At this season the sun enters into the sign of Libra, for the day and night are equal, and light and darkness evenly balanced. Even so for the resigned soul Jesus Christ is in the sign of Libra; and whether He grants sweetness or bitterness, darkness or light, of whatever nature His gift may be, the man retains his balance, and all things are one to him, with the exception of sin, which has been driven out once for all. When all consolation has been withdrawn from these resigned ones, so that they believe they have lost all their virtues, and are forsaken of God and of every creature; then, if they know how to reap the various fruits, the corn and wine are ripe and ready.
The Setting of the Eternal Sun
When the time came for Christ to gather in and bear away to the eternal kingdom the fruits of all the virtues that ever were and ever shall be practised upon earth, then the Eternal Sun began to set; for He humbled Himself and gave up the life of His body into the hands of His enemies. And in His distress he was misunderstood and forsaken by His friends, and all consolation, from without and from within, was taken away from His human nature, and it was overwhelmed with misery and pain, with scorn and heaviness, and in it He paid all the debt that justice claimed for sin. He suffered these things with humble patience, and in this resignation He fulfilled the highest tasks of love, and so He received and redeemed our eternal heritage. Thus was adorned the lower part of His noble humanity, for in it He suffered this sorrow for our sins. And this is why He calls Himself the Saviour of the world; this is why He is now famous and glorified, exalted and seated at the right hand of His Father, where He reigns with power. And every creature on earth, in heaven, and in hell, bends continually the knee before His glorious name.
The Nature of God
We must consider and examine the sublime nature of God: how it is simplicity and purity; height that cannot be scaled and depth that cannot be sounded; breadth without understanding and length without end; awful silence and the savage wilderness; rest of all saints in the union and in the common joy which He shares with His saints throughout eternity.
The Divine Generosity
The incomprehensible wealth and sublimity and the universality of the gifts which flow forth from the divine nature awake wonder in the heart of man, and above all he marvels at the universal presence of God and of His works, a presence which is above everything, for he beholds the inconceivable essence, which is the common joy of God and of all the saints. And he sees that the Divine Persons send forth one common effluence in works, in grace, and in glory, in nature and above nature, in all states and in all times, in men and in the glorified saints, in heaven and on earth, in all reasonable creatures, and in those which are without reason or material, according to the merits, the needs, and the receptivity of each. And he sees the creation of the heaven and the earth, the sun and the moon, the four elements with all the creatures, and the course of the heavens, which is common to all. God, with all His gifts, is common to all, men and angels are a common gift, and the soul with all its faculties....
When man thus considers the wealth and the marvellous sublimity of the divine nature, and all the manifold gifts which He grants and offers to His creatures, amazement is stirred up in his spirit at the sight of so manifold a wealth and majesty; at the sight of the immense faithfulness of God to all His creatures. This causes a strange joy of spirit, and a boundless trust in God, and this inward joy surrounds and penetrates all the forces of the souls in the secret places of the spirit.
Christ the Lover of all Men
Consider how Christ gave Himself to all in perfect faithfulness. His secret and sublime prayer flowed forth towards His Father, and was for the common good of all who desire salvation. Jesus Christ was all things to all men in His love, in His teaching, in His reproaches, in His consolations and sweetness, in His generous gifts, in His gracious forgiveness. His soul and His body, His life, His death, and His service were and are for the common good of all. His sacrament and His gifts are for all. Christ received neither food, nor drink, nor anything that was needful for His body, without thinking of the common good of all those who shall be saved even until the last day.