| We Are Not Separated from Him |
This week we read a letter to the Baronne de Chantal, written from Annecy on 21 July 1605.To prepare for our chat on Sunday, please read the letter, which is reproduced below, and review the questions at the end.Click for Living Jesus Chatroom  Paolo Veronese, The Conversion of Mary Magdalene (Public Domain)You expressed so much pleasure about the little letters I sent to you while you were on your journey that from now onwards I want to let you have more messages of this kind and not miss any chance of writing, either briefly or at length. But what am I going to tell you, my dear daughter? Tomorrow, the feast of Mary Magdalene, I shall be preaching at the Poor Clares’ convent; but to you I will say that one day Mary Magdalene was speaking to Our Lord, and considering herself separated from him, she wept and called for him, and was so eager, that seeing him, she failed to see him. And so courage, let us not be overeager and restless; our sweet Jesus is with us, we are not separated from him, at least I firmly hope so .’Woman, why weepest thou ?’ (John 20:15) No, you must no longer be a woman, you must have a man’s heart; and provided our soul has a firm will to live and die in the service of God, let us not be dismayed by the darkness, our helplessness, or our feeling of being shut out by some barrier. And speaking of barriers: Magdalene wanted to embrace Our Lord, and her gentle master put up, as it were, a barrier: No, he said, ‘Do not touch me; for I am not yet ascended to my Father’ (John 20:17). On high there will be no more barriers, here we must put up with them. It must be enough for us that God is our God and that our heart is his dwelling place.Shall I tell you a thought that came to me in that morning hour you want me to reserve for my poor soul? The point I was meditating was this petition in the Lord’s prayer: sanctificetur nomen tuum , ‘hallowed be thy name’. I said to myself, oh who will give me the happiness of one day seeing the name of Jesus written in the innermost heart of her who really has it branded on her body ? (She had written the Holy Name over her heart with a red-hot point of steel.) O how I longed to have the steel of our Saviour’s lance in one hand and your heart in the other! I am sure I should not have hesitated to do this work. You see, my dear daughter, how my mind lets itself go?I also remembered the great houses in Paris on the front of which is written the name of the prince to whom they belong, and I rejoiced in the thought that the mansion of your heart belongs to Jesus Christ. May he live there eternally.Pray much for me who am so deeply and incomparably yours.F.P.S. All who belong to you here are well, but no one knows that I am writing to you. I am full of hope in God’s goodness that we shall belong to him utterly; I am joyful and full of courage: is God not all ours? Amen. May Jesus reign. Reflections:How can we miss something, even though we are so eager to see it?St. Francis tells St. Jane, “you must no longer be a woman, you must have a man’s heart.” Certainly, this does not relate to today’s gender hysteria; so what did he mean by this?Why did Jesus not want Mary Magdalene to touch Him? What does this mean?What did St. Francis mean when he was talking about St. Jane having the name of Jesus physically branded on her skin? Was this a tattoo?How can marks of faith that we wear help us? For example, blessed medals, scapulars, St. Benedict bracelets, rosary rings, and the like?What does it mean for our hearts to belong to Jesus? Sign up for our Living Jesus Chat Room:Come to our Living Jesus Chat Room, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time |