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Chapter 84Ansl.1.84

MEDITATIO VIII. Elevatio poenitentis ad Patrem.

The Shield of Mercy: Christ Against the Father's Wrath

The penitent contemplates the Father's mercy in sending the Son as a shield against divine wrath, bearing the death and punishment deserved by sinners.

Look, I beg you, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, toward that most abundant abyss of your mercy, which like a flood of cleansing gushed forth — your most dear and only-begotten Son, most precious and life-giving — for the purification of the world, whose death also pleased your goodness, to bring us to life as well, and to wash us in his blood.✦ You even granted your most dear Son to the world as the shield of your good will, by which they might protect themselves from your wrath, and — you yourself — receive death, which they fear, with the shield of your justice and most righteous anger set before it.✦ Where you deigned to show us how much good you wanted to give through yourself, when you deigned to set your most dear Son as a shield against your wrath. And it pleased your mercy to receive your own wrath and our death — the wrath we deserved — and our death.✦ Your only-begotten Son himself alone carried our death.✦

Draw Me, Lord: Prayer for Grace and Surrender

The penitent prays to be drawn wholly to God, asking for the grace to be made acceptable, to love and fear God alone, and to be kept from enemies.

Remember your compassions, Lord, and your mercies, which have been from of old; and stretch out your hand to your creature as they struggle toward you.✦ Help the weakness of the one struggling toward you. Draw them — you know they cannot come to you unless you, Father, draw them by your love and desire.✦ Make me an acceptable and pleasing servant to you, you who know that I cannot please you in any other way. Give, I beg you, those holy gifts by which alone I may please you — you who give good and welcome gifts to those who seek you. Make it so, I pray, that you alone are my love and my longing, you alone are my love and my fear.✦ Claim me entirely for yourself — I who am entirely yours, and everything I am, and everything within me; indeed, everything I know, everything I am moved by, I know I owe to you alone. Turn me entirely into praise and glory for you, I who entirely owe myself to the praise of your glory. Do not hand over your creature to your enemies, I beg you, Lord. Keep them yours — they belong to you most fully and individually. Bring to completion in me what you have begun, and strengthen what you have accomplished.✦

Before You Called: God Hears the Sinner's Plea

The penitent reflects on God as the inspirer of prayer, begging to be rescued from enemies whose only grievance is that the sinner loves God.

Hear my prayer, I beg you — you who are both the giver and the inspirer of this prayer — even before I called out to you. Look with favor on me as I plead with you — me, who while I wandered lost you deigned to turn your gaze toward. You who show mercy, Lord, you did not breathe life into this prayer for nothing, nor did you grant it to me without purpose. You deigned to grant it to me for this very reason: so that you would hear me. For this you gave it to me: so that I might plead with you, so that you might have mercy on me a sinner — on me, to whom you have already granted the pledge of your mercy. Grant me what remains.1 Take me back, Lord my God, and snatch me from the hands of my enemies — for even they are yours and are subject to your power; and they hate nothing in me except what you have given me in all my good works. They hate nothing in me except that I love you. With all their efforts and their strength and all their cunning, they labor for this one thing: that I might not love you, that I might not glorify you, that I might not seek you at all.

Out of Darkness: A Cry for Deliverance and Glory

The penitent asks that enemies be confounded, that the soul be magnified for God's praise, and that dark spirits be driven away into the wonderful light of God's freedom.

So don't let the enemies of your glory prevail against me; rather, let them be confounded by the abundance of your mercy, seeing that I have turned wholly to seeking your praise and your glory against those who lie in wait for me — those whose very change of heart they are aiming at. Don't allow their will — so unjust, so accursed — to be fulfilled against me, I beg you, Lord, concerning me and directed at me. Therefore, my God, magnify my soul to proclaim your praise and the glories of your glory, so that from now on I may live wholly according to the greatness of your glory, and my whole life may glorify you. By my example of glorifying you, invite and stir up many who are predestined. I beg you: let the vilest, most unclean, and abominable spirits of darkness be drawn away from me — from the presence of the brightness and sweetness of your glory, which they cannot endure. Break apart my bonds, and lead me out of confinement, out of this horrid and dark and most foul prison, out of the pit of misery, out of the mire of dregs, out of the depth of death and darkness — into your freedom and your wonderful light.✦

Enlighten, Strengthen, Humble: Prayer for the Virtues

The penitent asks for faith, hope, love, fear, and holy shame, trusting that God's creative power can reshape what is deformed.

