Vigils Reading – St Lawrence

CONCERNING BURNED LOVE

From the writings of St Mechthild 5

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“Ah, dear Lord, have mercy on one who has been consumed here in the fire of your love and has been absorbed in your humility and has been annihilated in all things.” God speaks: “My Godhead burned you; My humanity recognized you; My Holy Spirit sanctified you in your poverty…”

Whenever I think of death… my desire reaches back to the time of the martyrs, that I might shed my sinful blood in true Christian faith for the sake of Jesus whom I love. A special gift forces me to dare to state this: that I love God. For whenever vice and suffering come my way, my soul begins to burn in the fire of true love of God with such sweetness that my body floats suspended in divine pleasure. But a sadness remains in my senses, and I pray to God for all who slander me or revile me, that God preserve them from sin…

When I come to die… I shall thank God that I bear the name of Christian and that I came to true Christian faith. And if I were to remain here longer, I would strive to be a help to Holy Christianity that is afflicted with many sins…

An unworthy person pondered in her simplicity God’s nobility. And God let her recognize in her senses and see with the eyes of her soul a fire that burned unceasingly in the heights above all things. The fire had been burning without a beginning and shall keep on burning without end. This fire is God eternal, who holds within himself eternal life and from whom all things have come forth. The sparks of the fire that have shot forth are the holy angels. The bright flickerings of the fire are all the saints of God… The ever-glowing coals of the fire are all the blessed here on earth who are on fire with heavenly love and shine with good example. All those who have grown cold in sin can warm themselves on the coals…

The smoke of the fire is all earthly things that one often makes use of with improper pleasure. How beautifully they shine in our eyes. How wantonly they play in our hearts. And yet they bear hidden within them a great amount of bitterness, for they disappear like smoke and blind the best. They make even the holiest persons bleary-eyed.

The comfort of the fire is the delightful pleasure that our soul receives inwardly from God through the warmth of the divine fire, so sacred that we, on fire, reflect back toward the heavenly fire, and we persevere in virtue so that we are not extinguished. The bitterness of the fire is the word that God shall speak on the last day: “Go from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!” The radiance of the fire is the gleaming sight of the divine countenance of the Holy Trinity that shall flood our body and soul with light, so that we shall see and know there the marvelous bliss that here we cannot even name. These things have come out of this fire and flow back into it, each according to God’s disposition, in eternal praise.

Whoever wishes to speak more about this, Let him prostrate himself in this fire And see and taste how the Godhead flows, How humanity pours,
How the Holy Spirit wrestles
And vanquishes many a heart, Forcing it to love God in many different ways