Our Blessed Father considered that no thought is of such avail to urge us
forward towards the perfection of divine love as the consideration of the
Passion and Death of the Son of God. This he called the sweetest, and yet
the most constraining of all motives of piety.
And when I asked him how he could possibly mention gentleness and
constraint or violence in the same breath, he answered, "I can do so in
the sense in which the Apostle says that the Charity of God presses us,
constrains us, impels us, draws us, for such is the meaning of the word
_Urget_.[1] In the same sense as that in which the Holy Ghost in the
Canticle of Canticles tells us that _Love is as strong as death and fierce
as hell_."
"We cannot deny," he added, "that love is the very essence of sweetness,
and the sweetener of all bitterness, yet see how it is compared to what
is most irresistible, namely, death and hell. The reason of this is that
as there is nothing so strong as the sweetness of love, so also there is
nothing more sweet and more lovable than its strength. Oil and honey are
each smooth and sweet, but when boiling nothing is to be compared with the
heat they give out.
"The bee when not interfered with is the most harmless of insects;
irritated its sting is the sharpest of all.
"Jesus Crucified is the Lion of the tribe of Judah--He is the answer to
Samson's riddle, for in His wounds is found the honeycomb of the strongest
charity, and from this strength proceeds the sweetness of our greatest
consolation. And certainly since our Lord's dying for us, as all Scripture
testifies, is the climax of his love, it ought also to be the strongest of
all our motives for loving Him.
"This it is which made St. Bernard exclaim: 'Oh, my Lord, I entreat Thee
to grant that my whole heart may be so absorbed and, as it were, consumed
in the burning strength and honeyed sweetness of Thy crucified love, that
I may die for the love of Thy love, O Redeemer of my soul, as Thou hast
deigned to die for the love of my love.'
"It is this excess of love, which on the hill of Calvary drained the last
drop of life-blood from the Sacred Heart of the Lover of our Souls; it is
of this love that Moses and Elias spoke on Mount Thabor amid the glory of
the Transfiguration.
"They spoke of it to teach us that even in the glory of Heaven, of which
the Transfiguration was only a glimpse, after the vision of the goodness
of God contemplated and loved in itself, and for itself, there will be no
more powerful incentive towards the love of our Divine Saviour than the
remembrance of His Death and Passion.
"We have a signal testimony to this truth in the Apocalypse, where the
Saints and Angels chant these words before the throne of Him that liveth
for ever and ever: _Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and
divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction
from every creature which is in Heaven, and on the earth._"[2]
[Footnote 1: 2 Cor. v. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Apoc. v. 12, 18.]