THE INTIMACY OF CHRIST

Taken from Our Savior and His Love for Us

by
Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O. P.
 

"Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?" -----Matt. 2O: 22

To ENTER truly into the depths of the mystery of the Redemption, we must consider the intimacy of Christ, that is, the friendship of predilection He had for certain particularly faithful and generous souls. Among these souls there is one described in the Gospel by these simple words: "the disciple whom Jesus loved." [John 13: 23.] If we would understand the greatness of the Savior's friendship, its wellsprings, its pattern, its tenderness and its strength, as well as its inestimable gifts, we can do nothing better than contemplate His friendship for St. John.

The most beloved of all the Apostles must have been perfect for our Lord to love him so much. John's purity delighted Him. Yet it was not John's perfection that attracted the love of Jesus. On the contrary, John's perfection was the effect of Jesus' love for him, Bossuet tells us, just as a fine work of art reflects its author's joy in creation. The love that God the Father and the Son have for our souls does not presuppose that we are lovable. Rather, their love for us implants and increases our lovable qualities by assimilating us to itself. When Divine love pours into us, it produces the life of grace in our souls, and it continues to increase this grace in us if we do not set up any obstacles. [Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q.20, a. 2: "The love of God infuses and creates goodness." St. Thomas relates his entire treatise on grace to this principle: Cf. la IIae, q. 1 10, a. 1, c. and ad 1: "Whatever is pleasing to God in a man is caused by the Divine love."]

Let us see how our Lord, through His friendship, made John resemble Him ever more closely. Bossuet has remarked that the Savior gave His beloved disciple three gifts: His Cross, His Mother, and His heart. [Panegyric on St. John.] But it seems preferable to follow the chronological order in which He bestowed these gifts, for it gives us a better understanding of St. John's progress in grace, and how the beloved disciple gradually entered ever deeper into Christ's intimacy. At the Last Supper Jesus gave John His heart. Soon afterward, when He was dying, He gave him His Mother. And then, to make John's ministry fruitful, Jesus gave him His Cross.

At the Last Supper, Jesus Gave John His Heart

At that moment, all the apostles were ordained priests, received the priestly character, and also received Holy Communion. But St. John came closer to the Master's heart, and laid his head on the Sacred Heart of the Savior.

When our Lord instituted the Sacrament whose purpose is to increase our love of God, He willed that one of His privileged Apostles should be more aware than the others of the beat of His heart, that would thereafter continue to live in the Eucharist for the consolation and perfect regeneration of souls.

What interior grace did St. John receive at that moment? We can get some idea of it when we remember that Jesus' body emitted a virtue capable of healing the sick. How much more must His heart have poured forth vivifying grace! Beyond any doubt John received in that instant a grace of light and love. He learned experimentally that the Savior's heart lives only for love of God and of souls. He understood how the Eucharist is the great manifestation of this love on earth, and that even under its humble appearances it is the very life of God always present among us. Predestined from all eternity to be the great doctor of charity, John drank in charity at its very source and was inspired by the words that were to inspire a holy tenderness in the faithful until the end of time. So that he might speak more eloquently of the Savior's love for us, he came very close to the spiritual fire that burns without destroying and that would transform us into itself.

As St. Paul recalled in his writings that he had been caught up to the third Heaven, so St. John remembered that he had rested on the Master's heart. And how the eagle of the Evangelists wrote! He proclaimed the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine to be as follows: God is light and love. It was He who first loved us gratuitously. Our love for Him must be a response to the love He has shown for us, and fraternal charity must be the great sign of our love of God. He summed up his views in his First Epistle: "Dearly beloved, let us love one another: for charity is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is charity. By this hath the charity of God appeared toward us, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by Him. In this is charity: not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. My dearest, if God hath so loved us, we also ought to love one another . . . God is charity: and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him." [1 John 4:7-16.]

This is an abstract of the whole of Christian dogma and morality, reduced to its essentials: love of God and of neighbor, the charity that must inspire and animate all the virtues. "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren." [1 John 3:14.] This is the great sign of the love of God.

