Oh, indeed! Let us not forget that Jesus is a man, and the most sensitive of men, and He wants to be loved as a man. That is why He asks for human love, for He possesses angelic love from all eternity. But it is necessary to understand this well: He asks for a chaste love! Jesus is loved chastely when the soul is elevated to spiritual regions of love and, with those elevated affections, lives enamored of the most beautiful of the sons of men: the Son of Mary. . .Jesus of Nazareth, as His most holy and pure Mother loved Him, as the most chaste St. Joseph loved Him!

To love thus is to love without any other affection, nothing that might occupy the depths of the human heart. No other affection, then, is necessary, not that for one’s father or mother, nor much less any other affection less noble and pure.

To love Jesus thus is for the soul to live enamored of Jesus, the Lily of the valley. To Him she addresses all her loving; to Him, her fervent aspirations. . .that are true hymns of the soul. To Him she addresses the sweetest and most tender words. . .from the depths of all her being they rise to the lips and are spoken to Jesus when He approaches her with an actual grace or she approaches Him with a thought, or better yet, visiting His Tabernacle or receiving sacramental Communion.

That is how Jesus wants to be loved by His creatures. That is why He says, expressly: "That, as faithful and loving spouses, they may be enamored of Me, caress Me, they may receive Me and live watching for Me."

Do you hear Him? He wants caresses. . .He wants consolations. He asks us to watch for Him, not to leave Him alone for even one moment. That is how the faithful and loving spouse must be, who flies to the side of her spouse as often as her duties give her time. And when she is occupied, if she is away from him because she deals with the very interests of her husband and of the children, etc., her soul is watching over her beloved in her thoughts. And when she sleeps, she is like the spouse of the Canticle: "I sleep, and my heart watcheth" (Cant. V, 2), because her love is watching at all times, both when asleep and when awake.

What is it: to watch for Jesus? What is it: to watch for Him? It is not to forget for even one instant that souls are waiting for us to rescue them, because souls are the "interests of Jesus" and this alone consoles His Heart, the Heart of a Redeemer and a Victim!

To watch with Jesus is to be quick to give Him what the world denies Him. And, what does the world deny Him? The world denies Him love, fidelity, above all, it denies Him this in the midst of sorrow. To love Jesus in sorrow, to bless this sorrow for the love of Him and of souls (the world refuses to give it to Him). . .that is what it denies Him and even His own, who say they love Him, do this.

Therefore. . .it is our responsibility to give faithful love in the midst of sorrow or, what is the same, complete delivery of oneself, holy abandonment to the Cross.

The world defrauds Him. Of what does the world defraud Him? The world defrauds Jesus of the hopes He has and has always had and for which He came to give Himself up as a victim for the world itself. . .the hopes of taking away sin!

In justice, after we have been redeemed with the redemptive Blood in Baptism and we continue cleansing ourselves with the sacraments, above all Penance and the Eucharist, in justice the world, we souls, should no longer sin. Because Christ has sacrificed everything to achieve precisely this: that the devil might have no part any more in mankind; that all souls might belong to Christ; that all might be heirs of Heaven; that with all of them the Heavenly Father might be pleased. . .but. . .oh!. . .Jesus weeps. He weeps because it seems His Precious Blood has been useless and that He is still hanging uselessly from the Cross. . .because he has revealed that, in the Eucharist, He continues crucified. There He has made present His redemptive sacrifice that He consummated on Calvary – because His sacrifice began at the moment of the Incarnation, in a physical manner, and it continued during His mortal life. But, desiring to perpetuate that sacrifice until the end of time, in the midst of His beloved redeemer, He instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice, where He continues suffering in a mystical, but no less real, manner, for He is present in body and soul, living. . .and not dead. Then, if He is living, He is not insensible.

But the world. . .what heed does it take of this Victim? It seems that this world for which He immolates Himself has contempt for Him, like the mob that saw Him pass one day on the way to Calvary and hanging from the Cross, wagging their heads, murmuring: "Behold, a crazy man."

Indeed, Jesus is crazy with love for us, a caravan of sinful humanity, trivial, noisy, vulgar, devoid of every ethical and spiritual principle, given up to the sensuality of animal passions, of pride or vanity, and of insolent arrogance, diabolical envy, shameless lust, unbridled rage, and wicked corruption.

And Jesus, the innocent Victim, nailed to His Cross for us. . .remains alone, abandoned precisely by us. He remains on the summit of the coldest and heart-rending Calvary. Only Mary remains at the foot of Her Son’s Cross. . .only She. . .with a few women. . .as the Gospel says.

Oh, what are we to do? What are we doing before this spectacle? Let us watch with Jesus! Let us be faithful at His feet! And more: let us throw ourselves into action with fervent love. . .and let us ascend to His Cross and nail ourselves with Him. This will be, truly, to give Him what He asks of us when He says: "My love longs for the pure love of its creatures, the chaste love of virgin souls who, as faithful and loving spouses, are enamored of Me, recollected in their interior, shut off from the world, attentive to My voice."

To watch with Jesus. . .to watch with Jesus is to accompany Him in His perpetual watch that He carries out between Heaven and earth. It is to unite ourselves with Him!

That is why He says that He wants them to console Him. To receive Him. . .how to receive Him? Opening to Him the doors of our soul and receiving Him, every day. Would to God that it would be possible for us, in holy sacramental Communion, keeping our conscience clean, watching, that is, not to soil it, in order thus to be able to receive Him daily. And so He will receive consolation from us on coming to our souls every morning. Thus we will live "recollected in our interior," as He enjoins us. Because, today we will watch to guard ourselves to receive Him tomorrow and tomorrow for the following day and this will have as its result that our constant concern will be in our interior, as He asks: "recollected in their interior."

 

But let us note that He adds: "Shut off from the world. . .attentive to My voice." Shut off from the world? How can it be. . .of we live in the world? For example, the Minim nuns, if we have constant dealing with the world, even in our isolation, because our mission is to concern ourselves precisely for the world and with the world?

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