Chapter 42
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
is dry or else because of the temptation of our enemy, it is driven by reason and by grace to cry to our Lord, audibly going over His blessed passion and His great goodness. Then the virtue of our Lord's word turns into the soul, quickens the heart, by His grace starts it working properly, and makes it pray most blissfully. To rejoice truly in our Lord is a most blissful, lovely thanking in His sight.
Chapter 42 Of three things that belong to prayer; how we should pray; and of the goodness of God, which always supplies for our imperfection and feebleness when we do what we are supposed to do.
Our Lord God wills that we have true understanding, especially of the three things that belong to our prayer.
The first is from Whom and how our prayer springs up.
He shows "from Whom" when He says, "I am the ground,"
"how" is goodness, for He says, "It is My will, first."
The second thing that belongs to our prayer is in what manner and how we should make our prayer. We should pray in such a way that our will is turned toward the will of our Lord, rejoicing. That's what He intends when He says,
"IT make you will it."
The third thing that belongs to our prayer is that we know that the fruit and end of our prayer is to be made one with our Lord and to live for Him in all things. It was with this intention and for this end that the whole of this lovely lesson was shown. He will help us, and we will make our prayer just as He Himself says, blessed may He be!
It is our Lord's will that our prayers and our trust should be equally far-reaching. For if our trust is not as far-reaching as our prayer, we do not give complete honor to our Lord in our prayer, and we waste time and cause ourselves pain. I believe the cause of this fault is that we do not know, in truth, that our Lord is the ground from which our prayer springs up. Further, we do not know that the prayer is given us by the grace of His love, for if we realized that, it would make us
THE FOURTEENTH SHOWING
trust that we would receive, as a gift from our Lord, all that we desire. For I am certain that no man asks mercy and grace with a true intention unless mercy and grace have first been given to him.
But sometimes it occurs to us that we have prayed for a long time and still, as we think, have not received what we have asked. We should not be depressed on this account, for I am sure, from what our Lord said, that we are waiting either for a better time, or for more grace, or for a better gift. He wills that we have a real knowledge that in Himself He is Being. In this knowledge He wills that our understanding be grounded with all our powers, all our attention, and all our purpose. In this grounding He wills that we have our place and our dwelling.
By the gracious light of Himself, He wills that we have an understanding of the following things: the first is the nobility and excellence of our creation; the second is the preciousness and the extremely great value of our redemption; the third is that He has made all things beneath us to serve us, and that He preserves them for love of us.
What He means is this. It is as if He said, "Behold and see that I have done all this before you prayed. Now you exist and pray to me." He means that it is our place to know that these great deeds have been done as holy Church teaches and that, gratefully seeing them, we ought to pray for the accomplishment of the deed that is now being done, namely that He rule us and guide us for His glory in this life and bring us to His bliss.
It is to accomplish this deed that He has done everything, and He intends us to see that He is doing it and to pray for it to be done. To do only one of these is not enough, for if we pray and do not see that He does it, it makes us depressed and doubtful, and that is not an honor to Him. But if we see that He does it and do not pray, we do not pay our debt, and that can't be; that is to say, in His sight, that does not exist.
But to see that He does it and to pray that it be done — that is the way He is honored and the way we profit.
Everything that our Lord has decided to do, He wills that