We also have received what John received: the Master's heart. We can receive the Eucharistic heart of Jesus each day at Holy Communion. And if we receive it, if we truly believe in it, we must imitate it. The Savior's heart is open to all the faithful. In His heart we are all united, to be consummated into one. He turns no one away.

If we would enter into Christ's intimacy, our hearts must exclude no one, they must forget the wrongs our neighbors have done us, and be compassionate for the sufferings of others; our hearts must be generous, keeping nothing for themselves, giving their lives for others and thereby possessing life all the more securely. Let us remember that God will multiply His blessings to us in the measure that we desire to share them with our brothers. We do not lose truth or goodness when we give them to others. Rather we possess them more securely and in a holy manner.

We should rejoice also in seeing in our neighbor what is lacking in ourselves. Instead of falling prey to jealousy, we ought to rejoice in his qualities, which are ours too in a sense, inasmuch as we are all one in the mystical body of Christ. The hand can rejoice in what the eye sees. Charity thus enriches our poverty. It makes all our goods the common property of all. It appropriates for us in a sense all the gifts of the mystical body of the Savior, and makes us participate in a measure in all the blessings of the City of God.

But to enter even more deeply into Christ's intimacy we must be taught by Mary, for she more than any other creature was privileged to enter into the heart of this sanctuary. That is why, when He was about to die, Jesus confided His Mother to St. John.

John was the only Apostle at the foot of the Cross. He was there, a heartbroken witness of all the Master's physical and moral suffering. Jesus had invisibly drawn him there to let him hear His last words and to give him a final proof of His love.

Those who are about to die leave to their dearest ones the most expressive testimony of affection. What did Jesus leave St. John, as He was dying? He had nothing left. He had been stripped of everything, abandoned by all. It even seemed that His Father had rejected Him when, as a victim in our stead, He cried out the first words of the psalm: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" [Matt. 28:46.] In this state of utter destitution, what did Jesus leave to St. John?

He left him a living memory, the very holy soul whom He cherished more than all other creatures taken together. He left Mary to him. "Behold thy mother," He said to John. And to Mary: "Woman, behold thy son." "And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own." [John 19:26 ff.]

Contact with Jesus' heart at the Last Supper spiritually vivified John's soul. The Savior's words spoken from the Cross also had Sacramental power, as it were. Although He spoke these words on the point of death, He was still strong enough to touch men's hearts and to enrich them as He pleased.

These words created between Mary and John a most intimate bond, analogous to the bond that unites Jesus to His Blessed Mother. They gave Mary a most maternal and deep love that would thenceforth enfold John's soul, and they awakened in John a most filial and respectful love that made him a true spiritual son of Mary.

In this moment of anguish the words of the dying Christ touched their souls to their depths like a gentle balm, soothing their sufferings and their broken hearts. They brought immense consolation to John and to Mary too, for she could see into human souls and, looking into the soul of the beloved disciple, she could see what he himself could not: the living image of the Savior, the image that Mary would make perfect, to render it ever more like its divine model.

And so it happens often in the history of souls. When Jesus seems to draw away to test the confidence of His friends, He leaves His Blessed Mother to them, and He entrusts them to her care. Who can describe all the blessings St. John received from Mary? If St. Augustine and St. Monica had conversations on such an exalted plane, what are we to think of the talks between Mary and St. John?

Through the plenitude of grace she had received, the Mother of God was superior to the angels. The charity ablaze in her heart surpassed that of all the Saints taken together. Its lively flame ever aspired toward God, even while she slept, in the words of the Canticle of Canticles: "I sleep, and my heart watcheth." [Cant. 5:2.]

Blessed with such a supernatural intimacy, how greatly St. John's charity must have grown, especially when he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in Mary's presence for her intentions, and when he gave her Holy Communion! Did he not know that the Blessed Virgin understood immeasurably better than he the sacrifice of the altar which perpetuates in substance the sacrifice of the Cross? Mary did not have the official capacity of the priesthood and she could not consecrate, but "she had received the plenitude of the spirit of the priesthood, which is the spirit of Christ our Redeemer." [These are the words of Jean Jacques Olier.] As universal Mediatrix and Coredemptrix, Mary never ceased lifting the soul of the apostle up toward God. Thus did He develop great love for the hidden life and become the model of contemplatives.

