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Chapter 14Imit.4.14

De quorumdam devotorum ardenti desiderio ad Corpus Christi.

The Hidden Sweetness and the Shame of Coldness

The soul marvels at God's hidden sweetness, is ashamed by its own tepid approach to the Eucharist compared to fervent lovers of Christ, and recalls how those devout ones burned with uncontainable longing for the living fountain of Christ's Body.

O Lord, how great is the abundance of your sweetness — how hidden from those who fear you!✦ When I think of certain devout ones who approached your Sacrament, Lord, with great devotion and a love that was catching fire, I am often ashamed and blush within myself — because I come to your altar and the table of sacred Communion so tepidly and coldly, because I remain so dry, without devotion and without any stirring of the heart, and because I am not wholly aflame before you, my God, nor drawn and moved with the same intensity as many devout ones were, who could not hold themselves back from weeping because of their overwhelming desire for Communion and the felt love burning in their hearts. With the longing of heart and body they yearned toward you, the living fountain, from the very marrow — unable to restrain or satisfy their hunger in any other way unless they had received your Body with every joyfulness and spiritual eagerness.✦

Faith That Burns and the Prayer for Kindling

The burning faith of the devout proves Christ's real presence in the breaking of the bread, while the soul laments its own lack of fervor and prays that Jesus would grant even a small measure of heartfelt love in Communion so that faith, hope, and charity may endure.

O, truly their burning faith — a convincing proof of your sacred presence. For these truly recognize their Lord in the breaking of the bread, whose heart burns so powerfully within them because of Jesus walking with them.✦ Far, alas — far from me — is such affection and such vehement devotion, so often. Be gracious to me, good Jesus, and sweet and kind; grant your poor beggar now and then to feel some small measure of the heartfelt affection of your love in Holy Communion, so that my faith may grow stronger, my hope in your goodness may advance, and love, once perfectly kindled and having tasted the heavenly manna, may never fail.✦

Hope in Mercy and Fellowship with the Fervent

Trusting in God's powerful mercy to visit the soul with burning ardor in the day of divine favor, the soul prays to share in the holy fellowship of all who love Christ with intense desire.

Your mercy is powerful, and so is your grace — powerful enough to grant me the grace I long for, and to visit me most mercifully in a spirit of burning ardor, on the day when the day of your good pleasure should come to me.✦12 For although I do not burn with that same intense desire as your especially devoted ones, I still have — from your grace — a longing for that great, inflamed desire: praying and yearning to become a sharer in the devotion of all your fervent lovers, and to be counted among their holy fellowship.345

Read the original Latin

O, quam magna multitudo dulcedinis tuæ, Domine, quam abscondisti timentibus te. Quando recordor devotorum aliquorum ad Sacramentum tuum, Domine, cum magna devotione, et affectu accendentium, tunc sæpius in memetipso confundor et erubesco, quod ad altare tuum et sacræ Communionis mensam tam tepide et frigide accedo, quod ita aridus sine devotione et affectione cordis maneo, et quod non sum totaliter accensus, coram te, Deo meo, nec ita vehementer attractus et affectionatus, sicut multi devoti fuerunt, qui præ nimio desiderio Communionis et sensibili cordis amore a fletu non potuerunt se continere. Sed ore cordis et corporis pariter ad te, fontem vivum, medullitus inhiabant, suam esuriem non valentes aliter temperare nec satiare, nisi Corpus tuum cum omni jucunditate et spirituali aviditate accepissent.

O, vere ardens fides eorum probabile existens argumentum sacræ præsentiæ tuæ. Isti enim veraciter cognoscunt Dominum suum in fractione panis, quorum cor tam valide ardet in eis de Jesu ambulante cum eis. Longe, proh dolor, est a me sæpe talis affectus, et devotio tam vehemens ardor. Esto mihi propitius, bone Jesu, et dulcis et benigne; concede pauperi mendico tuo vel interdum modicum de cordiali affectione amoris tui in sacra Communione sentire, ut fides mea magis convalescat, spes in bonitate tua proficiat, et charitas semel perfecte accensa et cæleste manna experta, nunquam deficiat.

Potens est autem misericordia tua etiam gratiam desideratam mihi præstare, et in spiritu ardoris, cum dies beneplaciti tui adveniret, me clementissime visitare. Etenim licet tanto desiderio tam specialium devotorum tuorum non ardeo, tamen de gratia tua illius magni inflamati desiderii desiderium habeo: orans et desiderans omnium talium fervidorum amatorum tuorum participem me fieri, ac eorum sancto consortio annumerari.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Ps.31.19 — How great is your goodness that you have stored up for those who fear you, that you have worked for those who take refuge in you before the children of men! Let the lips of falsehood be silenced, those who speak against the righteous with arrogance and contempt.
  2. ↩John.4.10-John.4.14 — Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." John.4.11 — The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water?" John.4.12 — Surely you are not greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his livestock? John.4.13 — Jesus answered her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." John.4.14 — but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst forever; rather, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life
  3. ↩Luke.24.35 — Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
  4. ↩John.6.31-John.6.35 — Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' John.6.32 — Jesus then said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.' John.6.33 — For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. John.6.34 — They said to him, "Lord, give us this bread always." John.6.35 — Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will not hunger, and the one who believes in me will never thirst."
  5. ↩Luke.4.19;Isa.61.2 — "To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Isa.61.2 — And To proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩autem rendered as 'and so is' to capture the continuative force while linking the two powers (mercy and grace) in a natural English cadence.
  2. 2 ↩beneplacitum tui ('good pleasure') retains the biblical resonance of divine favor/election; cf. Luke 4:19 (Vulgate: annus Domini acceptus / dies beneplaciti).
  3. 3 ↩Etenim ('for indeed') rendered as 'For' to open the explanatory clause naturally; licet…tamen rendered as 'although…still' to preserve the concessive force.
  4. 4 ↩consortium rendered as 'fellowship' rather than 'Communion' — the context is communal association among devout lovers of God, not the Eucharistic Sacrament.
  5. 5 ↩participem…fieri rendered as 'to become a sharer in' — participem carries the sense of partaking/sharing in the spiritual fervor of the devout.