Acting on Christ's Words

I long to see you set afire, swallowed up and consumed in his blazing charity, for we know that those who are set afire and consumed in that true charity lose all self-consciousness.  That is what I want you to do.

I am inviting you, in this blazing charity, to plunge into a peaceful sea, a deep sea.  I have just rediscovered the sea - not that the sea is new, but it is new to me in the way my soul experiences it - in the words, "God is love."  And just as a mirror reflects a person's face and as the sun shines its light on the earth, so these words echo within me that everything that is done is simply love, because everything is made entirely of love.  This is why he says, "I am God, Love."

This sheds light on the priceless mystery of the incarnate Word, who, out of sheer love, was given in such humility that it confounds my pride.  It teaches us to look not just at what he did, but at the blazing love his Word has given us.  It says that we should do as a loving person does when a friend comes with a gift: not looking at the friends hands to see what the gift is, but looking with the eyes of love at the friend's loving heart.  And this is what God's supreme, eternal, more tender than tender goodness wants us to do when he visits our soul.  So when he comes to you with his incalculable blessings, let your memory open up at once to receive what your understanding has seen in his divine love, and let your will rise up in blazing desire to receive and gaze upon the burning heart of the giver, the good gentle Jesus.  In this way you will find yourself swallowed up and clothed in the fiery gift of the blood of God's Son.  And you will be freed from all suffering and grief.

-Saint Catherine of Siena

Saint Catherine of Siena (1380), Doctor of the Church, was a Dominican, a stigmatist, and papal advisor.