Chapter 22
THE NINTH SHOWING
Chapter 22 THE NINTH SHOWING is of the delight of three heavens; of the infinite love of Christ, and of His desiring to suffer every day for us if He could do so, though it is not necessary.
Then our good Lord Jesus Christ asked me, "Are you really pleased that I suffered for you?"
I said, "Yes, good Lord, thank you so much! Yes, good Lord, blessed may You be!"
Then our good, kind Lord Jesus said, "If you are satisfied, I am satisfied. It is a joy, a bliss, an endless delight to Me that ever I suffered the passion for you, and if I could suffer more,
I would."
In feeling this, my understanding was lifted up into heaven and there I saw three heavens. I was greatly astounded at this sight, and though I saw three heavens, all in the blessed manhood of Christ, none of them was greater, none was less, none was higher, none was lower, but all were equally alike in bliss.
For the first heaven, Christ showed me His Father — in no bodily likeness, but in His properties and in His working.
That is to say, I saw in Christ what the Father is. The working of the Father is that He gives reward to His Son, Jesus
Christ. This gift and this reward is so blissful to Jesus that His Father could have given Him no reward that could have pleased Him better. The first heaven, which is the pleasing of the Father, was shown to me as a heaven. It was completely blissful because He is completely pleased with all the deeds
Jesus has done for our salvation.
Therefore, we are [Jesus] not only because He has bought us, but also by the courteous gift of His Father. We are His bliss, we are His reward; we are His glory, we are His crown.
It was a singular marvel and a thing most delightful to behold, that we are His crown. All of this (which I have just said) is so great a joy to Jesus that for it He counts all His painful labor, His difficult passion, His cruel and shameful death, as nothing.
In the words "If I could suffer more, I would" I saw in
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
truth that He would have died as often as He could have, and love would never have let Him rest until He had done it. I looked with great diligence to learn how often He would die if He could, and in truth, the number exceeded the power of my understanding and my wits to such an extent that my reason might not and could not comprehend it or take it in.
And even when He had died, or would have died, this many times, He still would count it as nothing for love, for all seems to Him very small compared to His love.
Though the sweet manhood of Christ could suffer only once, the goodness in Him can never cease offering itself: He is ready to do the same thing every day, if such a thing were possible. If He said He would, for my love, make new heavens and a new earth, it would be a very small thing compared to this, for He could do that every day if He wanted to, without any painful labor, but to die so often for my love that the number goes beyond created reason is the greatest offer our
Lord God could make to man's soul, as I see it.
By all this He meant the following to be understood: "How should it, then, be that, for your love, I should not do all I could? The deed does not distress me, since for your love I should die so often with no regard for my intense pain."
For the second heaven, I saw here, looking at the blessed passion, that the love that made Him suffer exceeds all His pains by as much as heaven is above earth. For the pain was a noble glorious deed done at a single time by the working of love, and love was without a beginning, is, and shall be without an ending. For this love He said most sweetly these words: "If I could suffer more, I would." He did not say, "If it were necessary to suffer more," because even though it were not necessary, if He could suffer more, He would. This deed and this work concerning our salvation was ordained as well as God could ordain it. It was done as gloriously as Christ could do it. And here I saw complete bliss in Christ, for His bliss would not have been complete if it could have been done better.
THE NINTH SHOWING
Fe Chapter 23 How Christ wills that we greatly rejoice with Him in our redemption and desire grace from Him that we may do so.
And in these three words, "It is a joy, a bliss, an endless delight to me," three heavens were showed, as follows:
For the joy I understood the pleasure of the Father; for the bliss, the glorification of the Son, and for the endless delight, the Holy Spirit. The Father is pleased, the Son is glorified, the Holy Spirit is delighted.
That is what I saw, looking at His blessed passion, for the third heaven that is to say, the joy and bliss that make Him delight in [that passion]. For our courteous Lord showed me
His passion in five ways. The first is the bleeding of the head; the second is the discoloring of His face; the third is the copious bleeding of the body in the likeness of His scourging, and the fourth is the drying of the dying. These four are the pains of the passion, as I have said before.
The fifth [way] is that which was shown for the joy and bliss of the passion, for it is God's will that we take true delight with Him in our salvation. In it He wills that we be greatly comforted and strengthened. That is why He wills that our souls be cheerfully occupied with His grace, for we are His bliss. In us He delights without end, and in the same way we shall delight in Him, with His grace.
All He has done for us, and does, and ever shall do was never a cost or charge to Him, nor could it be, except only that He died in our manhood; the cost and charge of our redemption in deed, beginning at the sweet Incarnation, lasted until the blessed Resurrection on Easter morning, and extended only that far. In this deed He rejoiced endlessly, as I have said before.
Jesus wills that we pay heed to the bliss that is in the blessed Trinity on account of our salvation and that we desire to have as much spiritual delight with His grace as I have already said; that is to say, that our delight in our salvation may be as like the joy Christ has in our salvation as it can be while we are here.
THE TENTH SHOWING
The whole Trinity has worked in the passion of Christ, ministering an abundance of virtues and a fulness of grace to us through Him, but only the maiden's Son did the suffering in which the whole blessed Trinity endlessly delights.
And this was showed in Christ's words "Are you really pleased...?" and "If you are satisfied, then I am satisfied."
It is as if He were saying, "It is joy and delight enough for Me, and I ask nothing else of you for My bitter labor but that I might really please you."
And in this He brought to my mind the quality of a cheerful giver. A cheerful giver pays little attention to the thing he gives. All his desire and all his intent is to please and comfort the one to whom he gives it. And if the receiver takes the gift nobly, gladly and thankfully, then the courteous giver counts all his cost and all his difficult labor as nothing, for his joy and delight that he has pleased and comforted the one he loves. This was showed completely and at length.
Also, consider wisely the greatness of this word "ever," for in it was shown a noble insight into the love He has for our salvation and the manifold joys that, because of it [that love], flow from the passion of Christ. One joy is that He delights that He has done it in deed and will suffer no more. Another is that He has brought us up into heaven and made us
His crown and endless bliss. The third is that, by it, He has bought us away from the endless pains of hell.
Chapter 24 THE TENTH SHOWING is that our Lord Jesus Christ, rejoicing, shows His blessed heart cut in two for love.
Then, with a happy face, our Lord looked at His wounded side and gazed into it, rejoicing. With His sweet gazing He drew forth the understanding of His creature through that same wound into His side within. And there He showed a fair, delectable place, large enough for all of mankind who shall be saved to rest there in peace and love. With this,