Tuesday, July 12 : Baldwin of Ford

“Set me as a seal on your heart, for love is strong as death” (Sg 8,6). Love is strong as death, for the love of Christ is the death of death… The love with which we love Christ is also strong as death, for inasmuch as it is the extinction of our old life, the abolition of our vices, and an end to dead works, it is itself a sort of death. This love of ours for Christ is a sort of exchange – however unequal- of his love for us. It is a likeness of his love, patterned on its image. “He loved us first” (1Jn 4,10) and by the example of that love which he offered to us, he was made a seal for us which enables us to be conformed to his image… This is why he says, ‘Set me as a seal upon your heart’. It is as if he said, ‘Love me as I love you. Have me in your mind, your memory, your desire, your yearning, your sighing, and your sobbing. Remember, mankind, how I made you, how I put you before all other creatures, how I ennobled you with such dignity, how I crowned you with glory and honor, how I made you only a little less than the angels, how I subjected all things under your feet (Ps 8,6-7). Remember, too, not only the many things I made for you, but what harsh and undeserved things I endured for you, and see if you are not being unfair to me if you do not love me. Who loves you as I do? Who wants you to love them as I do? Who created you, if not I? Who redeemed you, if not I? Take from me, O Lord, my heart of stone. Take away my hardened heart. Take away my uncircumcised heart. Give me a new heart, a heart of flesh, a pure heart (Ez 36,26)! You who purify the heart, you who love the pure heart, possess my heart and dwell within it, enclosing it and filling it, higher than what in me is highest, more inward than my most inward part. O form of beauty and seal of sanctity, seal my heart in your image, seal my heart under your mercy, “O God of my heart, O God my portion for ever” (Ps 73[72],26).
maronite readings – rosary,team