Enlighten me with your most wholesome faith, gladden me and strengthen me with your most delightful and most steadfast hope. Give me life with your most powerful and most righteous love. Humble me, bring me low, and guard me with your most mighty, most secure, and most unconquerable fear. For my healing, put me to shame with your most beautiful and most glorious modesty. Whenever I bring something before your eyes that causes them to stumble, wrench me, afflict me with a grief that is tender and sweet in the manner of compunction — that most effective remedy of your medicine — so that I may not withdraw from the face of your mercy empty and ashamed, but may obtain whatever I ask at your command, your generosity, and your inspiration, and whatever you have promised to those who seek you.23 Merciful and compassionate Lord, let me feel that it is not in vain one flees for refuge in your mercy, and that you are at hand to be found by those who seek you, and that I will not fail at your side, the fountain of your mercy — you who rescued me from the deep, and you know what, and how great, and how many things you have bestowed.✦4 For by that very power of your omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness — by which you spoke and all things came to be — by that same ease of your mercy you are able to speak, and all that is deformed in me will be reshaped.✦5

A Cold and Shameless Heart: Confession of Wretchedness

The penitent confesses ingratitude, spiritual numbness, and utter unworthiness, offering only a dead, blind, sick, and destitute self to God's mercy.

See, almighty and merciful Father: I have counted up the many and great blessings of yours that I have received; I have recited the many and great evils I have given back in return for your goodness. I am wretched and ungrateful — I who, after so many and great sins that cling to me and still hang over you, stand before you with a heart still cold, hard, shameless, dead, and numb — and I am not ashamed. Caught in so many and such great acts of robbery, and only waiting for the gibbet of hell, I am not shaken by fear, not tormented by grief, not confused by shame, not set on fire by love of your goodness — so gentle, so enduring. Are you waiting, sweetest Father, and putting off your glance toward me and your mercy toward me, until I appear before you worthy according to your mercy, and offer you something worthy in petition and in your hearing? See — a dead corpse, swarming with worms, stinking of three days' decay — I have come to you, the Giver of life, and brought it to you.✦ See — I offer the blind to be enlightened to your almighty mercy, and the sick to be healed, and one bound by so many and such great debts to be freed, and the utterly naked and destitute to be enriched — and in whose eyes it is easy to restore a poor person to honor in an instant.✦

Turn Me: The Penitent's Plea for Conversion

The penitent lays bare wounds and debts before God, begging to be turned and converted, since no good exists apart from God's grace.

There is nothing else I can offer you, most merciful God, except myself, just as I am. I lay bare my death and my wounds, my nakedness and my poverty, my debts—the very things that make me fear the prison of eternal death. So turn the eyes of your mercy toward me—see if somehow you might be moved to convert me, to forgive me, and to pour out the grace of your blessedness upon me.6 For I cannot turn back to you, weighed down and made powerless by so many and such great wounds, and infirmities, and death itself. But you, merciful Father—turn me, and I will be turned to you.✦ Turn me, Lord, to you. Crush and shatter my heart, and pour into my senses the life-giving pain of sorrow.✦78 There is no fountain of good apart from you. There is no one from whom I can receive the love and the fear and the grief and the shame by which I might be found worthy of your mercy before you—unless, from your overflowing mercy, you pour out grace upon this most unworthy soul of mine.910 Lord, if you grant this to me, I will be blessed.11

Blessed Under Judgment, Lost Under Wrath

The penitent declares that punishment under God's just judgment is blessedness, but ruin under wrath is not.

If you have deigned to punish my shameful acts and crimes against me according to your judgment and justice, I am blessed; but if according to your wrath, which overtakes the rebellious and the defiant at the end, I am not.✦1213

Pierce and Nail: The Remedies of Holy Compunction

The penitent defines God's justice as the work of fear, love, shame, and grief in the repentant heart, and prays for these piercing remedies, closing with Trinitarian praise.

And this is your justice and your judgment, merciful Father: that through fear and love and shame and grief it is worked in the hearts of those who truly repent and return to your goodness, so that they may obtain mercy. Therefore pierce that thief with your holy fear, and burn that apostate with the fire of your love and charity. Pierce, Lord, that evildoer with your life-giving and most wholesome grief; confound that shameless transgressor with your glorious shame. Nail that wicked one to the cross of penal labor and of your acceptable mercy; make me hunger and thirst for you with my whole heart, and embrace you with all my inmost being and with all my desire.✦ Make me serve you alone with all my inmost being, with all my zeal seeking the things that are pleasing before you; to whom, with your Only-begotten and our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, your most holy gift, be all honor and glory unto the ages of ages.✦ Amen.

