Had we dreamed, perhaps, of such beautiful things as these, that the Divine Guest in the Tabernacle makes manifest? Is it possible? To God all things are possible!

But, here He comes to remind us of the beginning of this revelation. Jesus says, "I want virginal souls who consecrate themselves thus: as sacramental spouses." He has clearly said it. He wants "virgins," that is, human beings so valiant that they guard the chastity, the virginity, not only of their bodies, but also of their souls. Just as wives guard their purity for their husbands, thus He wants these souls as sacramental spouses that consecrate themselves to Him, that they might be entirely for Him alone, that no other flavor but that of purity might be found in them. Undoubtedly as St. Paul explains it: "The married woman must please her husband and must busy herself in many things."

Surely a person occupied in many things. . .having contact with the world and its demands, cannot possibly guard that integrity of purity, of chastity, of virginity. How could she, then give to Jesus that fragrance of delicacy? In this, what He asks is seen clearly: souls that live solely for Him, consecrated to Him. And He promises these the secret treasures of His love as a faithful Spouse Who, introducing His spouse into His intimate chamber, shows her what He shows to no one else: the most exalted love, the most delicate of His caresses, the most valuable of what He has and can give her of His. It is not possible for divided hearts to give that refreshment and content, to pour themselves out and lavish themselves as He desires so much! He needs souls pure of any other love that is not His. That is, that soul will be able to love many souls, all created beings, but it must be only through Him, in Him and for Him. Because all the licit and holy loves must flow from the love that is of God, which alone should fill the soul of a sacramental spouse. This is what He means when He says, "I want virgin souls," that is, where He is the only love of their live, the center of every other affection, the ocean in which they must gather all the drops of love that flow from that heart to other creatures. Let us conclude: on approaching Him, above all in Communion, Jesus will give us what we want. Do we want to find a Father. . .let us approach Him as children, let us love Him as children. Do we want Him to be our Brother? Let us love Him as sisters, seek Him as sisters.

We will please Him by this, but never so much as when we approach Him, for 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, caress Me, console Me, receive Me and live watching for Me, recollected in their interior, shut off from the world, attentive to My voice. . ." Do we want Him to speak more clearly to us?

O Jesus! O Jesus, divine and human! You truly have for us a love we do not merit. By means of human attractiveness You call us to the divine, to elevate us to Your dignity, to make us Your spouses. . .to give us Your own divinity as one complete change and to seat us at Your right hand. . .and to have us share in Your Heart Itself. Oh. . .but on turning our eyes toward our human reality and on examining our works, our imperfect dispositions, we feel ashamed. We feel that our misery plunges us into the abyss of our unworthiness and it seems to us that such daring is a bold and reprehensible audacity. . .and that is why our heart retreats instinctively and with your apostle, St. Peter, we say to You, "Depart from Me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." Considering Your Justice it seems that we feel You repudiate us because You cannot admit anything stained and our heart feels itself still involved in a thousand unclean attachments. Our affections are still divided between creatures and the world, vanity still attracts us in many things. We seek a great deal for ourselves through self-love! How then can we approach You, Who are all pure and Who says You want "virgin souls?"

To this true and just reasoning of ours, let us continue with still other words of Jesus that solve this perplexity for us with an argument of His so irrefutable that now there is nothing left to fear in approaching Him. Because, if now we are still misery, if we are still divided in our heart, if we still cannot feel for Him that Love He desires, we can be sure that, our approaching Him, seeking that purity, that luminousness that He alone can give us, is precisely how we must and can acquire it. If we withdraw from Him, we will never attain it and we will go from abyss to abyss, from misery to misery until reaching spiritual indigence. These arguments that Jesus give us correspond, also, to other words of His revealed recently, when He says, "Trust in Me, O soul, trust in Me. I am the eternal thief who lies in wait for souls to make them My prisoners. I await only the opportune moment to sanctify them. I want them only to come to desire it in order to shed My graces on them."

Have we heard it? There we have the revelation of the loving Heart, of the loving design of Christ concerning our errant souls that walk far from Him. He is lying in wait for us to make us His prisoners, prisoners of His mercy, of His charity, of His love! If we are sinners, if we are stained, but we come to desire Him to clean us and to heal us; if we long for Him to whiten us, to beautify us, He will do it; precisely, He is only waiting to lift us from the dunghill. Everything will be realized if we approach Him and ask Him with good will, with sincere repentance, ask Him to transform us with His grace! Placed solely, then, in the state of grace, let us go to Communion, which will be the crowning of our intention. Let us go to Communion asking and seeking just one thing: purity of soul! Purity, beauty, to be able to serve Him and please Him and receive Him worthily! And, if we do so, we will see the wonders of His love. He has said it. He waits only for a soul to desire it in order to shed His graces on her. And let us note that he does not say He will give those graces to us slowly, little by little. Rather, He uses that literal expression, "to shed My graces on them." That is, to bathe her in them, to give them generously, lavishly, in abundance, as much as she desires.

Oh, indeed! The measure of our desire for purity, for virtue, for love of God, is in proportion to the graces we must receive from the One Who has said, "I am the fountain of living waters. All those who wish, come to Me and drink. I am the bread of life."

Do we want to love God? Let us go to Him Who is love and everything will be given to us. Because only He will teach us to love Him with His own Divine Love. The emanations of charity must come to us from Him.

Because only God is charity. . .is love! And He has created us to be loved by us, because He hungers and thirsts for our human love, to deify it in His infinite. . .in His divine LOVE. . .!

Third Meditation: The Spirit of Faith

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