It was St. John's purity that had prepared him to live in Christ's intimacy. It was his purity, too, that disposed him to inherit Christ's love for Mary, who thus became his spiritual mother in the deepest and truest sense.

Following St. John's example, let us place ourselves under the immediate direction of the Virgin, as St. Louis Marie de Montfort urges. She is our mediatrix before Christ, as He is our mediator before His Father. She will be our counsel and our strength, our defense against the devil. She will increase the worth of our merits by offering them herself to her Son. Let us abandon into her hands the reparative and impetratory value of our actions, our struggles, our prayers, so that she may make them available, according to her good pleasure, to the souls that need them most. Thus to strip ourselves is in reality to enrich ourselves. Under Mary's direction we shall with a much surer step follow the path blazed by the Word, who Himself obeyed her on earth. Then we shall run swiftly on the path of God's Commandments, because we shall receive the grace that dilates the heart, in the words of the Psalm: "I have run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou didst enlarge my heart."  [Ps. 118:32.] The Blessed Virgin will teach us countless things through her inspirations, as a good mother yields up to her child by a simple look, without need of words, the treasure of her interior life. With her and in her intimacy, we shall make more progress in a few days than during years of personal effort made without her. Thus speaks St. Louis Marie de Montfort, a true spiritual son of Mary as was St. John. [See his Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, no.155. Also the summary of this work, entitled The Secret of Mary, published by TAN Books.]

Our Lord gave St. John His heart, He gave him His Mother. What else did He give him to make his apostolic ministry fruitful? He gave him His cross, and progressively made him understand its inestimable value.

Jesus' friendship does not consist wholly in sweetness and joy. It is as strong as it is tender. It tends to purify through tribulations, and through suffering to associate souls with itself in the mystery of Redemption.

The Apostles did not understand this at first. When Jesus spoke of the foundation of the kingdom of God, the Apostles wondered which of them would be first in this kingdom. Then, as St. Matthew records, "Jesus calling unto Him a little child, set him in the midst of them, and said: 'Amen I say to you, unless you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven. whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of Heaven.' " [Matt. 18:2-4.] The Master had also said on several occasions: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." [Ibid. 16:24.]  But the Apostles did not yet understand the full meaning of the word "cross." They could not accept the idea that Jesus would be crucified. Yet several times He had told them that this would happen.

One day, as He was going up to Jerusalem with them, our Lord again predicted His Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. He wished to implant it more deeply into the mind of John and that of his brother. At that moment the mother of the two Apostles approached Jesus and bowed down as if to ask something. As St. Matthew records it, [Ibid. 20:21-23.] Jesus said to her: "What wilt thou?" She answered: "Say that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom." Jesus then said: "You know not what you ask. Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? " Quickly they declared: "We can." He answered: "My chalice indeed you shall drink; but to sit on My right or left hand is not Mine to give you, but to them for whom it is prepared by My Father." That was the day Jesus gave His Cross to His beloved disciple.

These words spoken by the Savior, like those spoken on the two other occasions, produced their effects in the disciple's soul. From that moment John no longer sought to be the first. He began to love suffering and humiliation, and this love continued to grow in his heart through the influence of grace.

Jesus was to make John more and more like Himself. He came to suffer as a victim of salvation, to save us by His agony more than by His sermons. So He united John more and more to His toilsome and crucified life. Bossuet says, "Whenever Jesus comes, He brings with Him His Cross and His thorns, and He shares them with those who love Him." As John was His beloved Apostle, He gave him the immense grace of loving the Cross.

John had at first thought that in order to have an honored place in the kingdom of the Son of God it was necessary to be seated at His right hand and to be clothed in His glory. He was to learn that we penetrate far into this kingdom even here on earth through suffering. He was to learn also how tribulation makes one clairvoyant in contemplating Jesus in the souls of men. Affliction was to open his eyes. He was to understand the profound meaning of the noblest of the beatitudes, the one that is most astonishing to human reason: "Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." This kingdom is already theirs here on earth even in the midst of persecution, because of the profound peace that Jesus gives them.

