Now the first exercise consists principally in prayer in which so many different interior movements take place that to express them all is impossible, not only by reason of their number, but also for their nature and quality, which being spiritual, they 232cannot but be very rarefied, and almost imperceptible to our understanding. Bernard calls it, active by that we affect or love God and what he loves, by this we serve God and do what he ordains that joins us to God's goodness, this makes us execute his will: the one fills us with complacency, benevolence, yearnings, desires, aspirations and spiritual ardours, causing us to practise the sacred infusions and minglings of our spirit with God's the other establishes in us the solid resolution, the constancy of heart, and the inviolable obedience requisite to effect the ordinances of the divine will, and to suffer, accept, approve and embrace, all that comes from his good-pleasure the one makes us pleased in God, the other makes us please God: by the one we conceive, by the other we bring forth: by the one we place God upon our heart, as a standard of love, around which all our affections are ranged, by the other we place him upon our arm, as a sword of love whereby we effect all the exploits of virtue. We have two principal exercises of our love towards God, the one affective, the other effective, or, as S. A DESCRIPTION OF MYSTICAL THEOLOGY, WHICH IS NO OTHER THING THAN PRAYER.
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