Read the original Latin

Respice, obsecro, sancte Pater omnipotens aeterne Deus, ad illam misericordiae tuae exundantissimam abyssum, qua velut diluvium ablutionis charissimi Filii tui unigeniti pretiosissimum vivificumque, in mundi emundatione exundavit, cujus et morte placuit bonitati tuae etiam nos vivificare, et ejus sanguine lavare. Qui etiam Filium tuum charissimum mundo scuto bonae voluntatis tuae largitus es, quo se ab ira tua protegerent, et mortem quam metuunt, ipse illam scuto justitiae tuae et justissimae irae tuae objecto exciperet. Ubi, quantum per te nobis boni velles, ostendere dignatus es, dum charissimum Filium tuum, velut scutum, irae tuae opponere dignatus es. Et ipsum placuit misericordiae tuae et iram tuam et mortem nostram excipere, iram quam merueramus, et mortem. Ipse vero Unigenitus tuus mortem nostram solus portavit.

Reminiscere miserationum tuarum, Domine, et misericordiarum tuarum, quae a saeculo sunt; et conanti creaturae tuae ad te porrige dexteram. Adjuva infirmitatem conantis ad te. Trahe ipsum, qui scis ipsum non posse ad te venire, nisi tu Pater traxeris eum tuo amore et desiderio. Fac me servum tibi acceptabilem et placitum, qui scis me non posse aliter tibi placere. Da, ebsecro, dona illa sancta, quibus solis tibi placeam; qui das bona grata petentibus te; fac, quaeso, ut tu solus sis amor meus et desiderium meum, tu solus sis amor meus et timor meus. Vindica me totum tibi qui me totum quod sum, et totum quod in me, imo totum quod sapio, totum quod moveor, debere tibi soli scio. Totum me converte in laudem et gloriam tuam, qui totum me debeo laudi tuae. Ne tradas, obsecro te, Domine, hostibus tuis creaturam tuam, retine eam tibi, cujus est solius plenissime, et singillatim consumma in me quod coepisti, et confirma quod operatus es.

Exaudi, obsecro, orationem meam, cujus tu largitor et inspirator es, antequam invocarem te. Respice supplicantem tibi, qui me, dum erarem, respicere sic dignatus es. Non in vacuum, miserator Domine, orationem istam inspirare dignatus es, non frustra eam largitus es mihi. Ad hoc utique mihi eam largiri dignatus es, ut exaudias me. Ad hoc dedisti mihi, ut supplicarem tibi ut miserearis mihi peccatori et cui jam arrham misericordiae tuae tribuisti, largire residuum. Recupera me, Domine Deus meus, et erue de manibus inimicorum meorum, quia et ipsi tui sunt, et omnipotentiae tuae subjiciuntur; qui etiam nihil oderunt in me, nisi quod dedisti mihi in omnibus bonis actibus. Nihil oderunt in me, nisi quod diligo te. Hoc omnibus studiis et viribus suis et tota fraude moliuntur ne diligam te, ne glorificem te, nec omnino quaeram te.

Ne ergo praevaleant adversum me hostes gloriae tuae, sed magis confundantur multitudine misericordiae tuae, videntes me conversum in laudem et gloriam tuam totum quaerere pacem et gloriam tuam contra insidiantes, et cujus immutationem intendunt. Ne expleri patiaris, obsecro te, Domine, tam iniquam, tam exsecrabilem voluntatem eorum de me, et contra me. Magnifica ergo, Deus meus, animam meam ad annuntiandum laudem tuam, et gloriae tuae praeconia, ut totus de caetero secundum magnitudinem gloriae tuae vivam, totaque vita mea te glorificet. Exemplo meo ad glorificandum te, invita et provoca multos praedestinatos. Abstrahat, quaeso, vilissimos et immundissimos abominabilesque spiritus tenebrarum a me, praesentiae luminositatis et suavitatis gloriae tuae, quam sustinere non possunt. Dirumpe vincula mea, et educ me de conclusione, et de carcere horrido et tenebroso teterrimoque, et de lacu miseriae, et de luto faecis, et de profundo mortis et tenebrarum in libertatem et lucem tuam admirabilem.

Illumina me fide saluberrima tua, laetifica me et confirma spe jucundissima et certissima tua. Vivifica me dilectione fortissima et justissima tua. Deprime me et humilia atque custodi me timore fortissimo, securissimo et invictissimo tuo. Confunde salubriter me pudore pulcherrimo et gloriosissimo tuo. Quoties ante oculos tuos aliquid quod eos offendat affero, torque me, afflige me dolore muliebri, et suavissimo modo compunctionis medicinae efficacissimae tuae, ne recedam a facie misericordiae tuae vacuus et confusus, sed obtineam quidquid, te jubente, te largiente et inspirante, petam, et quidquid te petentibus promisisti. Sentiam, misericors et miserator Domine, quod non in vanum ad misericordiam tuam confugitur, et praesto es te quaerentibus ad inveniendum te, et quod non deficiam apud te fontem misericordiae tuae, qui de profundo me eripuisti, et quae, et quanta, et quot intelligis, contulisti. Eadem quippe facultate omnipotentiae, sapientiae et bonitatis tuae, qua dixisti et facta sunt omnia, ea facilitate misericordiae tuae dicere potes, et informabuntur in me omnia deformata.

Ecce, omnipotens et misericors Pater, tot et tanta beneficia tua quae recepi, enumeravi, tot et tanta mala, quae bonitati tuae reddidi, recitavi; infelix ego sum et ingratus, qui post tot et tanta mala, quae manent me, et imminent mihi, adhuc gelido, duro et impudenti et mortuo et stupido corde sum coram te, et non erubesco. In tot et tantis latrociniis deprehensus, et solum exspectans infernale patibulum, nec timore concutior, nec dolore torqueor, nec pudore confundor, nec amore tam placidae, tam durabilis bonitatis tuae accendor. An exspectas, dulcissime Pater, et differs respicere in me, et misereri mei, quousque secundum misericordiam tuam dignus ante te appaream, et dignum aliquid rogatu et exauditione tua ante te offeram? Ecce cadaver mortuum, et vermibus scatens, et triduanum fetens ad te veniens in te vitae Largitorem, attuli. Ecce caecum ad illuminandum offero omnipotenti misericordiae tuae, et languidum ad sanandum, et tot et tantis debitis obligatum, ad solvendum, nudissimum et pauperrimum, ad ditandum, in cujus oculis facile est subito honestare pauperem.

Non aliquid aliud possum, clementissime Deus, offerre tibi, nisi memetipsum qualis sum, et ostendere mortem et vulnera mea, nuditatem et paupertatem meam, et debita mea, secundum quae carcerem mortis aeternae timeo. Ostende itaque oculos tuae misericordiae, si quomodo convertaris et ignoscas, et infundas gratiam beatitudinis tuae super me. Nec enim convertere me possum ad te tot et tantis vulneribus et aegritudinibus et morte ipsa depressus, et impotens effectus. Sed tu, misericors Pater, converte me, et convertar ad te. Converte me, Domine, ad te, et contere et contribula cor meum, et sensus vivifici doloris immitte. Non enim est fons bonorum praeter te. Non est a quo accipiam amorem et timorem et dolorem et pudorem, quibus coram te misericordia dignus inveniar, nisi de praelarga misericordia tua super me indignissimum gratiam effuderis. Domine, si istam mihi concesseris, beatus ero.

Si in me flagitia et facinora mea vindicare secundum judicium et justitiam tuam dignatus fueris, felix sum; non autem si secundum iram tuam, quae rebelles et contumaces misericordiae tuae comprehendit in fine.