What was John's cross? If we look at things outwardly, it may seem that his was the lightest of all the Apostles' crosses. He alone among them did not die in the throes of Martyrdom. He did of course suffer persecution. In Rome under Domitian he was plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil. But this oil changed into dew, and he emerged refreshed and purified. He was then exiled on Patmos, where our Lord appeared to him in His glory and revealed His secrets to him, commanding him to write them down in the most mysterious of all the sacred books, the Apocalypse.

Viewed externally, St. John's cross may seem to have been lighter than those of the other Apostles. But as Bossuet says, "St. John's cross was inwardly the greatest of all. Learn the mystery and consider the two Crosses of our Savior. The one was seen on Calvary, and it seemed the more painful. The other is the one He carried all through His life, and it caused Him far more suffering."  [Panegyric on St. John, Point 1.] Jesus explained to St. Catherine of Siena several times that this interior cross is the desire for the salvation of souls, a desire that was combated by the spirit of evil, by the spirit of the world, and by covetousness that sweeps millions of souls to perdition. In Jesus' life we can follow the progress of the malice of those who hated Him, thus increasing His thirst for the salvation of souls that was burning and consuming Him. The Martyrdom of the heart is often more painful than outward Martyrdom, and it can last for years and not merely for a few hours.

It was particularly this interior cross of desire for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls that Jesus gave to St. John. It did not strike at the senses, but it was implanted by God in the depths of his soul together with a very strong desire for the salvation of sinners. To make His Apostle capable of carrying this interior cross, Jesus inspired in him the love of suffering which at once quickened the desire to a calm, steady flame, and prevented the soul from finding solace in anything outside of God. Likewise, when certain souls called to holiness find too much natural satisfaction in creatures, our Lord will quickly pour a little bitterness on this satisfaction, and this bitterness far exceeds the pleasure formerly enjoyed. This is a crucifying and purifying grace.

Finally, St. John's interior cross consisted most of all in the heresies that were mutilating Holy Mother Church by denying the Divinity of Jesus. How these denials must have tortured the heart of the author of the Fourth Gospel which was written to make known the Word made flesh in all His glory! This interior cross derived from the divisions arising in the newborn Church to the detriment of charity. When the apostle was eighty years old, he had his disciples carry him to the church of Ephesus, and since he could no longer preach long sermons, he merely said: "My little children, love one another." He who in his youth had been called "son of thunder" by our Lord because of his ardor, could now speak only of fraternal charity, the great sign of love of God. He had lost none of his ardor, of his hunger for justice, but it had become more spiritual and gentle. And when his listeners asked him why he always repeated the same thing, he answered: "That is the Lord's command. If you accomplish it, that is sufficient." Such was John's cross; above all an interior cross.

The Lord gives us interior crosses, too. There are three kinds of crosses: those that remain useless, like that of the bad thief; those we carry to make reparation for our own sins and to merit salvation, like that of the good thief; and those that make us think of the Savior's Cross, and that we bear in order to labor with Him for the salvation of souls. When we carry a cross well, it in turn carries us. It unseals our eyes and leads us toward contemplation, and helps us to see God hidden in the souls of men. If such a cross sometimes seems very heavy, let us ask our Savior to give us a love of suffering, or at least orient us in the path of suffering.

That is what He desires, since He has given us His heart, a wounded heart. He has also given us His Mother, and one of the greatest graces that our Lady of Sorrows can obtain for us is the grace of delighting in the crosses that the Lord places on our shoulders to purify us and to enable us to labor for the salvation of souls. This is truly to enter into Christ's intimacy and to participate in His hidden and sorrowful life before having a part in His glorious life in Heaven.

NOTE:

 The expression "to delight in the cross" reminds us that our Lord declared: "There are some . . . that shall not taste death till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom" [Matt. 16:28]. St. Thomas said in this regard [In Matthaeum, 16:28]: "Sinners are absorbed, swallowed up as it were, by death, the just delight in death, which is their entrance into eternal life."

To help us enter into Christ's intimacy, let us from time to time reread a hymn composed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux: