MEDITATIO

It is not without purpose Saint Luke has set three parables before us one after the other: the sheep that was lost and was found, the drachma that was mislaid and was found, and the prodigal son who was dead and came back to life, so that, encouraged by this threefold medicine, we might heal our wounds… Who are the father, the shepherd, the woman? Are they not God the Father, Christ and the Church? Christ who took your sins on himself carries you in his body; the Church goes looking for you; the Father welcomes you home. Like a shepherd he brings you back; like a mother it seeks you out; like a Father he clothes you. Mercy first of all, then rescue, and finally reconciliation. Each of these details is appropriate to each one: the Redeemer comes to our help, the Church rescues, the Father reconciles. The mercy of the divine work is the same but the grace differs according to our worthiness. The wearied sheep is brought back by the shepherd, the missing drachma is found again, the son retraces his steps to his father and returns wholly repentant for the wandering off he rejects… So let us be glad that this sheep who strayed in Adam has been restored in Christ. Christ’s shoulders are the arms of the cross, it is there I have set my sins, on the noble neck of that gibbet have I found rest.

maronite readings – rosary,team

How can it be that, in spite of such promises and incentives on the Lord’s part, we refuse to abandon ourselves wholly and unreservedly to him and renounce all things, even life itself, in accordance with the Gospel (Lk 14,26) in order to love him alone and nothing but him? Consider all that has been done for us: what glory has been given to us; what benefits granted by the Lord from the time of the fathers and prophets with the history of salvation in view; what promises, what encouragements, what compassion on our Lord’s part ever since the beginning! And at the end he demonstrated his unutterable care for us by coming himself to dwell with us and dying on the cross to turn us back to him and bring us back to life. Yet we, we don’t set aside our self will, our love of worldly things, our evil inclinations and habits, and thus we appear as people who have little or no faith at all. And yet, in spite of this, see how God shows himself to us full of gentle goodness. He protects and cares for us invisibly; he does not completely abandon us to the world’s wickedness and illusions, despite our sins; in his great patience he keeps us from perishing and watches from afar for the time of our turning back to him.

maronite readings – rosary,team

So that nothing may draw me out of this beautiful silence within, I must always maintain the same dispositions, the same solitude, the same withdrawal, the same stripping of self! If my desires, my fears, my joys or my sorrows, if all the movements proceeding from these “four passions” are not perfectly directed to God, I will not be solitary: there will be noise within me. There must be peace, sleep of the powers, “the unity of being.” “Listen, my daughter, lend your ear, forget your people and your father’s house, and the King will become enamored of your beauty.” (Ps 44[45]:11-12)… To forget “your people” is difficult, I think, for this people is everything which is, so to speak, part of us: our feelings, our memories, our impressions, etc.… when the soul has made this break, when it is free from all that, the King is enamored of its beauty… The Creator, seeing the beautiful silence which reigns in His creature, and gazing on her wholly recollected in her interior solitude… leads her into this immense, infinite solitude, into this “spacious place” sung of by the prophet (Ps 17[18]:20), which is nothing else but Himself… “I will lead her into solitude and speak to her heart.” (Hos 2:16) The soul has entered into this vast solitude in which God will make Himself heard I “His word,” St. Paul says, “is living and active, and more penetrating than a two-edged sword: extending even to the division of soul and spirit, even of joints and marrow. “(Heb 2:16) It is His word then that will directlv achieve the work of stripping in the soul… But it is not enough just to listen to this word, we must keep it! (Jn 14:23) And it is in keeping it that the soul will be “sanctified in the truth,” (Jn 17:17) and that is the desire of the Master… To the one who keeps His word has He not made this promise: “My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home in him”? (Jn 14:23) It is the whole Trinity who dwells in the soul that loves Him in truth, that is, by keeping His word.

maronite readings – rosary,team

I was distancing myself more and more from you, my Lord and my life. My life, too, was beginning to become a death, or rather it was already death in your sight. And yet, within that state of death, you upheld me… All faith had gone but my respect and esteem remained intact. You showed me further graces, O my God: you preserved the attraction for study in me, for serious reading, beautiful things, a revulsion for vice and ugliness. I did evil yet I neither approved nor loved it… You granted me that vague uneasiness of a bad conscience, which though it may be asleep is not altogether dead. I have never felt that same sadness, lassitude, unease except then. Oh my God, was it then your gift? How far I was from doubting it! How good you are! And while, by this invention of your love, you prevented my soul from drowning altogether, you kept my body safe: for if I had died then I should have been in hell… Those dangers of the journey, great and various as they were, from which you enabled me to come out as if by a miracle! That unchanging health in the most unhealthy of places, in spite of such great fatigue! Oh my God, how your hand was upon me and how little I was aware of it! How you protected me! How you sheltered me under your wings when I did not even believe in your existence! And while you were thus protecting me time passed by, you judged that the time was approaching to draw me back into the fold. In spite of me you undid all the wrong attachments that would have kept me away from you; you even undid all the healthy bonds that would have prevented me from becoming all yours one day… Your hand alone carried out the beginning, middle and end in all this. How good you are! It was needed in order to prepare my soul for truth; the devil is too much master of an unchaste soul to let it enter into truth; you would not be able, my God, to enter a soul in which the demon of squalid passions reigned as lord. But you wanted to enter mine, Oh good Shepherd, and so you cast out your enemy yourself.

maronite readings – rosary,team