[Footnote 73: Psalm xli. 3.]
Where is the habitual communion of the heart and its works with the Word made flesh? and the tears poured out like Magdalen at his feet? and the bowed head—like that of John—upon his breast? and all that which the book of the Imitation so well calls the familiar friendship of Jesus? Where, in a word, is that Real Presence which, from the holy sacrament, as from a hidden fountain, flows forth to the true Catholic, like a river of peace, all the day long, fructifying and gladdening his life? It was this Emmanuel—this God with us—who awaited you in our church, and in the sacrament which attracted you with so much power even when you but half-believed in it. As in the ancient synagogue, you found in your worship only symbols and shadows; they spoke to you of the reality but did not contain them, they awakened your thirst but did not quench it. Weak and empty elements which have no right to existence since the veil of the temple has been rent asunder and the eternal reality discovered. "Old things have passed away, and all things are become new." [Footnote 74] Oh! blessed are you to have been admitted into the nuptial chamber of the Lamb.
[Footnote 74: 2. Cor. v. 17.]
However, madam, if Christ has taken captive your heart, it is the language of the prophet: "Thou hast beguiled me, O Lord, and I am beguiled: thou hast been stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed." [Footnote 75] But he has respected all the rights of your reason and of your liberty. That which you have resolved, that which you are about to accomplish, you have weighed well and long in the balance of investigation, study, reflection, and prayer; and I owe you this justice to say that you have carried your reflection to the utmost scruple, and completion almost to delay—so much have you feared, in this great religious act, any other argument but of personal conscience; to such a degree have you persisted in rejecting the shadow of any human influence, or the shadow of the influence of imagination or sentiment.
[Footnote 75: Jer. xx. 7.]
It is thus, however, that Jesus Christ would have you to himself. Spouse of love, he is at the same time the Spouse of truth and liberty, and this is why, in drawing souls to him, he never deceives nor constrains them. He is the eternal Word, begotten of the reason of God the Father; born in the outpouring of infinite splendor, he remembers his origin, and when he comes to us it is not under cover of our gloom, but in the effulgence of his light. And because he is the truth he is also liberty. He bows with respect [Footnote 76] before the liberty of the soul, his image and daughter, and forgets the language of command that he may only employ that of prayer.
[Footnote 76: "Cum magna reverentia disponis nos." (Sap. xii. 18.)]
As in the sacred song, he says: "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is full of dew, and my locks of the drops of the nights." [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 77: Canticle v. 2.]
"Here am I." He says again in the Apocalypse, "I stand at the door, and knock: if any one shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in, and will sup with him, and he with me." [Footnote 78] He never forces an entrance into the heart; he enters it only when it is opened for him. How tender and beautiful those words that prove that with God as with man there is the same love and the same tenderness! True love respects as much as it loves, and disdains triumph at the expense of liberty!