi pausat sibi interim, et dormit inter medios cleros, sortita jam in praesentiarum de memoria abundantiae suavitatis tuae, Domine Jesu, pennas deargentatas, innocentiae videlicet pudicitiaeque candorem; et sperans insuper adimpleri laetitia cum vultu tuo, ubi etiam fiant posteriora dorsi ejus in pallore auri: quando in splendoribus sanctorum introducta cum gaudio, sapientiae plenius fuerit illustrata fulgoribus. Merito proinde jam nunc gloriatur, et dicit, Laeva ejus sub capite meo, et dextera illius amplexabitur me: in laeva reputans recordationem illius charitatis, qua nulla major est, quod animam suam posuit pro amicis suis; in dextera vero beatam visionem, quam promisit amicis suis, et gaudium de praesentia majestatis. Merito illa Dei et deifica visio, illa divinae praesentiae inaestimabilis delectatio in dextera deputatur, de qua et delectabiliter canitur: Delectationes dextera tua usque in finem. Merito in laeva admirabilis illa memorata et semper memoranda dilectio collocatur, quod donec transeat inquitas, super eam sponsa recumbat et requiescat.

Merito ergo laeva sponsi sub capite sponsae, super quam videlicet caput suum reclinata sustentet, hoc est mentis suae intentionem, ne inclinetur et incurvetur in carnalia et saecularia desideria: quia corpus quod corrumpitur, aggravat animam: et deprimit terrena inhabitatio sensum multa cogitantem. Quid namque aliud faciat considerata tanta et tam indebita miseratio, tam gratuita et sic probata dilectio, tam inopinata dignatio, tam invicta mansuetudo, tam stupenda dulcedo? quid, inquam, haec omnia faciant diligenter considerata, nisi ut considerantis animum, ab omni penitus pravo vindicatum amore, ad se mirabiliter rapiant, vehementer afficiant, faciantque prae se contemnere, quidquid nisi in comtemptu horum appeti non potest? Nimirum proinde in odore unguentorum horum sponsa currit alacriter, amat ardenter; et parum sibi amare sic amata videtur, etiam cum se totam in amore perstrinxerit. Nec immerito. Quid magnum enim tanto et tanti repensatur amori, si pulvis exiguus totum se ad redamandum collegerit, quem illa nimirum Majestas in amore praeveniens, tota in opus salutis ejus intenta conspicitur? Denique sic Deus dilexit mundum ut Unigenitum daret; haud dubium quin de Patre dicat. Item, Tradidit in mortem animam suam; nec dubium quod de Filio loquatur.

Ait et de Spiritu sancto: Spiritus Paracletus, quem mittit Pater in nomine meo, ille vos docebit omnia, et suggeret vobis omnia quaecunque dixero vobis. Amat ergo Deus, et ex se toto amat, quia tota Trinitas amat: si tamen totum dici potest de infinito et incomprehensibili, aut certe de simplici.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Luke.6.24 — But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.
  2. ↩Ps.76.3 — There his tent is pitched, and his dwelling place is in Zion.
  3. ↩Ps.76.4 — There he shattered the flashing arrows, the shield and sword and battle. Selah.
  4. ↩Ps.23.6 — Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for length of days.
  5. ↩Matt.5.6 — Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
  6. ↩Deut.32.5 — They have dealt corruptly toward him; they are not his children—their blemish is theirs—a crooked and twisted generation.
  7. ↩Deut.32.6 — Is this the way you repay the LORD—O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father who created you, who made you and established you?
  8. ↩1Tim.6.9 — But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction.
  9. ↩John.6.60 — Therefore, when many of his disciples heard it, they said, 'This saying is hard. Who can listen to it?'
  10. ↩Matt.25.41 — Then he will also say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'
  11. ↩John.6.54 — The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
  12. ↩John.6.54;Rom.8.17 — The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. Rom.8.17 — And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
  13. ↩Col.3.5 — Put to death, therefore, the parts of you that belong to the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry.
  14. ↩John.6.60 — Therefore, when many of his disciples heard it, they said, 'This saying is hard. Who can listen to it?'
  15. ↩Heb.10.38-Heb.10.39 — But my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul takes no pleasure in him. Heb.10.39 — But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of faith for the preserving of the soul.
  16. ↩Matt.25.41 — Then he will also say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'
  17. ↩Matt.21.44;Luke.20.18 — And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but the one on whom it falls, it will scatter like dust. Luke.20.18 — Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.
  18. ↩2Cor.5.9 — Therefore we make it our aim, whether at home in the body or away from it, to be pleasing to him.
  19. ↩Matt.25.34 — Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'
  20. ↩Matt.11.30 — For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
  21. ↩Gal.6.14;Ps.34.8 — But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Ps.34.8 — The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
  22. ↩2Cor.3.18 — And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
  23. ↩Song.2.6 — His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me.
  24. ↩John.15.13 — No one has greater love than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends.
  25. ↩Song.2.6 — His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me.
  26. ↩Song.1.3-Song.1.4 — The fragrance of your oils is good; your name is poured oil; therefore young women love you. Song.1.4 — Draw me after you—let us run together! The king has brought me into his chambers. We will rejoice and be glad in you; we will remember your love more than wine. The upright love you.
  27. ↩John.3.16 — For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.
  28. ↩Isa.53.12 — Therefore I will give him a share among the many, and he will divide spoil with the strong, because he poured out his life to death and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors.
  29. ↩Phil.2.8 — And he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
  30. ↩John.14.26 — But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you of everything that I have told you.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩Quotation of Luke 6:24 (Vulg.).
  2. 2 ↩Quotation of Psalm 76:3 (Vulg. 75:3), 'Renuit consolari anima mea.'
  3. 3 ↩Quotation of Psalm 76:4 (Vulg. 75:4), 'Memor fui Dei, et delectatus sum.'
  4. 4 ↩Echo of Psalm 23:6 (Vulg. 22:6), 'Faciem Dei Jacob.'
  5. 5 ↩Quotation of Sirach 24:29 (Vulg.), 'Qui edit me, adhuc esuriet,' combined with Psalm 16:15 (Vulg. 15:15), 'Satiabor cum apparuerit gloria tua.'
  6. 6 ↩Christ speaks as the bread of life; 'cibus ipse' identifies Christ himself as the food.
  7. 7 ↩Quotation of Matthew 5:6, 'Beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam, quoniam ipsi saturabuntur.' The source text appears to truncate before the final verb.
  8. 8 ↩The Latin text as supplied ends abruptly with 'ipsi,' lacking the concluding verb 'saturabuntur' or equivalent. The translation supplies the expected completion from the Beatitude.
  9. 9 ↩laqueo venantium (snare of hunters) is metaphorical; the image contrasts earthly danger with the spiritual snare of the devil.
  10. 10 ↩The two hoc est clauses restate the same promise in two ways: recalling Christ's death and mortifying earthly members, then suffering and reigning with Christ.
  11. 11 ↩Direct quotation of John 14:26 (Vulgate). The Latin follows the Vulgate closely: Spiritus Paracletus, quem mittit Pater in nomine meo, ille vos docebit omnia, et suggeret vobis omnia quaecunque dixero vobis.
  12. 12 ↩The si tamen clause introduces a qualification: the word "whole" (totum) is applied to God only tentatively, since God is infinite, incomprehensible, and simple — categories that exceed the notion of totality. The aut links infinito et incomprehensibili with simplici as two ways of naming what exceeds human speech.

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