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Vigils Reading – Dedication Gethsemani Basilica
November 15, 2022
11SN1603
11/15/22
FROM THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES OF ST. GERTRUDE THE GREAT[1]
O love, the fruition of you is that worthiest coupling of your Word and the soul which is brought about by perfect union with God. To use you is to become intertwined in God. To enjoy you is to be one with God. You are that peace which surpasses all understanding and you are the road by which one comes to the inner chamber.
Oh, if only it happened to me, too, miserable as I am, to repose for a moment under your dearest cloak of cherishing-love so that my heart might be emboldened by one consolatory utterance of your living Word, or that my soul might hear this good and pleasant word from your mouth: ‘I am your salvation; behold, now the bedchamber of my heart is open to you.’
Why, then, O love so unwavering, have you deeply loved someone so foul, so ugly, if not to make her beautiful in you? Your loving-kind charity attracts and allures me, O tender flower of the virgin Mary.
Let me not be confounded in my expectation but grant me to find rest for my soul in you. I have found nothing more desirable, I have judged nothing more lovable, I have wished for nothing more dear than to be held tight, O love, in your embraces, to rest under the wings of my Jesus, and to dwell in the tabernacle of divine charity.
O love, O radiant noonday, I would die a thousand times to be at rest in you. If only you would bend to me your face of such beautiful cherishing-love, O dearest one.
Oh, if I were granted to come exceedingly close to you so that I might now find myself not only next to you but within you. Then, through you, sun of justice, flowers of all the virtues might arise in me, who am dust and ashes. With you as a husband, my Lord, such fecundity might enter my soul that the renowned offspring of total perfection would be born in me. Then, having been snatched from the valley of this misery, I might be able to glory in you forever in the presence of your desirable face; for you, mirror without spot, have not scorned to be, in truth, coupled with a sinner like me.
[1]SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, by St Gertrude the Great, Trans. by G. J. Lewis & J. Lewis (Cistercian Publications Kalamazoo 1989) pp. 78-79.