Et haec est justitia tua, et judicium tuum, misericors Pater, quod timore, et amore, et pudore, et dolore agitur in cordibus veraciter poenitentium et redeuntium ad bonitatem tuam, ut misericordiam consequantur. Confige ergo latronem istum timore tuo sancto, et adure apostatam istum igne amoris et charitatis tuae. Confige, Domine, malefactorem istum dolore vivifico ac saluberrimo tuo; confunde impudentem praevaricatorem istum glorioso tuo pudore. Affige sceleratum istum cruci poenalis laboris, et acceptabilis misericordiae tuae, fac me toto corde esurire et sitire te totis visceribus, totoque desiderio amplecti te. Fac me totis visceribus servire tibi soli, toto studio quaerere quae beneplacita sunt coram te; cui cum Unigenito tuo et Domino nostro Jesu Christo, et Spiritu sancto paracleto dono sanctissimo tuo omnis honor et gloria in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Rev.7.14;1Cor.6.11 — And I said to him, 'My lord, you know.' And he said to me, 'These are the ones who are coming out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.' 1Cor.6.11 — And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.
  2. ↩Ps.3.4;Ps.5.13 — But you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head. Ps.5.13 — For you bless the righteous one, O LORD; with favor you crown him like a shield.
  3. ↩Isa.53.4-Isa.53.5;Gal.3.13 — And Surely he carried our sicknesses and bore our pains, yet we considered him stricken, struck by God, and afflicted. Isa.53.5 — But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Gal.3.13 — Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree."
  4. ↩Heb.9.28;1Pet.2.24 — So also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, apart from sin, to those who eagerly wait for him, for salvation. 1Pet.2.24 — He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness — by whose wounds you were healed.
  5. ↩Ps.25.6 — Remember your compassions, LORD, and your covenant-loves, for they are from eternity.
  6. ↩John.6.44 — No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.
  7. ↩Matt.7.11 — If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in the heavens give good things to those who ask him.
  8. ↩Phil.1.6 — I am confident of this very thing, that the one who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
  9. ↩Ps.106.14;Ps.108.14 — But they craved a craving in the wilderness, and they tested God in the wasteland. Ps.108.14 — With God we shall do valiantly, and it is He who will tread down our adversaries.
  10. ↩Ps.130.1 — A Song of Ascents. Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.
  11. ↩Gen.1.3;Ps.33.9 — And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. Ps.33.9 — For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
  12. ↩John.11.39 — Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by now there is a foul smell, for it has been four days."
  13. ↩Ps.146.7-Ps.146.8 — He executes justice for the oppressed; he gives bread to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free. Ps.146.8 — The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.
  14. ↩Lam.5.21 — Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may return; renew our days as of old.
  15. ↩Ps.50.19 — You send your mouth toward evil, and your tongue frames deceit.
  16. ↩Ps.142.2 — My voice to the LORD I cry out; my voice to the LORD I plead.
  17. ↩Ps.41.2;Matt.5.6 — Blessed is the one who has regard for the poor; in the day of trouble, the LORD delivers him. Matt.5.6 — Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
  18. ↩John.14.16 — And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩Arrha (pledge/earnest) is a theological term for a down payment or guarantee of future mercy; rendered as 'pledge' to preserve the covenantal sense.
  2. 2 ↩dolore muliebri rendered as 'grief that is tender' to capture the sense of a softened, yielding sorrow (muliebris = womanly, i.e., pliant, not hardened) rather than a gendered pejorative; the phrase modifies the quality of affliction as gentle and receptive.
  3. 3 ↩compunctionis medicinae efficacissimae tuae rendered as 'that most effective remedy of your medicine' to preserve the medical metaphor of compunction as healing.
  4. 4 ↩de profundo rendered as 'from the deep' — a set phrase echoing Psalm 130:1 (De profundis clamavi); treated as a candidate scripture allusion.
  5. 5 ↩dixisti et facta sunt omnia alludes to the creation-by-word motif (Genesis 1; Psalm 33:9); rendered to preserve the echo of divine speech as creative act.
  6. 6 ↩si quomodo convertaris: the penitent asks whether God might 'be converted' (i.e., moved/turned) toward him—a bold anthropopathic petition, not a suggestion that God changes.
  7. 7 ↩contribula: rare verb, likely intensive of contero ('to crush, shatter'). Rendered as 'shatter' to preserve the force of the doublet contere et contribula.
  8. 8 ↩sensus vivifici doloris: 'the life-giving pain of sorrow'—the penitent asks God to infuse a sorrow that is itself vivifying, a grace-pierced grief.
  9. 9 ↩amorem et timorem et dolorem et pudorem: a fourfold cluster of interior dispositions—love, fear (reverence), grief (compunction), and shame (humble self-knowledge)—all understood as gifts from God, not self-generated.
  10. 10 ↩praelarga misericordia tua: 'your overflowing/abundant mercy'—praelargus is a rare, intensive form, emphasizing the superabundance of divine mercy.
  11. 11 ↩istam: refers anaphorically to the grace of compunction and interior conversion described in the preceding sentences.
  12. 12 ↩The contrast between God's just judgment (felix sum — 'I am blessed') and God's wrath (non) reflects the penitent's acceptance of deserved punishment as itself a form of mercy, while wrath that seizes the unrepentant leads to ruin. The paradox of 'happy under justice, lost under wrath' is deliberate.
  13. 13 ↩misericordiae tuae rendered as 'your mercy' (genitive of reference: the mercy belonging to you, which the rebellious and defiant fail to receive). The sense is that God's wrath overtakes those who resist or fall outside the reach of that mercy.

Orationes sive Meditationes — Collection for Princess Adeliza of Normandy companion

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