"Sword
and Love"
by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
Man, wouldst thou
wish to grieve thy Friend? Wouldst thou not rather wish to renounce making thy Friend
suffer?
He suffers, however,
as long as man doth not seek to know what the Lord’s work is.
Thus, who could
conceive what the prevaricators must make God suffer, when they carry their
deviations so far as to act against Him?
No! Man, thou couldst
not bear the sight of a picture so overwhelming. Who other than God would have
the strength for it?
Therefore, it is
only He Who pardons, and it is only from Him that we learn charity.
Clear each day the
pathways of this school, if thou wishest to learn what is the work of the
Lord.
May the Master Who
giveth instruction there find in thee the most assiduous of His auditors.
Thy interior
sufferings, caused by charity: canst thou believe them to be useless to thy
Friend?
It is not too much
to say that they bring thee closer to God, that they please God, in that they
join thee to Him, and make thee akin to His love.
This is the work;
this is the first degree of the work. May all the nations hear me!
May they become pure
enough to feel the interior sufferings of charity.
I
see two words written upon this Tree of Life: Sword and Love.
With the sword of the word I will subjugate all the enemies of my God,
I will bind them, and I will prevent them from hurting my God.
With love I shall zealously implore Him to shed in me a ray of His
charity;
And to grant that I might relieve Him in taking on myself some of the
sufferings of His love.
Be
not offended, oh my God, at the loftiness of this idea—it is Thou Who hast
given birth to it in my heart!
And
it is so vivid that I think I see delineated there the most beautiful titles of
my primaeval office.
These
are our terrestrial bonds which veil us from that ancient and divine office.
It
cannot fail to make itself known naturally to those whose souls have the
strength to cast off their chains.
--Chant 4 from THE MAN OF DESIRE (L'HOMME DE DESIR) (1790)
translated by Seth Edwards, 2016
title by Robert Amadou
No comments:
Post a Comment