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Chapter 16Imit.4.16

Quod necessitates nostras Christo aperire debemus et ejus gratiam postulare.

Laying Bare Our Need Before Christ

The soul confesses its weakness, inner poverty, and many failings, turning to Christ as the only one who truly knows and can heal.

O sweetest and most loving Lord, whom I now devoutly desire to receive, you know my weakness and the need I suffer, the many evils and vices in which I lie; how often I am burdened, tempted, disturbed, and defiled. For healing I come to you; for comfort and relief I beseech you. I speak to one who knows all things, to whom my whole inner life is laid bare, and who alone can perfectly console and help me.1 You know the good things I lack before all others, and how poor I am in virtues.

A Humble Plea for Grace and Transformation

Standing before God in poverty, the soul begs for mercy, inner renewal, detachment from earth, and the sweetness of God alone.

Here I stand before you, poor and naked, seeking your grace and pleading for your mercy: feed your hungry beggar, kindle my coldness with the fire of your love, and shine your presence on my blindness.✦✦2 Turn all earthly things bitter for me, all that is heavy and adverse into patience, all that is lowly and created into contempt and forgetfulness.✦3 Lift up my heart to you in heaven, and do not let me wander over the earth.✦ Be sweet to me now and forever, you alone, because you alone are my food and drink, my love and my joy, my sweetness and my whole good.✦✦4

Burning with the Fire of Divine Love

The soul asks to be wholly consumed and transformed by God's burning love, marveling that the ever-living fire purifies and illumines.

Would that you would set me wholly ablaze from your presence, burn me up, and transform me into yourself, so that I may be made one spirit with you through the grace of inner union and the melting fire of burning love.5 Do not let me depart from you hungry and dry, but work with me mercifully, just as you have often worked wondrously with your saints.67 What wonder would it be if I were wholly set ablaze by you and failed in my very self, since you are a fire always burning and never dying, a love purifying hearts and illuminating the mind.✦89

Read the original Latin

O, dulcissime atque amantissime Domine, quem nunc devote desidero suscipere, tu scis infirmitatem meam et necessitatem quam patior, in quantis malis et vitiis jaceo; quam sæpe sum gravatus, tentatus, turbatus et inquinatus. Pro remedio ad te venio, pro consolatione et sublevamine te deprecor: ad omnia scientem loquor, cui manifesta sunt omnia interiora mea, et qui solus potes me perfecte consolare et adjuvare. Tu scis quibus bonis indigeo præ omnibus et quam pauper sum in virtutibus.

Ecce sto ante te pauper et nudus, gratiam postulans et misericordiam implorans: refice esurientem mendicum tuum, accende frigiditatem meam igne amoris tui: illumina cæcitatem meam claritate præsentiæ tuæ. Verte mihi omnia terrena in amaritudinem, omnia gravia et contraria in patientiam, omnia infima et creata in contemtum et oblivionem. Erige cor meum ad te in cælum, et ne dimittas me vagari super terram. Tu solus mihi ex hoc jam dulcescas usque in sæculum, quia tu solus cibus et potus meus, amor meus et gaudium meum, dulcedo mea et totum bonum meum.

Utinam me totaliter ex tua præsentia accendas, comburas, et in te transmutes: ut unus tecum efficiar spiritus per gratiam internæ unionis, et liquefactionem ardentis amoris. Ne patiaris me jejunum et aridum a te recedere, sed operare mecum misericorditer, sicut sæpius expertus es cum Sanctis tuis mirabiliter. Quid mirum si totus ex te cognoscerem, et in me ipso deficerem, cum tu sis ignis semper ardens et nunquam deficiens, amor corda purificans et intellectum illuminans.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Rev.3.17-Rev.3.18 — Because you say, 'I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing, and you do not know that you are the wretched one, and pitiable, and poor, and blind, and naked— Rev.3.18 — I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may become rich, and white garments to clothe yourself, so that the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.
  2. ↩Ps.107.9;John.6.35 — For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good. 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."
  3. ↩Phil.3.8 — But more than that—indeed, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost everything and consider it all rubbish, so that I may gain Christ.
  4. ↩Ps.25.1;Lam.3.41 — Of David. To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. Lam.3.41 — Let us lift up our hearts with our hands toward God in the heavens.
  5. ↩Ps.34.8;Ps.103.5 — The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. Ps.103.5 — who satisfies your life with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
  6. ↩Song.2.3 — Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. In his shadow I delighted to sit, and his fruit was sweet to my palate.
  7. ↩Deut.4.24 — For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩Sublevamine (rare word) rendered as 'relief' to capture the sense of being lifted up or alleviated.
  2. 2 ↩frigiditas rendered 'coldness' for spiritual sloth/indifference, not literal temperature; cæcitas rendered 'blindness' for interior darkness.
  3. 3 ↩contemtus here means holy contempt of created things in comparison with God, not mere disdain; oblivionem is the spiritual forgetting of worldly attachments.
  4. 4 ↩dulcescas (become sweet/be sweet) rendered to capture both the subjunctive petition and the experiential sense of God as the soul's delight.
  5. 5 ↩liquefactio rendered as 'melting fire' to capture the devotional sense of the soul dissolved in divine love, not merely physical liquefaction.
  6. 6 ↩Ne + subjunctive (patiaris) rendered as prohibitive 'do not let,' preserving the force of the negative entreaty.
  7. 7 ↩cum (temporal/causal) with sanctis tuis rendered as 'with your saints'; temporal sense ('when with your saints') also possible but the experiential reading fits the context of past mercies.
  8. 8 ↩cum + subjunctive (sis) rendered as causal 'since'; temporal or concessive readings also possible but causal best fits the logic of the sentence: the speaker's self-dissolution is explained by God's nature as consuming fire.
  9. 9 ↩intellectus rendered as 'mind' rather than 'intellect' to match contemporary register while preserving the sense of cognitive illumination.